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And, for that matter, Animis Opibusque Parati. Fascinating emails (davidaslindsay@hotmail.com – keep them coming) from people saying, either that they have been thinking these things for while, or that it had never occurred to them to become Democrats but it certainly has now, or in a few cases that they had already done so for the reasons that I set out. Well, what can I say? Sometimes the spectator sees more of the game. And a party is strictly a machine, a device, a means to ends. It can never be an end in itself. What ends does the Republican Party now serve? Certainly not yours.
Bob Conley had had quite enough of the Republican Party’s completely closed attitude to conservative views on trade, immigration, war, and actually doing anything about abortion or in defense of marriage. So that Ron Paul activist and traditional Catholic (which latter presumably inoculates him against the more virulent strains of Paul’s libertarianism) changed his registration. He became a Democrat. Classy.
But then he went, not one, but two better. He entered the Democratic Senatorial primary. And, against a liberal Democrat from central casting, he won it. Narrowly. But he still won it. Okay, so he did not win the general election, at his first attempt and against a very well-known incumbent. But he managed a creditable showing under the circumstances. Not least the circumstance of the wider movement’s failure to get behind a Ron Paul-supporting, traditional Catholic Democrat as it would have gotten behind a Ron Paul-supporting, traditional Catholic Republican. Remind me, which Ron Paul-supporting, traditional Catholic Republican was running for the United States Senate last year, or indeed any year? Including next year.
On the matter of winning the Democratic primary, just how black is the Democratic Party in South Carolina? You may know better, but I am betting that it is very, very black indeed. And you may know better, but I am betting that those politicized preachers did plenty of work at the grassroots to secure the nomination of a man who shared their own and their congregants’ views on protecting blue-collar jobs, on immigration, on English as America’s national language, on war, on abortion, and on the nature of marriage. Is there any state in which no such alliance could be forged? Are there not many in which it could be decisive?
Not that that is the only such possible, and therefore morally and politically obligatory, alliance. For example, there are also the labor unions overtly on job protection, with plenty of their members broadly or entirely sound on the other issues, too. And there are others besides.
Do you, or do you not, ever want to get anything done on trade, immigration, the status of English, corporate power, corporate welfare, big lobbyists, the constitutional rights violated by the Bush Administration, helping those on low and middle incomes, reducing abortion, defending traditional marriage, a realistic foreign policy, and a strong defense capability used strictly for its properly defensive purpose? Who could disagree with you on those issues? The Republicans, that’s who. Only on abortion and on marriage do they even so much as make the right noises. And noises are all that they are. Yes, you would have to put up with some things that you did not want but your allies (the preachers, the unions, whoever) did. And yes, you would have to do without some things that you wanted but they did not. To be in that position would indicate your acceptance as part of the coalition, as part of the family. As things stand, you are forced to accept everything that you do not want and to forego everything that you do. You are part of no coalition. You are part of no family. You are cast out. It is very high time to come in from the cold. Come into the party in which anyone agrees with you, if not about everything, then at least about anything. Come into, come home to, the party of Bob Conley. The Democratic Party. Why not?
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I remain skeptical that some sort of great alliance between blacks and white paleoconservatives is possible. Although many of the black churches preach against homosexuality and abortion, I do not think most African Americans are secret paleocons only pretending to be standard leftists, and would become Buchanites if only we joined their party. We should not forget the importance of policies like Affirmative Action to blacks, and the degree to which most (probably all) paleocons dislike such policies. Affirmative Action alone may make such a political alliance impossible.
Right now both Peter Schiff and Rand Paul have decent chances of becoming Republican Senators. It’s an uphill fight, but they have a much better chance in the Republican primaries than in the Democratic primaries. But then, I suppose they also espouse the more “virulent strains” of libertarianism, though I’m not sure what you mean by that.
Bob Conley, if only the rich would fund him, like they did Lindsey.
Fat chance.
The only thing I agree with the Democrats on is the war. Oh wait – they’re not even against that any more. I almost forgot.
Jeremiah, quite. For that mattter, if only all the Ron Paul supporters, traditional Catholics, and others had gotten out of the South Carolina Republican Party and instead given him, first a thumping rather than a narrow primary victory, and then probably a narrow win, but a win all the same, in the general election. Instead, at least in the latter case, we all know for whom they voted. And he won.
Gerorge, “I do not think most African Americans are secret paleocons only pretending to be standard leftists, and would become Buchanites”? Whoever said they would? But no one in the Republican Party has become a Buchananite, either. Many African-Americans are at least broadly against abortion. Most believe in traditional marriage. Most share paleocon concerns about job protection, immigration, English, and war. The same or similar things can be said about other existing parts of the Democratic coalition. And no one does sheer organization like the black churches, the labor unions, and other key Democratic organs.
