Category: Authority

CXXXIV – COVID After Action Report

The Times Dispatch is not a place you go to for news. It’s one of one trillion opinion sites that is themed with a religious, political, philosophical bent. What you can count on is a thoughtful assessment of events, and a cool head. (I vent all my outrage elsewhere, this is a place for sober contemplation.)

This is a preliminary After Action Report since we are still not done.

Classification

The first task is to assess what the heck actually happened. There are a few factors that seem to conflict with each other. First: the panic factor was visible very early on. Panic requires a trigger, like a run on the banks. The trigger here was uncertainty, caused by the media because the panic began before the US had any confirmed cases. This caused a run on food, toilet paper, supplies, etc. Panic behavior, by design, runs out of steam and is short lived.

Next, there was the political reaction. I believe the reaction of our leadership was driven by two factors: Election year tom-foolery and the public panic. The political reaction was extreme: Lockdown, quarantine, etc. This fed into the public panic, rather than reassure them, and told them that this virus merited the extreme measures our public servants were taking.

The political reaction had immediate and extreme economic consequences. If the public are locked down, revenue flow stops and suddenly a “just-in-time” cash flow operation becomes strained. Many retailers stopped paying rent, many service industry workers stopped making money. And the political reaction had a long time horizon: Here in Virginia, at the time it was announced, was the longest lockdown by far: June 10th. Economies cannot function like this. It was rationalized by familiar political platitudes. A salve was attempted by a $2 Trillion injection of monopoly money into the economy.

Finally, the virus itself. The actual virus had been so over-hyped by the time it actually started manifesting in the US, that some had an incentive to maintain the hype. In a panic, none can think clearly so the early and sustained panic prevented clear messaging.

The way I see this was a failure-cascade feedback loop. It doesn’t fit the model for a Panic, because it was sustained for so long. It doesn’t fit the model for a recession, because the economic fundamentals didn’t break down, our government stopped the economy. It doesn’t fit the model for a social upheaval either because the public were very obedient to their authorities.

So I will classify this as Mass Hysteria.

Features of Mass Hysteria

There’s a famous example of Mass Hysteria in the Salem Witch Trials with which most everyone is probably familiar. This has the feature of people simulating physiological symptoms, so it’s not quite an analog for that reason. There’s another variety of Mass Hysteria which is exemplified by this example I learned about while researching just now: The Irish Fright.

The Glorious Revolution was the deposition of an English King in 1688 AD. At some point after that, a rumor spread that the Irish, in revenge for the deposition of the King they favored, had assembled an army and were burning and pillaging towns along the English countryside. It resulted in an immediate and massive mobilization of people to defend their homes.

The features of note here are: A plausible and personal danger, a swift rush to prepare for the danger, and a sustained panic (in this case, a matter of days.)

One interesting footnote here is that the Irish Fright was possibly a release of years of anti-Catholic propaganda that “imbued the English public with a deep fear of Irish bloodthirstiness”. In the case of COVID, I think this was a release of years of political tension; some fearing that their government is tyrannical, others fearing that the virus was a bioweapon (a rumor which coincided with first reports of the virus out of China). Another interesting note is that the Irish Fright was fueled and sustained by the news media, which has obvious parallels here.

Dilemma of Mass Hysteria

It is tempting to start here and write about the people and circumstances where the hysteria could have been stopped early, and cool heads could have prevailed. But instead, lets look at why cool heads were impossible to find.

First, there’s a phenomenon I like to call the “Bad Forecast Fallacy”. Every year, NOAA predicts that this hurricane season will be the worst on record. Inevitably, the hurricane season is relatively tame. This is because if NOAA predicts a light hurricane season, and they are wrong, they will be lambasted by the public. If they predict a terrible hurricane season, and are wrong, there is no public outrage. In the absence of concrete data (of which there was none for months after the first reports of COVID), political leaders must make the worst forecast possible in order to protect themselves from public opinion. You can see the effects playing out now as President Trump is criticized for being overly optimistic early on.

Second, there is the ill informed illusion of public good. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is famously quoted as saying “If our efforts save even one life, it will have been worth it.” Obviously such justification can be used for many misdeeds, but why did he say it? Why did he get a pass? Cuomo spoke out of an assumption that his duty is to maximize the public good; this is commonly abbreviated “The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number”. Many in government believe that’s what public service means, and in our classically liberal society, that’s what people believe they need. This is the whole premise of liberalism. The trolley problem comes to mind: If a trolley is hurtling down a track towards 5 people stuck in its path, and you are near a level which could divert the trolley to another track where there is only one person stuck, the greatest good for the greatest number is to pull the lever. Zippy Catholic untangled this dilemma by explaining that circumstances outside of your control would result in the death of 5, but circumstances you directly affected resulted in the death of one.

Finally, there’s what we might call the “Wag the Dog” phenomenon. The panic stricken public demanded action, and our leaders had to do something that looked like action. It didn’t have to do anything, and it certainly didn’t have to actually calm the public, but it had to be something. Politicians are, for a large part, great actors, and so they performed their drama beautifully but ineffectually.

