What’s Wrong with the World

Empire implies Emperor - so it is hard to conceive of a US republican empire.

The two successful models of Christian empire are the Medieval European (dually run by Pope and Emperor) and the Byzantine (where the Emperor was Christ's Viceroy on earth).

The founders were in error when they sought and succeeded in introducing constitutional religious indifference, a.k.a. secularism, as the governing principle of the American people. They broke with European Christian tradition. The American empire never really had a legitimate mandate.

This was amusing until the end. Jeff, read the founding documents. Empire wasn't what was planned. This is from the Northwest Ordinance (1787):

"Sec. 9. So soon as there shall be five thousand free male inhabitants of full age in the district, upon giving proof thereof to the governor, they shall receive authority, with time and place, to elect a representative from their counties or townships to represent them in the general assembly..."

"Sec. 13. And, for extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, which form the basis whereon these republics, their laws and constitutions are erected; to fix and establish those principles as the basis of all laws, constitutions, and governments, which forever hereafter shall be formed in the said territory: to provide also for the establishment of States, and permanent government therein, and for their admission to a share in the federal councils on an equal footing with the original States, at as early periods as may be consistent with the general interest:"

"Sec. 14. It is hereby ordained and declared by the authority aforesaid, That the following articles shall be considered as articles of compact between the original States and the people and States in the said territory and forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent..."

One of the good things about many blogs on the right is that they make it clear that some of our fellow citizens are not committed to the welfare of our republic.

"The question, for us, is whether the American empire has outlived its legitimate mandate, and whether secession or resistance might be, in some cases, a moral imperative."

We have just had two cases of home grown terrorism by deranged folk spouting the sort of anti-government rhetoric too frequently heard on the right. The last time this sort of inchoate anger bore friut we wound up with a dead president and a decade of violence.

I'm sure that, at Jeff's level, talk of "secession or resistance" is just that, talk. The problem is that, once one starts downhill from the mountains to west of Orland and heads east, one crosses a thousand miles or so and, southerly until the Atlantic, of land where at least a few process these words as a call to violence and act on them.

It's one thing to fantasize about happy and content peasants governed by a just and benevolent nobility under the unity of the True Faith in the long ago and far away but in the context of the United States of America, secession is a call to violence and the use of the term "resistance" speaks for itself. There are a lot of angry and scared folks out there just now. In fat times the normal level of political ignorance will accomodate a fair amount of nonsense, but these are hardly fat times.

A question for our friend Paul; How is this not sedition by your standards?

The alternative to empire, I should think, would be something like America at the founding: A republican federal government with strictly limited powers and no or very, very limited foreign entanglements, kept in check both by the tenth amendment and by strong state governments with a hefty sense of their own sovereignty and of infringements thereupon.

I suppose I'm not opposed to an empire in principle, especially if it grows up in a rather ad hoc manner, like the British empire did. But I think empires almost always work out badly in practice, often worse for the ruling, central country (e.g., Britain, Rome) than for the far-flung, governed countries (e.g., India).

"...grows up in a rather ad hoc manner, like the British empire did."

All empires are founded in corruption, crime, and violence (think Hastings and Burke). A virtuous republic shouldn't go there. We tried states rights and it didn't work out so well hence the Second Founding (long delayed by a successful counter-revolution) with the 13th - 15th Amendments.

Not possessing full clarity on what, precisely, Jeff means by the term "empire", I'd rather reserve comment, save to state that the term, as conventionally employed in political science and foreign policy literature, usually refers to various modes of domination exercised by a metropole over far-flung territories and dependencies. Manifestly, as the modes of domination are various, so also may be the forms of empire; surely, however, much of American grand geostrategy, as well as numerous discrete manipulations, such as the fraudulent "color revolutions" of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, qualify as imperial. While it is perhaps an old and stale trope for most readers here, who are as likely as any old National Review hand to reproach me for a want of patriotic sentiment (though I do not accept, not even a little, that criticism of the foreign empire is unpatriotic), this sort of empire is incompatible with the survival of republican government, as it promotes the aggrandizement of the executive power and a regimentation, tending ultimately to the subversion of constitutional restraints upon arbitrary power, within the body politic. To this form of empire, secession is no real remedy, for even were it possible - which I do not think it to be - it probably would be attended by other political phenomena utterly subversive of the good proponents of secession sought to achieve; and even were it to succeed, a bellicose imperium, arrogating to itself the right to meddle in remote and inconsequential nations such as Georgia, would surely assert a right to dominate a new near neighbour.

I perceive no way out of this problem, until and unless Americans come to accept that the view, common to Republicans and Democrats alike, Bush and Obama without distinction, which holds that American security depends upon the security/democracy/economic systems/regimes of {insert names of foreign nations du jour}, is rubbish - which it is.

We have just had two cases of home grown terrorism by deranged folk spouting the sort of anti-government rhetoric too frequently heard on the right.

One of those home grown terrorist was a registered Democrat, but he must of been a right wing extremist because none of that crazy stuff is ever found on the Left.

We might as well call the recitation of the Declaration of Independence sedition. (To the English, of course, that's precisely what it was.)

That document speaks of a "Right of the People to alter or to abolish" "any Form of Government" which becomes "destructive" of the ends of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"; and, furthermore, it speaks of laying the foundation of a new government, "on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

There is no guarantee these principles and organized powers shall definitely insure safety and happiness. There is, rather, a striking humility and deference to judgment of these people instituting their new government. In this it echos the Mayflower Compact, whose signers declared "solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another," their intention to "covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation" and furthermore to "enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Offices ... as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony." To this civil body politic, the signers pledged "all due Submission and Obedience."

(All emphasis added.)

