Tag: Tyranny

CCCXXII – Sunshine On Democracy

I watched a movie recently called “Sunshine“. I had watched it before, many years ago, […]. Obviously since then I have changed a lot and so I was primed to notice some key moments that perhaps they hoped would go unnoticed.

If you have not seen the movie, here’s the quick premise: The sun is dying and humanity mined all of the fissile material on earth to launch towards the sun and detonate it, and so reignite the sun. The crew is riding on a ship called the Icarus II, the Icarus I lost contact and their fate is unknown. There are 7 specialists as the crew on each ship.

There are two votes that happen in this movie–two demonstrations of democracy in action. I will share the parables and then we can break them down.

The first vote happens when the crew discovers the location of the Icarus I. The “antagonist” opposes diverting the mission to see if they can help the Icarus I. The psychologist on the mission believes that using the resources aboard the Icarus I–including the undelivered payload–could be helpful. The antagonist says “Let’s vote!” but the psychologist says “This is not a democracy–we are a bunch of astronauts and scientists, we are going to make the best decision available to us.” Rather than consult data and begin weighing options, the decision is handed to the Physicist (the protagonist) to make unilaterally.

The second vote happens in the middle of the third act, the visit to Icarus I has gone horribly wrong and several people have died as a consequence. The crew member whose hapless error caused a death is on a suicide watch. Their mistake also caused the burning of the Oxygen-generating eco lab, so oxygen is now a limited resource. The same antagonist from earlier proposes killing the suicide-risk member of the crew–but proposes the other crew vote on it and demands a unanimous decision. Three of the four people vote in favor, except for one, the pilot, who opposes. The antagonist decides to kill the crew member anyway, despite not receiving the unanimous vote he requested.

What the heck is going on?

In the first case, a vote is proposed, but they declare “no need” because of their intellectual pedigree, and allow one member of the crew to decide unilaterally. In the second case, a vote is proposed, and they demand consent, but in the face of opposition one member of the crew decides unilaterally. In both instances, the resulting decision was unilateral and indifferent to other viewpoints.

The first situation falls to scientism, the religious-like belief that the intelligent and scientific form a priestly class. This is why the decision was handed to the Physicist-Astronaut–the ultimate priest of scientism. In the film, the decision ultimately came down to a utilitarian one: two bombs is better than one, lets see if we can get a second payload to deliver to the sun. There was no gnostic, hidden wisdom–it was a numbers game. The democratic choice may have considered other points of view, irrelevant data. A truly scientific approach would have spent more time on analysis and running scenarios. Both of these represent an abdication on the part of the captain to authoritatively rule his crew. The decision, and it’s consequences, ought to have rested with him. The first vote represents the abdication of a kingly sovereign to the masses, and the masses make bad decisions under a pretense of legitimacy they invented for themselves.

The second situation falls to tyrannical utilitarianism. It is tyrannical because it did not follow the rules it set for itself. It is utilitarian because it weighed the value of a human life, which they did not have the authority to do. The one opponent–the conservative–voted no, and when told that her vote didn’t matter, simply shrugged and said “find some kindness” when you murder the crewmate. Conservatives and right liberals do that a lot. They vote, and when told their vote was meaningless, they shrug and say “please abuse us nicely”. Rules and procedures exist for a reason, and if the Captain had been alive he at least would have had some semblance of authority and legitimacy to add to the proceedings. The captain is one of the people who died in the blunder after the first vote, so he was not present. It is telling that the King died when the people took control.

There’s a lot more I could read into this, but I thought it was interesting. It’s a good movie in it’s own right, and there’s lots of little symbolisms that I hadn’t noticed on previous watch throughs. I hope you watch it, and if you can’t take your traditionalist-reactionary hats off, let me know what you think of my analysis of democracy from the movie.

AMDG

(w) – The Tree of Liberty

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson

The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed because the previous liberators have become tyrants and the new liberators have not yet become tyrants. The cycle is infinitely recursive. The fruit of the tree of liberty is tyranny, and the seeds which make the tree grow is revolution.

