Category: Philosophy

QUID EST VERITAS?

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According to the Gospel of John, after Jesus’ arrest he was eventually brought before the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, to be questioned (John 18:38). During their brief dialogue, Pilate utters the famous phrase, “Quid est Veritas?’, or “What is truth?”. Scholars often refer to this retort as “jesting Pilate”, as he seems to be mocking Jesus’ claim to be, or at least to know, Truth. While Pilate is but a bit player in the Biblical drama that eventually unfolds, I submit to you that we are all living in Pilate’s world now. His rejection of the existence of objective truth has become, sadly, the dominant philosophical dogma in our times and the consequences of that paradigm shift have been disastrous to say the least.

WE ALL HAVE A DOGMA IN THIS FIGHT

Speaking of dogma, it is important that I first address a particularly annoying mischaracterization of dogma because it actually helps one to understand why we have fallen into the cynical worldview presaged by Pilate two millennia ago. Non-religious types love to dismiss as mere dogma the basing of one’s belief in objective truth upon one’s religious faith. Despite the negative connotation secular moderns have tried to give it, dogma simply means the ideas or notions laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. As Hannibal Lecter so memorably said, “First principles, Clarice.” It is from these principles, or dogma, that we begin to construct our view of the world, what we sometimes like to call reality. We all have dogmas, whether or not we believe in Jesus or Buddha or Sam, the neighbor’s dog. Secular people like to imagine they are free of dogma because they erroneously equate dogma with only the faith tenets of a particular religion. Transubstantiation is Catholic dogma. Yet, so is the principle of objective Truth. In fact, that principle undergirds the entire edifice of the Judeo-Christian, or Western, if you prefer, philosophical worldview. When secular thinkers dismiss as mere religious dogma the existence of an objective source of truth, they imperil the logical foundation for the existence of objective truth itself.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

So, how does one defend the reality of objective Truth while simultaneously rejecting the necessity of an objective source of that Truth? Those wise enough to understand this dilemma try to claim Reason itself, or more often “SCIENCE” (as they prefer to write it, as if the ALL CAPS imbues the word with some kind of authority) as their source of objective Truth. Yet, in claiming this, the “SCIENCE” folks make what any first year philosophy student would recognize as a category error. Reason, and the subsequent science it produces, is simply a tool by which one attempts to ascertain objective Truth. It is not the Truth. Think of it this way: When Einstein completely upended the Newtonian understanding of physics with his Relativity equations, did the Truth about the ways the physical world operates suddenly change? Of course not. What changed was our understanding of that Truth. One man’s incredible ability to use his reason allowed all of us to gain a more complete picture of that Truth. Or, to use a more quotidian example, when we first meet another person we may learn some basic things about them, such as their name and where they are from. But do those pieces of truth constitute the Truth about that person? Obviously not. That Truth exists outside of ourselves. We may use our reason and intellect to improve our understanding of that person, but the Truth that is that person does not exist merely as a function or result of the application of our reason. Religious and secular alike use reason as a tool to help them to ascertain Truth, but reason and/or science is not a synonym for objective Truth.

IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

Dogma, category errors…what’s with all this philosophy stuff? Well, sorry, but ideas have consequences. All those philosophy classes you blew off in college actually have some real world relevance. Who knew? The irony of the post Judeo-Christian world is that those folks who spent the past 400 years working so devoutly, if I may, to tear down the edifice of the Judeo Christian philosophical worldview were simply allowing their anti-religious bias to undermine the solid philosophical foundation upon which they were standing. They succeeded in pulling the rug out from under themselves. As such, despite their attempts to erect the God of Science as a stand in for the God of Abraham, it was inevitable that once that solid foundation was finally destroyed, we would find ourselves like little children, struggling to find truth in a world with nothing to cling to save the whimsy of our passing fancies or our often misguided and unreliable emotions.

GRADUALLY, THEN SUDDENLY

In Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises, a character named Mike is asked how he went bankrupt. He replies, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” The story of how our Judeo Christian worldview went bankrupt, a world wherein feelings matter more than facts, and the quest for truth has been replaced by the desire to promote one’s personal narrative, can be described in much the same way.

First, sin was watered down into sickness, which struck a blow against the commonly held philosophical precept in Judeo Christian thought of personal responsibility. No longer was it acceptable to judge someone’s actions against an external standard, particularly not some dogmatic religious standard. Even people of faith, or maybe particularly people of faith, wary of being accused of being some kind of Puritan zealot, were taken in by this objection. Soon all sorts of objectively bad behavior was being excused lest we commit the only sin deemed worthy of condemnation, that of being judgmental. Sure, it was still frowned upon to murder, rape, steal, and lie, but assigning blame to the individual for these actions became unacceptable. After all, it wasn’t really the perpetrator’s fault. Their abusive parents, or the fact they grew up in a poor neighborhood, or even their poor diet, made them ultimately not responsible for their bad actions. Without a standard outside of ourselves, it becomes impossible to effectively refute the logic of the popular refrain, “who are we to judge?” Indeed. A philosophical worldview based on individual “truth” cannot honestly lay claim to any universal truths.

Then words morphed into weapons. We ditched the truly healthy and empowering refrain, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” in favor of the idea that somehow the words we utter are akin to the magical incantations of the mythological witches of old, inflicting pain and suffering on those at whom they are directed. It didn’t start out that way of course. Once again, appealing to people’s sense of fairness and decency, we were told that, although we cherish free speech and expression in our culture, we should try to be more sensitive. It was better, in the interest of protecting other’s feelings, that we not be as truthful as we could be with our words. I will never be one to argue with the notion that a civil society works better when people behave civilly towards each other and observe such old fashioned notions as politeness. However, while well intentioned, the fact is that once the truth becomes something to consciously avoid, it isn’t long before the truth becomes something to condemn. We may have started with creating silly euphemisms, such as calling garbage collectors “sanitation engineers”, and encouraging more inclusive terms, such as chairperson, but now we are told that simply uttering certain words is equivalent to attacking someone with a knife.

Finally, feelings trumped facts. We jettisoned the old standard of first telling the truth, and then providing our opinion, in favor of privileging our feelings above all other considerations, even facts and evidence that may be contrary to those feelings. Again, it started more innocently. We were told to express our feelings more freely. We were told it was healthy to explore our feelings and share them more openly. Then, however, it turned into the idea that we must protect those feelings from being hurt or challenged. We needed safe spaces and we couldn’t be exposed to anything that might “trigger” us. Finally we were told if someone felt we were responsible for hurting their feelings, never mind any other considerations such as facts or evidence, then we should be punished for that. I suppose one might argue we really haven’t abandoned our old notions of crime and punishment. Its just that instead of living in a society based on notions such as the rule of law, derived from objective ideals, we now live in a society wherein our “newspaper of record” can unironically print words such as these:

“The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.”

