We’re tackling two of the big taboos in this one.
David the Barbarian has some great comments in my previous article about changing the culture. He elicited a self realization: while I know that politics just doesn’t matter to me, I realized my worldview has passively reflected that without my positive awareness.
My latest response to David was this:
Excellent points. My—problem? Schtick? Niche?— is that the political stuff is just not important to me, and perhaps that’s my own hubris showing. Religious conversion is important and all else flows from that, one way or another. You make a good point though that perhaps some people’s conversion story includes repentance from liberalism as a stepstone, which we should not discount.
The error I am afraid of is in thinking that political victory is the end, political conversion is primary, or that political orthodoxy will solve our problems. That’s probably more a balance I need to strike than anything wrong with Bonald’s idea. But that’s something Orthosphere has done a lot of historically, focusing on political effort to the detriment of the spiritual effort.
I make a lot of claims here, so I wanted to muse aloud about them.
Scoot, Why do you disdain politics? Why does it not matter to you?
First, a practical admission: I am bad at politics. When Hambone and I were in college, we worked together on some leftist utopia pet project as their accounting duo. They were doing some operation for some altruistic good, and Hambone and I were brought in to be their number crunchers, but they did not anticipate we would bring analysis to the table.
Actually, it is interesting: The leftist utopian project was a Microfinance project, giving micro-loans to the poor in a third world country. Neither Hambone nor myself had heard of Zippy nor had we begun our respective trips back to Rome, all we had was the data from this microfinance organization and our accounting backgrounds. We learned that we were hurting these poor folks by charging them interest. The people that got the most benefit from our operation were the ones who took the money and ran. The ones who paid us back were made worse off for the endeavor. It was horrible, and Hambone and I resolved too change the program into something philosophically coherent and financially sustainable.
Hambone has a talent for dealing with people that I do not–this is the definition of politics I refer to above. He was able to take our suggested reforms and pitch them using the language of leftists and make them see that we are well meaning and have good reasons and really it’s just the best thing to do. He remains talented at this. I brought brute-force number crunching to the table, I was talented at that and not at all talented at pitching these reforms. I stayed in the program one year longer than Hambone, because he did it as part of a class. As soon as he left, war broke out between myself and the faculty leader of the organization. It lasted for months, and culminated in him asking me to leave the program.
So believe me when I say I am bad at politics. It’s not that I am rude, I just declare my objectives and my intent to achieve them–perhaps a more precise way of saying that is that I am a terrible negotiator.
On a national bureaucratic scale, politics means people negotiating using slippery language and not being transparent about their intent and objectives. I hate this. One of the reasons I appreciated President Trump was because he would do as I did, and state his objectives and his intent to achieve them, only he was an excellent negotiator and was actually able to achieve many of his objectives. On the main though, the culture of politics is toxic, cynical, and underhanded. Some might use the word corrupt to refer to this scheme, but the word corrupt implies that what is happening is illegal. Most of the slipperiness and underhandedness in our system is by design.
Second, I don’t consider political victory to be valuable. Political victory to me is like sports victory. I enjoy the baseball of the Washington Nationals. If they happen to win games–great! If they don’t–OK! Their winning and losing doesn’t affect me, and are not affected by me. It should be a fun recreation to go to games and watch them, it should not consume my life. Ardent sports fans–the ones who focus their lives around sports–will invent ways to feel as if they do affect the game. In baseball, some people turn their hats inside out, various superstitions around performance, an intense amount of statistics. Likewise, they let baseball affect their lives: their mood changes depending on the outcome of games, their weeks revolve around the major game, they travel to support the team. All these things are fine, but at some level it detracts from the honor and reverence due to God. That might sound puritanical, but I am merely saying all things should be in their proper order.
Politics, our curious interlocutor may suggest, is not in any way the same as baseball. Politics does affect you, daily–taxes, at a mundane level, but in Nicaragua right now the Catholic Church is being actively persecuted by the apparatus of government. You can’t say that politics doesn’t affect you, nor that you can’t affect politics.