All of which is to merely restate what I said in my last response to Al in some thread last week; namely, that the political problem of disloyalty is a permanent one, which has or soon will confront all men to the extent that they form in political society. It is true, of course, that American liberals in our age flatter themselves that they have solved it -- solved it by anachronistically reading J. S. Mill's dubious "open society" doctrine into the First Amendment. This tells us more about American liberals, however, than it does about the problem of disloyalty, which problem, as I say, does not admit of permanent solution.

My own view of the discontent that is among the more striking features of our current political atmosphere, and the seedbed for the recent acts of violence, is not easily summarized. The liberal derailment of our constitutional tradition (mostly by a series of usurpations by the Supreme Court) plays a role; as does the plutocratic drift of recent years. Likely the most influential factors are economic: unemployment, insecurity, increases in taxation (which have already hit most of us at the local level and must eventually hit us from the federal level). Al refers to the discontent of the 1960s, but perhaps the more germane parallel would be the frothing radicalism that afflicted the Republic in the 1930s.

In any case, this latest crank, at the Pentagon, was, it appears, a September 11th "truther," of which perhaps the less said the better. However, attributing his crime, in part, to the "anti-government rhetoric too frequently heard on the right," is more than a stretch, not least because (for instance) however much anti-government rhetoric the Right has promulgated, it has yet to appoint to an office of real political power a man signed himself to the truther ideas.

In a word: No, mere talk of the possibility of a government losing its legitimacy, its just claims to "due submission and obedience," is not sedition by my standards.

We interrupt this thread to bring the welcome news, which I hope all patriots will join in cheering, that the Muslim American traitor Adam Gadahn has been arrested by the Pakistani authorities. I hope he is convicted and duly executed, and may God have mercy on his soul.

al, Only because I keep getting in trouble, and realizing that some of it is my fault, may I remind you that the "dead President" you so poignantly remind us of was killed by a leftist who evidenced no revulsion of big government, at least not enough to stop him from marrying the daughter of a senior KGB officer, and other peccadillos which due to the agonies of self introspection I will not remind you of.
In passing you may wish to refrain from suggesting that people who question the activities of government are homicidal in nature. It was an honorable thing until January '09. And apparently a seasonable thing.

It's wonderful that they captured him, and I hope that he receives a fitting punishment, not to be preceded by torture or kangaroo court proceedings. I'm not certain that capital punishment is the appropriate punishment. Did we execute Nazi and Japanese propagandists during WWII, or merely imprison them?

Well, I've come to the conclusion that I hate the Fed, State and local governments where I live.

Two weeks ago I had the misfortune of having to go to the DMV, and then I got called to jury duty and even got on a jury (where one lone fool screwed up a cut and dried misdemeanor charge).

I witnessed a nation of sheep enduring the utter contempt that bureaucrats and politicians have toward the people.

The contempt is hidden under various excuses for incompetence, the "System", and of course, a shrug of the shoulders and blame on bureaucracy. "What can you do?"

But seeing that various programs and institutions run effectively is the chief job of those we elect and those who are hired to run them.

But all our politicians (really, all of them) want to do new things, not maintain and improve old stuff; and those they hire are hacks who have no interest or ability to either improve performance, install common contemporary technology and business practices, and accountability is nil.

These poltroons can't run a lemonade stand properly, yet they want to run our lives with an endless series of prohibitions, regulations, felonies, misdemeanors, fines, penalties, confiscations, and featherbedding.

Well, I'm done with it. To hell with the US Govt. Down with it. I no longer retain an ounce of respect for it. Not even for the military which has joined the rush to political correctness and displays total contempt for its soldiers in so many myriad ways, not the least of which is in preferring they die than allowing them to sensibly defend themselves while at war.

I'm not certain that capital punishment is the appropriate punishment.

Um, he is a traitor against the federal government, for which, yes, the death penalty is the punishment, and he is already indicted properly for treason. To whit, the Constitution of the United States:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

I think we might just barely manage to conclude that Adam Gadahn meets this definition.

We have just had two cases of home grown terrorism by deranged folk spouting the sort of anti-government rhetoric too frequently heard on the right.

Yes, one of them a registered Democrat and the other a Communist-Manifesto-quoting nut of a decidedly leftist bent. He's "anti-government" in the same sense that the SDS was anti-government.

What unthinking partisan bilge you're sucking on, al.

I perceive no way out of this problem, until and unless Americans come to accept that the view, common to Republicans and Democrats alike, Bush and Obama without distinction, which holds that American security depends upon the security/democracy/economic systems/regimes of {insert names of foreign nations du jour}, is rubbish - which it is.

Maximos, I think that problem is of relatively recent coinage, compared to the more systemic problems which preceded these regime-supporting foreign policies by many decades.

One of the most important is the fact that the federal union was established under a concept of shared sovereignty between the states and the federal gov. but there is no built in mechanism to maintain that. The series of checks and balances between the 3 federal branches take note the tendency of one arm to aggregate more power than it ought, so the checks are supposed to unravel that excess of aggregation. But all three arms are perfectly happy to take power from the states, and there is NO check built in against that (well, there was one, the state legislators electing senators, but that was changed and never was very effective). For at a minimum 150 years (since the Civil War) the states have been losing power to the federal gov.

What is needed is a mechanism of check against that. I would propose that we need another amendment to the constitution: For any action taken at the federal level, by any of the 3 arms, the states can nullify it by an agreement of 2/3 of the states that the action exceeds the powers vested in the federal government.

This would enable the states collectively to take an action corrective of the federal imperialism without falling to secession. I would submit there is a better than even chance that without some comparable change, there will be some action so egregious that one or more states will secede, within the next 30 years. As society becomes more fractured and less content with the ability to push change in any meaningful direction, catastrophic-type individual events will increase, both those of deliberate planning like terrorism and others such as riots. At some point secession will seem like a lesser evil than continued acceptance of a very bad deal from a very corrupt system.