Michael Powell, New York Times

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Thus we have arrived at a place in history where the quest for objective Truth, once seen as mankind’s ultimate purpose, has been abandoned. We instead find people on a relentless, albeit tragic, quest to protect and promote their personally defined truth, their narrative, against any and all enemies, no matter the cost to themselves or society. No person or part of society is immune. From history to politics to law to science, it is the narrative that must be maintained above all else. Even the seemingly most obvious, ineluctable, indisputable facts are simply ignored if they don’t serve the narrative. Can there be any more obvious example than the current transgender rights movement? It is the subjective worldview taken to its logical and disastrous extreme. When a biological male, who proclaims he feels like he is truly a female, is not only allowed to compete against biological women, but is encouraged and supported to do so by the very institutions supposedly responsible for seeking the truth, we have truly gone through the looking glass as a society.

Yes, we all live in Pilate’s world now. For like the cynical Roman governor, we have as a society dismissed the Truth as unknowable, even when it is staring us in the face. Like Pilate, our society has washed its hands of the whole thing, and we are reaping the consequences of that terrible decision every day.

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

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I cannot recount to you how many times over the past year or so I have thought to myself, “That’s just crazy.” Ever since the tragic death of George Floyd, it seems we have been inundated with a tsunami of stories purporting to expose the structural racism and white privilege endemic to the United States. The accusations stretch far and wide. They of course rain down almost daily upon your average white male heterosexual, a.k.a guilty, citizen. But these torrents are powerful enough to have burst through the heretofore unassailable defenses of even people such as Tom Hanks, the widely respected actor whose universal popularity and conventional liberal politics everyone assumed would have sheltered him from this storm. However, as even Mr. Hanks found out, this madness is widespread, and we are all drowning in it. As the great Brook Benton sang, “Feels like it’s raining all over the world.”

There was one story I read that particularly stood out, however. The facts of the incident are not especially notable as these things go today. It was the following sentence, however, that struck me like a thunderbolt from the heavens:

The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.

Michael Powell, New York Times, February 24, 2021

I began to wonder. Who is the most convinced of the absolute truth of their vision of the world, no matter the facts that are odds with it? Is it the preacher, the politician, the common man? No, it is none of them. It is the madman. The doubts of even a Mother Teresa have been well documented, but the certainty of Jim Jones was deadly. FDR tried one thing, and if didn’t work he’d try another. Hitler could not be swayed from his deeply felt sense of personal truth, to the tune of millions of deaths. The average man might jokingly speculate that he would do a better job than those in charge and therefore dream about being a king for a day. The lunatic has allowed his speculations, devoid of a sense of humor and a proper humility, to harden into the unassailable certainty that he really is the King of England in disguise.

THE CLEAN, WELL LIT PRISON OF ONE IDEA

In his masterwork, Orthodoxy, Chesterton entitles his second chapter “The Maniac”. In it he describes the commonalities materialist philosophers and academics in his time shared with the inhabitants of Hanwell, a London mental hospital. Rereading this chapter recently I finally understood why the word ‘crazy ‘ kept jumping into my head every time I heard one of those racism stories. It was because the stories were so marinated in the insanity known as Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT is an academic theory, and its proponents and adherents are for the most part academics, which is to say rationalists. As an explanation for the world, CRT suffers from the same shortcoming as the materialists’ worldview did over a century ago: Their reasoning leads to madness.

I may shock the reader by admitting there is truth in some of what CRT argues. There is truth in it, in the same way it is true that the Earth and a golf ball are both spheres. But what a great amount of truth there is left out! Just like the lunatic, who papers his wall with photos and news clippings, all connected by push pins and string, CRT purports to explain a large many things. But whatever truths it might touch upon, it doesn’t explain them in a large way. Their logic may be as complete and symmetrical as a circle, but it is not a very large circle. It has only room enough for one idea, repeated over and over. One might ask of the CRT enthusiast, are there no other stories in the world except yours? Is there no other drama happening but the one starring you?

Quite simply, as Chesterton famously described it, the maniac is trapped “in the clean, well lit prison of one idea.” And unfortunately for us, that one idea…that one mad, mad idea…has leaked out of the asylum and, much like the Corona virus, infected the world. The young woman in the story linked to above is only capable of seeing the world through one lens. She, and the other adherents of CRT, have taken one idea and crammed the entire world into it. It is the mark of true madness: a logical completeness married to a spiritual contraction. Cynical nihilism coupled with boundless self regard. As Chesterton notes, how much larger your world would be if your self could become smaller in it.

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

G.K. Chesterton

If we choose to continue to instantiate the limited vision of world defined by CRT, we will be choosing the path to madness. CRT, being a product of the academy, necessarily suffers from its flaws: the fatal combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason coupled with an almost complete absence of common sense. CRT is like the person who only can see the zebra as having a white coat with black stripes and is wholly incapable of summoning the imagination to see the zebra as black coated with white stripes.

THE NIGHTMARE…OR THE DREAM?

Did you ever notice that whenever someone describes a “nightmare”, their description invariably involves some variation of the same theme: endlessly falling into a dark oblivion, or repeatedly being chased by some monster, human or otherwise, or being compelled to face some other deep seated fear. In their vision they nearly always describe the experience as one of being stuck in some perverse twilight zone of fear and anxiety, where they are doomed to endlessly relive their terror, as if on a merry-go-round from Hell. It is interesting to note that insanity has been described, as much as it can be, in very similar terms. The lunatic is simply one who is experiencing the type of nightmare from which one never wakes up.

When, however, one recounts what they describe as a “dream”, the story is quite different. It often involves magical creatures who lead one on exciting if somewhat unintelligible adventures. Or often the drama is populated by old friends, or lost loved ones, and one has the chance to reenact happy moments and to make new ones. The entire tone and tenor of the experience speaks to a kind of mystical sanity, precisely opposite of the nightmare. The person recalling their dream has an expression of wonder and excitement at the possibility of it all, and they are anxious to have that dream again. Has anyone ever said that about a nightmare?

Not long ago…although in today’s climate it feels like a lifetime…when talking about the issue of race in this country, instead of the nightmare of CRT, we talked about our dreams. There was one man, a black man, who articulated that dream, that vision of who we could be, one hot summer day.

Of course he was a Christian preacher, a man who follows the Son. The Christian places the Son at the center of his universe and reasons out from there. His faith provides him with the mystical imagination, as Chesterton put it, to accept the mystery of Christ at the center of things so that all else in the world becomes intelligible.

In our universe the sun blazes on in the heavens, often somewhat hazy and mysterious, but it alone provides both light and heat. Its counterpart, on the other hand, is the cold, lifeless moon, floating in the darkness of dead space: light without heat, and only reflected light at that. CRT is a product of the academy, home to the rationalists and their cold, lifeless theories. It’s no coincidence the moon’s Latin name forms the root of the word lunatic.