By the way, I looked up the source of the quote in context in order to render the quote properly for this post. I was amused to see the sentence immediately following the above quote is this one:

It is it’s natural manure.

This we can agree on, Mr. Jefferson!

AMDG

(e) – Afterthought about Bad Sovereigns

It is easy to be obedient to a good Sovereign. It is hard to be obedient to a bad Sovereign. But the bad Sovereign needs our obedience more because our obedience (and also our forbearance) lends itself to both social stability and our sanctification. There are many stories of Saints whose path to holiness passed through a monastery with an ill tempered superior.

Our duty of obedience goes up to and no further than the point of Tyranny, where they become an evil Sovereign by enforcing some moral evil as truth, and our duty becomes one of disobedience.

I’ll leave you to figure out how that works in a Democracy.

CXXXIX – Rights or Sovereignty

Either man has rights, or the people is sovereign. The simultaneous assertion of two mutually exclusive theses is what people have called liberalism.

Don Colacho

This probably seems somewhat irrelevant now, in the aftermath of Coronavirus. As Bonald so clearly put it, we’re fighting a dead beast, and uncontroversially so. Nevertheless, the timeless wisdom of Don Colacho is not to be ignored, so lets explore this idea a little bit.

Left is Right and Right is Wrong

We’ve talked about Rights before so lets recap. In the United States, the public treat Rights as something we have and which the government cannot take away. “I have rights!” is the refrain. What they are saying is “I have the ability to speak freely!” or “I have the ability to own a gun!” and the government is disobliged–metaphysically incapable–from mitigating those rights in any way. This is also what people mean when they talk about things that aren’t explicitly enumerated rights: “Healthcare is a human right” or “We need to give so-and-so full rights”.

There are obvious exceptions to this claim. “I have the ability to speak freely!” except when what you say is “fire” and where you say it is a crowded theater. “I have the ability to own a gun!” except if it’s fully automatic. I am sure none would find those limits controversial. We agree that shouting “fire” in a crowded theater would be disastrous; that restricting ownership of automatic firearms is sensible. So when we are talking about rights we are really talking about operating within a fence the government has made for us. “I have rights!” translates to “I have the ability to speak freely!” which now means “I agree to abide by restrictions on my ability to speak as long as they appear sensible!” which doesn’t make a great rallying cry. We could push this just a little bit further to say that the government disagrees that shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is a good thing to do; therefore when I say “I agree to abide by restrictions on my ability to speak as long as they appear sensible,” what I really mean is “I agree to only say things the government approves.”

How rapidly “I have the right to free speech” becomes “I agree to government sanctioned speech”. The word “Rights” is charged with the value of natural law. A true right, in the sense that we intend it when we usually talk about rights, is something which God has given us and which is inseparable from our being. This is why the Declaration of Independence went with “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and why the constitution went with “Life, Liberty, and Property.” Our Government holds no claim over our lives, they are ours, given to us by God. We have Free Will, something inherent to us as people. Our Free will cannot be restricted except by our own complicity. These illustrate best what we think we are saying when we declare that we have rights.

A Royal Cup of Sovereign Tea

I’ve spent a little bit of time exploring the idea of sovereignty, though not quite as thoroughly as rights. We know enough to be able to frame it as a paradox. We can use the old parable of Themistocles, who said “My infant child rules my wife, my wife rules me, and I rule all of Greece. Therefore, my infant child rules all of Greece.”

Themistocles is the sovereign of all of Greece, but he answers to his wife, who in turn answers to his infant child. By “answers to“, I mean two things: He is surely mindful of the needs of his wife, seeking to please her and keep her happy. But he also obeys her prerogatives. So the Ruler of Greece is the person whose prerogatives are ultimately obeyed, and of whose needs others must be mindful; yet who owes no reciprocal obligation.

So here’s the paradox: The President of the United States would typically be considered sovereign, because he is our head of state. Yet he is mindful of the needs of the people. He obeys the prerogatives of the Legislature to the extent they are able to enforce them. The legislature are also mindful of the needs of the people, and more directly must obey the popular prerogatives. The people are not obliged to be mindful of the needs of the legislature or the executive, but they must obey their prerogatives too. So the people, the Executive, and the Legislature all impose prerogatives of each other, but only the Executive and Legislature need to mind anyone’s needs.

