Category: Jeremiad

Doubling down on dumb

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has written another liberal-baiting book, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. The American Conservative’s Scott Galupo reviewed it a few weeks ago and revisited it today.

What I get from today’s piece is a reminder that movement conservatism is no less riddled with clichés than is liberalism.

I can’t tell a heckuva lot of difference between Republican and Democrat policies day-to-day, political rhetoric aside, on matters of business. Both are beholden to Wall Street. Neither has anything worthwhile to say about the bizarre and ominous development of “finance” ceasing to be a utility for real industry and having become a very, very lucrative (however temporarily) and major industry in it own right.

This fabulous industry brings us wonders like this, in connection with which which Scott McConnell comments:

I remember a time when financiers who talked about themselves in such language  would have been laughed at — yes, even in the Hamptons. There was a Wall Street, and people who worked there made good money.  But Americans’ admiration went to the people who actually created tangible goods or developed innovative products. Talent, drive, dedication were admired, and there  was no big brief for a leveling equality. No one thought that Henry Ford (before my time, actually) contributed no more to the common good than the average assembly line  worker. But neither did anyone believe in the absurdity that financiers –the lubricants perhaps of a successful economy–were synonymous with the engine itself.

When it comes to economics, in short, the Republicans are doubling down on dumb, at least rhetorically. I have to consider the possibility that they mean it, unlikely as that is in politics.

Understand: from religious freedom to liberal groin pieties (Obama’s support for abortion, gay marriage and his refusal even to defend DOMA being notable) and probably several less important things, I’ve got huge issues with Obama. It is unlikely that the Republicans could disgust me enough into voting for him.

But don’t try to sell me the “voting for anyone but Romney is voting for Obama” crap. I didn’t vote for him in the primary and you can’t foist him on me now and tell me I’ve got to vote for him. Just watch me.

Or rather (the secret ballot not yet having been abolished by some Orwellian “Patriot Act”) just guess how I’ve voted as I leave the polls, green at the gills at the nauseating choice between the two top dogs.

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Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Church history (according to the Mormons)

Thanks to fellow-Orthodox blogger John, I discovered this Mormon version of Church history, for which I explicitly claim “fair use” and provide the obligatory link to the original.

The basic storyline is this: “Regardless of the valiant efforts of Christ’s apostles and their faithful followers, the original church that Christ restored began to fade away.” Then along came Joseph Smith. Woohoo. (Italics are in the original. My comments are not italicized.) Continue reading “Church history (according to the Mormons)” →

Breaching the Wall

John Garvey, president of the Catholic University of America, a former dean of Boston College Law School and co-author of “Religion and the Constitution,” had an excellent op-ed at the Washington Post Friday: For the government, what counts as Catholic?

He likens the HHS employer mandate for contraception, sterilization and abortifacient coverage to “compelling Jehovah’s Witnesses to salute the flag, or Quakers to fight, or Jews to eat pork.” But then he shifts to separation of church and state.

Or so he says he’s shifting. I’m not convinced that freedom from compulsion to act against one’s faith is really a different topic than separation of Church and state, but let’s move on.

What idiot ever started the idea that only the Church can breach the “wall of separation”? Au contraire, mon frère. As a matter of law, only the government can breach it. Maybe the Church can do things that are provocatively political, or can violate the “spirit” of separation, but the limits of the Constitution are, fer cryin’ out loud, limits on government. The Constitution is, first and foremost, so much the charter of our federal system of  government that there was considerable debate about the need for a Bill of Rights to define government’s relationship to individuals and what we today call “mediating structures.”

But the current Administration is tacitly pushing the statist spin on separation again and again and again.

There’s an analogy to the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, where not engaging in commerce by not buying insurance is re-cast as commerce within the power of Congress to regulate. Here, it’s rather the opposite: activities that everyone has always thought religious (not that atheists can’t do the same things, of course) are insufficiently religious for exemption from government’s heavy hand.

This invasive approach to religious institutions is, I am afraid, becoming all too common. Recently, in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission , the Supreme Court considered whether the government could regulate the firing of a religion teacher. The teacher, who had filed a disability claim, was fired for suing the Lutheran grade school rather than settling her claim out of court. The commission and the solicitor general argued that the government need not give any special deference to employee relations at religious organizations. A unanimous court found this view “remarkable” and the government’s action unconstitutional.

In two other recent cases, the National Labor Relations Board’s regional directors have held that Manhattan College in Riverdale, N.Y., and St. Xavier University in Chicago are not Catholic schools for purposes of exemption from the National Labor Relations Act, which regulates collective bargaining. The cases stressed that the colleges do not require students to attend Mass and do not engage in “indoctrination” or “proselytizing.” Rather, they observe norms of academic freedom. They also hire non-Catholic faculty, and their boards of trustees are dominated by lay people.

