CDXXVI – Citizenship, Immigration, and Culture

More Adventures in Scootland

I discussed Citizenship previously with the aim of thinking about how lay-folk participate in government, and to what extent. Now, I want to think about Citizenship in the context of culture.

Citizens have an obligation–one they can’t help but fulfill–to immerse themselves in their nations culture. One of the challenges of America is that there is no ubiquitous culture, but there is a coalition of lots of little cultures all trying to make peace in a shared legal framework. It occasionally flares up but is mostly peaceful in most parts of the country due to the social forces of politeness.

In Scootland, it is imperative that Citizens appreciate their native culture, and that there is some mechanism for educating citizens about that culture. You can’t love something you don’t know, so it would be important for there to be celebrations for cultural features of state that are distinct from religious feasts which are celebrated for religious reasons.

A cultural tradition is something that you come to love because you’ve done it, your parents have done it, your grandparents have done it–it gives continuity between your present and your past, all under the loving umbrella of your people. It creates also bonds of fellowship between fellow citizens. In the Philippines, there are neighborhood and City celebrations for the “feast day” of that neighborhood or city. These are a distinctly religious feast–if your neighborhood was founded on the feast of St. John the Baptist, then the celebration would center around some devotion to St. John the Baptist–but the whole neighborhood or city comes out for the celebration. It is an excuse to party, but also to thank God and ask for the intercession of the patron saint.

Immigration

Because Scootland is a Catholic Monarchy under the Pope, it is of utmost importance that all citizens are Catholic as well. This should be compulsory, but not without catechesis. The Church is, after all, responsible for education in Scootland, so there is no way you could get away with avoiding the influence of the Church. Immigrants would have to be Catholic or willing to become Catholic before naturalization. The common faith helps bind the common culture of Scootland. Naturalization would take place in the context of a Mass, and perhaps once the Mass is complete would involve an oath of fidelity, service, and obedience to the Monarch, but also a reciprocal promise of fidelity, service, and custodial care from the Monarch. It would be cool if naturalization services take place once per year and are attended by the King for this purpose.

There are many reasons why one may need to issue Visas for temporary visitors. Visitors would need to affirm that none of their actions during their stay undermined the King or his subjects; visitors would need to stay for some specific purpose and then leave.

Emmigration would be an equally serious thing. It would require renouncing ones oath of fidelity to the King of Scootland, which is required to be removed from tax rolls and draft-eligibility records. Essentially, if you move to another country and fail to close the loop on your oath of fidelity to the Sovereign of Scootland, you are still technically considered a lapsed citizen. Renouncing the oath must be done in person before a Judge or other magistrate, so there’s a bit of a humiliation factor there as well. I want to make it painful to formally leave Scootland. Then you are relieved of your oath and must depart with all haste. If you want to return, I am sure there is some way to rub your nose in it a little more, without outright rejecting you. Perhaps there’s an “oath breakers tax” that can be paid so that former citizens can return and “reconcile” with the King.

This is a lot of minutiae but I think it illustrates that citizenship is a sign of both a duty to the King and a sign of having received the care and protection of the King. These are not things lightly put away, nor lightly taken up. Treating citizenship seriously also helps instill a sense of importance about the culture one is entering, and hopefully creates a desire to immerse oneself in that culture and internalize it as ones own.

AMDG

CDXXV – Revisiting Scootland

In my previous article, I mention briefly an idea which I realize solves a major challenge with my own fictional kingdom of Scootland (The first article of the series is HERE). In that series, I take great pains to talk about different factions and ways to control their power. One of the things I was least satisfied with was controls for an unjust King.

What I said in the previous article was this: “So a King could not be tried for a crime unless it was in an ecclesial court for a moral evil.”

This helps in many ways. Scootland, you will remember, has a mechanism for the people to represent their concerns to the King, but does not have a control that gives them means of redress if the King goes off the rails. Suggesting ecclesial courts is an interesting idea and I want to explore it for a moment.

First, we need to revisit my article where I explore the controls for Ecclesiastical power. In that article, I suggested that the dangers from the Church are that they would seek more power and influence and award themselves exemptions from laws; or the Church in Scootland would accumulate money (by way of corruption or exemption) and use it’s economic power to influence the King or the other operations of the State. The Church and the State must be mutually obedient and cooperative with each other, so conflict here threatens to tear Scootland apart.

Giving Ecclesial courts the ability to try a King comes with some extreme risks. We can control abuses in this way by preventing frivolous suits against the King in the Ecclesial system.