So who is sovereign?

The Crown’s Virus

American political theory asserts that the public have rights and that the people are sovereign. In the first section, I demonstrate that rights just means that the people are obliged to obey the prerogatives of the elected officials. In the second section, I demonstrate that the elected officials are obliged to obey the prerogatives of the people. The people cannot both have rights and be sovereign. This is especially clear in our Governments reaction to Coronavirus.

The First amendment includes the freedom of assembly, which as I’ve explained means we agree to assemble in a manner in which the government approves. The first response of the Government was to restrict our freedom of assembly. This is seen clearly in the infamous picture from North Carolina where the police are informing protesters that protesting is a non-essential activity. As a consequence, our government is less and less obliged to obey our prerogatives, nor to mind our needs.

That’s part of what makes this so unnerving. Society is, in part, held together by the comfortable lie that the people have both rights and sovereignty. The pretense has been done away with: We obey the government, it’s for our own good.

There’s a part of me that likes it this way. The pretense made it hard to discern what was good or bad about our government. If they begin to rule by decree, well, it becomes much plainer. It doesn’t matter if they have a mandate from the electorate or not, it only matters what they are doing at the time they are doing it. I can judge a man’s actions if I see them, but it’s more difficult if he says he was obeying a mandate from the electorate.

All illusion is gone now. I just wonder how long we’ll pretend things haven’t changed.

AMDG

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

LXXIV – Resolution to the Legitimacy and Tyranny Problem

I read a great article and I think it has helped me untangle the Legitimacy Problem, which is an extension of the Tyranny problem.

My writings so far:

  • Article XVI – Establishes an early definition of Legitimacy
  • Article XVII – Explores some consequences of that definition
  • Article XVIII – What happens when things go wrong?
  • Article XIX – Clarifying the definition of Legitimacy
  • Article XXIV – Realizing that defining Legitimacy creates problems for Democracy
  • Article XXV – Civil and Spiritual Obligations of a Sovereign

As you can tell it’s been a while since I’ve written about this. Lets see what has changed:

The Legitimacy Problem

Conceptions of sovereignty were easy during the Monarchy period of western civilization. A King ruled over a people, his authority granted by God (by birth or otherwise) to rule in God’s name and keep God’s peace. Easy! The rise of democracy complicated things somewhat. The ruler gains his authority from the people, but also rules over those people, so the reasoning appears somewhat circular. The problem lies when evaluating what exactly Tyranny is. Can a democratically elected ruler still be illegitimate? Can a democratically elected ruler be a tyrant? How do you know when a ruler ought to be forcibly removed by revolution? The Legitimacy problem is an attempt to answer these questions.

Patriotism is a Virtue

I linked to an article in the beginning, make sure you read that first, because the rest of this is predicated on information contained therein.

Obedience to civil authority is good, virtuous even. Acts of creation–even creation of a state–is done with God. Therefore, we owe to our civil authority a similar kind of obedience, but one subordinate to obedience to God. The Constitution establishes the legitimate authority of the United States of America. The Constitution itself was written in a valid and licit way, therefore it is a Legitimate legal document prescribing our particular means of self governance.

A Civil leader, who is raised to their position by the valid and licit means prescribed by the legitimate legal procedures, is the legitimate civil sovereign of a democracy. The Chain of Legitimacy still flows from God, but gets not at the raising of a sovereign but at the foundation of the democracy, in our case being the Constitution.

Back to Tyranny

This conception allows us to revisit the Tyranny problem with some coherent strategy. Tyranny is a quality of governance. A validly, licitly, and thus legitimately elected democratic sovereign is essentially the legitimate authority. Their decisions can be essentially for good or for ill. The means of rule are accidental to a democratic sovereign; that is to say, whether ruling by fiat or by precedent does not define either the legitimacy or tyranny of a sovereign. However, The same way that a person that chooses unvirtuous choices more often than not can be said to be essentially immoral, so too a sovereign that chooses poor choices can be said to be essentially a tyrant. This is again regardless of the accidents of their reign.

