What Dover could do without effort, most scholars could not do even with the most painstaking labor. When his autobiography, Marginal Comment, first appeared in 1994, I was visiting Dover and his wife Audrey at their home in St. Andrews. With a mischievous smile, he dashed into his study—to emerge a short time later with an inscribed copy. On the flyleaf was a Greek elegiac couplet in which Dover had managed (1) to use in an apposite and humorous way a Greek word whose meaning we had discussed in a co-authored article, disputing its translation with John Finnis; (2) to express pleasure at the collaboration; and (3) to compare the “daring” outspokenness of our article to that of his own memoir—all with not only impeccable meter and style, but also graciousness, wit, and elegance. This in ten minutes . . . .

But note that Nussbaum’s praise of Dover focuses on the major advances made in our understanding of human sexuality by his 1978 book, Greek Homosexuality; bear in mind that this is praise from one author with an interest in deviant sexuality to another.  Her heart bursts forth with this fulsome line: “A life devoted to mastery of such arcane matters illuminated the world for us all.”  The world? Come on, if she had called this book a fine example of the fruits of a life dedicated to free inquiry in pursuit of the truth, I’d be ready to go with her; I’ve not read the book, but I agree with the point in principle. But Dover didn’t illuminate the world with yet another book sexuality. With endless “gender studies” and “queer studies” and “sexuality studies” and “peace studies” and “cultural studies”, classicists and other humanists have lost sight of the truly human and have lost their connection with the world of humane letters that spans the centuries. Dover famously had a tin ear for philosophy; in his commentary on the Symposium he more or less says that Plato was one of the mentally ill few who believe that reality has both a physical and non-physical dimension. If you can only appreciate Plato for his prose style and his dialogues for what they suggest about homosexuality in Athens, you’re probably not the type to salvage funding for the humanities (when the money is needed for government pensions and health-care), let alone to set the world on fire for the truth.

As for the money running dry in England and in Europe – here’s looking at you, progressives. How many humanities programs around the world have you seen endowed with tax dollars? In the United States, the great colleges and universities were built through the philanthropy of those who had prospered in the free market and whose money had not been confiscated by taxation. You want to live in a progressive society, Nussbaum, with endless sexual license and government regulation? I’d get your REF report ready.

I’ve always found this particular Bible passage (about how the devil that is cast out goes wandering in search of comfort, and, when he can’t find it, gets together a group of his evil buddies and goes back to invade the soul from which he was evicted) quite eerie. It actually seems to give us a bit of insight into demon psychology… but also to suggest that, after the demons are cast from the soul, it is ultimately in even greater danger since they are likely to return in force. Now, allowing one’s soul to be invaded by demons certainly doesn’t seem good. Our priest used this passage as an opening for talking about the importance of giving the devil no quarter, and keeping the door firmly closed to his influence. That doesn’t seem an unreasonable way to expand on the passage, but even so, I have to wonder: are people necessarily blameworthy when they are possessed?

Exorcism can, in some times and places, be a means for increasing the faith of many. Of course, the same could be said of many types of conversion, and that doesn’t mean the one converted bears no responsibility for his formerly sinful state. St. Paul was still blameworthy for his life of persecuting the Church, even though it all worked out well in the end. But possession seems a bit different, potentially. No doubt we can diminish the risk of it by wearing our scapulars and going to Mass regularly and surrounding ourselves by holy objects of the sort that demons would find distasteful. But after all, many cases of possession seem to involve children, and others of less than complete mental competency, and in the Gospels, Our Lord seems to treat possession as an affliction to be treated along with physical illness. (This observation has led many to interpret Biblical demon possession as being merely mental illness. I don’t think that stands up, all things considered, but I can understand why some would wish to read it that way.) Doesn’t this seem to suggest that, in some cases, God allows demons to invade (temporarily, at least) a particular soul?

In any case, it certainly seems that the assault comes much more heavily on some than on others. Presumably God takes this into account when assessing blame.

A classic example of what I hate cropped up at Mass recently where, at the Archbishop’s request, all the parishes have been playing a recorded message basically asking us to give money to the archdiocese. Now, in the first place, playing a recording seems tacky to me. If you want to send a letter for pastors to read out, fine. But do we have to have a little commercial, complete with cheesy, recorded music? It’s just not dignified.

But the really obnoxious part came from the segment on Catholic education, when various people were expounding on the virtues of Catholic schools. A few things were said about the value of Catholic education generally. I’m not unsympathetic to this point, but I couldn’t help but wonder: shouldn’t the schools be supported primarily on a parish level, and not by the diocese?

