Tag: meditations

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.

SUICIDE OF THE WEST

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This past September marked the twentieth anniversary of what has come to be known as “9/11”, the day a band of terrorists, ensorcelled by a death cult masquerading as a religion, murdered nearly 3,000 people on United States soil.

For anyone at least thirty years old today, it was the kind of event so significant that everyone knows exactly where they were when it happened. For my fellow Generation Xers, it was our Pearl Harbor, our JFK assassination. Roused from our “holiday from history”, as George Will dubbed the decade between the end of the Cold War and 2001, we briefly rejoined the fight against tyranny and oppression.

Now, sadly, we have chosen again to turn our backs on that fight. The United States’ humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 15th of this year was not only shockingly inept in its execution, but also betrays this larger truth: The lack of resolve on display in our decision to withdraw portends a slow but steady march towards civilizational suicide.

The argument that the United States needed to end this “forever” war was superficially appealing but ultimately hollow. The fact is the battle against the forces of tyranny and oppression is now, always has been, and forever will be a battle Western civilization, and the United States in particular, cannot ever withdraw from.

The civilization we have been blessed to inherit will not self perpetuate. We must do the hard work of constantly maintaining it. “Things fall apart”, as the poet William Butler Yeats put it, and we must be resigned to the fact that the forces of nihilism and despair are ever present, waiting to tear down the civilization so many have sacrificed so much to build. Therefore, we must be prepared to combat those forces always. As much as we might have hoped it were the case, there is no “holiday from history” in this struggle.

Now, this is not to endorse any notion of “nation building”. That project, I believe, is similarly misguided, only instead of being borne of despair, like the sin of suicide, it is borne of hubris. I fear, however, that we have been lulled into the false belief that all efforts to protect and defend free society from tyranny are merely acts of Western imperialism. We are constantly told that our deep seated patriotism is a mere veneer for jingoism and nationalism, instead of the necessary lifeblood that feeds our will to survive as a country and civilization.

CONFLATING PATRIOTISM WITH NATIONALISM

The attacks of September 11, 2001 were so horrific that they stirred the patriotism of the American people to a degree not seen since probably World War Two. Nearly all were united in the determination to defend our country and our way of life against the nihilists who had attacked it that Tuesday morning. Alas, it did not take long for our resolve to weaken. Displays of patriotism make certain types of Americans quite uneasy. They view it as the jumping off point to what they fear are the deep seated jingoistic and nationalist predilections of the great unwashed masses. These more progressive minded, intellectually superior types feel it is their duty to save the world from the wicked American imperialist they heard so much about in college and graduate school.

While it is true that the average American retains a deep well of patriotism, I do not believe we have ever truly been, in our nature or temperament, nationalist. The patriot is one who loves his country as a parent does his child, willing to sacrifice his own well being for his country’s sake. This is a crucially different mindset than that of the nationalist. The nationalist loves his country in much shallower manner. Our friend G.K. Chesterton may shed some light here. Chastising his fellow Englishmen for their misappropriation of patriotism in support of a clearly imperialist venture in South Africa in the early 20th century, he said:

“On all sides we hear to-day of the love of our country, and yet anyone who has literally such a love must be bewildered at the talk, like a man hearing all men say that the moon shines by day and the sun by night. The conviction must come to him at last that these men do not realize what the word ‘love’ means, that they mean by the love of country, not what a mystic might mean by the love of God, but something of what a child might mean by the love of jam….’My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober’. No doubt if a decent man’s mother took to drink he would share her troubles to the last; but to talk as if he would be in a state of gay indifference as to whether his mother took to drink or not is certainly not the language of men who know the great mystery (of patriotism).”

G.K Chesterton

OUR DANGEROUS NAIVETE

The West’s victory, (mostly our victory, truth be told), in the near fifty year Cold War, the struggle with Communism and its primary proponent and exporter, the Soviet Union, had some observers prophesying a permanent triumph for liberal, democratic values. In fact, in 1992, in the recent wake of the fall of Soviet communism, political scientist Francis Fukuyama published his famous book, The End of History and the Last Man , in which he argued the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet empire marked “not just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Fukuyama’s book ignited a vigorous academic debate. Some agreed that, to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King, the arc of political history bends toward democracy. Others were not so sure.