WHERE I STAND:

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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

In 1976, legendary USC football coach John Mckay, who had led the team to four national championships during his tenure, left the program to become head coach of the NFL’s latest expansion team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Mckay and his Bucs were winless in their first season and lost their next 12 games in the second season of their existence before finally winning a game. That adds up to 26 consecutive losses. Ouch. Mckay had developed a reputation with the media as having a quick wit and a keen sense of humor, which no doubt helped him survive those dark, early years with the Bucs. During one memorable postgame Q&A, Mckay was asked what he thought of his team’s execution. Mckay deadpanned, “I’m in favor of it.”

So I guess we know where John Mckay stood on this question.

For those of you who may be offended, or even slightly perturbed, that I decided to begin an essay about the very serious issue of capital punishment with a quip about subjecting a poorly performing football team to the ultimate punishment, I simply remind you that using dark, ironic humor in hopeless situations is known as gallows humor, so the anecdote could not be more apropos. Also, in case you were unaware, football is damn serious business.

Truth be told, I was going to begin this essay with some high falutin’ disposition on society, laws, the necessity for punishment and the need for those punishments to reflect society’s sense of justice, yadda, yadda, yadda. But I was boring myself, and no doubt would be boring the reader by now. Plus, I couldn’t resist the temptation to relate just about the funniest post game answer to a reporter’s question I think I’ve ever heard. So, shoot me. Or should I say, lethally inject me? (Oops, there I go again.)

HOW ABOUT SOME SMUG LIBERAL PIETY INSTEAD?

Okay, if you don’t appreciate my dark humor, and maybe you think this issue deserves more earnest treatment, here you go. Some readers may remember the TV show “The West Wing”. It portrayed the fictional presidency of Josiah Bartlett. The show’s creator and head writer, Aaron Sorkin, is well known to be a man of the political left. It was a very popular show and by all accounts well written and acted. And, if you watched it faithfully, you were bound to receive quite a “liberal” education. By that I mean you would be versed in all the arguments in favor of the left’s position on any given issue.

I recall catching a portion of one episode (I was not a faithful viewer) wherein Bartlett is being prepped for a debate. His staffer presents him with a hypothetical question about what he thinks should happen to a person who rapes and murders his wife. If you follow politics at all, you may remember that question being asked of Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis during a 1988 debate with George H.W. Bush. Dukakis was a very prominent opponent of the death penalty, so it was a fair question. His answer, that he opposed the death penalty even in that case, struck voters as clinical and academic, and it turned off many to his candidacy. Sorkin may have had this moment in mind when he wrote the episode I am referencing, as it seems he was determined to provide Bartlett the answer he thought Dukakis should have given.

In the scene in question, Bartlett replies that of course he would want to see the man who brutally raped and murdered his wife given the most severe punishment imaginable. But, he adds, that’s why its a good idea that grieving husbands don’t have legal power to decide punishments. Its a typically clever retort, in that it at once makes Bartlett more human in his answer than Dukakis was, yet still identifies opposition to the death penalty as the “good” position. It also subtly implies that support for the death penalty is really just based on one’s irrational emotional impulses, and that smart people who are more evolved in their thinking would naturally understand that and decide the death penalty is an anachronism, a remnant of humanity’s pre-enlightenment, religious based ethical and moral thinking. Its a “Win-Win” answer as they say.

BUT WHAT ABOUT JUSTICE?

Except that it isn’t. As is the case with so much of modern thought, it is a clever answer but it lacks wisdom. What isn’t addressed in that answer is the question of justice, a topic pretty thoroughly analyzed by scores of pretty smart people (Aristotle and Aquinas come to mind), both secular and religious, who provided us with much knowledge and wisdom. Too bad we as a culture are so certain their ideas are out of style.

Of course the victim’s family should not have the legal authority to exact their preferred punishment on the offender. That’s called vigilantism. While it may be a natural, instinctual reaction, I agree with Sorkin that a morally healthy society must have the moral clarity to resist enabling or endorsing it. Where I differ with Sorkin and others who oppose capital punishment is that I believe a morally healthy society must also have the moral courage to clearly and unequivocally condemn very serious moral transgressions against society-such as heinous, depraved, and wanton acts of murder-by inflicting a punishment commensurate with the serious threat posed to the moral order by those kinds of crimes. I believe a proper conception of justice, one infused with the wisdom of many of those thinkers and theologians that moderns have so casually dismissed would go a long way towards reversing the recent trend in favor of abolishing the death penalty.

So, there. Is that serious enough for ya?

THROWING SAND IN THE BULL’S EYES

Now, most of the objections I hear people raise against capital punishment are the equivalent of the old debating trick of throwing sand in the bull’s eyes. What I mean is they don’t address the horns of the issue, i.e. the fundamental questions of justice and morality, but instead offer various objections designed to distract one from their ill conceived conception of justice. Let’s first clear away some of the sand so we can get to the horns of this issue.

For any death penalty supporter, the potential of executing an innocent person must be taken seriously. If one is talking about pre-modern societies, I am certain this injustice occurred. However, to my knowledge, opponents have yet to produce a single case in any post enlightenment liberal democracy wherein an innocent person was executed. This kind of mistake, in the context of our current system, which includes the rapidly developing science of DNA evidence, is so slight that I am comfortable supporting the death penalty while accepting the risk and responsibility of potentially having an innocent’s blood on my hands. Do opponents of capital punishment accept responsibility for the lives lost due to their support of abolishment? I am pretty certain I can dig up plenty of cases where a convicted murderer, who should have been executed, kills again, either in or out of prison. I am absolutely certain there are far more innocent victims of convicted murderers than there are innocent victims of capital punishment.

By the way, it always amazes me that opponents of the death penalty love to trot out those cases wherein DNA evidence overturned a conviction of a prisoner on death row, as if that makes their point. Doesn’t that just prove my point? Our system is so chock full of backstops in the form of appeals and stays and God knows what, that by 2018, the average time elapsed between a defendant being sentenced to death and the execution being carried out was 238 months! That’s almost 20 years, for those readers of mine who are as mathematically challenged as I. That is a morally corrupt system? I think not.

Another grain of sand thrown in this debate, and an amazing example of sheer chutzpah, is when opponents of capital punishment try to argue that maintaining death row inmates is more of a financial burden than their preferred punishment of life imprisonment. A debatable proposition at best, but one made possible only by the extreme guardrails erected by death penalty abolitionists that results in the convicted murderer spending nearly 20 years on death row!

