So, have I
given a misleading impression of Vallier’s treatment of Vermeule? Not in the least. Note, first, that I explicitly said in my
review that Vallier acknowledges that Vermeule does not advocate violence. I wrote:
Vallier tells us [that]… whether they like it or not, in order
to bring their desired regime about, integralists “must use violence in ways
that the Catholic Church rejects” (p. 137)…
Vallier admits that in
fact “Vermeule wants to avoid coercion” and “says little about how hard integralists should fight for the ideal”
(pp. 134-35).
Most of what Vallier describes is not anything Vermeule himself actually says, but only
what Vallier claims would have to be
done in order to realize Vermeule’s vision.
End quote. The problem, as I show, is that Vallier also says things that give the
impression that Vermeule advocates a radically revolutionary political program
that manifestly could not be realized without violence. And material of this latter sort greatly
outweighs the qualifying statements Vallier makes here and there, and which he
cites in his response to me.
Hence, as I
noted in my review, we have page after harrowing page in Vallier’s book
describing how the political program he attributes to Vermeule “probably
requires abolishing democracy” (p. 136) and would entail “mass surveillance… [to]
suppress dissent” (p. 150), “Chinese-level tactics” (p. 148), “modern heresy
trials” (p. 149), “pressure to segregate religiously diverse populations” (p.
154), “ultra-loyal troops [to] subdue career military officials. (Hitler’s SS
springs to mind)” and “youth programs to increase loyalty to their leader.
(Hitler Youth springs to mind)” (p. 146), “human rights violations” and “secret
police” (pp. 151-52), and “leadership purges, replete with execution, torture,
and show trials. A one-party state” (p. 147).
Vallier warns that to uphold the regime Vermeule would set up,
“Protestants could face heresy charges” (p. 153); that “according to
integralism, Black Protestant churches have no right to exist” and “the state
must decide whether to declare Black Protestant churches criminal
organizations” (ibid.); and that “we should not assume that an integralist
regime will treat Jews well” (ibid.).
And so
on. Vallier concludes that “Vermeule’s
integration from within requires massive violence” (p. 239). Indeed, the political program he attributes
to Vermeule is so extreme and
unhinged that it is hard to see how anyone could fail to perceive that it would
require massive violence. And again,
though Vallier makes a few disclaimers here and there, they are nowhere near as
numerous or prominent as the detailed descriptions he gives of the coercive
regime he says Vermeule’s views would entail.
When an author briefly notes here and there that Vermeule doesn’t advocate violence, but also goes on at great
length about how Vermeule’s extreme
political program would manifestly require massive violence, it is hardly
unfair to judge that he has given his readers a misleading impression of
Vermeule’s views.
Then there
is the fact that Vallier’s qualifying statements are hardly full-throated. For example, as Vallier notes in his reply to
me, he concedes that “Vermeule would not suppress liberalism with violence” (p.
134). But here is the longer passage in
Vallier’s book from which that line is taken:
Vermeule wants to protect the Church
from malignant states. His method: train
strong Christian leaders who will take power and defend the church. When I
have spoken with Vermeule’s defenders, often young people, they characterize
his strategy as concerned chiefly with defense rather than offense. I do not think Vermeule’s
theory of liberalism allows for any such distinction. Vermeule would not suppress
liberalism with violence. Liberalism
will destroy itself. But liberals and
the liberal state can still do significant damage in the meanwhile. Further, once liberalism dies, it could
revive.
As Vermeule so evocatively
claims, we must “sear the liberal faith with hot irons.” It must not rise again. Only a strong state combined with a strong
church can complete this urgent task.
Vermeulean protectors must become conquerors. They must then rule with an iron rod. And so, however much Vermeule
wants to avoid coercion, he is stuck with it.
Integralists must exercise hard power. (p. 134)
End
quote. The impression given here is that
while Vermeule does not endorse violence and even eschews it, he does endorse a radical political program
that would clearly require
violence. But as I showed in my review,
the problem is not just that Vermeule does not endorse violence itself. The problem is that Vermeule does not in the first place actually endorse the extreme
political program Vallier attributes to him.
Hence, in “Integration
from Within” (from which the “hot irons” remark is quoted), Vermeule
is not talking about Catholic
integralism, but “nonliberal” politics more generally. Indeed, he explicitly says that “there can be no return to the integrated
regime of the thirteenth century, whatever its attractions.” Nor does he advocate any positive concrete
political program of any other kind for replacing liberalism, and indeed
explicitly says that the “postliberal future [is] of uncertain shape.” Vermeule says that “for the foreseeable
future, the problem will be to mitigate the spasmodic, but compulsive and
repetitive, aggression of the decaying liberal state” rather than promote an
alternative. Indeed, he says that
nonliberals who follow his advice will:
mainly attempt to ensure the survival
of their faith communities in an interim age of exile and dispossession. They do
not evangelize or preach with a view to bringing about the birth of an entirely
new regime, from within the old. They mitigate the long defeat for those
who become targets of the regime in liberalism’s twilight era, and this will surely have to be the main aim
for some time to come.
End
quote. Similarly, in “A
Christian Strategy,” far from endorsing the “party capture” approach that
Vallier attributes to him, Vermeule says that “the Church… must stand detached from all subsidiary political commitments, willing
to enter into flexible alliances of convenience with any of the parties.” Rather than calling for going on offense with
a revolutionary political program, he says that “the main proximate short-run
goal must be largely one of survival.”
Rather than pushing some doctrinaire integralist vision, he emphasizes
flexibility: “Christians will always have many different options for political
engagement. In some or other
circumstances, one or another of them will prove best in the light of
prudential judgment; none has any logical or theological priority.”
In short, Vallier
is saying, “I didn’t accuse Vermeule of advocating B! I accused him of
advocating A, which will inevitably lead to B!” And the problem is that Vermeule not only
does not advocate B, he doesn’t advocate A either.
Or consider Vallier’s
remark that “Vermeule has publicly declaimed all such [violent] tactics.” Here is the passage in Valler’s book in which
that remark appears:
Vermeule has publicly declaimed all
such tactics. Indeed, even in
“Integration from Within” he indicates hesitancy about coercion, though what he
says is curious: “It would be wrong to conclude that integration from within is
a matter of coercion, as opposed to persuasion and conversion, for the
distinction is so fragile as to be nearly useless.” On the one hand, integration from within is
not “a matter of coercion.” But the
distinction between coercion and noncoercion is “nearly useless” – which leaves
one to wonder which tactics Vermeule has in mind. (p. 147)
End quote. One problem here is that Vallier is misusing
the word “declaim,” which literally means “to speak in an eloquent or
impassioned way.” So, the literal
meaning of what Vallier says in the first line here is “Vermeule has publicly spoken
in an eloquent way of all such [violent] tactics”! Obviously, that is not what Vallier means,
which is why I didn’t bother quoting this particular line.