Many in academia and the chattering classes mistook that temporary victory as a permanent one, and they dreamed of a world where we no longer had to remain vigilant in our defense of Western Civilization. In fact, they argued, we needed to dispense with our patriotism and Western chauvinism because they were now relics of a bygone era. Keeping them now would only reveal us to be racist, imperialistic thugs in the eyes of the world community. Although temporarily awakened from that delusional dream on 9/11, it was not long before the voices urging us to “get out of all these foreign wars” grew louder and more persistent.

Now, the ineptitude displayed by the Biden administration during the withdrawal from Afghanistan was truly embarrassing. Of course, what could we really expect from an administration headed by a political mediocrity whose intellectual capacity is as thin as his hairline. What is more distressing, ultimately, are the false presumptions that underlay the decision to withdraw in the first place. We cannot blame Biden for that. His supposed foreign policy expertise has always been a myth. As one of former President Obama’s Secretaries of Defense, Robert Gates, famously remarked, “Joe Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Biden is like the typical college sophomore, the “wise fool”, spouting platitudinous phrases that sound deep and insightful in the wee hours of a late night, dorm room bull session but that fall apart when subjected to the clear realities of daylight. The sad truth, however, is Biden’s sophomoric pronouncements merely reflect the inch deep pool of conventional wisdom in which he wallows.

Apparently the Biden administration was taken by surprise at the American public’s decidedly negative reaction to the withdrawal. It’s no wonder. He, like the rest of the so-called foreign policy establishment, have always misread the American public’s view. I submit that the American people have always had the intuitive good sense to distinguish between the love of country that informs patriotism versus the shallow jingoism of nationalism. It is the intellectuals who, purposely, I believe, have tried to tar the American people as closet imperialists. In fact, the American people have always been wary of “foreign wars”. They come by that naturally, as they took careful heed of their father’s warning to avoid foreign entanglements. What they have never lacked, until recently that is, is the resolve to fight the enemies of freedom, whenever and wherever they may arise.

REDISCOVERING OUR RESOLVE

Taking advantage of the strategic mistakes we made in Iraq and Afghanistan, foreign policy “experts” like Biden have managed to convince us that our retreat from Afghanistan is not a mistake but instead the proper rejection of a misguided nationalism. What the cynicism and intellectual snobbery of our so-called elites has actually achieved is to put the country, once aptly described as the “last best hope of earth“, on an inexorable path to self immolation.

Fortitude is defined as “love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object.” Any parents reading this will immediately understand the meaning of those words. While we may still demonstrate fortitude individually, as a society we tire easily and get bored quickly. There are many unpleasant but necessary tasks that happen to be essential to civilizational survival. Only citizens who love their country like a mother does her child will be willing to endure the necessary unpleasantness that is required to ensure its survival. Is it any wonder that our modern society, wherein patriotism has become passe, finds itself unable to muster the fortitude to endure for the sake of it’s own survival?

Remarking on his choice of title to his 2018 best seller about the threats facing our civilization, author Jonah Goldberg noted that he settled on “Suicide of the West” because it accurately conveyed his belief that the decline and ultimate death of Western civilization can only occur by choice. The suicidal person no longer believes life is worth living and has thus lost the will, the fortitude, to endure the vicissitudes of life and stay in the fight. A civilization that lacks belief in its own worth will eventually lack the fortitude to fight for its survival. With its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States simply acknowledged the sad fact that we lack the fortitude necessary to “bear all things” for the sake of our own survival.

In the Catholic tradition, suicide is considered a grave sin, and rightly so. “The suicide”, as Chesterton wisely observed, “is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.”

We owe it to the brave men and women who have given “the last full measure of devotion” to our nation to rediscover our fortitude. For the sake of future generations, we must not commit the grave sin of civilizational suicide. We must not allow cynicism and despair to poison our healthy patriotism and thereby weaken our resolve to stay in the fight. As the poet and philosopher T.S Eliot reminds us:

“If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.”

T. S. Eliot

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.

WHERE I STAND:

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THE CASE FOR THE IMPEACHMENT AND CONVICTION OF DONALD J. TRUMP

(Reader’s note: This essay is the first in what is intended to be a series of essays laying out my position on what seem to me to be important issues, whether the nature of those issues be political, philosophical, moral, or some combination of each of those things. The issues may address topics timely–as is the case here–or timeless. They are simply one person’s opinion, but my hope in presenting them is to induce the reader to at least reflect on the issue anew while exposing them to a viewpoint they may not have previously considered.)