Just as I was thinking this, the financial officer of one of the local schools addressed the point. “Supporting (name of school) is first and foremost the responsibility of (name of parish.) But because we have chosen to be a diverse school, with the poor among us, all the parishes must contribute to our mission here.” Or words to that effect.

Ewwww. What an icky thing to include in the general diocesan appeal. And the first thing wrong with it comes from the use of the word MUST. I mean, basically, the bottom line here seems to be that this school wants to give out more scholarships than it can afford to poor students. They don’t specify whether the recipients are Catholic, or members of the parish, but I’m guessing not given the reference to “diversity.” Now, paying the tuition of poor, non-Catholic students wanting to go to Catholic schools might be a nice thing to do. But it seems a bit much to say that we must do it, based on the decision of that particular parish. Perhaps there are other worthwhile projects that we care about more.

Furthermore, though, I was somewhat disgusted by the obvious pride that this school was taking in being “diverse” by having “the poor among us.” Oh, hooray for you, agreeing to have poor kids in your school at other people’s expense. How exactly is this a noble action on your part, if the diocese is even paying their tuition? It’s almost as if they think they deserve credit just for putting up with these irksome poor people. Lovely.

Finally, I was irritated by the way that no explanation was given for why this was such a valuable ministry. If I could be sure that diocesan money was being spent to give the underprivileged a truly Catholic education, I would be pleased. Far better than material handouts, a good religious education might be just the thing to help some people out of the unfortunate conditions under which they are raised. Given the general tenor of the remarks made, however, I can’t help but be skeptical. People who boast about having “the poor among them” tend to be the same sort who want to do away with things like Rosary prayers, or just orthodox religious instruction, for the sake of making the newcomers more comfortable. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope that I am. But what I saw did not inspire confidence.

Unfortunately, in our society, it’s become necessary to be more discerning about what we give for the sake of “the poor.”

Bonifacius, following St. Thomas, contends that gender is accidental, on the way to making an argument that the female gender is (accidentally but still intrinsically) inferior to the male. It is my opinion that this argument is offensive and degrading to women generally and Our Lady in particular; it is a fact that it contradicts the explicit teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You may read more of that discussion in the next thread. Here I just want to ask: how helpful is it to think of gender as an accident?

Gender is an odd thing. It seems to have properties of both an essential and an accidental trait. It’s easy to see why, given a choice, St. Thomas called it accidental. If women and men were of different essences, they’d be different species, but that can’t be right. On the other hand, calling it accidental is also odd. The usual smell test is to ask: could you change this and still be the same person? So, I could (given some growing tonic) get three inches taller and still be the same person. I could move to a different state. I could dye my hair. These things are accidents. But I could not be made incorporeal and still be me. I could not cease to be rational and still be me. These are essential to my nature.

So, could I become a man and still be me? We don’t, of course, have the power to make such a transformation (“sex change operations” change only very external characteristics – in effect, we have the power to turn a man into a mutilated man, or a woman into a mutilated woman, but that is all.) But put it all in God’s hands, and suppose that there was a question of making people the opposite sex in heaven. Doesn’t it seem rather wrong to suppose that Clara could become a man and Bonifacius a woman, without either ceasing to be the same people? Gender seems more fundamental than that, at least in a Catholic conception of reality.

In the preceding discussion, Discipulus and Bonifacius hit on some points that, I think, illustrate the difficulty of the problem. Discipulus suggested that, if indeed the male were intrinsically superior, it would be better for women to try as much as possible to imitate men… but obviously traditional Catholics tend not to favor such efforts. Bonifacius said that, no, it would be better for women to act like women, and unfitting for them to imitate men (even though they, in their perfection as women, would still on his argument be inferior to men who had fulfilled their masculinity equally well.) Well, it’s easy to see why he’d want to say that, but the justification seems thin. If masculinity is better, why should we not all want to be more masculine? If the answer is, “you should, but you can’t pull it off,” then that just doesn’t seem to be true. Some women can act very much like men. If the answer is, “it’s not in your nature to be manly,” then we get back to the different-species problem.

Complimentarity helps with this, because it makes a third sort of answer available. In general, women and men are better equipped to exemplify different human perfections. So, they can each best fulfill their human nature by fulfilling the perfections of their sex. (And, I think it should be noted too, that they’re not that different. The basic virtues are common to both, though they might sometimes manifest themselves in slightly different ways.)