Buckets of sand have been hurled, most especially in our current social climate, claiming the death penalty is unjust because it is unfairly applied in the case of poor and/or minority defendants. Opponents argue these defendants are more likely to receive the death penalty as punishment because of either unsuitable legal defense or systemic racism against minorities. As with any issue involving statistics, much depends on how the data is interpreted. On the one hand, a recent analysis in Georgia (poor Georgia! Sorry for piling on, Peach State!) indicated that the death sentence rate is 6% higher in white victim cases than in black victim cases. That means that if one murders a white person one is 6% more likely to be sentenced to death in Georgia. For those opposed to the death penalty, this serves as evidence of racial bias and therefore justification to call into question the justice of such a penalty. But does it? Despite the progressive insistence otherwise, in nearly everything from criminal justice to college graduation rates, the existence of disparity in outcomes along racial lines is not automatically dispositive evidence of bias. From 1977 through 2011, the racial breakdown for those convicted of crimes eligible for the death penalty was 48.6% white, 40.9% black, 8.9% Hispanic, 1.6% other. The race of those actually executed was 56% white, 35% black, 7% Hispanic, and 2% other. You’ll notice that when it came to carrying out the sentencing, the percent of black defendants who were actually executed is well below the percentage of white defendants receiving such a fate. Were those outcomes racially biased against whites?

My point is not to deny the real issues of race in the United States, but rather to remind the reader that these arguments simply don’t address whether or not capital punishment is just in and of itself. I am willing to concede that our criminal justice system is not perfect. No human system can possibly attain such an otherworldly status. I am more than willing, in fact eager, to debate and adopt potential reforms to our system to address inequalities, inefficiencies, and incompetence. What I am not willing to concede is that any of these problems obviate the need to have available a punishment proportionate to the severity of the crime. To those of offering this line of objection, I have a proposal: I will agree to a system in which any minority or poor person convicted in a capital crime shall have their case independently reviewed for any irregularities; gross misconduct on the part of the defense, prosecution or courts; or evidence of bias by any of the same. In return, you will agree to support the death penalty as a just and moral punishment for murders of a particularly heinous nature.

Some opponents of the death penalty like to throw scholarly sand by appealing to the Constitution, arguing that the death penalty violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment”. Part of this argument rests upon their assertion that the penalty is unfairly applied (see above). Another part, the part I believe to be more revealing of their true objection to capital punishment, is the assertion that executions are barbaric and their continued use merely a relic of outdated mores and customs informed by less enlightened thinking. I do not doubt the Founders clearly viewed the death penalty as constitutional. It is the penalty proposed in cases of treason. Furthermore, it has been the misguided efforts of death penalty opponents to make the procedure more medical in nature, and thus supposedly more humane, that has led to lethal injections as the preferred means of execution. Yet, this method has proven to be rife with problems that often cause the kind of unnecessary pain and suffering to the person being executed upon which opponents partially base their objection to the practice in the first place. Mercy unchecked by an equally strong sense of moral outrage for the victims of these murderers leads to such morally confused thinking.

THE LITMUS TEST

Having dispensed with the clouds of sand and dust thrown at this issue, we finally arrive at the crux of it. The litmus test question in my mind is this:

Do you believe that all murderers should be allowed to live?

If your answer is NO, then you do not believe the death penalty should be abolished. You may have some concerns and qualms, as any moral person should, but you are at least in the same moral universe as I. You have not abandoned the centuries old Judeo-Christian moral and ethical framework that contains vast deposits of hard earned wisdom about such fundamental questions as justice and mercy. And as such we can at least discuss whatever reforms might be necessary to ensure capital punishment is applied only when justice demands. No more, no less.

If, however, I present you with a case like that which occurred in 2007 in Cheshire, Connecticut, wherein two men brutally beat, raped and murdered three people, and your response to the question posed above is YES, then you and I do not inhabit the same moral universe. There is nothing I can say that would make sense to you regarding this issue because your moral compass points to some other true north.

Sadly, more and more opponents of capital punishment, when pushed to admit their obscurant objections about the constitution or disparate impacts are smoke screens that do not hold up to scrutiny, have begun to more confidently assert their arguments against the death penalty in more direct moral terms. Believing they have discovered in their modern moral philosophies a superior sense of justice and morality, they dismissively cast supporters of the death penalty as at best pitiful clingers to old superstitions, and, at worst, blood thirsty souls bent on vengeance.

GUESS WHO SAW IT ALL COMING?

As I mentioned above, support for capital punishment has been trending downward recently. I believe the reason is quite clearly diagnosed by our old friend Gilbert:

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered…it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.

G.K. Chesterton

Only someone inhabiting the fractured, inverted moral universe described here by Chesterton could possibly believe that justice is served by allowing all murderers to live.

THE DOWNLOAD

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FEBRUARY 2021

SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE

For those of you that did not come of age during the early years of MTV, when they just played music videos, the headline to this paragraph is of course the title to the Thomas Dolby song…more famous for the bizarre video than the actual song. In fact, I do not remember ever hearing the song on the radio…only “seeing” the song, if you will, on MTV. I suspect there were many songs like that during that era. They were composed merely as vehicles for the frustrated cinematic aspirations of the songwriter. Dolby admitted as much in 2011 when he was interviewed about the song’s origins.

I mention it here not only because so many of those early MTV videos still cling to my grey matter like lichen to a stone (such is the brain of a teenager), but also because I’ve noticed a curious trend regarding the role of science in our politics.

The Conservative sensibility tends by nature toward “adherence to the old and tried as opposed to the new and untried”, as Lincoln formulated it. This makes it naturally more circumspect when it comes to embracing the latest “thing”, scientific or otherwise. Chesterton, unsurprisingly, wonderfully articulates the virtues of conservatism with his famous thought experiment about “the fence”:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

GK Chesterton

Of course, human nature being what it is, thoughtful resistance to radical change can morph, whether thru fear or selfishness, or both, into the reactionary posture most famously represented by the Luddites.

Conservatism’s opponents long ago seized on the Luddite caricature to tar all of conservatism as anti-science and anti-progress. Countless disingenuous portrayals of the conservative as an unapologetic Luddite saturate our media and popular culture. These portrayals, usually beginning with Galileo and his spat with Pope Urban VIII, have been largely successful in cementing the public perception that progressives desires are motivated solely by the cold, hard facts of science, while conservatives “cling to their guns and religion”, as a prominent progressive once famously proclaimed.

Of course the conceit that Progressives are simply “following the SCIENCE” when crafting their political positions was always just that–a conceit. Their fidelity to “SCIENCE” (as they always seem to prefer to type it) is tenuous at best.

Take, as just one example, Progressives’ full fledged endorsement of the radical transgender agenda. It doesn’t get more scientifically basic than the biological fact that XX is not XY. Yet, we are told to ignore this fact in service to the ludicrous concept that it is a fundamental civil right to not only decide for yourself you no longer wish to be the sex you were biologically assigned, but also to force the society in which you are blessed to live to acknowledge your new identity as a civil right. Just ask those girls, who are being forced by the Biden Administration to compete with…and lose to…biological males in high school athletics, what they think of Progressives’ commitment to science.