The 2/3 figure of my proposed amendment is deliberate: it needs to be substantively more than a majority, but less than the 3/4 needed for an amendment. It should be less onerous to declare the federal government has exceeded its powers in one act or decision or law than it is to change the fundamental law of the land. But I could go with a supermajority of 60%.

It would also be nice if Congress or the President would exert even a little of their authority to hold the Supreme Court in check, such as by dismissing a justice, or taking a matter out of the court's jurisdiction (Congress), or by the President simply saying that he disagrees with the court's conclusion and he cannot, in good conscience, violate the Constitution and defy his own oath of office, and so he will permit no executive employee to spend any federal money enforcing their decision.

Al, the founders agreed that the source of governmental power rests in the people to begin with. If the people find that the government is no longer performing the role they need from it, they have the authority to do something about that including eradicating that form of government and instituting a new one. It is logically impossible that just talking about doing so has the moral meaning of sedition, though of course the government might not view it that way. It should hardly be surprising, if a government is so damaged that patriots and conservers of stability and order should talk about ditching that government, the said government should ALSO be corrupt enough to mis-define such speech as sedition. That should not make us want to agree with a mis-definition like that.

Also, the polis that has chosen to govern itself under this particular constitution preceded the constitution, and the same polis can persist if the constitution is ditched: patriotism is more to the polis than to a form of government.

Great comment, Tony. I'm intrigued by this modified doctrine of Nullification you propose. The adjustment of requiring a solid alliance and supermajority of states opposed to the egregious act has much to recommend to it, especially by way of tamping down the anarchic character of the original doctrine, which, if effected, would surely have laid waste to the Federal Union.

Hey, even Al might at least get a yuk out of the irony that the original doctrine of Nullification was propounded by Jefferson and Madison in the course of their opposition to ... the Sedition Act of 1798.

...or by the President simply saying that he disagrees with the court's conclusion and he cannot, in good conscience, violate the Constitution and defy his own oath of office, and so he will permit no executive employee to spend any federal money enforcing their decision.

This "solution" makes the President an Emperor, so while the other ideas have some merit, this one is dangerously naive. The judiciary also enjoys a much greater degree of trust from the public than either the executive or legislative branch, so even as a partisan political matter it is not something that should be easily dismissed.

Step2, I am sensitive to your complaint, and it is possible that what I suggested would overstep the limitations intended by the Constitution. However, the president's oath is to uphold the Constitution. If one of the other branches takes an action that would, if he were to go along, require him to do something contrary to the Constitution, then his oath should mean he says no.

The constitution itself is silent about this, but at heart is the distinction between the different powers. Famously, one of the points made over and over in the debates before the Constitution was ratified was that the Supreme Court would have no police, no executive functionaries to enforce its will, and so it cannot become despotic. In order to make such a claim, then, presumes a notion of an executive who refuses to enforce the erroneous _and_ unconstitutional acts of the Court. The fact that it has now become despotic suggests that the intended powers for checking it have not been exercised.

Perhaps this notion always was unrealistic, unfeasible, and itself lending to despotism in the executive. I might agree with that. But the notion was there right from the start.

JD wrote:

The founders were in error when they sought and succeeded in introducing constitutional religious indifference, a.k.a. secularism, as the governing principle of the American people. They broke with European Christian tradition. The American empire never really had a legitimate mandate.

If true, the implications of this are staggering. But it can't be true that religious indifference de-legitimizes governments or empires. St. Paul enjoined obedience to the Roman emperor long before Constantine.

The question before us, especially as Americans and as republicans, is that of what, specifically, constitutes legitimacy. Leo XIII's Immortale Dei ( http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_01111885_immortale-dei_en.html ) tells us what legitimate authority ought to look like. Along with religious indifferentism, certain forms of democracy are unequivocally condemned:

The sovereignty of the people, however, and this without any reference to God, is held to reside in the multitude; which is doubtless a doctrine exceedingly well calculated to flatter and to inflame many passions, but which lacks all reasonable proof, and all power of insuring public safety and preserving order. Indeed, from the prevalence of this teaching, things have come to such a pass that may hold as an axiom of civil jurisprudence that seditions may be rightfully fostered. For the opinion prevails that princes are nothing more than delegates chosen to carry out the will of the people; whence it necessarily follows that all things are as changeable as the will of the people, so that risk of public disturbance is ever hanging over our heads.

However, the encyclical doesn't draw a clear line between legitimacy and illegitimacy, and of course it stops well short of declaring that rebellion against democratic governments is in any way lawful.

Some protestants assume that power alone confers legitimacy, but that is entirely foreign to Catholic thinking. The Catholic, when confronted with illegitimate authority, can say with Charles I to a kangaroo court: "I see I am before a power." Ironically, a believer in the divine right of kings like Charles Stuart I finds common ground with St. Robert Bellarmine in affirming the distinction between power and authority:

It depends upon the Consent of the multitude to ordain over themselves a King or other Magistrates, and if there be a lawful cause, the multitude may change the Kingdom into an Aristocracy or Democracy' (St. Robert Bellarmine, Book 3 De Laicis, Chapter 4).

Or vice versa, presumably. Catholicism, as Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn would say, is demophilic but not democratic, and that too is a distinction with a difference.

Al wrote:

I'm sure that, at Jeff's level, talk of "secession or resistance" is just that, talk. The problem is that, once one starts downhill from the mountains to west of Orland and heads east, one crosses a thousand miles or so and, southerly until the Atlantic, of land where at least a few process these words as a call to violence and act on them.

Previously I took you as a neighbor, since you seemed to be familiar with California's northern counties, but apparently you are unaware of the State of Jefferson secessionist movement gaining momentum in this region ( http://www.jeffersonstate.com ). I have personally met two prominent public officials who support the movement, one even sporting State of Jefferson license plate frames on his vehicle. Secession, in this instance, is not a call to armed rebellion, as anyone familiar with the literature can attest, neither is it a call to secede from the American union/empire. But it is an expression of the anxiety and frustration that is felt in these parts due to the imposition of an alien culture - that of urban liberalism and political correctness - which is destructive of our way of life and is driving families out of the state.