The more
important point here, though, is this. On
the one hand, Vallier here acknowledges that Vermeule shows “hesitancy about
coercion.” But on the other hand,
Vallier says that it is “curious” that Vermeule says that the distinction between
coercion and persuasion is “nearly useless,” so that one “wonder[s] which
tactics Vermeule has in mind.” Since the
larger context is a discussion of the violent means Vermeule’s program would
allegedly require, some readers might get the impression that Vermeule might
not be entirely committed to eschewing violence after all.
But here is
the longer passage from Vermeule’s article “Integration from Within” where he
makes the remark in question:
It would be wrong to conclude that
integration from within is a matter of coercion, as opposed to persuasion and
conversion, for the distinction is so fragile as to be nearly useless. As J. F. Stephen noted, there is a type of
intellectual and rhetorical “warfare” in which “the weaker opinion – the less
robust and deeply seated feeling – is rooted out to the last fiber, the place
where it grew being seared as with a hot iron.” In a more recent register, we have learned
from behavioral economics that agents with administrative control over default
rules may nudge whole populations in desirable directions, in an exercise of
“soft paternalism.” It is a useless
exercise to debate whether or not this shaping from above is best understood as
coercive, or rather as an appeal to the “true” underlying preferences of the
governed.
End
quote. Seen in this context, there is
nothing at all “curious” about Vermeule’s remark, or remotely suggestive of
violence. On the contrary, as I noted in
my review of Vallier’s book, it is clear from this passage that when Vermeule speaks
of cases where the distinction between coercion and persuasion is unclear, what
he actually had in mind were soft incentives of the kind liberals like Richard
Thaler and Cass Sunstein describe in their book Nudge:
Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness.
Here is another
example where Vallier’s reading of Vermeule is careless to such an extent that
he ends up attributing to Vermeule the opposite of what he actually said. As I noted my review, Vallier compares
Vermeule’s program to that of a Marxist revolutionary party. Hence, in his book, Vallier writes: “Vermeule
analogizes his view [of liberalism] with Karl Marx’s claims about capitalism: ‘Liberalism
is inherently unstable and is structurally disposed to generate the very forces
that destroy it’” (p. 127). The remark
from Vermeule is quoted from “A Christian Strategy.” But here is the larger passage in that
article in which it appears:
There are two ways of understanding
[the liberal] dynamic. One is that in
the long run, liberalism undermines itself by transforming tolerance into
increasingly radical intolerance of the “intolerant” – meaning those who hold
illiberal views. On this view, militant
progressivism is distinct from liberalism, indeed a betrayal of it. Such an
account would make liberalism analogous to Marx’s claim about capitalism:
Liberalism is inherently unstable and is structurally disposed to generate the
very forces that destroy it.
A different view, and
my own, is that liberal intolerance represents not the self-undermining of
liberalism, but a fulfillment of its essential nature. When a chrysalis shelters an
insect that later bursts forth from it and leaves it shattered, the chrysalis
has in fact fulfilled its true and predetermined end. Liberalism of the purportedly tolerant sort is
to militant progressivism as the chrysalis is to the hideous insect.
End quote. As the reader can clearly see, in the line
Vallier quotes, Vermeule is not
stating his own view, but on the contrary, a view he explicitly says is “different [from his] own.”
More could be said, but that suffices to make the point. Vallier is for the most part admirably fair-minded, and I don’t think for a moment that he intentionally misrepresents Vermeule. But that he does in fact give a misleading characterization of Vermeule’s views, however inadvertently, there can be no doubt. (Vallier addresses some other issues too, and says that he will address yet others in a future post. I may return to those in a future reply.)
UPDATE 12/15:
Vallier responds over
at Substack. Here’s the reply I
posted at
Twitter:
Sorry, but the case remains unmade. When @Vermeullarmine offers us specific models for a Christian politics to look to, he gives biblical examples like Joseph in Egypt, Esther and Mordecai, and St. Paul. Are these models of the integralist “state capture” envisaged by @kvallier? No, they involve using state power defensively, to protect a faithful minority (in the first two cases) and seeding the ground for a centuries-long change in the culture (in the case of Paul). Any “state capture” that such models could lead to are so very far down the line (perhaps centuries) that the relevant concrete cultural circumstances are impossible to predict, giving Vallier’s imagined Catholic integralist state capture scenarios no purchase. And as I keep saying, Vermeule himself does not, in any event, actually propose any such scenario. In order to attribute it to him, Vallier’s latest response has to rely in part on what other people have said, and on extrapolation from a tweet from Vermeule (despite conceding, at p. 123 of his book, that tweets and other off-the-cuff social media ephemera are not a good basis on which reconstruct someone’s considered views).
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI'm going to drop this link here, and if you can scrape together 5 minutes - and I am uncertain that you can - give it a quick look.
But speak of the Devil and he appears. Geez.
Was reviewing Schechter, and there at the top of the page was a link to: "Will the Common Good Guys Come to the Shootout in SEC v. Jarkesy? And Why It Matters"
" ... Professor Coffee identifies the two sides and the stakes:
'This is a fight between proponents of the Administrative State and the Federalist Society mob, which has been seeking this shootout for some time. If the Federalist Society gang wins, the Administrative State will have taken a crippling (but not quite fatal) wound. Thus, this column asks (with its usual objectivity): Can the SEC, Wyatt Earp, and the other Good Guys win this shootout?[4]'
My main comment was that I agreed with Coffee’s analysis and his bottom line that the Supreme Court should uphold the power of the SEC to seek the equitable remedy of disgorgement in ALJ proceedings without allowing a right to a jury trial. The nondelegation and ALJ removal arguments should be rejected too. At the same time, I suggested that the characterization of the fight between the Good Guys and Bad Guys should be expanded to include some other combatants.
Gee, I wonder who they could be. No need to wonder he is avid to tell us....
" The new Bad Guys coming to town are disguised as Good Guys ...
In a recent book review in Foreign Affairs, Professor Charles King of Georgetown University diagnoses the rise of new versions of illiberal philosophies that purport to explain and provide direction for populist movements arising in the last few decades in the United States and around the world.[6] A trio of recent books, according to King, illustrate these views. The books are Patrick J. Deneen’s Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future (2023), Yoram Hazony’s Conservatism: A Rediscovery (2022), and Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism: Recovering the Classical Legal Tradition (2022)
Take, for example, the theory of common-good constitutionalism propounded by Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School.[14] Professor Vermeule argues for a recovery of classical legal theory that incorporates values of Roman and Christian canon law as foundational to any true conception of law. He argues against both originalism and progressivism as missing the central justification of the law. Following ancient Roman jurists, he says law should stand for “peace, justice, and abundance ..."
[Now, here comes the really precious part, if you think blindness to a redounding irony is "precious"]
The trouble is that Vermeule leaves out two essential Enlightenment ideas – or at least radically conditions them. One is the idea of rights, and the second is democracy."
