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Exceptional America

by Tony M.

I love this country. I admit it: I am a patriot.

I love the many, many good things about America, I love the special qualities she has and the particular virtues her citizens exhibit. I love America’s sense of optimism, can-do attitude. I love Americans’ hospitability, of which I have experienced much. I love the American love for the underdog, rooting for the little guy to make big. I love America for its natural beauty and treasures. I love America’s contribution to the world of thought and science.

I don’t love everything about America. I despise the slavery we took into our fiber with colonialization. I hate the materialism of the many. I dislike the failing of separate regional characters.

But here is the thing: I don’t view any of the defects of America as intrinsic to the very being and meaning of America. I view each and every one of them as something that America can change and still be America. And so, when I say I want America to change, I mean that she should change evils that are incidental but remain who she “really is” deep down, because I don’t think any essential part of the root reality is intrinsically wrong. And no, that doesn’t mean that the Constitution is all perfect, either - it can be changed, improved, corrected, perfected, without changing what America really is at root.

And so, I am a patriot.

Are you?

When you think of “patriots,” do you think of “us” or “them”. In your own mind, do you associate yourself with the word, the idea, the sense of patriotism.

There are conservatives of a sort who don’t. For example, there are some extreme traditionalists who think that acknowledging ANY sort of sovereignty but Christ’s is a repudiation of Christ’s sovereignty, who think that Christ alone is and should be our ruler.

There are plenty of liberals who are patriots. They have, for example, no problem with saluting the flag, singing the national anthem, and cheering for America.

But as far as generalizations go, conservatives are patriots who are totally comfortable with the name, liberals are not so much – by and large the typical liberal either refuses to associate with patriotism or is at least a little uncomfortable with being thought of that way. They squirm just a bit if they are asked if they are patriots. They may say “yes…but…” That is, they are patriots but with a qualification to that notion. Or, at least, that’s my totally anecdotal experience. If you think I am wrong, let me know. I would like to hear what you think.

When someone like Obama declares he wants to change America,

We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America

does he mean the sort of fundamental transformation that makes America cease to be what it is in its root reality, or does he mean something less essential? Conservatives think that maybe by “fundamental change” he means really fundamental – that he honestly means what he said. Does he mean for America in her core essence to cease to be so that a new, different entity can exist in its place? And, if so, is that consistent with patriotism properly understood? Is that intent for change anything other than replacing America with a different entity?

But this question isn’t just for Obama, it is for all the politicians who stake their claim on “change”. Just how far do they want that change to take us? Do they believe in any basic foundation that should remain? If so, what is it that should be stable so that change can occur in the rest? What is, for them, the part that isn’t subject to “fixing.” Do they even have a coherent notion of these things?

Comments (70)

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2014/feb/06/what-barack-obama-has-said-about-fundamentally-tra/
"In five days, you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor."

"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." - Carl Schurz

Happy Independence Day!

Excellent ideas - get rid of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street, and give better chances of success to more people.

But it's also a matter of specifics: how you go about getting rid of the greed on Wall Street, for example. You can nuke Manhattan, or knock down the buildings and pave over it, or modestly change it. You can take away the problem of Wall Street by taking away ownership of capital altogether, or you can change it in lesser ways that doesn't "fundamentally transform" but corrects its errors.

So, was Obama speaking loosely in using "fundamentally transform" and being more accurate in his later commentary, or was he being "fundamentally" honest in his first declaration and just doing political triangulating in his later? This isn't a question that can be answered ONLY by his words, of course.

Nor is it a test we should apply to Obama, as if other politicians get off scot free. There is plenty of talk about change. What matters is what does the person intend to hold stable and constant while he accomplishes change, and whether that of itself implies a fundamental change or not.

For example, a serious argument can be made that the Constitution's underpinnings of meaning inherently rely on a world-view with a deity - that the whole construct assumes a God. If you take the words of the Constitution and re-interpret them so that they assume no God, instead they are "God-neutral", that can legitimately be described as a "fundamental transformation" in the state. While other people will claim that since the words didn't change, it isn't a fundamental change. So, which one is more true, more coherent?

And so, when I say I want America to change, I mean that she should change evils that are incidental but remain who she “really is” deep down, because I don’t think any essential part of the root reality is intrinsically wrong.

That's very important--a kind of essentialism bound up with patriotism. I concur.

For example, a serious argument can be made that the Constitution's underpinnings of meaning inherently rely on a world-view with a deity - that the whole construct assumes a God.

Given the Founder's reliance on Locke, I would agree. I would argue that Locke's view of God was much more closely related to Deism rather than any revealed religion.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke/#HumNatGodPur

Tony, would you say that the American Revolution was justified?

I have mixed feelings on that. Originally I would have sad absolutely, but lately I'm starting to lean towards no.

MarcAnthony, here's a distinction worth considering. Distinguish:

1) Was the American Revolution justified from the perspective of, e.g., just war theory?
2) Was the resulting national entity created by the Constitution in 1789 well-crafted and worthy of support?

My strong suspicion is that people in certain corners of the blogosphere argue for "no" on #1 on the supposition that this is strong evidence for "no" on #2. I would contend that even a "no" on #1 doesn't tell us a whole lot about #2.

I've been reading Zippy a lot, who has been rubbing off on me.

I would say justification for the Revolution was problematic for a few reasons.

1) The Revolution was based around the principle that governmental authority derives from the consent of the governed. But this is quite clearly false. For one thing, we would have to label all non-democratic governments as illegitimate, which is ridiculous, and I'd argue even unbiblical. For another, it is most commonly said that 1/3 of the American people were Patriots, 1/3 tories, and 1/3 undecided/uncaring. If government derives from the consent of the governed then there should have been no Revolution, as only 1/3 of the nation would have supported it, right?

2) Just war principles, which you brought up, are another good example. The colonies featured one of the highest qualities of life in the entire world at the time. Their taxation, even with the supposedly horrible raises (like the stamp act) used to justify the revolution, were actually incredibly mild and reasonable when compared to the world at large. Is it just to go to war when quality of life is that high and only a minority of the population even supports it? The British were hardly tyrants.

3) Very importantly, the colonies WERE, in fact, validly governed. The British mainland even helped the colonies in the French and Indian War, and it's worth noting that the colonies were hunky-dory being British subjects right up until there were taxes they didn't want to pay. The organization the Sons of Liberty has a modern day reputation as freedom fighters. Truthfully, they were closer to terrorists, though that is perhaps too strong.

And onto the Constitution itself - I don't know. I certainly don't like the early libertarian principles in it. The theory behind the Southern secession during the Civil War is, if you think about it, totally absurd. They lost a valid election in a fair Presidential race and instead of accepting their duly elected government they decided to secede. And yet, Southerners have a point when they say that perhaps the early Constitution had a system like that in mind. Certainly the Articles of Confederation did.

In a way, the increasing authority of the central government might NOT have been totally Constitutional but also might have been absolutely necessary in order for the nation to survive, because true Athenian democracy can only really work on a small scale. The Constitutional committee couldn't decide whether or not they wanted to be Athens or Rome, and in the process of having their cake and eating it too they ended up having to fight it out in the early years, culminating in the horrific Civil War that essentially ended any idea of an Athenian type democracy as viable in any way.

So America as it is today probably isn't as any of the founders envisioned it, but it's quite possibly because America as the founders envisioned it would have died.

I'm completely open to being convinced otherwise, though. These views are relatively new for me.

true Athenian democracy can only really work on a small scale.

Not to be too harsh, but I think you are really missing something historically if you think any of the major founding fathers wanted to found a pure democracy a la Athens. It was _always_ a representative Republic with some democratic aspects, and there were many checks and balances (just one example being the election of the senators by the states rather than the people, which has since been changed) that were quite clearly intended to distinguish the government form from a direct democracy.

Whether secession was permitted by the Constitution is a huge question, as you know, on which much ink has been spilled. But it would certainly be a hasty and I would argue unjustified conclusion to say that the Constitution was definitely *intended* to permit secession. Plenty of scholars, and I suspect at least several of the Founders, would have strongly disagreed. The farthest I would go would be to say that the Constitution simply leaves that question unaddressed. But "no secession" scarcely needs to mean the sclerotic and undeniably unconstitutional Behemoth of a federal government we have gotten, nor anything remotely close. And if the various arms of government had been run by more, er, "positivists" (as they are falsely called) who stuck to the constitution and thus exercised their rightful, intended powers to keep the system of checks and balances in place, we wouldn't have gotten that federal government either.

Another point, MarcAnthony, is that it's unclear that, "This would not have lasted forever" is necessarily a damning criticism. Must a governmental plan be guaranteed, for example, to produce a country powerful enough to fight off all of its enemies forever, world without end, in order to be a wise governmental plan? That's by no means clear. As I just implied choosing the amount of time to make the country count as a success is rather arbitrary. Is a hundred years enough? Certainly if a form of government cannot be sustained even for a couple of generations, we can probably infer that it was missing something. But for 250 years? Had America, in fact, been defeated again by England or by Spain (e.g., because the southern states succeeded in seceding and the resulting confederacy ended up siding with an enemy in a later generation) would that have meant that the Republican form of government in the Constitution was bad or foolish? I think it's important to ask these kinds of questions very directly, because often the criticisms from the "America was a mistake" crowd conveniently leave them out. One will even sometimes get the idea that the Founders are somehow to be blamed for not having prevented later judges from telling lies about the Constitution and perverting the form of government they put into place! One almost wonders if the founding of America as a country could have been vindicated only if Madison had come back as a ghost to haunt the Roe justices and terrorize them into rendering a true verdict!

Not to be too harsh, but I think you are really missing something historically if you think any of the major founding fathers wanted to found a pure democracy a la Athens.

Yeah, I hesitated when I wrote that. Certainly in theory nobody wanted a *pure* Athenian democracy. But I think a lot of the Southerners wanted something closer to Athens than Rome(in general), whereas the Northerners wanted something closer to Rome than Athens - the point being that the South emphasized the people's role in it far more than the North did, partially due to a smaller population. The South's involvement in the Constitutional Convention in some ways amounted to trying to work in loopholes to escape authority. One of the great misconceptions of the Civil War is that the South was being "dominated" by the North by the time Lincoln was elected - it was closer to the other way around.

Any way, a lot of the checks and balances and compromises in the Constitution were because there were two different theories of government warring with each other in the Constitutional Convention.

But it would certainly be a hasty and I would argue unjustified conclusion to say that the Constitution was definitely *intended* to permit secession.

I agree completely, but I can certainly see the case for it.

But "no secession" scarcely needs to mean the sclerotic and undeniably unconstitutional Behemoth of a federal government we have gotten, nor anything remotely close.

Agreed, but here's a thought: America in its 200 year history was arguably the world's most successful country. How different would we be, and would we like it more, if the limits of the original Constitution were kept?

I'm far from justifying what we have now, but I think the question it poses is interesting.

Until recently I would have described myself as a pseudo-libertarian and still believe in a lot of those principles, but I do think there's some merit to opposing arguments now, at least.

Agreed, but here's a thought: America in its 200 year history was arguably the world's most successful country. How different would we be, and would we like it more, if the limits of the original Constitution were kept?

Who knows? Would we even be here? It doesn't really matter, though. An analogy: Suppose your grandfather were a highway robber who got away with his loot. Suppose your innocent father inherited his ill-gotten gains. Your entire existence might depend upon that, and very likely at least the comfort of your upbringing, education, etc. That doesn't mean you have to endorse highway robbery in hindsight. What we would like better isn't in question. And even if we stipulate (which is very hard to know) that America would not be nearly so prosperous and powerful, for example, in 2014 if the federal government had been kept to its limits in 1950 (a year I just made up for no particular reason) or even 1850, it doesn't follow that we have to say that America was a mistake in the first place.