As for affirmative action, the Republicans are the party with a politically unremarkable black Chairman (less pro-life than his Southern white counterpart over at the DNC), plus a politically unremarkable woman and a politically unremarkable Asian as serious Presidential contenders.
No one can fault paleocons on race or sex. Buchanan’s running mate in 2000 was a black woman. A politically remarkable black woman.
George – Paul and Schiff need to distance themselves from the former’s father on things like drugs. They may or may not gain the nominations that they seek, whereas Conley has already won a Democratic primary.
And even if nominated and elected, they would be fringe figures, whereas Conley and other such Democrats would be reaching out to many other Democrats who shared their views on one or more of trade, immigration, the status of English, corporate power, corporate welfare, big lobbyists, the constitutional rights violated by the Bush Administration, helping those on low and middle incomes, actually doing anything to reduce abortion, actually doing anything to defend traditional marriage, a realistic foreign policy, and a strong defense capability used strictly for its properly defensive purpose.
What crazy freaking Republican is going to join a party that has been hijacked by the hard left? We have a president who was a student and professor of Alinkskyism, and you expect sane people to defect from the traditional party of liberty to a communist front group?
There’s no helping some people, William…
Enjoy President Huckabee saying that there are no Palestinians. Or President Palin saying, at best, mercifully little at all. Except, of course, that they could be nominated. But they couldn’t possibly win the election.
Frankly, William, you deserve whatever you get on trade, immigration, the status of English, corporate power, corporate welfare, big lobbyists, the constitutional rights violated by the Bush Administration, helping those on low and middle incomes, reducing abortion, defending traditional marriage, a realistic foreign policy, and a strong defense capability used strictly for its properly defensive purpose. But that doesn’t mean that everybody does. People who feel that they deserve better know what to do.
Oh spare me the sanctimonious melancholy!
I am confident that the Republican party will go conservative – that is to say, Reagan Conservative – and win the next election. That I, and my fellow non-deluded conservatives, do not see a future in a, yes, communist front group, should not trouble you. You’re overseas, in a nation that long ago gave up any hope of true liberty for its people. You’d be better off returning to a limited monarchy over your over-preening parliament, hijacked as it is by old school, LSE socialists and immigration pandering, politically correct pusillanimous ministers.
I’m trying to save my country the same tragedy history has bore witness to overseas in Britain. I will not apologize for being optimistic for my own countryman’s ability to dispel an ever-encroaching tyranny.
“Reagan Conservative”
Well, I think that pretty much sums it up.
From a recent edition of this very organ – http://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/may/04/00006/
Reagan was the man who brought the Trots (neocons) into the GOP, straight in at the top.
And as for a conservative GOP winning the next election, just how many GOP members of Congress, to say nothing of anyone else, are you really hoping to remove in one go?
The Trots? What do you mean by the Trots?
The Trotskyists. They loved Reagan for being so anti-Soviet, rhetorically at least. Their previous hero, Scoop Jackson, was by then never going to be President. So over they came. I think all TAC readers know what happened next, and not least what has now happened to the GOP as such.
Why don’t you return the compliment? At least your position is capable of forming part of a wider Democratic coalition. Their position had, and has, nothing to do with either party. But that hasn’t stopped them from taking over and destroying the GOP.
And you still have somewhere else to go. Over here, they have taken over both parties: New Labour is entirely a project of unrepentant campus Communists and Trots from back in the day, and David Cameron is planning a top job for Geoff Mulgan, the old Trot founding Director of New Labour’s favorite think tank, Demos, one of several continuity organizations created in the early Nineties out of the rubble of the Communist Party.
If Obama is a Marxist, then I honestly cannot imagine what that made every Tory Leader since they nationalized electricity in the Twenties. Look at his supporters, pointedly rather than Clinton’s. Is Bob Casey a Marxist? Is Ben Nelson? Is Jim Webb? Is Chuck Hagel? Is Dick Lugar? Is Christopher Buckley?
Are you qualified to comment on anything besides fish ‘n chips?
Who the hell are the Trotskyists (neocons)? Are they anti-Soviets?
Are you implying Reagan was not actively against communism? Are you further implying that the “trots” took over the party of the rhetorically anti-Soviet Reagan, only to make it communist themselves? Or is it that they were duped by the Gipper, and found themselves in a party with communist sympathies, and now should go to Obama’s Democrat party?
Whichever formulation you are attempting, it makes no sense. I am for actively shrinking the size and scope of the federal government. I am against communism and socialism. That you’ve long ago made your peace with them has little bearing on me, or much of the American electorate.
You’re a protectionist, big government statist, enamored by the modern British state and its NHS.
Just admit it and spare your 4 readers the time.
“Who the hell are the Trotskyists (neocons)?”
Have you ever read The American Conservative? Or Taki’s Magazine? Or anything by Pat Buchanan? Those would be good places to start.