"Leaves out" as in, "I agreed with Coffee’s analysis and his bottom line that the Supreme Court should uphold the power of the SEC to seek the equitable remedy of disgorgement in ALJ proceedings without allowing a right to a jury trial."
Yeah, a jury trial is so inexpedient, so inefficient in implementing the collective good. We can always pretend a substantive distinction if legal niceties require between disgorgement of profits at the decree of an Administrative Law Judge, and common law damages. Just like we can readily, or conveniently at least, distinguish between an original fine, subsequently redefined as a tax in order to make it "legal", with regard to the ACA mandate to purchase and penalty.
Oh, and "Federalist Society mob". That's kinda nice too.
Another point about how integralists don't have any "plan" is that the result of integralism would resemble hard integralism much more than middle integralism. The Aristotelian medium sounds nice in theory but if the secular ruler wants to curry favor with the Church (for real faith or political capital), they're going to push away from the medium. Likewise, the Church (speaking in terms of people, not policy) is going to accept that movement because it will only them. I don't necessarily see a totalitarian state but it sounds a lot less nice than the one presented in the blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteI think that if integralists want people to feel comfortable that they don't intend to persecute Protestants, Jews, etc., it would be helpful if they issued any kind of full-throated condemnation of when past integralists did exactly that.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Anonymous. As a Protestant, I am horrified at how Protestants treated Catholics and Jews at certain periods in certain places. Can we get a reciprocation from Ed on that point? If Ben's reading of Dignitatis Humanae in the previous post is correct, that would alleviate some of my concerns but I am far from certain that integralists agree with him.
Delete"Can we get a reciprocation from Ed on that point?"
DeleteOf course. That goes without saying.
Great; I assumed that would be the case, Ed. I think that Tony's point regarding subsidiarity in the previous blog is also important. The Papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum (Concerning New Things) based on Luigi Taparelli's earlier work articulate what "social justice" used to mean, in which subsidiarity and solidarity are both important. I taught a semester long course on social justice at APU (which included topics like abortion, infanticide, eugenics, euthanasia normally ignored by the critical social justice theorists) and we spent a couple of weeks going through Rerum Novarum. I have also heard Ed lecture on this topic. As Tony points out, a church that upholds subsidiarity in the way that Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno etc. do has principles (not just prudential considerations) which would argue against operating in the way that both Catholics and Protestants did in the 16th and 17th centuries.
DeleteBTW, Tim, in response to your question in the other post's comment thread (which I didn't read until today), the answer is that no one should ever have been forced to convert. And I don't know of any integralist who denies that.
DeleteThank you, Tim, and thank you, Ed. (BTW: I usually post as SMack. I'm having a login issue, not trying to be anonymous.)
DeleteIf I may follow up, though -- what of seemingly infallible pronouncements from the Church (e.g., Exsurge Domine; and I think, though I may be wrong, that that was later reiterated at a council) that heretics should be burned?
Even if moderates such as Ed may denounce such (and I do appreciate that, Ed!), it seems that the dynamics within a vibrant integralism might well lead people to again thinking that that was a good idea.
These are at least concerns; but I don't want to move the goal posts from my first request that the actions be denounced, which Ed has done.
And to expand on Ed's remark here: The Church throughout the centuries explicitly said that people should never be converted by force. That there may have been (some) times and places where the authorities ignored this long-standing teaching, and that Church officials condoned it, would be shameful, but there never was a doctrinal thesis by the Church in favor of conversion by force.
DeleteI realize that now, Ed, and Ben had a couple of superb quotes to that effect. The reactions to the horrors perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th (and I was in Israel when it happened) have revealed fault lines. The Society of Biblical Literature failed on this test because of its commitment to critical social justice rather than traditional social justice or simply objective morality (and I can give you details in private). Loads of us have attended our last SBL meeting. Harvard, UPenn, and MIT failed. What Claudine Gay and her colleagues said are standard implications of poststructuralism and the various critical theories. I think our energies should be devoted to the great crisis and opportunity of our times. What you said in your book on critical race theory is so relevant to what has been happening in the last couple of months. I know you are busy but I am surprised that there has not been a single blog on this inflection point in world politics and ideology. I am not surprised (because I knew how deep the rot had gone in our universities) but I am horrified to hear "From the River to the Sea" or other expressions of wiping Israel/Jews off the map being regarded as acceptable speech but anything which smacks of cisheterosexism is not.
DeleteIn "The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory," it seems that Evangelical Protestants are fully ready to use the powers of the government to advance their goal of a Christian nation.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-kingdom-the-power-and-the-glory-tim-alberta?variant=41012408516642
I have not been impressed with Tim Alberta's work (at National Review or after), and I suspect that "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory" reflects more of his animus at what Hillary called "the deplorables" than sound religious analysis. Alberta thinks that if evangelicals are not doing "critical social justice" they have abandoned Christianity. I just attended the national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society and in not a single session did I hear anything about advancing the goal of a Christian nation. Many do want to see natural law inform America's institutions but very few are theonomists. Evangelicals on the whole are happy to make common cause with Catholics and Jews to stop poststructuralism, critical theory, and non-traditional ethics. Tim Alberta's real target goes way beyond evangelicals; he just thinks that they are easy pickings.
DeleteAnonymous, what laws are Evangelicals pushing that would exclude Catholics or Jews? There were state laws in the past that did so (early on, many states favored particular denominations whether Puritan, Quaker, Catholic, Anglican, etc.) but I see no desire to return to that or to demand that one be a Christian for U.S. citizenship.
DeleteHi Norm. Yes, I am an Evangelical. My wife is Catholic. Two of my doctoral advisors are Jewish (my Ph.D is in Hebrew Bible), and I have learned a great deal from Judaism. [When Jews perform the ceremony of the Afikomen at the Passover Seder, though they do not know it, they testify to Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. This is one example.]
DeleteNo, I would not be happy with an integralist society; nor do I think that a Protestant analogue would be ideal either. I agree with many of your comments on the previous blog post on this topic, Norm. I think that they are very insightful. What I would favor (but is unlikely to happen) is a nation that had norms of natural law (which include natural theology; knowledge of God is presupposed in the Noachic lawcode incumbent on all people) and that the metaphysical principles which underlie natural law and virtue ethics were taught as a norm in the education systems. This would need considerable fleshing out. I do think that a quite soft integralist state might be easier for a Protestant family to raise children they way they wish than in our present society and the converse would hold for a Catholic family in a Protestant analogue to an integralist state (with Jews facing less anti-semitism in either than in what they now face in most of Europe and, increasingly, the USA, as recent events have shown).
Tim,
DeleteYou want to stop critical theory generally?