A Few Specific Cases

The Church’s response has been bewildering to me, but we must remember that once they reach a certain level they become politicians, quite like Generals in the military. All the same circumstances that affected our politicians affected our Bishops: They were obliged to accept a prediction that was far worse than reality, they had a culturally-pervasive view of the public good, and the public wanted them to do something. Lo and behold, public Mass is cancelled.

There are many ways this could have been avoided, but I think the most urgent thing that needs to be addressed by the Church for the future is the second item, the culturally-pervasive view of the public good. Our Church leadership is charged with the caretaking of souls. Many Saints have been made by risking life and limb to help others; see St. Charles Borromeo. The Public Good should not factor so heavily with their decision making. Their first responsibility should be figuring out how to care for the souls in peril, what is the Spiritual Good. Secondly, how do they effectuate the Spiritual Good in a way that is free of the Trolley-problem? I think that requires some creative thinking, which was foregone in exchange for the appearance of action. The Church had an opportunity to be on the front lines of hope and healing, and so I can’t help but think that was an opportunity missed.

What about the case of Locking Down states and shutting down the economy? The Public Good mentality was a problem here too, because it is by definition reactionary. Proactive measures could have prevented the need for a lockdown, and even so specific and targeted measures could have allowed a partial lockdown. I don’t know what measures would have worked better, my argument here is that the philosophy that “If it saves one life it will have been worth it” is too low a hurdle and allowed our leaders to reach for extreme but disastrous–dare I suggest, Pyrrhic–solutions to this problem.

Conclusion

We have made it through the worst of a period of Mass Hysteria. The consequences are still playing out, but we learned that a false ideal of the public good does more damage than actual public good. Watch for this in the background as events unfold going forward. The “Blamestorm” as WMBriggs put it will target people who didn’t do enough, perhaps a few who did too much, and we will be dealing with the economic consequences for years to come (to say nothing of the cultural and political impacts). The public psyche will be shaken, but will they return to full trusting of the government, or will our relationship with the government be permanently damaged?

May we live in interesting times!

AMDG

CXXIII – The Moon is Cheese and Your Opinion is Wrong

Politics doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. Yes, I know I write about it an awful lot. Yes, I know you think your side is correct. But that doesn’t change that it doesn’t matter.

Let me first clarify what I am not saying. I am not saying that politics doesn’t affect us. It most certainly does. I have more money because of the current tax laws, and in the future the tax laws will change and I will get to keep less money, until they change again and I get to keep more.

Also, I am not saying that all politicians are wrong. Some might even be very good and morally upstanding people. I’d personally need some convincing that that is the case, but they may be out there.

What I am saying is that it doesn’t matter.

Voting for the right candidate won’t get you into Heaven. Holding the right policy position doesn’t count as virtue. Getting certain laws enacted won’t change society much. Getting certain people elected won’t mean the apparatus of government will finally change.

Politics doesn’t matter.

So what the heck do I mean by this?

Hierarchy of Matters

Getting to Heaven ought to be the foremost priority for every person. Getting the people in their lives to heaven ought to be perhaps second. Unity with God is the only thing that matters for many reasons. We can use a logical approach: If you want to have an impact, you want it to be lasting. The biggest impact will be the longest lasting, and vice versa. The longest conceivable time something could last is eternity. The only thing we have that is eternal is our soul. Therefore, we ought to ensure that we get to enjoy our eternity by working very hard at it here on earth.

We can also use a variation on Paschal’s wager. The possibility of an infinite reward, and the danger of an infinite punishment, far outweighs any temporal benefits we may get in this life, therefore we ought to act as if there is an infinite reward we can gain.

Please note: Politics does not factor into this discussion. No policy position can effectuate our desire for Heaven. Policy is accidental to the aims which are essential.

Reductio ad Moon Cheese

The reason political division is so intense is because there is really not a right answer. As long as humans are involved, any political system will be fraught with peril and immorality and danger. We will not and can not achieve Heaven on Earth barring the End of All Things.

To illustrate this point, lets use an argument conceived by my dear friend Hambone. Lets say I believe the moon is made of cheese. This can be a religious belief, a political belief, it can be just a thing that I say. But lets just suppose that I said it. Resolved: The moon is made of cheese.

A contemporary interlocutor would be flabbergasted. They might ask, “Why do you believe the moon is made of cheese?” or they might say “but my friend, the moon is not in fact made of cheese.” I might respond to both by simply restating my position: “I’m simply convinced the moon is made of cheese.”

Anger and Disdain may be the consequence. “I can’t believe you believe the moon is made of cheese! That is stupid. We have proof that it is not cheese.” I can merely nod and say, “have you seen the proof?” or note that I don’t trust those who present the proof. I can steadfastly maintain that the Moon is made of cheese. The emotional response of Anger comes from cognitive dissonance: You are saying something at odds with their world view, and holding to it. But remember also, the moon being cheese does not influence their life or my own. We can both live the same lives tomorrow as we lived yesterday. One of us will just believe the moon is cheese, and the other will live with the knowledge that the other believes the moon is cheese. Their anger comes from the fact that my claim, at odds with their worldview, is wrong and I ought to believe rightly that the moon is made of rock. We see these reactions all the time. Here’s a contrast of the Women’s March and the March for Life. One side believes the moon is cheese, the other does not. It doesn’t matter which side is which. Click that link having decided one side believes the moon is cheese, and see how the other side reacts.