Secession, if justified, can and should be accomplished legally and peacefully. If the modern centralized state is bent on crushing any and all expressions of secessionist sentiment, well, that is just more evidence that we are living under a tyranny.

It's one thing to fantasize about happy and content peasants governed by a just and benevolent nobility under the unity of the True Faith in the long ago and far away but in the context of the United States of America, secession is a call to violence and the use of the term "resistance" speaks for itself.

Is it truly your opinion, Al, that secession and resistance are never justified? If so, then I presume you would have been a Loyalist in 1776. That's nice to know: we might have been allies. If that sounds like a contradiction recall that England was largely sympathetic to the Confederacy. However, I suspect that you dislike the ideas merely because you dislike where they are coming from - the political Right - and because you feel confident your side is now on the ascendance. Until you actually engage the ideas I will have no reason to believe otherwise.

A question for our friend Paul; How is this not sedition by your standards?

A question for you, Al: how is accusing me of sedition not a vile and outrageous act of calumny? Nevermind. Your attitude is shared by many in the corridors of power, and is precisely the reason why this discussion is necessary in the first place.

Lydia wrote:

The alternative to empire, I should think, would be something like America at the founding: A republican federal government with strictly limited powers and no or very, very limited foreign entanglements, kept in check both by the tenth amendment and by strong state governments with a hefty sense of their own sovereignty and of infringements thereupon.

That could work well for a small and religiously not-too-diverse Christian population with British political roots (e.g., many regions of the United States). But what about everyone else? There are, I believe, natural empires and natural colonies - not indelibly or permanently so, but natural for time and circumstance. Haiti, for instance, is not presently fit for self-governance, and there is no shame in admitting the fact. The decline of the colonial age has been an unmitigated disaster for much of the world. I don't think we want a world without empire.

That said, empires are not created equal, and do not automatically assume legitimacy by virtue of their mere existence. They are desireable or undesireable insofar as they do good or do harm. In my opinion, it seems clear that the American empire (encompassing states, territories and conquests) is rapidly squandering the raison d'tere that was once the source of its strength and benevolence.

Jeff --

I follow the great Willmoore Kendall and his collaborator George Carey in formulating American republicanism, properly understood, as follows.

The people are sovereign; but that sovereignty flows through (a) deliberative bodies of the people's representatives who understand themselves to be (b) subject to the transcendent order of justice as apprehended by the philosophic traditions of Western man.

It is a misfortune for conservatives that this treatment of American majority rule -- majority rule of a very particular sort -- has largely been set aside by subsequent thinkers on the Right. One would think that Kendall's stance, almost alone among contemporary conservatives, of full-throated support for the Civil Rights Act (it being precisely an instance of consensus-based deliberative politics, where a sovereign legislature, feeling itself subject to natural law, reforms a defect in a body politic), would endear him to later generations. One would think that his numerous essays recommending options wholly in line with the American political tradition for checking the usurpation of the Court, would recommend him to thinkers of our age.

Why he has been largely ignored is a puzzle to me. Part of it, I suspect, is that his doctrine of majority rule includes an element of humility that rubs a certain class of right-wingers the wrong way: it lacks that missionary zeal which has (alas) dominated the Right for some years now. For Kendall the only "mission" for America, if such terminology is even applicable, far from being something so extensive as to spread and establish democracy and freedom everywhere people yearn to breathe free, much less so grandiose as an end to evil, is simply as an example: the demonstration that self-government under law, under transcendent and eternal law, is possible.

Another part of it is his lack of orthodoxy on to laissez faire economics. Kendall, it is clear, was inclined to favor free market economics, and spoke regularly of that aspect of the American tradition which leaves social innovations to the private sphere of life, in other words the tradition of letting government stay out of social development. But he had no patience for the attempt to read laissez faire economics into the Constitution, seeing it as no less an anachronism than the liberal attempt to read "open society" absolutism into the Constitution. That is to say: according to Kendall the American tradition of majority rule, of legislative supremacy under God, certainly includes the possibility of bringing the force of law to bear, with firm consequences, against whole industries judged inimical to liberty and virtue -- let us say, the pornography industry or the exotic securities industry.

It is, as I say, a great misfortune that few young conservatives read Kendall anymore. For myself, reading him in my early 20s was like a bolt of lightning across my mind. I count Kendall among the greatest teachers in my intellectual life, alongside Burke and Chesterton. Kendall's ineradicable Americanness, his deep learning and life-long wrestling with the sources of American politics, is to me his most endearing quality. Read a couple Kendall essays and you'll soon find yourself engrossed in a volume like this one, pouring over resources of the American political tradition: http://www.libertyfund.org/details.aspx?id=1589&catalog=090210&target=bottom

No true son of Christendom can be against empire in principle. What is the alternative to empire? The "right to self-determination" for every conceivable racial, religious, and random grouping of individuals?

By defending imperialism you are inherently defending the "right of conquest." I happen to agree with that doctrine, but I would hazard to guess you don't agree with the equal right of the conquered to violently overthrow their oppressor. If one government can invade and conquer the territory of another, then the people of that state have an equal right to rally later and retake it.

Like Maximos, I am almost entirely opposed to imperialism on principle because intentional imperialism is inherently destructive to a republican government. The only imperial act in our history which was not was the conquest of half of Mexico in 1848 that was the result of us defeating the Mexicans in a war that they launched against us.

Furthermore, imperialism invariably is a marker that a people have begun a sinful downward spiral. They're no longer content to live peacefully and produce, but must now go out and conquer others, put them down, exploit them and enrich themselves from their spoils. What made the Romans and British interesting was that they brought as much benefit in many cases as they sucked out of the conquered peoples.

