The civic wisdom of Plato's Gorgias and Apology

"The organization of the society, according to Plato, is determined by the orderliness of the souls of its citizens." So writes H. Lee Cheek, Jr. over at The Imaginative Conservative, explaining the ongoing relevance of Plato's notion of civic order.  For those of us not familiar with the intricate details of Plato's political theory, Cheek's exposition is a very helpful introduction. I'm generally not that interested in Plato's ideas -- but Cheek's essay makes me think that my aversion to Plato is a deficit. Cheek's essay is certainly worth reading for anyone who is interested in beginning or returning to sailing on deeper waters regarding political theory.

A carol for the Sunday after Christmas

[What Child is This, performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Dec. 3, 2012.]

Two posts on the deeper problems of the welfare-entitlement state

• From the Wall Street Journal comes an interview with Harvard professor and conservative political philosopher Harvey Mansfield discussing the challenge the entitlement state poses to American self-reliance and republican government:  The Crisis of American Self-Government.  Mansfield makes some excellent points, not just about the intellectual exhaustion and corruption of the Left, but also about the problems that beset the conservatism as well.  

• From the London Telegraph comes this op-ed by Janet Daley speaking the truth that few dare to mention on either side of the Pond:  The truth is that politicians are telling lies.  Well, yes, so what's new?  What's new, as Daley makes clear, is that politicians are lying about the basic math undergirding the cost of the massive welfare-entitlement state because voters don't want to address reality. However, numbers don't lie and the entitlement state that dominates both Europe and increasingly America is simply not fiscally sustainable. A smaller state is coming, not because of a shift in ideology to the Right or disenchantment with the ideology of the Left, but because of simple economic necessity.  But the politicians won't tell us this, because the people don't want to hear it.  

How big government corrupts society

That topic is explored by John Hayward in this post over at Human Events online:  The bitter wastes of politicized America.  (Hat tip to Instapundit).  Read the whole thing, but I found this material to be a great description of the underlying dynamic released into society by government bloat and overreach:

The expansion of government replaces competition with coercion. Free people lack coercive power, so they must compete with each other for business opportunities. Customers must be persuaded. Employees must be attracted. It’s messy sometimes, and the process must be policed for theft and fraud, but it’s generally constructive. 

Government power replaces all that with a simple, brutal, zero-sum equation: what you are given must be taken from someone else. The regulatory process is corrupted by both ideology and special interests. Even when it avoids outright corruption, the process is expensive, because it’s not constructive the way private competition is. Wealth and value are lost through forced redistribution. It’s a smaller, poorer world, in which political influence becomes valuable currency. Your fellow citizens are not your competitors – they are your enemies. They become selfish plutocrats or lazy parasites. Their defeat becomes an occasion for riotous celebration. 

And effective political power requires solidarity – sizable groups of voters acting in concert, to press their common interests upon the State, whose officials in turn benefit from packaged electoral support. The best way to hold a large group of people together is to make them feel as if everyone else is out to get them. The most effective political adhesives are distilled from hatred and distrust. People who disagree with your agenda are “attacking” you or “robbing” you. How commonly do you hear dissent described in precisely those terms nowadays?

As George Washington noted "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." And as Hayward points out, a fire that burns darkly when it grows too large.

Localism and the limits of libertarianism

Joshua over at The Pittsford Perennialist describes himself as a libertarian, but notes in this post the necessary limits of libertarian doctrine in light of localist sensibilities: Localism Trumps Libertarianism. I would suggest to Joshua that he really isn't a libertarian, but a localist conservative who robustly embraces the constitutional concept of federalism.

The multitudes of Oscar Wilde

One of the great wits of Victorian literature had a life-long fascination with Catholic ritual and art which eventually blossomed, at the very end of his life, in a conversion to the Catholic faith, as this article over at the Catholic Education Resource Center explains: The Long Conversion of Oscar Wilde. In our era Wilde is usually celebrated for his homosexuality and bohemian life-style, but if one looks deeper into the works and life of the man, one sees the strong currents of a spiritual river that eventually flowed to the Tiber. So, who was Wilde? As the author of the article, Andrew McCracken, points out, Wilde contained multitudes: "writer, wit, voluptuary, gay man, failed father and husband, sensitive soul, laughing stock, broken heart, eleventh hour Catholic convert."

Stephen Fry, who embodies many of the same traits as Wilde in modern cloth (replacing, unfortunately, Wilde's interest in Catholicism with the modern avant-garde embrace of atheism), does a wonderful job of conveying Wilde's humor and deeper spiritual perspective in this discussion of Wilde's work and approach to literature:

The first day of Christmas

Merry Christmas!  Today is the beginning, not the end, of the traditional twelve days of the Christmas season, which last through the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. It should be no surprise that Russell Kirk left us some sage advice about celebrating this time of year, and the goods folks over at The Imaginative Conservative have done a tremendous service by reprinting Kirk's views of Christmas merry-making:  The Twelve Days of Christmas. As Kirk recommends:  "Spend less, and celebrate more."  Grand Yuletide advice from the Sage of Mecosta!