"stop ..., critical theory,"
"Critical theory, by contrast, reflects on the context of its own origins and aims to be a transformative force within that context. It explicitly embraces an interdisciplinary methodology that aims to bridge the gap between empirical research and the kind of philosophical thinking needed to grasp the overall historical situation and mediate between specialized empirical disciplines. Critical theory aims not merely to describe social reality, but to generate insights into the forces of domination operating within society in a way that can inform practical action and stimulate change."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/
What part of that seems somehow bad to you?
Critical theories, generally, don't accept analysis at face value in a vacuum, wherein the analysis is presumed to be neutral and unbiased.
For example, in science. One might presume that science is carried out objectively, without bias, and factual in a neutral sort of way.
Actually, science is done by human beings, and all human beings are intrinsically biased. A critical methodology, then, seeks to question even the most basic assumptions to identify biases and therefore inaccuracies that might not otherwise be understood.
You want to stop that?
Yes, read the book Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont for some good examples of the nonsense produced by critical theory in the hard sciences and it does not stop there.
Delete@ Norm
DeleteThey enforce certain norms for Muslims and restrict evangelisation rights for Non muslims. In that sense they can even be called "Muslim Integralists".
I guess that the first point I am trying to make is that once you are comfortable at the basic level of family, you will naturally want more freedom to share those values.
And secondly, in today's America, for all it's flaws, you have the right to evangelise, to spread the Gospel. But there's a certain sense of comfort knowing that the people who attack that right are actually acting against the law.
Norm, it is my sense of Dignitatis Humanae that (a) because men are rational beings who come to know through processes of learning; and
(b) we are not able to learn well independently, rather we tend to learn well in communication with others who can correct our flaws or impart new data,
Therefore, not only is the search for truth a basic human right, so is communication in that search, both as questioning and as proposing answers, even posing potentially wrong answers.
However, it is also part of the teaching of that document that the communication we do in pursuit of truth holds also responsibilities and obligations on us, especially that we do not, in our public efforts, act in ways that undermine the proper pursuit of truth. A simple example of what is foreclosed by this duty would be convincing someone of a true conclusion by using false premises. But there are many other elements of this obligation.
The sticking point, I think, comes from duties such as the obligation to GIVE UP on your past opinions when the evidence is adequate to showing to you that they were wrong, and not keep pressing your old position out of stubbornness, pride, etc. It is actually an offense against the duties to rightly pursue truth to persist in an argument that (were you not being stubborn) you would realize has already been defeated. Other duties include finer details like not bringing forth "evidence" as if it were solid, when it is nothing more than rumor or hopeful wish. These are "sticking points" because it cannot but be a matter of prudence about such abuses of the right to pursue truth, as to when some other party (like an authority) has a right or duty to step in and say "stop, that's actually an abuse against the duties to truth and the due pursuit of truth." And, as is generally true with matters of prudence like that, it is either difficult or impossible to set out formal rules and principles that will uniformly tell the authorities when to act and when to let things alone because leaving them alone will more favor the good.
Tim,
Delete"Yes, read the book"
Diversion to a strawman.
I asked you if you wanted to stop the specific processes defined as critical theory in the source I cited, and the sorts of goals of critical theory I described.
"Go read a book" is a typical commenter diversionary tactic for one who cannot or does not wish to address the points actually made.
I did not ask you to provide a vague reference to some strawman that is supposedly buried somewhere out there in some book.
I asked you a specific question to which you answered yes, which makes you a highly unreasonable person, because seeking out biases to eliminate them is a reasonable aspect of critical analysis.
Stardusty,
DeleteLet me give you examples of what people have argued for on the basis of the various strands of critical theory. E=m c squared is a sexed equation because it privileges the speed of light over other speeds; the prohibition against stealing is invalid because it protects the property of the rich; racism is about white superiority …. period (has she been to India or certain other nations I could mention; and is she aware of anti-Semiticism and other forms of racism in America); the overwhelming empirical evidence that British students of African descent do better on exams than white British students must be wrong because it against the narrative of critical theory; biological sex is a social construct and sex is assigned, not determined, at birth; men who self-identify as women can compete against women at rugby (even if this causes injuries to women); we should allow criminals to loot less than 1,000 worth of good at stores; scholarship about Nebuchadnezzar conquering Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C.E. (or any other widely accepted fact in biblical scholarship or probably historical scholarship in general) is an example of malestream scholarship which we are free to ignore (“mansplaining” is another common term to dismiss inconvenient facts in numerous disciplines); mathematics is racist; the reason that there has not been more progress in fluid body mechanics compared to rigid body mechanics is that the first is considered feminine (not because the Navier-Stokes equations are difficult to solve). What is particularly important is that critical theory advocates hardly ever publicly attack the perpetrators of this fashionable nonsense as abusing critical theory. Critical theory is prescriptive at its core; it wants to change any norms and facts that are contrary to their revolutionary goals.
or set the foundation for implementing it in the long term (50-100 years from now etc),
DeleteAny half-way prudent integralist would need to have a scope of 200+ years, 50 being much too short, and 100 being pie-in-the-sky implausible for turning any existing pluralist society of today into an integralist one (whether Catholic, Protestant, or other).
they are very ignorant of how easily the Church can succumb to excersising state power, despite the historical evidence.
Nothing in integralism requires that the Church exercise state power. Only that the government exercise ITS OWN power in ways that promote the (favored) religion's views of the final goods of human life.
Tim Finlay
ReplyDeleteYou mischaracterize the book. The only "deplorables" are those on the Christian Right.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/02/kingdom-power-glory-review-tim-alberta-trump-evangelical
"Franklin Graham, the late Billy Graham’s son, threatened Americans with God’s wrath if they had the temerity to criticize Trump. “The Bible says it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment,” he said, on Facebook.
Another famous scion, the now disgraced Jerry Falwell Jr, admonished his flock to stop electing “nice guys”. Instead, he tweeted, “the US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government”. Resentment and grievance supplanted the message of scripture and “What would Jesus do?”
There is nothing in those quotes about using the government to advance the goal of a Christian nation which is what your initial post was about.
Delete
DeleteTim Finlay , on
December 14, 2023 at 8:59 PM,
Replies,
There is nothing in those quotes about using the government to advance the goal of a Christian nation which is what your initial post was about.
Tim,
I think that Anonymous at 1:58 p.m. was joking.
Franklin Graham threatened God's wrath? And it supposedly upset someone? Hilarious. Got to be a joke that is just too meta to be grasped immediately.
No psychologically healthy normally developed human is that delicate and sensitive and still running loose on the streets. If they were, you would see tatted up freaks and narcissists screaming about feelings, hurts, inclusion and affirmation almost everywhere you looked. They would be shouting that words hurt and that they needed to be protected from scary opinions.
Society - or at least many of its institutions - would be on the verge of collapse if that were the case. Why, you would have to imagine that 20, maybe 30% of - possibly largely young - people were clinically diagnosable with psychological and emotional disturbances; and that maybe 20% were on mood altering drugs.