Or, what about the issue of abortion? In an ironic twist, the ongoing advances in science and technology have served to undercut the political position of most progressives. Abortion supporters long standing claim that the choice a woman makes when she has an abortion does not involve the killing of a human being is becoming nearly impossible to honestly defend.

Any parents of school aged children out there? At this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, when numerous private schools have figured out a way to get kids back into classrooms successfully, where is the science behind the refusal of so many public schools to reopen? Progressives craven political calculus-that fealty to the teachers unions is their most pressing concern-is the only whiff of science you’ll find there.

Funny thing, science. It doesn’t care about your feelings, or how you wish reality to be, or even which political constituency you find yourself needing to placate. Facts are stubborn things, as the saying goes. The Luddites found that out. Now, despite their snarky putdowns and sanctimonious preening, Progressives are having to face the facts as well, and it isn’t pretty. There is no bigger tell of the cognitive dissonance they are experiencing than their annoying habit of putting the word “science” in all capital letters whenever they type it. That’s the written equivalent of someone yelling at the top of their lungs in an argument. Dr. Freud might call that overcompensation. When the facts are not on your side in a debate, you have two choices: Concede the argument, or yell louder. Who is clinging desperately to the past now, Mr. Obama?

ON LENT

The Lenten season has begun. Six weeks of trying to refocus our priorities to what’s important. Interestingly, speaking of science, research has shown that in order to make any lasting habitual changes, we humans need 66 days on average to imprint the new behaviors. A Lenten commitment to change our ways puts us well onto that path to success. Maybe the Church was not so anti-science after all?

The fact is the Church has never been anti-science. That is a myth. Many of the great discoveries of science were made by “church men”. Science and religion are not antithetical. They simply are exploring different questions. What really troubles those steeped in post modern, purely “scientific” modes of thought is the Church’s small “c” catholicism. By that I mean, her comfort in embracing all modes of thought and being, material and non-material, and her ability to embrace paradox and revel in the mysterious.

As Chesterton observed…there’s that guy again! Do yourself a favor this Lent and discover Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Start with his own story of conversion, Orthodoxy. It is a short book, which is good, because you will want to read it several times…anyway, as Chesterton observed, modern rationalism seeks to explain everything with reason. It wants to do away with the jagged edges of humanity and existence, smoothing everything out into a perfect sphere of logic and rationality. That is why the perfect symbol for modern thought is the circle. Of course, Chesterton notes, the circle also represents madness. Modern rationalism just goes around in circles, like the ancient symbol of the serpent eating its own tail.

A madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

GK Chesterton

The symbol of Christianity is, of course, the cross–the ultimate paradox. The cross is the physical representation of paradox, the holding of two opposing ideas at once: the horizontal and the vertical. Christ on the cross is the spiritual representation of paradox and the essence of the faith. One will never be able to embrace that faith until one is able to accept the ultimate mystery of the crucifixion and resurrection.

THE LESSER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE

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The ransacking of the United States Capitol on January 6th by pro-Trump rioters was a disgrace. Especially disturbing is the fact the rioters proclaim themselves “Patriots”. If they were “Patriots” the word has no meaning with which I am familiar. Attacking and vandalizing the most recognizable symbol of our system of government are the actions of idiotic morons, not patriotic citizens. They are no better, nor worse, than the violent mobs we witnessed this past summer burn communities and take over parts of cities.

The optimist in me tries to reassure my distressed spirit by telling me that in spite of this insanity, the center ultimately held. The bulwarks designed by the Framers were triggered and there were still enough people committed to defending the integrity of our institutions to prevent any permanent damage to their structure. The pessimist in me wonders: for how long?

“Character is destiny.”

HERACLITUS

The events of last week were in no small part the result of the defective character of our current President. For anyone willing to see it, this was how it was destined to end for Donald Trump’s administration. Yet his character flaws were not only overlooked by his supporters, in the eyes of his most dedicated fans (fan is short for fanatic I’ll remind you) they were actually celebrated. Petty, vindictive, boorish was transmuted in their minds into “HE FIGHTS FOR US!”.

The Founders were not naive. They understood the office of the Presidency was a political office and would not always be occupied by virtuous men such as George Washington. That is why they designed the government the way they did. As I have noted in previous posts, the Constitution contains many safeguards designed to prevent any one person or branch of government from being able to exercise complete power. Despite the drama of the past week, the system worked, effectively checking the self absorbed whims of the current occupant of the White House.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

John Adams

But what of our character…and ultimately, our destiny…as a nation? That a person of such spectacularly poor character as Donald Trump was, if not outright championed by so many, deemed at least the lesser of two evils in 2016, is a sad and troublesome commentary on our society at large. I am not the first to identify Trump as merely a symptom. Many have recognized this fact. The nature of the disease is harder to pinpoint.

THE SELFIE SOCIETY

We love to nickname our generations: The Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials. We also label certain historical eras in an attempt to convey the mood of the time: The Gilded Age, The Jazz Age, The Me Decade. I can think of no better moniker for our current moment than “The Selfie Society”. Its defining characteristic is an all encompassing self-absorption. Is there a more telling cultural artifact than “The Selfie”? Taken on our “I” phones (of course), it captures the outside world as meaningful only in relation to ourselves. Social Media platforms dovetail perfectly with this mindset, simultaneously reinforcing and expanding our subjective existence until there is barely an objective reality to speak of. The saying used to be you are entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts. Now we are each entitled to our own facts. What is good is what I agree with. What is bad is what I disagree with. What is true is what I want to be true. Is it any wonder we struggle to find any “common ground” these days? Our governing system is designed for persuasion and compromise. The psychological mindset of the Selfie Society creates ever increasing alienation and division.

The Selfie Society is not only destroying our interpersonal relationships, it is infecting our institutions as well. We are all wheels and no cogs. The survival of our institutions depends upon individuals subverting their personal needs and goals for the betterment and ultimate flourishing of the institution. Where will we find the people willing to make this kind of sacrifice in the Selfie Society? Institutions and organizations are not to be served but to serve us…as platforms for our personal brand. We see it more and more in the sports world and the business world. The operative question has become, what’s in it for me? The idea of being a team player or a good company man is unimaginable in the Selfie Society. And now our institutions of public service have been infected by the same mindset. Increasingly we are seeing people get into public service because the “public” part of the phrase “public service” provides an excellent platform for their personal brand. The “service” part is conveniently forgotten.

Donald Trump is only the most prominent example. Oh, you say, politicians have always been egomaniacs craving attention! Of course they have. To a point. I submit to you that the Selfie Era politician is of a different breed–a breed whose continued propagation will deal a fatal blow to this republic. Think about this: Richard Nixon, whose personal ambition and thirst for political power were unsurpassed by any of his contemporaries, did two things in his career that would be inconceivable to Donald Trump. After the 1960 presidential election, in which Nixon ran against John F. Kennedy and lost by a razor thin margin, it was widely accepted among those in the political classes that widespread voter fraud in the Democrat controlled city of Chicago had tipped the balance in Kennedy’s favor. By all accounts, Nixon could have mounted a very strong (stronger by a magnitude of a thousand than the claims Trump has been touting) challenge to the final result. But he chose not to. There probably were many self serving reasons why Nixon chose to not challenge the result, but at least one of his reasons was that he felt it was better for the country to not put it through that drama. Fourteen years later, facing impeachment and certain conviction after the exposure of the Watergate break in and cover up…at his arguably personal and definitely his political nadir…he chose to resign rather than put the country through the turmoil of impeachment.