Notice the similarity to HHS’s view of what counts as Catholic. A “real” Catholic college would be inward-looking. It would inculcate religious values and censor contrary views. It would hire Catholics and not other people. Its board would be dominated by clergy. It would admit Catholic students but not others.

There is a pattern to these cases. The government has been eager to regulate the behavior of churches in ways more to its liking. It does this by defining religion down, so that only the most rigid and separatist groups are exempt. The rest are, for constitutional purposes, no different from the Jaycees or the Elks Club. We might say that the wall of separation is intact, but the government has made it so small that it encloses nothing more than a flower bed.

Thank you, President Garvey.

I’m starting to entertain the thought that a litmus test for bad guys versus good guys is that the former want to limit religion by arbitrary state redefinition, the latter to limit government to the terms of the Constitution.

I’ve been concerned with religious freedom pretty keenly since well before I set foot in law school, and I know that this issue is one where, whatever his other defects, Romney stands in stark contrast to Obama and his administration. “We’re all Catholics now.”

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Standing advice on enduring themes.

The War Party

One of the reasons I’m burned out on the two major parties is that, to a disgusting extent, they are one party, The War Party. That party’s going to be the death of this nation, as giddy, thoughtless, hubristic wars make us odious in the eyes of the world and eventually bankrupt us.

This is not conservatism. This is not Christian. This sure as hell is not “Christian conservatism.” No amount of drum-beating about Radical Islamic Terrorist Hoards can make it so.

The best conservative response to terrorism, it seems to me, is what I first heard from Pat Buchanan: If there’s no solution, there’s no problem.

Terrorism is an evil, not a problem. We will not eradicate it (Hatfield probably said something like Bush’s second inaugural before he set out to end McCoy terrorism – or was it McCoy ending Hatfield terrorism?), and I personally – call me silly – don’t didn’t want to give up the Republic trying to eradicate it.

And while my individual position may shade into “isolationism” (due to personality quirks and a history of conscientious objection and borderline pacifism), the historic Christian conservative mainstream position is not isolationist.

That’s all I need to say to introduce and commend to you a great current piece by Winston Elliott III at The Imaginative Conservative. The author is appreciably more hawkish than I am, despite his having a son in the Army, but far less adventurist, interventionist and lunatic than either Dubya or Obama or anyone who’s taken seriously for President next year (Ron Paul, the favorite of active military people, not being taken seriously).

Excerpts:

Every conservative concerned about American foreign policy should read Foreign Policy for Conservatives on this site. This brilliant description of a conservative foreign policy is excerpted from Russell Kirk’s book The Political Principles of Robert A. Taft …

Those who wish to use the American military to effect regime change in foreign lands are sensitive to terms like “war party.” They say this is an exaggeration of their position. Poppycock. Let’s go ahead and add “interventionist” and “lover of foreign adventure” for good measure. They do not like it because it accurately describes their approach to using the military might of the American Republic. They are open to spending American blood and treasure whenever they feel that people in a foreign country are “oppressed” or their leader is a “tyrant” or “dictator.”…Before they start calling me an “isolationist” again let me state my position clearly (as I have before on this site). I don’t believe in “isolationism.” However, I do believe that prudence demands we count the costs of our actions, especially so that we learn from the past and may make better decisions in the future. Certainly 6,000 U.S. dead, 33,000 wounded, and $1.3 trillion is a very high cost indeed. 
Is it not legitimate to ask was it worth it?…Russell Kirk and Robert Nisbet, and other notable conservatives, have expressed great concern that centralization and militarization have been the greatest threats to preservation of the principles of the American Republic. They were not isolationists. They were true patriots who wished to guard against taking actions to destroy the enemy that may simultaneously lead to undermining the ordered liberty we claim to fight to preserve.I am for taking military action against those that clear evidence indicates threaten the safety of our Republic and its citizens. But, does this necessitate a permanent military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan? How about Germany, South Korea and Japan? Is there no end to this? If not, I fear that we must (as Brad Birzer has suggested on this site) admit that the Republic is lost and that we fight to defend a democratic empire … 

My policy … is simple: I say kill the enemy and come home. Don’t move into his house and call it defense….

I will say this again. When the real interests of Americans are threatened then to use military force is permitted. Kill those who plan to kill us. Destroy their bases. When necessary, go back and do it again. That is prudent application of military force against the enemy. It is not pacifism or isolationism. 

Don’t occupy foreign nations for decades, longer than WWI and WWII combined. This is foolishness. And it is not conservative.

…

All I ask for, beg for, is a prudent use of our military. Never one drop of blood for an American empire. Kill our enemies, destroy their bases and bring our boys home. I believe it is conservative to choose protecting American lives over a goal of changing the culture and politics of foreign nations.

Foreign Policy for Conservatives is itself a collection of excerpts, but I’ll be so bold as to pull one of them:

The statesman not concerned primarily with the national interest is tossed about by every wind of doctrine; he pursues with imprudent passion vague ideological objectives, and soon finds himself mired in diplomatic and military quicksands….