• Petitioners would have to establish that the King committed a public, moral evil.
  • Private evils are between the King and his confessor, so ideally the King is already doing some private penance for his inevitable sins. Public evils are both visible to the public and negatively affect the public. Murdering someone is an obvious public evil.
  • Moral evils require the offense to be against God and not necessarily against man. One could not bring a case to the Ecclesial courts for taxes being too high, or the King not being charitable enough. The best rule of thumb is that the King has taken upon himself some authority which is not given to him–such as governance over life and death.
• Only the King could be tried in Ecclesial courts. The domestic system of justice is perfectly adequate for civil and criminal law, so the Ecclesial courts are only necessary when the King is involved.
• The Ecclesial courts cannot depose the King nor sentence him to death, but they can impose severe penances. Wrongfully murdering a subject could receive the penalty of providing for their necessities as long as they live, prostrating at the murdered persons grave, begging forgiveness on his knees from the family.
  • Steeper penalties, perhaps, if the King refuses to comply. Consistent refusal could include everything up to and including excommunication. The King must subject himself to the Church already, so it is no different here.
• Petitioners who make severe accusations which are baseless receive the penalty the King would have gotten if he were to be found guilty. Perhaps the probable punishment is decided before proceedings begin so as to ensure fairness and justice and to prevent excessive penalties.
  • So if Johnny accuses the King of murdering his son, and the son appears in court to watch the trial, Johnny must offer the King some stipend, must prostrate himself before the King, and must beg the King’s forgiveness on his knees.
  • Refusal to comply would likewise receive the same steeper penalties, up to and including Excommunication.
  • The Church could investigate the claims with an Inquisition (!) before deciding to accept the case. When the case is accepted, the penalties would be decided, and then the parties would come before the court to speak in their own defense, hear witnesses, examine the evidence, and present their own.

The Church is prevented from using trials as a power grab because the things that are eligible for trial are extremely limited, the penalties are limited. The people are prevented from frivolously trying to shame the King in court by virtue of the fact that they will receive the same sentence he will if it turns out their accusation is false. The risks of a frivolous case are extremely costly, but if you are assured of your case you need not fear because you aren’t going before a representative of the King, but before the Church to which the King is equally and also subject.

This control is essential because it provides some means of redress should a King begin to have bad public morals. It is a mechanism by which the People can go directly to the Church.

I can’t help but think this would work–but again, I am aware of the potential for blindness to my own faults. Please–tear this idea apart! Have at it!

AMDG

CDXXIV – The Snake Of Liberalism In The Monarchist Garden

NLR in a comment recently told me about a couple of new blogs relating to Monarchy. As–to my own surprise, I assure you–a monarchist myself, I investigated the blogs and found them to be interesting and as I explore I may get more fodder out of them.

One of the blogs–“Mad Monarchist”–was about historical and traditional monarchies throughout the world. The other–“Kingdom of Edan”–is a micro-cyber-nation that exists entirely online and is the creation of the King there. It’s a really interesting and thorough thought experiment. Regular readers might remember my recent fictional foray into a fictional kingdom I called “Scootland,” so this is clearly a topic I enjoy and am interested in.

NLR specifically called out the constitution of Edan. You can examine the constitution for yourself here, and I hope you do. My first thought was–“Hey, that is really useful, I wonder if they cover some of the same ideas I have covered”. But then I realized–“wait, isn’t a constitution inherently liberal?”

You can see traces of this in the constitution itself. While it certainly uses all the proper monarchist language–all authority and all operations of Government are delegated from and by the King–the act of making a constitution itself makes this entity a liberal one.

Here are some excerpts from the Edanian constitution, my emphasis in bold:

Article 2 Nature of the Kingdom of Edan – (1) The Kingdom of Edan is a sovereign, Catholic, constitutional monarchy. – (2) This Constitution, as ratified by the King as an instrument of his sovereignty and authority, is the ultimate law of the Kingdom.

Article 7 Organizational Principles – (1) The powers and rights of the Edanian government are expressions of the King’s sovereignty. Executive and legislative powers cannot be separated in the person of the King or in the institution of the Kingdom. Judicial powers are considered part of executive powers. This constitution establishes checks and limits to the King’s powers to ensure just and moral government in the interests of the Edanian people.

Article 2-(2) establishes the constitution as a separate and distinct entity from the Sovereign and must be ratified by the King (implying supremacy over the King) and alone is the ultimate law of the Kingdom–not the King.

Article 7-(1) establishes that the King’s powers must be limited in the interests of the people. Limited by whom? By a legislature? By the people themselves?

I suppose this makes me an absolute monarchist. The King’s authority must be limited by considerations of morality alone. God’s law. If the people are given any leverage whatsoever over the King, they will use it to tear him down. There’s a great video exploring this problem indirectly, here. The video is centered around this question: Can monarchs commit crimes? The “authority is from God” model suggests that no, they cannot, since they are the source and summit of all law. All law is either a spelling out or a delegation of the sovereign authority. The “authority is from the people” model suggests that yes, they can, because a violation against the people ought to be punishable in a legally binding sense.

So creating a constitution that is distinct from the sovereign and to which the sovereign is subject makes the Constitution Sovereign and the King a mere figurehead. The existence of a constitution in and of itself begs the question in favor of liberalism and not in favor of monarchy.

This is reinforced by the following graf I listed, Article 7-(1). If the King’s powers are going to be limited, then the power that limits those of the King are supreme. That entity is sovereign, and not the King. I said in a previous article that the true sovereign is the person who is answerable to no one. It has to be the King, otherwise the King is operating within a massive bureaucracy and trying to understand what rules to follow.

