Lex Anteinternet: Musing for Conservaties from a real (well mostly, ...

Lex Anteinternet: Musing for Conservaties from a real (well mostly, ...: 

Musing for Conservaties from a real (well mostly, sometimes, 50/50 anyway) Conservative.

This comes, I'd note, at a time at which it's clear that much of the Wyoming GOP got to the station on the Trump Train, went into the station and had a few drinks, and re-boarded on Crazy Train, where it stumbled to the club car, and is now decrying the moral state of the country to the bar maid, who has ear buds in and is listening to Taylor Swift and hoping these guys leave a big tip, while knowing that they won't.

Witness:

Wyoming GOP Wants Investigation of Gov. Gordon’s Ties To Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett

That is, quite frankly, and the only way it can be described, "batshit crazy".   This is going to reveal nothing, and it won't happen for that matter, but the fact that the GOP Central Committee endorses it is scary.

And hence the problem. At the same time that across the country a lot of Republican conservatives voted and said "whoooeeee, what's that smell in here. . . " and then marked the ballot for Democrats, the Wyoming GOP, listening only to the right wing edge of the party, has voted itself into total isolation. Right now, the state's party is about as aware of reality as close affiliates of Kim Jong-un are.

Somehow, it just figures.

And for that reason, they're going to take the state into political isolation, spouting nonsense, while one Senator proclaims that Joe Biden personally sets the price of gas every day, another tries to figure out which GOP Presidential hopeful stands the best chance of giving her a cabinet slot, and a freshman Congressman rails against whatever Kevin McCarthy says is a good thing to rail against today.

In four years we'll have so little say in the nation's politics that our even being a state will be utterly pointless, and beyond that, the Conservative "movement", if it can still be called that, will be about as relevant to the nation as the post World War Two Sicilian movement to make that island the 49th state.

You didn't know there had been one, did you?

Hence, my point.

So, as I am a conservative, of a sort anyhow, and feel that generally my sort of conservatism is correct, some unsolicited advice and commentary for conservatives.

With the first being, what is a conservative, anyhow?

In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation . . . the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not . . . express themselves in ideas but only . . . in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

Lionell Trilling, 1950. 

A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

William F. Buckley.

Defining Conservatism.

The blue flag of Conservatism.  Blue is the traditional color, globally, for conservatism, but for some reason in the American political imagry its been substituted for red, which is the color of socialism. Perhaps this makes sense, however, as populism is really a left wing ideology, and as the national conservative party becomes more populist, it is in fact less conservative.

Defining conservatism isn't all that easy to do, and we'd submit, it's so frequently done clouded by either a liberal tradidtiion or a reactionary impulse, that its done incorrectly.

Take, for instance.

We, as young conservatives, believe:

• That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;
• That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;
• That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;
• That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;
• That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government; and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;
• That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: Does it serve the just interests of the United States?

The Sharon Statement, 1960, drafted in part by M. Stanton Evans. Is it correct?

One of the real problems modern conservatives face is that they don't know what conservatism is, even if most vaguely have a grasp of it.  As a result of this, they've adopted a lot of libertarianism, which isn't conservatism by any means, and a fair amount, recently, of fascism, which actually originated in the radical left.¹

Without some sort of existential understanding of what it is, conservatism isn't really anything at all. And indeed, if you look at the current GOP, it is indeed a "big tent", but that tents a real mishmash of people with widely varying ideologies, or no ideologies at all.

The irony of the recent race in Wyoming is that one of the far fight candidates campaigned on the platform of "less government, more freedom". That's not conservative, that's libertarianism.  The same candidate has billboards up opposing abortion, which is a conservative position, and one I support, which has roots in theology, philosophy, and natural law, but which doesn't really square with the "less government, more freedom" platform.  A guy who is for less government, and more freedom, ought to take the position that you can pretty much do whatever you freakin' want to, which of course he really doesn't.

You can get to being pro life and be a libertarian, I'd note, but its harder.

Shoot, why not legalize dueling?  Less government. . . more freedom.

And that defines why the current crop of conservatives make nearly no sense.

I'd propose that Conservatism is this; it's a political/philosophical view that human beings are flawed and in some serious ways, de minimis.  We're a creature of some external force, that force being nature, and for those who are believers, nature's God.  What we are and how we should behave is defined by that, and as we are imperfect, we should always be extremely careful about departing from something we have conserved, i.e,. tradition, as by and large, tradition and traditional views are highly refined from experience and probably correct. Something we come up with in our own era stands a good chance of being wrong.  Because we are imperfect, we can find out that we are wrong on things, and we do over time, but we ought to never assume we've figured it out in our own era.  Added to that, as history is conserved knowledge, the past is nearly as alive as the present, and we should consider it and its voices constantly.

Now, going from there.

All reality is governed by, well, reality.

And what we know of reality is ultimately governed by nature.  

We can know nature, and know a lot of it by observation.  But we cannot redefine it.

Modern "ology" fields, outside of the hard sciences, have tried mightily, and indeed enormously succeeded, in shoving out vast piles of crap on our natures for well over a century. Sooner or later, the last crap starts to stink up everything and be revealed as crap, but not before many lives have been destroyed in the process.  

Psychology, sociology, sexolgy, all are hugely guilty of this.

Biology, geology, orthodox theology, and physics, are not.

If things aren't grounded in nature, as revealed by the real, i.e., hard, sciences, they are probably wrong.

Now, science doesn't have an explanation for everything, but it has the explanation for a lot.  And where it does, it must be listened to. And an awful lot about us can readily and easily be explained by evolutionary biology, which should not be confused with cultural anthropology, another one of the "ology" fields that tends to be in the category of "the self-explanatory flavor of the day rationalizing my own behavior".