The Revolution was based around the principle that governmental authority derives from the consent of the governed. But this is quite clearly false. For one thing, we would have to label all non-democratic governments as illegitimate, which is ridiculous, and I'd argue even unbiblical.

That's an overly narrow application of the principle of consent. As far as I can tell there is no necessary reason why consent must only function under conditions of democracy. Given that our own system, particular in the early decades of the Republic, included numerous non-democratic elements, it is quite a stretch to ascribe a quasi-Jacobin notion of consent to them. (Here I use Burke's famous epigrammatic definition of Jacobinism: "the principle that all government, not being a democracy, is a usurpation.")

When Lincoln speaks of consent, he generally contrasts it with the idea of certain people born to rule and certain other people born to be ruled. Consent as a political principle need not be confined to one form of government. It is easy to forget, for instance, how often monarchies, historically speaking, were truly popular: the king was on the side of the people -- against the barons, against the church, against the emperor, etc. Indeed, biblically-speaking, there is a real sense in which the early Hebrew monarchs were a concession to popular sentiment.

Moreover, it is abundantly clear that even popularly-elected governments may well trample over consent, departing from popular will, abusing their power and the station despite the formal structures that appear to grant that "the consent of the governed."

MarcAnthony, I will try to answer you main (and very worthy) questions, but I may not get to all of it tonight.

1) The Revolution was based around the principle that governmental authority derives from the consent of the governed. But this is quite clearly false. For one thing, we would have to label all non-democratic governments as illegitimate, which is ridiculous, and I'd argue even unbiblical.

Zippy is of course a very intelligent person, but he has a RATHER LARGE BEE in his bonnet about the thesis "authority derives from the consent of the governed" and how wrong it is. With Zippy, I agree that all authority derives from God ultimately. And any authority that claims that it does not derive its powers from God is defective.

However, St. Robert Bellarmine, well before Locke got his hands on politics, wrote quite clearly that men also have their role in how authority comes to rest in certain men:

"It depends upon the consent of the multitude to constitute over itself a king, consul, or other magistrate. This power is, indeed, from God, but vested in a particular ruler by the counsel and election of men”

Now, it is certainly NOT the case that Bellarmine was thinking of democratically elected rulers, (for one thing he mentions kings). The principle applies even without democracy. "Consent" is not found solely in formal elections. Here's a couple of examples: the first time a nation forms enough to have a ruler, and Francis the I comes out of the mix as king, he could not possibly become king without the consent of those around him, at least SOME of them, usually those whose say is accepted by lots and lots of others (barons, nobles, elders, the rich, whomever the many go along with). There has to be people who first say "yes" to "will we obey Francis", and then there has to be more still who say "OK, we will go along with that" until you have a sufficiency of support for Francis as king that others more or less have to go along whether they would prefer to or not. In the first stage of the process, there is always a body (sometimes small) of men who have a real, free first choice as to whether they will follow Francis or Bob or do something else, and then there is another body of men (somewhat larger) who can at least somewhat freely choose to "go along" with the preference of the first group or not. It is generally impossible for a man to become king where no kingship had previously existed without consent of many others.

Take also the example of a kingdom where there has been a 150 year rule that the king's oldest son will be crowned, and the old king dies with no heir, and there is no other rule in place. Some men have to gather and decide what new rule to institute to identify the new king - maybe the oldest son of the king's brothers, or the oldest son of the king's brothers AND sisters... whichever rule they select, they had freedom to choose some other rule, and so the new ruler comes to have his authority through the agency of MEN, not simply and directly through the providence of God. (Which really points to the fact that even if they had had that rule already in place before the king died, that rule is itself a choice of men, not simply handed to them by God. In some kingdoms they have one rule, in some others another rule about it, and it is men who decide.)

So, even if "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" was capable of meaning "in exclusion from God", it is also capable of meaning "ultimately from God but mediately through men." There is no necessity to demand it be the former.

Admittedly, Jefferson himself seems to have been pretty allergic to God, and was likely to have meant the former. However, many of the people who formed the governments of the colonies at the time and who then formed the US government through the war and after were not nearly so enamored of Lockean theory as Jefferson was. Some rejected Locke outright. And Madison, for example, had Bellarmine's work in his library. It is surely possible that Jefferson intended his phrase in the Declaration in one sense but that other men accepted it in a different sense.

St. Thomas, in "On Kingship", explicitly refers to men who have the capacity to erect a king as their ruler - who have the capacity to choose one man or another or some other form of government. The concept is there whether we like it or not - God puts it into man's hands to work out the details of who shall rule and how, by human conscious choices.

Which is not to say that the authority to rule rests in the whole multitude as such, and they then delegate it to a single man or small group. Yes, that COULD be the way it to read it, but it's not a necessity. The authority to rule can either come from God into the multitude and then passed from them into certain men; OR it can come from God directly to certain men due to the selective actions of men, without the multitude ever holding the authority themselves. Either picture is consistent with basic Catholic teaching on the social nature of man - as long as in the former picture one understands that men are not morally free to either withhold all authority for ruling by refusing to delegate (so that a formal state of anarchy should exist), nor that men can delegate and take the power back up and delegate again wherever their whim takes them, i.e. that men are constrained to form societies and thus governments and thus select rulers and once delegated the multitude are not free to take it back up again without due cause. Given that either picture is compatible with the Church's teaching, and either one is also compatible with the phrase in the Declaration (or at least the second picture is), I see no reason to claim this founding document to be definitely in error.

For another, it is most commonly said that 1/3 of the American people were Patriots, 1/3 tories, and 1/3 undecided/uncaring. If government derives from the consent of the governed then there should have been no Revolution, as only 1/3 of the nation would have supported it, right?

While it is true that there were plenty of Tories, I think the facts are a little more decided in favor of the Patriots than that 1/3. The colonies already had true governments. It was the men forming these very governments - in some sense the best men of the colonies - who by formal and deliberative and organized structure, decided that revolt (rather, secession) was necessary. It wasn't a conspiracy in a back alley with a few leaders and a few hundred thugs, it was out in the open and constantly approved (in one form or another) by the separate governmental bodies in the colonies. The Tories were unable to carry the day because they were not as strong (numerically, at the voting polls) and could not garner equal support. (Notice, also, that the revolt was agreed by all 13 colonies, unanimously, which again indicates a strength of support overall.) If the Tories really were at 1/3 of the total, then they should have been able to offset the Patriots in the war and the British should have been able to win handily.

I myself have doubted whether I might have been a Tory at the time. I think any decent conservative should ask himself some careful questions about that. My conclusion (admittedly with hindsight to some extent) is that the revolutionaries were more in the right than not: the entire mind-set of colonialization, to the great European powers at the time, was to USE the place over there for the benefit of the people over here - straight up aggrandizement. That attitude is somewhat justifiable so long as the "over there" is not itself a going concern, is highly dependent. But once it has its own people with customs and their own capacity to rule themselves, it cannot remain. A people are not "for the sake of" a different people, certainly not permanently. The colonies had ruled themselves in rather stable fashion for more than 2 generations, in some cases more like 4, and it is pretty much the case that Britain was getting harsher about using America precisely because America was more and more capable of true independence - like a young adult in his father's house, except that in this case it was like a young adult who went out to make his way in the world and his father kept sending to tell him what to do and kept demanding "pay" for raising him. Filial piety extends to gratitude and honor, it does not extend to obeying your father once you are out on your own and making your own way.

2) Just war principles, which you brought up, are another good example. The colonies featured one of the highest qualities of life in the entire world at the time. Their taxation, even with the supposedly horrible raises (like the stamp act) used to justify the revolution, were actually incredibly mild and reasonable when compared to the world at large. Is it just to go to war when quality of life is that high and only a minority of the population even supports it? The British were hardly tyrants.

Well, yes and no. If you read the Declaration, there is quite a long list of grievances against the king. Some of them may seem minor, of course, but it isn't that each one on its own is a just cause, it is that the sum total constitutes a just cause. Just the first 3:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

A king can be a tyrant even if the tyrannized subject still has a higher standard of living than most others. That's not the criterion upon which to base the judgment. A battered wife can be tyrannized even in a very comfortable home.

For myself, I don't know enough of the actual facts on the ground as to just how real and how severe the problems were that found their way onto this list. However, I would hazard a standard for (tentatively) deciding - without the underlying facts at my fingertips the way they had them - as to whether this list is honest: the character of the men who made it. They were, by and large, sober men of accomplishment, not given to ridiculous and ill-thought forays for foolish ends. They were, a few of them, preachers and men of God, who would be unlikely to assent to known fabrications. They were, some of them, soldiers who had risked their lives alongside the British, and unlikely to have a prejudicial hatred for the King and his officials. They were, in a nutshell, unlikely to pursue something this grave without grave reason.

We have since then seen dozens of other colonies have to break free of the parent country, and we know a bit more about the matter than was self-evident at the time (because America was pretty much the first in modern times). It seems almost impossible for a parent country to willingly see its colony as a "grown-up" that not only can but must stand independently. It seems very commonly the case that the parent country gets so used to receiving material benefits from the colony that it can hardly even force itself to ask the right questions about whether this beneficial relationship is just and right. We have seen intentional choices of parent countries so as to block the capacity of the colony to become full-fledged polities in their own right, so as to force continuing dependence on them. (And as a result we have seen colonies react regularly with deep-seated hatred for the parent and all it stands for (even when much of what it stands for is good) - much as we see teenagers repudiate an oppressive parent's entire standard of behavior.) We know a thing or two about colonies, and it seems likely that the Patriots were more right than wrong about their claims.

A secondary (ex-post-facto) criterion for judging the character of the Patriots who revolted: they were men of sound political judgment. That is, not only were they (many of them at least) men who had been deeply involved in their own governments before the Revolution, they went on to succeed admirably where few have done since: they established a just and peaceful government WITHOUT internal war, without rampant suppression of citizenry, without enormous disruption of peoples (think Rwanda 1994, or India 1947). They manifested that they had a high degree of prudence. But prudence is not found solely (and suddenly) in knowing how to organize a new nation after you have revolted, it is found also in judging whether to revolt, for the very same sources are used in both. If they were prudent in forming the new constitutional order so successfully, then those very same men were prudent in judging whether it was right to go to war over how they should be governed. The very same G. Washington who was humble and decent enough to refuse the kingship when it was on a platter waiting for his reaching for it, was probably humble and decent enough to not be a rabble-rousing revolutionary for mere personal benefit - especially because it likely wasn't much FOR his personal benefit. Some of the signers used up their entire fortune in the war and the aftermath.

Within my limited knowledge, the preponderance of the evidence seems to say quite strongly that the revolt was justified. I admit that there are lots of bits and pieces that can be used to call that into question, and I don't insist that I have an answer to all of them. But the big picture is the more important, and I haven't read anything to disturb the rendering of the big picture that is the common one bandied about in our histories.

I think it's also useful to distinguish the Declaration from the Constitution. The former, especially the parts that most people find either thrilling or despicable (depending on whether they are antecedently pro- or anti-democracy) are much more sweeping and theoretical than the actual constituting document. If Thomas Jefferson *did* believe that all monarchies are illegitimate, which would have been a silly thing to believe, it apparently didn't prevent him from participating in the formation of a wisely set-up nation which did a good and careful job of incorporating the consent of the governed into its own structure.

3) Very importantly, the colonies WERE, in fact, validly governed. The British mainland even helped the colonies in the French and Indian War, and it's worth noting that the colonies were hunky-dory being British subjects right up until there were taxes they didn't want to pay. The organization the Sons of Liberty has a modern day reputation as freedom fighters. Truthfully, they were closer to terrorists, though that is perhaps too strong.