Fast forward to 2020 and the Selfie Society. After losing an election-mostly due to his own lack of discipline–Donald Trump refused to concede. Instead, he has continued to push the lie(over Twitter, of course–the perfect medium for the prototypical Selfie Society politician) that the election was stolen. He has repeatedly peddled bogus conspiracy theories and riled up his equally self deluded followers. He even threw his loyal Vice President under the bus by insanely insisting Mike Pence had the power to overturn the election results. After Trump egged on a riot at the Capitol on January 6th, he now also faces Impeachment and ever increasing chances of conviction. Yet, he argues that those pursuing the impeachment are provoking more riots and chaos and that he needs to continue to fight.

The saddest part is that his die hard supporters continue to believe he really fights for them. If he thought of anyone but himself, he would resign and spare the country the turmoil he claims to believe would result from his impeachment. The fact is he has never fought for anything outside of his own self interest. There is nothing bigger to Donald Trump than Donald Trump. Just ask Mike Pence. Trump is the Selfie President.

“At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln understood what the Founders understood. The survival of this form of government and this nation depends upon us. Hopefully the tragic events of the last week will force us to lift up our eyes from our backlit screens, venture out of our Selfie induced nightmare, and rediscover the ‘better angels of our nature’.

My Conservative Sensibility: Part III

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American Conservatives seek to conserve the principles of the American Founding. In part I, we examined how natural rights theory, the philosophical concept that asserts men are born free and possess inherent, or “natural” rights, animated the core political philosophy of the Founders. Its logic led them to conclude the only just form of government is one derived from the consent of the governed. In part II, we examined how the Judeo-Christian conception of an unchanging and fallen human nature was also a key part of the Founders thinking. That worldview made the Founders particularly wary of man’s tyrannical tendencies when given power over others and therefore properly skeptical of mankind’s capacity to produce a perfect political system. A Judeo-Christian worldview, marinated in the intellectual and philosophical currents of natural rights theory, created the framework within which the Founders approached the task of designing their new government in the late 1780’s. The eventual design of our Constitution was primarily the result of the political genius of James Madison. His detailed study of past human efforts to organize mankind politically prompted the insights that helped him craft our unique Constitutional system, a system American Conservatives believe to be the ‘last, best hope of earth’.

“Democracy is the worst form of government…except for all the others.”

Winston Churchill

As Madison studied political arrangements throughout history, he attempted to dissect the flaws in each and every system. Madison reverted to first principles. He asked himself, like any true conservative, What is the worst outcome of any political system? His answer can be boiled down to one word: tyranny. Whether it be monarchy, oligarchy, or even the democracies of Ancient Greece, the risk of any political arrangement devolving into tyranny was a danger he was keenly aware of, particularly in light of the recent experiences with the British crown.

AUXILIARY PRECAUTIONS

Madison realized the inherent risk to the democratic system he was trying to craft was a tyranny of the majority. The danger to democratic systems posed by the mob, whose temporary passions lead to the imposition of ill-considered notions, is akin to a fever sweeping through one’s body. Madison sought to inoculate the American body politic against this potential catastrophic fever by fortifying his design with what he called “auxiliary precautions”. These measures are what you may have heard referred to in school as “checks and balances”. The genius of Madison was his insight that he could use men’s natural self interestedness as a check against their potential abuse of democratic power. These measures, such as separation of powers between, and even among, the branches of government; procedural checks on those powers enjoyed by each branch over the other; and the varying means and methods of electing the members of each branch, including the unfairly maligned electoral college, are, to the conservative sensibility, some of the ingenious features of our system.

CLOSED QUESTIONS IN AN OPEN SOCIETY

As the Constitutional convention of 1787 wore on, its members, who were generally in agreement with Madison’s basic framework for the new government, began to split into two camps regarding its final form. Federalists, led by Madison and Alexander Hamilton, were keen to ensure that the new system created a federal government much stronger than the weak and ineffectual central government under the Articles of Confederation. Their opponents, dubbed Anti-Federalists, were wary of too much centralized power, fearing it would infringe upon the freedoms of the states in the union, and ultimately, the individual rights of the people. They demanded that in return for their support of Madison’s overall plan, a list of enumerated, individual rights be written down as part of the text of the new constitution. Madison felt the Constitution’s basis in natural rights philosophy made it implicit that nothing in the document could be interpreted to override those natural rights belonging to the people. Additionally, he feared that by specifically listing some rights, other rights enjoyed by the people, could be interpreted by future generations to not be protected. In classic American political fashion, a compromise was reached. The Anti- Federalists agreed to vote for adoption of the new Constitution with the understanding that Madison and the Federalists would immediately implement, via the amendment process written into the Constitution, a list of enumerated individual rights, including language that the enumeration of certain rights shall not be interpreted to deny other rights retained by the states or the people . Thus was born, after ratification by the states, the Bill of Rights. These ten amendments serve to remind us of the Founders’ commitment to the protection of individual rights. The Founders wanted to protect the minority against any potential majority that may wish to use its democratic power to deny the minority their fundamental, natural rights. As George Will put it in his graduate thesis, there are certain questions that, even in an open society, are closed. The Founders were natural rights absolutists, and they were insistent that the political system they created would always protect the natural rights of an individual against the temporary whims of a transient majority. The Bill of Rights are part of the sacred canon of our political system, and they are properly revered by American Conservatives as the fundamental basis of our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

Benito Mussolini

Critics of the Founders, beginning most prominently with Professor Woodrow Wilson, later President Wilson, and like-minded political Progressives, express immense frustration with the design of our Constitutional republic. Progressives believe our rights come from the State. Therefore, they believe the State must take a more aggressive and central role in the lives of its citizenry, helping them to achieve a more equal and just society. They also believe mankind has progressed beyond his nature, beyond his primitive limitations, and is capable, with the proper enlightened leadership (always, curiously, found among the educated elite like Wilson himself) of achieving the dream of the ideal society. These ideas are fundamentally at odds with the Founders philosophy of natural rights and their more skeptical view of the potential of human nature. Therefore, Progressives are destined to chafe at the Constitution’s protection of individual freedoms, its preference for limited government, and its decentralization and balance of powers among the branches and the states. They heap untold amounts of scorn upon the electoral college; the makeup and means of election of senators; the need for super majorities to achieve significant changes; the filibuster; and even the bill of rights. They view these mechanisms, celebrated by Conservatives, as tragic faults of our system to overcome or eliminate. They see the Constitution as a relic of our primitive past and no longer relevant or applicable to the modern world they seek to create. And therein lies the rub. The ultimate conflict between American Conservatives and their Progressive counterparts, is, to borrow the title of an illuminating Thomas Sowell book, A Conflict of Visions.