What is great about the Reductio ad Moon Cheese is it raises the bar of things worth getting worked up about. An interlocutor has to justify why the moon being cheese is significant and why it matters to be wrong or right about it.

This is different from Nihilism: Nihilism is the idea that nothing matters. I’m simply arguing that only one thing matters–and the composition of the moon is not it.

AMDG

CXII – Veni, Vote, Vici

When he is defeated by a majority, the true democrat should not merely acknowledge that he was defeated, but also confess that he was wrong.

-Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Of the many contentions of Zippy Catholic, the hardest one for me to accept has been that in a democracy, truth is defined by a vote. This quote by Nicolás Gómez Dávila is stirring for that reason: To a “true democrat”, a vote is not just a preference indicator, but an act of conquest.

Zippy argued that this common understanding among all democrats is what makes voting an immoral act in an immoral democracy. You might be a good Catholic in private, but if you are a democrat in public, you will be assessed as such.

The Conquest approach to democracy is foreign to me. I’ve long been an advocate of civic participation and at the same time a believer in the value of political discourse–discourse which requires participants to have different perspectives, if not argue from different sides, of an issue. Both can be true, in fact both ARE true. But then the day after the vote happens: this is where I get into trouble.

Lets think of it like we think of other philosophical arguments. A nation is analogous to a person. A person has an intellect, and a will. A nation has national policy, which governs attitudes; and makes irrevocable actions for or against that policy. It’s laws are simply analogous to a moral conscience. In a monarchy (taken literally, “rule by one”), this embodiment of the national will is more obviously a single person. In a democracy, the impulse is still to think of our President as the sovereign, but that’s still not quite the case.

The people choose proxies to effectuate the national will in elections. The people–the voting population–are the ones holding the strings. When one side with one policy wins an electoral victory over the other, they and their proxies get to put their views into practice. After an election, the National Person resolves to act in a certain way, and acts are irrevocable. The side that loses an election doesn’t get to influence the national will, so the only power left to them is to influence the national moral conscience. Perhaps one side is allowed to import green beans exclusively from Bhutan, but if the law is changed to say that green beans must be imported equally from as many nations as possible, then the exclusive import becomes morally wrong–it becomes “illegal”. This is the push and pull of the moral arbiters (legislators) and the embodiment of the national will (executives).

Describing Legislators as the moral center of a nation and the Executive as the Agent of a nation is what makes voting an important moral consideration. Legislators who legalize abortion are making a positive affirmation that something which is objectively immoral is nationally moral. This assertion is what I have described as Tyranny. Executives who execute national policy which is objectively immoral but nationally moral are agents of the people, because the side that won selected him, and the side that lost must accept him as the legitimate sovereign or else schism completely. Because the executives are agents, they are culpable for their moral actions and the people are culpable for giving their instructions to their agent.

This is the lynchpin to Zippy’s whole argument. In my previous graf, I described the Executive as the agent of the people, but that’s not true. The Executive is agent of the voting population. Not voting means you have no influence over the Executive if your side wins, and are not bound to an “accept-or-schism” resolution if your side loses.

More to come on this.

AMDG

XC – Obedience School For Christians

I had a brief dialogue with Richard Cocks at Orthosphere recently, and something about it rubbed me the wrong way. He was making a point that the opposite of Freedom is Slavery, and so Freedom is and ought to be the great mystery of life. In disagreeing, I argued that Freedom has two alternatives: Obedience and Slavery. Richard had this to say in reply:

As for obedience, I’m in favor of obedience for dogs and small children who can’t be trusted to be morally autonomous because they can understand only “this displeases me” but not why. But I don’t want my 23 year old son to obey me. I want him to join me in loving communion and shared ideals. Bearing in mind that he is a morally sound, well-meaning individual who, when he makes mistakes, he makes them involuntarily and accidentally. I am not here to judge him, but to be a parent who is there for him if and when he needs me, but mainly to loosely join our lives together in comradery and fellowship. He is free to communicate if and when he chooses with no consequences from me. Certainly no threats.

Richard Cocks, Orthosphere

This is an excellent critique, and forces me to explain why exactly Obedience ought to be preferred to freedom. I attempt to go into that here.

Freedom

When people refer to freedom, they generally are thinking of a few different things. 1) Autonomy, or the unrestrained nature of being. Any inhibition necessarily reduces autonomy, and is therefore opposed. 2) Liberation, the changing of one state to another. When I did Exodus 90, they described the process as “Freedom”. We weren’t any more free than when we started, but we changed states from ignorance of our own sin to a state of awareness and repugnance of our own sin. We were liberated from the shackles of sin. Some might consider themselves liberated from school at the end of a school day, or liberated from their parents when they move away from home. This kind of freedom implies by the change in state that there are new choices available to them which, by some external force, were previously unavailable. 3) Independence, or the absence of dependence on anyone else. This is differentiated from Autonomy, in that autonomy is freedom of action, while Independence is freedom from responsibility. The Independent rely on no one, and have no one relying on them. They are “free” to act without consideration of anyone’s interest.

The Freedom which Richard wishes for his son is the first sort of Freedom. He doesn’t wish to impose upon his son a sense of morality (which would surely make his son desire the second sort of Freedom), but rather would like his son to have the Freedom to choose a path, and he would like his son to freely choose the path that he himself chose. He wants to avoid using carrots or stick to incentivize certain behaviors, for fear of reducing his Freedom in the third sense.