I think that this is answered in the complaints listed in the Declaration. The colonies were governed by a system that had been gradually been getting worse and worse. Britain wanted the colonies to "pay for the war" and the soldiers, of course, and the Americans wanted a say in Parliament about such matters. But this was politically unfeasible: the American situation had resulted in tons of customs and practices (and local laws) that were not comparable to life in Britain, and it would be nonsensical for Americans to be subject to a Parliament 3000 miles and 3 months away for all of those minutiae, but at the same time it was nonsensical (or so it seemed) for Americans to be elected members of Parliament on the same standing as members of all the other British shires but not have Americans be subject to all the rest of regular British law made by Parliament (that made sense in Britain but not America). Britain tried to "solve" that dilemma by saying that the colonies were crown territories (dependent on the king rather than on the legislature), which would justify separate sets of laws, but of course that could only work if the crown was willing to listen to Americans. Which he wasn't.

The situation was inherently unstable, and the distance / time factor was insoluble with the technology available. The solution of separate governments for the separate peoples with different needs and customs was, in all likelihood, the only truly effective solution.

I think it's also useful to distinguish the Declaration from the Constitution.

I absolutely agree with Lydia on this. Whether the Patriots were morally upright in their decision to go to war (ius ad bello), their approach to and conclusion of a new constitutional order was manifestly reasonable. Perfect? No, not perfect. I don't think they got everything right. But that they got so much more right than wrong, I think, is manifest. Whether they built into the very foundations of that new order fundamentally immoral or theologically erroneous principles, I have yet to see a decent argument for it.

The Constitutional committee couldn't decide whether or not they wanted to be Athens or Rome, and in the process of having their cake and eating it too they ended up having to fight it out in the early years, culminating in the horrific Civil War that essentially ended any idea of an Athenian type democracy as viable in any way.

I don't think that account of the Civil War is a very good description of what happened. Here is my counter-offer: The reason the constitionalists couldn't decide on Athens or Rome is that they were stuck in a place that ACTUALLY, REALLY needed some of both. Small governments are truly right for small polities. Large nations can't work the same way. Yet because of improvement in shipping and roads and printing presses, a real nation the size of the 13 colonies had in fact been forged, and needed something more to recognize that than than mutual treaties between independent nations. But an empire with top-down management is wrong too. The only solution to both needs is subsidiarity, but at the time the principle had never been fully stated much less developed. Madison managed to work his way into the concept without realizing fully and totally what he was doing, but still understanding something of it. America has handed to the world the foremost needed political concept for the global era: subsidiarity with shared sovereignty. (Together with solidarity, they constitute foundational political principles.) It is not surprising that they didn't flesh it out perfectly, but they got it much more right than wrong.

What happened with slavery and the Civil War is, necessarily, an unfolding of one of the possibilities inherent in the situation at the founding, but it is not the necessary and natural outflow of the constitutional order as such. The Founders couldn't solve the slavery problem AND keep the unity of the American colonies, and they (almost certainly correctly) perceived the political dangers inherent in giving up the unity as being more urgent. So they OFFICIALLY shelved the slavery problem for 20 years. At the time, nobody envisioned the cotton gin, and slavery was gradually getting less and less beneficial as an economic model. They plausibly believed that the problem would be more tractable in 20 or 30 years, and left it for solution with their descendants - once a stable polity had been forged. And it probably would have been more soluble without the cotton gin. But after that invention, the gradual demise of customs and practices surrounding slavery reversed, and some states came to re-enforce those customs rather than let them diminish.

Still and all, there might have been a solution anyway. If, for example, after 1809 (when slavery was once again allowed as a subject for federal law), they might have started debating the issue with a proviso: no new restrictions will take force for (another) 20 years, and all restrictions will be compensated at just price. Whether any theoretically possible solution of the situation (by law) was really possible, we can of course never know. But the Founders explicitly intended the notional possibility of there being an eventual solution within the constitutional order, even though they could not envision its specific form.

The Civil War - 87 years after the Founding, 3 generations - is not a mere continuation of the Founders debate between Athens and Rome, simply speaking. It represented a different problem distinct from the problem of what kind of political structure to form. Yes, it affected the balance of powers, greatly to the detriment of subsidiarity. But that result is not the natural fruit of the Constitutional order as fruit is implicit in the seed and the blossom: other results could have been achieved just as reasonably from the same seed. The Civil War was, frankly, Americans failing in part their first great internal test after the test of the founding itself. But the partial failures (as ongoing flaws) are not defects that cannot be fixed without revolutionizing the very concept of America.

I think that even apart from the evil of slavery itself the Confederate states made the wrong political judgment in choosing to secede. But whether they did nor not, "solving" the notional and conceptual problem of whether a state has the authority to secede as a constitutional principle by FORCE OF ARMS was not a good way to go about it. Any more than medieval knights proving their opponent's truthfulness by force of arms was sound. We were ill served by Lincoln and later speakers saying we were "proving" the truth of the matter by the war. The matter is still debated justly and vigorously precisely because the war did not address the underlying conceptual question. And, in my opinion, that "solution" in that particular war unhappily covers up needed distinctions for the question.

Thank you all for the excellent and lengthy responses. I'll ruminate on them for awhile before I put forth my own thoughts again. In the meantime, you've given me a lot to chew on.

I'll note again that, as I said before, I'm not wedded to the points made in my original post, so I find all of this talk very valuable indeed. Thanks again.

For what it's worth, I participated in that thread at Zippy's and one of the more annoying aspects of it was that he and the other tradcons would not acknowledge (from anything I remember them writing) the abuses of due process, quartering and arbitrary assaults on subsidiarity by the British. Hardly tyrannical my ass.

Marc,

But I think a lot of the Southerners wanted something closer to Athens than Rome(in general), whereas the Northerners wanted something closer to Rome than Athens - the point being that the South emphasized the people's role in it far more than the North did, partially due to a smaller population. The South's involvement in the Constitutional Convention in some ways amounted to trying to work in loopholes to escape authority.

With all due respect, I don't think you could be further from the truth. Most southerners have traditionally had little use for direct democracy, intensely preferring less democratic republican forms of government and even monarchy over the rule of the multitudes. The antebellum south had more in common with Sparta (whites and free blacks = Spartan citizens, most blacks = Helots) than Athens and the south was a very class-stratified society compared to the North.

As for issues of authority, well, you seem to forget the fact that Virginia played a leading role in the Constitutional Convention. Madison in particular, early on, wanted a very powerful federal state. One of the features being that it could overrule any state law at any time. Hardly "anti-authority" more like a recipe for similar abuses that justified the revolution in the first place.

the American situation had resulted in tons of customs and practices (and local laws) that were not comparable to life in Britain, and it would be nonsensical for Americans to be subject to a Parliament 3000 miles and 3 months away for all of those minutiae, but at the same time it was nonsensical (or so it seemed) for Americans to be elected members of Parliament on the same standing as members of all the other British shires but not have Americans be subject to all the rest of regular British law made by Parliament (that made sense in Britain but not America). Britain tried to "solve" that dilemma by saying that the colonies were crown territories (dependent on the king rather than on the legislature), which would justify separate sets of laws, but of course that could only work if the crown was willing to listen to Americans. Which he wasn't.

Which is a point I also raised. The American Revolution was the "politest revolution in history." We asked the King twice to reform his behavior, respect the rights of Englishmen and behave himself as a proper British monarch. He instead chose to govern like a good German (which his family was) and the rest was history.

If we indulge in some alternate history, the situation also gets a little more interesting. I raised the prospect there that suppose it had happened in 1876 and not 1776. The American colonies would have had the native military strength of a European power nearly on par with Britain. It would have been an armed conflict that would have ripped the English speaking world to pieces. Surely there was divine intervention there in the timing which ensured that the conflict would be over, the cost to both sides lower and the opportunity for outsiders to take advantage much fewer.

I've always thought of Virginia as a special case among the Southern states, rather like New Jersey was, for a long time, essentially a Southern state sitting in the North. The South, of course, naturally rallied around it as it was the most influential Southern state, partially due to its population and partially because a lot of very smart men came from VA. Washington was, after all, essentially (though unofficially) a federalist.

MA, I think you are right that Virginia held a unique role in the debate. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Henry, Mason, and Lee all came from Virginia, and were greatly looked up to around the colonies.

It is interesting how Madison started out pushing a nearly national form of government, and was forced to accommodate the smaller states and ended up backing himself into subsidiarity and shared sovereignty. At first he didn't see it, but by the end he had started to see the principle itself and not just the compromise.

Mike, I think you are very right that Providence was at work picking the timing of the Revolution, for the British at other times would have been able to commit far more resources to the problem than at that time. Just as it is providential that the British were fighting Napoleon when they pushed into the War of 1812. It is also interesting that we had at that time a plethora of educated gentlemen who were capable of envisioning a new order but who were not rabble-rousing rioters and Robespierres (we avoided the excesses of the French, thank God).

Tony,

I think the matter of timing may have been more to save the British than America. The point I made on Zippy's blog is that time would have only made the political questions you raised fester worse and worse. Eventually, 1776 would happen. I said that had it happened around 1876, the resulting war would very possibly have ended with American troops burning the Parliament and executing the King, not with wounds and a treaty. Remember, by 1860-1876, the American states were more populous, quite rich and could field a military as large as the British military.

Mike, you are probably right about the later possibilities. All I am saying is that it seems providential even with respect to other times even well before 1876, such as in 1750. And the providence can go both ways even taking into account maybe the British could have won in some scenarios: where would Britain have been in WWII without America to back her up? Which required that America separate in such a way as to forestall that we would be permanent and bitter enemies forever more.

After all these years have you guys still not figured it out? This isn't our country any more. It hasn't been since 1964.

The federal government is supposed to represent the interests of the people. But which people? Does the federal government represent the interests of you and people who look, speak, and believe as you do? Or does the federal government spend your tax money acting against the interests of you and people who look, speak, and believe as you do?

We are supposed to have a government of by, and for the people. But, years ago, the Power Clique that controls this country decided that the people the government was supposed to represent were too white, too Christian, and too straight to be represented. They tried to change us, to mold us to be more in line with the things they believed in, That was what the '60s and '70s were all about: changing the people to be like the Power Clique wanted them to be.

They succeeded to a degree -- but their success did not go far enough. No matter how many dirty movies they made, no matter how many homo "weddings" they approved, there still remained a core group of Americans who did not want to live in the Age of Aquarius.

Oh, they still believe in government of, by, and for the people -- as long as the people are on board with the progressive project. They couldn't convert you and me -- so they have decided to replace us with a new "people".

That's it. That's what every immigration law since 1965 has been for: to replace the old American people with a new breed of Americans.

And that makes you and me enemies of the state.

And there is nothing we can do to stop them now. It's too late. The time to stand in front of the illegal immigrant bus was fifty years ago.

The next time you have the opportunity to pledge to the flag, ask yourself: to what, exactly, am I pledging my allegiance? For whom does that flag stand?

You and yours?

Or somebody else?

Bienvenidos a el Nuevo America. Aconsejo a todos a aprender español lo más rápido posible.

Ah, yes. The Power Clique consisting of rich, white, powerful, straight (sort-of, formerly) Christian people didn't want to represent rich, white, powerful, straight Christian people like themselves, because they hated themselves, so they wanted to turn the country over to the poor, black & brown and Catholic powerless people who might (if the rich, white, (formerly) Christian people were lucky), would punish the rich, white (formerly) Christian powerful people the way they deserved for being rich, white, and uber powerful (leaving off the formerly Christian aspect, of course).