Haiti, for instance, is not presently fit for self-governance, and there is no shame in admitting the fact.

I couldn't agree with you more, Jeff, but I don't think we should _want_ Haiti, and I don't see why anyone else should want to govern Haiti, either. What a tar-baby. That's part of my point: I don't object to empire because it's "evil and hegemonic." I think it's often very benevolent. I object to it because ultimately it always seems to drag down the ruling country.

"The question, for us, is whether the American empire has outlived its legitimate mandate"

There is no American empire. There never was an American empire.

Haiti, for instance, is not presently fit for self-governance, and there is no shame in admitting the fact. The decline of the colonial age has been an unmitigated disaster for much of the world. I don't think we want a world without empire.

Much of the world is not capable of self-governance, but that is not our problem. We stand to gain little from colonizing them, and as we colonize them we will invariably allow these third worlders to easily come to our country. Every empire worth mentioning has faced that end, and the last thing many of us want is America to be flooded by the spawn of every armpit country.

I like Jd's point:

The founders were in error when they sought and succeeded in introducing constitutional religious indifference, a.k.a. secularism, as the governing principle of the American people. They broke with European Christian tradition. The American empire never really had a legitimate mandate.

There is too much of the "Enlightenment" in the founding for our good, and was even a poison pill. I don't want to make a rule of it, but "any government not explicitly Christian will become anti-Christian" fits.

That rule would be ironic since Europe, where many states have established churches, are actually far more hostile to Christianity than the US where the state, while hypothetically secular to its very core, allows by comparison virtually no infringement on the religious liberty of Christians.

Mike T has a good point. And I think what he points out is not a coincidence, by the way. Power corrupts. In my opinion the Church and the churches have been a greater witness for Christ in America precisely because they are not united with the power of the state.

In further defense of our secular constitution, a strict reading of it gives the federal government no authority to meddle in the affairs of the church which are, by nature, local issues. The federal government actually has almost not a single iota of intrastate authority granted it in times of peace by the US Constitution (and further sealed by the 10th amendment).

If more Christians would get firmly behind the actual Constitution, they'd have more religious freedom. We seem stuck between the Dobsons who want to federalize every social issue because they bluntly declare that they can't tolerate some states living in sin and liberals (like much of the Catholic population) who would equally reduce it to toilet paper to carry out their social activism.

I would also add that even here, rarely on issues like health care is the constitutional question posed. Even I as a right-libertarian acknowledge some fundamental powerful to establish a welfare system (as inadvisable as that may be), but even Hamilton's far more liberal reading of general welfare clause would only authorize the creation of a federal spending program, not regulation of the health care industry (which means Medicare is constitutional, Obamacare is not).

Would a horizontal/vertical type distinction be too simple for checks and balances between civil entities? IOW, is it useful to speak of both Tony's amendment and periodic popular election of representatives under the category of "vertical checks" and branches of government as "horizontal checks"?

"A question for you, Al: how is accusing me of sedition not a vile and outrageous act of calumny?"

Lol, peace Jeff, I was just asking questions and raising concerns, you know, like they do on Fox. I just find it amusing that some folks get all exercised over the fantasy that a handful of Muslim immigrants are going to radically change our modes of governance while remaining unconcerned (or even approving of) fantasies by home-grown Christianist folk who would do much the same. As for moi, I find the choice of a Christianist state to be as repulsive as an Islamist one.

(For perspective consider another experiment in the way back machine: The time is the 12th century and your choice is being 1, a peasant in northern France. 2. a commoner in the Caliphate, or 3. a Native American peacefully dwelling on the Malibu. Which is the most rational pick? Hint - I like lobster, abalone, and a pleasant climate.)

Anyway, on to secession. A certain precision is useful and using one term to refer to two different things isn't useful. Legally speaking, states and counties are wholly different creatures. I'm sure that someone in say, Indiana, would not have dividing a state as a first thought. Historically secession has meant one thing and the last time it was taken seriously 600,000 folks died and a few million spent a century under state terror.

Yes, I'm familiar with the State of Jefferson and find it strange that anyone would take it seriously as it deserves to be filed with things like Emperor Norton. For one thing the new state would have to assume its share of the California and Oregon debt so we would start out deep in the hole. Since you find liberalism an issue, the tension between the inland cow counties and all us dirty hippies on the coast would be interesting. The anxiety and frustation you mention is precisely why talk of secession and resistance should be avoided. What is intellectual and academic to the denizens of this blog is going to be taken differently by some further down the food chain.

California needs to be fixed. You might start by circulating the current petition to remove the moronic requirement that the budget needs a supermajority in order to get through the legislature then fix Prop. 13. California became a great state because we were willing to go great things - a world class university system, roads, water, etc. Swallowing the anti-tax snake oil in response to the anxieties and frustrations of the 1970s has resulted in much of that being trashed. Buying into cow county fantasies isn't going to result in paradise. You probably don't remember but we reformed the state Senate in the 60s because the that body gave disproportionate power to the rural counties who had no problem spending on their concerns while short sheeting urban areas.

"Is it truly your opinion, Al, that secession and resistance are never justified? If so, then I presume you would have been a Loyalist in 1776."

Actually my uncle and several cousins chose to fight while my grandfather got his fill of war in 1757 (he also got a land grant in Virginia). I go along with the Lockean prescription in the Declaration.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right..."

I refer not to you personally but the whole "tea party' phenomenon now. Duration is pivotal in Locke's formula so why do we just now see these folks raising a ruckus within a few months of January, 2009? What has changed? Only two things that I can see; an ongoing financial crisis and a black man in the White House.

A people have the right to change their government by any means necessary as long as conditions warrant it. Unhappy people on the right and left who see those conditions applying in our current situation are either so unnerved by their personal economic situation that they are incapable (temporarly we hope) of clear thought or are simply mentally ill.

