Think It Out, III, or, the Obligatory Election Post

I'll start this post with a large caveat, in the form of an article which (with some reservations) I rather admired (on first reading--see: admission of reservations): https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/holding-your-nose-how-to-vote-like-a-catholic/.  The gist of the article is that Catholics are required to exercise prudence when voting.  Some of the details are a bit more iffy, but the overall message seems to me to be correct.

Having laid that out there, steel yourself for my prudential considerations when I go to vote--for president, for various ballot measures, for local and federal officials from the water board superintendent to the mayor to my senator.

I'm a conservative when I vote (actually, I am a conservative at other times as well).  That word means a great many things these days; here is how I understand it.

Political conservatism (and its polar opposite, progressivism) has at least three planes: the social/cultural, the philosophical/methodological, and the economic. 

(N.B. I am deliberately avoiding the word "liberal," which comes in such a large variety of senses today as to be nearly meaningless.  A recent quiz I took, purporting to helpfully sort Americans into no less than seven tribes, identified me as a "Traditional Liberal," I believe on the strength of the facts that I prefer polite political dialogue and like to think the best of those with whom I disagree.  It also, on the basis of these facts and the subsequent identification, incorrectly predicted the political candidates I supported.  Tl:dr, "liberal" is a broad label.)

On the social and cultural plane, conservatives favor ending abortion (which is, in some cases inarguably, the ending of human life).  Social and cultural conservatives want legal distinctions between so-called traditional families and nontraditional ones.  Social and cultural conservatives want to delay and discourage transgender operations for the young; and they want educational presentations of transgenderism to be formulated in a way that, while they do not stigmatize those experiencing transgender feelings, they also do not encourage those with other atypicalities (e.g., autism) to explain their experience, reductively, through a transgender lens.  Social and cultural conservatives want conscience protections for workers and employers who believe that providing contraception (qua contraception) is morally evil--and the same applies to participating in abortions, etc., etc.

On the philosophical plane, conservatives want diversity of opinion--ideological, religious, and philosophical--to be as important as diversity of ethnicity.  (This is were a conservative is most likely to overlap with a "traditional liberal" or libertarian, btw.)  Subsidiary to this, philosophical conservatives tend to want immigration to be conditioned by assimilation--or, to put it more simply, they think it is critically important for new immigrants to want to stay in this country and to commit to learning the history and language of this country, since these things are prerequisites for having actual conversations about important matters of politics, ideology, religion, and philosophy.  Philosophical conservatives tend to value political methodologies--like the various forms of legal originalism--that prefer to change government and society through the system found in the Constitution, rather than finagling the sense of the Constitution to achieve change.

On the economic plane, conservatives tend to be cautious about the notion that government can keep printing money without ever incurring inflation; they want a welfare state designed to help people out of welfare, and for that reason tend to prefer policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit over policies like raising minimum wage laws.  Economic conservatives also tend to think that a federal-level bureaucracy is a money-loser: rather than streamlining the redistribution of wealth, and making it more efficient, it tends to line the pockets of those who congregate in air-conditioned offices in D.C.   And economic conservatives worry about regulatory capture, and think that many regulations, while they can sometimes protect consumers, are more damaging on balance, as they can encourage monopolies, depress existing small business, and present barriers to entry for people attempting to start their own businesses.

That is actually one of the most terrifying posts I've written in some time.

And that, in and of itself, is a good reason to lay all this out there.

P.S. Thank you to the person who inspired this post.  You know who you are.

Think It Out, II

Another alternative to restricting all healthcare deductibles would be to have a safety net specific to people who find that their deductibles end up being too high.  One can readily imagine how some people would misuse that.  But then again, some people would genuinely need to be helped through it.

I'm reminded of the scene in My Fair Lady where Shaw (a socialist, FWIW), makes Eliza's father Alfred Doolittle categorize himself, truthfully and with some self-awareness, as one of the undeserving poor.  He is, in fact, not particularly worthy of a government handout, but some of the men his his position are, and there's no way for the government to tell which are which.