If that were the case, the wrath of God - or nature- would already be upon them.
No, I am sure Anonymous is joking.
"There is nothing in those quotes about using the government to advance the goal of a Christian nation which is what your initial post was about."
DeleteRead the book and you will see my post was correct. You don't have to buy it. Just go to a bookstore and skim through it. Or read the review if skimming a book is too difficult for you. Or read this link:
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156642544/more-than-half-of-republicans-support-christian-nationalism-according-to-a-new-s
The Christian Right has always courted the
Republican Party to advance its agenda, starting with Reagan. Are you not aware of that?
DNW,
That was not one of your better posts, not in content, not even in style.
The Christian right wing (there is a Christian left wing also and they are far more influential in the Academy than the Christian right) wanted Reagan to appoint Supreme Court nominees to overturn Roe v Wade. They did not want or expect him to make Jews or Buddhists the equivalent of dhimmi status.
DeleteAnonymous
DeleteDecember 15, 2023 at 1:54 PM
"DNW,
That was not one of your better posts, not in content, not even in style."
Thank you Anonymous. I'll take this as an opportunity for reflection, and give your contribution both this, and whatever additional attention, it deserves.
But as far as style goes, that's just not a matter that merits consideration anyway.
This is a combox; I'm giving my opinion; and you, are not paying anyone to read it. At least not me.
That said, apart from a few Anonymous - or anonymoi - who make a point of voicing their style related displeasure with my comments here, and who then announce they will nevermore read them, nobody else fixes on it.
I think you would agree that it would be unnatural and off-putting if they did; sort of like one guy obsessing about another particular guy's good looks, the part of his hair, or his waistline: kind of intrusive, and pretty damned creepy if you think about it.
Presumably, demonstrably in fact, most men here have healthier interests, and other rhetorical fish to fry.
And happily, apart from these comboxes and the two, or three, or maybe just one "anonymous", and the one named commenter who have brought up the matter before, no one else, as I mentioned before, broaches or frets it. My so-called style, that is.
But speaking as we now are of style, and of payments, and of wrapping up the topic, one might ask with regard to your own mannerisms: Just how much you are paying StardustyPsyche to do your writing for you?
Because as far as personality, voice, and technique goes ...
Maybe ... you should adopt a name; if for no other reason than so you can be told apart.
Tom
DeleteThe US is more secular and less Christian now than it was under Reagan, which is why the Christian Right has become more aggressive. Jerry Falwell, Jr is spouting the kind of nonsense is father never would.
DNW, StarDusty, payment? I think you are not well. I have posted as Anonymous for many years. And although some of your lengthy posts are entirely justified and interesting to read, this one could have summed up in just one paragraph. Maybe the holiday season has you off your game.
DNW 1.54PM
DeleteOh dear, here we go again., accusing/suggesting that someone is SP, with no evidence whatsoever. Still, if they signed off 'Fred', that would satisfy you apparantly.
Your entire post could have been condensed down to just two paragraphs max.Even you must have sufficient self awareness to appreciate that you are a verbose windbag in need of an editor. And the reason you have not received more comments about this, your sociopathy and general style, is very plausibly that most people give your frequently bizare posts a miss.
Anonymous,
DeleteI am glad that you concede that Jerry Falwell and company were not trying to implement a Protestant version of integralism in the USA.
I can tell you that the vast majority of the evangelical movement were not trying to implement one in either 2016 or in 2020 either. You have yet to produce a quote that shows that even Jerry Falwell Jr. was trying to do that.
Tom
DeleteYou did not read the articles I cited or you refuse to believe them. I concede nothing about Falwell and company. Jerry Sr was not bright enough to know what integralism meant, but his Moral Majority was an attempt to try to elect leaders to make America a Christian nation. Jerry Jr tried to be like his dad, but a sex scandal led to his downfall. Since Ed has moved on to a new topic, I will leave you with this article
https://www.laciviltacattolica.it/articolo/evangelical-fundamentalism-and-catholic-integralism-in-the-usa-a-surprising-ecumenism/
Anonymous 1
Delete"StarDusty, payment? I think you are not well. I have posted as Anonymous for many years."
Anonymous 2
"Oh dear, here we go again., accusing/suggesting that someone is SP, with no evidence whatsoever ..."
"Your entire post could have been condensed down to just two paragraphs."
A fitting response to you simpering clowns could be condensed to just two words.
But this is a philosophy blog where ideas are ostensibly discussed.
So, first step is to confine ourselves to noting that you still have made no identifiable contribution to the topic at hand, or the U.S.S.C. cases I mooted in conjunction with progressive statist policies, or so far as is obvious, anything else of real substance at all.
And how would anyone know if you had? Why so fearful of adopting a comment box identifier? Afraid even of the consequences of having your own comments consistently assigned to you? Where did you wimps grow up? The U.K.?
Instead of real contributions it is more of your recurrent obsession with the so-called style of another commenter.
And then, how would anyone identify or tell you apart if on some occasion you did manage to rise above an expression of interpersonally directed pique?
The natural question then, is what the hell are you even doing here?
Don't like the observation that in considering the very issue of "style" which you brought up, that one of you is a virtual rhetorical clone of the troll? Ok then. Just label it convergent devolution if you prefer.
However, on the other hand, you in particular, "Oh Dear Me I Must Say", yeah, you do in fact stand out from the anonymous crowd a bit, as you peevishly flounce your way throughout the combox threads.
And that is all that anyone need see in order to peg you.
DNW 5.17PM
DeleteAnother soporific novella for everyone to ignore. Yawn.
FRED
"Another soporific novella for everyone to ignore. Yawn.
DeleteFRED"
If you could summon the will power to do so yourself, Fred, you might be less fatigued.
@Tim Finlay
DeleteIf Jesus really was left-wing, then it is impossible for Christians to be left-wing.
Why? Because for a left-winger to be Christian, he must first worship Jesus as God. But if Jesus has the same political values as him, then he is worshipping himself, which would make him a Narcissist, which itself is a right-wing personality type.
Of course, right-wing Christians have no problem worshipping Jesus because Jesus is already different from them.
Therefore all Christians by definition must be right-wing.
Anonymous who calls me "Tom,"
DeleteI read the article you mentioned. It confirms several of my points. Evangelicals are not trying to get government to favor evangelicals over Catholics; they are not trying to reestablish the anti-Catholic laws of the past. Evangelicals are working together with Catholics on issues that they consider natural law such as abortion and same-sex relations. The prohibition against abortion is found in the hippocratic oath and the prohibition against same sex relations if found in Plato's "The Laws"; they both predate Christianity. The article confirms the existence of a Christian left (although it does not use that term) that has different values to the alliance of Evangelicals and traditional Catholics (and that does not include Pope Francis). You are making the same mistake that many on the Christian left make: confusing arguments for provisions of natural law (which includes recognition of the Creator) with establishing an Evangelical or even Christian state. My guess is that Tim Alberta makes the same mistake.