The lesson of the hard sciences, like orthodox Christinaity, tend to make lot of people hugely uncomfortable, in part because starting with the, yes conservative, Reagan Administration the Federal Government gutted the funding for them.  Prior to that we had enlisted the hard sciences in the war effort against the Axis and then later against the Soviet Union.  At that point we really needed to know what science, often in the form of engineering (which is applied physics) had to say about things.

By the mid 1970s "Conservatives" had regrown uncomfortable with some things science had to say, particularly in the environmental fields, which I'll address below.² So they gutted it, and int he process they've managed to make modern Americans woefully poorly educated in the sciences.  There's no excuse for it.  Here's a good example:

Nobody remembers  this as in reality we treated viruses with a massively publicly funded health system and mandatory vaccinations.  Treating things with soup and Vitamin C is a trip to the cemetery.

But we're now so freakin' dense that this actually showed up on a recent candidates' website.

Reality, you smart mammal, is defined by nature and evolution.  You are formed existentially by external forces, and that is what you are existentially.  You, and we, don't get to change that.

Our own appetites don't define right or wrong.

But people sure seem to think that.

You would think this would be self-evident, but in this era of massive wealth, the concept of restraining your own conduct in any fashion is regarded as passé.

Among the things we are, we are broken. The standards are clear, but we don't always individually orient ourselves to them. That doesn't mean our disorientation should be given license.  

Indeed, we don't even know where to draw the line on this.  For eons human beings accepted, for example, the norm that sex should be contained within marriage, and that it was between male and female. The only real global divergence on how this worked had to do with whether polygamy was okay or not. That's about it. 

This isn't the only example, by any means, but it does show how conservatism isn't libertarianism or progressivism.  Progressives would require you to believe that the latest social "ology" items are real legally.  You may not assert, for example, that transgenderism isn't real, as that's not socially acceptable.  Libertarians don't care if you believe it or not, but they wouldn't have the structure of the state accept the scientific realities that it's far from proven, and up until it is, it's not a state matter to force, and because it's also contrary to long human experience, and frankly science, the burden of proof on it is very high.

Our own economic well-being doesn't define true or false.

Avarice, 1590.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.

1 Timothy.

Somewhere along the path of things, conservatives started believing that capitalism is the natural order of things.  And beyond that, somehow conservatism began to equate itself with a worship of mammon.

Southerners justified slavery, which was in their perceived economic self-interest, on the basis that the Bible said it was okay, which it does not.  The Germans justified invading the Soviet Union on the "ology" basis that the Germans were a master race, and they therefore were entitled to the Slavic breadbaskets of Europe.

Think this doesn't apply to this argument?

Well, right now the GOP in Wyoming, which claims to be conservative, wants the state to investigate Gov. Gordon’s Ties To Bill Gates, George Soros, and Warren Buffett. Why?  Well somebody's economic ox is being gored as these men don't have the same view of the economic future as the Central Committee does.

Indeed, among those who are involved in economics and science, it's really clear that the Republican Party in Wyoming has literally walked up to a dead mule and put it in harness on the basis that the mule made us rich in the past, and he better now.  That's not how these things work.

Things do change, and you don't have a right to insist that they do not.  Railroad crews couldn't demand that the switch from steam to diesel not be made on the basis that steam engines employed a larger crew.  Sail mariners couldn't demand that the age of sail not yield to that of coal.  But that's what a lot of people in the "conservative" moment are doing right now.

Truth be known, we can learn that our own occupations are not sacrosanct, even though the lesson is hard.  Nobody argues, for example, that "I'm a tobacco farmer, and therefore cancer is a fib" anymore, but people did at one time.  We hear economic arguments of that type made in conservative circles all the time, however.

And that is not real conservatism. That's reactionary.  A real conservatism would realize that economics isn't the same as conserving core human relationships.

Conservatism sometimes has to aim to restore or recall what was already lost.

One of the common failings of conservatives, which opens them up to criticism all the time, is that they are often working at conserving either what is right now, or what was just very recently.

A good example of this is another economic one.  Conservatives constantly claim to be preserving capitalism. That isn't conservative at all.  Capitalism itself is a government made economic liberal construct designed to promote certain type of business activities.

Capitalism can be argued to be good or bad, and in varying degrees, in its own right, but the fact of the matter is that its contrary to nature in recognizing what would otherwise be a type of partnership as a "person", giving it a huge economic advantage against real people.  If conservatives truly sought to conserve, they'd look back and realize that the corporate innovation has evolved massively and to the detriment of the natural social and economic order.  In other words, they'd restrict the use of the corporate business form, which itself would go back to an earlier era.

None of this is radical, it's purely conservative, but because it understands the nature of how this works, and looks back prior to December 31, 1600, it doesn't seem that way.

Another example is in the area of men, women, sex and marriage.  Conservatives in our current era are full of horror about the recent developments in the area of sexual attraction, and they should be. But addressing this by taking it back to the pre Dobbs status quote actually isn't all that conservative. Taking things back to when the heart balm statutes still predominated would be.

"But, didn't William F. Buckley say. . .?" 

Yeah, so what.  He was wrong here.

We're all fallen, but nobody has the right to engage in open hypocrisy.

Strom Thurmond, the Southern Democrat and "Dixiecrat" senator who opposed desegregation for most of his career but whom also fathered a child by his 16 year old black maid, that child being his oldest offspring.

Oddly enough, this story was sort of hi lighted by a development that occurred after Cynthia Lummis went up on the decks of the SS Political Fortunes, looked at the weather gauge, and determined that it had shifted, probably resulting in her vote on Dobbs.  I've dealt with that extensively here.

What does that statute really say? The Respect For Marriage Act, what it says, what it means, what it means behind what it means, and the reaction to Lummis voting for it.