But we’re still left with the essence/accident problem. I conclude that this is a case in which the traditional Thomistic categories just aren’t all that helpful for giving us a grasp on the truth.

Related to this are contraception and abortion. The liberals use the environment to rationalize abortion and contraception. At the end of the day, they can excuse their own sins by saying, “The world is overpopulated anyway.” If we have a right to kill wolves and other destructive creatures, then our own human needs and the prerogatives of human dominion precede those of wild creatures. Which means that child who was aborted or who was never conceived was more important than all the wolves in the world.  Also, liberals displace their desire for children upon animals. Somehow they feel that by treating irrational animals like persons with rights they can compensate for the execution of their own pre-rational (as opposed to irrational) children. Surely it bugs them that conservatives somehow “delude” themselves into accepting the traditional distinction between a human fetus and a dumb brute in the wasteland. More bothersome is the fact that the benighted conservatives, most of them Christian, are unbothered by this medieval fairy-tale that humans and animals are essentially distinct. Heck, some of these troglodytes don’t even think that they’re even *descended* from animals! Shudder!

And worse yet, these gun-toting, wolf-hunting, baby-making, Darwin-denying conservatives are *happy*! The liberals envy the conservatives the happiness that they (the liberals) had to abandon when they adopted the position that humans and animals have the same rights and abortion is no different than hunting. In fact, they think that abortion is *better* in that it is self-inflicted! Damn those conservatives for not sharing in the miserable existential truth! Indeed, in many liberals’ thought patterns the division between people who believe that man is supreme over irrational creation (if we can use such creationist jargon!) and people who deny it replaces the division between brute and man. The old ways represent an earlier, less ”advanced” and “humane” phase in evolution. As the un-evolved won’t cull themselves the way the WASP and Jewish ruling clique does, they need to be socially engineered into thinning out their own herd.  That, or treated to forcible eugenics.  Instead of hunting wolves, the government should be aborting babies.   

So you can see why Sarah Palin was so offensive to liberals — why they have such hatred of her.  Not only did she have a number of children, but she kept one who will never manifest his human rationality fully.  Yet she acknowledges him as human nonetheless.  Nor did her teenage daughter abort the child she conceived out of wedlock.  Palin killed off *unwanted wolves,* not children who came into existence with an unwanted disability or at a time when they were unwanted.  Wolves and humans are not equal.  And while the liberals with all their pretensions to higher education cannot see this, the relatively uneducated Palin can.  It *really* bothers liberals when someone less educated than they are grasps a bit of wisdom that escapes them and therefore is happier than they are with all of their conceits and displaced guilt.   (Actually, to get all Freudian — Freud got some things quite right — the liberals are guilty of both displacement and projection when it comes to their own guilt.  Much as I am blasting away at liberals right now instead of mortifying my own passions and examining my own conscience.)

I return now to the helicopters. Some liberals faulted the method. I guess they found it “unfair” somehow. I mean, to bring such high-powered technology as helicopters and rifles into the killing of an animal is such a gross, gauche (in the non-political sense of the word) demonstration of human reason and animal inferiority, right?  Remember, this wasn’t about sport or skill. The goal was to kill the quota of wolves in an efficient way. That meant helicopters. Were the hunters supposed to ”violate” the ”virgin” wilderness with four-wheelers that would leave tracks and cause erosion? Or were they supposed to build roads, maybe with Stimulus Bill monies? Wouldn’t helicopters burn up the least amount of fossil fuels?  Were the hunters supposed to kill wolves *and* contribute to global warming . . . er, “climate change” . . . which would only kill more Alaskan polar bears?  So the liberals want to kill wolves *and* their precious polar bears?  Really, what was the Alaskan government supposed to do to take care of the wolf problem? Probably ban the hunting of moose by humans (the wolves were competing with human hunters), decree the public celebration of Darwin Day (as we have in Ithaca), and dispense condoms to Eskimo women (and *yes* that *is* the proper nomenclature! the *Canadian* Inuit are only *one subset* of Eskimo!) so the white man can finally finish off these superstitious, un-evolved savages once and for all.

