Political Morality – Page 5 – Maverick Philosopher

Kurt Schlichter

You don't want to end up on the wrong end of his invective. Schlichter may be the contemporary master of this mode of discourse. There is a place for invective in this fallen world although I sincerely wish invective were not needed.

"Resist not the evil doer" and "Turn the other cheek" make sense only within a loving community of the like-minded. In the wide world, however, practice of these precepts will soon lead to the demise of your loving community of the like-minded.

The American Catholic Bishops and others whose hustle is Religion, Inc. are blind to these truths.

I have a good post that deals with some of the issues in the vicinity: Machiavelli, Arendt, and Virtues Private and Public.

It begins as follows:

An important but troubling thought is conveyed in a recent New York Times op-ed (emphasis added):

Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good. The virtues taught in our secular and religious schools are incompatible with the virtues one must practice to safeguard those same institutions. The power of the lion and the cleverness of the fox: These are the qualities a leader must harness to preserve the republic.

The problem as I see it is that (i) the pacific virtues the practice of which makes life worth living within families, between friends, and in such institutions of civil society as churches and fraternal organizations are essentially private and cannot be extended outward as if we are all brothers and sisters belonging to a global community. Talk of global community is blather. The institutions of civil society can survive and flourish only if protected by warriors and statesmen whose virtues are of the manly and martial, not of the womanish and pacific, sort. And yet (ii) if no extension of the pacific virtues is possible then humanity would seem to be doomed in an age of terrorism and WMDs. Besides, it is unsatisfactory that there be two moralities, one private, the other public.

Read it all.

Phrase of the Day: ‘Infra Dig’

I just came across the following sentence in Charles R. Kesler's Claremont Review of Books article, Thinking about Trump:

It is not entirely clear whether his liberal and conservative critics disapprove of Trump because he violates moral law or because he is infra dig.

The 'infra dig' threw me for a moment until I realized it was a popularization of infra dignitatem, 'beneath (one's) dignity.' According to this source, Sir Water Scott in 1825 was the first to use the abbreviation.

I was taught to italicize foreign expressions, which is precisely what the good professor did not do in the sentence quoted. Where's my red pen?

As for the content of the sentence quoted, it is tolerably clear to me that the Never Trumpers (who are of course conservatives of a sort by definition) despise Trump mainly because the man has no class and is therefore infra dignitatem. He is not one of them. He does not have the manners and breeding of a Bill Kristol or a George Will and the rest of the effete, yap-and-scribble, but do nothing, bow-tie brigade. He is an outsider and an interloper who threatens their privileges and perquisites. Better Hillary and the status quo than a shake-up and take-on of the Deep State and its enablers.

On the other hand, leftists, most of them anyway, don't give a damn about the moral law as it pertains to marital fidelity and sexual behavior with the possible exception of rape. These types don't object to Trump because of locker-room talk and affairs. After all, they tolerate it in themselves and their heroes such as the Kennedy's, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bill Clinton. What they are doing is right out of Saul Alinksy's Rules for Radicals, in particular, #4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

Nor do Leftists much care that Trimp is infra dig. What leftists object to are his policies and programs, but instead of addressing them, they attack the man for failing to honor values that they themselves do not accept so as to discredit him among his supporters.

Of Patella and POTUS: The Mueller Squeeze

Having some trouble with my right knee, I purchased a Mueller compression sleeve which is putting the squeeze on my patella in a manner much to be preferred to the in terrorem manner Robert Mueller is putting the squeeze on POTUS. And then there's Heinrich Mueller of Gestapo fame, no blood relation of Robert. I'll leave it to the better informed to assess the similarity of their tactics.

One thing is for sure: the criminalization of political differences is a serious threat to our republic. Hats off to Alan Dershowitz for speaking out forcefully on this danger.