CLOSET ELITISTS AND RACISTS?

Knowing that our Constitutional republic was born of an alternative, essentially conservative vision of humanity, Progressives realize that in order to convince the American people to adopt their vision, they must dislodge the Founders and their ideas from their revered perch in the minds of the citizenry. Therefore, we are subjected to countless Progressive critiques of the Constitution and its authors that seek to delegitimize the Founders personally, attacking their motives and sneering haughtily at them for their personal faults and foibles.

Critics often cite the Founders oft stated fears and warnings of an unchecked democracy, or a tyranny of the majority, as proof of underlying, anti-democratic sympathies. They accuse the Founders of establishing a faux democracy with a Constitution that is actually a cleverly designed mechanism intended to block the will of the people and serve only the interests of the wealthy elite. I submit these critics erroneously characterize the intentions of the Founders. They were not so keen to mention the faults of democracy because they deemed it an unworthy or undesirable political system. Having come to the logical conclusion that democracy was the only just system, they wanted to ensure that their fellow countrymen were fully aware of its limitations. It is only when we are aware of faults that are we able to address them effectively. Madison’s ‘auxiliary precautions’ and the Bill of Rights are evidence of a commitment to individual freedom within a democratic society, not a subversion of that democracy. However, because they are ideas that instantiate a system antithetical to the Progressive desire for more State power, they are disingenuously and unironically maligned as the devious, power hungry design of their elitist authors.

Most recently, the Founders have come under attack as specifically designing the Constitution to perpetuate slavery. Now, I will concede that there are some legitimate arguments to be had about the validity of the Founders philosophical assumptions that will impact whether one thinks their political designs were wise or foolish or somewhere in between. If Conservatism stands for anything, it most definitely stands for the idea that anything produced by humans is by nature imperfect and therefore not immune from criticism. There are some critiques, however, one needn’t waste time addressing seriously. They are so widely condemned, by thoughtful scholars from all political perspectives, as historically illiterate, agenda-driven pablum (yes, I’m looking at you New York Times 1619 project), that one should feel comfortable ignoring those critiques as being what the average, common sense citizen would immediately recognize as horses**t.

LET THE CONVERSATION BEGIN

My primary goal with these essays has been to illuminate to the best of my ability and understanding the underlying political philosophy of the American Conservative. Hopefully, I have succeeded in that task. With that groundwork in place, as I comment in the future on various political issues, I hope the reader will at least consider the basis for my arguments, whether one agrees with my position or not, rather than simply dismissing the conservative viewpoint with ill-informed invective.

My Conservative Sensibility: Part II

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American conservatives seek to conserve the principles of the American founding. In Part One, I discussed one of the Founders fundamental principles: governments are instituted among men, who are possessed of inherent, or ‘natural’, rights, for the purpose of securing those natural rights.

Government so conceived, “conceived in liberty” as Mr. Lincoln so brilliantly distilled it in his Gettysburg Address, necessarily will be government derived from the consent of the governed. Each of us, as individual, free persons, must consent to any curtailment, any ‘government’, of those natural freedoms. Any other political arrangement violates our natural rights. If one accepts the doctrine of natural rights, then logic demands the only acceptable form of government be democratic, i.e. subject to the consent of the governed.

By declaring to the world in July 1776 their belief in the doctrine of natural rights, the Founders had implicitly committed themselves to establishing a democratic form of government. However, the precise form of that government was not otherwise described in the Declaration. It would take another eleven years, many debates and heated arguments, and (mostly) James Madison’s applied genius, to construct and adopt the framework of that government, our Constitution. The design of that Constitution revealed another fundamental principle held by the Founders that is also key to understanding the conservative sensibility.

OUR FIXED HUMAN NATURE

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

James Madison, Federalist 51

That men are sometimes devils requires no great intellectual capacity to grasp. A mere casual reflection upon one’s own life and times will supply ample evidence to support the proposition. No, Madison’s words point to an equally self evident truth for the Founders: our fixed human nature. Much like the speed of light, the universal constant at the core of Einstein’s theoretical physics, the universal constant of self-interested human nature is a core principle underlying the Founders thinking about the nature of political arrangements. Any hope for good government needed to incorporate a healthy skepticism about human nature. The Constitution they produced, with its checks and balances of rival powers, its frustrations of fleeting popular passions, and its careful protection of minority rights, is a testament to a political genius that rivals the scientific genius of Professor Einstein.

The conservative sensibility is grounded in this conviction about the fallen state of human nature. From it flows a philosophical worldview that naturally aligns the conservative with the Founders political vision. It also helps inoculate us from being infected by the temptations of alternative visions of society-visions rooted in false hopes of human perfectibility arising from the enlightened, scientific rule of an all-knowing elite.

In part three of this extended meditation on the conservative sensibility, I will discuss American conservatism in relation to its adversaries-those alternative political visions that fundamentally disagree, knowingly or not, with our founding principles.

My Conservative Sensibility: Part I

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“When it comes to politics, what are you?”

“I’m a conservative.”

“Ohh…”

Conservative, liberal, republican, democrat, progressive. I suspect most of you are like me when asked to categorize yourself politically. You simply provide your inquisitor…and let’s face it, when they ask that question, their motives are inquisitorial…with one of those shorthand descriptors.

Unfortunately, their understanding of what it means to be a conservative, or progressive, or democrat or republican, is almost certainly informed by certain assumptions and associations they have acquired from the present public discourse. In most cases, these characterizations can be quite fairly described as ranging from disingenuous distortions to malicious misrepresentations.

CONSERVE WHAT?

So what do I mean when I proclaim that I am a conservative?

Let’s begin by asking the most logical question: What is it that I am trying to conserve?

To conserve something is to protect it from harm or destruction. Depending on when and where one might be answering the question, what a conservative is trying to protect might be the Monarchy, the Soviet Union, or the Galactic Empire. I am not, however, an 18th century Englishman, a 20th century Russian politburo member, or a 25th century citizen of Tatooine. I am an American citizen in the 21st century professing to be a conservative. So, what am I trying to conserve? According to George Will, in his book The Conservative Sensibility, the correct answer to that question is simple, straightforward, and reasonable:

An American conservative desires to conserve the principles of the American founding.

AN EXCEPTIONAL IDEA

People who bristle at the idea of American exceptionalism are no doubt misapprehending the concept as some sort of jingoistic claim of national superiority. Nothing could be further from the truth. Exceptionalism in this context refers to the uniqueness of both the American founding and the revolutionary ideas upon which it was based.