Today's holiday -- the Feast of the Nativity in the Catholic liturgical calendar -- is an ancient one. The name "Christmas" comes from Anglo-Saxon, "Cristes Maesse" or "Christ's Mass."  The English translations of readings for Mass today commemorating the Birth of Jesus Christ may be found here.

Now, for three of my favorite carols for the Nativity, all sung by the King's Choir of Cambridge, England:







I wish all my readers a blessed and happy Feast of the Nativity, as well as a very merry Christmas season.

What does the failure of the House to pass Plan B mean for Speaker Boehner's leadership?

Smitty over at The Other McCain has a pretty solid answer to that question:  Leaders Are People With Followers.  He also has a great suggestion for how the Republican Party needs to move forward toward achievable, realistic reform.  Well worth a read.

A suggestion for Christmas dinner

Adrienne over at Adrienne's Corner has a great suggestion for Christmas dinner, complete with recipe and helpful photographs:  Prime Rib...  At our house we are fans of prime rib for the winter holiday season, although we tend to cook it for New Year's Day dinner rather than Christmas.

Ten facts about Advent

Well, Advent is almost over, which means that the Christmas season is almost upon us. But before the holy season of Advent departs, it might be a good idea to refresh the memory a little bit about it. Catholic theologian Taylor Marshall provides some insight on some little-known aspects of the season in this post over at his blog Canterbury Tales:  10 Things You Should Know About Advent. An interesting read!

Of Christmas trees and capitalism

That's the topic of this interesting post over at Reason.com:  How Capitalism Made the Christmas Tree Better.  As the author of the piece, Greg Beato, recounts, while Christmas trees were originally introduced to try to de-commericalize the Christmas holiday, the entrepreneurial spirit soon took the opportunity presented by the Christmas tree to expand the market for Christmas decorations.

While the Christmas tree had been introduced as a means to dampen the holiday’s commercialism, it instead did the opposite. It gave retailers a new item to sell, and that item in turn prompted additional spending. Once you had a tree, you need ornaments and, of course, a vast array of presents. Once you were decorating inside, why not outside too? The tree helped furnish the holiday, and the increasing number of furnishings associated with Christmas gave people more and more ways to make Christmas a larger and more significant part of their lives. 

And the tree would not have caught on it as it did had it not been for the efforts of entrepreneurs determined to increase its availability and affordability. However “exorbitant” Mark Carr’s prices were, buying a tree from him must have been cheaper than going to the Catskills to get one. The next year he brought more and sold out again. Once a family affair limited to a relatively small number of practitioners, the ritual of the Christmas tree had been conveniently commercialized and was on its way to becoming a beloved mainstream tradition.

I do not know if Beato's retelling of the rise of the Christmas tree as a cultural phenomenon makes me like capitalism more rather than less.  

The one-two punch of America's fiscal pickle

Punch number one:  the welfare state.  "Looking at the West over the last century, the arc of history bends towards socialism and insolvency." So writes Patrick J. Buchanan in this gloomy take on our nation's fiscal prospects: Why God Created the GOP.  As Buchanan notes pessimistically, the federalized welfare state is here to state, and given the social and economic status of the country, it is unlikely to be pared back in any realistic scenario.  Too many have become too dependent for too long for the country to be able to readjust the size and scope of the welfare state to sustainable levels.  Add to this that the welfare state is also a vast employment program for government workers, and there simply is no realistic way to engineer real reductions in those programs.  As Buchanan puts it clearly, "[o]ur gargantuan welfare state of today, however, is permanent, as are the millions of government employees who milk and manage it."

Well, if social welfare spending can't be cut, couldn't the government work towards reducing at least part of its spending problem by addressing the bloated "defense" budget.  After all, why does American need to have bases in places like Germany and Italy, with World War II a fading and distant memory?  Why do we need all those planes and tanks and ships in a world where the U.S. military out-classes the next ten nations combined?  

Punch number two:  the military budget.  Those questions lead us to this post over at Reason.com, where Veronique de Rugy explains why cutting the defense budget is next to impossible:  Six Degrees of Military Spending.  As a practical matter, a huge part of the military budget, as she points out, functions as another form of social spending -- it is boosting employment in the civilian workforce.  While de Rugy ends her post hoping that some trimming of defense spending may occur due to fiscal pressure, I am not nearly so optimistic.  Cutting the military budget doesn't just mean fewer tanks, it means fewer civilian workers to build those tanks. In the current political environment, that makes cutting tanks an even harder proposition.

Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit deals blow to HHS contraception/abortifacient coverage mandate

Megan MeArdle has posted an analysis of the court's decision over at her blog, Asymmetrical Information.  Well worth a read.  The Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit handles the lion's share of appellate work dealing with federal administrative agencies (which makes sense since the court is located in Washington, DC), so it is no surprise that the HHS mandate ended up in front of that court.  In addition, as one of the circuit courts of appeal, the DC circuit appellate court is just below the US Supreme Court in terms of importance.  So, this ruling carries a good deal of weight.  If interested, the actual text of the court's opinion may be found here, courtesy of SCOTUSblog.

It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will decide to fight all the way to the Supreme Court on the issue of forcing religious institutions to provide contraception & abortifacient coverage in their employee insurance plans.

Supreme Court lets stand appellate court ruling allowing credit for public school release time for religious education

Here's a press release from The Beckett Fund celebrating the Supreme Court's decision not to review a decision from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding South Carolina's decision to allow students to receive academic credit for religious instruction off campus during release time.  The Fourth Circuit had noted in its decision that if students didn't receive credit for the religious instruction, it made it more difficult for the students to participate in the release time program.  The actual text of the Fourth Circuit's opinion may be read here.

The Supreme Court's decision not to review the Fourth Circuit decision means that the Fourth Circuit's decision stands for that circuit.  The states located in that circuit include Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.  No state either within the circuit or outside the circuit will be required by this decision to provide academic credit for release time religious instruction, but no state within the Fourth Circuit will be prohibited from doing so.

This is a considerable judicial victory for both religious believers and the right of state governments to control eduction.

The bond between a mother and her child

Elena Maria Vidal has this posted over at her blog Tea at Trianon:  Connections Between Mother and Child. As she notes there in her comments on a recent article in The Scientific American, "They are much deeper than originally thought."  Well worth a read as we move closer this time of year to the Feast of the Nativity, celebrating the birth of the Christ-Child and the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The negativism of libertarianism

As George H. Smith points out in the post over at Libertarianism.org, libertarianism properly understood embraces an ideology of negative liberty as opposed to the the idea of positive liberty:  Negative and Positive Liberty.  Positive liberty is the idea that freedom is primarily about choosing to do good and right, rather than just doing whatever it is you would like to do at any given moment.  Smith's argument is that libertarianism is primarily about negative, rather than positive liberty.

This to me hits the problem with libertarianism right on the head, although Smith doesn't view libertarianism's embrace of the negativism as a problem.  Negative liberty is the idea of freedom from constraints on personal impulses and desires.  Balancing such an individualist approach to freedom, positive liberty is primarily concerned about freedom being oriented towards the classical virtues of truth, justice, temperance and fortitude.  To put it more concisely, positive liberty is freedom for something, while negative liberty is about freedom from something.   In classical liberal and conservative theory, positive liberty correlates strongly with ideas of civic virtue and duty.  Negative liberty, on the other hand, simply degenerates into license.

For civic order to be preserved and for human beings to properly flourish, our impulses and desires must be tamed by virtue and duty.  Thus, both forms of liberty are necessary for a truly free society.  Classical liberalism understood this, and modern conservatism understands this as well.  Sadly, the mainstream of modern libertarianism -- closely allied with many on the cultural Left -- does not.

Quote of the day: on Vatican II

This posted by Patrick Brennan over at the always interesting Catholic law blog Mirror of Justice: Peter Berger on Vatican II.  As Berger, a Lutheran minister turned sociologist, said about the Council:

If a thoroughly malicious sociologist, bent on injuring the Catholic Church as much as possible, had been an adviser to the Church, he could hardly have done a better job.

I would say that that quote is more applicable to the implementation of the decrees of the Council more than to the Council itself, but it is still a point worth pondering.

Some book recommendations for the Christmas season

Historian Thomas Kidd provides just that in this post over at The Imaginative Conservative:  Five Compelling Religious Biographies.  Many of these folks I have never even heard of, which makes Kidd's recommendations all the more welcome.  I am definitely going to give the book about Lincoln's religious views a read.  In light of my post on Lincoln's last words yesterday, a further exploration of Lincoln's religious views during his presidency would be interesting to say the least.

Some reading from the pages of the internet

Well, my project at work is over so I am back a-blogging!  Here are some things I've run across the blogosphere in the last few days that I thought I'd share:

• Joshua over at The Pittsford Perennialist has a post on a helpful distinction that many people don't make:  Science vs Scientism.  There is a difference between science as a way of understanding how the world works and "science" as an overwhelming ideology that crowds out other ways of knowing and reasoning. As in all things, ideology poisons what would otherwise be fruitful.  