You would do better to let others respond to your criticisms and just let their responses stand. No one needs this many rounds. Vallier wrote a book. You criticized it. Vallier responded. The end. Readers can judge well enough from a single exchange. Few cases require more attention than that.
ReplyDeleteTo take the discussion back to the book and the review: does Vermeule do anything to actually argue that the violence he says is "necessary" for integralism really is necessary, or does he simply assert it? Or, more probably, just give numerous just-so stories of how an integralist "would" end up pushing violence, as if there were no other possible pathways for an integralist to consider?
ReplyDeleteEven if he sincerely believes that Vallier's integralism would end up as a violence-toting despotic regime, if he doesn't give a half-way decent argument that Vallier's theories must necessarily lead to such results, then he flagrantly mischaracterizes Vallier's views. It is a perfectly legit critique to say
"Bob doesn't believe that Y follows from X, so when he proposes X, he isn't aware that he is indirectly pushing for Y. But X does necessarily lead to Y, and here's why...A, B, and C. Therefore, his views in favor of X de facto are also in favor of Y, though he is unaware of the intimate connection, and indeed he believes otherwise."
But it is an utterly UNFAIR critique to say "It is my opinion that X will probably lead to Y, so when Bob proposes X, his thesis 'really' amounts to a thesis in favor of Y, though I cannot be bothered to discuss how it is that Y follows from X so surely, nor can I be bothered to point out whether in Bob's own view X does not lead to Y."
And on a note taking into account historical realities (both past and future), it cannot be denied that in the US, pluralism was greatly fostered by the sheer broad fact that in Europe in the early Endarkenment period (called by some by its opposite), persecution by some of others who believed differently led those others to flee to the hinterland so that they could be free to live without such coercion, free because there was virtually nobody there in the hinterland to oppose them (at least, not effectively). The Pilgrims may have technically preceded the "Enlightenment", but many later groups were part of the pilgrim's progress westward.
ReplyDeleteI doubt that modernity has successfully dealt the death blow to the psychology that made this possible. I suspect that in a few decades, or maybe a century or so, there will mass movements outside of planet Earth, with lots of those who feel coerced under "liberal" regimes here on Earth. If a true Faster Than Light (FTL) drive comes around, with (relatively cheap) passage to the stars in less time than several decades, I am sure that the dispersal of peoples who believe differently will be massive. While Vermeule decries the "segregation" of different believers, the fact of the matter is that self segregation is a fact of life if the opportunity presents itself, and conditions where there are no such opportunities are merely conditionals to normal human behavior, not some bedrock, foundational principle of human rightness.
I am perfectly fine with integralism being tried in some integralist colony somewhere.
ReplyDeleteWhy not?
In fact it seems to be a natural human impulse to want to try it.
Cromwell's England, and maybe continuing in some respects until Catholic enfranchisement or relief in 1839, for example. Or Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony until the American Revolution and even later.
And I would guess that Francoism might have had some elements of integralism in a very loose sense in it. And during that time a great many people liked visiting, though not all would have wanted to live there.
I guess it kind of depends on whether you are attuned to the past Spain of quiet Sunday mornings and religious processions, or nude beaches full of ugly flesh bags wanking each other in public. Spain, has had both.
Point of clarification: is Vallier's argument that integrism logically requires/necessitates violence, or that integralism merely provides insufficient guardrails against violence in service of integralist policy preferences?
ReplyDeleteBecause those are not actually the same argument, the latter is much more defensible than the former, and what many non-integralist commenters here seem to be arguing. If that's what Vallier is arguing, then it's not sufficient to respond by arguing against the former.
Norm,
ReplyDelete"I also think there's a good case to make for Integralism being an ideal atleast in principal"
No, there is no such case.
Catholic "integralism" is just a whitewashed word for Catholic fascism.
It is a putrid principle that a particular religion would be preferred by the state, and that laws would be passed to benefit and suit the practitioners of that particular religion, while practitioners of other religions or no religion would be treated in a lesser manner or even punished under the law.
There is no good case to be made for enacting or even aspiring to such a grotesque principle.
What does natural law theory has to say about taxation?
ReplyDeleteThe usual natural law position is that
Delete(a) men are social by nature;
(b) to be in society requires rules and authorities to set rules, so government is natural;
(c) in order to operate, a government must have resources; so commandeering resources by taxes is natural.
There are no definitive methods of taxation that are clearly the right methods. However, there are theories (usually not by natural law proponents) who argue that governments, if they must exist, should operate on voluntary donations. (Typically this is trotted out by anarchists or extreme libertarians.)
@Tony
DeleteIn particular, I am talking about income tax. What is the natural law position on income tax? Sales and property tax do not generate the same type of controversy among natural law teachers.
I am not aware that among natural law proponents, income taxes are particularly disputed. I am aware that libertarians dispute them, and some few others.
DeleteI am also not aware of a good natural law argument against income taxes (or the closely associated value added tax). Nor the less closely associated taxes of tariffs / import excises. I am aware of a (natural law) argument against property taxes, but I think it has only modest weight, and I think it can be countered.
The underlying reality is that a government can only tax wealth, it cannot tax un-wealth. It can tax wealth either in the getting of it, in the having of it, or in the act of getting rid of it, of which income, property, and sales taxes are prime examples. It is not manifest that taxing any one of these violates natural law.
DNW
ReplyDeleteThere is a choice between Franco's 1930s military dictatorship of Spain and the nude beaches and decadence of present day Spain. It's Gov. Ron Desantis' "Free State of Florida," where Haulover Beach, considered one of the world's best nude beaches, is located. It's near Miami Beach, which is more decadent now than ever.
Anonymous
DeleteDecember 17, 2023 at 2:56 PM
DNW
There is a choice between Franco's 1930s military dictatorship of Spain and the nude beaches and decadence of present day Spain. It's Gov. Ron Desantis' "Free State of Florida," where Haulover Beach, considered one of the world's best nude beaches, is located. It's near Miami Beach, which is more decadent now than ever."
Franco's dictatorship began over all of Spain in 1939 after 3 years of civil war.
The period during which vacationers sampling a Falangist Spain might have visited would have been post 1947 prior to 1975 for the most part.
You can look up Francoism on Wikipedia if you like.
Personally I don't think that an integralist type of program has a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding in a pluralistic multicultural sociopolitical environment. Probably no libertarian republic can survive given such premises either.
But, given a clean slate start, with a like-minded population, in a new place, I'd give a voluntary integralist one about the same lifespan as Massachussetts Bay Colony and the Puritans of the Great Migration acheived before finally degenerating into Unitarianism and Transcendentalist BS.
Maybe as much as a century and a half. Then people would grow tired of it and immigrants or "refugees" and internally generated mutants would become a constant disruption and "change agents".