Unfreedom

Richard said that the opposite of Freedom is Slavery, and I suggested that another corollary would be Obedience. Let’s re-examine these ideas given the clarifications above.

If we take the concepts introduced in 1, 2, and 3 above and simply invert them, we have a pretty clear depiction of Slavery. 1) Restrained nature of being. 2) Changing from a more-free to less-free state. 3) Dependence, totally reliant on others. But lets not rush to the other side of the scale: One can be restrained without being enslaved. One can burden themselves for some different benefit than immediate self interest. One can be partially dependent and have some advantages.

Lets consider livestock, specifically horses. Wild horses are romanticized as roaming free on the plains of the American west. They need to forage for food for themselves. Fight for mates for themselves. They live in the elements of the outdoors, their wounds can quickly become fatal. But consider farm horses. They don’t have to look for food at all. They are selectively bred. They are protected from the elements. Their wounds are cared for. In exchange, the horses must be put to some work. Some pull carts or farm equipment, others race: regardless, they must work.

To my mind, this is what Christ refers to when he says the yoke is easy and the burden is light. He restrains us, but doesn’t hurt us. We must do work, but it is not hard. This is a picture of Obedience.

Practical Obedience

I am not too far removed in age from Richard’s son, so I will use myself as an example instead. If I lived at home, my parents would be right to expect obedience from me in certain things. They would be unhappy, for example, if in the spirit of comradery and fellowship I failed to raise a hand to aid in the upkeep of the home. I would surely think I was being unduly restrained, enslaved from my formerly free state, if they imposed their will upon me. If my parents failed to instruct me that it was their expectation that I care for some aspect of the home while I lived there, they would be unreasonable to be irritated by not meeting expectations that were not communicated.

Even as a son living away from home, my parents expect certain behaviors, even if those behaviors have changed somewhat. If I failed to acknowledge my mothers birthday, for example, I would be in hot water with my father, and rightly so. Obedience, in the family, ensures that all are aligned to the good of the family.

Likewise, with Christendom: Obedience ensures that all are aligned to the good of God, the King of Creation. Obedience can not be ensured without both carrots and sticks. The burden is light, but still a burden. The reward is sharing in the beatific vision. An infinite reward at a modest price.

AMDG

LXX – Tonlieu

Kristor wrote another excellent article over at Orthosphere which I have been stewing on for some time. Rather than write another essay in the comments, I’ll keep my remarks here. Read it first, before reading this!

It’s a Privilege To Be Here

On it’s face, I like the premise of Tonlieux.  It is coherent with my past expressions regarding rights and authority. In short: That Authority is derived from God via the Sovereign[1], and rights are a logical fallacy and not helpful in determining who is owed what duties by a government. A wayfaring stranger crossing the border from another country has no claims on the hospitality of his newfound host. A sovereign owes to that stranger no obligations; the stranger has no privileges in this land. That same stranger, crossing at a legal point of entry, presenting valid identification does have a claim on the host, the minimum claim of hospitality in exchange for an agreement to abide by the laws and customs of the host.

The present immigration system is designed to work like that, provided our subordinate authorities actually enforce the rules. The basic framework is complicated by questions of human rights, which don’t exist: Are we treating wayfaring strangers well when they wander into our land? There is a puzzling question of Justice: Are we allowing them due process? We technically do not owe them this, non-citizens aren’t bound by the constitution in the same way, but as far as I can tell this is extended as a courtesy to all those within our borders.

Tonlieu works to put a monetary value on access. Kristor explains his suggestion for an Optimal Tonlieu. I cannot dispute the economics of his proposal. I do, however, see a problem: Enforcement.

An Invisible Wall Made of Money

Our border is such that there are millions of illegal immigrants – that is to say, Sovereign citizens of a nation other than ours – who presently reside in and lay claim to the accidents of citizenship without any of the essences. Furthermore, there is such a volume of incoming foreign citizens that the mind boggles. A tonlieu is effective for travel that is limited by some mechanism, but when I can walk from A to B, how does it prevent our present situation? How can it help resolve it?

It seems Kristors primary suggestion is deterrence. Not being bound by law, the foreign citizen is thus in danger of disappearing into the abyss of human evil. One challenge is that I am not sure how our present system, even without tonlieu, isn’t also designed this way. Does the Constitution protect foreign citizens? I don’t believe it does[2], or if it does only in passing. So fundamental to this proposal of tonlieu is a society which behaves somewhat differently than it does today.

Second, if foreign citizens arrive en masse, and begins perpetrating human evil against it’s host, what can a tonlieu do against it? Certainly there is more money to be made in illegally and repeatedly crossing a border, perhaps smuggling goods, than in abiding by the law. Nothing short of an organized and concerted effort by the host sovereign can reclaim any land physically held by the group of foreign citizens–some might refer to that process as “repelling an invading force”.

A Solution

It seems to me that tonlieu, while an effective solution for people the world over who already abide by the law, is deficient in the practical reality only insofar as it doesn’t address or prevent the problems that exist right now, and adds assumptions which aren’t supported by experience.