• Richard Wall has some reflections on an under-appreciated American writer: Why I am interested in John Dos Passos. I first encountered Dos Passos in my freshman college English course at Skagit Valley Community College. I was almost immediately a fan!

• I never knew that Russell Kirk had formally sat down and debated Malcolm X on television, but this short essay by Kirk, reproduced over at The Imaginative Conservative, tells the tale:  Russell Kirk on Malcolm X.  Kirk's take on Malcolm X, written soon after the latter was assassinated, strikes me as quite insightful, particularly the observation that "Revolutions do, indeed, devour their own children." Still, the idea that two of the inhabitants of my own personal Valhalla met and talked and debated is thrilling.  Do you think that somewhere in a vault there is an old video-tape of that encounter?

• Michigan's right to work law in light of Catholic social teaching -- that's the topic of this essay over at The Mirror of Justice by law professor Rick Garnett. He makes some excellent points regarding Catholic social thought and the role of unions, and on the need to combat union abuse of power.  Well worth a read.  

• Stephen Mansfield has a new book on Abraham Lincoln out and there is an excerpt posted regarding Lincoln's last reported words:  Lincoln's Surprising Last Words.  Lincoln is usually portrayed as a skeptic when it comes to religion, and while that is certainly true for most of his life, his experience as president deepened a sense of providential faith in him.  His last words, attested to by his wife Mary Todd Lincoln and generally accepted by a who's who of modern Lincoln scholars, shows that his faith was blossoming into something far more robust.  What were his last words? "We will visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the Savior.  There is no place I so such desire to see as Jerusalem." Those do not sound like the words of a religious skeptic.

Light posting for awhile

Sorry I haven't posted for a bit -- work has caught up with me again.  I'm working on a project now and won't be finished until Wednesday at the earliest, so blogging will be light to non-existent until then.  But I'll be back!

Liberalism, libertarianism and conservatism: which is the heir to classical liberalism?

"The simple fact is that libertarians are liberals—and we should be proud of that." So writes Aaron Ross Powell over at Libertarianism.org:  "Liberal" is Not a Dirty Word.  I've argued here on this blog that libertarianism is closely linked ideologically with modern liberalism, as much as many current libertarians try to distance themselves from the doctrinal similarity between their movement and progressivism (the current favored label for modern liberalism).  I am delighted to find that at least one libertarian writer agrees with me.

There are many different types of liberal, though -- most conservatives in the United States are in fact liberals in the classic sense of that term.  What distinguishes conservatism -- particularly in its Burkean form -- from modern liberalism and libertarianism is that conservatism has preserved the idea of ordered liberty, an idea that was central to classical liberalism as it existed in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Both modern liberalism/progressivism and libertarianism reject the idea of ordered liberty, preferring ideology to custom and license to the notion of freedom under law.  Thus, the authority of the State to legislate in the areas of morality is denied by both modern liberalism and libertarianism.

Where the two ideologies part company, however, regards economic liberty. As Powell points out,

Early liberals were generally enthusiastic supporters of markets and private property. (Adam Smith, for example.) But today most philosophical liberals—i.e., the people who apply the term to themselves as it’s understood within political philosophy—take a rather dim view of capitalism the related, robust right to private property. While they remain respectful of markets as an unmatched means for wealth creation, they believe those markets should be heavily regulated and their participants heavily taxed in order to minimize income disparities in the name of egalitarianism and social justice.

Modern liberals embrace the power of the State over the economy while denying the power of the State over moral behavior.  Libertarians deny the power of the State over both.  But at their core, as Powell demonstrates in his essay, both liberalism and libertarianism share the same fundamental aversion to the idea of traditional order.  Both are essentially two expressions of the same basic movement away from ordered liberty and towards and ideological embrace of a revolt against the power of the State.

Powell's analysis is interesting and insightful for the most part, but one point where Powell is wrong, involves his claim that libertarianism is itself a form of classical liberalism.  While on a superficial level it may so appear, upon deeper inspection the differences between libertarianism and classical liberalism are apparent -- and it becomes plain that  conservatism, oddly enough, ends up being far truer to the original vision of liberalism that motivated the American Founders and such conservative statesmen as Edmund Burke.  Both classical liberalism and conservatism understand the need for ordered liberty, for a regime of virtue and responsibility undergirded by the rule of law and the enforcement of social norms that make limited government and individual rights possible to begin with.  Ironically enough, while modern liberalism and libertarianism both claim the mantle of classical liberalism, it is the conservative tradition -- the tradition of Burke and Kirk and Weaver and Nisbet -- in which classical liberalism's fundamental insight remains alive.  While libertarians and modern liberals are two sides of the same ideological coin in rejecting customary order, the classical liberal tradition of ordered liberty remains alive and well -- within conservatism.