Thank you for your response. However, your attempt at sarcasm has failed.

The Power Clique does consist of rich, white (and Jewish), powerful people. They were and are not straight; rather, they are practitioners of sexual perversion as a means of ritual "magick" (worship). This is nothing new. It's the same situation that existed at the time of the Tower of Babel, on the hilltop of Megiddo, and in ancient Carthage: human beings sell their souls to the Evil One in exchange for power. Their god, as in days past, still demands the sacrifice of children to himself -- we call this "abortion" and "contraception" now -- as well as the corruption of children by sexual perverts (which is now, fittingly, called "Pride".) No, the members of the Power Clique are certainly not Christians. Their god goes by several names: Lucifer, Ba'al, the Lightbringer, the Architect of the Universe. They do not worship Jesus Christ.

They act to protect the interest of rich, white (and Jewish), powerful people like themselves, because they want to be as God, knowing for themselves good and evil; that is, they want to become immortal, posthuman beings, ruling over a heaven on Earth. When it became obvious that their plan to destroy the practice of Christianity by the people of the United States through social and moral subversion would not entirely succeed, the decided to "elect a new people"; that is, to turn the country over to the poor, black, brown powerless people who would form a permanent underclass, dependent upon the State for their basic needs, a class beholden to the State -- an eternal, unbreakable bloc of welfare recipients who would punish the Power Clique's enemies: the Christian middle class.

To this end, the various Christian groups (including the Catholic Church) were subverted in order to swing support of the country's remaining Christians behind the repopulation of the United States and the final destruction of the Christian moral order.

This effort has succeeded. The population of Christians in this country who still believe in the teachings of the Church as they were taught prior to the 1960s is now down to a small remnant. This remnant is now under attack from both government entities, the media, the entertainment industry, academia, its fellow Christians, and Viewers Like You. Soon, this attack will intensify into official persecution. The Power Clique will then seek to effect their long-planned Endlösung to the Christian Problem.

And the new American people -- the sodomites, the invaders, the permanent welfare voting class, and Viewers Like You -- will be there at the voting booth, keeping it all nice and legal.

May God bless you.

Having unburdened himself of that rather vigorous fulmination, when he could have just answered Tony's question "No, I'm not a patriot," I'd ask that B Lewis permit himself no more ejaculations of such egregious and bitter insinuation, thank you.

Marking 1964 the crack of doom for America is dubious. The year of the Civil Rights Act was the end? I agree with Willmoore Kendall (who has long been slandered by certain West Coast detractors as an apologist for segregation) that the Act was a true triumph of self-government, an entirely worthy undertaking by Congress, and an achievement for Constitutional liberty. Americans are justly proud of the day the bill was signed, even if it is nothing close to a perfect bill in ideal, and very very distant from one in application.

Tony,

I'm coming late to this "party", but I can't resist commenting after my wonderful Independence Day. In particular, this holds true for me:

"I love the many, many good things about America, I love the special qualities she has and the particular virtues her citizens exhibit."

In my little corner of Chicago, the local community association hosted the annual 4th of July parade and picnic and we had perfect weather for both. As a new board member of the association this year I was responsible for selling tickets (this is our biggest fundraiser). Thanks to our wonderful volunteers and an assist from the weather, we sold over 6,000 tickets at $1.00 a pop -- with expenses in the $3,000 range we'll clear over $3,000 for the association for various local improvement projects. Families had a great time, many hot dogs and hamburgers (and snow cones) were consumed that day and I had a blast at the after-party counting the money and socializing with my fellow board members and community volunteers. Kids were honored for art they created to recognize the theme of this year's parade -- celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Star-Spangled Banner!

What a wonderful day and a great example of those "particular virtues" that Americans still exhibit when inspired by patriotic values.

What unmitigated blather, tripe, and sewage. B Lewis, how's 'bout we make a deal: you keep your sewage off my threads, and I will personally - PERSONALLY, mind you - refrain from enticing the rich, white, powerful elite's goons to ask you to step outside for some fun.

Jeff, that sounds like a great 4th. Mine was a little toned down from that: I live close enough to the nation's capital to drive (at least on occasion), so we drove in to see the fireworks. I planted the family on a stretch of green grass, we threw a ball and frisbee around and socialized a bit with the slice of America that showed up, and when it got dark we all ooh-ed and aaah-ed at the fireworks. And after the last explosion, my built-in choir started singing the national anthem, we got another 20 or 30 people joining in, and as it ended about 50 or 60 of our neighborly watchers gave a round of applause for the rendition and for the 4th generally. Nary a disagreement or nasty moment in 4 hours - including the traffic jam afterwards.

MarcAnthony, to follow up on your prior thinking:

If Zippy (or anybody else) wanted to make a serious argument that there was something defective in America as she is in essence, probably the best stab at it they could take would be the religious pluralism. America (says this argument) is constructed from the bottom up as a religiously plural nation, and this is not the ideal form.

Some people might question why, in this day and age of religious freedom, that a person would even suggest that pluralism could be proposed as a defect rather than as a positive good. The answer lies in the Christian (especially Catholic) past teaching, namely: the state has a negative role in not interfering with the Church and the citizens' living their faith, but also that the state has a positive role, to some limited extent, in supporting and promoting the excellence of its citizens' lives of virtue, even the virtues of religion. And a pluralistic state that fails to promote any religious sentiment at all because it cannot choose to promote one specific religion over any others fails that ideal. In Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae, it is more or less explicitly provided that state for which the vast majority of its citizens are one single religion, it is normal and good for that state to be confessional (at least in some ways), though not so as to suppress all other religions outright.

I would take issue with the above claim that this implies plural America in her core is defective, in two ways. First, the American colonies, each separately, were basically constructed from the beginning as religiously separate. Each colony had its own sect, and if you wanted to be free to practice something else, you were free to go somewhere else. That's how Connecticut started after Massachusetts. As the colonies grew, and as the British took over NY from the Dutch, they became more unified under the British system, but not by making all 13 into a single confessional system. Each colony had its own confessional position.

The second is more critical: the federal system explicitly was designed to leave the individual states their own establishment position. The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law...", but at the time all 13 states did have laws respecting religion, and the amendment was designed to protect those, including the confessional states. At its official start, then, America did not reject establishments for an undifferentiated pluralism.

Nor did America reject religious establishments in their entirety, in the absolute sense, over the next 70 years or so even as the states did give up their established religions. For they all retained much of the general tenor and baggage of the established religion in maintaining a broadly and universally accepted Protestant Christian sense, purpose, and sets of practices, even though not denominational within that Christianity (though mostly not accepting of Catholicism). They would, very likely, have thought and re-thought the idea of renouncing the state religion if they were told outright that the courts in later years would re-interpret this to mean that even the schools could not teach Christianity, that even the courts could not allow a Bible to be found on its official premises. The intention of giving up the establishment was, rather, to give up the competition between the sects of Christians, not to make the state anti-Christian.

When the courts finally got around to the horrible, manifestly wrong decisions under the "incorporation" doctrine interpreting the 14th amendment backwards into the state's own rights, of course, they ran a wrecking ball through the original concept of federalism and its import for the state's relationship to religion. Religion became a second-class right, and freedom from religion became a higher right than freedom of religion. States became third class entities, compared to the union and the individual. But none of this is implicit in the Constitution as it was written, nor is it a sensible interpretation of the Constitution as amended. Such an interpretation is ITSELF the foreign object rammed into our guts. And while I don't hold out much hope that it will be reversed in my lifetime, I also don't accept that this represents "the real America" as she is in her essence. Just as I don't accept that the Roe v Wade decision represents the real essence of America, when it defies so much of the more central meaning of America.

Tony, I completely agree with you as a matter of jurisprudence that the incorporation doctrine is incorrect. However, two major factors confound any attempt to peg the incorporation doctrine as the heart of the "freedom from religion" problem via its abolition of state establishments. First, virtually every state, if not every state, has had for some time an anti-establishment clause in its individual state constitution, rendering the issue largely moot. Second, along with the anti-establishment clause, the incorporation doctrine also incorporated free exercise, which has done a great deal of good. It seems entirely plausible that if incorporation were thrown out tomorrow and that if states were to delete "stuff" that they borrowed from the bill of rights into their state constitutions, free exercise would get deleted and that the net effect would be extremely bad. Indeed, it's more likely that states and their institutions would enact ACLU-style persecutions against Christians than that they would all rush out and establish state churches, so even if you think the latter would be a great thing for restoring morality and true religion in America (I don't, particularly), that's not what you would get. To give just one example, the incorporation doctrine was recently used in the Eastern Michigan University case, successfully, to defend a counseling student who was being forced to affirm homosexual relationships in her counseling.

Of course that result doesn't mean that the incorporation doctrine is _right_ as jurisprudence. It does mean, however, that we shouldn't fool ourselves by thinking that its _results_ have been generally bad because of the elimination of state establishments of religion.

Yes, NOW there are issues involved that there wouldn't have been earlier. Nobody in 1840 or whenever North Carolina got rid of its establishment clause thought that you needed a state constitutional provision to allow the schools to provide Christian teaching. Now that we have created an anti-Christian elite and a non-Christian majority, yes in today's conditions getting rid of the free exercise clauses in the state constitutions would be very dangerous indeed. And I think that a true understanding of religious liberty would demand something in its place no matter what.

I believe that subsidiarity is a very important political principle, and it applies here as much as anywhere else. I think that if a state decided to enact a state religion (and amend its constitution for that sake), there is no way in the world the federal Constitution should be read to preclude that. I am not saying that in today's climate I would push for such a change, I am speaking more about the theoretical than the practical. It would almost certainly be a horrible idea for any state that not only doesn't have a single majority religion, but doesn't have either an overwhelming, vast majority one religion, or (like with Christianity) an overwhelming, vast majority of closely grouped religions (if you could figure out how to make a group like that the "official" religion). And of course we have nothing even approaching such a situation now. But part of the cause of the loss of Christianity is, itself, the mandate led by the courts to get religion out of the public sphere - it's not 100% effect and 0% part of the cause.

The incorporation doctrine has been bad by helping to eradicate the states as viable, intermediate polities with their own share of sovereignty. That will eventually be a death blow to federalism if we can't stem the tide. Whether the doctrine has been good or bad overall in the particulars, I don't really have an idea.

In my opinion, western culture in general seems to have been a lab experiment for whether it is possible for government to be neutral about religion, and the answer seem to be no. At least, we don't have any good evidence for government being fair and really neutral while the people remain committed to their religion - any more than that the state can maintain decency and general public virtues without an official commitment to religion either (which is something George Washington pointed out). All the evidence seems to say that religion and political orderliness go hand in hand, which is after all what we would expect from the fact that man is fallen and needs the help of the Church to not become ever more vicious. Given that in our case the federal union is going to have a plurality of religious faiths rather than just one, it seems better, to me, that a religion be fostered and promoted by lower governments which can do so (in strictly limited ways, of course) in limited regions, with the federal government keeping its hands out of those issues so that each place has its religious faith supported and encouraged according to local belief (even if that faith happens to be atheism), without imposing it on _everyone_ in the federal union. If that requires the political units with a professed religion be smaller than states, I am OK with that. That's the only way I see of NOT running into the same results western society has repeated so much in the last 80 years of basically losing both faith and public virtues, side by side. If the choice is to have several different religions fostered in small scale in local governments (while leaving larger matters to the higher governments), or have all religion be suppressed and asphyxiated by government at the higher level, I'll take the former (as long as there is a federal notion above that can regulate matters between such units).

