Alexander Hamilton: human rights are grounded in the common origin of humanity

That Americans are entitled to freedom is incontestable on every rational principle.  All men have one common original:  they participate in one common nature, and consequently have one common right.  No reason can be assigned why one man should exercise any power or preeminence over his fellow-creatures more than another; unless they have voluntarily vested him with it.

- Alexander Hamilton (1775-1804), A Full Vindication, Dec. 15, 1774, published in The Revolutionary Writings of Alexander Hamilton (Liberty Fund: 2008), pg. 6.

American support for the death penalty explained

By Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit.  I think he's right, but he misses one part of the equation. Liberal arguments against the death penalty often rest on the principle of the inviolability of the right to life. That argument from liberals rings hollow though because liberals generally support abortion on demand. If it is permissible for a private person to kill an innocent unborn child (who has done nothing to merit death), how can it be morally wrong for the government to kill a convicted murderer who, in a strict "eye for eye, tooth for tooth sense," deserves to be executed? If it is permissible to kill the innocent, why not kill the guilty? Because of liberalism's inherent contradictory position on the right to life, its specific argument against the immorality of the death penalty comes across as incoherent at worst and special pleading at best.

The liberal embrace of abortion also undermines the other main liberal argument against the death penalty: that innocent people might be executed by mistake. Again, by embracing abortion, which is the deliberate killing of an innocent unborn human being, liberalism undermines its own argument. Liberalism is revealed, for the most part, to already accept the idea of killing innocents in order to promote what it sees as social utility. Once that principle is embraced, it is very difficult to cabin it only to apply to the unborn.

North Dakota is booming

Adrienne over at Adrienne's Corner has an informative post about the tremendous economic growth being experience by North Dakota. Here's her post: Williston, North Dakota... Well worth a read.

As I noted in a post from January 1 of this year, North Dakota's prosperity is due to resource extraction -- the Bakken Oil Field is producing energy for the country, and that in turn is producing jobs for the people of North Dakota. And the North Dakota government has been smart enough not to kill off this boom via excessive regulation or taxation. As a result, not only is the oil industry booming in North Dakota, but other businesses are booming as well. There is a lesson in all this for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see.

Update:  Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit has more on North Dakota's oil boom -- and it is huge news. Read it all. 

Is the social teaching of the Church a core element of Catholicism?

That's a question that often comes up in discussions with libertarian Catholics, many of whom take a rather minimal view of Church teachings regarding law, politics, economics and society.  The Church has published an official catechism on its social teaching -- the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church.  In that catechism is found the following statement, which indicates that the Church's social teaching is not simply an add-on to the Church's proclamation of the Gospel.  Rather, the Church's social teaching is an essential component of the preaching of the Good News of God's salvation for all humankind:

The Church's social doctrine is an integral part of her evangelizing ministry. Nothing that concerns the community of men and women — situations and problems regarding justice, freedom, development, relations between peoples, peace — is foreign to evangelization, and evangelization would be incomplete if it did not take into account the mutual demands continually made by the Gospel and by the concrete, personal and social life of man. Profound links exist between evangelization and human promotion: “These include links of an anthropological order, because the man who is to be evangelized is not an abstract being but is subject to social and economic questions. They also include links in the theological order, since one cannot disassociate the plan of creation from the plan of Redemption. The latter plan touches the very concrete situations of injustice to be combated and of justice to be restored. They include links of the eminently evangelical order, which is that of charity: how in fact can one proclaim the new commandment without promoting in justice and in peace the true, authentic advancement of man?

Seems fairly clear.

How to live well for less than $40,000 a year

With a family of four, no less!  Some great advice by somebody who is doing it as a teacher.  Two things to note:  1) advance planning is a must; and 2) there is a certain reliance on divine Providence as part of this as well (as is mentioned in one part of the story).

Human nature, liberty & the wisdom of the Founding Fathers

"As we approach the endgame on this administration, the clear winners: the Founding Fathers, who recognized the frailties of human nature and poured so much wisdom into the Constitution." So writes Smitty over at The Other McCain at the start of this meditation on the current state of our political order: Underscoring the Wisdom of the Founding Fathers. We worth a read. The path toward the future has been set out in the past, by those who were wise enough to know that human nature doesn't change.

How to become a good writer

A guiding thought from a man who was a good writer and a clear thinker:

We learn to write well, if we ever do, by reading good prose, paying close attention to our own words, revising relentlessly, and recalling the connections between written and spoken language.

- Christopher Lasch (1932-1994), Plain Style, University of Pennsylvania Press: 2002), pg. 75.