My answer to that is that we really cannot affect politics–national affairs are subject to the influence and negotiations of individuals. Unjust acts are the acts of individuals, not of bureaucracies, not of political parties. Aligning myself with the right political party does not mean that the political party will be just. Look at the Abortion ruling–I know it is the case here in Virginia but surely in other states, Governors are scrambling to appease the popular conservatives without taking the hard stance of outlawing all abortions forever. Furthermore, St. Thomas More stands as an example of how the apparatus of government can ignore inconvenient laws at any time in order to inflict injustice on people. The law is a low fence over which a sufficiently determined tyrant can step easily. It is social mores–values–virtues–that give stability to society.
Virtues–that is to say, moral law, grounded in religious truth, in proper understanding of God. If you want to have influence over politics, go to Mass, and pray for your country. You can vote if you want (I don’t think you should), but don’t let it inordinately affect you the way the disordered baseball fan was affected. The spiritual reality–the reality that is God–is primary. Take care of your soul, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Let the political stuff take care of itself, commend to God the outcome of national affairs, and put your trust in the workings of the Holy Spirit.
People who are deeply invested in politics will not agree with this, and that’s OK. Different strokes for different folks. But this explains at least why I do not put much stock, emphasis, or focus, on politics.
AMDG
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 
Very intriguing thoughts, Scoot. I am glad if my comments had any part in helping to elicit it.
In the practical sense, I am of course in agreement, as a fellow non-voter and political apartisan. Our philosophies have a divergence, I think, on a meta-historical and meta-political level.
I don’t have any faith or hope in the lower politics (mass democratic electoral, lawfare, boycotts, etc.) but I think the higher politics (essentially completely theoretical for us, here, now) can be worthwhile, and not only as an innocent pastime like enjoying a baseball game, but with potential downstream, longterm effects. And one of the immediate personal effect is in fact the detachment from the lower politics.
What I see as the main task of the higher politics now is combatting (the idea of) liberalism. One method is demonstrating the illogical nature of liberalism, as Zippy did, as well as the possibility of an alternative, though not in a positivistic way.
The Church changed in its pastoral duty to usurers and their victims (not through any deficit of the Church per se but downstream from legal/cultural changes), and not everyone has the interest or ability to empirically determine the effects of usury, but Zippy’s Usury FAQ, just as an example, is understandable to anyone who takes the effort to read and understand it. I see part of the To Change the Culture project as publishing and spreading work like that on every topic of interest. That doesn’t mean getting on the New York Times bestseller list but making it accessible to those who would be open to it. I think that has value on a personal, immediate level.
I disagree that we cannot affect politics, in the higher, Providential, long-term sense. That is, in a small part, what St. Thomas More did. His death did not prevent the closure of the monasteries, etc., but he stands as a shining example for all future statesman in resisting tyranny.
The just and wise exercise of authority is one way I would describe the art of the higher politics. Virtue is the main component but like any art it requires theoretical wisdom or science as well, and the philosophy of politics is at least one area where we can have an effect. Politics is downstream from culture, but there is a point where they coincide.
We are uniquely situated from earlier times because we have had at least 250 years of liberalism dominating political/cultural thought, as well as the new natural science to deal with. But it was never the case that the political takes care of itself in an absolute sense. We are to take no thought to food or raiment, not in an absolute sense, of course, but relative to taking so much more thought to God. Man does not live by bread alone, but so long as he is called to live, he most toil and sweat for his bread.
Providence works through individuals, and will work in spite of them as well. But the farmer and the spinner must actually do the work, and man as political animal as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I suppose I need a clarification on the parameters for “High politics” and “low politics”. I take high politics to be more or less what I am doing now–speaking into the void, telling people about what I think, educating them on views I support. And low politics I take you to mean the “dirty work” of politics. Is that right?
Because if so I think we are in agreement. Another word for higher politics is “living by example”. And explicating that example to the curious. I would disagree that it is a form of politics but I won’t disagree that it’s a good thing to do.
I am really intrigued by your description of man as a political animal. This is true, but just a phrasing that has struck me. Social animal, sure, but political?