In other words, I don't accept the Endarkenment's thesis that the answer to religious wars is to get religion out of government and out of the public square, and make it a small little personal secret that must be hidden under a bushel. Nor do I agree with having religious wars over the matter, with state fighting state. I am proposing that there is another option.

That other option, and how workable it is, is going to depend entirely on that parenthetical phrase "in strictly limited ways" as applied to the promotion of specific religion. When it gets to the point of throwing totally peaceful _____'s in prison for having unauthorized meetings, where they will never _get_ authorization, and where the reason they will never get authorization is that they don't accept, I dunno, the filioque or sola scriptura, or because they don't *deny* the filioque or sola scriptura, etc.,...then we have a problem. I don't know about you, but I can imagine some pretty problematic confessional states, even on a small scale. Imagine a confessional atheist state and how well that would work out as far as religious freedom. (Speaking of which, a court--I believe a state court--has recently remanded a case to a lower court to rule on whether a "real" confession took place to a Catholic priest, in order to decide whether to try to force the priest to break what he says is the seal of the confessional. That's an example of a place where having a freedom of religion clause gets very, very important.)

Lydia, I agree with you on that. That's one of the reasons I used (and have made a habit of using) expressions like "promote" and "encourage" and the like for the polity's relationship to a specific religion: to provide positive incentives, not to provide legal punishments for not going along. Yes, the legislature can start sessions with a prayer. Yes, the court can have a Bible out front, and can by default administer a perjury oath relying on God, (but a person can take another oath if they won't use one relying on God - if they want to put up with the natural consequence that maybe a judge or jury won't believe their testimony), yes, the state can have an explicitly religious holiday and a church-led procession, yes - if we even have public schools - the schools can start the day with a prayer, but the parents can opt out of the public schools and get a voucher toward tuition toward some other school. And then: no, they cannot throw people in jail for not going to church, or for not attending the procession, or for denying the filoque (or sola scriptura), etc. There are many, many ways in which a state helps things out that are doing more than simply "administering justice", and these need not be matters of legal sanction.

Take Thanksgiving Holiday. It's explicit historical meaning is a day set aside nationally to give thanks to God. So far, the courts have kept their dirty paws off of it, but ONLY because they deem its God-centered-ness to be empty, pro-forma, words without content. But imagine instead a state in which the governor called for a day of fasting and atonement and prayer to God in explicitly Christian terms - not threatening to call out the guard if you don't fast, but inviting all to join the Christians in fasting and prayer. Where the TV stations are allowed to re-iterate the "public-service" message in explicitly Christian terms - even though Muslims, Shintoists, and others are non-plussed by the whole affair. Nothing about the affair is forcing non-Christians to DO something themselves, their only beef (in Endarkenment terms) is that they are paying taxes for the government to promote something their religion doesn't much like (although I don't know of any religion which actually forbids fasting and prayer). And that's the point: in a confessional state, is indeed normal for some of the taxes to be used to promote confessional goals, which money is not spent on promoting the goals of competing religions. But still need not use the police power of the state to pursue those who disagree.

Yes, the court can have a Bible out front, and can by default administer a perjury oath relying on God, (but a person can take another oath if they won't use one relying on God - if they want to put up with the natural consequence that maybe a judge or jury won't believe their testimony), yes, the state can have an explicitly religious holiday and a church-led procession, yes - if we even have public schools - the schools can start the day with a prayer, but the parents can opt out of the public schools and get a voucher toward tuition toward some other school.

But all of that was allowed at the beginning, even at the federal level, despite the establishment clause. I actually meant to say in my earlier comment but forgot that I think we ought to be pointing fingers at the misinterpretation of the establishment clause even more than at the incorporation doctrine. And I note that the systematic misinterpretation of the establishment clause was all done explicitly by or in agreement with ardent and aggressive secularists. The interp. of the establishment clause to prohibit all of that is bad jurisprudence from an originalist perspective as well.

Great discussion, folks.

Lydia, I think we can go even farther and say that "the systematic misinterpretation of the establishment clause was done explicitly or in agreement with" ardent anti-Catholic bigots, before it was taken up by more general despisers of religion. In any case, your subtle assessment of Incorporation is superb. I agree that even if many of the legal steps along the way were dubious, circumstances today require a very robust and unqualified defense of free exercise.

Tony, I think your Thanksgiving example is excellent. And the fact that lawyers and judges beyond count have stayed their hand against Thanksgiving, "because they deem its God-centered-ness to be empty, pro-forma, words without content," in no way obligates us to join with their infidelities. It is obvious that even the deist or heterodox Christians among the Framers, far from lacking in sincere penitence and gratitude, infused the American tradition of Thanksgiving with the virtues of piety and humility quite despite their theoretical departures from orthodoxy.

But all of that was allowed at the beginning, even at the federal level, despite the establishment clause.

And that's why I don't think it is valid to say that America in her roots and in her essence is deformed by some kind of commitment to (so-called) neutrality to religion to the point that all government favoring religion (or "a" religion) is out of order. Yes, many liberals have such a commitment, but that's not the same thing.

Okay, I'll zero in on one particular objection of mine to get a more focused response.

I think one of the stronger arguments against the Revolution is that, by most statistics I've heard, most people didn't support it or didn't care. Given that as the case, justification for it falls apart. The fact of the matter is that the majority of the Revolution was driven by a few highly intelligent men. The population as a whole wasn't quite so convinced, though there was a significant minority of supporters.

Given the principle that government should be determined by the consent of the governed, then wasn't there too little support to justify a Revolution?

There are other problems, or there seem to be to me. There's little question that, for most of the colonies' existence at least, England was the legitimate ruling authority. Given that as the case, wouldn't we have the obligation to submit under their authority even if we think they're making bad decisions?

Now, I know you made the point that you don't necessarily need to be forcing a low quality of life to be tyrannical, but I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with that. Like a "beat and cheat" divorce justification (I emphasize that as a Catholic I refer only to civil divorce with no remarriage), it stands to reason that just because you dislike the decisions and actions of your legitimate ruling authority it does not mean you have the right to rebel, as long as the citizens of said ruling authority are not being treated in a way that would significantly lower their quality of life. Otherwise, it seems to undermine any claims of legitimate authority.

These were both answered, but in all of the long comments I'd like to see them singled out if possible. Thanks.

Don't forget, MA, that my position is that the country formed could be a legitimate country, wisely designed, not somehow metaphysically tainted, and worthy of our loyalty, even if the revolution that kicked things off was unjustified. It's not like some kind of reactionary "America is bad" conclusion automatically follows even from fairly serious criticisms of the American Revolution.

To follow up on my previous point, let's take this, which you used earlier:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

This would make a lot more sense if those laws really were necessary for a high quality of life in the colonies. But everything I've read seems to point otherwise.

I think one of the stronger arguments against the Revolution is that, by most statistics I've heard, most people didn't support it or didn't care.

Point 1: I am not so sure where you are getting your numbers to support this. It is my impression that there were some Tories who definitely opposed a revolt, and I'm sure that there were some who simply didn't care. Then there would be the ones who were more or less good with a revolt but wouldn't go out of their way to actually promote it, those who definitely wanted a separation but didn't want to stick their necks out, and those who actively supported the revolt even though it meant taking real risks (including the soldiers, information relay-ers, and sabotageurs plus the stay-at-homes who provided food, clothing, shelter, and supplies for the others).

All 13 colonies' governments sent representatives to the Continental Congress: in each colony, the legislature in the _majority_ wanted something done. These sent representatives were eventually to decide unanimously that revolt was the best feasible option, and each colony's own legislature elected to go along with that decision. And this all took place over a long enough period that there were local elections during. In some sense that final ratified outcome could not have happened without a majority of the voting populace's consent. Now I suppose that the voting public was not parallel with the total populace, but it's the best definite set of polling numbers we have. (No Gallup organization at the time). If there are other data that supports a definite conclusion that only 1/3 of the population was (a) actively involved either directly or indirectly, (b) definitely desired the revolt though not actively involved, and (c) fine with the revolt but didn't have any desire to go out of their way to achieve it, taken all together, I would be glad to see it. I have yet to hear of anything like that.

Point 2: in pre-democratic days, there were any number of revolts against tyrants, where we think it is plausible that those in revolt were in the right, but there was no "majority vote" for the matter. In situations where you have an aristocracy or blended government (Roman Senate, for example), or the nobles in Britain at Runnymede, there is no doubt that the ordinary joe was basically going to do whatever his local lord told him to do, whether that was to stand up to the king or support the king. Without completely direct democracy, it is little likely that the "majority" of any population EVER registered their support for or against a given order: the capacity to have an effect when giving or withholding consent varies by degree, and the baron at Runnymede had a lot more than the woodcutter in a forest near Lincoln. In overturning the existing order, then, one would rightly look to support from a multitude, but there is no basic requirement that it actually be the support of literally the majority of all men. As we stated above, "consent" doesn't inherently require elections, and people in different states have varying degrees of capacity to consent or dissent in a meaningful way, so that we shouldn't expect to see consent registered alike, say, at the end of the War of the Roses, in the nobles versus in the common folk at the same moment. As a practical matter, most of the consent most of the time ended up being something like "I can go along with the decision those men over there made without asking me."

Point 3: I fear that you may be conflating two distinct issues: (1) whether revolt was justified IN ITSELF on account of objective defects and disorders in the state of affairs; and (2) whether a majority realized this correctly and sought to revolt because they realized it.

For (1), the common situation is that defects in a governing order grow and grow and grow gradually. Since it is gradual, many people do not realize just how bad the reality is, and some who suspect it naturally grant the benefit of the doubt to the governing authority (as, generally, they ought to). And inevitably there are some who, on the other side of the coin, are incendiary rabble-rousers who inflate the real disorders to imagined proportions, thereby confusing others as to how bad the disorders really are.

At the same time, we know that there are indeed some situations that MUST be revolted against, that have become so horrible that good men cannot just leave things "as they are". So, somewhere along the way, in the process of going from (a) bad but not horrible, through (b) horrible, to (c) so horrible that no upright man should doubt that it is time to act in revolt, conditions must have passed through (b1) horrible enough that many or most upright men rightly ascertain that revolt is objectively justified. The virtue of prudence includes within it the capacity to judge well matters of degree, where one can say how far something is "far enough" without running into "too far". But that virtue is, inherently, impossible to nail down into definite particulars as a matter of mathematical proof: it's an estimative function precisely for situations of judgment and not proof. (Think of what is the "right" amount of ice cream for your desert. 3 ounces might be good, 4 ounces might be OK, and 12 ounces is too much - "somewhere" before 12 ounces, but where isn't a precise line, it is a broad gray area.) It depends on and uses a wealth of the individual's own prior experience, filtered through his own successful efforts and his own recognized failures understood and corrected. As a result, even upright and prudent men will sometimes agree on the overall pattern of the situation but not on the exact degree of wrongness or exactly what to do about it.

So it is inevitable that in the process of moving from bad to objectively justifying revolt, there is going to be a gradual increase of more and more upright and prudent men seeing more and more clearly that the situation calls for revolt, until the preponderance of such men are in agreement. The reality tends to be that the objective conditions justify revolt before a preponderance of upright men agree that that is true, because they give the benefit of doubt to the regime in power. But even when you have such a preponderance of men in agreement, there will still be hold-outs among those who are upright and prudent, because their own particular experience leads them to put a greater emphasis on different weighty considerations (like the honesty with which outrages have been reported, or the relative importance of bad laws overall.)