The liberal response is generally to vote for the government to be liberal, in the sense of generous, towards all the Doolittles, deserving and otherwise--which frequently leads to the government being illiberal to all, lest the Alfreds of the world in their liberty abuse its liberality.  The conservative response is to vote to be generous to none of them.

And the conservative response is, I think, the better, so long as there actually are other ways of helping those who can't actually help their doing little.

This is where prudence comes into government, and charity into life.  Those in government (and to a fair extent, those voting for them based on their platforms) have to discern prudently which sorts of welfare are in fact best administered at the particular level of government at which they serve.  And those who are not in government have to discern charitably how best to help those who are not being helped by government.

Indeed, those who tend to vote against government welfare have, for that reason, a particular burden on them to be charitable with their time, treasure, and talent.  In America, conservatives supposedly give more to charity than liberals (here, for any liberal readers, is an NYT piece on the topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/your-money/republicans-democrats-charity-philanthropy.html).  Worldwide, Americans are supposedly more charitable than many other nationalities (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-is-the-most-generous-country-but-americans-say-debt-is-keeping-them-from-giving-more-to-charity-2019-10-18).  This doesn't mean that Americans or conservatives should pat themselves on the back: it simply is an indication of the fact that they are actually doing their duty, to some extent, by attempting to provide personally for those whom they have voted against providing for governmentally.

And of course, one can still argue about which way is better: do things go better when people can decide where to put their money, or when there is a government bureaucracy of experts making those decisions?  (For those who don't know a conservative, be aware that all the folks right of center just sneezed as if they had an allergy at the phrase "government bureaucracy of experts.")  I think that the Alfred Doolittle argument is a strong reason for preferring the former, but there are plenty of other arguments out there ... which is why good, smart people vote both D and R: because there's a lot to be thought out.

Think It Out, I

The following is a (heavily edited) version of a Facebook comment I left on a friend's thread, vis-a-vis the fears that Justice Barret may strike down the ACA, aka Obamacare.

I quite understand the concern of people who may lose their healthcare; and I do feel, as a Catholic, that healthcare for those who can't afford it is one of those things that society has an obligation to provide.  Of course, there are other ways to provide healthcare besides government, and local governments might arguably be better than the federal government at providing it ...

But setting all that aside, my personal experience with Obamacare has been negative. It led to my rates being hiked--of course; for someone has to pay for those who can't afford their own healthcare, and I was young, employed, and healthy when the bill was passed--but, what bothered me more, Obamacare made it more difficult for me to get the sort of high deductible plan I was interested in, as a young healthy person with sufficient savings.

So I suppose what I'd like to see, if indeed the plan were to be struck down, would be something that protected people with lower incomes and those with preexisting conditions but also allowed for more ... consumer discretion?

This, however, is tricky, because there will always be people who do foolish things, like purchasing houses (cf. Fannie/Freddie crisis) and healthcare plans that they can't afford.  I know I could afford high deductibles, but not everyone can, and some people would try to cut corners, and then the taxpayer would end up footing the bill.  (Again, cf. the housing crisis.)  So should I, the prudent person, have my choice of healthcare plans restricted by the government because other people, granted the same freedom, would inevitably be imprudent?

I can understand why some would argue that way, but as a conservative (surprise!) I don't think that's the right solution.

One alternative might be to have some sort of means-tested provision, e.g., if you can check a box claiming that you have more than X amount in savings, or saved more than Y amount every month for the past year, then you are permitted a high deductible plan.  That wouldn't necessarily penalize poor people, the way an income-based means test would, though of course plenty of people would lie about their savings, and there would doubtless be other unforeseen consequences--as there always are, of any regulations, and the less foreseen the more complex the regulations are.  (#reasonsforconservatism)

Children Are Children Are Children

There's a nice craft book by that title, should you be the sort of person who is interested in doing crafts with (grade-school-age) children.  The gist of the title is simply that, whatever the time or place, there are certain commonalities in the way children think.