One solution, with or without tonlieu, is to enforce the laws as written, and expurgate the foreign citizens residing illegally. This presents the same deterrent force proposed in Kristor’s Optimal Tonlieu. Another solution is to reduce the size and scope of government to minimum constitutionally enshrined services. Fully private healthcare may produce enough of a profit to charitably fund certain needs of illegal immigrants prior to their swift deportation. Never let it be said that America treats it’s visitors, welcome or unwelcome, without dignity. Charity can also pick up much of the slack in service of the needy, without the need for government as arbitrator. In fact, the 10th Amendment may be a justification for 100% of the proceeds of Tonlieu to go towards the state a person enters. This would provide a profit motive for State’s to maximize collected proceeds by Tonlieu.

“But Scoot, why does that profit motive not exist when managed federally?”

The Federal government is in such deep debt, the money would be immediately leveraged or appropriated. I have no confidence in our administrators to effectively manage the money. Further still, subsidiarity would dictate that the enforcement of the tonlieu and thus the benefit thereof go to the closest possible unit of society.

We can enforce immigration if we enforce our laws. The number one problem is not how our structure is designed, but in how it is being administered.

[1] – I am still puzzling over how the Chain of Authority, i.e. legitimacy, functions in a democratic society, expect writings on this in the future.

[2] – The 14th Amendment includes language “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law”–the language of “person” vs. Citizen is at issue here, and this is why Illegal Immigrants enjoy such comfortable lifestyles. So, in my article, I am wrong, but begrudgingly so.

LII – A Brick House Built on Solid Ground

There is another excellent conversation going on over at Orthosphere, and a recent contribution is lengthy enough to be a post unto itself.

The conversation at present revolves around how to describe the layered structures of society so as to describe how the ‘wholly owned’ government bureaucracy relates to it.

Commenter:
Scoot,
I don’t know what Zippyist notions of authority might be, but the political rule is rule among equals in the classical conception. Which differs from monarchical rule where the king is more like a father to the people.

Kristor,
When you say you have used despotic rule with your children, you haven’t understood what Aristotle is saying. The despotic rule is ordered to the good of the ruler. The ruled slave does not count. It is NOT paternal at all.

[Furthermore,]
There are no isolated families either. All families are embedded in some City or another. A family is not self-sufficient unit of cultural continuity. The immigrant families adopt the local culture.
And individual can not be denied. He is embedded in a family but he can not be derived from a family.
Aristotle puts it strongly. He analogises a family without the City as a cancerous cell.

The error of Communism is to overemphasize City.
The error of classical liberalism is to overemphasize individual (and to derive family and City from individuals)
The error of familism-is to overemphasize family. Political relations as obtain in the City are not same as or reducible to relations as obtain in the family.

I agree that families are not isolated. If you’ll permit the analogy of society as a brick house, families are the smallest irreducible units (bricks) of the house, and the legal structure are the supports and framing. So again I don’t think we have a disagreement in principle, only in terms.

I guess I would put it this way. If I understand correctly, it seems your thesis is that society is structured on an Aristotelian basis between individual, family, and city. I am proposing a different conception. The precepts of my proposal are as follows:

  1. All exercises of authority are the same. This is what I described as a Zippyist notion. [Authority Figure] has a moral capacity to oblige [subject figure] to choose [preferred behavior] to [non preferred behavior]. A Father obliges a child to mow the lawn over sitting in front of the TV. A Mayor obliges a citizen to drive the speed limit rather than street race. A Sovereign obliges a citizen to march to pay a share of his income to the treasury rather than use it for his own ends.
    1. It seems to me your description of ‘political, monarchic, and despotic’ serves to describe attitudes of that authority. Political rule as rule among equals, as you say, is a mechanism of exercising authority. An Equal has a moral capacity to oblige a fellow equal to choose [XYZ] over [PDQ]. Monarchical rule follows the same rubric, but maybe has different perception by ruler and ruled. Likewise with despotic: Someone is obliging another to do something. How, why, and what everyone thinks of it are all variable. But Authority is being consistently exercised.
  2. Because all exercises of authority are the same, all authority structures can be compared by analogy. To wit: A Father is like a King, but a Father cannot rule like a king. A families ends and means are completely different. But the way Authority is structured, from Father to Subject, is comparable.
  3. The end, the goal, the objective of all exercises of authority are distinct, but the lesser is contained within the greater, and the greater directs the subordinate units to the greater aim. Said another way: Families, as bricks in the house of society, are not self sufficient units nor autonomous units, as you say. It is the role of the Mayor to oblige the family to choose the good of the city over the good of the family, if ever they differ. Likewise it is the role of the Sovereign to oblige the City to choose the good of the Nation over the good of the City. anything else is chaos, as you describe.
    1. One thing you say that perhaps I don’t understand is this: “A family is not a self-sufficient unit of cultural continuity.” Why not? A child is more likely to retain the culture of the parents, and parts of the culture of the surrounding society. But if cultural continuity were the aim of the the authority figure at any level, they would have the moral capacity to oblige the subordinate authority to prefer [XYZ cultural elements] to [PDQ cultural elements]. I would disagree that culture itself is an end of political authority but I do not disagree that there are some authority structures designed for cultural continuity. I would only say that cultural continuity is not, in my opinion, the biggest determinant in the usefulness of the family as a unit of authority.
  4. The role of the individual is to comply with all authority structures of which they are part. An individual ought to work to the benefit of their family structure, city structure, and nation structure but not all on their own. An individual works in a family to the benefit of the family. An individual works in a family so the family can work to the benefit of the city. The family works in the city so the city can work to the benefit of the nation. An Individual that views themselves as the supreme end and means of all of these structures is the cancerous cell you describe. They are not operating within the social structures or hierarchy, they are not helping any group benefit. That is why I assert that individuals are best contextualized as part of a family: That is their first exposure to the greater aims of their nation.
  5. The “Political” realities (i.e. the legalistic structures through which authority is exercised) are extremely convoluted. In Democracy, there is no clear, distinct Sovereign in the traditional sense. The people select a delegate to stand first among them, which gives their chosen delegate power and authority (this is the social contract). But in the present day and age, the exercise of that authority is limited by other delegates who oversee and restrict actions of the Executive delegate (this body is the legislature), and who adjudicate conflicts between executive and legislative delegates (the judicial). All three ultimately derive their authority from the people, and the people obey the authority of the delegates. It is a tautological system, and when it grows to be large and unwieldy, it can and does break down. There are a lot of things to consider when exercising authority, so structures are built to facilitate. The beginning of the bureaucracy is when executive or legislative delegates appoint subsequent delegates who derive their authority from those executive or legislative delegates. And their term does not end when the source of their authority ends. Thus the bureaucratic state, which is separated from direct link to the people, and at varying times subject to or in rivalry with the legislative and executive delegates. This bureaucracy is an authority structure which is distinct from and not directly subordinate to the greater aims of the political authority. It finds itself variously subject to or in rivalry with the Family, City, or Nation. It is wholly owned by the governing polity, but serves its own ends. This is the challenge of the day.