Point 4. Even with regard to conditions in which upright and prudent men rightly conclude they are going to revolt, there is still another distinction to be made: (X) that conditions in themselves justify revolt, and (Y) that there is a reasonable expectation of success in revolting and in setting up a better order of affairs. It can readily happen that men know perfectly well that they not only (morally) can but *should* revolt, if only they could succeed, but they see no likelihood of success so they don't try. Another way of saying this is that conditions are such that the government in power has made itself really and truly illegitimate as an objective matter, but no plausible opportunity has come up for overturning that government. In such a situation, one continues to obey the government not so much because one owes obedience to it (those in control have destroyed its legitimacy and thus eradicated your definite obligation toward obedience), rather because fewer social evils will attend your appearing to go along than will result from your disobedience. But that's a different internal attitude than true obedience.

And when these prudent men discuss the situation, there may well be some degree of confusion in the debate making it look like there remains a real doubt as to whether revolt is _justified_ in itself versus whether active, visible, and forthright revolt with a chance of success is "justified" by your resources for winning and the government's problems with being able to defeat you. The latter isn't justifying the conclusion that the government has become illegitimate, it is justifying a conclusion on a different issue.

All these are difficult matters for ordinary unreflective men who have incomplete education and not much time to sort out the issues. Such men, justly, may look to the best men of the community to guide them on conclusions of this sort. In pre-democratic Europe, this would naturally have focused on the local lords, along with their liege knights, squires, and trained armsmen, men whose participation in a revolt would come home to roost very directly. In colonial America, the average joe would justly rely on the relatively well-educated elected representatives to the colonial governments, along with town aldermen and mayors and such.

That's why I suggested that (in the absence of being present at the time and not having spent years reading all the primary sources we still have on those times) we need to look at the judgment of those elected men who were clearly men of judgment, who had excellent educations, who had been practical enough to achieve matters of business, who were cautious enough to deliberate at length instead of running of half-cocked, and so on. Because it is very likely that this is exactly what a lot of the regular joes were relying on as well - and the fact that these representative were elected and re-elected suggests to me that the regular joe in the street was pretty much on board with the revolt - pretty much on board with going along with the judgment of these men - even if he wouldn't have stuck his neck out to say so out loud.

I've looked up the facts. The number is an often quoted one from a John Adams letter, and it is highly misinterpreted. Seems a proper reading of the facts does hold that a majority of Americans supported independence. So I was far from alone in my estimate, but I was also wrong. Mea culpa.

MA, that's excellent research, and a very good article.

It certainly seems very likely that the 1/3 claim almost certainly does derive from John Adams letter of 1813, and upon reading that letter there is quite clear that the 1/3 division he pursues is regarding the FRENCH revolution and its aftermath of feeling for France. Here is the bulk of the section:

If I were called to calculate the divisions among the people of America, as Mr. Burke did those of the people of England, I should say that full one third were averse to the revolution. These, retaining that overweening fondness, in which they had been educated, for the English, could not cordially like the French; indeed, they most heartily detested them. An opposite third conceived a hatred of the English, and gave themselves up to an enthusiastic gratitude to France. The middle third, composed principally of the yeomanry, the soundest part of the nation, and always averse to war, were rather lukewarm both to England and France; and sometimes stragglers from the, and sometimes the whole body, united with the first or the last third, according to the circumstances.

The depredations of France upon our commerce, and her insolence to our ambassadors, and even to the government, united, though for a short time, and with infinite reluctance, the second with the first, and produced that burst of applause to the administration, in which you concurred, though it gave much offence to Mr. Randolph. Nor to him alone, I assure you. It appeared to me then, and has appeared ever since, that a great majority of the people of the United States, and even in New England in their hearts disapproved of those addresses as much as they did of those pompous escorts, public dinners, and childish festivals, which tormented me much more than they did them. They thought, that such things led to monarcy and aristocracy as well as to a long and interminable war, a war with France, our sister republic; and a war with any body, must bring expenses and taxes.

There would be simply NO SENSE to the passage if the feeling were that of Americans about the American revolution. France and her "depredations upon our commerce" certainly had nothing to do with Americans feeling lukewarm at the time of our revolution.

There are other problems, or there seem to be to me. There's little question that, for most of the colonies' existence at least, England was the legitimate ruling authority. Given that as the case, wouldn't we have the obligation to submit under their authority even if we think they're making bad decisions?

MA, that's a very good point. An excellent statement of what it means to be the legitimate political authority: you get to decide troublesome and contentious things, and the others have to go along and submit even when they think you are making bad decisions.

Except for some qualifiers. Harking back to the definition of law (which is, of course, intimately bound up with the notion of authority), St. Thomas says that law is

nothing else than an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated. (Question 90, Ia IIae

It is essential to law that it be an ordinance given for the purpose of the common good. (The lawmaker can be mistaken as to whether it really will achieve the common good, but it is necessary that the reason behind the lawmaker's making the law be the common good.) If a law is given instead for the lawmaker's good, it fails of an essential part of law.

One of the significant facts of colonialism in the Americas, not just the US but all over the Americas, was that one of the primary purposes the European powers pursued colonies was for their own good back home. This intent found explicit expression in things that were designed from the ground up to transport the wealth of the new world to Europe, regardless of its effect on the colony. Spain's plunder of gold and enslaving Indians for that and silver are good examples. But Spain was by no means the only culprit. Britain certainly played its own hand in this: the mercantile laws that forbade American colonies from trading with any but British merchants using British shipping, for example, had no real purpose but to feather the nests of British.

Even the (very costly) matters of the French and Indian War, which the British and American forces worked together in, were still more than a little for the sake of British ends: Britain was pursuing a territorial strategy, not only in America but in India and elsewhere, to prevent other European powers from increasing their own power-base.

A sign of the reality is the original source of the American colonies themselves. For almost the full 1600's the colonies were populated by undesirable religious refugees, or by criminals sent by Britain. There was virtually no formal British presence in the form of a British army or navy. When, later in the century, there was involvement of a crown appointee as a governor, he perforce shared power with a locally generated assembly, along with locally chosen judges. The eventual claim by the king of the right to appoint a governor with the right to call and dissolve the assembly was a later accretion, once there was enough of an organized, going concern to make it worthwhile. In the first 50 to 60 years, the American colonialists could rely on nothing but themselves for protection, support, or anything else. And it is left as an exercise for the reader to imagine the feeling of Americans who had perforce learned to quell banditry, parley and make peace with the Indians, and at times form militia to repel an uprising, then to be told how to run their affairs by a crown appointee all of a sudden - a governor who had not lived in America and had no idea of the realities. It is decidedly not the case that Britain herself came to America and settled it as extensions of English shires, carrying with them formal extensions of the land under parliamentary rule.

The colonialists were outcasts, adventurers, and others leaving behind the social order they didn't want or which couldn't stand them. That social order could not then claim them as its own 70 years (and more) later.

MA,

This would make a lot more sense if those laws really were necessary for a high quality of life in the colonies. But everything I've read seems to point otherwise.

At Zippy's blg, King Richard made a similar argument in his attacks on my position viz a viz gun rights and places like Australia. The fact that a government does something bad without affecting the quality of life is not a defense. That is just consequentalist thinking. The King no more had a moral right to assault subsidiarity than the Australian government had to eliminate the right to keep and bear arms of all law-abiding people in Australia.

Unfortunately , what conservatives today call "American exceptionalism " is nothing but American chauvinism .

How can any self-respecting, reflective Roman Catholic be an American patriot? This country, as Charles Coloumbe makes abundantly clear in Puritan's Empire, is decidedly anti-Catholic. It is the spawn of a heresy; the Puritans who founded it were unabashed persecutors of the faithful. Most importantly, it is the leading proponent of capitalism, which is not only intrinsically evil but inimical to Catholic social teaching embodied in the medieval, community-based economies it violently supplanted. Cf. Belloc's The Servile State.

Robert Allen, are you yourself a Roman Catholic?

I notice that England, too, is anti-Catholic, at least since Henry and Elizabeth, and thus unworthy of the patriotism of the men of that Creed. And yet that dirty crypto-Calvinist duo ChesterBelloc loved England still.

And why, lookie here, most of Europe -- Spain, Germany, France -- has turned openly hostile toward the Church. The European Empire of today abjures even mentioning Catholicism in any constitution or diplomatic writ.

When bitterness would make disloyalty a Catholic virtue, it's a pretty good tell for rubbish.

How can any self-respecting, reflective Roman Catholic be an American patriot? This country, as Charles Coloumbe makes abundantly clear in Puritan's Empire, is decidedly anti-Catholic. It is the spawn of a heresy; the Puritans who founded it were unabashed persecutors of the faithful.

Well, Robert Allen, I don't know for sure just which it is, but I think that you are making a big mistake either in your notion of what America is, or in what patriotism is, or even both.

Let's take patriotism first: America was settled right from early days by people creating the institution of black slavery. And she kept slavery going for some 250 years, with direct oppression for another 100 years after. And yet, there are blacks who are patriotic. Indeed, there were a great many blacks who were patriotic even during the Jim Crow era, and even during the slavery era. So, the fact that a country has a great, horrible defect doesn't mean you cannot love it. As, indeed, Russians who loved their country during its communist days, and Germans who loved their country when it was the seat of Nazism. And the British who loved their Britain even when she was immersed in oppressing the serfs, back in medieval times, etc.

And well should they, for in my opinion your country deserves your love in a manner analogous to the way your parents deserve your love - even when they are imperfect, even when they sin against you. For in both cases, piety implies an obligation of honor, respect, and love. In both the case of parents and the country, they are (in quite different senses) the source from which you spring, and the foundation on which are built the particulars which make you distinctly you. After the duty to honor God, we are bound and obligated to honor our parents and our country.

Now let's turn to the first - to the notion of what America is, what makes her to be America as such. You seem to think that anti-Catholicism is in it. Well I disagree: certainly the Pilgrims were anti-Catholic, but so were they anti-Church of England. And yet America isn't anti-episcopalian. In fact, the Quakers came over here to shed their oppression, and so did other groups. And the Catholics did the same thing, in Maryland (until the rug got pulled out from underneath them). And while there was indeed quite considerable anti-Catholic sentiment for well over a 100 years after 1776, there was also embedded in America the wherewithal to address that disorder within the rules. And so as a result we saw, in the 1940's and 1950's, popular culture broadly accept and even propose Catholics for admiration: movies with Catholic priests always protrayed them as noble characters (Bells of St. Mary's, On the Waterfront, Boy's Town), and Bishop Fulton Sheen's radio and TV program were fully successful even outside Catholic circles. All of which occurred without a revolution, or even a national act of lifting oppression (like the Civil Rights Act).

Going back to the colonies and their development with many religious groups: in the mix of all that, following upon the experience of being able to work together (to revolt, for example) even while not sharing the same religion, the unique and distinctive feature of the FEDERAL arrangement that brought to birth our specific political order was an explicit acceptance of religious liberty expressed with subsidiarity: the Congress would not establish one religion (though the states could). And that, oddly enough, is extremely close to the model of liberty expressed in Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae. So far from being in its core nature anti-Catholic, the US was not insignificant in casting up to Rome's eyes an example from which to help express a truth about the relationship between the (true) religion and the state (though not a perfect example, as I have repeatedly stated in these pages).

And, lastly, it isn't the heretical notions of the Pilgrims, or of any other Protestants, that constitutes a core, essential feature of America. Not so as I can see. The closest one could come to that is (as I said above) the notion that pluralism is in itself a positive good, and I have responded to that objection already.

Most importantly, it is the leading proponent of capitalism, which is not only intrinsically evil but inimical to Catholic social teaching embodied in the medieval, community-based economies it violently supplanted.