That is why classic children's books can remain classic: because they really do dig in to the way children think about the world.  The Winnie the Pooh books are an outstanding example (far more than the Disney adaptations, although the older ones of those are fairly innocent and harmless).

For instance ...

There is a pine cone sitting on my desk right now.  It's a little lopsided, and doesn't quite have that autumnal je-ne-sais-quoi  that, say, a William Sonoma centerpiece would have, because small children have picked off some of the knobs from the bottom--very methodically--although more from one side than the other, so that it now leans for support rather than standing properly.  That it should have been the recipient of experimentation by small hands is only right and just, however: it is booty from a walk, and the rightful possession of the little people of the house.  In this case, I borrowed it for the ambiance, not (as so often happens) the other way round.

The children call it "the fir cone."

This, despite my introduction of it as a "pine cone."  (Reader, I promise, it is a pine cone from a pine tree.  I used to know my botany well.)

I was initially disturbed by this until I realized that their avatar for such articles is the collection of fir cones that Winnie the Pooh throws over the bridge, thus inventing the game of Pooh Sticks.  Also, while Pooh sings a song about "a mystery / About a little fir tree," the only evergreens one meets in the books are the Six Pine Trees.

So one can play Pooh sticks with a fir cone from a pine tree in small person land.  That, at least, is the Tao of Pooh, and I for one am not prepared to dispute it on such a fine afternoon as this.

Poor Chris Pratt, Not Really, P.S.

Did you know “One has to go” was a popular Twitter meme?  It was new to me.  And it struck me as a bit strange.

Stories about the illiberal nature of Twitter, Facebook, etc., are a dime a dozen.  Scratch that, stories about the illiberal nature of liberal progressives in America are a dime a dozen.  And of course, there are plenty of conservative voices who nevertheless manage to have a large following (I heard recently that Ben Shapiro trends a lot on social media? Bo).

And there are of course good reasons to sometimes be illiberal; illiberality is the appropriate response, for instance, to someone who attacks one’s family.  One can imagine, therefore, certain political, cultural, or social positions which merit an illiberal response; although of course one’s priors will determine which positions those are.

But the point of an illiberal response is, or should be, to correct the situation.  When someone attacks your family, you respond for the purpose of sustaining and restoring your family’s integrity.  You don’t respond in order to punish—or, at any rate, such actions were deemed, after the advent of Christianity, to be vengeful and wrong in their own right.

That is why the particular illiberality of “One has to go,” by whomever and on whomever it is used, is problematic.  Not because it might be hypocritical, not because its victims are necessarily all innocents, but because it’s designed to punish rather than to cure.  Ostracism does not, ultimately, heal the body politic.  Only conversions will do that.  And “One has to go” is not about earning converts.

Poor Chris Pratt

No, not really.  He’s a Hollywood star with, I am sure, lots of money, plenty of adoring fans, a beautiful family (second wife, I think? if he sticks with #2 we’ll just call it the Hollywood standard, I guess), and no (yet publicized) major personality or drug issues.

So, from a modern human standpoint, he should be pretty happy.

Did I mention he’s also characterized in the news as a committed Christian?  That his church doesn’t support LGBTQ people?  That he once gave away an old cat that he co-owned with his ex-wife (presumably without her knowledge and consent, or it wouldn’t be an issue)?  And that he said he won’t be going to a Biden fundraiser with some of his fellow Marvel stars?

So he’s in trouble again, on Twitter, not for the first time, for the most recent of those offenses (and of course the others are being dredged up as well).  A producer pulled up a picture of Pratt and three other Chris-christened actors, and employed the popular Twitter meme “One has to go,” leading to fans expressing disapproval of Pratt’s non-presence at the virtual Biden fundraiser, as well as his other offenses.

And, adding insult to injury, Pratt had the gall to be defended by some of his fellow stars (e.g., the ever popular, also-not-going-to-be-at-the-fundraiser Robert Downey Jr.) who did not leap to defend female Marvel stars during similar Twitter spats.  So Pratt is an inspiration for an ongoing anti-woman double-standard as well.