Before I forget, Mike, Medicare regulates insurance companies and negotiates with providers.

"Yes, one of them a registered Democrat and the other a Communist-Manifesto-quoting nut of a decidedly leftist bent. He's "anti-government" in the same sense that the SDS was anti-government."

Sage, I think you mean Weatherman but I did use the term inchoate. The extremes tend to feed on one another and if one actually talks with some of these folks one find that it is possible to hols all sorts of strange and conflicting views. Stirring the pot will cause all sorts of unpleasant things to surface.

No Paul, I don't find it ironic to contemplate Madison and Jefferson opposing a law I also oppose while disagreeing with their flirtation with what would become a pernicious policy. Turning ancient circumstances which had to be finessed in order to have a nation into high principle and in the process ignoring the actual history that evolved is a poor way to make policy. The last thing the United States needs is to enshrine yet another anti-majoritarian contrivance in our politics. The Senate is bad enough.

"There is no American empire. There never was an American empire."

Only if one omits much of our history. Empire can be a subjective concept. France claimed Algeria as part of metropolitan France; the Algerians disagreed.

al,
You are dealing in fantasies if you are thinking of the American empire. Influence, even global influence, is not an empire.

Understood but debatable at the margins; James Burnham had an article on this in National Review a few decades ago. Perhaps, in the end, influence defined as boots on the ground is too restrictive for the real world. And, as you made a categorical statement we have the likes of Hawaii to explain.

Before I forget, Mike, Medicare regulates insurance companies and negotiates with providers.

Regulating the insurance companies is then an unconstitutional aspect except where it applies to interstate commerce. Since insurance companies operate locally through their agents, the federal government has little practical jurisdiction here.

Negotiating with providers is also perfectly constitutional since Medicare does not require that providers participate in the program.

There is no political solution to a spiritual death.

"...and liberals (like much of the Catholic population) who would equally reduce it to toilet paper to carry out their social activism."

Just how has much of the Catholic population reduced the Constitution to toilet paper to carry out their social activism.?

Interesting to note that the Protestant population (which largely consists of radicals who not only are mostly Pro-aborts but also liberals, too) are not even mentioned.

Paul, I confess my ignorance of Willmoore Kendall and promise to look him up. What you describe sounds like a worthy and sensible contribution to modern political theory (his support for the Civil Rights Act notwithstanding.).

The people are sovereign; but that sovereignty flows through (a) deliberative bodies of the people's representatives who understand themselves to be (b) subject to the transcendent order of justice as apprehended by the philosophic traditions of Western man.

Undoubtedly Kendall anticipates problems and difficulties in his work. I should like to know how he would resolve the contradiction arising when the sovereign people are, themselves, in rebellion against the "transcendent order of justice" under which their deliberative bodies toil, or when deliberative bodies are chosen on the basis of accommodating the same rebellion.

It seems not to matter much, in the end, whether sovereignty rests in the people or in a monarch - every system ultimately depends upon the virtue of the majority. But is a virtuous people a democratic people? We can easily identify the qualities which inspire and lend support to a monarchy; but what are the virtues giving rise to democracy? Is not democracy more commonly animated by envy, greed, and selfishness? Granted - charity is often democratic, when the scale is humane and grave injustice is out of the question. But a sovereignty limited by such conditions is obviously not sovereignty at all.

Another problem, of course, is identifying the "people" who are said to be sovereign. Oceans of blood have been spilt in carving republics out of empires - in drawing the right kinds of borders for the right kinds of sovereign people.

For these reasons, and others, I think the idea of popular sovereignty creates more problems than it purports to solve. But perhaps in our times we are left with no alternatives ...

Mike T. wrote:

By defending imperialism you are inherently defending the "right of conquest." I happen to agree with that doctrine, but I would hazard to guess you don't agree with the equal right of the conquered to violently overthrow their oppressor.

You frame the issue as though conquest necessitates oppression. I don't believe that to be the case. A conqueror may be, on the whole, a just and benevolent ruler, and revolt against that conqueror may be entirely illicit.

If one government can invade and conquer the territory of another, then the people of that state have an equal right to rally later and retake it.

Clearly a non sequitur.

Like Maximos, I am almost entirely opposed to imperialism on principle because intentional imperialism is inherently destructive to a republican government.

Of course imperialism is destructive of republican government. But you are making a mistake: republican government is a means to an end, not an end itself. If imperialism results in a greater good in any given circumstance, then you ought to prefer it. The notion that republican government must be maintained at all costs strikes me as morally dangerous, to say the least.

Furthermore, imperialism invariably is a marker that a people have begun a sinful downward spiral. They're no longer content to live peacefully and produce, but must now go out and conquer others, put them down, exploit them and enrich themselves from their spoils.

Again, I don't believe this is even remotely just to the European imperialism of the Christian era. Granted, greed and exploitation and cruelty do follow imperialism, but they follow men everywhere, and in conquered lands have generally been less brutal than what they have replaced. The main exception to this has been the westward expansion of the United States, which was carried out without even the pretense of evangelism or goodwill towards conquered peoples, and on balance left the indigenous populations worse off than than before.

What made the Romans and British interesting was that they brought as much benefit in many cases as they sucked out of the conquered peoples.

This is even more true of the Spanish, French and Portuguese empires, the conquerors preferring to to mix with the natives rather than obliterate them, and in so doing converted millions to the True Faith.

The question, for us, is whether the American empire has outlived its legitimate mandate, and whether secession or resistance might be, in some cases, a moral imperative.