PS: In point #5, I describe politics at a national level. This structure is not reducible to the subordinate levels, as pointed out in #2. A family can be neither democracy nor Monarchy, but is its own ‘political’ structure.

If a family is like a brick, a “city” is like the wall, and the nation is the house. A pile of bricks does not make a nation. A series of parallel walls does not make a house. Each brick must be ordered towards the wall. Each wall must be ordered towards the house. One does not consider the house when making the brick, but how it fits into the wall. The rules that govern how to order the bricks will not be the same as the rules that govern how to order the walls.

Kristor: Scoot, thanks for all the work you have done on this. I have only two quibbles. First, when you say that all exercises of authority are the same, it seems to me that you should make it crystal clear that what you mean is that however they might differ in other ways, all exercises of authority are alike in that they all involve an authority who has a moral capacity to oblige others.

Second, you say that, “A family can be neither democracy nor monarchy …” I would amend that to say, “A family can be neither a pure democracy nor a pure monarchy.” I would add further that a properly ordered monarchy would integrate aristocratic and democratic processes. Such is the Polybian ideal, that engenders stability of the social order. Feudal subsidiarity is one way to accomplish that, provided that members of each level of the subsidiaritan stack have a safe, regular and established way to appeal the rulings of their immediate superiors to the judgement of a higher court.

Bearing in mind that neither Scoot nor I would propose that the city is nothing but a big family or that the family is nothing but a big individual, it seems to me then that neither Scoot nor I have any fundamental disagreement with Bedarz on that score.

XXXVI – Reverse Communism

Here is an excerpt from Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain (emphasis mine):

[Communism] was an easy and handy religion–too easy in fact. It told me that all the evils in the world were the product of capitalism. Therefore, all that had to be done to get rid of the evils of the world was to get rid of capitalism. This would not be very hard, for capitalism contained the seeds of its own decay (and that indeed is a very obvious truth which nobody would trouble to deny, even some of the most stupid defenders of the system now in force: for our wars are altogether too eloquent in what they have to say on the subject). An Active and enlightened minority–and this minority was understood to be made up of the most intelligent and vital elements of society, was to have the two-fold task of making the oppressed class, the proletariat, conscious of their own power and destiny as future owners of all the means of production, and to “bore from within” in order to gain control of power by every possible means. Some violence, no doubt, would probably be necessary, but only because of the inevitable reaction of capitalism by the use of fascist methods to keep the proletariat in subjection.

I read this and I could not stop myself from thinking about Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. It was almost as if she accepted wholesale the mechanism for social change but directed it  from the top down, rather than from the bottom up.

Read it again, modified only to change the ideological perspective:

[Capitalism] was an easy and handy religion–too easy in fact. It told me that all the evils in the world were the product of communism. Therefore, all that had to be done to get rid of the evils of the world was to get rid of communism. This would not be very hard, for communism contained the seeds of its own decay (and that indeed is a very obvious truth which nobody would trouble to deny, even some of the most stupid defenders of the system now in force: for our wars are altogether too eloquent in what they have to say on the subject). An Active and enlightened minority–and this minority was understood to be made up of the most intelligent and vital elements of society, was to have the two-fold task of making the oppressed class, the industrialists, conscious of their own power and destiny as future owners of all the means of production, and to “bore from within” in order to gain control of power by every possible means. Some violence, no doubt, would probably be necessary, but only because of the inevitable reaction of communism by the use of tyrannical methods to keep the industrialists in subjection.