That’s the short version of the events of the past few days in the Hollyverse.

And as someone who’s seen maybe half the Marvel movies franchise, who watches maybe five new movies a year (and waits until movies come out on video for less $$—at which point are they even new anymore?), who doesn’t have a Twitter account, who spends less and less time on Facebook, and who is also not voting for Biden … I’m sitting here and shaking my head and laughing.

I don’t have a problem with Twitter censoring conservatives.  It’s not a public library or courthouse or even a newspaper; it’s a privately held company with a distinct ownership and a distinct set of fans.  I think any conservative who hops on Twitter expecting not to be censored is fooling himself or herself.

But, mes frères libéraux, I submit for this incident to be entered as exhibit P in the case of the Shy Conservatives.  If you don’t see anyone expressing conservative views on your platforms, or in your neighborhood, or at your book club, or what have you—and if the only ones you do hear of online seem to be increasingly strident and scary—then it’s probably because all the nice guys and gals got tired a long time ago and went back home, or reopened a personal blog, or took up origami airplane making.

I recommend all three, especially the last if you have small kids.

 

 

 

 

Shouldn’t the Good Guys Be Better than This? (VI)

Aquinas tends to explain human frailty in more intellective terms (lack of attention, grounded in imperfect thought processes); his near-contemporary Scotus thought the problem was more one of will—and that tends to be the modern diagnosis as well.  Certainly there are issues in both faculties.

In any case, whether one puts the source of human error in the intellect or the will, or suspects both equally of frailty, the effect is similar: even good people, and people who know better, fall through frailty.

And grace?  Doesn’t grace repair fallen human nature?  Indeed, the frailty of the best of Christians is rather a scandal, if you think grace is meant to eradicate human frailty.  But I don’t think that’s what St. Paul meant to convey when he talks about Christ’s power being made manifest in weakness, or when Julian of Norwich says that sin is behovable.  Grace builds on nature, it shores nature up, but it seems that God only rarely bestows so much of it as to create a preternatural superstructure entirely ungrounded in its natural foundation.  Or, to put it in English, God helps people slowly, in time, and not in an instant; and in eternity it all comes out in the wash.

That of course raises problems of theodicy for many.  But that’s another problem for another blog series; and this one is not finished yet.

Shouldn’t the Good Guys Be Better than This? (V)

It’s something of an empirical fact that people do things which are not in their own best interest.  Some people—Socrates, libertarians (yes, I know one of these things is not like the others)—seem to feel that this can always be traced back to an information deficit.  If only we truly knew better, we would never eat sugary foods, buy tchotchkes, or stay up too late.

Dear reader, I submit myself as exhibit A in refuting this position.  I know very well that lack of sleep, spending on valueless items, and too sweet foods do not make me happy for more than about half a second.  And the more I can keep those facts of life in mind, the less I am tempted by these particular pitfalls.  But the fact is, for all that I have that knowledge, I don’t always … remember it very well.  Aristotle has some excellent analysis of this paradox, which Aquinas picks up and many a modern psychologist has performed all anew.

It comes down, in modern terms, to willpower.  It’s hard to muster enough will to do the best things for ourselves all the time, because doing the best thing is often harder than doing the immediately sensually or emotionally appealing thing.  Aquinas talks in this context about attention: our minds tend to flit from one thing to another, and we do not always attend to the principles that we know to be true, e.g., this pecan praline crunch will not actually make me feel happy after about more than a tablespoon.

Shouldn’t the Good Guys Be Better than This? (IV)

I think the answer to the question of why so many Catholics sin in obvious contravention to the Gospels, and despite the help of grace, can be boiled down to three parts.

(1)   Free will.

(2)   Original sin.

(3)   Are you so sure?

I’ll talk about each of these parts in an upcoming post, but preview the answers here, since the short phrases may seem absurdly glib, especially as they are hardly original as responses to this problem.

(1)   Free will means that people often resist what they know to be in their best interests, e.g., I resist eating raw vegetables and exercising.