So how do we tell whether a choice is poor? I have previously described that a Tyrant might violate civil law but must violate natural law. I argue now that mere indifference to law does not rise to the level of Tyranny. Tyranny is a positive assertion contrary to natural law, followed by an effort to codify or enforce that assertion civilly. This may ring a bell if you remember Zippy Catholic, who said: “Tyranny is a false pretense of Authority, frequently accompanied by enforcement of the false claim.”

To phrase my new conclusion as an axiom: Tyranny is an exercise of authority which is contrary to natural law, and the attempted or actual enforcement of that authority.

Resolution

A Tyrant may be legitimate or illegitimate, but a Tyrant definitively acts contrary to Natural law, and definitively enforces it. Said another way, a Tyrant compels evil, whereas a saintly leader compels good.

It is not enough to ignore the law, civil or natural. A Tyrant must actively subvert and reject the law, claim untruth as truth. A government which ignores truth or is indifferent to it’s character is merely negligent, and is a vice unto itself. A Tyranny subverts Gods law, and attempts to legitimize that subversion in civil law.

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

XXI – The Worst Participation Trophies

In order to address the Tyranny problem, we need to tackle problems up-stream, namely problems with the Government and the source of it’s authority and legitimacy. We must also tackle problems down-stream, namely a citizens participation in that government.

The specific question at hand is whether participation in Tyranny is sinful. The broader question is what our obligation is to address a tyranny. This article will more closely address the former than the latter, but it is a fitting reminder of where we are in the process.

A Helpful Reminder

In order to avoid sin, we must understand what sin is. Mortal sin has three elements.

  1. Grave subject matter
  2. Full knowledge and awareness that a given deed is, in fact, a sin and awareness of the gravity of that sin.
  3. Deliberate and complete consent to commit that sin.

But let us not be confused: A sin is a sin every time. Not checking one of these three boxes does not make it NOT a sin, it just reduces culpability. For example, a teenager inadequately formed in faith may commit a sin. They cannot be said to have full knowledge and awareness of the sin. They are less culpable. But they still committed a grave offense. When the teenager is made aware of the gravity of the sin, they would then be obliged to stop and amend their life; they would be held responsible for the full weight of the sin if they commit it again. There are many other mitigating factors as well, which we will discuss in part here.

Before we do, there is an additional element: the element of Scandal. One must avoid not just the near occasion of sin, but also the appearance of sin. Chaste cohabitation between male and female roommates may be without fault, but fellow Catholics may believe they are living as an unmarried couple in a state of sin. Non-Catholics may also get a mistaken impression of what it means to be Catholic. These reactions for others are foreseeable and you are responsible for knowingly causing these reactions, causing scandal.

With this helpful reminder, lets dig in.

The Ladder of Cooperation

Authors Note: This  and subsequent sections are almost exclusively informed from this link, with a Q&A answered by a priest. It is a bit of a word salad, so my writing here is intended as a laymans summary of the somewhat heavy jargon of the aforementioned link.

We are principally concerned with the spiritual state of other parties to sin. To help inform understanding, it helps to have a common scenario that we can use to fill and inform the many definitions that we will be adding to our dictionary.

For this scenario, we will use the scenario of a man robbing a bank.

Mortal Sin: Robbing a bank is a mortal sin. The robber has committed the mortal sin of larsony, in violation of the commandment ‘Thou shalt not steal.’

Formal Cooperation in mortal sin: An associate who stands guard outside the bank. This person has not robbed the bank nor harmed any individual, they simply stood outside the bank while the robbery took place. However, their intention is united to the Robber, and their presence facilitated the robbery. They have Formally Cooperated in the sin, and thus share in the culpability for that sin.

Immediate Material Cooperation in mortal sin: This is essentially a distinction without a difference, there are few and rare cases in which this would not be considered Formal Cooperation. I am listing it here because it is on the website, and I lack the expertise to more clearly draw a distinction. For all intents and purposes, we can consider this Formal Cooperation.