Is this so far removed from Ayn Randian philosophy?

This betrays the lie in the Cult of Demos. It pits one team against the other, like it’s a sport. Whether you’re playing defense or playing offense, you’re still playing the same game. I think that’s why I took to Zippyist philosophical thought like a fish takes to water. He presents an actual alternative to our political realities. I read some political blogs, some religious blogs, and the ones that are angriest are the ones trying to wake up their chosen minority, that minority which is composed of all the most vital and intelligent elements of society, and seize power for themselves.

My friend, who has requested the alias Hambone, put it well when I described what i’m writing about here:

In order for the people in power to not be consumed with concern for losing power, they must rule based on right, not might.

In other words, they must be informed by some morality that is not their own. Ideology is jealous, Morality is just.

AMDG

XXV – Give unto Caesar your Rose Colored Glasses

We’re going to approach a complex topic in a roundabout way.

A Reality Filter is a concept coined by Scott Adams, defined as a way of viewing the world that helps you easily contextualize and understand it. Of course, a reality filter is only as good as the eye that beholds it, and a Reality Filter is only good for understanding things a certain way. An Atheist has a different reality filter than a Catholic, a Left Liberal has a different reality filter than a Right Liberal. My reality filter is different from yours.

A reality filter is a means to an end. With this in mind, my recent article on Legitimacy and the core concepts that make legitimacy work serves as an important reality filter for figuring out where authority comes from. We can use this reality filter to break down questions of authority and legitimacy.

Follow the Rubric Road

Lets imagine a venn diagram, with the two overlapping circles. Make one of them smaller, and push it most of the way into the bigger one. This smaller one contains all things pertaining to civil life. The larger one contains all things pertaining to spiritual life. If Church and State were unified, our civil leaders would fall squarely within the area of overlap, because they would accept their responsibility as both spiritual and civil. You don’t just want to lead a positive society, you want to make positive people.

Separation of church and State segregates the leaders. It moves the spiritual leader to the ‘spiritual life’ side of the diagram; and the civil leader is removed to the tiny space outside of the spiritual life.

Considering a nation like the United States of America, current civil leaders are not responsible for their own separation from their spiritual responsibilities. As such, Civil Society can be said to be distinct from spiritual society, but they both have a common cause in what is known as the ‘common good’.

Tyranny is a term that describes the condition of the leader, in whichever sphere. A civil tyrant is one who is cruel or unjust or illegitimate in his exercise of his civil authority. A spiritual tyrant is likewise cruel or unjust or illegitimate in his exercise of spiritual authority. One could argue that unification of Church and State means one person could do twice the damage, but that’s really still the case with a civil leader. While a civil leader lacks the explicit authority to act on spiritual matters, they do have a responsibility as a steward of spiritual affairs of their subjects. Therefore a civil tyrant can do damage in both spheres.

Tyranny then, defined as cruel or unjust or illegitimate exercise of authority, has implicitly a civil and spiritual component. Tyranny is the violation of civil and spiritual law. A true tyranny must violate both.

Consider a ruler who violates civil law but is in unity with spiritual law. In order to be in unity with spiritual law, it necessarily implies that the civil laws were unjust. While they might violate civil law, they could still be said to be acting for the common good.

Consider a ruler who violates spiritual law, but is in unity with the civil law. Their deeds are illicit, but valid. They probably cannot be said to be acting for the common good, but they cannot be said to be behaving illegally.

I’ll amend the definition then. A true Tyranny must be in violation of spiritual law, and can be in violation of civil law.

Consider a ruler who violates spiritual law, and is in violation of civil law but subsequently amends the law. The overriding factor is the moral element, their violation of spiritual law. Tyranny then is defined by violation with some authority other than the civil law.

Potential and Kinetic Virtue

We have an obligation, as spiritual creatures, to grow in holiness and virtue. Our civil obligation is obedience where it is in compliance with spiritual law. Spiritual law supersedes all others. So when we are told to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, that is an admonition to respect the sliver of civil authority which is exclusively exercised by civil leaders. To obey the civil authority, but obey them second. Obeying the letter of the law is not virtuous in and of itself, but if the law is formed by virtue, it drives people to virtue.

Potential energy is when an object is at rest, kinetic energy is when an object is in motion. So too with Virtue: When a person is not motivated to be virtuous, they will remain the way they are, whatever state they happen to be in. The civil law ought to motivate kinetic virtue, to make people be active and change their state of virtue and holiness. The civil authority, however, is that of steward and not that of sovereign over the individual. So their authority over a ‘person’ is partial. Only spiritual leadership has authority over an entire person. Disunity of Church and State also means disunity of authority over persons within a nation. They can, but do not always, take the position of rivals. This is further evidence that a Civil authority has a responsibility to promote virtue: it prevents and even inoculates against being placed in rivalry with a spiritual authority, and creates stability with the authority that they wield.

Where do We Stand?

This reality filter helps us understand that civil authority does not always have to be in union with spiritual authority, though the disunity between the two does create some instability. A nation would be aided if Church and State were united, but a nation can succeed without. It must be acknowledged that the conditions for tyranny are more readily available when Church and State are separate, and is liable to be more dangerous. This helps us focus our definition of tyranny, but does not help us answer the question of redress, or even help us apply this definition to contemporary society and the complex problems therein.