Finally, one more personal observation. I alluded to my conscientious objection which, if you know me, you’ll know was Vietnam era, shortly before the abolition of the loathed military draft. But I fear that the abolition of the draft, replaced by a “volunteer army,” has deprived our ruling class from having any flesh, blood or skin in the game of military adventurism. How many of our bellicose GOP hopefuls have a child in uniform? How many served themselves? Do you think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that the Obama girls will go into the Army from Sidwell Friends School, rather than to University of Chicago, Stanford or one of the Ivy League schools?

No, I’m afraid that to our rulers, the flesh and blood of soldiers is just a “human resource,” to be squandered as freely as monetary resources.

We now return to lamestream programming. Look! Kim Kardashian! Chaz Bono! American Idol! Shiny! (HT Mark Shea)

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Standing advice on enduring themes.

Godbaby (and mom)

Back in my Conscientious Objector days, I had a passionate pacifist quote from Menno Simons (whence Mennonite, I believe) on my wall for several years, and even tried attending a Mennonite church because of their historic pacifism. I was kindly disposed toward them.

So that was the first reason it especially caught my attention when I came across this Thursday night:

Another Radical Reformation theologian set forth a Christology that said the Son of God became man not “of the womb” of Mary, but rather simply “in the womb” (Menno Simons), which means that Jesus’ humanity is a new creation, not an assumption of the humanity created in Adam. Mary becomes a kind of surrogate mother, and Jesus is not truly a member of our race.

(Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy: Exploring Belief Systems through the Lens of the Ancient Christian Faith) So I’d been unwittingly flirting with a novel (yes, 500 years old is “novel”) Christology, though even then, I knew that Christology was where most cults (in the theological sense, not necessarily sociological) became cultic. (For the record, I don’t know if Menno Simons’ Christological heresy is held by Mennonites today.)

It caught my attention for a second, bigger, reason: I heard this same sort of “Mary was just a conduit for the godbaby, Jesus” thing from a Breathless Woman’s Inspirational Show on WMBI in Chicago (flagship station for Moody Bible Institute’s mainstream Evangelical radio network) while driving a Chicago expressway, and I startled my wife when my head exploded at the heresy of it. (I’ve learned a few things in 40 years.)

Breathless Woman’s Inspirational Show is a peculiar radio genre. I can literally tell, within seconds, that I’m listening to “Christian” radio, just by the tone of voice, even if what the hostess is saying is “take two eggs and fold them into two cups of flour.” It’s the same with CCM (Contemporary Christian Music); I’ll know within eight bars, apart from the lyrics, that this is “Christian” music.

But BWIS is a little like Rush Limbaugh in a way. These “ministries” are on the air so many hours per week that they can’t possibly be working from a script – not a real, written one, anyway.

So on the one hand, I need to cut heretical Breathless Woman’s Inspirational Show hostess a little slack. She may not really have meant it. She surely hasn’t thought it through.

But she has an unwritten Romophobic script: don’t say anything about the Virgin Mary that might give aid and comfort to Catholicism. So “incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary” blithely becomes “Wow! Isn’t it amazing! Mary allowed her womb to be used so Jesus could zoop down to earth through her! What a gal! (Not that she’s anything more than an inspiring example, mind you.)”

I cannot cut that any slack at all, even if I cut some slack for the airhead ministress that utters it.

In contrast (and here, I enter dangerous territory, because I’m blogging without taking time to look up everything), the historic teaching is:

  • “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man ….” (Nicene Creed)
  • What is not assumed is not redeemed. (St. Athanasius, I believe). Jesus had to be a full member of the human race to redeem the human race.
  • “Who’s the only human who ever gave God something that He didn’t already have?” (Riddle) Answer: The Virgin Mary gave God human flesh.
  • “… ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father ….” (Nicene Creed) Note: human flesh, which the second person of the Holy Trinity assumed permanently, is seated at the Father’s right hand right now. (Salvation is bigger than you may have thought.)

And that, folks, is why we call her Theotokos or just “Mother of God.”

But if you’d rather be a heretic than give aid and comfort to Roman Catholicism (and Orthodoxy, and the Magisterial Reformation), it’s a free country. Just don’t say I didn’t tell you.

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I also have some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Notes from a place worth caring about

James Howard Kunstler, traveling abroad, managed on Monday only a feeble notice that his weekly blog (which I shall euphemistically call “CFN”) would be delayed. It came on Tuesday, bearing the unpromising caption “Jet-Lagged and Ragged.”

I glanced, my jaw dropped, I thought I’d marked it for returning later, but I forgot it for a bit.

I wish Kunstler, a man in the prime of life (i.e., about my age) no health-endangering problems, but if this is how he writes jet-lagged and ragged, I’ll gladly glean the fruits of his ill-health: Continue reading “Notes from a place worth caring about” →