Dispair and the move to abolish the death penalty

Ross Douthat discusses the death penalty in this column over at The New York Times online. The whole thing is well worth a read, but the last three paragraphs struck me as very insightful:

Fundamentally, most Americans who support the death penalty do so because they want to believe that our justice system is just, and not merely a mechanism for quarantining the dangerous in order to keep the law-abiding safe. The case for executing murderers is a case for proportionality in punishment: for sentences that fit the crime, and penalties that close the circle.

Instead of dismissing this point of view as backward and barbaric, criminal justice reformers should try to harness it, by pointing out that too often our punishments don’t fit the crime — that sentences for many drug crimes are disproportionate to the offenses, for instance, or that rape and sexual assault have become an implicit part of many prison terms. Americans should be urged to support penal reform not in spite of their belief that some murderers deserve execution, in other words, but because of it — because both are attempts to ensure that accused criminals receive their just deserts.

Abolishing capital punishment in a kind of despair over its fallibility would send a very different message. It would tell the public that our laws and courts and juries are fundamentally incapable of delivering what most Americans consider genuine justice. It could encourage a more cynical and utilitarian view of why police forces and prisons exist, and what moral standards we should hold them to. And while it would put an end to wrongful executions, it might well lead to more overall injustice.

As Douthat notes, the move against the death penalty is more often than not grounded in dispair. Russell Kirk made a similar point many years ago in an essay on the death penalty which, unfortunately, isn't available online. Kirk's basic argument was that opposition to the death penalty was grounded not so much in a belief in the sacredness of human life, but in a materialist view of existence that saw this life as the only thing of value. Belief in an afterlife, and its attendant judgment, had wained in public life, and as a consequence people began to see this life as the only thing with value. As a result, execution became to be seen as a punishment too extreme to be inflicted.

Dispair leads to enervation.

Does the Catholic Church teach that the state has a positive role in society?

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it does, as this selection from the Catechism makes clear:  Article 2: Participation in Social Life. Unlike the libertarian ideology (itself a substitute for religious faith), Catholicism affirms that government has a necessary role to play in protecting human dignity and defending human rights. "Every human community needs an authority in order to endure and develop," as the Catechism states.  At the same time, the Church teaches that government's power is not unlimited.  As the Catechism expressly states:

The diversity of political regimes is morally acceptable, provided they serve the legitimate good of the communities that adopt them. Regimes whose nature is contrary to the natural law, to the public order, and to the fundamental rights of persons cannot achieve the common good of the nations on which they have been imposed.

In short, Catholicism believes in the legitimacy of the state and in an active but limited role for the government in human life. Catholicism diverges from the modern liberal view of the state by insisting on limits on state authority bounded by natural law and the common good.  Catholicism also diverges from the libertarian view of the state by insisting on the legitimate authority of the state in upholding natural law and the common good.  Deo gratias.

Related item: Mark Shea reminds us that in this post that "The Gospel is Not a Political Programme." Something that bears reminding. While the Catholic Church does not propose a definitive model of government or economics, it does incorporate fundamental principles about natural law and its role in secular law and government, as my post above indicates. Within the ambit of the natural law, however, there are a wide range of possible political & economic systems. In its consistent teaching, the Catholic Church upholds both the natural law and the positive & limited role of government in effectuating the principles of natural law in the public square.

Peter Hitchens on George Orwell

Christopher Hitchens' younger and wiser brother, Peter Hitchens, has a delightful post over at his blog on the recent English festival held in honor of George Orwell: An Orwell Pilgrimage. Well worth a read. Hitchens closes his post with the following observation:

None of us here would ever have found him entirely convenient, or comforting, or a certain ally.  He had that genuine independence of mind whose unfailing magnetic north is a love of truth and a loathing of humbug and which scorns all conventional wisdom.  That's why, knowing that he would probably have scorned me and everything I ever wrote or said, I'm still very proud to be associated with his name here today. 

Indeed. On very few specific issues do I find myself agreeing with Orwell. On virtually every topic, I find myself on the opposite side. But on the big issues of human life, Orwell is usually spot-on:  the centrality of the human person, the inherently corrupt nature of totalitarianism, the need for freedom of thought, the centrality of the quest for truth. Orwell's brilliance -- and his power -- is in seeing that some things are more important than politics. And that politics must be in the service of human values.