Meditation on the Third Commandment

A 1941 article by C. S. Lewis. (HT: Victor Reppert)

The Third Commandment in the ordering preferred by Protestants of Lewis' stripe is the one about taking the Lord's name in vain:

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

Lewis meditates on the difficulties that must beset attempts to form a political party animated by Christian principles.

Christians may be expected to agree on the general ends of good government, but that agreement does not suffice for a political party. What one needs for a political party, which by its very nature is oriented toward concrete actions in the here and now, is the championship of very specific means. But then bitter contention over these means is unavoidable and our incipient Christian party breaks apart into competing factions.

The cynosure of Lewis' disapprobation, I take it, is the invocation of God to justify one's very specific political means. One who does that takes the name of the Lord in vain.

One is put in mind of Dylan's With God On Its Side.

Private and Public Morality Again

Elliot submits the following and I add comments in blue:

After reading Machiavelli, Arendt, and the Important Difference between Private and Public Morality, I thought you might be interested in J. P. Moreland’s A Biblical Case For Limited Government.

His position seems similar to yours (and mine) is several respects. Here are some relevant quotations.

— “In my view, the more secular a society becomes, the more its citizens turn to government to give them a sense of transcendence.”

I agree. As Schopenhauer said, "Man is a metaphysical animal." He is not content with a merely physical existence and the petty meanings and purposes of ordinary life. Those no longer able to take religion seriously seek a substitute in political activism. They seek transcendence where it cannot be found, in the immanent sphere of the political.

— “As naturalism and postmodernism gain ascendency, [ascendancy] the idea of individual, responsible agency vanishes, and therapeutic justice and a culture of victimization take its place. Now those that advocate free will and responsible agency tend to want government to be small and off people’s backs. By contrast, those who eschew such agency tend to want government to provide care for various victims of the natural lottery.”

Agreed.

— “… the state cannot show compassion. As an individual, a representative of the state can have compassion in his heart as he gives to the poor; but this compassion is exhibited by him qua individual and not qua representative of the state.”

Right.

— “Jesus held that the church and state had separate callings and spheres of authority.”

Render unto Caesar . . . Matthew 22:20-22

— “It is widely agreed that two features are at the core of Jesus’s ethical teaching—virtue ethics and the love commands… I am among a growing number of thinkers who believe that Jesus was primarily a virtue ethicist.”

— “In a biblical ethic, helping the poor by the coercive power of the state is of little ethical value.”

I should think that this holds for any ethic worth its salt.

“Such actions count for very little in God’s eyes because they do not reflect the features of Jesus’s ethic identified above.”

– “…when it comes to caring for the poor, which is clearly a moral duty placed on believers, Jesus never intended such action to be forced on people by the state. Such acts were to be voluntary and from a freely given heart of compassion.”

Some thoughts of mine with which J. P. may or may not agree.

The state is coercive by its very nature. Now either that coercion is morally justifiable or it is not. If it is justifiable, and the state takes money from me for a good cause, then, while I have not been morally violated, my contribution has no moral value.

If, on the other hand, the coercion essential to the state is not morally justifiable, and the state takes money from me for a good cause, then it is the case both that I am been morally violated and that my contribution has no moral value. Money has been stolen from me to benefit someone else. That is not what is going on in the first case. If the state and its coercion are morally justified, and the state takes my money via taxation for a legitimate function of government such as the securing of the nation's borders, then that money has not been stolen from even even though it has been taken by force.

Other questions arise concerning the state's coercive taking of money from citizens to fund what many consider to be evil enterprises such as abortion providers.

Machiavelli, Arendt, and the Important Difference between Private and Public Morality

Reader R. B. writes:

I have been enjoying your posts about immigration because they are insightful. I'm on the border (haha) about the issue for the most part. I work with illegals from Mexico (in a restaurant) so you can imagine how that plays into my thinking. The problem as I see it is this: it is extremely difficult to gain citizenship in America and extremely expensive; most immigrants do not have the money and are trying to escape their shitty situation in Mexico. They are left with a nasty choice of returning to Mexico or purchasing an illegal visa (which the majority of the time is a scam for a large amount of their money). I am a Christian so I think it's important to think about how God treats the other–the outcast, the poor, and the immigrant.