So while I have critiqued this constitution as begging Liberalism, we still have some open problems:

• How do we control for a bad King?
• What legal codifications are appropriate?

I’ve discussed controlling for a bad King here, and especially in the comments with Tenetur. It’s a notoriously tricky thing to do. There are some cultural ways to do it, some traditional ways to do it. But the fear is, what if a King ignores all that and goes off the rails and starts abusing his subjects?

There shouldn’t be any need to codify the ten commandments or to restate the rules of the Catholic Church into legalese, but perhaps having some document explicitly noting that the King is subject to God and to God’s law and as such justice rests with God for his crimes. Furthermore, absent God’s justice, here is a list of some principles based on the ten commandments that should guide the conduct of a good and virtuous King who takes seriously his duty of custodial care for his people.

So codifying the 10 commandments and the kneeling of the King to God is allowed. I think furthermore it would be good if a King issued some kind of list of commitments to his people, so that the people know what to expect. “Read my lips–no new taxes” would be a fine promise to hear from a King, and then if the King issues a new tax then the people could appropriately riot and tell the King he’s not keeping his own word.

Common Law also came to mind. Britain does not have a constitution, but every act of legislation ever passed by parliament is part of a compendium of laws by which every citizen is bound. Furthermore the collective rulings of court cases and the like creates an informal source of law and precedent that aids in governing society.

So a King could not be tried for a crime unless it was in an ecclesial court for a moral evil. Instead of taxes as the example above, I almost said the King would promise not to arbitrarily kill people–but life and death is something in God’s domain so the King doesn’t even have unlimited authority there. Arbitrary murder would be cause for a formal censure from the Church and the Church could order restitution.

In fact, using the Church as a formal check against the King has some benefits, though it also comes with risks. It establishes the Church as a superior body to the Sovereign, which is not altogether inappropriate. The King ought to be subject to the Pope and not a rival to him.

All this to say: When we’re building ideal, fictional monarchies, we have to be really careful not to let any liberalism sneak in before the door closes. It will poison the whole process and the problem–liberalism itself–will not be tamed. The King must always have supreme authority over his domain, and the people must accept that authority and obey it. Mutual love between sovereign and subject is the best check or balance in any kingdom.

AMDG

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Post Script: Article 6 of that constitution outlines the eligibility to vote and other matters. I hadn’t read that previously, but it seals the deal–this is a liberal monarchy, which means it is a democracy that carry’s some poor soul on a golden chair, but all the people have swords and the guy on the chair has just a crown.

CCCLXIII – Law, Citizenship, and Multigenerational Sovereigns

This is Part 5 of a series on the hypothetical nation of Scootland. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

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We are in an interesting position now with our model of the fictional state of Scootland. We have some bones but a few open questions still. How does the concept of citizenship work? In nations with universal or even limited suffrage, there was a clear connection between citizenship and the right to vote. Scootland is not a Liberal society so there is no policy making by vote. The King is the sole decision maker in almost every facet of government. So Citizenship obviously will have a different meaning since there is no voting.

We also have intentionally avoided talking about micro-laws but I think it would be worth while to discuss it a little bit, as laws and judging and justice are all important parts of society, and will help determine the stability of the relationship between subjects and sovereign.

Finally, I would like to consider something I have talked about in a vacuum, namely, how to control for the goodness of the sovereign across generations. Let’s dig in!

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Citizen Subject

Being a citizen of Scootland would be a different experience. There’s no voting, so there’s no method of control, except what I have been jokingly referring to as the “Kids-table council” which is an advisory council of subjects to the Sovereign, and serves as a release valve for popular discontent. The body would be split into two kinds. There’s the body that serves at the discretion of the King, which would be the People’s Council. The People’s Council is only in session when convened by the King and when the King is present. Absent the presence of the King, the People’s Council still needs to meet to discuss things and plan recommendations for the King. These informal meetings would be called the People’s Congress. The Congress is a meeting without the King, and is designed to iron out specific recommendations. The Council is a meeting with the King, and is designed to present recommendations to the King.

I mentioned previously that Scootland has birthright citizenship. That confirms both a duty and a benefit. The duty is one of loyalty to the Sovereign and to obey all his lawful commands; the benefit is to receive the custodial care of the sovereign, and to allow oneself to be put under his protection. Upon achieving the age of majority (18 is typical in America so let’s say it’s 18 in Scootland), one can attend the Congress and voice ones concerns. I imagine the Congress being kind of like a town council, with elected members merely for the sake of giving the body order and structure but not with any formal authority. These elected members elect from among themselves a Speaker to actually give the presentation of the matter at hand to the Sovereign in the Council.

There can be smaller versions of this Congress/Council phenomenon aimed at the lesser Nobility (Dukes, Counts, Barons) designed to address concerns more locally. The National Congress and the National Council would be aimed at National problems.