Some people are past help. Still, enjoy voting for Sarah Palin, or Sean Hannity, or Bill O’Reilly, or Glenn Beck. Mercifully, none of them is going to win.
Sounds like a giant conspiracy theory. Or a Big Lie, perhaps?
Oh, and just a little something on the NHS (certainly not perfect), since you bring it up.
I’ll leave aside the stock Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck nonsense about death panels, about not being able to choose your doctor, and about not treating the old (a particularly hilarious one for anyone who has ever seen the NHS in action). I’ll leave aside the fact that anyone in Britain is perfectly free to take out private health insurance, but that far fewer people do so than could easily afford it. I’ll even leave aside the fact that euthanasia and assisted suicide are still illegal here and in most European countries, that abortion was not legalised until the NHS was already a generation old, and that standard West European abortion laws are vastly less liberal than those in the US.
No, it is the fact that the NHS consumes the same percentage of GDP as Medicare and Medicaid do. So you already have a system of socialized medicine the same size as ours. It’s just that yours doesn’t cover everyone. Your overall healthcare costs are therefore, as a percentage of GDP, double ours. How inefficient is that? How fiscally irresponsible? How very, very, very unconservative?
I realize that some people on here would probably like to abolish Medicare and Medicaid. But they really and truly must have an electoral death wish, and thus a most profound desire never to get anything remotely conservative done in practise.
On the “waiting in line” line, I’d have died last year if it applied in emergencies. It doesn’t. And anyway, as I might well write up into a whole post sometime, Europeans (or West Europeans, anyway) have retained, though we are sadly doing so less and less, something that Americans have very largely lost: the understanding that waiting your turn is an integral part of being a good neighbor, a good citizen.
William, it’s a fact. They themselves don’t deny it!
Do you read this magazine? You really should.
Apologia for government control. You’re an European conservative, a throwback to aristocratic and monarchist rule; not an American conservative. It’s laughable how you disregard the history of your own country to justify the importation of Bismarkian, German social policy. Actually, it’s quite sad that for centuries your ancestors fought to be free from government coercion, consummating in the American Revolution and European Liberalism, and you’re now a dissembler for the new crown: a giant, amorphous bureaucratic democracy. Britain, meanwhile, has lost nearly all its influence in the world and is unable to control its own immigration. I don’t want this for my country. I prefer self-reliance, independence, and self-sufficiency. Waiting in line is not “neighborly” when you could more easily expand the supply of doctors and hospitals and half shorter lines. You just don’t get it, do you? No, you wouldn’t, because you don’t understand Smith, Ricardo, Hayek, Bastiat, Jefferson, or Madison. This is why you’re stuck on your socialization of the means of production; and, coincidentally, why you sympathize with the Democrat party of today.
I prefer reading historical tracts and the political/economic theory over conspiracy theories of a “Trotskyist” takeover of the GOP. Keep writing to your 4 readers, and the regular American people will save their own country.
William P., As you can see from my comments, I have little time David’s curious ideas regarding our politics. But what he means by “Trots” are the Neoconservatives. You know, Krouthammer, Brooks, Kristol and that whole gang that took over the Conservative movement and launched us into a war of choice in Iraq. They were influenced by Trotsky, Leo Strauss and others who are deeply alien to our culture and faith.
So it comes down to Iraq, then.
I don’t know where your bizarre history of Britain, Europe and America comes from, and it is probably better not to ask. It is perfectly true that the Jacobins appealed to the Cromwellian precedent for the regicide, but that is hardly happy stuff on any level. Is it?
But yes, it is also perfectly true that a planned economy started with a French Catholic ultraconservative (Colbert – not the one on The Colbert Report) and a sort of Welfare State, although very heavily influenced by Catholic Social Teaching (itself influenced by Colbert) and indeed designed to shore up Catholic loyalty, began with a German Protestant ultraconservative (Bismarck). Then there is Distributism to add in, of course. Quite a mix.
A conservative mix, its ingredients produced by people who correctly predicted exactly where the alternative would lead. The parts not native to the English-speaking world entered it especially through two English Liberals (Keynes and Beveridge) and an American liberal (FDR); Belloc was also a Liberal MP for a time.
They were then taken up (although Distributism nowhere near enough) by the Labour Party under Attlee, whose Deputy, Herbert Morrison, famously defined Socialism as “whatever the Labour Party says it is at any given time”. Mostly, this meant ideas originating with Colbert, Bismarck, Pope Leo XIII, Chesterton, Belloc, and the corresponding traditions passed down within English and Welsh Methodism, and within English, Scottish and Welsh Calvinism. Small wonder, then, that the Liberals were in favor of them from the start and that the Tories very rapidly came round under internal and electoral pressure.
Just as the rural and Western half of the Republican Party had supported the New Deal, and it was not repealed under Eisenhower, that valiantly conservative ender of the Korean War, resister of Zionist monomania, and denouncer of the military-industrial complex.