As Russell Kirk once observed about Edmund Burke, "he was a conservative because he was a liberal."

The Second Sunday of Advent

(Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending, sung by the Lichfield Cathedral Choir, with photos of the Lichfield Cathedral in England. The hymn was written by John Wesley and rewritten from the original text by John Cennick.)

Today is the second Sunday in Advent in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar.  The readings for Mass today in lectionary can be found here.  The focus of this Sunday is on waiting for the return of the Lord in glory, something for which the faithful should ever be hopeful.  As St. John the Baptist confidently announced the arrival of Jesus the Messiah, so too we can in confidence await the Return of Christ, who provides us with comfort and strength, baptizing us, as the Gospel reading announces, "with the Holy Spirit."  It is in the gift of the Holy Spirit that Christians find their hope, a hope which comes not from themselves but from God.

And what is the purpose of the Advent season but to remind believers of the hope which comes to us in Christ, the Messiah who was born as a child to bring the promise of redemption to a lost and hurting world? As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) has pointed out:

Advent is concerned with that very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope.

Subsidiarity is not just a Catholic principle

One of the three pillars of Catholic social thought is the concept of subsidiarity -- that political, social and economic issues should be resolved at the levels of government, society and economy that are closest to the problem that needs solving. Along with the ideas of solidarity and the common good, subsidiarity is foundational to Catholic social thought. The idea of subsidiarity has obvious parallels with the traditional American concept of federalism (embodied in the Constitution in the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights) but as a theological principle, subsidiarity has long been associated primarily with Catholic thinkers, theologians and political theorists. As Jordan J. Bailor points out over at The Acton Institute website, this view of subsidiarity as an exclusively Catholic idea is inaccurate -- subsidiarity has its place within the Reformed Protestant tradition as well: The Catholicity of Subsidiarity. Well worth a read. As Bailor points out, subsidiarity as a principle is an application of natural law thinking, and as such it is a principle that can be rationally understood without necessarily requiring adherence to the theological principles of the Catholic Church.

Although, I would note as a Catholic, that the theological principles of the Catholic Church certain help to better understand and apply subsidiarity.  

Related item:  this short essay by theologian Megan Clark does a very good job of introducing the ideas that underpin the Catholic approach to subsidiarity:  Subsidiarity is a Two-Sided Coin.  Subsidiarity isn't simply a plea for smaller or more decentralized government, it is an idea that links in with other principles in Catholic social teaching.  As she writes, when applying the principle of subsidiarity, the common good must always be kept in mind:

The question, from the perspective of subsidiarity, is does this – or any government program – protect and promote our multi-layered civil society? Does it protect and promote human flourishing and the common good? Because the goal is not smaller government, the goal is the common good.

Happy Hanukkah

At sundown tonight Jews across the world began celebrating this eight-day holiday of lights, a commemoration of God's faithfulness to the Jewish people and their faithfulness to him during an ancient persecution.  Here's an overview of this holiday, from the Chabad.org website.

Happy Hanukkah!

Another constitutional problem with Obamacare

Explained by David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey over at the Wall Street Journal:  The Opening for a Fresh ObamaCare Challenge.  In addition to the religious liberty challenges to the HHS mandate, the kinds of problems that Rivkin and Casey identify will likely continue to ensure that Obamacare remains before the courts for quite some time.

Fr. Robert Sirico explains the errors in Ayn Rand's ideology

Check it out, over at The Acton Institute.

Book review of Rights and Duties by Russell Kirk

The University Bookman reprints a very fine review by Bruce Frohnen of Russell Kirk's book on the American Constitution, Rights and Duties:  The Character of Our Constitution.  As Frohnen notes,

Early in the book, Kirk points out that our “Constitution had been designed by its Framers, in 1787, to conserve the order and the justice and the freedom to which Americans had grown accustomed.” Thus Kirk takes issue with ideologues who seek to convince us that America was created ex nihilo through the drafting of an abstractly philosophical Declaration of Independence. The Declaration, and the War for Independence, must be seen as our Founders saw them: as defensive measures intended to protect Americans’ traditional and chartered rights from an overreaching English Parliament.

That's just a taste of Frohnen's review -- read it all, and better yet, get a copy of Kirk's book and read it closely.  There is much wisdom there.  I first read Kirk's book on the Constitution when I was a law student, and it was the first book by Kirk that I ever read.  I was immediately impressed by his wisdom and insight, and quickly devoured everything he had written that I could get my hands on.  I would have loved to have met him and studied with him, but alas that was not to be.  But he lives on in his writings, and thanks to them we can all be Kirk's students.  And he is a fantastic teacher!  Of history and literature and on the roots of our country's polity and order.