ARGUING IN GOOD FAITH

Originally, I considered titling this essay “The Constitutional Case for the Impeachment and Conviction of Donald J. Trump”. However, I realized to imply that faithfulness to the Constitution demands one agree with the proposition Donald Trump should be impeached and/or convicted would be to fall into the trap I rail against constantly. We need to temper the natural tendency to cast out opposing views as necessarily springing from pernicious motives. I have read several excellent arguments both for and against the impeachment of our 45th President. The arguments on both sides are made by partisan political actors. After all, we are all partisan. But to acknowledge that fact is not to concede that a legitimate Constitutional case cannot be made for or against impeachment and conviction in this case.

I hope it has been made clear to regular readers of this blog that I am an originalist when it comes to The Constitution. If originalism means anything, it means that the Constitution is not partisan. It does not prescribe a conservative or progressive policy answer. Originalists do not start with a preferred political or policy outcome and then go find the the justification for it in the text. Originalism as a philosophy says our job is to read and interpret the Constitution in the plain meaning of the text. Where there is not plain meaning, we are to use our intellect, available scholarship, and ultimately our informed judgement to discern the original intent of the Founders, wherever that leads. That is my goal here. You must decide whether I fail or succeed. But let’s try to get out of the habit of ascribing bad faith to every argument with which we disagree.

WHAT IS IMPEACHMENT?

The Constitution grants Congress alone the power to impeach. This fact is instructive in and of itself. Despite our more recent tendencies, Congress was always envisioned by the Founders as being the supreme branch of our government. Article I states that the House of Representatives shall have the sole power to impeach and that the Senate shall have the the sole power to try all impeachments. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present. Article II, which generally describes the role of the Executive Branch, specifies that ‘the President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office upon impeachment and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors’.

The Founders were rightly concerned about abuses of power by the Executive and Judicial branches. The topic of impeachment was discussed often in the deliberations surrounding the adoption of the Constitution. Impeachment is a concept borrowed from English law and was intended as a means by which civil officers who commit criminal acts, engage in conduct clearly unbecoming of their office, or generally abuse their powers can be held accountable by Congress. The clear intent was to provide the people with some means of relief from an official engaged in treachery, corruption, or behavior inconsistent with the faithful execution of their duties or damaging to the institution as a whole. Some members of the convention worried impeachment could be used in purely political manner by Congress, whereby they would simply impeach an official with whom they disagreed politically. The Founders understood impeachment was ultimately a political consideration, not a narrow criminal or civil procedure. That is why they made impeachment moderately difficult and conviction quite difficult. The Founders expected impeachment to be employed more often, as a corrective to executive and judicial officers whose actions endangered the proper functioning of government or threatened its institutional integrity. The reality is Congress has been quite reluctant to employ its impeachment power. There must be quite broad agreement in the House in order to draft and pass articles of impeachment. Even then, the two thirds consent required in the Senate for conviction raises a daunting factor of even broader public sentiment required for success. Politicians, particularly in the House, are naturally wary of being too far out in front of their constituents. The raw political calculus involved works to ensure, as history has proven, the judicious employment of the impeachment power.

WHAT CONSTITUTES HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS?

Most of the controversy over impeachment has centered on the clause in Article II, ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’. In arguing in favor of an impeachment provision being included in the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton noted that several state constitutions included the provision of impeachment for ‘maladministration’. Madison, fearing the term may be politically abused, substituted in his final draft of the Constitution another term, borrowed again from the English: ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’. Debate has raged ever since over precisely what this phrase means in the context of impeachment. First, realize that ‘high crimes’ in 18th century parlance means ‘activity by or against those who have special duties acquired by taking an oath of office’. For those of you with a military background, think of it as similar to the oft heard charges in military tribunals of ‘dereliction of duty’ and ‘conduct unbecoming’. I think a clear, concise, accurate, and helpful understanding of the overall meaning and intent of the phrase was summed up in an article in Smithsonian Magazine. The author, Erick Trickey, writes that the Founders, after vigorous debate, ultimately concurred that civil officers, and particularly the President, would be subject to impeachment “for abuses of power that subvert the Constitution, the integrity of government, or the rule of law.”