Well, but no, I disagree with the picture you paint here, also. First, let's make a distinction, one which I will insist upon for the rest of this thread because it's my thread and I can: There are 2 kinds of "capitalism" available for the name. One is the rabid, extreme, no-holds-barred capitalism that makes supreme just one principle, that of profit, and its means of getting it, capital. The other one is a different animal, it is a belief that of the two parties to economic progress, capital and labor, BOTH are necessary and BOTH are owed part of the fruit of the undertaking, the profit - although accepting that profit is not the sole principle and that the means of achieving it must be subject to the good of men as a whole. This latter meaning of capitalism has a rightful claim to the name "capitalism" also, for it rests squarely on the belief that capital is due a part of the profit. And this both Pope Leo XIII and Pope John Paul II said, pretty much directly. Therefore, for the rest of this discussion, the first kind of capitalism shall go by the name "rabid capitalism" and the second shall go by the name "limited capitalism".

Now, I ask you to show me how and where rabid capitalism came to be enshrined within the very bones and soul of America. For I don't think it is. Indeed, I think that there is no way to prove that rabid capitalism is a core reality of America. For one thing, we constantly see men of all walks of life walking away from rabid capitalism - the men who found great charitable enterprises, the men who forego opportunities for increasing their wealth, the "dollar-a-year" men, etc. I would put it to you that Ben Franklin's mutual (non-profit) fire insurance company of Philadephia is more true to the picture of what America is essentially than rabid capitalism. Indeed, the America that Alexis de Tocqueville described was very much an America that was comfortably similar to your picture of "community-based economies", at least in many ways if not in toto.

Furthermore, I would also dispute the notion that one can point to the degree to which rabid capitalism has made headway in overcoming limited capitalism today as proof of the point: even if we grant, for the sake of the discussion, that capital and government have gotten in bed together to help each other along grotesquely (a point made in these pages repeatedly so it is nothing new here), this is a matter that has grown by increments and can be fixed / undone in similar fashion: the change did not make a new, different America, and changing entirely into a limited capitalist America would undermine nothing of the essence of America. Therefore, you need more weighty arguments than that "so many big entities are rabidly capitalist in practice."

Unfortunately , what conservatives today call "American exceptionalism " is nothing but American chauvinism .

One man's chauvinism is another man's patriotism. And, I am sure, both Chesterton and Belloc would heartily support the notion of loving one's own homeland.

Robert Berger, I suppose it didn't come through clearly, but there was a bit of irony in my use of "exceptional" in my title: if you read the OP carefully (go ahead, I will wait while you do that), nowhere do I actually use or rely on any formal exceptionalism to justify my love of America. There's a reason for that: I am a Christian first, not an American first. I think that God does indeed arrange things for the good, including arranging the existence of certain nations at various times in history - including America - but that basis also supports the existence of all the other nations that exist as well. In point of fact, I pointed out that I love America's virtues - but I love the same virtues found in other countries as well, and nothing I said suggests otherwise. Do you disagree with the notion that America does have certain virtues, or my (very short) list of them?

The only thing exceptional that I claim for America is that she first put forth subsidiarity in explicit form (as shared sovereignty) as a practical, developed, formal reality, from which the world learned a new thing. And I don't claim it as special because we have it and nobody else has it, not that kind of chauvinism. So, frankly, you are just barking up the wrong tree.

So, the fact that a country has a great, horrible defect doesn't mean you cannot love it

Guys like Robert Allen always seem to forget that if a horrible defect were a legitimate basis for disloyalty and harboring hatred, then there would have been no cause to send Christ to die for us. There is no man who has lived since the fall who could be found innocent under that metric.

Belloc lamented the fact that England abandoned the Faith. As for patriotic African-American slaves, perhaps they did not share my loyalty to Rome. My parents right or wrong- yes; my country, hardly. The analogy is a bit strained, doncha think? I certainly appreciate the distinction between RC & LC; if America were to ever adopt the latter, as it is Distributism by another name, I'd start flying the Stars and Stripes day and night.

God so loved the world that He sent His only Son to die for our sins. Thus, we must love anything that is 'horribly defective', nay, even heretical: sounds like a non sequitur to me. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Anyone who fully appreciates the enormity of Christ's sacrifice will oppose, if not hate, any institution in any way associated with heresy, even one's own country. Oh, and BTW, I'm not a big fan of the EU either.

Mr. Allen, can you cite scrap of writing that suggests that Belloc hated England? The very fact that he lamented England's abandonment and persecution of Catholicism is evidence of his patriotism. His works on the English Reformation and its aristocratic impostures positively ache with love, like that of a parent for a wayward child.

There is no possible way to denounce 21st century American patriots, on the grounds of America's hostility toward Catholicism and her embrace of capitalism, while leaving untouched by the anathema 20th century English patriots.

By a pure and bright syllogism we're left with the knowledge that Mr. Allen thinks Belloc and Chesterton were not "self-respecting, reflective Roman Catholics."

My parents right or wrong- yes; my country, hardly. The analogy is a bit strained, doncha think?

I did say that it was an analogy, not an exact parallel. Because, you know, analogues are somewhat different while also somewhat the same.

And I did state exactly where the sameness lies: in both (parents and country), they are in a sense a cause of the child / citizen. Yes, in different senses. Yes, the way we reflect that will be different. Yes, the honor due will be honor simply for parents, and honor in a derivative way for the country.

So, either engage the argument, or just admit that you don't like it even though it is true.

Anyone who fully appreciates the enormity of Christ's sacrifice will oppose, if not hate, any institution in any way associated with heresy, even one's own country.

OK, here's the problem: if you admit that we are supposed to love "our country" at all, even under SOME conditions (like when it is not heretical), you will be forced to admit that we love it even when it has defects. Suppose you are a citizen of Catholic Italy in 1820, if you love the country because it is your country (i.e. differently from any love of Catholic Austria which is not your country), you love it based on something - a something that you are ignoring in this discussion.

In fact, the country is a being, a being whose reality is a _derived_ reality stemming from the reality of the persons who make it up, together with their unified origin and customs: language, sources of law and order, religion, etc. That's the WHAT of a country. If it is worthy to be loved at all, it is worthy to be loved precisely insofar as it is that derived thing, that something that depends upon man's social nature being expressed into a particular time, place, and society. That being has a good and an ordering principle, the "common good" for which it acts, and in which its people finds their flourishing.

And that's the reason why it is worthy of being loved even when defective: it is, still, that derived being, rooted in man's social nature expressed in a particular time and place and society, that is the embodiment of their particular mode of fulfilling the common good, and in which they find their flourishing as social persons. That it is defective in its ordering to the true good means that we will love it the less in act, though we can (and should) hope for its correction so that it becomes worthy of being loved the more. But any state that is still not so deformed and degenerate as to require being overthrown has, ipso facto, enough good in it to be loved.

But perhaps, you will say, that being a heretical state is just so deformed and defective. And to which I respond with 2 counter arguments. First of all, America has heretical people, I cannot find within its core essence an heretical principle: nothing about America makes it "America the heretical" in essence, and if America became Catholic she would still be the same entity. As I said above and in which I was not refuted.

Secondly, I deny that having a state be a heretical state does so deform it as to undermine its whole and complete good so that it is no longer lovable, can no longer command our allegiance. For even a state that is heretical can still be effective in many other aspects of the common good. I think you will find that you do not have the support of the great Catholic thinkers either. For example, Cardinal John Henry Newman, expostulating against Gladstone's claim that Vatican I implies Catholics cannot be good loyal citizens of Britain:

Now the main point of Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet is this : that, since the Pope claims infallibility in faith and morals, and since there are no "departments and functions of human "life which do not and cannot fall within the domain of morals "(p. 36), and since he claims also "the domain of all that concents the government and discipline of the Church," and more-over ' ' claims the power of determining the limits of those domains," and " does not sever them, by any acknowledged or intelligible line, from the domains of civil duty and allegiance" (p. 45),. there fore Catholics are moral and mental slaves, and " every convert and member of the Pope's Church places his loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another" (p. 45).

I admit Mr. Gladstone's premises, but I reject his conclusion ; and now I am going to show why I reject it...

but my argument at least shows this, that till there comes to us a special, direct command from the Pope to oppose our country, we need not be said to have ' placed our loyalty and civil duty at the mercy of another'...

Of course we must recollect, on the one hand, that Catholics are not only
bound by allegiance to the British Crown, but have special privileges as citizens, can meet together, speak and "Unions, ran vote for members of Parliament, and sit in Parliament, and can hold office, all which are denied to foreigners sojourning among us; ...

Newman, in a country that had been Catholic and had become Protestant 300 years earlier, still declared that its Catholics owed their allegiance to the crown.

The truth is that precisely because the state is ordered to good under the temporal order and not the eternal order (it's proper object is more limited), it is a fundamentally distinct authority from that of the Church. And this implies also that the state can be in error about religion and still retain considerable good because of its relation to the good of the temporal order. And this is what underlies Newman's argument. It is the pagans (Pharaoh, Darius, Caesar) and Muslims who smash religion and the state together and insist they be one entity. Christendom insists rather that they are separate. And this Christian belief allows, nay it implies, that men owe their loyalty even to states that are in the wrong about religion, though they do not owe their loyalty to the state precisely in those matters in which the state would have them violate the true religion.

'Christendom insists rather that (the state and religion) are separate. And this Christian belief allows, nay it implies, that men owe their loyalty even to states that are in the wrong about religion, though they do not owe their loyalty to the state precisely in those matters in which the state would have them violate the true religion.'

You appear to be overlooking the time when rulers were required, upon pain of excommunication, to defend the Faith. The Holy Roman Empire- now there was a political system I could love without reservation! If something like it went astray, I could love it like a 'wayward child' realizing that it wasn't being true to itself, a la Belloc, who believed that England had it roots in Roman Catholicism. The situation is vastly different with the US. It is rotten to the core, because it is based upon heresy.

I continue to find it insulting that you should compare my mother and father in any way to the impersonal entity of which I happen to be a citizen.

I continue to find it insulting that you besmirch the name of fine English Catholics like Chesterton and Belloc: men who, again, in pristine logic cannot be left outside your strident denunciations. The Catholic roots of England had been forcibly uprooted long before America became a Republic. And the United States, thank God, despite a lot of bigotry, slander and discrimination, never even came close to the level of anti-Catholic persecution, suppression, expropriation, and butchery that England accomplished under Fidei Defensor Henry the VIII alone.

I also continue to find insulting your breezy accusations of "based in heresy," when it's pretty clear you haven't paid any attention to Tony's very careful arguments about the basis for his American Catholic patriotism. Maybe you could manage a calm and deliberate argument, oh, say, a third as gentlemanly and patient as Tony's have been, instead of just firing off tedious and summary spittle.

I continue to find it insulting that you should compare my mother and father in any way to the impersonal entity of which I happen to be a citizen.

Are you completely unlettered? It is not I who make this comparison, (that is, not I who originated it): Cicero mentions it. Augustine allows it. Aquinas defines it.

The principles (or origins) of our being and governing are our parents and our country, which have given us birth and nourishment. Consequently man is debtor chiefly to his parents and his country, after God. Wherefore, just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God, so does it belong to "pietas," in the second place, to give worship to one's parents and one's country. (Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, Q. 101)

The entire German and Russian peoples own it, calling their countries "the Fatherland" and "Holy Mother Russia". The idea is as old as the hills, and as widely accepted. Indeed, the Latin term for one's home country, the "patria", a cognate for "father", is the very term from which we get "patriotic". A "nation" is a people that has a common source, for "natus", birth, is the basic meaning of the word. There is no escaping the ancient and universal connection made between the homeland and a sense in which it is a father or mother to its people. All of history supports my point, Robert.