Hitchen's post reminds me of this video, from a dramatization of Orwell's life by the BBC. Well worth watching:

The real value of distributism & libertarianism

Serge over at A Conservative Blog for Peace tears into distributism in this post. Serge, unfortunately, misunderstands the practical value of distributist thought: it functions as a critique of the big business - big government - wage earner economic system. Distributism posits that a healthier form of economic life is oriented towards broadly distributed ownership, small business and localism. Distributism is not meant to function as an economic system, rather it is an approach to free market economics that stresses that small is beautiful. Overlook that, and distributism becomes unintelligible.

I would argue that libertarianism, if it is to be of any use, needs to be thought of in a similar way. The libertarian ideal is unworkable in human society. Nobody would really want to live in a libertarian world -- it would be like living in the Mad Max movies. No society has ever been a libertarian one, not even the American frontier. Every society restricts human behavior and every society seeks to enforce social and economic norms. Insofar as libertarian rejects this, it demonstrates its ideological and utopian essence as part of the anarchistic wing of liberalism.

But if one puts aside the delusion that libertarianism could ever function as a practical approach to human government, the libertarian perspective can be useful as a critique of the modern big government servile state. And in this respect libertarianism can function to devastating effect. Not in its ideological dogmatism and not in its hostility to the notion of positive government, but in its identification of the limitations of government power and in its defense of the principle of human freedom. While the libertarian critique needs to be balanced by other considerations, it has tremendous value as a perch from which to point out the negative consequences of government untethered from practical and prudential limits.

Thus, both distributism and libertarianism have value in the modern world -- and they have value in similar ways, as thought experiments that correctly identify overreaching policies that curtail human flourishing.  If taken as actual blueprints for human civilization, distributism and libertarianism are unworkable.  But that isn't really what they are.  They are critiques of centralized and overwhelming power disconnected from the lives of actual people.

Pope calls for Christian unity in defense of human life and the traditional family

"Are not the deep roots of faith and Christian life to be sought in something very different from social freedom?"  So asks Pope Benedict XVI on his trip to his native Germany, during which he has called for a united effort by Christians to combat abortion and same-sex marriage:  Pope defends traditional values.  As the Pope notes, the greatest threat to the Church comes not from opposition from outside it, but from lukewarm Christians within it.  The Pope also is encouraging young people to resist the urge toward evils like "selfishness, envy, aggression."

Quote of the day: Archbishop Oscar Romero on hope

The words of a great martyr for the faith and for his people who spoke about hope in the face of what appears to be insurmountable problems:

Hope is not resignation; it is a commitment to continue to struggle even when things seem to warrant surrender, when hope flares, it allows human beings to overcome monstrous difficulties.  It allows people to defy common sense and confound strategists.  Hope experienced in the extreme, like faith and love, is miraculous.

Servant of God Oscar Romero, martyr, ora pro nobis!

Trailer for movie about Bl. John Duns Scotus

In philosophy I am a Thomist, but I have tremendous respect for Bl. John Duns Scotus, so I was delighted to discover that the Franciscans have made a movie about him. Here's the trailer:

 

 (Hat tip to A Minor Friar.)

What does it mean to be a "Red Tory"?

Over at Front Porch Republic Roberta Bayer explores the political phenomenon of Red Toryism.  Well worth a read.  Conservatism is a broader movement than usually portrayed -- and in many ways the ideas that underpin the Red Tory movement are far truer to the vision of Burke, Kirk and Lasch than many of the libertarian-infused ideologies that masquerade as conservatism in modern America.

A view of some of the richness of human culture

That's what's on display over at the great A Man on the Move blog, written by my friend Joseph who lives in India. He has posted some fantastic photos from the Nom festival in his city. Incredible stuff, and well worth looking at. Check it out!

Some thoughts on Solzhenitsyn

Courtesy of the Pittsford Perennialist, available here.

Is the movement of American history libertarian? Part 1

Walter Russell Mead argues that it is:  The "Christianist" Nightmare:  It's Just a Bad Dream.  (Hat tip to Instapundit.) Mead argues that the trend of American culture is towards every greater individualism.  This produces some Right effects (like lower taxes) and some Left effects (like increasing support for things like same-sex marriage). 

I think that Mead's essential thesis is largely correct, that the core push of American society since the 1960's has been towards greater and greater individualism, where people are free to define their own identies without reference to broader communities like the church and the family and the state.  In the 1960's and 1970's, the Left seemed in ascendence because the cultural push towards individualism manifested itself as an assault against the legal structures that supported traditional morality in the public sphere.  First, the laws regarding artificial contraception were struck down by the Supreme Court, then the laws on abortion were invalidated  (also by the Supreme Court), and finally the laws restricting access to divorce were removed.  The result:  with the restraints of the law removed, the sexual revolution stormed the culture, the institution of the family suffered massive collapse, and the Left appeared triumphant.  On virtually every cultural front since 1974, the family as traditionally understood has become weaker and weaker and weaker.