And that is not to even mention the undermining effect which opportunist niche seekers would have on the integrity of the system long before that.
There is always a weak male willing to say and do anything to avoid honest work and find a place in a bureaucracy.
Look at the prelature of the Catholic Church, which has become a literal roost for sexual degenerates despite doctrine, tradition, and the life efforts of untold thousands of good men.
But once the sh1t worms its way in, they use the rules of the system, and the respect the naive and idealistic possess, against them in order to keep power.
It seems you either expel and then let the morally perverse and self effed up die in a ditch of their own digging, or you become their slave eventually. Or their keepers, which is almost as suffocating.
Doesn't seem to be much else in the way of selection ... when dealing with the "morally frail" and obnoxious.
WCB
ReplyDeleteIt has long been an article of faith among evangelicals and fundamentalists that by abandoning solo scriptura, the RCC long ago ceased to be a true Christian religion. So any real integralism in America will eventually meet stiff resistence.
WCB
This would also entail that all other views that fall short of this, including the views of Protestants can only be tolerated not encouraged or promoted, atleast not by the state.
ReplyDeleteNorm, the philosophical and natural law underpinnings of integralism do not depend specifically on Catholic doctrines to operate (well) upon society. Take a society that is pre-Christ, more pagan that anything else, but there is some pluralism in social mores, a bit of live-and-let-live, but it sways back and forth with the king. Suppose a new king comes in, and he is monotheist. Suppose that he is a monotheist who philosophically came to grasp the (many) arguments for the existence of a single transcendent God, and he realizes this has implications for human life. And suppose he hears about the monotheistic religion of Judaism, and seeking to understand it, he comes to believe the Jews are indeed blessed by the one true God, and converts.
It is not only possible, but right and proper for him, as king, to gradually, slowly, move the government and his society toward monotheism, and Judaism in particular, using both laws and other humane methods to try to convert other people. He can cause the Scriptures to be translated and disseminated widely. He can bring in famous Jews and introduce them into the best society, and noticeably give them praise for their wise laws and customs. He can start introducing some of their customs as voluntary things (like their washing rules, or avoiding pork). He can found an academy to promote the philosophical works of Aristotle and other famous monotheistic philosophers.
Suppose that he makes a lot of headway in terms of converting some to monotheism, and makes it generally accepted. And his son, the next king, continues in the same vein. And natural law philosophy comes to dominate academia in general. At some point, at least arguably, his son can legitimately start making laws proscribing certain religious practices of other religions that are clearly contrary to the natural law, when those practices are well on their way out as no longer being much accepted (socially) anymore.
The thrust of Dignitatis Humanae includes the fact that governments not only may, but MUST make judgments about morals, and rely on natural law, and sometimes these judgments will run straight into someone's religious practices or feelings, suttee, for example: when this happens, the government is not forbidden to act to stop some religious practice that is damaging public welfare, merely because "it's a religious practice". Speaking generally, Jews, Catholics and Protestants have natural law in common, and governments can and should broadly uphold the natural law, and all three would commonly get along quite well under the kind of soft integralist kings described above.
My point is that natural law, in addition to prescribing certain positive goals, also prescribes prudence in seeking those goals, and prudence in statecraft prescribes that laws and customs should be changed slowly and with caution, using also other means besides punishment to push mores toward the ideal. Integralism doesn't demand flouting those prescriptions.
The debate on integralism concerns the real world, one that has received revelation and is called to acknowledge the Church. Imaginary worlds of natural religion worshiping the true God without revelation are unknown. If we escape from realism and go back to the world BC, and your monarch decides to follow the example of the Hebrews, the first thing he will give up is any religion that does not accept the revelation of OT prophets.
DeleteAs for integralism joining religions that cannot agree on what God has revealed, or recognise his Church. That is even more fanciful.A contradiction in terms.
The discussion on integralism hasn't got much to do with non-Catholic societies applying natural law or not. It's about civil society recognising another society, the Church, as God's religion. Nor is religious establishment integralism per se. The establishment of religion in eighteenth-century England, or pagan Rome, for example, was based on there being no fundamental distinction between civil and religious society. They were one thing - not two allied things.
DeleteThe debate on integralism concerns the real world, one that has received revelation and is called to acknowledge the Church. Imaginary worlds of natural religion
Delete@ Anonymous
I focused on the real world of the divine religion revealed in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets. The one wherein God founded an integralist government (actually, 2 different ones, under Judges and then Kings). I proposed a non-descendant of Abraham accepting the one true religion that God revealed, (something that did in fact happen), long before Christ founded the Church. The religion of Abraham was the same true religion as the religion of Peter and Paul.
Imaginary worlds of natural religion worshiping the true God
I didn't suggest a natural religion, I proposed the king joining the one true religion. But he was drawn to it by factors that included natural philosophy - and I have known Catholic converts who were drawn to it because of natural philosophy (in part, as one of the arrows in God's quiver).
the first thing he will give up is any religion that does not accept the revelation of OT prophets.
And that's exactly what I was indicating. You insist on manufacturing straw men to knock down.
One might say, why not propose some kind of "natural-law" Integralism.
DeleteNorm, I was trying to show that you could have an integralism in favor of the true religion before the Church was even formed. Indeed, maybe I should have just pointed to Israel during the governments of the Judges and then Kings, founded by God.
A government based on natural law won't, by that mere fact, be an integralist one, but a Catholic government that is an integralist one better be one guided by natural law, for otherwise it will be a bad government.
I guess the fundamental point is that while a civil government is not organized so that its primary function is to direct us to our supernatural end, every civil government has to govern people who will have some understanding (good or poor) of their final end, and that civil government can be either
(1) be utterly ignorant of what its own people view as their final end; or
(2) recognize what its people view as their final end, and not care;
(3) recognize what its people view as their final end, and take that into account in how it governs.
Only one of those is likely to be at all decent as a government, the third. A government that respects natural law, in a society where people generally know that their final end is to know and love God in heaven, ALSO knows that the common good under the care of the civil government is not only not contrary to pursuing that as the final end, that common good is closely integrated with its people's of pursuit of their supernatural end, and good civil government (e.g. toward the moral virtues) is right and proper ordering toward the supernatural end - and not by any accident. So the proper civil order direction by the civil government, though not religious in nature, is compatible with the true religion of its people, and lends itself to cooperation to the true religion in matters of civil organization. It will do so not because it is directing men toward their supernatural end, as such, but in order to not interfere with the Church's institutions and directions for them toward their final end, and to rightly pursue the temporal good which itself aligns closely with a society properly pursuing their eternal end.
The other point I was making also comes from the natural law, which St. Thomas teaches, but he borrows it from St. Isidore, after he shows that all human law is founded on the natural law:
Delete"Law shall be virtuous, just, possible to nature, according to the custom of the country, suitable to place and time, necessary, useful; clearly expressed, lest by its obscurity it lead to misunderstanding; framed for no private benefit, but for the common good."