Some have tried to argue, as recently as during the debates over Trump’s most recent impeachment, that only indictable criminal offenses qualify as impeachable, since any other interpretation would lead to the politicization of the impeachment power. While many brilliant legal minds have argued this way, I believe their interpretation is simply wrong in this case. The records of the debates during the Constitutional convention clearly indicate that the high crimes and misdemeanors phrase was meant to broaden the scope of Congress’ impeachment power beyond the narrower limits of crimes indictable in a criminal court. After listing the crimes of treason and bribery, many of the delegates worried that there needed to be wording that allowed Congress to employ its impeachment power to cover actions that may not be criminal but that were clearly deleterious to the Constitutional order. As noted, mindful of the potential for political abuse, they rejected Hamilton’s suggested term (‘maladministration’) and settled on the now famous, and, I contend, still misunderstood, ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’.

AND NOW FOR THE ISSUE AT HAND…

I believe, without any doubt or hesitation, that in the time between approximately November 4, 2020 and January 6, 2021, Donald J. Trump engaged in actions that qualify as impeachable offenses and therefore should be impeached in the House for those actions.

That being said, the charges drawn up by the House committee and adopted by the House were ill considered and foolish. As former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy argues in National Review, the charge of incitement to insurrection is “needlessly problematic and provocative”. It allows Trump and his defenders to focus on the legal definition of those words while sidestepping Trump’s undermining of the Constitution and his dereliction of duty.

In the narrow legal sense, Trump could not be convicted in a criminal court of incitement. That requires ‘an unambiguous call for violence’ that creates ‘an imminent threat of violence’. Also, despite the fact that what happened at the Capitol on January 6th was clearly an insurrection, including that charge in the impeachment is particularly galling to many Americans who witnessed countless acts of insurrectionist violence over the past year but were told by many in Congress and the media that those protests were largely peaceful and righteous.

However, even with those reservations in mind, I would still vote to impeach. The articles of impeachment as drawn up are flawed, unnecessarily focused on specific criminal charges, but they still detail an overall pattern of encouraging anti-constitutional actions and a singular, but unforgivable, failure to carry out the duties of the office, both of which are impeachable offenses.

TRUMP’S OFFENSES

As McCarthy notes, Trump should have been charged with Dereliction of Duty and Subversion of the Constitution’s Election Process. Trump’s plain and stunning failure to take any action to defend the Congress, and his own Vice President, who, due to Trump’s own actions (see below) was clearly one of the primary targets of the rioters’ violence, is a clear dereliction of his duty. He blatantly ignored plea’s for action and simply watched passively as the events unfolded before him on the television.

As for the charge of Subversion, it is necessary to provide some context as to Trump’s actions since the election in November. He has consistently peddled numerous conspiracy theories to his followers, contending that he was the true winner of the election and that they must take action to #stopthesteal. All of these accusations have been proven false or brought into serious doubt, as even Trump’s own Attorney General at the time, Bill Barr, told him in no uncertain words. Yet he has continued to recklessly promote them as fact to his followers. In the days leading up to the rally at the Capitol, he consistently pressured his Vice President and members of Congress to violate their 12th amendment duties to certify the election. He and his supporters touted the rally on the 6th as a way to further ramp up the pressure on Pence and the other lawmakers and framed it as their last chance to “stop the steal”.

TO CONVICT OR NOT TO CONVICT

The decision to convict the President lies with the Senate. Some have protested that the timing of the impeachment, so close to the end of Trump’s legal term of office, makes it impossible to conduct the necessary trial and therefore his impeachment is moot. I disagree. Even if the trial and conviction were to extend beyond Trump’s term of office, I think it should be conducted and he should be found guilty. Even with my reservations about the wording of the actual articles that were charged, I would still vote to convict.

To some, impeaching and convicting an official after he has left office makes no sense and would be counterproductive. However, I believe the intent of the impeachment power goes beyond the specifics of one set of circumstances. There is actually precedent in several state constitutions for impeachment of civil officers after their time in office. This tells me that impeachment was always understood as more than a process to identify or punish the particular unbecoming acts, criminal or otherwise, of particular officials. Impeachment, and ultimately conviction, involves the protection of the integrity of our institutions and the assurance of their continued survival and flourishing. It is intended to send a message to the accused, but also to the public, that behavior antithetical to the norms of good government and society as a whole cannot be tolerated, lest we risk the dissolution of our Republic.

Impeachment is a serious matter in which serious, thoughtful people can disagree. I believe in this case, Donald J. Trump was plainly derelict in his duties during the riot at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, and wantonly and dangerously subversive of the Constitutional order since at least November 4th, 2020. He therefore is deserving of his impeachment in the House. After a trial in the Senate, he should be convicted and suffer the remaining penalties prescribed in the Constitution: disqualification from holding any public office in the future.

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.