The state is impersonal in ONE sense, but is personal in ANOTHER sense. Canon Law provides that there are "juridic persons," such as a diocese, or a religious order. The very same concept underlies corporate "persons". A real person is a subsistence of a rational nature (St. Thomas's definition), and while a diocese, a corporation, and a nation are not properly speaking subsistences, they have DERIVATIVE reality through the persons in whom they "subsist". The usage of "person" for the nation is legitimate, though derivative.

The Holy Roman Empire- now there was a political system I could love

Yes? How about just the "Roman" Empire, before it was baptized and became holy? Maybe you would find it difficult to love that - but the Bible tells us differently:

Remind them that they have a duty of submissive loyalty to governments and to those in authority, of readiness to undertake any kind of honourable service. (Titus 3:1)

The kind of love that patriotism entails is, precisely, that "submissive loyalty" of which Titus spoke even during the first Roman Empire.

Leo XIII specifies that it stems from the natural law:

If the natural law bids us give the best of our affection and of our devotedness to our native land so that the good citizen does not hesitate to brave death for his country, much more is it the duty of Christians to be similarly affected to the Church. (Sapientiae Christianae)

Robert, your position opposes ancient usage, the Bible, the early Fathers, the medieval Doctors, the popes, recent great Catholic thinkers, philosophy, and Canon Law. I know not how else a point may be proved more thoroughly.

Tony's of 6:59am is one of the best comments I've ever read in nearly 15 years of reading blogs.

Far from imagining I might ever join the 6:59ers, I will add these points:

(1) To a certain extent it is true to say that the American colonists were heretical from Catholicism precisely because the England they came from had tried to extirpate Catholics. Again the Robert Allen logic turns hard against ChesterBelloc, who were patriots of a country that so forcefully inflicted Protestantism on the world that America had no choice but to be Protestant.

(2) It is simply true that several of the earliest American settlements were completely open to Catholic faith and practice -- New Amsterdam, Maryland, all French settlements, Louisiana, and the Spanish Southwest. Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Midlands were founded by a people firmly committed to toleration, and the South, though publicly orthodox Protestant, was in practice tolerant of a wide range indeed. Much of Catholic sympathy was on the side of the Confederacy and even a number of Jews were elevated into the ranks of the Southern apologists and statesmen.

So again the counsel of despair, disloyalty and treason rings hollow from Rome to America.

I can highly recommend Chapter 1 ("The Unsentimental Sentiment") of Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences to this discussion, in which he elaborates the imperative for criticism to come from love; we cannot rightly or well criticize that which we despise. "We have no authority to to argue anything of a social or political nature unless we have shown by our primary volition that we approve some aspects of the existing world. [. . .] We begin our our other affirmations after a categorical statement that life and the world are to be cherished." Essentially, his argument is that we begin with two things -- a love for what is and a picture of what could be (the ideal); both of these impel us to right action.

Thanks, Paul. That's very kind of you.

To add to Paul's litany and to extend my comment of 10:16 yesterday:

I cannot find within its core essence an heretical principle: nothing about America makes it "America the heretical" in essence,

let me note that John Carroll, the first American bishop, did not reprove his own cousin, Charles Carroll, one of the signers of the Declaration, for his patriotism, nor his own brother Daniel, one of the signers of the Constitution. Quite the opposite, at the election of George Washington as President, he sent "An Address from the Roman Catholics of America to George Washington, Esq., President of the United States", from "Bishop Carroll, on behalf of the Catholic clergy, united with the representatives of the Catholic laity (Charles Carrollton, and Daniel Carroll of Maryland, Dominick Lynch of New York, and Thomas FitzSimons of Pennsylvania) in an address of congratulation, admirable for its sentiments of exalted patriotism" (as described by the Catholic Encyclopedia). Bishop Carroll's word are clear:

Their blood flowed as freely (in proportion to their numbers) to cement the fabric of independence as that of any of their fellow-citizens. They concurred with perhaps greater unanimity than any other body of men in recommending and promoting that government from whose influence America anticipates all the blessings of justice, peace, plenty, good order, and civil and religious liberty

The Puritans fled England precisely because the Protestants there were not anti-Catholic enough for their taste. The rest of what I detest about the US flows from that fact. (Is it just a coincidence that this country did not elect a Catholic president until JFK- and only then after forcing him to choose between Rome and Washington D.C.?) The Carrolls are not exactly my idea of staunch Catholics, tending to the heresy of Americanism. (There has always been tension between the Vatican and groups like the USCB.) I will not speak to the case of GKC, because I have not read his writings. But to reiterate concerning HB, he loved that part of England that was still Catholic; not the Protestantism upon which many of its institutions had come to be based. St. Paul and STA were not speaking of political entities that had done everything in their power to promote heresies. I cannot imagine them saying that any service could be 'honorably' performed for a state such as Saudi Arabia, which is the just the Islamic version of the US. You people simply do not share my hatred for heresies, which is a shame and the intimation at least of heresy itself.

The Puritans fled England precisely because the Protestants there were not anti-Catholic enough for their taste. The rest of what I detest about the US flows from that fact. (Is it just a coincidence that this country did not elect a Catholic president until JFK- and only then after forcing him to choose between Rome and Washington D.C.?) The Carrolls are not exactly my idea of staunch Catholics, tending to the heresy of Americanism. (There has always been tension between the Vatican and groups like the USCB.) I will not speak to the case of GKC, because I have not read his writings. But to reiterate concerning HB, he loved that part of England that was still Catholic; not the Protestantism upon which many of its institutions had come to be based. St. Paul and STA were not speaking of political entities that had done everything in their power to promote heresies. I cannot imagine them saying that any service could be 'honorably' performed for a state such as Saudi Arabia, which is the just the Islamic version of the US. You people simply do not share my hatred for heresies, which is a shame and the intimation at least of heresy itself.

Would that this country had developed out of the French and Spanish settlements mentioned. Also it is simply namby pamby ludicrous to suggest that I must 'love' something in order to justly criticize it, as Beth suggests. By that measure I would have had to keep silent re. the Nazis. Trust me, there's a WHOLE LOT to detest about this miserable, demon-infested world.

Yes, a country's subsistence is derived- one very good reason for not adopting the same emotional attitude towards it as one should foster towards flesh and blood realities such as one's parents.

Finally, the willingness to do one's civic duty up and including 'braving death' is not the same thing as love. Notice how Leo says 'much MORE ....' I love one and only one institution in this world, the HMC, and a man simply cannot serve 2 masters.

It has also occurred to me that there is a significant difference between (say) England and the USA- bloodlines, family and ethnic ties bind generations in the former but not the latter. Love for the Fatherland, then, comes naturally to those who find themselves in the former sort of situation; indeed it is not a stretch to think of it as such, as having nurtured its 'sons and daughters'. The USA, of course, lacks an ethnic identity. Why in the world, then, should I feel any affection or loyalty towards someone like George Washington, who not only isn't 'family' but is a heretic to boot? Chesterton, in other words, could see England as a brother gone astray; I, OTOH, find it difficult to see the USA as not being ignoble in origin.

St. Paul and STA were not speaking of political entities that had done everything in their power to promote heresies.

Robert, you just start down a bottom, and then insist on digging your hole deeper and deeper till you come out lower than low.

The letter to Titus was written at the time of the Roman empire, devoted to pagan Gods, by Paul who would be killed by that government for his religion. The same empire who started killing Christians by the hundreds and thousands shortly thereafter.

St. Thomas and Pope Leo show that the principle is built into natural law, and pertains to a nation and its government by nature. It does not, therefore, depend on a nation being Christian. Nor does it depend on whether a nation has turned its back on Christianity in the past, because the principle of the piety due depends more on the good of the temporal order which is the object of the state.

The Puritans fled England precisely because the Protestants there were not anti-Catholic enough for their taste. The rest of what I detest about the US flows from that fact.

You are an ignorant clod. The Puritans did not settle Massachusetts primarily to repudiate Catholicism or to persecute Catholics, for goodness sake. They were in rebellion against the Protestant Church of England, and were persecuted by that group.

Nor did the Puritans settle the entirety of the American colonies. Catholics came over the Maryland to flee persecutution. Quakers settled Pennsylvania and erected a religious neutral zone that did not persecute Christians. The whole whole smorgasbord did not, indeed, could not become united into one entity until they could put the political good (i.e. temporal) on a plane separate from their religious differences - and thus the formal institution of the United States explicitly prohibits Congressional interference in establishment of religion. Thus what was "ignoble" about the Puritans dislike of Catholicism was formally separated in the formation of the United States as a coherent entity. It is incoherent to suppose the very Catholics who fled England for a measure of freedom could give their allegiance to a country whose core meaning was fundamentally opposed to Catholicism.

You people simply do not share my hatred for heresies, which is a shame and the intimation at least of heresy itself.

I suppose that Jesus did not share your hatred of prostitution and tax collecting. Nor did St. Paul share your hatred for paganism, for he went among the Gentiles. Nor did St. Francis Xavier share your hatred for eastern religious errors, for he proselytized in the East among those pagans. Robert, you have shown that you have no sense, no appreciation for distinctions, but even someone as ignorant as you are might have paused a moment before obliterating distinctions which Christ spent 3 years hammering into the heads of his Apostles. Hate the heresy, love the sinner.

But aside from all that, your comment about "intimation at least of heresy itself" is boorish, uncivilized behavior. It is contrary to civilized discussion, and will not be tolerated. Your other comments show that you don't take the discussion seriously anyway, they are as trivial and foolish as the day is long.

Where did I say anything about hating heretics, Tony? I have consistently used the term 'heresy' to refer to the object of my animus. The USA, the subject at hand, which I do not hate anyway- I just don't love it enough to call myself a patriot- is not a person. I expect scurrilousness and threats of censorship when I argue with non-Catholics, not my co-religionists. And it is simply ludicrous to suggest that asserting a position borders on heresy is 'boorish, uncivilized behavior.' I am putting my reputation as a Catholic scholar on the line here- and you have the nerve to further accuse me of being glib? Why don't you either show that America is not part of the Protestant heresy, which is why I am wary of it, or explain to me why Catholics shouldn't scorn heresies?

I showed it three times or so above. You haven't even tried to respond to them.

And it is simply ludicrous to suggest that asserting a position borders on heresy is 'boorish, uncivilized behavior.'

What you said was:

You people simply do not share my hatred for heresies, which is a shame and the intimation at least of heresy itself.

The "at least" is, of course, a showing that you haven't yet decided whether what you are seeing is heresy, but you're open to the idea. That's pretty rich coming from someone who apparently rejects explicit Church teaching on the nature of our duty of "pietas" to our country, and seem pretty uncomfortable with the Church's teaching in Dignitatis Humanae as well. But rich or not, what you did was to *hint* at calling contributors at this site heretics. Not good behavior for a guest, EVEN IF it were true. But of course, it isn't true, you cannot locate any heresy in the above, because nothing stated is remotely like a heresy.

Furthermore, you also made an unfounded judgment at our lack of "hatred for heresies". That's BS. Nothing in the above indicates that I (or we) are OK with heresies. For example, toleration of another's heresy by not suppressing it through force is not a lack of hatred for heresy, as proven by the fact that the Vatican doesn't go around using force to suppress heresy either. One can detest heresy and think that X or Y response to it is called for, it doesn't become "lack of hatred" to respond with X just because you think Y is a better response.

"Censorship"? What an odd thing. If you tell your neighbor you won't tolerate his calling your wife a slut in your house, is that "censorship"? Well, that's about what we are talking about here. You are a guest. We welcome the comments of guests who have intelligent things to say, even when they oppose our own ideas. We merely insist that they make them politely and civilly. If you can't be bothered to stay within those rather simply boundaries, (which a lot of other people manage to do quite readily even when they disagree vehemently with us), then you won't be welcome. Is that so hard to understand?

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