Now, however, the target of the culture of individualism is the welfare/taxation state and its various hangers on and cronies.  This is manifested by the rise of the Tea Party movement, but really goes back quite farther, back to the 1976 presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter.  The Left is panicked because it sees the rise of the Right behind this movement, but that is in fact a mistaken identification.  What is really happening is not that the forces of moral order are reasserting themselves in the public square.  Instead, as Mead explains, it is the force of American individualism coming to bear on collectivist economic politics.  The legitimacy of government regulation of the economy is being ravaged by the same force that crippled the government's ability to function as a moral restraint in defense of the family. 

The culture's radical individualism has pushed the political momentum towards the libertarian ideology:  no responsibilities, no duties, no restraints.  Where once this mantra was chanted in regard to the draft and government prohibitions on condom distribution, it is now chanted in regard to teacher's unions and tax rates.  

Should you have a tv?

That's a question raised by this interesting post over at the Pittsford Perennialist:  Nobody, Like Steve Sailer.  The Perennialist doesn't have a tv himself, using the internet to get news and media clips.  For my own household, we have two tvs, one upstairs and one downstairs.  I don't see us getting rid of our tvs anytime soon, although I am considering cutting our satellite tv service and simply going with rabbit ears for local t.v. here in Spokane, and internet access through AppleTV for movie rentals, Netflix and YouTube. 

The colonials were better readers than modern Americans

That's the topic of this post over at Freakonomics:  Were Colonial Americans More Literate than Americans Today?  The answer is yes, perhaps not quantatively, but qualitatively.  The people who could read were far better readers than we are, as the post notes.  I attribute this to the more rigorous standards of basic education (the study of Latin and Greek tend to enable people to follow complex synatax more effectively in English, plus the study of those languages boosts English vocabulary when it comes to complex words which are often derrived from Latin and Greek roots).  The near uniform exposure of colonials to that jewel of the English language, the King James translation of the Bible, didn't hurt either.

Patriots fighting for liberty instituted a hippie tax

That's the tongue-in-check title of my most recent post over at American Creation, discussing this story:  1775 document: Colonists asked pacifists to pay. It turns out that the Patriot leaders in one Pennsylvania county asked contientious objectors to pay a fee instead of serving in the colonial militas that where then gearing up to fight the British. The objectors were provided an exemption from service based on their "religious scruples," but were expected to pay in order to provide for the defense of the broader community.

An interesting piece of history -- and one that doesn't really have anything to do with hippies. But it does have to do with the perennial question in a society such as ours: at what point do sincerely held religious beliefs exempt individuals from obeying the rules set up by the broader society? In the 1775 document, that question arose over military service, but in the modern context, it arises over a host of cultural issues, e.g., sexuality & the family, conscience rights for health care providers, religious expression in the public square, etc. As our society grows increasingly religiously pluralistic while remaining, for the foreseeable future at least, predominently influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition, controversies involving this perennial question will become more common, not less.

The 1775 documents represents a classic American approach to the intersection of religious conscience and public affairs. The right of the objectors not to serve in the militia was recognized and respected, while at the same time the objectors' participation in the community was affirmed as well. By encouraging the objectors to pay a fee instead of serving in the military, the 1775 document provides both for the needs of the Patriot cause and for the religious duties of the objectors. In so doing, it reflects the traditional American concept of according a wide berth for religious expression, while insisting that religious believers' liberty be truly that -- liberty, not license disconnected from duty to the community.

Burke and the return to conservatism's roots

That's the theme of this editorial over at The American Conservative: Back to Burke. As the modern conservative movement is beset by ideological distortions -- from neo-conservatism to libertarianism -- it needs to be grounded in a deeper understanding of what it means to conserve the Permanent Things in political and social life. The ideas of Edmund Burke are essential to that program, and recovering a Burkean approach to politics is a critical need for the right at this point in American life. That Burkean tradition is to be found on the right in the work and writings of men like John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, Robert A. Taft, Russell Kirk and Richard M. Weaver. On the left, scholars like Christopher Lasch and Connor Cruise O'Brien represent a Burkean liberalism that defends traditional moral and social order in the face of the forces of dissolution and anarchy. It is these Burkean voices that modern conservatism needs to listen to, to regain its footing in the face of the ideological temptations facing the right at this time.