More to come.

AMDG

XXIV – A Prelude to a Bigger Discussion

Kristor Says, in response to a question of mine on a backdated article:

“Can a government that separates church and state be said to have ever had the mandate of heaven?”

Only by accident. By analogy, we can do the will of God, and enact his Providential plan for the created order, even when we sin; for, our deluded clouded desires can happen to congrue with the divine will.

“How do we reconcile a secular society with our spiritual obligations?”

Render unto Caesar.

“Can a government which does not uphold a responsibility to promote virtue be considered a Tyranny?”

I don’t think so. In practice, every government upholds some vision of the good. This is so even of tyrannical governments. It is true also of governments that profess amorality. In practice, there is no such thing as amorality, except among dead bodies. For, some means of parsing moral decisions – which is to say, simply, decisions per se – is needed in order to proceed with the conduct of life, ergo of government.

“What is our obligation to address [an “amoral” government]?”

Render unto Caesar.

T. Morris Says, in response to an article of mine, here:

Now ask yourself this question: “What proportion or percentage of today’s electorate is well versed in classical literature?” and let that be your answer as to how insane the whole concept of “one man, one vote” universal suffrage is.
Meanwhile (and this is getting into some of the finer points), when a man or woman votes in our elections (or even when (s)he registers to vote in our elections), (s)he is lending a sense of legitimacy to an illegitimate process that is rigged to produce a certain kind of result from the gitgo. Meanwhile as well, (s)he is participating in evil, but (s)he usually doesn’t know (s)he is participating in evil, so to that extent the sin is not chargeable to him/her. But to those who are aware that the system is rigged, that it is illegitimate and therefore evil, participation therein – lending such a system credibility – is sin. So just keep that in mind if ever you are told that it is somehow your “Christian duty” to vote in our elections. Nonsense! The truth of the matter is that it is highly highly probable, due to reasons aforesaid and others I can’t get into at this moment, that your Christian duty as far as voting in our elections goes, is to not participate. Hence the post title.
Were the franchise limited in a way or ways that makes sense, I might consider participating in our elections again, if in fact I were deemed qualified. Democracy is clearly an illegitimate form of government, to my mind, because it is nothing short of mob rule, and mob rule can only serve the common good by mere chance or happenstance. Our system *might have been* more legitimate when it actually incorporated the federal principle and subsidiarity, but that all ended with Northern victory in the Civil War, albeit it took some time (decades) to eliminate the federal principle *in actual practice*. Nevertheless, that was always the goal (to eliminate the federal principle altogether); what we modern Americans refer to as the “federal government” is a national government, there is nothing federal about it; and a purely national government is in fact a tyranny in a country like the United States because the various States (and the peoples who inhabit them) can in no way govern themselves unless given permission from on high, which is to say from the national government. Hence, we *must* accept the wholesale murder of the unborn as some sort of fundamentally inviolable human right; we *must* accept homosexuality and other forms of freakish anti-social behavior as yet another inviolable human right. And so on and so forth. No State or local government may declare any of this as the self-destructive insanity that it is and refuse to participate in it, and your participation or my participation (or anyone else’s participation, for that matter) is never going to change that.

He continues:

At VFR the subject of limiting the franchise was discussed on numerous occasions, and the consensus view amongst that learned group, in my recollection, was that the franchise should be limited to net taxpayers. Which is to say persons who pay more in real taxes than they derive in government benefits. This would exclude retired military men since, as with any other government profession, professional soldiers generally receive a great deal more in “compensation” over the course of their lifetimes than they contribute in actual taxes. So there is a very real and ever-present conflict of interests within that community. But I think the consensus view was even more specific, or limiting, than net taxpayers, in that it also stipulated that only married men who are also net taxpayers should be given the ‘sacred franchise.’
The issue of whether or not one is a net taxpayer is sort of complex in a sense, and people have a very hard time understanding it in my experience. But it is fairly obvious, at least to my mind, that he who is employed in public sector work, from whence he derives all of, or at least the great bulk of, his income and related benefits, cannot possibly be a net taxpayer, quite the contrary.
So you see that limiting the franchise to married men who are in fact net taxpayers would, at least in theory and to a great extent, eliminate the conflict of interests problem that is pervasive under the current “one man, one vote” ideology.

Quick Thoughts In Response:

  1. One of the fundamental assumptions of the Tyranny Problem is that an immoral government is Tyranny. Kristor questions the assumption in my reasoning.
  2. T. Morris suggests one solution is limiting suffrage in some way
  3. T. Morris adds additional information to the idea I originally discovered at Zippy Catholic, that voting is a sin.

Questions I mean to answer:

  1. What is the root of authority for a Democracy, following the rubrick of the chain of authority described here?
  2. What is the responsibility of a citizen in a nation which is, at worst, a tyranny; at best, immoral?
  3. Can we envision a perfect solution, using our hypothetical states of Edeny and Anakay?
  4. Having answered these, does it fit the Catholic Sociological ideas of Distributism? Where are the discrepancies?

These ideas are nebulous and I need to precipitate them. Big thank you to Kristor and T. Morris for adding kindling to my philosophical fire.

AMDG