The problem for social conservatives on university campuses

Is that they are often marginalized not only by the dominant liberal culture within academia but also by the libertarian chic prevalent among many on the collegiate Right. This piece by Derek Beckebede over at Public Discourse highlights the problem:  I'm Socially Conservative, in College, and Need a Party. Beckebede calls on Republicans to reach out to young people to convince them of the truth of conservatism regarding social issues rather than simply abandoning the defense of traditional marriage or the right to life:

After three years at the helm of Harvard’s student conservative movement, I know that the campus is not only liberal but also hostile to conservatives, especially social conservatives. As the Republican Party and fellow conservatives try to appeal to young voters, they must not ignore the university environment in which many of those voters live and learn. The actual state of America’s universities is worse than most Republicans realize, not because conservatives’ efforts have failed but because they have not wholeheartedly been tried. Instead of abandoning fundamental portions of the Republican platform, it’s time for the party to embrace a new one: outreach to America’s universities on social issues.

Read it all.  Conservatives abandon the educational venue at their own peril.

One of the many negative consequences of the student loan debt crisis

It hobbles so many young people with debts so extreme that they aren't able to engage in the kind of entrepreneurial risk taking necessary for a vibrant and growing market economy, as Glenn Reynolds highlights over at his Instapundit blog.

Some helpful advice from Hank, Jr.

Legalizing marijuana won't end the drug war

In the last election Washington State and Colorado legalized possession of marijuana (in varying amounts depending on the form of the drug) for people over 21. The proponents of marijuana legalization argued in part that making the drug legal would undercut gangs and cartels. Now that the election is over and the pro-dope forces won, it turns out that such a happy outcome is extremely unlikely. Why, you ask? Human nature would be my initial response, but there is a market-based answer as well:  because the traffic in drugs has moved on from marijuana to other drugs, as this article by Keegan Hamilton over at The Atlantic online points out. And one law enforcement official notes that gangs and cartels that are still involved in marijuana sales and trafficking now have some legal protection from law enforcement:

"I just don't see the legislation of marijuana causing any problems for the criminals," Gagliardi said. "The gangs are still going to grow marijuana and they're still going to sell marijuana, only now it will be legal for them to walk around with an ounce supply individually packaged and not have any repercussions."

Marijuana legalization does not appear to be the law enforcement panacea that its proponents argued.  Of course, legalizing dope has never been about undercutting crime. It it fundamentally part of the ongoing rush of our culture towards bread and circuses.

Related item: Merle Haggard had the best approach in his classic anthem to sanity from the 1960's:

Ave Maria Law School rises from the ashes

Austin Rose reports on the rebirth of the Catholic law school that actually conforms to Catholic social teaching:  Ave Maria Born Again.  Ave Maria began with great promise but then fell into a period of deep conflict between its benefactor & administration on the one hand, and the faculty & some students on the other.  It is good to see that the school appears to be on the right track and ready to thrive.  The reclamation of our culture cannot be done entirely through the law, but it cannot be done without the law, either.  We need solid Catholic lawyers who will fight for actual justice for their clients while being committed to a vision of the common good that embraces the dignity of all human beings.

The politicization of legal clinical education

Law schools across the country have legal clinics where students work under lawyer supervision to help local community members who usually cannot afford to pay for civil legal services.  As Professor Stephen Bainbridge of UCLA Law School notes, these clinics are more often than not hotbeds of liberal indoctrination for law students, and at state schools this indoctrination takes place at taxpayer expense.  Read his informative post over at his blog on this topic, available here.

On celebrating Advent

Celebrating Advent means being able to wait. Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespectful hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them. Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting -- that is, of hopefully doing without -- will never experience the full blessedness of fulfillment.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Lutheran pastor and martyr, letter to his fiancee Maria von Wedemeyer from prison, Dec. 13, 1943.

The wages of the culture of death

Is a population demographic in dangerous decline.  Ross Douthat explains the importance of the plummeting American birthrate in this piece for the New York Times:  More Babies, Please.  While there are several short-term explanations for the decline in America's birthrate, Douthat sees a deeper cultural problem at work, one that reflects the overall decadence of life in the 21st century:

The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.

Such decadence need not be permanent, but neither can it be undone by political willpower alone. It can only be reversed by the slow accumulation of individual choices, which is how all social and cultural recoveries are ultimately made.

Douthat is right that a cultural reinvigoration is necessary -- but that cultural effort must be supported by and fostered by the law and politics of our society.  It is folly to pretend that the shifting of legal norms around family, divorce, abortion and other topics did not have a direct effect on the culture of family and the culture of child-rearing in American society. As Pope John Paul II noted in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), there is a powerful culture of death at work across the globe now. One manifestation of that culture of death is a decline in the creation of new life -- of children.