St. Augustine of Hippo, “Divine Providence and The Problem of Evil”

What can be mentioned more sordid, more bereft of decency, or more full of turpitude than prostitutes, procurers, and the other pests of that sort? Remove prostitutes from human affairs, and you will unsettle everything because of lusts; place them in the position of matrons, and you will dishonor these latter by disgrace and ignominy. This class of people is, therefore, by its own mode of life most unchaste in its morals; by the law of order, it is most vile in social condition. (emphasis added)

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Part II of book II, question 10, article 11

I answer that, Human government is derived from the Divine government, and should imitate it. Now although God is all-powerful and supremely good, nevertheless He allows certain evils to take place in the universe, which He might prevent, lest, without them, greater goods might be forfeited, or greater evils ensue. Accordingly in human government also, those who are in authority, rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain greater evils be incurred: thus Augustine says (De Ordine ii, 4): “If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust.” Hence, though unbelievers sin in their rites, they may be tolerated, either on account of some good that ensues therefrom, or because of some evil avoided. Thus from the fact that the Jews observe their rites, which, of old, foreshadowed the truth of the faith which we hold, there follows this good–that our very enemies bear witness to our faith, and that our faith is represented in a figure, so to speak. For this reason they are tolerated in the observance of their rites.

See here for a detailed account of St. Thomas’ teaching on prostitution and his arguments for its legal toleration.  And see here for St. Thomas on the sin of seduction, i.e. the seduction of a virgin outside of marriage. He ranks this as worse than simple fornication, a category in which he includes prostitution. In other words, the seduction of a virgin is a worse sin than prostitution.  And modern secular culture vastly prefers that young men seduce virgins rather than turn to prostitutes. 

And now for a recent quotation from H.E. Gustaaf Cardinal Joos (R.I.P.), a Belgian cardinal raised to the sacred purple by none other than H.H. Ven. Pope John Paul II of fairest memory and “Theology of the Body” fame: 

If a man thinks he needs sex or is going to explode, it is better to find a prostitute than seduce or rape a girl. At least there are no innocent victims involved.

I am primarily writing to open this for debate, only secondarily to say, “Maybe this route in some circumstances might be more preferable.” For instance, it seems better to have legally tolerated prostitution in a moral culture where everyone regards prostitution as both evil and as an evil than the current situation where prostitution is illegal but sexual promiscuity is rampant in the general populace and is not regarded with shame.

Also, general promiscuity leads to a general desensitization of the populace to vice.  Now for a very touchy point:  the women who become prostitutes, strippers, porn stars, etc., generally are not corrupted by the people who lure them into those jobs.  Most were sexually abused as children.  When it comes to sexual intimacy, a sense of shame, etc., these poor women generally died inside long before they entered these jobs.  So while this life is definitely very evil, I am not sure that these professions lead to an over-all increase in the number of women who have been corrupted.  As I say, they are a self-selected group.  If legal tolerance for the abuse of these women’s condition — and it is an abuse! — might lead to a net decrease in the number of women corrupted (as by fornication), then this situation might be preferable to the alternative of rampant promiscuity among all classes.  

That, at least, is what St. Thomas, St. Augustine, and Cardinal Joos seem to be saying.  So, do you think that this is sensible?  Practical?  Impractical?  Completely immoral and intolerable?  Is it better to have rampant fornication and illegal prostitution?  Or are both so evil as to require criminalization?

P.S. I am *not* saying that the legalization of prostitution would help the current situation of our culture at all. It would merely add one more vice to the pile. Obviously, what we need is a Catholic reform of morals. Still, even when 100% of the populace is Catholics, there will still be pornography and prostitution going on somewhere among some. Should that be legally tolerated but legally restricted, or entirely banned?  And N.B.:  my argument and that of the saints listed above is completely different from the libertarian argument that people have a *right* to prostitution.  There is no right here.  Only a matter of prudence as to whether a legal ban (as opposed to legal restriction) would really be advisable.

Some have sought to defend medical cannibalism in similar terms.  The idea is that as long as one does not participate in or approve of the killing of embryos, one may legitimately use their stem cells or vaccines made from the embryos.  They say that this is analogous to the cannibalism practiced in the Andes.  This supposedly shoots down the common objection that embryonic stem cell research is ”medical” cannibalism.  The people in the Andes did not kill the people whose bodies they ate, but they did eat the flesh once the person died.  The argument goes that so long as we do not participate in abortion we may still prosper from it. 

I counter:  the problem with stem cell research, etc., is not cannibalism per se but the fact that the cannibalism does not take place in extremis.  In the Andes, the people were facing starvation.  For everyone on that mountain the alternative to cannibalism was imminent death, a choice that at least one person made.  They used the dead human flesh as something that everyone needs in order to live — food.  Like air and water, food is an ordinary requirement for life.  Stem cell research and vaccine research does not produce food without which any person would die.  *At best* they might produce one particular type of potential treatment for diseases and disorders for which a variety of other treatments are available or might be if we pursued an alternative line of research.  There are alternatives available which were not available on that mountain.  I therefore highly doubt whether we can legitimately compare the pressing imperative of the Uruguayan students to eat with the desire of a Parkinson’s sufferer to combat the effects of his disease over the course of years.  This is entirely apart from the immorality of abortion and the question of tacit participation in murder after the fact.  The relevant criteria that rendered the Andean cannibalism permissible are absent from medical experimentation.