There's almost no way to deal with this topic without being somewhat crude, but suffice it to say if you are on the current Super Conservative Special, you really can't be proclaiming what people who have unusual attractions are doing if you are shacked up with somebody, or bed hopping, or the like. Quite frankly, you probably can't say anything about family values if you are divorced and don't have a really good explanation or if you are married but childless and seemingly in a well paying career.  You can't say that "those people aren't acting" naturally, if you aren't either.

And yes, this harkens back to an age with children out of wedlock was regarded as conveying shame, and being a serial polygamist was frowned upon.  But hence the point.  This sort of topic is broad, not narrow, and you can't take your social programs off the shelf like cans of pinto beans, and leave the lima beans up there.  You are getting a sack of beans, and they're all in there.

"Freedom" may not be just having nothing left to lose, but it's not a defining feature of our beings either.  Nor is "liberty".

Freedom and liberty are the two most misused words in the political lexicon.

Conservatives, if they grasp it, do have a better claim on these words than liberals do, but freedom isn't an absolute and liberty doesn't equate with being a libertine.  

In Catholic social thought freedom is often noted as being a true positive but only when a true understanding of things is derived.  I.e., the framework of the Church doesn't impose shackles on my freedom so much as guardrails, so I don't fall off and lose it.  This is true of properly understood social conservatism as well.  And that's one of the things that distinguishes conservatism from libertarianism.

Looking at things from a point of view of nature, it becomes clear what things have to be provided with guard rails and which do not.  For example, recently, the Obergefell decision opened up same sex unions all over the country.  A frequent argument was that this meant you were "free" to marry whom you wanted. 

Marriage, however, is simply a natural institution for the protection of children created by male/female interactions.  It has nothing whatsoever, as a social institution, to do with "love".  The guard rails here are for the protection of kids, and then widows.  Nothing else.  They've been massively removed over the years to the detriment of society, which hasn't made people "free", but careless and miserable.

Another instance is the massive decriminalization of drugs in American society. Drugs don't make people free, they enslave people to them. The guard rails kept people free by helping them to preserve themselves against self-destructive impulses.  Frankly, Prohibition, in this context, was very much pro freedom and liberty.  Opening up the weed laws and, in Colorado's case, opening up the shrooms, is pro slavery (as well as worshiping money).

Most conservatives instinctively get this, but don't know why they do. People haven't thought out what this ultimately means. And what it means is that sometimes the expression of the people, legislative bodies, have to enact restrictions, rather than open things up.

This includes restraining some kinds of businesses, and not just those mentioned here.  Getting back to what is clearly a distributist bent, restraining some sorts of economic activities promotes freedom, including the right to make a living, but finding a conservative who realizes that isn't always an easy thing to do.

We ought to be honest, and occasionally blunt, but smart.

But at the same time, we ought to be knowledgeable.

We ought to say what we mean, but know why we mean it.

A recent populist Interim Secretary of State had, on his failed campaign platform material, that the United States Constitution was ordained by God.  He didn't say it that way, but was pretty close.  I'd have to look it back up.

That's not a conservative position, that a theocratic one, and it tends to indicate membership in one of several minority religions.  I note this, however, as I hear people relate their political views loosely to God all the time and often in a poorly thought out way.

I don't think the United States Constitution was ordained by God, and I also think that God loves Russians and Ukrainians every bit as much as Americans.  Americans may be exceptional, and right now we're not exceptional in ways that aren't universally positive, but simple unthinking citations such as this don't cut the mustard.

If your conservatism is founded in religious beliefs, fine, you ought to say so. But you probably need to go a bit further and really explain it in a thinking fashion.

Likewise, conservatives constatly spout "less government, more freedom" now days. What does that mean?  The logical conclusion to "less government" is no government, which is called anarchy of course, and which isn't very conservative.

What people who say that probably really mean is that the best government is the government that governs the least, a phrase attributed to Thoreau and to Jefferson, but which in reality nobody knows the author of. The Thoreau quote is as follows:

I heartily accept the motto, — “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe, — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Thoreau, it might be noted, was in fact an anarchist, and was arguing for that.

Of course, Henry David Thoreau lived in an era in which you could wonder off in the woods and hang around there pretty much unimpeded, if you were a European American.  The prior occupants of the same territory had been forcibly removed by the government.  Those aboriginal occupants, it might be further noted, had their own form of government.

Given all of this, we can say, for instance, that stating phrases like "less government" and the like sound really nifty until you realize that a lot of them are bankrupt and always have been, if not explored more completely.  Less government?  Is that conservative, or is it simply anarchic?

Let's look again at the Sharon Statement:

• That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;

That certainly makes sense, but it probably makes sense to liberals as well.

And being free from arbitrary force concedes that some force isn't arbitrary. That often seems quite missed.

• That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;

That also makes sense, and is a basic tenant of conservatism, but one that's poorly implemented and understood. True economic freedom would require an economic leveling that modern conservatives seem to abhor. That is, some will do better than others, and all should be allowed to compete, but a guy wanting to start an appliance store really can't effectively do that if giant corporations, with shareholders protected from liability and personal loss, are running a mega store in the area, now can he?

• That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;

Conservatives, truly, can agree with that.

• That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;

American conservatives, at least, can agree with that, but  recently they don't seem to be doing universally on all of its tenants.

• That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government; and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;

This is true, but conservatives weren't really arguing for this to be logically implemented at the time, and they still aren't.

Indeed, to some degree what conservatives seem to think is that they're fighting against "socialism". True socialism was knocked out in the fifth round and has been removed from the building. Today, conservatives are arguing against any sort of revival of The American System, but only to the degree they don't personally benefit from it.

• That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: Does it serve the just interests of the United States?