From the "possible to nature" and "according to the custom of the country" St. Thomas draws certain constraints on law. For example, law must not enjoin all acts of perfect virtue (even the natural virtues), because fallen men are not capable of that. For another, normally laws should not contradict long-standing custom, for custom is itself like law, and a people cannot easily reverse itself in its mores. For such reasons, one cannot propose a (good) Catholic governor of a pluralistic society (like we have in the US) that he would start overriding long-standing laws and customs permitting Protestant and Jewish practices merely because they are not in accordance with the truths of the Catholic Church. Yes, it would be better if the Protestants gave up those defective practices. But in terms of the long term good, it is still better that he employ means other than penal laws to bring that about, precisely because of what St. Thomas teaches.
But what is possible to such a ruler is not identical to what is reasonably available to a ruler of a country that is and has been Catholic for hundreds of years. Because (as St. Thomas says) all human law is founded on the natural law, when a Catholic country recognizes the Church in law, it does so according to natural law AS WELL AS its rulers acting on their recognition of the divine claims of the Church. One element of that conjoined action is the state's right act to worship God collectively as well as as individuals, for it belongs to each being to honor God properly according to the mode of its nature, and the state is a created being - and this duty is known from natural theology as well as from divine revelation, as St. Paul indicates.
As a result of these points, a Protestant or Catholic would be far more comfortable in the pre-Christian Jewish integralist but historically pluralistic society I proposed than in oppressive Rome or Athens, and a Protestant or Jew would be far less comfortable in a (sound) moderate integralist Catholic society that has been Catholic for 500 years than in France of today, but this simply does not say anything for against integralism as such. It shouldn't be taken to be saying anything against integralism as such, not any integralism that honors natural law at least.
Catholic fascism is a contradiction. Fascism is literally idolatry of the state. The two are mutually exclusive.
ReplyDeleteIt"s a bit late to make this recommendation, and probably unnecessary since I am sure everyone else did it automatically.
ReplyDeleteBut reading through all of the embedded links is highly advisable, especially for the one or two others who might previously have had no clear idea of exactly what those who are actively currently using the term "integralism" meant by it in substantive terms; nor of the immediate environment which integralists see everyone as facing: i.e., the active degeneration and inescapably degenerative human effects of hedonic utilitarian liberalism itself.
Take the 4th link ...
Though all here are familiar with the transmutation of liberalism from a classical doctrine primarily concerned with the preservation of "negative" liberty, into a restless redistributive monster perpetually at war with the status quo and the past, it is still worth reading in its entirety.
What use for example, would the Benedict Option present within an in-principle unbounded system of progressivist molestation having a baked-in desire to ferret out all non-compliance emerging from its very DNA?
That, is the context in which some of the present integralist theorizing and gaming strategy arises.
Now, Roman Catholic Integralists might think it is their duty at least abstractly or if the opportunity arises, to concern themselves with the fate of Hell bound progressive molesters. The Progressive Molesters themselves, may like the fictional "Seinfeld" TV series character "Elaine', disbelieve in Hell, yet nonetheless inconsistently imagine that those assuming there is one, should care if they wind up there.
But the problem with the molesters of the progressivist CHEKA, is more immediate than that.
" Late-stage liberalism, which calls itself “progressive,” embodies a distinctive secularized soteriology and eschatology. Progressive liberalism has its own cruel sacraments—especially the shaming and, where possible, legal punishment of the intolerant or illiberal—and its own liturgy, the Festival of Reason, the ever-repeated overcoming of the darkness of reaction. Because the celebration of the festival essentially requires, as part of its liturgical script, a reactionary enemy to be overcome, liberalism ceaselessly and restlessly searches out new villains to play their assigned part. Thus the boundaries of progressive demands for conformity are structurally unstable, fluid, and ever shifting, not merely contingently so—there can be no lasting peace. Yesterday the frontier was divorce, contraception, and abortion; then it became same-sex marriage; today it is transgenderism; tomorrow it may be polygamy, consensual adult .... "
And because the major premise of modern liberalism is that "liberty" must be redefined to include the collective provision of opportunities for the subjective self-realization of the emergent satisfactions desired by its clients, then, in the words of Obama your, Mere tolerance ... is not enough.
You must embrace, you must affirm ...
Thus they don't give the man who largely just wishes to be left alone much selection when it comes to dealing with the perverts demanding not just his indifferent tolerance, but his sacrificial underwriting of their performance, his participation as part of the audience, and finally even his applause no matter how insincere.
Because, tolerance is not enough, and because commitment to a shared fate, and because feelinz (theirs, not yours). Or some sh#t like that.
Progressives ought to be grateful that it is meek integralists with a preservation impulse they are potentially dealing with ideologically, and not some proposed anarcho-libertarian movement proclaiming that the normal people should just stand back and watch the progressives accidentally burn it all the hell down including the progressives themselves. And then, start over in the ashes.
Integralists, appear to be much more Christian than that.
Under Ed's account of Vermeule's thought, he turns out to not to be much of an integralist, after all, but a kind of faint-hearted integralist, one seems to hold a view not too dissimilar than the original American understanding of the relationship between religion and government that was dominant in our culture up until the middle of the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteUnder Vermeule's neo-liberal integralism (my label), the Church will never, ever, ever, ever in-principle have the option to ask the state to imprison heretics, kidnap baptized Jewish children, and politically disenfranchise non-Catholics, all of which happened when integralism was in vogue. But, we are assured, that there is nothing in the logic of this neo-liberal integralism that would re-open the door to such practices.
On the other hand, liberalism, according to Ed, has a kind of logic, one that commits its advocates to this endgame: "Liberal intolerance represents not the self-undermining of liberalism, but a fulfillment of its essential nature." But if your conventional liberal were to say in reply, "I don't believe and have never defended such a thing,," I suspect that it wouldn't matter to Ed, since liberalism has its own "essential nature."
Why can't Vallier do the same thing and appeal to what he thinks is integralism's "essential nature" and tease out the implications of it given Vermeule's project, regards of what Vermeule may or may not claim to support or defend?
I think he can claim that, and most likely he was doing just that in an implicit way. The trouble is that you can't do that honestly and fairly without demonstrating that these flow through from the "essential nature" of integralism, you can't just assert it.
DeleteYou also must try to state in clear terms that "essential nature" that you are basing your argument on, and in doing so you run the risk of stating it in a way that nobody else actually agrees is the essential nature of integralism. Certainly there are plenty of competing (and opposing) theses as to the essential nature of liberalism.
Just for fun, I would note that the 19th century (lone) example of the Church kidnapping a Jewish baptized child was singular, happened under Pius IX, and probably would not have been condoned under any later pope who explicitly commends subsidiarity as a critical social principle. (I.E. I think Pius made a real mistake, there, on Catholic terms.)