It does not surprise me at all that the spread of premarital sexual activity occurred at precisely the same time that college became increasingly popular.  It is one thing to ask young people to save themselves until the age of about 18-20.  It is another to add on four years of college.  We are asking people in their  young, most fertile and most sexually potent years to accept the fact that their teenage crushes and high school sweethearts will never marry them.  Why?  Because they have to go to school for another four years!  You don’t want to be stuck with your high school sweetheart through four years of separation at college, do you?  So unless these young lovers make love when prom rolls around, they will never make love to one another.  Because the entire  society is built to make them defer their natural, innate, God-given desires until, in the case of women, their biological clocks are already ticking.  I think that it is cruel to make marriage something that is practically impossible until one is at least 22.  I think it is cruel that so few high school sweethearts are permitted to marry each other when high school ends.

And we should do something about it.  I think that we need to raise our expectations of primary and secondary education and get rid of our expectation that everyone will go to college.  If this means that America loses some affluence, so be it.  We need more people and more moral people, not more technological prowess. I say that it would be a much better country if the average 20-year-old had already completed his necessary job-training and was settling into the married life.   Teenage pregnancy outside of marriage would probably be much less common if people could marry soon after turning 18.  Teenage pregnancy with teenage marriage need not be such a bad phenomenon. 

P.S.  This is also why we need to get our manufacturing jobs back from the Third World.  An 18-year-old guy on an assembly line could once support a family.  Now there are no such jobs and that man must incur the debt of four and often now more years of college in order to support a family.

Yes, to most Americans “dating” means just what was described above.  However, to most Americans “marriage” also means contraception, false feminist equality, easy divorce, and, yes, abortion.  Are we going to say that “marriage” is a bad word because generally most marriages are bad?  “But dating only means bad things.”  No, dating means going out on *dates,* which are scheduled outings by a couple.  If you are a couple and you go out on scheduled outings, then you are dating.  Mind you, most people who get married do in fact start their relationship by dating.  While a good many people date without the intent to marry, almost all people in this country who marry dated first.  If you say to a modern person, “we are dating and saving ourselves for marriage,” most modern people might wonder at your choice to save yourselves but almost no one would find the description of the relationship as “dating” to be problematic or self-contradictory.  If you are “courting” a girl and you schedule times and places and circumstances under which to meet, then you are going out on dates and are dating, period.  To try to say, “dating bad, courting good” is a lame attempt to redefine words.  And it will ring false for a lot of people.  As long as you date the girl you’re courting and court the girl you’re dating, there can’t be a problem.

Another example:  I recently read a good (if occasionally flawed) book, Joseph Pearce’s “C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church.” Pearce makes me want to read more of C.S. Lewis (I’ve read only “The Abolition of Man”). He also makes me an even firmer believer that Lewis was culpable in his heresy. Pearce more or less proves that the reason Lewis did not become Catholic, if he ever considered it, is because he was an Ulster Protestant bigot. Let me repeat that: it was about bigotry. Not ignorance, at least not inculpable ignorance, for Lewis was friends with the Catholic Tolkien (who, when discussing his disappointment with Lewis, said that Anglicanism is nothing but hatred of Rome) and even corresponded in Latin with a now-canonized saint (St. Giovanni Calabria) who tried to get him to convert! Oh, and in addition to bigotry it was about not causing discomfort to others via “inter-denominational” controversy. So it was *lukewarm* bigotry! So I call Lewis out as a formal heretic. But how am I to judge that? Well, how do *you* judge Arius and Luther and Calvin? “The Church said so.” Yes, and *before* the Church could formally judge them, somebody had to indict them. Which means somebody had to accuse them. By definition, that person was acting on personal judgment. So I stand as an accuser against C.S. Lewis.