So really, Citizenship just identifies you as a subject of the sovereign, and all that implies.

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Justice and Legislation

There’s two aspects of this, one is law and one is justice. Law describes the process of making laws and Justice describes the process of enforcing them.

There’s a real risk here in thinking about Legislation in a positivist way: that everything must be documented. So we’re going to have to get creative so that we can avoid having to create a legislature in our model of Scootland.

The first kind of law is going to be Tradition. Tradition is ceremonial practices which make the people happy to do and lend legitimacy to the official participating. Maybe it is tradition that the King convene the National Council on the day after New Years (New Years Day being a feast day). Perhaps there is a tradition of the Coronation mass, where the Church installs and blesses a new sovereign. There are Church traditions and State traditions and they can and do bleed into each other.

The second kind of law is going to be Edict. Edicts from the King are official decrees that define some way of doing things, change some rule, etc. Taxes are encoded in Edicts, if there was a law banning wearing purple shirts on Thursdays, it would be an edict. Edicts are the closest thing to positive law but silence on some matter in an Edict does not imply legality or illegality.

The third kind of law (in no particular order) is Ecclesial Law. The first part of consideration of acts is of it’s morality and then of it’s legality. Where positive law (edict) is silent, moral law prevails–and moral law cannot be overridden by edict either.

Excursus: This is probably why positive law is a problem. Absent moral convictions or considerations, one feels the need to define every little thing. In fact, with a moral law superseding positive law, there would no longer be a need to be expansive in legislation.

The fourth kind of law is Common Law. Common law is the sum of judicial judgements and allows judges to rely on precedent and, in effect, tradition. Common law is extremely conducive to stability because it provides a unifying force for the cause of Justice across time, space, and people. Deviations from common law become destabilizing.

The fifth and as far as I can tell last kind of law will be Ordinance. These will be local rules specific to a village, a city, or community.

The practice of Justice is going to reflect the structure of society, as it cannot help but do. We live in a democratic society, so we believe a Jury is a good method of deciding cases. Scootland is not a liberal society so there will be no juries. The King of course will be the chief justice but may delegate authority to Judges who act with the authority of the Sovereign to decide cases. Cases decided by judges can be appealed to the Sovereign, but the request for an appeal would need an endorsement of one of the lesser nobles just to keep the volume to a minimum. The sovereign would not hear the case again but receive documents and decide.

Justices would review first the moral law, then edict, then ordinance, then weigh all of these in light of tradition/common law precedent. Their verdict would enter common law and that would be that.

The challenge of corrupt Judges would be resolved by this simplified appeals process as well–the King could intervene quickly and easily in blatantly unjust decisions.

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Sovereign Succession

We have two questions here: how to structure the rules for succession, and how to incentivize a good sovereign. I talked about incentivizing a good sovereign HERE and determined three methods of doing so:

There are three protections for the subjects from a bad sovereign. First is Tradition, which limits the sovereign in behavior and custom. Second is formation, which inoculates the sovereign against being tyrannical by forming him in the first place to have strong and positive values. Third is agitation, which is when the peasantry voice their discontent to the sovereign in varying degrees of peacefulness. 

Tradition is, in one sense, a way of holding the Sovereign accountable: it sets expectations. Formation is the family life, where a father must form his children to be good and just. We have created a formal mechanism for Agitation in the form of the National Council, which represents the concerns of the populace to the Sovereign in the form of policy proposals. I think these methods will work because the system also provides negative reinforcement for bad behavior across the board. If the sovereign is unjust in his evaluation of appeals or in administration of Justice, he will hear about it from the people. If he is arbitrary in exemptions from tax or corporate laws, he will hear about it. If he is heavy handed with law enforcement, he will hear about it. The National Council really just ensures that the King cannot insulate himself from hearing what is going on with the people. This plays a big part in ensuring the Sovereign not just behaves well but also that he cares for the population.

So then we get to the question of the means of succession. Primogeniture? First born son? First born child in general?

I am partial to the First born son method because it preserves the family name, which the people will come to love like the house of Windsor in England. This is somewhat arbitrary, as there is no reason to suspect that women would not be just and capable sovereigns, but including them in succession means that the surname of the royal family will change more frequently. This may be a simple matter of taste. In the case of a Sovereign who has no sons, I think that is when the exception is made to pass the line to a daughter, but then son-succession resumes, again so that the surname remains stable. In the event a sovereign has no children, it passes to the next of kin, and resumes from there.

There’s another question of what to do with second sons and daughters, who are not in line to rule over anything?

Diplomatic marriages are a custom as old as time, and giving appointments to political positions, especially close by, helps protect them in case the Sovereign should die in sudden and tragic circumstances. All children should feel a personal responsibility for the affairs of the state and should not be neglected in formation because they are not high on the line of succession.

Wars of usurpation would be a concern, but modern technology avoids doubt as to lineage, so I think it would be less of a challenge to determine who is the legitimate heir.