I think it might be a way of saying authority structures are natural to man, and we should both understand and accept our position within the authority structure, be it peasant or politician. I think it could lead to some confusion because Democracies are uniquely rich in “low politics” and the diluted authority structure allows everyone to take credit for the apparatus of government and simultaneously avoid blame.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The terminology is always tricky for me! I came up with higher or lower on the spot, but I think it would be better to say the lower is practical politics and higher is meta-politics or theoretical politics. I think they have roughly the same conceptual relation as practical and theoretical wisdom.
Actual exercise of political authority is essential to practical politics, meta-politics is involved in all intellectual contemplation of political authority, perhaps.
My historical disagreement, I think, is mainly that I think practical politics has historically been only somewhat less important for Christians than practical farming. There is a difference with liberalism, but mainly in how we have to react to it from a position of not just political impotence but an active misunderstanding of, and rebellion against the very concept of, political authority.
That sounds strong, but if even our maladjusted political order collapsed, we would be at much greater risk of violence, invasion, starvation, etc. Those are all things we must accept if they are to come, but proper care, in addition to proper attitude and proper attention to higher things, is as warranted as working for our daily bread. We can’t affect what will happen if there are disasters with the food system much more than we can affect national politics.
I agree with your definition of man as social animal. Man is further naturally political because the city (polis) is the first perfect society, as the self-sustaining, growing and living fulfillment of his physical, intellectual nature. Politics, as the instantiation of sovereign authority, is the source and precondition for the existence of the city. (I also note that St. Aquinas goes further than Aristotle, because for him the Church is the final perfect society, and it is higher than the city of man as the spiritual is higher than the physical/intellectual.)
Everyone, even the peasant, has a part in the sustaining of the city’s continuance, part of which is politics. The role of follower, or subject, is as essentially political as the role of leader or sovereign. There is an art of being a good follower. Not voting for the reasons we do or criticizing liberalism and democracy is, I think, to be a good follower, because our political community, and the common good, is harmed by liberalism. It is mainly for us idealistic, but in our small way we can look to St. Thomas More.
That is an interesting thought about Democracy. I think the way I would put it is that in democracy, there are more people pathologically passionate about politics in part because of the mob effect and the lowest common denominator. In monarchy, there is court intrigue and in aristocracy there are (often literally) warring factions. But the obvious difference is the number of people intimately involved with the exercise of Sovereign authority is greater, and they are more likely to conflict.
I think the unhealthy relation we have to food is a decent analogy. A great many of us are stuffing ourselves with cheap, non-nutritious garbage, but there is a proper relation to food, as nutrition and as part of social life, and not solely or mainly for pleasure or misplaced fulfillment. We politic to live and not live to politic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is a great and meaty comment, David. I love your phrase “Pathologically passionate about politics”–Pathological is exactly the phenomenon I am observing. It is a pathological insistence on political information–because we feel like king-makers so we want all the information of a king.
I am sorry to harp on terminology but it really helps keep ideas consistent. “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name”, and here I think your revised descriptors of practical vs. theoretical are sound. Political theory is the movements and strategy and, well, theory guiding decisions. Liberalism is the dominant political theory but other theories naturally can co-exist without being dominant. Practical politics is how it is put into action, so because Liberalism is dominant the practical politics follows the liberal model. Other political theories are not in practice nearly anywhere so there is no practical model for them at the moment.
This is EXCELLENT. It is worth highlighting. This argument could get me thinking about politics in a way that coheres with my religious focus. Sure, politics is not THE MOST important, but what is the measure of proper care and attention? You are right that it is a component (however trivial or not) of our daily bread. We live in a political world, for now.
The question then is what is the proper care and attention due to politics? It’s not zero. I don’t even pay zero attention to politics for all the bluster on my blog.
This is gold as well. “Sustaining the city” is a great way to think about macro-level things as a peasant. Wow. i’m having a moment here. I will probably write a post but I need to let this thought mature. In short: The Peasant is not a rural-isolate polity. The peasant is connected to a city, and vice versa. There are urban peasants and rural peasants, their work is different and perhaps the ability to live simply is harder in the city but still–each sustains each.
This will help connect the Peasant to a community but through some purpose.
More to come on this.
LikeLiked by 1 person