Every nation's foreign policy should be so dictated, but with the understanding that the United States isn't its own planet.  Like it or not, advances in travel, technology and the conservative insistence on the globalization of trade now mean that actions anywhere impact people everywhere, and we're all in this together.  In other words, have bat soup one day in China and the next thing you know, people are sick and Rome and Sacramento.

There are a lot more examples of how that works, but what the drafters of the Sharon statement were really after, at the time, was the Democratic inclination to intervene in foreign wars.  Conservatives of the 1950s had never really gotten over the US entering World War Two, which they didn't fully approve of but which thanks to the Japanese Navy they had no choice but to agree to. They weren't keen on the Korean War and they weren't all keen on the Vietnam War.  There was an odd conservative sense at the time that we could let the world slide into the Red Menace but protect ourselves through B-36s and B-52, not realizing that in the modern world Harley Davidson was about to get a run for the money from Honda.

All of which gets back to this.  Yes, maximum personal liberty is a conservative principle, but not up to the point of self-destruction.  The basic ethos is that we can provide a societal and cultural structure and hope that people succeed, and try to help them when they fall.  Pretending that we're the first person on virgin soil, however, isn't reality, and it in fact it never was.

Probably another way to put this is this.  Liberty can only travel with subsidiarity.  Freedom only travels with responsibility.  Success travels with duty.  And conserving means existential conservation, not reaction.

We don't really have fellow travelers.

Politics is the art of compromise, but the right/left divide in American politics blurs the lines on the nature of movements.  The Wyoming GOP is a good example of this, although the national Republican Party is as well.

Conservatives aren't populists.  Indeed, to some degree the old charge against conservatives as being elitists, a charge made against liberals as well, is true.  So what? 

Populism works just as well for left-wing mobs as right-wing ones, and in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the American Populist Party was a liberal party that American conservatives fought against. Thomas Jefferson, who was a conservative, feared the day when populists would arise in the US, which he felt inevitable, as it meant the end of democracy.  He may well have been correct.

Given this, why are conservatives sitting in the corner of the club car holding their tongues but watching the populists hit on the bar maid?  They shouldn't be.

They are, of course, for the same reason that right wing German political parties held their nose and went along with the Nazi Party in the early 30s. They had a place they wanted to go, and they thought the Nazis would bet them there.  They didn't.  The populists won't get the conservatives get there either, and the populists have no desire to do so. Their nearly open declaration of war in Wyoming against conservatives, and the six-year campaign that they are "RINO's" should be lesson enough on this point.

Conservatives should be guided by Kipling (a conservative) on this point and take from The Winners, although it certainly isn't true on everything.

What is the moral ? Who rides may read.

  When the night is thick and the tracks are blind,

A friend at a pinch is a friend indeed;

  But a fool to wait for the laggard behind

Down to Gehenna, or up to the Throne,

He travels the fastest who travels alone.

White hands cling to the tightened rein,

  Slipping the spur from the booted heel,

Tenderest voices cry, "Turn again,"

  Red lips tarnish the scabbarded steel,

High hopes faint on a warm hearth-stone

He travels the fastest who travels alone.

One may fall, but he falls by himself

  Falls by himself, with himself to blame;

One may attain, and to him is the pelf,

  Loot of the city in Gold or Fame

Plunder of earth shall be all his own

Who travels the fastest, and travels alone.

Stayed by a friend in the hour of toil,

  Sing the heretical song I have made

  His be the labour, and yours be the spoil.

Win by his aid, and the aid disown

He travels the fastest who travels alone.

Conservatism isn't a man and can't be reduced to worshiping a human being.

I've already mentioned a fellow here who was a conservative, Thomas Jefferson.  

He was a great man.

He also kept slaves, one of whom he was bedding, and he kept the kids born of that union enslaved. That's creepy and reprehensible.

A person we quote here frequently and whom we admire is G. W. Chesterton. He was a polymath and great thinker. A great man.

He was also anti-Semitic.

Ideas aren't people, and once the two are confused, you are in real trouble.

Some parties evolve towards cults of personality, and at that point, they're always on the verge of failure.  Once the party is defined by Il Duce's poster, it's pretty pointless.

Donald Trump is one man, and if a person strives to find what cogent philosophical positions he's held on anything, you'll be striving all day and night, for months, and fail to find them.  In truth, love him or hate hm, Trump was a mere vessel for those with certain hopes, many of whom he failed, rather than the originator of anything brilliant himself.  Trump didn't dream up the list of conservative names for the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society did.  Economically, we had good times, but how much of that was Trump, and how much of it was his staffers who came in with him as he declared himself to be a conservative.

Now, you can take this too far. No doubt there were ideas that originated with Trump, some good, and some bad, but he certainly wasn't an overarching intellectual titan that defined a movement.  No, rather, a series of movements, some very poorly defined, simply saw him as their vehicle.

That's been seemingly forgotten.

"Heroes" almost never meet their hype.  Political heroes exist, but where they do, they should be intellects that have contributed real thought. And even when they arise, they can't be the definition of a movement.

Theodore Roosevelt, a great liberal President came to define Liberal "Progressive" Republicans after he left office and a cult of personality developed around him. That lead to the Republican Party splitting and Woodrow Wilson entering office. After that, as a heroic figure, Roosevelt did the right thing.  He reentered the GOP and was pretty quiet.

By Di (they-them) - This SVG flag includes elements that have been taken or adapted from this flag:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114863039

Footnotes

1. This is, I'd note, a debatable point.  I'd start off, however, noting that Mussolini had been a Socialist.  A Russian refugee of friend of Whitaker Chambers, as another example, who had been a Soviet general felt Communism was a species of fascism.  The Nazi Party had been a radical socialist party very early on, but once Hitler entered the picture its socialism rapidly waned.