So tell me, which of the following was a Communist: Colbert, Bismarck, Pope Leo XIII (and all his successors down to the present day), Chesterton, Belloc, Keynes, Beveridge, the Methodists, the Calvinists, Attlee (who took Britain into NATO, and who ruthlessly purged his own party of Soviet sympathizers), Morrison (and obsessive seeker after aspirational suburban votes), FDR, the rural and Western half of the Republican Party in the Inter-War Years, and Eisenhower? In that case, who the hell is NOT a Communist?
And which of these people, at least, was not a conservative: Colbert, Bismarck, Pope Leo XIII (and all his successors down to the present day), Chesterton, Belloc, the Methodists, the Calvinists, the rural and Western half of the Republican Party in the Inter-War Years, and Eisenhower? In that case, who the hell IS a conservative? (You’re going to say George Bush, aren’t you?)
If you don’t know about the Trotskyist roots of neoconservatism, then you really don’t know anything at all. Nor can you be a regular reader of paleocon literature, including this magazine. Look up the people listed as signatories to the PNAC, just for a start.
Your beloved Reagan, like Thatcher, was anything but an enemy of welfare dependecy. On the contrary, like her, he created vastly more welfare dependents than there had ever been before, by abandoning the Keynesian emphasis on full employment. The destruction of good jobs for working-class men destroyed the economic base of paternal authority, initially in those families and communities, but then rapidly throughout society as a whole. How conservative was that? Among numerous other examples. Still, Reagan did begin nuclear arms reduction, the only conservative thing that he ever did, and firmly in the tradition of the GOP from World War One, through World War Two, Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford.
Funnily enough, you have not said anything about how, and with whom, you would actively pursue job protection, immigration control, making English the official langauge, rolling back corporate power and corporate welfare, breaking big lobbyists, restoring the constitutional rights violated by the Bush Administration, helping those on low and middle incomes, reducing abortion, defending traditional marriage, forming and implenting a realistic foreign policy, and rebuilding and maintaining a strong defense capability used strictly for its properly defensive purpose. Why not?
And as for monarchy (I don’t know why you think that America has no aristocracy – next you’ll be telling me that you have no class system, at all, never mind as if that were a good thing), it can, at its best, embody the principle of sheer good fortune, known to some of us as Divine Providence, with its conferral on the more fortunate of responsibilities towards the less fortunate. A conferral understood by Colbert, Bismarck, Pope Leo XIII (and all his successors down to the present day), Chesterton, Belloc, the Methodists, the Calvinists, the rural and Western half of the Republican Party in the Inter-War Years, and Eisenhower.
The other main case for the British monarchy is that it is a unifying force among 16 sovereign states and various other Territories, each of which retains the link entirely voluntarily, each of which uses English at least to some extent, each of which has a more-or-less functining parliamentary system, and each of which is at least generically Christian (in the West Indies and the Pacific, devoutly so).
But that is peculiar to us. One of the things that I keep planning to write is about how, since 1776 came before 1789, the American Republic is not a product of of the Revolution, and American republicanism can therefore be read in terms of pre-Revolutionary Catholic and Protestant republican thought in Venice, Switzerland, the Netherlands, &c. I can’t see William P caring for it, though.
Thank you, Thomas.
“So it comes down to Iraq, then.”
What doesn’t?
“Funnily enough, you have not said anything about how, and with whom, you would actively pursue job protection, immigration control, making English the official langauge, rolling back corporate power and corporate welfare, breaking big lobbyists, restoring the constitutional rights violated by the Bush Administration, helping those on low and middle incomes, reducing abortion, defending traditional marriage, forming and implenting a realistic foreign policy, and rebuilding and maintaining a strong defense capability used strictly for its properly defensive purpose. Why not?”
Because I have a day job, and it is not writing white papers for the RNC.
I don’t go around labeling people communists who do not merit such a dubious title. I called Barack Obama a communist, and his mentor, Alinksy, a communist, because he was. Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s childhood teacher, was head of the Party in Hawaii. Obama himself talks about Marxist professors he used to hang with. Would you compare any of these to Belloc et al.? I wouldn’t. But nonetheless, as an economic non-interventionist (for the most part) I oppose social experimentation from all sides. If you were learned in economics, you may feel compelled to agree, however begrudgingly. Since this is very clearly not the case, just admit your ignorance and, until you educate yourself, defer to me.
American did not and does not have a class system, in the sense of the Old World. We have no system of peerage; no history of royalty. This is admirable, though in danger due to excessive and ever-creeping government control. Big government creates a bureaucratic class and a proletariat class. Don’t respond with a list of the wealthy – I’ve read more than enough F. Scott Fitzgerald to get the whole “the rich are different” spiel.