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I think this gives us a fairly thorough look at life in Scootland. I am unsure where to go next with this idea, any suggestions? Again: constructive criticisms would be greatly appreciated–I am not capable of looking at this objectively, so any insight into areas where I have favored an idealistic interpretation over a realistic would be helpful to refining the idea.

AMDG

CCCXXXI – Winners, Losers, and N/A

Or, An Apologia For Idiocy, Part 2

Chivalric Catholic has ably laid out a response to my volley as regards voting. In the comments, I discussed a few points of clarification and I think between his articles and comments and my own (with the support and a separate line of attack ably set forth by Jack in the comments), we have set the stage and have clearly defined parameters for what we are talking about.

I am not, however, going to do a point by point response to Chivalric Catholic’s post–in the comments I said I like to get at first principles, to try to go back through the taxonomy of dialectic and find our first common ancestor and then examine where our worldviews diverge. I think I have identified it, but in looking through my post and CC’s response, I don’t think I made the point explicit. So here I will lay out what I think the root is and then respond to some general principles CC identified in his post.

Not My President

The key question is this: Who is bound by the results of a vote?

I approach this idea in two places. Here:

Another ironclad truth is that the losers of a vote are bound by the results of the vote as much as the winners.

and here:

Would your [opinion as to who committed an evil act] be different if the Population voted 60/40 to legalize abortion? If the vote was 50/50, with the legalize abortion crowd winning by 1 vote? What if the population voted unanimously, minus one dissenting vote?

Chivalric Catholic responds to the latter argument here:

Well, the short answer is that the ones who committed an evil act are the ones who tried to make abortion legal. Whether that is a single king or a majority of citizens is irrelevant, since a person is only responsible for his or her own actions. Whether it is a single king or 51% of voters is irrelevant.

Let me digress for a moment. When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, there were immediate protests. Trump won the office with a majority of electoral votes but a minority of raw votes. Our political system determines political victory based on the electoral college, so Trump won in the only sense that mattered. Our system is a Republic, and the electoral college is the “republican” system (in the political systems sense, not the political party sense). Our forefathers established this system and everyone up until this election agreed to the rules.

Because of political polarization, the side with the most raw votes lost and took to the streets in protest. They made a few general arguments. First, that because Trump lost the popular vote, he was not their president–that their allegiance lay only with who they voted for, and not with the person whom their political system determined would be the president. They also argued that the people who lost would also not be represented–that Trump would only cater to the interests of the people who voted for him, and not for the people who voted against him.

My position is that both of these arguments are wrong, and both of these arguments illustrate the dangers of classical liberalism.

I Pledge Allegiance To My Vote

The protestors first argument was that their allegiance lay with the winner of the popular vote, and not with the person whom the system produced as victor. This is obviously fallacious, but there is some sense to it. Because they lost, so their implicit reasoning goes, they are excluded from the political system, and so in absence of a leader for the excluded people, they choose their candidate. It is almost a “government-in-exile” argument.

One of the logical consequences of this argument is that the side that wins only has legitimacy to the polity that won, and has no legitimacy to the polity that lost. In other words–Trump enjoyed 100% support from the electorate, because the 48% that did not vote for him don’t count.

This line of thinking is false, dangerous, and a natural consequence of classical liberalism.

This line of thinking is false because, as I have argued elsewhere, when you consent to the process you consent to the outcome. Trump ruled over the 46% of people who voted for him and the 48% who did not. The losers of the vote are citizens, and thereby acknowledge and accept and agree to obey the political customs of the United States of America, and one of those political customs is that we decide presidential elections by voting, and then aggregate our votes using the Electoral College, and the Electoral College decides on the outcome of the election. The losers of the vote are bound by that outcome, and if Trump passed a law that declared long hair illegal, even if that law were unjust, both the people who voted for him and the people who did not would be bound by that law.

This line of thinking is dangerous because it creates political instability. If 48% of the populace refuses to abide by the political customs they are bound to as citizens of the United States of America, then there is a question as to which political customs they would accept. The whole exercise is destabilizing. In order to have a stable government, even in a democracy, everyone must agree to the rules and stick to them even when it hurts. This applies to any form of government.

This line of thinking is a natural consequence of classical liberalism, because classical liberalism teaches us that we have the power to decide the presidency. At the turn of the century, there was a politician named Huey Long who Hambone and I like to talk about as a man too wise for his own good. He was a socialist candidate, and his slogan was “Every man a king”. This is exactly what classical liberalism makes us think and believe–every man is a king–or could be king–or if not, could decide who is king. This is exactly what voting is–it is deciding who will be an agent for the people, who collectively are sovereign.

Ruler over those who agree to be ruled

The second argument implicit in the anti-Trump protests was that the people who did not vote for him were not represented. Trump only needed to pander to the interests of the people who voted for him, and everyone else had to wait their turn to rule.

The problem with this argument is partly what I discuss above–that the losers of the vote are equally bound by the outcome. The other part is that is the reciprocal: the winner of the vote is equally ruler over the people who do not want him to rule.