Mediate Material Cooperation in mortal sin: Neither doing the act nor even especially intending the act, but providing some peripheral assistance or preparation. If a friend of the robbers agreed to give the robbers a lift, without knowing or intending on that day to participate in a robbery, but actually facilitated the getaway, the driver would then be Mediately Materially Cooperating in mortal sin.

Negative Cooperation in mortal sin: If the robbers said to their friend, “I’m taking your car for a robbery,” and the friend did and said nothing, and let them take the car, this is considered negative cooperation. He was in a position to obstruct the conduct of a sinful act, but chose to do nothing. This is like the ‘sin of omission’.

The Ladders of Proximity and Necessity

Subsequent distinctions can be drawn for a Mediate Material Cooperator. They may not intend a certain consequence, but the consequence can be foreseen. So we ask then, how close they were to the act and how necessary their cooperation was to completion of the act?

Proximate, Mediate Material Cooperation in mortal sin: The bank robbers ask their friend to borrow his car. The friend, who knows they are bank robbers, allows them to borrow the car, foreseeing that it could be used for robbery but intending that it is not. The friend is in Proximate, mediate, material cooperation with the mortal sin of the robbers.

Remote, Mediate Material Cooperation in mortal sin: The winter-sporting goods store where the robbers purchased their ski masks also furnished some means for the robbery but they are sufficiently removed from the robbery itself to be considered remote. A store cannot anticipate how shoppers use their wares, for good or ill. The shopkeep is remotely cooperating. The degree of remoteness affects culpability, and other mitigating factors not included in this scenario. All else being equal, the shopkeep may not be culpable for their mortal sin.

Necessary, Mediate Material Cooperation in mortal sin: Supposing that the robbers did not have a car and had no other means to acquire a car, the friend giving them use of his car is necessary mediate material cooperation. The sin could not have been committed without the car, so the friend shares the burden for cooperating in that sin.

Non-Necessary, Mediate Material Cooperation in mortal sin: Supposing again that the shopkeep at the winter sports store sold the robbers their ski masks, that is non necessary cooperation, as if the shopkeep refused to sell them the masks they could have gone elsewhere and purchased the same masks, or fashioned some different face covering. The masks were not essential to the completion of the sinful act, and was thus not necessary. By this consideration, the shopkeep’s cooperation was non necessary, and culpability would be commensurately reduced.

Determining Morality of Mediate Cooperation

This was said first and said best in the link:

1. In a serious evil, proximate mediate material cooperation is permitted only if necessary to escape a very serious damage.

2. In a serious evil, necessary mediate material cooperation is permitted only if necessary to escape a very serious damage.

3. In a serious evil, mediate material cooperation that is both proximate and necessary is permitted only if necessary to escape an extremely serious damage. Moreover, where cooperation could bring serious harm to a third party, proximate and necessary cooperation (i.e., harm to the third party would not occur if the cooperator were to refuse) is permitted only if the cooperator would suffer damage commensurate with the injury suffered by the third party. In this case of harm to the third party, the law of charity requires this greater constraint, but not at the cost of greater harm to the cooperator.

4. Mediate material cooperation which is non-necessary and very remote is permitted for a reasonable cause.

5. In other cases the degree of necessity or proximity of cooperation must be judged in proportion to the evil effect and in proportion to the degree of the good effect achieved by the cooperator.

The best way I can think to explain this is to go through the rubric with the example of Abortion.

Lets suppose a husband is driving his wife to an abortionist for the purpose of obtaining an abortion. His cooperation is both proximate and necessary. Because this is a grave matter, it is only permitted to escape serious damage: Say the mother’s life was in imminent danger due to a complication with the pregnancy. This cooperation may then be permitted.

In this case, there is also the prospect of serious harm to a third party, the baby. The above scenario does not automatically give license to abort the baby. It must be sufficiently grave danger, wherein they must choose (for example) between saving the Mothers life, or losing both the mother and the baby. The Husbands cooperation in driving his wife to the abortionist may then be permitted as well.