FDR and Keynes are certainly suspect in their own respective rights. Keynes’ General Theory was an unoriginal and destructive: not only to academic economics, but to civilization. It was the government apologist’s wet dream: an alleged inherent need for government to fix capitalism every so often. I am qualified to comment on these matter, again, because I understand political economy. He turned classical economics on its head, telling people what was formerly black was now white. I do not believe he should be considered an eminent economist.
FDR was a political animal who understood little economic theory. He imported Fascism, compounding Hoover’s errors, and deepened Hoover’s recession into what we call the Great Depression. No, he wasn’t a Communist. But he did share the communist/Marxist contempt for private enterprise. He was also apparently addicted to power, having been elected 4 times in a row. In short, FDR fundamentally altered the relationship between citizen and federal government, something akin to citizen to client.
Meh, you know what, you can educate yourself. Until you do, stop embarrassing yourself with foolishness like supporting the Democrats. I, for one, gain little from this intercourse.
Ugh, I can’t let this one go:
“And as for monarchy (I don’t know why you think that America has no aristocracy – next you’ll be telling me that you have no class system, at all, never mind as if that were a good thing), it can, at its best, embody the principle of sheer good fortune, known to some of us as Divine Providence, with its conferral on the more fortunate of responsibilities towards the less fortunate.”
Then you must like the czars of Obama. You are not only unauthentic, but antithetical to American Conservatism.
“Obama himself talks about Marxist professors he used to hang with”
Well, he could hardly have gone to college or graduate school and never met any. And still nothing from you on the Trotskyists who took over the GOP because people like you either were not paying attention or could not find anything specific with which to disagree.
“American did not and does not have a class system”
Where does one even begin? I think that a lot of Americans are sincerely blind to it. But you can’t all be.
“We have no system of peerage; no history of royalty”
Again, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck. No royalty? What are the Bushes? The older ones are even close friends of the Queen, although they are arguably higher-born than she is. Really old noble houses over here, such as Diana’s Spencers, look down on the present Royal Family; still, the Queen Mother came off one, so the Queen is permitted in the presence of dear old George H W.
Walker Bush and Forbes Kerry are equivalent to English double-barrelled surnames, indicating two great houses joined together by marriage. The two candidates in 2004 had at least a dozen common ancestors, mostly members of the English landowning classes.
If anything like Skull and Bones existed over here, there would be riots, whereas Americans just accept it as normal, because you have no aristocrcay, no royalty, no class system. No, of course you don’t…
And so on, and on, and on. Mind you, as over here, a family can break in within a couple of generations: the Kennedys, perhaps the Clintons. But they will never really count. They will always be regarded as the old nobility regards the family now calling itself Windsor, in fact.
“This is admirable”
That depends what you have (or think that you have) instead.
“an alleged inherent need for government to fix capitalism every so often”
Like now, for example.
“I do not believe he should be considered an eminent economist”
Well, you are pretty much on your own there, even among his sharpest critics. Apart from the neocons. Do we really need to go round again about who they really are?
“FDR was a political animal who understood little economic theory”
Reagan? Bush?
“He imported Fascism”
We’ve found the level, have we?
“He was also apparently addicted to power, having been elected 4 times in a row”
They all would be if they could be.
“antithetical to American Conservatism”
Well, Colbert, Bismarck, Pope Leo XIII (and all his successors down to the present day), Chesterton, Belloc, the Methodists, the Calvinists, the rural and Western half of the Republican Party in the Inter-War Years, and Eisenhower all got it from the Bible. Is the Bible “antithetical to American Conservatism”. It is to Marx, Trotsky, Max Shachtman, Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand. But I suspect that you have come to the wrong magazine if you feel that American Conservatism entails preferring them to the Bible.
Congrats, you’ve outed yourself as a nut and an ignoramus.
No bad thing, since someone will have to take over from Glenn Beck.
I would also diagnose you with OCD. You repeat phrases verbatim so often that it makes you clownish. (My apologies if you are mildly autistic.)
You are a psychiatrist in addition to everything else? In that case, I would write “Physician, heal thyself”. But that would be cheap.
No, it’s just that I’ve never heard anyone so desperately fixated on such quack notions and small set of names as you. I take that back – I have, and it came from autism.
What do you have against Glenn Beck? And as for all that crap about the Bushes, the next thing you’re going to do is recommend I start looking up the Illuminati or NWO. There’s a reason why you are so marginalized, you know.
Strange that you would accuse me of being anti-Bible of all things. I did not know that pro-Keynsianism was a requirement for eternal redemption. And you managed to lump Ayn Rand and Marx into the same category, for what reason? That they were both atheists, I presume?
You are way too narrow-minded and centered on relatively modern Catholic thought re: economics. Apropos, see here:
http://mises.org/story/3607
…waits to hear a screed against the Jesuits…
“What do you have against Glenn Beck?”