(2)   Original sin means that even when we know our own best interests, we generally know them only partly, and with mixtures of other information, e.g., I know that exercise is good for me but I don’t know all the details of how running helps my heart and mood levels and gee that was a really good episode of the Mandalorian; I wonder if that actor was in the other thing that I saw with the friend whose hair is really too good to be true but how much time does it take to take care of that, and you just have to prioritize some things over others in life, like parents deciding whether to homeschool their kids or not, which is a really dicey topic these days, but it shouldn’t be, unless of course we start turning into France after the election, which would be weird but not entirely far-fetched, given the history of …

(3)   I’m not convinced that Catholics who resort frequently to the sacraments are not, in fact, better at following the Gospels than other people.  I would love to see some actual research on this.  I’m not sure how you’d conduct a double blind study, but I think it might almost be done … and even a less well conducted study would be well worth the reading.

Shouldn’t the Good Guys Be Better than This? (III)

Of course, most Catholics are not following Jesus particularly well (myself included).  And indeed, when people point to vengeful Catholics, or lying Catholics, or greedy Catholics, or what-have-you, it is generally not hard to show that vengeance, lying, greed, etc. are in pretty direct conflict to the words of Jesus in the Gospels, and to the basic teachings of the Church.  (Cf. the Seven Deadly Sins).

Regarding vengeance and related sins of anger in particular, there are, of course, those places in the Gospels that discuss hell.  But in general, Jesus seems to draw a pretty direct line between hell and a lack of charity; so—whatever you make of hell doctrinally—it would be difficult to argue that a reasonable interpretation of Jesus’s remarks on hell could form grounds for our treating each other worse.

(Of course, there have been unreasonable interpretations that did precisely that.  I’m not appealing to the idea that Christians has never gotten anger, etc., wrong; rather, I’m appealing to a reader who doubts my “reasonable interpretation” metric to just go read the source texts and explain to me how taken as a whole, the Gospels support anger, vengeance, and the like.)

But in fact, this seeming defense of Christian doctrine has actually exacerbated the original problem.  For if sins of (say) anger are not only against nature/intuition/enlightened-best-interest but also against the basic tenets of Christianity, then it is even harder to explain—given the doctrine of grace with which this series of posts began—how Christians can so often violate these tenets.  If God says “Be angry, but sin not” and also gives Christians the grace not to sin, why do so many sin anyway?

Shouldn’t the Good Guys Be Better than This? (II)

One cannot, alas, explain away bad Catholics by appealing to the mere fact of good Catholics.  Mother Teresa is wonderful, but she doesn’t answer the problem of President Kennedy.

Evelyn Waugh, to an interlocutor who considered that his status as a mediocre human being reflected bad on the Church, is said to have rejoined something to the effect of, “You can only imagine how terrible I’d be if I weren’t Catholic.”  That is funny, though it hardly addresses the problem of Bad Catholics in general either.

Still, another moment is due to Waugh’s response.  It is after all the response that I am prone to give in my own case.  If I fail, it is not in spite of my membership in the Church—it is certainly not due to my relationship with Jesus Christ, to the time I spend with him in prayer, and to the ways in which I attempt resemble him.  On the contrary: to the extent that I fail, it’s because I am not conforming myself to Christ and the divine element within the Church.

That is only one data point, but it is one which I know intimately—the workings of my own mind—and so it has considerable salience.  And it suggests to me that the starting point, when I ask why there are so many bad Catholics, should be to consider whether most of them are in fact doing what Jesus commanded.

It’s Human Nature to Believe in Human Nature, Even If We’re Wrong About It

This past week the California legislature, ever the harbinger of progress, passed a bill reducing, under certain circumstances, the penalties related to physical intimacy between adults and minors. It involves a reduction in (not elimination of) penalties for adults (18 and up) who engage in certain activities with minors (under 18), provided the age gap is 10 years or less and the minor is 14 or over; the upshot of the bill (if California governor Gavin Newsom signs it) is likely be unfortunate rather than dire.