Demography is destiny. And the future belongs to those who are there to enjoy it. Civilizations that do not reproduce do not survive.

The crisis in Catholic culture in the United States

Fr. Dwight Longenecker writes about the collapse of a distinctively Catholic worldview within the Church in the United States:  Wake Up and Smell the Catastrophe.

The biggest problem with American Catholics is that the majority of them are asleep. Lulled by materialism, the good life and the cares of the world, they’re blind to the real crisis facing America and blind to the real crisis facing the Catholic Church.

Fr. Longenecker goes one to list out and explain the problems facing the Church in the United States.  Read it all, prayerfully.  

A more realistic James Bond

John O'Sullivan writes in praise of Skyfall -- the most recent 007 movie -- over at National Review Online:  Skyfall Approaches Realism. I think that O'Sullivan is spot-on, both in his critique of the James Bond movies and in his suggestion that Jeremy Northam would make a great James Bond (he was a fantastic Thomas More in the Tudors series).  While the Daniel Craig version of Bond isn't quite as good as Sean Connery version, it is considerably better than the depths to which the franchise had fallen during the Roger More era.  Skyfall is a move in the right direction for the 007 movies.  I hope the next sequels keep moving more in the direction of Ian Fleming's original characterization.

Pope legislates that Catholic charities act in accord with Catholic principles

Christine over at A Catholic View has the story.  Pope Benedict XVI has issued formal legislation requiring Catholic charities to follow Catholic teaching in carrying out their missions.  This is a major step forward -- although as is often the case the challenge will be in getting the pope's order enforced by the bishops.  But the pope's action sends a strong signal that Catholic social service agencies, ministries and apostolates must conform to the Catholic faith.  It is a sign of the times we live in that such an order had to promulgated at all.

What's the problem with libertarianism?

Joshua over at The Pittsford Perennialist writes to defend the libertarian ideology from the charge that it is heartless and selfish:  Libertarianism = Nonaggression.  Joshua excerpts the libertarian activist and theorist Lew Rockwell, who provides this quote: "The libertarian idea is based on a fundamental moral principle: nonaggression. No one may initiate physical force against anyone else."

Of course, insofar as libertarianism embraces that idea, there isn't anything wrong with it. The problem with libertarianism from a conservative perspective, as noted exhaustively by Russell Kirk in his landmark essay on libertarianism, is that libertarians habitually fall into the trap of ideologizing that principle to the point where society acting through the State has no ability to recognize and inculcate moral norms. In this, libertarianism is very much like its sibling ideology, modern liberalism. And both ideologies end up undermining freedom by undermining order.

As the English statesman Edmund Burke and our own Founding Fathers well understood, it is impossible to have freedom without order, and for that reason neither Burke nor our Founders set out to create a modern liberal or libertarian polity. They sought to defend systems that would preserve ordered liberty, the notion that individual rights are balanced by individual duties. It is this mix of rights and duties that constitutes the core of both the conservative and classical liberal approach to the relationship between human beings and society, between individuals and the State. And it on this basis that the conservative and the classical liberal must object to libertarianism. Not on account of its non-aggression principle, but on account of its inability to account for the need for a virtuous citizenry and the role that law and State action plays in shaping a virtuous citizenry.

Of course, in this, as in all things, most libertarians' errors are easily corrected by a close reading of Burke, John Adams, Russell Kirk and -- for the truly adventurous -- St. Thomas Aquinas and the social encyclicals of the Roman pontiffs. Take up and read. Take up and read.

Advent

(Claire College Choir, Cambridge University, performing at St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St. Edmunds, England.  Timothy Brown, conductor; Jonathan Brown, organ.)

At sundown this evening, the Church began the liturgical season of Advent, and thus began the ecclesiastical new year.  In the Middle Ages Advent became a penitential season prior to Christmas; for that reason the liturgical color of the season is purple, the color of penitence, and the Gloria is omitted from both the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms of the Roman Rite.  Over time, Advent lost its penitential character, but has remained a time of preparation for the Coming of the Lord.

The first lesson from the lectionary for the First Sunday of Advent highlights the anticipatory nature of the Advent season.  Taken from the Book of Jeremiah 33:14-16, the lesson emphasizes God's promise to Israel to raise up a "just shoot" from the House of David to bring justice and safety.  As translated by the Revised Standard Version (2nd Catholic Edition), the text reads as follows:

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring forth for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness int he land.  In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will dwell securely.  And this is the name by which it will be called:  "The Lord is our righteousness." 