Well, that one either answers itself or there is no point trying to answer it. More widely, since when was conservatism known for ranting demagoguery? Style and substance are inseperable: ontology, epistemolgy, ethics and aesthetics are ultimately identical, since Being Itself, the True, the Good and the Beautiful are really identical with each other and with the Divine Essence (which is Trinitarian, not Unitarian – think on that). Academic and behavioral standards decline in the midst of hideous decor. Doctrinal orthodoxy and moral standards decline when and where liturgical standards decline. Bad taste is moral evil. Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and O’Reilly are in extremely bad taste.
“And as for all that crap about the Bushes”
What, that they are practically royalty, and are members of Skull and Bones? Which of these do you deny? Which of these do THEY deny?
“Strange that you would accuse me of being anti-Bible of all things”
Well, if you don’t believe that the rich and mighty have been given responsibilities towards the poor and lowly.
“And you managed to lump Ayn Rand and Marx into the same category, for what reason?”
They are both formative influences on neoconservatism. Rand directly. Marx via Lenin, via Trotsky, via Shachtman. As you would know, if you knew anything about it.
“relatively modern Catholic thought re: economics”
It is the Teaching of the Church. And since it was a response to the Industrial Revolution, when was it supposed to have ben written? The principles that it applies, however, are those of the Mediaeval Doctors, the Fathers, and on back to the Bible itself, indeed to Jesus Himself. That is how and why it is the Teaching of the Church. In essence, it always has been.
“a screed against the Jesuits”
Not a bit of it. Just Google Fr Rodger Charles SJ, for a start.
Please note: my comparison to Mr. Lindsay notwithstanding, I have nothing against sufferers of autism.
Forget it. I cannot argue with a dogmatist who apparently does not appreciate the diversity of the Church’s teaching throughout the centuries. It seems you are first a doctrinaire Marxist, then a Christian. Your entire intellectual edifice is muddled and incomprehensible.
Saint Thomas Aquinas had his doubts about whether Our Lady had been conceived without Original Sin (I once heard someone say that he was still in Purgatory for that – but he was a Jesuit novice, he’ll learn). But the Church decided infallibly that She had been, so that was, and is, that.
Likewise, the School of Salamanca (of which I had never previously heard, and I really do know about these things – influential it clearly wasn’t, ever) can have said whatever it liked. Unlike many things to which the name of Vatican II is attached by friend and foe alike, Catholic Social Teaching was affirmed infallibly by that Council, as well as in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the promulgation of which by the Pope in union with the whole Episcopate (to which it had been referred, and in the light of whose comments it had been revised) was an exercise of the Episcopal College’s infallibility.
Roma locuta est, causa finita est.
I don’t know why I continue to torture myself, but perhaps it’s because I enjoy you resorting to Papal decree instead of cause and effect. I see nothing moral about stealing from one by taxation to give to another. It would be called theft if it were done by an ordinary citizen. You can try to dress up your socialism in religious doctrine, but I prefer “Thou shall not steal” to your contorted explanations.
If you look up the chapters under that heading in the Catechism, do you know what you will find?
Catholic Social Teaching lay at the heart of political movements that successfully saw off serious Communist threats in Western Europe and the Old Anglosphere before and after the War.
Where the system that you prefer has been and is being implemented, there have been and are routinely mass membership Communist Parties with real influence, armed Marxist insurrections, and so on. Or rising, if not risen, political Islam. Or both.
Leo XIII was right. Of course.
I can’t argue with an economic dogmatist. Absent in your political recommendation are any suggested policy. It is a necessary omission, of course, because econ 101 would prove you to be sorely misguided. And this is why you’re wrong. Your CST dogmatism and unwillingness to engage in reality makes you boring.
I can think of plenty of policies on on trade, immigration, the status of English, corporate power, corporate welfare, big lobbyists, the constitutional rights violated by the Bush Administration, helping those on low and middle incomes, reducing abortion, defending traditional marriage, a realistic foreign policy, and a strong defense capability used strictly for its properly defensive purpose. All thoroughly paleocon. And all informed by CST. I also have some idea as to how to get them implemented.
What are your ideas on on trade, immigration, the status of English, corporate power, corporate welfare, big lobbyists, the constitutional rights violated by the Bush Administration, helping those on low and middle incomes, reducing abortion, defending traditional marriage, a realistic foreign policy, or a strong defense capability used strictly for its properly defensive purpose? By what are they informed? What is your idea as to how to get them implemented?