2.  I've said "regrown" as the first real instances of conservatives becoming uncomfortable with science seems to have occured with Protestants becoming uncomfortable with the theory of evolution when it was first introduced. While evolution, as a scientific theory, is so well demonstrated it is clearly fact, some are still uncomfortable with it as this late date and occasionally there are efforts to preclude it from schools.  Apostolic Christians tend to be baffled by this, unless they've been heavily protestantized, as many in the US have been, as there really is nothing contrary to the Faith as they conceive of it in regard to evolution.  However, like going down a rabbit hole, rejecting evolution tends to end up as a rejection of all sorts of other science and, in the end, make Christianity weaker by making it look contrary to science, which it need not be.

Lex Anteinternet: Can real conservatism exist without authoritarianism?

Lex Anteinternet: Can real conservatism exist without authoritarianism?: 

Can real conservatism exist without authoritarianism?

By SanchoPanzaXXI - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3415994.  Francoist Span's coat of arms.   The motto means "One, great, and free".

Look at Wyoming GOP right now, and you would have to assume that the answer to this question must be "no".¹

And frankly, buying off on election theft myths and mutually reinforcing propaganda aside, there's some reason to think that.  That's basically what Patrick Deneen of Harvard has warned of.  He's the author of Why Liberalism Failed, a major work criticized heavily by the mainstream press, as we've previously noted, and adopted by current conservatives.  Yale's snippet on the book states, as we also previously noted:

Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded?

"Why Liberalism Failed offers cogent insights into the loss of meaning and community that many in the West feel, issues that liberal democracies ignore at their own peril."—President Barack Obama

"Deneen's book is valuable because it focuses on today's central issue. The important debates now are not about policy. They are about the basic values and structures of our social order."—David Brooks, New York Times

Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

Now, Deneen did not state that we needed to elect an orange haired Duce  whom we "must work towards" in order to impose the proper order upon society.²  At least, I don't think he did, having not read his book.  And the essence of what Deneen apparently states here, as summarized by the Yale review, is correct.  Political liberalism "trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality"  It also "discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history."

All that is true.

Perhaps more disturbing is that liberalism/progressivism has unmoored itself from any sort of external greater force.  Depending upon how you view it, it either takes the position, basically, that man can vote on his own private wishes, and God must endorse them, or that individual desires are paramount and nature must bend to and accommodate them.  There's no possibility of unity in any of that, and it's deeply anti-nature. There's not even the possibility of a society functioning that way, on a long term basis.

So, given that, is it the case that conservatism must assert itself, by force?

That seems to be the conclusion that Orbán and a host of Eastern European leaders have concluded.  They're willing to tolerate democracy, but only if certain things are universally agreed on first.  And that sort of top-down directive nature of government, as long as it seems conservative, is the reason so many Americans of the MAGA persuasion, like Tucker Carlson, have been Putin cheerleaders.  It's also the reason that CPAC has swooned over Orban and has come very close to adopting his Illiberal Democracy point of view.  And it's the sort of point of view, sort of, that lead the Edmund Burke Foundation to adopt a "National Conservatism" manifesto this past June.

But it's also deeply illogical.

The basic core of real conservatism, indeed any political philosophy, is that it's right.  And conservatives believe they're right on two things, social issues and economic ones. . . well conservatives who have completely bought the package believe that, there are plenty of people who believe in one of the two tenants of conservatism and not the other.

But ironically, in believe that they are right, real conservatives, have always believed that man is flawed, and it's best to rely on tradition and what we know of science to guide us.  Old time conservatives, quite frankly, in the Buckleyite era, tended to be elitist, and proudly so. They were well-educated, at least at the upper levels, and didn't take their beliefs from the masses.  Indeed, often they assumed they were a permanent minority that could influence heavily, but was unlikely to rule.

We should note here that populist, at least right now, are fellow travelers of conservatives, but their views aren't really the same at all.  Populist tend to believe that the mass of people have some native instinct that's right because they have it.  It's thin on education and tends not to trust elites of any kid, because they ain't elite.

Basically, five guys in a corner drinking Budweiser, and lots of it, are presumed to know more about just about anything, to current populists, than five theologians or conservative philosophers.

And of course, in various circumstances, populists can be extreme rightist or leftists.  Early Soviet Reds were basically a  type of populist.

Note the irony of the illiberal democracy point of view.  Conservatives believe they're right, but they also believe, if they are illiberal democrats, that the attractions of progressivism are so strong that they'll overwhelm those truths unless they're enforced by force.

The current right, basically, believes that if offered dessert over dinner, kids will east dessert first every time.  Put another way, the current American right believes that given a choice, everyone is going to opt to be transgendered and there's no argument against it.  None at all. So people have to be forced to comport with what 99% of humanity already does naturally.

Progressives have believed something similar for decades, which is why they sought to enforce their beliefs through the courts. The basic concept was to enforce their beliefs through liberal courts and either plan on that enforcement indefinitely, or hope that people would get used to the enforced change over time and accept it.  Conservatives took the opposite view, at least up until recently.

This is what the recent battle of being "woke" is about.  Truth be known, hardly anyone anywhere, as a large demographic, has been in favor of things that may be defined as "woke".  But the courts enforced wokism, or at least opened the doors and windows for it. So, for example, you have Obergefel redefining what love means and the ancient concept of marriage, and soon thereafter "accepting" transgenderism is a major societal push.

Illiberal democrats argue that we should simply close the door on these arguments via fiat.

The problem with that is twofold.  No bad idea ever goes away in darkness. That's why the goofball economic theory of Communism rose up in autocratic states.  Bad ideas, like viruses, die in the sun.

Secondly, it presumes that your own arguments, while right, just can't compete.  Arguments that can't compete, however, can't compete ever.