This is not the bill to be worried about, if you are a social conservative. But it does raise questions, for — like all such bills — it relies on the notion of consent.

Consent is the sine qua non in extra-familial relationships: without it, the term “relationship” is rather meaningless.  But though consent is necessary for a healthy relationship, it is insufficient.

Consider, for example, the analogy of finance, or labor, or sports.  We might obtain verbal “consent” from 10-year-old Rupert to invest his inheritance in mutual funds; but the law generally does not accept that Rupert has the judgment to determine his investments, and so requires that his financial interests be vested in a parent or guardian until he “comes of age.” Again, 12-year-old Evangelina might want desperately to contribute to the family finances; but modern child labor laws frequently presume that her consent to a working arrangement should be overridden for her own good.  And finally, 14-year-old Arthur, when he signs up for the competitive soccer team, signs a waiver about injuries and indemnity — but, critically, his parent signs too, because it is assumed that Arthur, being a tender 14 years of age, is not mature enough to sign away his own ability to sue the living daylights out of the soccer coach, should his malleus, incus, and stapes fracture in an ill-advised headshot.

There are plenty of other things government and society (let alone parents) do not think that children and teens are competent to decide: many medical procedures, whether and what school to attend, the right age for walking to the park or riding the subway alone or watching in a public theater an NC-17 movie (the very restriction is baked into the designation!).  In all these cases the presumption is that a young person’s consent is not sufficient: and the implication is that there is a deep sense in which people do not always know what is good for them. Their consent, we might say, is uninformed — not simply because they lack information intellectually, but because their lack of emotional and life experience makes them necessarily less able to handle decisions that even adults can agonize over.

And yet — and yet — there is one area in modern life in which young people are supposed to be able to consent: the matter of SB-145.  When it comes to intimacy, our culture accepts that a 14- or 15- or 16-year-old has the judgment and maturity to make decisions.

I would not attempt to argue that all teenagers are too immature to determine what constitutes a healthy romantic relationship; but such maturity is rare. In ancient and medieval times the nobility (but not, notably, peasants) were frequently married quite young — to people chosen by their parents. Nobody thought Romeo and Juliet were old enough for informed consent; and Shakespeare hints that they may have been the exception that proves the rule.

The same holds true today: I know of a few people who got together in their teens and are living happily ever after; but most people would agree that their teenage judgment about who constituted a worthwhile partner was atrocious.

So what gives?  Why are we careful to protect teenagers from bad choices about money, work, safety, movies, and drugs, but casual about potential bad choices in the area of romance?

Read the rest at the Register: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/it-s-human-nature-to-believe-in-human-nature-even-if-we-re-wrong-about-it

God Gets the Last Laugh

 Out of the many tragedies of coronavirus days — from lost lives to missed playdates, from broken marriages to unemployment — has been the silencing of music. While it certainly does not deserve to be classed with more major, life-altering events, music is one of those things that makes life worth living. But now Broadway is online; community theaters are shuttered; church choirs are disbanded in favor of cantors or — nothing at all.

Nor is this a trivial alteration, the cancellation of one sort of “entertainment” that can easily be replaced by another, as if knitting parties by Zoom could somehow sate the human spirit’s need for song. Music is unique: its presence in every culture, its uselessness, and its frequent employment in worship suggest that it answers a universal desire to express something deep in human nature, even something transcendent. Its unique role earns it a cameo in The Screwtape Letters, where C.S. Lewis puts the following sentiments in the mouth of the experienced demon instructing a junior tempter:

The whole house and garden [of a certain girl] is one vast obscenity. It bears a sickening resemblance to the description one human writer made of Heaven: ‘the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.’  Music and silence — how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since Our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise — Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile — Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.”

Music and silence are, of course, the two modes that lift the liturgy into the sacred. In the traditional Latin rite the canon is silent or sotto voce; in the Eastern churches it is sung. Even today, the option to chant or speak quietly for the canon is present in the Novus Ordo, and adopted on solemn occasions like Christmas and Easter. (Now, if only more priests could treat every Mass as a solemn occasion!) And of course, congregational participation in hymn singing is a part of the liturgy for most Christian churches in America.