Do I know for certain that Lewis was guilty of a mortal sin? No. But there are all sorts of people we simply assume are. We just assume that most adulterers know that what they’re doing is wrong, right? In any individual case some screwball problem might preclude full consent, but on the whole we write that group of people off as damned. I say that, even if Lewis was personally innocent of mortal sin, all of the actual indicators are there that usually incline people to believe in guilt. So *for the purposes of moral exemplarity,* I say we lump him with his fellow Protestants Cranmer and Calvin and Jim Jones.  In other words, to put it in a way Lewis himself would appreciate, Dante would be right to place Lewis in the Inferno or the Purgatorio (in the latter case if he converted *before!!!* his judgment), not in the Paradiso.  Pearce shows that his life was marred by bigotry and irrational rationalizing (=Anglicanism) and we should remember that.

When Brown thanked his family, he rather shamelessly told the entire country that both of his young, attractive daughters are available. Then he corrected himself — only one of them is available. He broadcast the fact that he is a typically, and endearingly, bumbling father and is interested in, well, in his daughters mating.

Coakley also thanked her family — her husband, sisters, nieces, grand-niece, etc. She also embarrassed them — by actually calling them dysfunctional! What Brown said about his daughters was very embarrassing but also a compliment to them — he thought that young, red-blooded American males were interested in them:  “YES, they *are* available.”  At best, Coakley was teasing her family.  But dysfunctionality is by definition a problem and it is not a compliment to comment publicly on this. 

You will note that she did not thank her children. She has none. Instead, Coakley said that now that the campaign was over there would be two very happy dogs in her home. So she is one of those modern professional married people who has dogs in place of children. That description basically tells you everything you could possibly want to know about who she is and where she’s coming from. 

Which is the more appealing image? A man who has contributed even two children to the future of his country, or a woman with two dogs? Right.  And guess who won the election.

King did not get the govt. to pass civil rights legislation by peacefully winning over Southern hearts and minds through long-suffering, charity, study, work, and lives of virtue.  That was more the Booker T. Washington school of thought.  King preached provocative confrontation and defiance.  While the marchers did not engage in violence, part of the hope of the marchers was that they would *create* racial tension, not defuse it.  When white racists reacted with force, whether police violence or KKK banditry, the marchers publicized this.  King wanted Northern whites to see Southern whites beating blacks.  Then the Northern whites would vote for civil rights legislation.  And the Southerners did react violently (often immorally) and the Northerners did pass the legislation.  Here’s where things get interesting.  The laws were enforced by agents and soldiers with guns.  In other words, King did believe in using force and the threat of force (i.e. violence) to get his way.  He just thought that it would be more convenient to have federal officers carry the guns and push the Southerners around than try to arm blacks.  And he was right — that did prove more successful. 

I believe that there may be times when such tactics of tension are correct.  But what I do not like is when people delude themselves.  And thinking that King won the civil rights movement by non-violent means is bogus.  He worked to provoke *limited* outbreaks of violence on the part of whites so as to induce the federal government to use its massive power (and guns) to impose his ideals upon hostile white populations.  Good or bad, that’s what he did and we should acknowledge it, perhaps even admire it in some sense.  His was a secular version of, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”  I’m not saying that King preferred this route.  Maybe he would have preferred to have converted hearts and minds.  I think that the Protestant/Masonic/KKK racism of the South was probably too entrenched for Booker T. Washington’s view to prevail.  But at the very least King’s route was not the Christian ideal, which would have been to win people over.  And the imposition of federal control over state and local governments via the civil rights legislation — although perhaps understandable at the time, maybe even necesssary in order to secure basic constitutional rights – did not conform with the American and natural law ideals of subsidiarity.  But that is for another post.

This is because our nation was *born* from an identifiable ideological — and propagandistic — movement. Contrast the situation in France, where at one time at least there were royalists, republicans, and Napoleonists running around. Yet all were French. Look to most European countries and you will find reactionaries, Christian Democrats, fascists, classical liberals (i.e. capitalists), Social Democrats, and Communists. Generally the nationality of the country is not tied up with any one political ideology. Italy, Germany, and France have all gone through a variety of forms of government. In this sense their political cultures are less conservative than ours. We do not know whether an America that did not at least *claim* to be a federal republic would still be the nation-state we know.  The Confederacy is usually written off as a rebellion or deviation, not a major challenge to the Unionist position.  And even the Confederates were republicans (with a small “r”!) and invoked the Founding Fathers against the North. 

As a Catholic and a European-style reactionary/counter-revolutionary, I do not formally “believe” in the Declaration of Independence or the First Amendment. In this sense I am less an American (ideologically speaking) than even the most left-wing liberals in office. In this sense I am also more radical as judged against the standards of American politics, even though I am probably more content with many of our country’s actual, individual political traditions than are those same liberals.