We see this problem all the time in Medieval times–a King dies, his unpopular brother takes the throne, he has to scramble to make peace and assuage all the subtle factions to ensure they don’t assassinate him or the people don’t rise up in revolt. A King is one flesh with his people and that includes the people who hate his guts. A sovereign who only pandered to the people who liked him would quickly find himself unpopular and on the outs. A sovereign who tried too hard to appease the people who hate him would quickly find himself unable to please anyone and unable to get anything done. A sovereign must strike a balance and must find a way to rule an entire people with tender, loving, filial care.

Abortion, Democracy, and Why Your Vote Matters

We have now all the pieces, I think. Let’s suppose for example that abortion was to be decided by plebiscite, a national-scale referendum where the Government would put it to the people a heads-or-tails vote, this simple question: “Should Abortion be legal? Yes or no.” The Government would then adopt a binding resolution turning the outcome of this vote into law.

You would be tempted to muster all your Catholic buddies and go to the polls on plebiscite day in order to pack the ballot for a big ol’ HAIL NAW. But then something shocking happens: The next day, the newspapers all shout the headline on the front page: Abortion Should Be Legal.

You are tempted to console yourself and your friends–hey, at least we did the right thing, at least we voted no.

This argument is the same as saying Trump is not your president because you didn’t vote for him. The outcome of the vote does not determine the morality of the vote, neither does the way you vote determine the morality of the vote. The act of voting consents to the outcome, be it “yes” or “no”, before you ever know the results of the vote. In other words, you consent that by voting abortion might become legal anyway and that you agree to abide by that outcome. Your act of voting is to intrinsically consent to the proposition that abortion may be legal and the process of voting is simply the way of determining whether abortion is legal. If the pro-abortion side wins, then the only acceptable response of a good democrat is to say “Oh, I guess Abortion is legal after all!”

Well Intended Principles

Chivalric Catholic is nevertheless right that the Church does not admonish democracy as a political system, nor does the Church admonish civic participation, and further still the Church encourages us to make the best with what we’ve got.

The United States of America and other classically liberal polities are not intrinsically evil, but you see how voting can force you–without realizing it–to consent to evil. Further still, there are other forms of civic participation that can do more tangible good than voting. Hambone likes to describe the ballot box as a “revolution release valve”–we get whipped up into a political fervor, go to the ballot, let off some steam, and go home thinking we’ve done something. You have done something, but perhaps not what or as much as you thought.

This is where the “proportionate reason” line of argument comes in, which I am not very well versed in so this is where I will pass the baton to Jack if he would like to pick up on that line of reasoning.

As far as I understand, the “proportionate reason” argument says that the definite discernable good of a given act is what is important, and the definite discernable good of voting is so miniscule as to be meaningless. Therefore, if the decision to vote comes down to a prudential judgement, pragmatic analysis should result in deciding not to vote.

But again–I may be misrepresenting Zippy’s line there.

Thanks are due, again, to Chivalric Catholic for his fair minded engagement (not to mention the excellent content he puts out otherwise), and I look forward to seeing what he has to say in response. Jack, not to put pressure on you but I hope to see a primer on the “proportionate reason” argument because that has always been hard for me to understand.

God bless you all!

AMDG

CCLXXXVII – High Bloodline Pressure

There’s a new blog I discovered in my poking about wordpress, the Catholic Monarchist and it’s author JackYankton, who has been writing an interesting series on the virtues and values of Monarchy. I don’t know if he realizes he is a traditionalist reactionary, but I encourage those of you interested to check him out and I hope he finds his way to the broader traditionalist reactionary circle which inspires my writing here.

His latest article led me to comment about the stability of bloodlines, which connects to a thought I’ve been considering for a long time, regarding how to prevent a monarchy from devolving into tyrannical despotism.

First, regarding bloodline driven transfers of power. The least stable time in any government is always the transfer of power. In America they have become decreasingly peaceful over time, and in Medieval times they were almost always perilous (as I understand it). The important thing when any transfer of power happens is 1) That the incoming sovereign has a legitimate claim; 2) that the incoming sovereign is seated using valid forms; 3) that the incoming sovereign is seated using licit forms. Legitimacy, Validity, Licity, are the three pillars that make for a stable transfer of power. The popular acclaim will accept a new sovereign only if he has all three. If any one is questionable, there will be instability. This is true of any political system.

The advantage of a bloodline based system is it creates unambiguous legitimacy. Either you are or are not the child of the previous sovereign. Questions arise when a monarch has no children–then you turn to siblings or other more distant relatives. But there is a definitive hierarchy: if the previous sovereign was the eldest child, and is himself childless, then rule transfers to the sovereigns next youngest sibling, or their child. This is all made much more simple if the sovereign is a Perfectly Formed Catholic (PFC), as mistresses, divorce, and the like make determining the hierarchy confusing. If the Monarch behaves, then bloodline can be an extremely stable source of legitimacy.