This is the line that provoked Al to "raise the question" of sedition. But if we do not address the subject today, it is likely to be forced upon us within a generation. Unlike the colonists in 1776, we do not merely have a government that sometimes works against our economic interests. We have a government which has, for decades now, officially and actively and aggressively worked against the natural and divine law, this outrage ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/24/hud-wants-help-creating-a_n_475817.html ) being only the latest example. Perhaps the present level of government-sponsored wickedness is tolerable and can be successfully navigated by clever citizens. But we are not all equally clever, and at some point the evil being tolerated and taught to our children outweighs the good of docile submission.

Resistance, I am afraid, is not going to come primarily from the states. Most Americans live cheek-to-jowl with civilization's vandals and desecrators: city, county and state governments are deeply complicit. Recently, when the Supreme Court of California ruled that same-sex "marriages" could not be prohibited, only two of 58 counties - Kern and Butte - offered more than token resistance. The rest fell into line overnight, even the most conservative "cow counties" (to use Al's sneering appellation). As much I would like to see a revival of the Tenth Amendment, I'm not sure that is going to be enough.

Resistance can take many forms, and under the circumstances I think resistance is going to be regional. Let there be regions where federal abominations like the HUD witchhunt can simply find no collaborators. If this happens often enough, and widely enough, perhaps the vandals will back off, choosing not to drain their shrinking budgets in order to force compliance. It's a long shot, I know, but you tell me what the options are.

You frame the issue as though conquest necessitates oppression. I don't believe that to be the case. A conqueror may be, on the whole, a just and benevolent ruler, and revolt against that conqueror may be entirely illicit.

Clearly a non sequitur.

It is only that if you assume that governments have a special prerogative to alter and abolish one another with impunity. I reject that presumption on the grounds that it gives license to governments to act aggressively toward others, carry out illegitimate wars and behave as oppressors (one population's oppression is another government's enforcement of its "rightful claim" to that population).

Of course imperialism is destructive of republican government. But you are making a mistake: republican government is a means to an end, not an end itself. If imperialism results in a greater good in any given circumstance, then you ought to prefer it. The notion that republican government must be maintained at all costs strikes me as morally dangerous, to say the least.

That is no mistake. Republican government is not just a means to an end, but an end unto itself as it is the only way to perpetuate a free society that is not martially aggressive toward others. There are inherent virtues to a republican government which do not exist in any form, such as the civic virtue that it cultivates which has virtually never existed in a monarchy, certainly not for a sustained period of time because the duties of a citizen to the republic are higher than the duty of a subject to a dictator or king.

Of course, you can speak of moral danger in the abstract, but ignore the fact that imperialism almost invariably inflicts moral harm on the society doing it, to say nothing of its target. Not a single nation in human history has avoided the moral calamities inherent to imperial policy.

Again, I don't believe this is even remotely just to the European imperialism of the Christian era. Granted, greed and exploitation and cruelty do follow imperialism, but they follow men everywhere, and in conquered lands have generally been less brutal than what they have replaced. The main exception to this has been the westward expansion of the United States, which was carried out without even the pretense of evangelism or goodwill towards conquered peoples, and on balance left the indigenous populations worse off than than before.

It is not simply a matter of what is good for the invaded, but what is good for the invader. As an American patriot, I am far less concerned with the well-being of the rest of the world if it comes at a spiritual and civic cost to my people. I would quite literally rather Haiti go to hell than see it further corrupt our own people by assimilating them through imperial policy.

My concern is primarily for my people, who happen to be my true neighbors. The rest of the world can take care of itself. That is a major difference between us.

Just how has much of the Catholic population reduced the Constitution to toilet paper to carry out their social activism.?

By activating for the political left.

Interesting to note that the Protestant population (which largely consists of radicals who not only are mostly Pro-aborts but also liberals, too) are not even mentioned.

Interesting to note that most conservative Christians in America are also Protestants. Even many denominations that are "liberal" are actually divided with large conservative wings like the PCUSA.

Of course imperialism is destructive of republican government.

Seems to me that there is a mistake going both ways. First, it is nearly always the case that aggressive imperial take-overs are unjust on their face, and the theoretical good that the empire might do for the subject nation is beside the point. You cannot do evil that good result. But the result of causing damage back to the imperial actor comes at least in part from the unjust nature of the aggression, and will hurt the country whether it be a republic or some other just form. That is, a just country cannot remain just while engaging in unjust empire-building, and its own injustice will rot it whatever form it has.

Yet there are a few isolated instances of a nation taking out a neighbor's government and replacing it, as a matter of self-defense because the neighbor was entirely out of line and aggressive in its behavior. This means that the sheer act of imposing a new government on another nation doesn't have to mean aggressive imperialism run amok. But it's rare, I say. And if a just republic is forced into a situation where it must rule the neighbor for a time while the new government finds its feet, that is not itself destructive of republicanism: as long as the occupation and governance from outside have as their end goal that the occupied nation soon learn to rule themselves peacefully, the just republic which forces this upon the occupee isn't going to loose its republican character just by that alone.

The degree to which America is, or has been, an empire, is open to debate, because it is surely a matter of degree: the expansion across the west was one form, (settlers, yes, but along with them soldiers and forts), and our stepping onto the world stage in the Spanish American war, with the end result of our holding lots of islands. There is the result of WWII, where we held Japan and (part of) Germany, though the degree of imperialism here must surely be lesser, since we repaired them after their defeat, and THEN WE GOT OUT. But there was good ol' Vietnam, Panama, and Grenada. On the less jack-booted side, there were all the places where we leaned on a nation to let us put a base there by threats of withholding our trade or offers of assistance dependent on cooperation. All in all, we are far from free of all imperialist events in our past, and we are far from being a clear and obvious Napoleonic empire. Matter of degree.

Republican government is not just a means to an end, but an end unto itself as it is the only way to perpetuate a free society that is not martially aggressive toward others.