Unlike any nation before it, the United States was unique in that it could pinpoint exactly when and where it came into being. To that point in history, nation states arose gradually and organically…and violently… into the entities we now recognize as individual countries. On July 4, 1776, the United States was proclaimed into being. Just as exceptional was the fact that this revolutionary proclamation was not driven by the usual catalysts, such as poverty or political oppression. The men proclaiming their independence were relatively free and prosperous Englishmen, who enjoyed more rights and material well being than most of the world at that time. This revolution was sparked by an idea, and it forever turned upside down the understanding of the relationship of man to his governing institutions.

“We have it in our power to begin the world again.”

Thomas Paine

Drawing from the political and philosophical musings of classical civilizations and Enlightenment political philosophers (particularly John Locke), and infused with a Judeo-Christian teleology, the Founders followed a line of reasoning the essence of which Jefferson poetically captured in the second line of the Declaration. To wit, Mankind, uniquely endowed by their creator with reason, can use that reason to discern certain truths (“self-evident” truths) about the nature of man. First and foremost, that man is created equally free, and as such, is endowed with certain inherent rights (natural rights), to include the right to life and the right to be free to chose his own pursuits.

All well and good. The dignity of the individual was a concept introduced by Judeo-Christian theology and expounded upon by secular philosophers before Jefferson and his pals adopted it. But the Founders took things one step further. What Jefferson proclaimed in his next sentence was the exceptional idea at the root of the American revolution:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (emphasis added)

Let me reiterate: To secure these a priori rights is the reason government exists. This is a complete inversion of the previous relationship of men to their political societies and it is the bedrock principle of American conservatism. We do not need to petition the government….be it a king, emperor, or parliament…to obtain these rights. They already belong to us as free men. We set up political systems in order to secure these rights from infringement by other men or society at large.

If you doubt the Founders commitment to this principle-if you think it a mere throwaway piece of poetic musing-notice that in the preamble to the document that describes the governing structure within which their revolutionary ideas were to be implemented, they reaffirm the principle:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, to ourselves and our posterity…”

Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America (emphasis added)

In order to understand what it is to be a conservative, you must grasp this principle first: Government does not exist to grant the blessings of liberty. It exists, with our consent as free men, solely to secure those blessings. We, by mutual consent, agree to surrender a small portion of our natural liberty for the express and limited purpose of establishing a zone of individual freedom, bounded by the rule of law, within which to pursue happiness as we see fit.

Over the past century or so, this concept of natural rights has been under attack by many in our political and intellectual classes. They believe the Founders’ doctrine of individual, natural rights, secured by a government limited to that narrow purpose, is hopelessly inadequate for the challenges of our modern world. They believe we have outgrown those founding principles and the thinking that follows from it.

As a conservative, I believe just the opposite. The Founders principle of government as the securer of rights rather than as the source of rights is one of the great political insights. It must be reasserted, not rejected, if we are to have the best kind of republic possible in this imperfect world.

Speaking of imperfect worlds, in part two I will explore another philosophical perspective crucial to the Founders’ thinking. Accepting the truth of that idea, and understanding its implications, leads one logically to certain conclusions about the form of government best suited to secure our natural rights.

Welcome

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THE EXAMINED LIFE?

Plato tells us that during Socrates’ trial for corrupting the youth of ancient Athens, the famed philosopher, ever the scold, made a statement along the lines of:

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

I’m sure this went over well with all his fellow Greeks scraping out their meager existence on the not exactly fertile plains of their homeland.  But old “Socrates”, like all radicals, had to speak his truth, consequences be damned.  Possessing the natural temperament of the more Aristotelian “golden mean” type (enough with the ancient Greeks already, you blowhard!), I like to imagine Plato misheard what Socrates said, possibly because it’s famously hard to enunciate after a generous dose of hemlock.  Maybe Socrates actually said:

“The unexamined life is not very fulfilling.”

To that I say, unequivocally, right on brother!

I believe we can experience a more fulfilling life if we take the time to examine more thoughtfully the things that matter.

THINGS THAT MATTER?

My interests encompass many subjects both large and small.  The true, the beautiful, the just, the good…as well as why the best cookie, hands down, no argument, is oatmeal chocolate chip (Grandma Granger, blessings be upon you).   Historians note that Thomas Jefferson organized his vast library into three main categories: reason, memory, and imagination.  These roughly translate into the subjects of philosophy/science, history, and arts/culture.  When I think about it, those subject headings encapsulate quite nicely my interests.  I suspect they might end up roughly describing the kinds of things regularly mentioned, highlighted, mused or meditated upon in this blog.

A NOTE ON TONE

We seem to have devolved into a world wherein a bumper sticker mentality prevails (twitter: curses be upon it). “Thinking” 140 characters at time is not conducive to thoughtfulness, and it leads to a lot of shouting and posturing, and, frankly, it gives me headaches.  What passes for debate is simply a lot of juvenile name calling.  Character and motives are constantly attacked while underlying ideas are never addressed.               

This blog is my refuge from that world.  I’m hoping it might be yours too.

That being said, good natured humor, irreverance, and cleverness are always welcome and encouraged.

WHY?

 “You have a lot going on in that (crazy/pea/delusional…take your pick) brain of yours” is something I have heard often from friends, family and many others over the years.  This is true.  Unfortunately, as friends, family and others are apt to also mention often, “you don’t say much.”  Also true.  So, what to do with all this “stuff” in my head?  This blog is my outlet.  It is my chance to dust off the mental furniture in my attic.  We all need to do a mental spring cleaning if we are to pursue the examined life seriously.  Exposing our ideas, particularly our biases and blindspots, to the light of day, and possibly to the reasonable critique of others, is a prerequisite for the examined life.

Now, some people prefer to accomplish their mental spring cleaning by “talking things out”, as it were.  God bless them (and the people listening!).  I find I need to write.  The exercise of expressing one’s thoughts in words can be exhausting, but it is often exhilarating.  It is also immensely clarifying.

“IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT SIMPLY, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND IT WELL ENOUGH.”  

Albert Einstein

In order to write clearly, one must put in the time and effort to think clearly.  If I don’t know why I think what I think, how can I explain it to another? How can I hope to convince another, if that is my aim?  How can I defend my point of view from attack?  How can I be open to seeing it another way?  Sit down sometime and try writing an essay on any topic. I’ll bet by the time you’re finished you will be a hell of a lot more clear about what you think about that topic and why.  Who knows, you might have changed your mind about it, too.

 “HOPE IS A GOOD THING…MAYBE THE BEST OF THINGS.”

Andy Dufresne

So, if you’re still reading, maybe you’ll check in from time to time.   I hope so.  Maybe you’ll want to respond to something or add your own thoughts.  I hope so.  Maybe you’ll introduce me to an interesting idea or drop a bit of knowledge on me, or maybe I’ll do the same for you.  I hope…