So far as I can tell, you do not even agree with these things, yet somehow purport to be a conservative. You cannot even see why anyone would be too bothered about the Iraq War! You are just a spewer of the toxic neoconservative brew of Strauss, Rand and Marx-Lenin-Trotsky-Shachtman, as marketted to the masses by Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly and Beck. Who, apparently like you, have certainly never heard of Strauss, Rand or Shachtman, and probably not of Trotsky, either. They are, and you are, what Lenin called Useful Idiots.
lol you’re funny. It’s also becoming increasingly clear that you’re not too bright. How would anyone go about answering the twelve topics you laid out above short of writing a comprehensive book? Why don’t you just pick one item from your list, lay out your position and reasoning, and I’ll then mine.
I admit I’ve never heard of Schachtman, and am not exactly planning on reading his biography.
If you think I’m a follower of Marx in any way, shape, or form, well…. I’ll let you figure out why you’re so much closer to him than I.
If you are going to classify me as anything besides an American conservative, call me a classical liberal. I don’t know what I’d classify you as, but attention hungry.
“Why don’t you just pick one item from your list”
Why don’t you? I think we know why not.
“I admit I’ve never heard of Schachtman”
Then you don’t know what you are talking about.
“I’ll let you figure out why you’re so much closer to [Marx] than I”
Well, I can’t see it. In true Thatcher-Reagan-neocon fashion, you have merely changed Marxism’s ending so the bourgeoise wins. You even claim to loathe the idea of a bourgeoise (truly bizarrely seeing it as a product of “big government”), despite obviously being a member of it; nothing could be more Marxist than that, all the way back to Marx himself.
And in true Thatcher-Reagan-neocon fashion, you retain the Marxist dialectical materialism, the definition of politics in terms of economics rather than the other way round; the Leninist vanguard elitism, and reliance on religious and other Useful Idiots; the Trotskyist entryism, and belief in the permanent revolution; and the Stalinist belief that the dictatorship of the victorious class (in this case, the bourgeoisie) must be created in one country before being exported throughout the world, including by force of arms, while vanguard elites owe their patriotic allegiance to that country instead of to their own.
I grow increasingly tired of this exchange. Allow me to repeat, so that the full gravity of the statement might penetrate your thick skull:
Your entire intellectual edifice is muddled and incomprehensible.
Attention – this is me calling you a moron, not communist, not a marxist, not a socialist, but a moron.
I reprint this here:
Fortunately, at least after reading this post you can consider yourself semi-literate in the ideas of Marx, and I won’t have to act dually as a debater and an educator.
Marxism is a German synthesis of ideas, combining thought from the disciplines of economics, philosophy, and spurious interpretations of history. The endgame for Marxists is Socialism – the simultaneous consummation of man’s achievement and the end of history. It is held together through a perversion of Hegel’s dialectic: dialectic materialism. What does this concept contend?
1) Society is an outgrowth of the tools employed in production. Therefore it follows that the plow and the cart created feudalism, the factory and the steam engine created capitalism, and the new tools of the future will lead to socialism. The dialectic is the interaction of society and the tools employed.
2) The superstructure of society – itself an outgrowth of the tools employed (what one may call capital goods) – leads to the creation of classes. The class one is born into shapes ones thoughts. It is impossible for one to think outside his class, and in fact communication between classes is impossible because one’s conception of truth is determined by class.
3) There are two classes: the proletariat, and the bourgeoisie; the proletariat is exploited by the bourgeoisie. It always has been and always will be, until the eschaton – socialism. This exploitation grows increasingly more burdensome as society progresses from feudalism to capitalism, until finally the oppression is enough and the proletariat stage a revolution.
4) This revolution will establish socialism – it will socialize the means of production – the capital goods, the tools that determine the class structure. It necessarily entails an abolition of private property and the market system. This is the revolution our president is spearheading.
[I am not going to delve into the fallacies in Marxian economics, but if you are interested I would recommend reading about the labor theory of value (LTV) and the essay "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth" by Ludwig von Mises.]
You say that Marx’s ideas are long-discredited. This is true, of course: they were discredited back in the 1800s. But that does not change the fact that the current president is a Marxist, like his mentor Saul Alinsky. It does not change the fact that the modern environmental movement is run by socialists. It does not change the fact that Keynesian economics – the doctrinal system of our universities -are sympathetic to socialism. It also does not change the fact that even our so-called free market financial press takes many of the Marxian assumptions in its writing.
Socialism is no longer just abstract and discredited; it is historically proved to be a system of slavery. This was predicted by many social theorists, including Tocqueville. In the end, the will of a nation’s citizenry must be directed by a central ego, or a small planning board.
Now, in direct and irreconcilable contrast to Socialism, to Marxism, is the free market system. Anyone who advocates government coercion to guide us sheep back to localism – agrarianism, so say the authors of that piece – is a functional Marxist. It necessary involves restricting our economic freedom (private property rights, that is), and the freedom of enterprise to engage in large scale profitable activity. If you contend that this idea of localism is in no way political, then why bother advocating it? Live your life on a kibbutz, on your own private property – just leave MINE alone.