Coronation Mass is a very stable form of ensuring a Valid and Licit sovereign. Once Legitimacy is established, the throne must be claimed following the prescribed rites and then the transfer of power is complete. In the biography of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain, St. Joan refused to acknowledge Charles as King until his coronation, until that point referring to him as “The Dauphin”.

In America, instead of bloodlines we have elections; instead of coronations we have inaugurations. Both serve the same purpose–establishing legitimacy and creating a rite which ensures the popular acceptance of the new leader. Elections are more ambiguous than birthright, so inherently introduces an element of instability which can fester and grow. We saw this throughout the Trump presidency–around that time I stopped paying attention to politics, so I don’t know if anyone is making similar agitations about the current president (please don’t tell me if they are–ignorance is bliss).

There is a natural question which follows from this: Once a leader has taken power and received popular acclaim, what stops him from descending into tyranny? We know as sovereign his filial obligation binds him to a duty of custodial care. But what if he ignores that duty? Really–what can we do if our father is a violent abuser? We have recourse to the Mother, she in prudence separates for a while to protect the health and wellness of herself and her children. In a Monarchy, it is really only the Queen Mother who plays that role (like Mama Mary). That is not a great control because the Queen Mother is as likely to be tyrannical as the Sovereign. The American Revolution felt that tyranny must inherently be overthrown, and took the attitude that all monarchy was tyrannical–this is too much of a reaction, as well.

There are three protections for the subjects from a bad sovereign. First is Tradition, which limits the sovereign in behavior and custom. Second is formation, which inoculates the sovereign against being tyrannical by forming him in the first place to have strong and positive values. Third is agitation, which is when the peasantry voice their discontent to the sovereign in varying degrees of peacefulness. Argument is a natural part of a family life, sometimes it is normal that a husband and wife should argue, or that children should argue, to ensure their demands are heard whether they are reasonable or not. The sovereign is not required to oblige every demand voiced, but the sovereign cannot address a problem he does not know about. A sovereign who is confronted with the ill fruit of his decisions on a daily basis must necessarily come to realize that he is the source of that fruit.

If a sovereign does not value tradition, is not formed with strong values, and is protected from hearing the vox populi, he will surely become a tyrant. This is true in a democracy as much as it is in a monarchy. Once a tyrant becomes a tyrant, we must pray for a change of heart, obey his lawful commands, and wait for him to die a natural death, and pray that his issue are more just than he is.

AMDG

CCLXXXIV – One Flesh

In Scripture, we see Adam and Eve referred to as “Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh”. This is unifying oneness, two becoming one before God. The sacrament of Marriage mirrors this. We also see this language used to refer to Kings: From 2 Samuel 5:1-4:

Then all the tribes of Israel came to David in Hebron, saying: “Behold we are thy bone and thy flesh. Moreover yesterday also and the day before, when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that did lead out and bring in Israel: and the Lord said to thee: Thou shalt feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be prince over Israel.”

The ancients also of Israel came to the king to Hebron, and king David made a league with them in Hebron before the Lord: and they anointed David to be king over Israel. David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years.

In this case, the people acknowledge David as being victorious in his battles and claim they are united to him in the same way a husband and wife are united–as bone of bone, flesh of flesh. David begins his reign over Israel as a father rules over his children, with custodial care for his family.

This is the care with which a sovereign must reign, it makes explicit that duty of care and that the role of sovereign is not a mere title to be claimed but a distinct responsibility. A husband must care for his wife, and a wife must care for her husband–the relationship goes both directions, but each has a duty to each. So to between a Sovereign and a people.

It is this dynamic that becomes complicated in a democracy. If the people are sovereign, as I have argued, then to whom do the people cleave? Themselves? To whom is owed a duty of custodial care? From whom is received that care? There’s no way to ease into the punchline: Democracy is narcissism. A people promising to love and honor themselves, and take care of themselves, and they don’t need anyone else. The sovereign marriage is between a sovereign and a people–in democracy, a people are married to themselves. The analogy is a husband marrying himself, promising to take care of himself and rule over himself. It is fundamentally incoherent. This is why Democracy, and the Liberal ideology from which it arises, is disastrous.

In such a condition, the people usurp the position and power and responsibilities of the missing spouse, the sovereign. All ownership is derived from the sovereign, but without the sovereign the logic is recursive. All ownership is derived from the people, and the people receive from themselves the delegated authority to acquire property, and they promise to use it to the ends selected by themselves for the custodial care of themselves. What?

Since the French Revolution, liberal institutions and democracies have been sustained but they must be fed and fueled. They must be balanced by something. It takes energy, consumes effort to sustain such an unnatural dynamic. I can’t predict the future but the instability we are seeing here in the USA and which is apparent in democratic societies around the world is directly related to this unstable dynamic.

It is this understanding of the Sovereign that will inform the rest of our discussions on the topic.

AMDG

CCLXI – Veritable Heritability

Over thanksgiving […] I visited my family and […] enjoyed watching a television show called Downton Abbey. It’s good harmless fun and served as a macguffin for a lot of good conversation. During one conversation about the TV show, one among my family made a comment to this effect:

I don’t respect inherited wealth or titles because the recipient did no work to earn it. Inherited wealth and titles leads to decadence because hard working generations beget spoiled and comfortable generations, which squander the wealth and didn’t learn how to earn it. That’s why I don’t respect Monarch’s and such, too–they didn’t learn to rule they were just given authority.