Mike, I think that you missed Jeff's point. Eventually, all that will be left will be members of the kingdom of God, and then we won't need a republic. In the meantime, a republic may be the best form of government to protect various freedoms and to promote many public virtues, within a context that allows for this than any other form. Sure. But without that context being present, the republican form is NOT necessarily the best form to achieve the common good. There are times and places where a people need to develop _into_ a people who can carry off a republican government, and for them something else may be best. And for a people who were once a republic but who lost their public and private virtues and their willingness to self-rule, it is debatable whether another form is better or worse. Is there any example in history where a republic revived itself from such a sorry state?

Mike, I think that you missed Jeff's point. Eventually, all that will be left will be members of the kingdom of God, and then we won't need a republic. In the meantime, a republic may be the best form of government to protect various freedoms and to promote many public virtues, within a context that allows for this than any other form. Sure. But without that context being present, the republican form is NOT necessarily the best form to achieve the common good. There are times and places where a people need to develop _into_ a people who can carry off a republican government, and for them something else may be best. And for a people who were once a republic but who lost their public and private virtues and their willingness to self-rule, it is debatable whether another form is better or worse. Is there any example in history where a republic revived itself from such a sorry state?

We won't need a republic then, but I didn't see Jeff making any comments that implied that he was including the Kingdom of Heaven into this conversation. The Kingdom is not an empire and our Lord is no emperor. I oppose imperialism as a rule simply on the grounds that, while a philosopher can abstractly ponder scenarios in which it can be a real moral good, it is, in practice, almost invariably a moral evil to both sides involved.

As to your last question, once a society reaches that point, it is typically lost entirely. Roman civilization died. There are no cities left where Latin is the vernacular language unless you count the Vatican. Roman civilization has left its mark on many cultures, but Latin-speaking Roman civilization is dead.

If imperialism results in a greater good in any given circumstance, then you ought to prefer it.

I haven't the slightest notion of what this actually means in practice, as opposed to the level of abstraction with which it is stated. Aside from the epistemic problems - how could one know, with any degree of certainty, that any given country, or people, and any given set of circumstances, really would be better off if reconstituted as an empire, and know the answers to these questions before a period of political change, as opposed to ruminating about them ex post facto, in the manner of historians - how could one even act upon such knowledge? Lay aside the controverted matter of whether America is an empire, and stipulate that it is a republic, in an entirely uncomplicated manner. If one were to become convinced that, for reason of changing mores, moral declension, or some such factor, America might be better off under the imperial form, how would one effectuate this ambition? The very process of effectuating the change would necessitate subversion, even treason.

Moreoever, what is the nature of the good that may or may not be enhanced under the imperial form? Empire is traditionally undertaken for transparently pecuniary and material reasons, and their attendant spiritual emergent properties (ie. "National Glory", or "National Greatness"), and these are scarcely reasons to assume the manifest temptations to evil inherent in the projection of power, conquest, and so forth. Were the effects of the Spanish conquests of Latin America uncomplicatedly good, in the sense that they advanced the betterment of those peoples without qualification? Not really, not in the mind of anyone who has even skimmed Las Casas. Even if one were to cite the barbaric religious rites of some of the natives, this could not have been known anterior to the decision to, you know, actually conquer them; even if one believes that, on balance, despite the atrocities of the conquest and enslavements, things were better off afterwards, this still could not have been known before deciding to conquer and enslave.

Why bring this up? Because there is simply no way to know, prior to any imperial undertaking, whether it really will result in betterment of the human condition. You can try to run a probability calculus, but the terms are indeterminate and open; history isn't really predictable in that fashion. What we're really talking about when we evaluate empires and imperial undertakings is ex post facto analysis, determining, long after the fact, that imperial state I was preferable, according to our conception of the good, to pre-imperial state P. There is a certitude here that is never warranted in the midst of the unfolding circumstances, which is why the burden of proof must be on the empire-builders.

For once I agree almost completely with Maximos. But I have one qualification: a just state (including a republic) can reasonably decide - not to "become an empire" in the generic sense - but rather to take on the defeat, occupation, control, and re-building of a specific neighbor whose aggression forces others to step in. This decision would make the just state imperial in a sense without altering its basic form, including its republican form if that's what it starts out with.

"Just how has much of the Catholic population reduced the Constitution to toilet paper to carry out their social activism.?"

By activating for the political left.

"Interesting to note that the Protestant population (which largely consists of radicals who not only are mostly Pro-aborts but also liberals, too) are not even mentioned."

Interesting to note that most conservative Christians in America are also Protestants. Even many denominations that are "liberal" are actually divided with large conservative wings like the PCUSA.

If it weren't for "much of the Catholic population" and, indeed, if it were left to most Protestants, things like abortion and homosexuality, typically liberal-backed agendas, would have hardly found any opposition at all amongst Americans, what with most of the Protestant churches as early as the mid-60s having not only accomodated abortion but also promoted open access to it and, where homosexuality is concerned, 70% mainline Protestants have supported acceptance of it, with support of 52% Presbyterians, 56% Lutheran, 63% Anglican, 51% Methodist, 40% Baptists.

As some fair-minded Protestants (which includes their ministers and theologians, too) have come to realize at the time of JP II (and even now during the pontificate of Ratz), if it weren't for "much of the Catholic population" but, more precisely, Rome, there would be no anchor by which to keep hold onto the Rock of genuine Christianity!

Tea Party,

I have no beef with the Catholic Church, but rather much of its members who are decidedly left-wing in this country and reject Catholic doctrine on abortion, homosexuality, etc.

You also left out non-denominational churches which are often conservative evangelical churches, Pentacostals, Assembly of God, Seventh Day Adventists and the Mennonites.

Tea Party,

Take a look at these survey results showing where Catholics and Evangelicals, churchgoing and non-church going included for both, line up on moral issues. You will notice that regular church-going Evangelicals actually tend to have far more in common with what Rome teaches than even church-going Catholics.