The manufacturer of the car, for example, is both non-necessary and very remote. Their reasonable cause would be making a living, and so they are not culpable for cooperation in the sin. Please note: non-necessary and remote cooperation does not automatically excuse cooperation! There must be reasonable cause for the cooperation, as well as the other limitations described above.

In all other cases, in point 5 above, necessity and proximity must be judged proportionally to the sin being cooperated in and the good achieved by cooperating. In other words, we cannot presume upon Gods will or mercy, but this leaves open mitigating factors in the case of ambiguity.

The Chain of Sin

Let’s take the abortion example and follow the chain of sin all the way to the voters.

Mortal Sin: A Doctor at an Abortion clinic performs an abortion

Immediate, Material Cooperation in Mortal Sin: The Treasurer of the abortion clinic pays the Doctor

Remote, Necessary Mediate Material Cooperation in Mortal Sin: The clerk of a government agency pays the abortion clinic, the payment which is the only thing keeping the abortion clinic open. If the payment has no effect on whether the abortion clinic remains open, the clerk is of reduced culpability as their participation is no longer necessary.

Remote, Non-Necessary Mediate Material Cooperation in a sin: An elected representative appoints the clerk, with the reasonable cause of performing their duty to appoint clerks to various agencies. This becomes Necessary Cooperation if this elected official is the only person who can make the appointment, and thus would become a mortal sin. The elected representative would be obligated to resign rather than facilitate the procurement of abortions to the public.

Remote, Non-Necessary Mediate Material Cooperation in a sin: An elected representative votes to fund the agency, with the reasonable cause of performing their duty to set budgets and apportion funding to various agencies. This becomes Necessary Cooperation if the ONLY PURPOSE of the vote was to fund the abortion clinic, and would thus be mortal sin. If the agency funds other things besides the abortion clinic, participation would return to being non-necessary, and would reduce culpability.

Very Remote, Non-necessary Mediate Material Cooperation in a sin: A citizen who votes for those elected representatives, with the reasonable cause of executing their civic duty. If the elected representative is advertised to be pro-abortion, this becomes Necessary Cooperation because the representative is advertising their intention to increase availability of abortions, and would thus be a mortal sin. If the elected representative was neutral or explicitly anti-abortion, the vote for that representative would have no impact on whether abortion is or isn’t offered in the country, and would thus be morally neutral.

Very Remote, Non-necessary Negative Cooperation in a sin: A citizen who abstains from voting for those elected representatives, with the reasonable cause of not wishing to participate in their civic duty. Their non-vote has no effect on the outcome of the election, and does nothing for or against the cause of abortion. While the evil effect is known, their actions neither help nor hinder, and thus cannot be considered a mortal sin.

Socks and Scandals

While voting is generally neutral in this case, we still have an obligation to avoid voting for candidates who are explicitly pro-abortion. If all candidates in an election are pro-abortion, then voting or not voting has no impact and would still be considered (by some) to be morally neutral, since there is no effect on the profusion of abortion.

However, now we must consider scandal. If one candidate is pro-abortion and one is not, we are obligated to vote for the one who is not. If both candidates are pro-abortion, we may be morally able to vote for one or the other, but if our Catholic or non-Catholic peers became aware they may be given to Scandal, which adds an element of sin to the deed.

While in the United States of America we have the benefit of the Australian / Secret ballot, there may be circumstances where we could discuss politics and risk giving scandal.

Here is where my friend and braintrust offers some sage advice:

“I think the safest choice in any circumstance is to not discuss it unless pressed and then to justify the decision with Catholic teaching”

This is good advice for more than just voting.

Conclusion

Voting (by which I mean, civic participation in a government aparatus that may be tyrannical) is not material participation in sin, by this rubric! We have unwound one pillar of the Tyranny problem. We now must consider the bigger question: What is our obligation if we find ourselves under a Tyranny?

We have added more definitions and have a lot more to think about.

AMDG

XVII – The Lady of the Lake Throws an Anchor at the King

Update: A new article has ideas which substantially modify the ideas presented herein.