My immediate reaction was to think about why I have such a fondness for Monarchy. Monarchy with a big caveat–rule by a Perfectly Formed Catholic (PFC) Monarch. That’s a tall order even on a good day. But still–in contrast to democracy, is it better to be given authority by birthright or is it better to be chosen by a game theoretical contest? Does asking people for authority select for better rulers?

The chief virtue in my family members opinion is work ethic–one cannot inherit work ethic, it must be chosen individually and in their imaginings the hardest working will be the most successful.

I think this is not true even if we assume a society of PFC‘s and ignore any deliberate evil in our fellow man. In a perfectly competitive market of individuals, sometimes the first to work will come to dominate other hard working late comers. Hard work is good, but material success does not imply virtue. There are people in the world working diligently for the ends of evil. That is why it is not enough that one works hard.

Inherited wealth is not inherently bad–nor are inherited titles. It’s merely a mechanism for transferring stuff from one person to another. Legitimacy is all about following the proper forms for transfer. In America, our proper forms involve game theoretical contests on a massive scale. In Medieval Europe, the proper forms involved coronation Masses and bloodlines. Both are semi-arbitrary but neither is better. Assuming our forms of legitimacy is better is just current-year-ism. Good rulers can certainly come from weird but legitimate forms–but so can bad ones.

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

LI – AMERICAN EMPIRE PART 3

American Empire Part 1
American Empire Part 2

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A Study in Authority

All power structures are prone to internal rivalry. Rivalry can, in some cases, be anticipated and controlled for. Rivalry, properly harnessed, can strengthen a system rather than weaken it. Stable rivalry requires three points of contact, balancing the Sovereign Authority, the means of enforcement, and the source of legitimacy.

First, regarding Sovereign Authority, it must be broad enough to allow effective rule but limited in such a way as to prevent it from becoming absolute. A Sovereign whose authority is very restricted cannot exercise that authority effectively. A sovereign whose authority is totally unrestricted quickly becomes a tyrant, ruling absolutely. So some balance on the authority of the sovereign is important.

The Sovereign only exercises authority through decisions to enforce or not enforce their edicts. A Sovereign cannot act unilaterally to enforce their authority, they must utilize some enforcement mechanism. This can be the military, a police force, typically some body of people. Any number of means of enforcement are available to the Sovereign. However, this body has it’s own authority unto itself, and is governed by a will of its own. This body must be loyal to the sovereign, to enforce their edicts. They must also be loyal to the subjects, unwilling to enforce tyrannical edicts. This is the second balance which must be struck. The Sovereign must be able to rely on the enforcement mechanism to obey their will but also reject actual abuses.

Finally, the Sovereign is only able to exercise authority if they have a legitimate claim to that authority. Legitimacy is typically derived from some source, and must also be accepted. The source of legitimacy must be objective and unquestionable; the acceptance of legitimacy must be preserved. If the source of legitimacy is in doubt, the ability to enforce edicts is weakened and the effective exercise of authority is diminished. If the acceptance of legitimacy is lost, the authority of the sovereign is undermined.

These three forces, Scope of Authority, Enforcement of Authority, and Legitimacy of Authority, serve to balance the various stakeholders in a nation.

Case Studies in Rivalry

The Kings of Rome had, initially, a balanced system. The King could not unilaterally extend the scope of their authority without consent of the Senate. The military would enforce edicts, but was an essential control against sovereign overreach. The failure of Roman Monarchy was manifold: The Senate was the source of legitimacy for the King, and they began to withdraw their acceptance and consider themselves the legitimate rulers. The last King of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, undermined the source of legitimacy by having senators killed and refusing to replace them. He was cruel in his enforcement, losing the acceptance of both the senate and favor of the populace. The last straw was his crime of raping a woman: The senate took control of the enforcement mechanism, with the support of the people, and overthrew him. The Sovereign, from inception and across seven kings, gradually extended and allowed the sovereign to be cruel and unjust. Each of the pillars was gradually undermined, and ultimately collapsed.

For pre-revolutionary British monarchs, the collapse was a little more overt. Legitimacy was assured by birthright, and the legislature enabled the growing tyranny of King George III. The result was that the Legitimacy of the monarch ceased to be accepted by the people, and the chosen enforcement mechanism, self governance of the remote colonies, outright failed. The Legitimate monarch of the British colonies was rejected by the colonial population in favor of self rule.

Consequences of Rebellion

In both cases, a singular sovereign was replaced by a collective sovereign in the form of a powerful, elected legislature. In the Roman case, they simply removed the Monarch and took all the accidents of authority and power unto themselves. In the American case, it took some time before the nation coalesced into the burgeoning young republic. In both cases, we have arrived at the Republic phase of these nations.