The truth about Thomas Jefferson

Paul Finkelman hits the nail right on the head in this book review published in the New York Times:  The Monster of Monticello.  As Finkelman writes in critiquing two recent authors' approach to Jefferson:

We are endlessly fascinated with Jefferson, in part because we seem unable to reconcile the rhetoric of liberty in his writing with the reality of his slave owning and his lifetime support for slavery. Time and again, we play down the latter in favor of the former, or write off the paradox as somehow indicative of his complex depths. 

Neither Mr. Meacham, who mostly ignores Jefferson’s slave ownership, nor Mr. Wiencek, who sees him as a sort of fallen angel who comes to slavery only after discovering how profitable it could be, seem willing to confront the ugly truth: the third president was a creepy, brutal hypocrite.

Personally, I find Jefferson to be one of the least admirable men in American history, a consistently duplicitous and deceptive  political operative who actively ignored his stated principles in order to pursue both his personal and political advantage.

Updates:

• William A. Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection takes issue with Finkelman's review in this post:  Jefferson is a proxy target in the modern political war.  For an alternate view of Jefferson's moral character, give Jacobson's post a read.  For myself, I'm not convinced that Jefferson's approach to slavery was as benign as Jacobson alleges.

• Libertarian law professor and Instapundit blogger extraordinare Glenn Reynolds has his own response to the Finkelman piece, as well as feedback from his readers, posted over at his blog.  Well worth a read, both for the defenses of Jefferson found there and one very spot on critique of Jefferson's approach to politics and his legacy posted by reader John Vecchione: 

I have always thought that he was the original “coach and four” (limosine) liberal. As a graduate of Hamilton College I’m acutely aware there is a long, distinguished, and constitutional anti-Jefferson cabal in this country. Compare him to Washington or Marshal the Federalist slave owners of Virginia. Or even a John Randolf or George Mason. Dr. Johnson’s barb at those “bleating loudest about liberty” but owning slaves was directed right at him. Race aside, his understanding of finance, national debt and the like was the ruin of the South for 200 years.

I will say it Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine are my least favorite founders. Any one siding with the French Revolution over the guy who actually helped us in in Independece is right out in my book. The current anti-constitutionalists are precisely those who posit we should have had a French Revolution and not an American one. Jacobins all–and Jefferson too!

Social conservatism, classical liberalism and the patriotic imperative

Philip Vincent Munoz argues that social conservatives should be committed to the small-l liberal democratic order undergirding the American experiment:  Why Social Conservatives Should Be Patriotic Americans:  A Critique of Patrick Deneen. As Munoz notes, the natural rights approach to politics that typifies classical liberalism is sufficiently compatible with social conservatism to be worth reclaiming. Rather than seeking to build an entirely new political order or political philosophy, Munoz advocates for conservatives to embrace the liberal tradition that stands at the root of America's order:

Rather than trying to create something new, I would direct us to the more modest task of recovering something we have unfortunately lost. America’s true liberal heritage is not to be found in Hobbes or Rawls, but rather in the natural rights philosophy of our founding fathers and in the natural rights statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln.  

In our natural rights tradition, we can find a commitment to truth and a profound respect for nature and the natural order created by God. I also believe it offers our best hope for a more sustainable liberalism.

Read it all.  

Capitalism and Catholic social teaching

Fr. Robert Sirico is interviewed in this video-clip posted over at the Acton Institute:  Is Capitalism Catholic?  In some Catholic circles the free market and private enterprise are almost dirty words -- authentic Catholic teaching on the economic order embraces a vibrant and healthy private sphere for economic activity.  Sirico provides a good defense of the market economy and free enterprise.  Well worth watching!

He's got a good quote in there as well, "For me the important thing is not whether you are radical or not, but whether you are right or not.  I am just looking for the truth in my life."

An argument to limit DOMA tailored for Chief Justice John Roberts

The liberal law blog Balkanization provides just such a thing in this post by Gerald M. Magliocca:  The Defense of Marriage Act.  Magliocca builds off of Chief Justice Roberts' approach in his opinion in the Obamacare healthcare mandate case.  Anyone interested in the how the Supreme Court might rule if review of DOMA is accepted should give Magliocca's post a read -- Chief Justice Roberts is far from a predictable conservative vote on the Court now, particularly if he can be subjected to pressure from the media and academic elites.

Freeman Hunt lists some great family movies

Libertarian blogger Freeman Hunt lists out some great movies for families with small children:  More Great Movies for Young Kids.  I would agree with most of the movies on her list -- and go further that her list is great for anyone interested in movies, not just folks with young children.

One movie that I do disagree with her about is Hondo.  That is, in my humble opinion, the worst John Wayne movie ever made.  It is a terrible movie.  And I am a member of the John Wayne cult, by the way, so I don't say that lightly.  But the rest of the movies she selects are, for the most part, very good and well worth watching.  Thanks, Freeman, for providing the list!