It occurs to me that there are some consequences to this new conception of legitimacy. Traditionally, Legitimacy has been considered a thing leaders have. However, much like responsibility, or fortitude, or other virtues, instead it’s a trait leaders must maintain. The old idea is the Lady of the Lake giving a sword to King Arthur, and now that he has the sword of legitimacy, he can assert his right as King of England. Now the Lady of the Lake gives him an anchor, and the chain spools all the way back to God, and he’s got to carry it around with him.

Chain Chain Chaaaaiiinnnnn[1]

This idea helps me to grok a concept Zippy wrote about that I struggled with for a while. Lets start at the beginning: Legitimacy is a chain of Authority that starts at God and goes all the way down to you and me, the humble citizens of a given nation. As described: If that chain of authority is broken, it is the responsibility of the surrounding links to join themselves either to each other, or to look to God for guidance. But it stands to reason that we are all in the line of authority. We might be 200-millionth in line for the Throne, but if everything broke down, we would indeed be obliged to step up to the responsibility of governance. You see this in post-apocalyptic scenarios on TV, movies, etc. In the absence or breakdown of civil society, leaders rise and take responsibility for small communities until the link can be reformed with legitimate authority. In the meantime they are acting under the direct authority of God.

Zippy described this in the context of subsidiarity[2], the principle that problems ought to be solved at the smallest or most local level possible.

Thus, we come to Zippy’s thesis regarding the 2nd Amendment:

An armed populace may thus be a good and natural thing when viewed from the standpoint of subsidiarity. Nobody is in a better position to defend a family or classroom, in the immediacy of an armed attack by a criminal, than the particular authorities literally closest in space and time to those defended: fathers and teachers, respectively.

But this depends upon viewing the authority of fathers and teachers in a context of subsidiarity: specifically not as rivals to or as the source of higher authority. The police may be slower and more distant than teachers; the courts may be slower and more distant than the police. But they are all integral parts of the same organic hierarchy of authority resting on a custodial relationship with the common good.

A ‘consent of the governed’ view pits the people against government. A ‘Chain of Legitimacy’ or ‘Consent to be governed’ view puts people in the chain of command. To wit: In an active shooter situation, a citizen could be deputized[3] to respond to a grievous violation of the law and act to subdue the offender[4]. A citizen can step into the chain of command to bring the Law where it’s proper enforcers may not be present.

Chain of Fools

This again requires a population of Edenites to work perfectly. You don’t want someone who places themselves in personal rivalry with government to step into the chain of command and do damage. There is a responsibility to both act in the preservation of legitimate authority and to prevent scandal. We live in a society where there is no guarantee of that. This is where we reach the problem of liberal society, epitomized by the Presidential Campaign Slogan of the tragic socialist Huey Long: Every Man a King. Liberalism could be summarized essentially as the supremacy of the individual over the sovereign, which leads to this fallacious argument that every man is a King or Kingmaker.

Liberal society is designed to break legitimacy, because it views all government as Tyranny. With no legitimacy, and no one to inform them of a true conception of legitimacy, every man begins to view himself, indeed, as a king. Absent a million swords of Damocles hanging over their heads, they abdicate both their responsibility to subordinate persons and their own subordination to greater authority.

The result being a crowd of usurpers, with the affectations of legitimate authority, but none of the heavy burden that comes with it. All of the credit, none of the blame, so to speak.

Which returns us to the grand question: How does one begin to encourage a population to become formed in virtue?

AMDG

[1] Chain of Fools – Aretha Franklin

[2] Note to self, add to dictionary.

[3]Quote from Zippy: “Setting aside the multivocity of the term “free State” it is possible to propose an (illiberal, explicitly authoritarian, and thus unusual) interpretation of the second amendment as deputization. Armed citizens are viewed as loyal subsidiary agents of the sovereign, a militia very much loyal to and subject to the sovereign, against proximate threats posed: not threats posed by the sovereign, but by criminals and foreign belligerents in that crucial quick minute and last mile.” Emphasis mine.

[4] Every care must be taken not to take a human life. The ‘Right to bear arms’ (or, the Privilege granted by government to own and keep arms) is not a license to kill. Every Human Life has a certain dignity. A life can not and should not be taken lightly.