Now, the way that Illiberal Democrats would probably put it is that the truth has been established but corruption, unleashed by evil, is always there to take things down.  In some ways, this view is an elitist one, even though populist that have adopted that are anti elites and don't know that (which is part of the reason that currently conservatism and populism may ride on the same bus, but they aren't the same thing).  Basically, this view at some level, openly or simply instinctively, takes the position that regular people are like children.³

Enforcing conservative via fiat has never worked.

Ask Marshal Petain.

The French political right has never recovered from Vichy, and it basically lost its ability to really influence anything.  

The Trumpist wing of the GOP is taking the Republican Party in that exact same directly.  If it keeps going this way, you can guaranty that Gender Queer is coming to a school library near you, pretty freaking soon.

There's a much better way to go about this.

And what that is, is this.

Conservatives should make their argument, and in making it, take a page from their Buckleyite past.  When accused of being elitist, embrace it.  Football players in the NFL are elites.  The Green Berets are elites.  Accused of being an "elite", lucky you.  Say you are, and as an elite, you know better.

Adopt Western Society, but its great thinkers and lights.  Donald Trump isn't one of them.

Don't try to be populists, populists can come to you.

Don't eschew science. Science is science and it aims at the truth.  If you reject it, your chances are better than not that you are favoring myth over reality, and dangerously so.

Realize that cultural conservatism doesn't equate with capitalism.  Capitalist are after the money.  You are after the culture.  Confusing the two sews the seeds of destruction.  Things that are deeply conservative, in real terms, are often anti-capitalist.

Embrace democracy.  You aren't always going to win, but you can always argue your point.  Arguing your point is trying to convince.  Forcing your point via fiat is a concession that you can't win through persuasion, as your argument is weak.

For a few minutes there, before Trump' narcissism spawned his coup, and the Supreme Court returned to the rule of law, you really had something.

You're blowing it.

Footnotes

1.  Based upon the most recent proclamations of the Central Committee, you also have to be deeply anti-scientific and an adherent to wacky conspiracy theories.  If you ever wondered how a rational German could have believed that the Jews were responsible for all of Germany's ills of the 20s and 30s, well just look at how the Central Committee thinks that Bill Gates and George Soros are messing with the state's energy sector.

2.  "Working toward the Führer" was a primary ethos of Nazi Germany.  Hitler didn't come up with all the bizarre beliefs and policies of the Third Reich on his own, his acolytes developed many just trying to figure out what Hitler would do if he was working on the topic. The Trumpist wing of the GOP has pretty much picked up on that sort of thing and worked towards Trump, who in turn has worked back towards them.

3.  The irony of this is that quite a few members of these movements have already eaten the desert.  If their underlying foundation is really meant, and they have, for example, adopted any aspect of the Sexual Revolution, which frankly most Americans have, they're hypocritical.

Related Threads.

Illiberal Democracy. A Manifesto?

Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with Russia? It was never part of Rome.

Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with Russia? It was never part of Rome.: 

What's wrong with Russia? It was never part of Rome.

By Ssolbergj - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2992630

SPQR Senātus Populus que Rōmānus.Translated, the Senate and People of Rome.  The motto of the Roman Empire, whose legions marched under that banner in service of its Emperors.

"I will burn other people's villages with a cheerful smile."

"It ain’t a war crime if you had fun."

"Behind us, there is a house on fire. Well, let it burn. One more, one less."

Russian wall scribbling in liberated Ukrainian territory.

What's wrong with Russia?

People have been asking that question for years, maybe centuries.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. 

Winston Churchill

No, it's really not.

What it is, is something it isn't.  It was never part of the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire was the most extensive expression of the Greco-Roman world and their culture.  The Greeks had commenced the work that Rome would end up finishing, or rather the Catholic Church would end up finishing, well prior to Rome's rise, however.  The great Greek philosophers came into being prior to even the expansion of the Greek Empire under Alexander the Great, infusing its culture with the outlook of the Western world.  Under Alexander the Greeks spread throughout the Mediterranean region, but the Romans picked it up, and the Greek world view, and massively expanded it.

Indeed, the influence of the Greeks and the Romans was so extensive that a student of early Christianity can't help but be impressed by the extent to which Christ and his disciples lived in a Judea that had been heavily impacted by the Greeks. The version of the Old Testament that is quoted in the New Testament pretty clear is the Septuagint, the Greek version.  Most, maybe all, of the New Testament was originally written in Greek.  Thoughts expressed in the New Testament are such that there have been those who have speculated that they could not have been expressed in Hebrew, had Hebrew remained the language of the Israelites, and that therefore Divine Providence was at work.  Early Christian Church fathers applied Greek philosophy to their understanding of Theology.¹ 

The Romans built on what they obtained from the Greeks, and they built the concept of a multicultural empire.  Rome started off a city state monarchy but in the end, it was a multicultural empire in which anyone within it could become a Roman citizen under certain circumstances.  Its unifying features was a uniform legal code and two languages, Latin and Greek.  You could be a cultural German, but if you could learn Latin and adhere to Rome's legal code, you had a chance to be as Roman as an Italian born in Rome.

The Church, and there was only one, came in and added the concept that there was only one moral code for everyone in the world, and your status and culture didn't trump that.  It also came in with a strong ethos of support for the plight of the poor and the equality of everyone before God.  Real women's rights came in with the Church, and the end of slavery was made inevitable by it as well.  The supremacy in religious matters of the Roman pontiff pointed out that even the government was subject to the Natural Law, and that it didn't create it.

We are all Romans.

The influence of Rome spread well beyond the Empire, even during the Roman age, and that was through Christianity.  Rome made it all the way up to the Teutoburg, but not beyond that.  Christianity did, however.  It may have taken the Northern Crusades to bring the Poles in, but brave missionaries to bring in the Scandinavians, but they did.