A professor friend has written an interesting paper on the subject, entitled "Love and Borders." If you have time let me know what you think.

My overall view is as follows. Maybe later I'll discuss the details of the paper in question.

Christian precepts such as "Turn the other cheek" and "Welcome the stranger" make sense and are salutary only within communities of the like-minded and morally decent; they make no sense and are positively harmful in the public sphere, and, a fortiori, in the international sphere. The monastery is not the wide world. What is conducive unto salvation in the former will get you killed in the latter. And we know what totalitarians, whether Communists or Islamists, do when they get power: they destroy the churches, synagogues, monasteries, ashrams, and zendos. And with them are destroyed the means of transmitting the dharma, the kerygma, the law and the prophets.

An important but troubling thought is conveyed in a recent NYT op-ed (emphasis added):

Machiavelli teaches that in a world where so many are not good, you must learn to be able to not be good. The virtues taught in our secular and religious schools are incompatible with the virtues one must practice to safeguard those same institutions. The power of the lion and the cleverness of the fox: These are the qualities a leader must harness to preserve the republic.

The problem referenced in the bolded sentence is very serious but may have no solution. That's the aporetician in me speaking.

The problem as I see it is that (i) the pacific virtues the practice of which makes life worth living within families, between friends, and in such institutions of civil society as churches and fraternal organizations are essentially private and cannot be extended outward as if we are all brothers and sisters belonging to a global community. Talk of global community is blather. The institutions of civil society can survive and flourish only if protected by warriors and statesmen whose virtues are of the manly and martial, not of the womanish and pacific, sort. And yet (ii) if no extension beyond the private of the pacific virtues is possible then humanity would seem to be doomed in an age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Besides, it is unsatisfactory that there be two moralities, one private, the other public.

Consider the Christian virtues preached by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. They include humility, meekness, love of righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, love of peace and of reconciliation. Everyone who must live uncloistered in the world understands that these pacific and essentially womanish virtues have but limited application there. Indeed, their practice can get you killed. (I am not using 'womanish' as a derogatory qualifier.)

You may love peace, but unless you are prepared to make war upon your enemies and show them no mercy, you may not be long for this world. Turning the other cheek makes sense within a loving family, but no sense in the wider world. (Would the Pope turn the other cheek if the Vatican came under attack by Muslim terrorists or would he call upon the armed might of the Italian state?) My point is perfectly obvious in the case of states: they are in the state (condition) of nature with respect to each other. Each state secures by blood and iron a civilized space within which art and music and science and scholarship can flourish and wherein, ideally, blood does not flow; but these states and their civilizations battle each other in the state (condition) of nature red in tooth and claw. Talk of world government or United Nations is globalist blather that hides the will to power of those who would seize control of the world government. United under which umbrella of values and principles and presuppositions?

What values do we share with the Muslim world?

The Allies would not have been long for this world had they not been merciless in their treatment of the Axis Powers.

Israel would have ceased to exist long ago had Israelis not been ruthless in their dealing with Muslim terrorists bent on her destruction.

This is also true of individuals once they move beyond their families and friends and genuine communities and sally forth into the wider world.

The problem is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):

     The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all
     earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular
     — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been
     frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended
     protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of
     the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the
     wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned
     against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who
     for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good
     for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for
     others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth
     interests of the community.) [Arendt cites the Nicomachean Ethics,
     Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]

There is a tension between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen. As a philosopher raised in Christianity, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops many of whom are woefully ignorant of the simple points Arendt makes in the passage quoted. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug smuggler or a human trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law breaking. I must be concerned with public order. This order is among the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's law breaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" as the New Testament enjoins us to do.

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops and others who confuse private and public morality.

The article referenced above is Thomas M. Crisp, Love and Borders.