A final thought, to wrap things up. The future does not belong to those who insist on returning to what they perceive as an uncorrupted past. Socialist authors and totalitarians alike agitate for the return to their own version of their idyllic bygone era. Change is one of the few certainties in life, and we should embrace it prudently. Progress is a good thing assuming we, as moral humans, do not throw out the baby with the bathwater. The authors of that piece and apparently all localists are really closer to advocating the static conditions of socialism than they realize.
This is why they’re neo-Marxists. They accept his terms of the debate. Disagree with me on what you will.
“I grow increasingly tired of this exchange”
Not that I’ve noticed.
“Allow me to repeat”
Try and stop you, I fear.
“Allow me to repeat”
High praise indeed, coming from someone who can see no fault in Reagan or Dubya, cannot see why anyone would have anything against Glenn Beck, and cannot see why anyone would be too bothered about the Iraq war.
The less said about the bad undergraduate summary of Marxism that follows, the better. Likewise, the description of Obama as a Marxist, when in fact this Adminstrtion SUCCEEDED one full of them, and entirely dependent on them intellectually.
Saul Alinsky’s chosen successor was and is a member of Opus Dei. Are they Marxists, too? And anyway, Alinksy is nothing compared to Krauthamer, the Kristols, and that crowd. Yet I doubt if anyone beyond Obama and maybe a couple of others in the present Adminstration ever met Alinksy. Had anyone in the Bush Administration not met, and rather more than met, Krauthamer, the Kristols, and that crowd?
“the modern environmental movement is run by socialists”
If you define “Socialism” as “anything I happen to dislike”, yes. There is a growing left-wing opposition to the re-restriction of travel to the rich, the arresting or retarding of economic development in the poor world, and the destruction of high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs for the working class in general and working-class men in particular. Within the Democratic Party, conservatives could make common cause on that basis. You, on the other hand, being a Reaganite rather than a conservative, doubtless think that such re-restriction, arresting, retarding and destruction are thoroughly good things, putting you on the same side as the hardline Greens.
And if you think that it is possible simultaneously to be a Marxist and a Keynesian, then you have certainly never spoken to, or even read, a Marxist on the subject of Keynesianism (not a perfect system, since none is; but a serviceable one).
Since this is a conservative site, how, exactly, does your favored system conserve even so much as ONE of national self-government, local variation, historical consciousness, family life (founded on the marital union of one man and one woman), the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West, agriculture, manufacturing, small business, close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, all forms of art, mass political participation within a constitutional framework, and respect for the absolute sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilization to the point of natural death? I submit that it is utterly corrosive of all of them.
And I submit that to define politics in terms of economics, rather than the other way round, is Marxism. To say that any one or more of these things must go because the economics require it, is Marxism.
To what “piece” about localism are you referring?
“A final thought, to wrap things up”
We should be so lucky.
In fact, you should be so lucky. You really have never been disagreed with in your life, have you? You have never dealt with anyone whom you could not fire, or possibly evict. You have absolutely no idea how to deal with it.
“In fact, you should be so lucky. You really have never been disagreed with in your life, have you? You have never dealt with anyone whom you could not fire, or possibly evict. You have absolutely no idea how to deal with it.”
I am a conservative living in New York City. Never been disagreed with? Come on…
In America we call “conservativism”, what is roughly classical liberalism. If you are unable to comprehend that classical liberalism is exactly the opposite of Marxism, meh, I don’t care. You’re a moron, remember?
I think you’re demented. It’s a weird day indeed where I long for the relative normalcy of Nathan P. Oringer. You can go back to your own planet, now… thanks.
“In America we call “conservativism”, what is roughly classical liberalism”
Really? In NYC, perhaps. But not in TAC!
If you cannot see that to define politics in terms of economics, rather than the other way round, is Marxism, I don’t care. You’re a moron, remember?
Meanwhile, TAC readers and writers will need no explanation that conservatives, by definition, approve only of economic and political arrangements that conserve such good things as national self-government, local variation, historical consciousness, family life (founded on the marital union of one man and one woman), the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West, agriculture, manufacturing, small business, close-knit communities, law and order, civil liberties, academic standards, all forms of art, mass political participation within a constitutional framework, and respect for the absolute sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilization to the point of natural death.
If anything doesn’t do that, then it is not conservative. By definition. And if it does, then it is. By definition.
The historically illiterate ideas that Americans have always been suspicious of any government activity whatever, and have always been prepared to use military force to advance “freedom and democracy” all over the place, not only cannot both be true, but simply are not conservative, by definition.
You can define it how you want. I think any conservatism worth spreading embraces wisdom. Economics developed out of the people’s need to be able to show, logically, how governments could not supersede nature’s laws. Ignore the laws at your own peril. You will lose every time, and your grand delusions will be exposed for their true intention: your own petty tyranny.