In the East, the Baltic was part of the Greek world, and hence the Roman world.  St. Andrew the apostle travelled into what is the southern Ukraine, via the Black Sea, and preached at least in Scythia.  Some maintain that he saild the Dneiper and preached in Kyiv.

Ukraine was the subject of missionary work in the 800s.  St. Cyril and Methodius, brothers, passed through Ukraine during their missionary work.  Western Ukraine, which is where the Ukrainian Catholic Church has its presence today, was Christianized first.

St. Cyril and Methodius.

Under St. Vladimir The Great, a Kyivan king claimed by both the Ukrainians and the Russians, the Kyivan Rus were firmly brought into the Church.   But of note, Vladimir had been born a pagan and converted to the Church (again, there was only one) in 988 after traveling to the West and studying the non-pagan religions. He died in 1015 at age 57.

Now, 1015 is a very late date.  St. Andrew had been in the region in 55AD.  St. Cyril and Methodius in the late 800s.  But as late as 988 paganism still existed in the lands of the Rus.

And in 1054, the Great Schism commenced.

Now, the Rus did take to Christianity, of that there can be no doubt. But the Great Schism put their Church outside the Latin world to some degree.  Islam was already on the rise, and the Byzantine Empire would fall in 1453.  In 1448 the Russian Church obtained de facto independence, although in 1439 history nearly took a different course with Russian Orthodox representatives recognized Rome as the head of the Church at the Council of Florence. Sadly, their union was prevented from taking effect.

So basically, the Russians were on the edge of the world. The Great Schism, the collapse of the Roman Empire, and then the collapse of the Byzantine kept them there.  Ukraine had been part of the Greco-Roman world, and to some degree, it remains so, especially the further west in Ukraine you go.

And this matters.

Outside of the Moscow elite and a very small urban elite, Russia is one great big blue-collar country.

Fiona Hill

Russia definitely has a cultured development and the Russians are a great people. But they're a people where western concepts have never taken root, including the concept that power devolves from the people, and not the other way around. Even those who have attempted, and there have been many, to change that, have uniformly failed.

It's a culture that has developed great works of art and literature, while remaining insular and focused on itself.  Outside of Russia, everyone is some sort of odd stranger, and the Russians have, from time to time, imagined themselves as the archetype of Slavs.  The culture has a hard time not accepting that to some degree.

And it's a rough place to live in part because of this.  People die young, often due to conditions and alcoholism.  Male deaths outstrip women's by quite some margin.² Brutality and acceptance of horrible conditions exists where it has departed elsewhere.  Russia's military retains an ethos of cruelty that stems back to ancient times and manifests itself in horrific ancient behaviors. 

And hence, there's really no mystery.  

Russia wasn't part of the Greco-Roman world.

Ukraine, however, was.

Footnotes.

1. There's a common myth that Islam preserved the works of the Greek philosophers, and Christians got them from them.

In reality, Islam got the texts of the Greek philosophers from Chaldean Christians, who had preserved them.  Latin Christians did get them from Islamic Arabs, but it is important to note that Islamic Arabs got them from Chaldean Christians.  

As it happened, Hellenized Islamist theologians were later dismissed and regarded as heretical in Islam.

2.  As an odd expression of this, it's often frequently noted that younger Russian women are disproportionately beautiful, before age and conditions change this at a rate not experienced in the West.   It's been seriously suggested that this is due to natural selection, as the population of women always exceeds that of men, thereby giving physically attractive women a heightened competitive genetic advantage.

Lex Anteinternet: The Agony of being a Catholic Voter in 2022

Lex Anteinternet: The Agony of being a Catholic Voter in 2022: 

The Agony of being a Catholic Voter in 2022

Catholics, according to the Church, are obligated to vote, and to do so in an informed manner.

And, I'll add to that, those who like to say that religion should stay out of politics are grossly misinformed, at least to the extent they mean that religion should be held personally and not influence a person's vote.  A truly held set of religious beliefs ought to inform everything a person does.

This year is simply agonizing for the well-informed, thoughtful, Catholic voter.

In my area, where I will vote, two women contest for the position of Congressman.

The Republican expresses pro-life views, and views which suggest that she holds traditional views on the definition of marriage, two positions which are taken very seriously, even definitively so, by serious Catholics.

She also holds a mix of conservative views on various other issues, some of which I agree with, and some of which I do not, but none of which are moral issues, or at least not closely so.

The Democrat holds pro abortion and "progressive"  views on the definition of marriage, and a host of other liberal views, some of which I agree with, and some of which I do not, but none of which are moral issues, or at least not closely so.

So, no dilemma, in weighing the voting scale, eh?

Well, the Republican has also expressed the view that the election was stolen, and her entire campaign was basically a stab in the back on the incumbent who stood by principals.  In order to advance her campaign, she went from doubts, to being certain of election theft, and is now expressing views regarding the current administration which might charitably be described as nutty, even going so far as to suggest that inflation is a Democratic plot designed to bring about a liberal "Utopia".  If I'm to take her asserted positions as actually held, it would mean she's believing in wild flights of dangerous fantasy, thereby making her a scary potential office holder.  If I am to assume that they're taken for the purpose of being elected, she's lying and an enemy of democracy.

And there are no viable third party choices, really.  One is from the far right, and the other from the Libertarian Party.

The far right candidate, running on the Constitutional Party ticket, is probably every bit as far right as the Republican, but with a very obvious Protestant Evangelical bent to her campaign.  She doesn't say the vile things that the Republican does, and to the extent that her positions sound nutty, they sound nutty in the way that a position expressed by a person with little experience in the world and little education might voice them.  Innocently, in other words.

Maybe I haven't listened enough to her, however.  Frankly, I've disregarded her all along as a candidate that will obviously make no impact in the current election. 

The Libertarian is a Libertarian, and there's no point in even going there.

A person could protest vote for the Constitutional Party candidate, but that's all it would be, a protest.  But then, in order to make that protest, a person ought to know what she really believes.  Perhaps I should go back and listed to her in the recent debate, which the GOP candidate skipped out on.

The only realistic hope of defeating the candidate that's either lying or coming off the rails is to vote for the Democrat, which is voting for a position which is normally gravely morally objectionable.

And then we have the Secretary of State's office, where a co-religious is running unopposed based on a stolen election theory along and is otherwise not a candidate which I'd prefer to consider.  A protest is surely mandated there, but it'll have to be a write-in protest.

And so the state's politics have come to this.  It feels like being a German going to the polls in 1932.

Lex Anteinternet: Culpability for murder.

Lex Anteinternet: Culpability for murder.:  

Culpability for murder.

 This is from a Twitter post:

This is Viktoriia. Today she died in Kyiv. Her colleagues write that her body was found in her beloved husband Bohdan's embrace, their cat was with them in the building attacked with the Russian drone. She was pregnant. They had been expecting for child.

11:00 AM · Oct 17, 2022·Twitter for iPhone

Recently, on an email list I'm on, the topic of the individual culpability of Russians for the war in Ukraine came up.  Most of the people who posted on the topic, not surprisingly, held that individual Russians had no culpability, it was all Putin, or Putin and his cronies.  A few held the opposite view.

I tend to hold that opposite view.

Now, it is not the case that some babushka in Vladivostok just trying to get by really has blood on her hands, but rather at some level, and I'd but that level fairly low, responsibility for actions in wars vests.  

After the Second World War, and even continuing on to the present day, thousands of Germans were put on trial from crimes during the Second World War.  "I was only following orders" was held not to be an excuse.  Crimes, we supposedly learned, are crimes no matter what.

Of course, it's easier to see those crimes if you are ordered to shoot civilians, but what about bombing them?  That's effectively what's going on.

Well, it's no different.

Bombing of cities was once a controversial subjected in a way that it always should have been, but which after World War Two it wasn't.  In 1939-40, both sides in Europe stuck to bombing military and industrial targets, but the Germans actually accidentally hit civilian targets during the Blitz that seemed to observers to be calculated acts.  The British, who rapidly went to nighttime bombing, fairly quickly quit worrying much about collateral damage, and things were off and running.

Theoretically, most Allied bombing in Europe was targeted, but the targeting was relatively loose.  American daylight bombing was conducted during the day for precision, but even it hit a lot of residential areas.  British nighttime bombing was much looser by default.  Frankly, at some point at least the British passed over to where the Germans had already been, and were effectively bombing civilian targets, or at least bombing so cavalierly that they knew that they were killing a lot of civilians.  Lest Americans feel too good about this, the US deliberately went to the same tactic against Japan, bombing highly flammable civilian housing on the theory that making workers homeless would wreck Japanese production, even though it was effectively already wrecked.

The US is the "good war", as Studs Terkel put it, to Americans, and it's practically the high point of modern British history.  But in truth, the areal bombing campaigns crossed over into the criminal and immoral.  And in both instances they had no discernible impact on shortening the war by way of loose targeting.

The exception to that last statement, of course, was the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities, which directly ended the war with Japan.  The US has been struggling to justify destroying two Japanese cities in what was a terror attack ever since, but it can't be justified.  Excuses have ranged from it was no worse than the firebombing of Tokyo, which was also immoral, to it hypothetically saving the lives of a lot of Japanese soldiers and civilians, as well as allied ones.  We don't know that, of course, and at the time of the bombings, that was only a theoretical possibility.  

We've basically found it impossible to reconcile with ushering in the age of atomic weaponry ever since, but we have abstained from its further use in spite of it being urged from time to time.  Indeed, it was urged during the Korean War, the French Indochinese War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even during the Vietnam War.  Most of the civilians and military figures in authority always said no to the suggestion.

The fact that the US blazed the trail on this has been used recently by Putin as an excuse for suggesting he might go nuclear.  It doesn't provide one, as we've abstained.  Indeed, since World War Two the Western Way of War has become more and more precise, and excuses for collateral damage of any kind less and less tolerated.  Single USAF bombs to neighborhoods have been regarded as inexcusable by the US.  On the ground, photographs by Marines with Afghan dead combatant bodies have been regarded as criminal, when their grandfathers in arms routinely cut the ears off of dead Japanese soldiers and nobody thought anything of it.

Putin's war has stripped the band aid of the noble Russian combatant off and showed to us an ugly wound that goes back at least as far as World War Two.  The Red Army was effectively a large armed mob that committed at least the crime of rape on a massive scale.  The current Russian army doesn't seem much better.  Indeed, it seems as the crude vulgarity of Russian servicemen that came in with the Russian Revolution just won't go away.

Nobody has let the Germans get away with supporting the Nazis and all that meant.  Nor should they. The Third Reich tarnished the reputation of the Germans in a way that will take at least two centuries to change.  The Russians are working on the same thing.

One of the reasons that the July 20 plotters attempted to kill Hitler in 1944 is that they wanted to show the world that not every German was fully invested in the evil, although even those in on the plot were to some degree.  Russia's reputation now can only be saved for generations to come if some brave Russians refuse to cooperate in the evil and do something, whether that means voting with their feet and leaving Russian ranks in Ukraine, to parking a tank in front of the Kremlin and declaring Putin's regime over.

Whether or not that happens is yet to be seen.  But what we can say is that every Russian missile crew that points a missile towards Ukraine and helps fire it is complicit in murder to some degree.

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.