It seemed, therefore, like a particularly cruel joke from an infernal perspective that music got the ax early in coronavirus time. Multiple cases and two deaths resulting from a choir practice in Mount Vernon were followed by videos and expert testimonies about how singing might spread water droplets carrying the virus, infecting far more people than mere conversation. So the singing stopped, even in those places where services were still being held (distanced, with masks, etc., etc., etc.). It wasn’t as if Catholics were ever very good about singing in the first place; now, we might as well all be deaf and mute.

Read the rest at the Register: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/god-gets-the-last-laugh

Always Flight 93, Never Flight 93 (IV)

I think it has always been this way.  We are certainly seeing an age in which public standards of behavior and speech are degraded; but they have never been particularly good, especially in any place touched by politics.  If you don't believe me, spend a little time with the history of Tudor England, Imperial Rome, the early American Republic, or (probably) any other point random point in history.  Political leaders have always been sketchy at best; political rhetoric has always been disgusting.  It's always been a Flight 93: one is always constrained to choose between a bad man and a worse man, always forced to rely on checks and balances, on senates and parliaments and busybody nobility, and hope that they do their job keeing the king, the emperor, or the president in check.

And that means, of course, that in another sense it's never really a Flight 93 election.  If political choices are always constrained between bad and worse, then--however execrable our own political period may seem (and there is no doubt that it is execrable)--and however poised on the point of civil strife we may be (and there is no doubt that the civil unrest in our country is real)--nevertheless, our historical position is not entirely unique.  We cannot justify anything by appealing to our current situation.  The ordinary rules of political choice--the need to choose for the sake of the good, and to decry what is evil--still apply.  It's just that those rules have always been sadder, and more attuned to our fallen condition, than some of us would like to acknowledge.

Always Flight 93, Never Flight 93 (III)

I do not think this example of study is merely about semantics.  I think, rather, it illustrates the importance of intentions--of having one's heart in the right place, as it were.  There is a world of difference between the attitude that says, "Health is not important" and the attitude that says "Study is important enough that other things, even things like health, must temporarily give way to it."  The first is simply wrong, both factually and morally; the latter is a judgment call, a weighing of priorities prudentially, which may or may not be factually right, but is hard to morally impeach.  And hence the problem with the Machiavellian formulation, that anyone directly wills the bad means: it is too simplistic.

So likewise in the case of politics, it seems too simplistic to me to say that someone who votes for a politician who is a bad man is choosing to vote for a bad man in order to further the common good (or, more likely these days, stave off common evils).  That may sometimes be the case: some people may say, simply, "I choose this evil because it is lesser."  But I think most people would say, rather, that they are not choosing an evil but choosing a good, however limited and constrained.  You vote for a man or woman in spite of their flaws, not to flaunt them or to speak as if they did not matter or are trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Always Flight 93, Never Flight 93 (II)

It does not help the Flight 93 crowd's efforts to escape the imputation of Machiavellianism that the intellectually rigorous elements within their school of thought have that connection to Claremont, with its connection to Harry Jaffa and ultimately to Leo Strauss, and thence to a slightly more positive reading of Machiavelli than is usual in conservative circles.

But while the purely end-based ethics of Machiavelli are execrable, it is by no means clear that a focus on the end over the means is always wrong.  Indeed, to insist that the means in any human endeavor have all the splendor, moral and otherwise, of the end at which they aim, would be foolish.  If the means were as splendid as the end, they would as often as not simply be the end (hence the phrase "an end in itself").  None of this is to say that one can deliberately choose evil in order to achieve good--one cannot, for instance, commit theft in order to give to the poor.

But one should certainly not be surprised if, in the complexities of ordinary life, one finds oneself facing difficult choices; for reality is rarely so pure as examples like "theft to give to the poor" suggest.  Thus, for instance, I might find that in order to study for an exam I have to neglect sleeping and eating healthfully for a short period of time.  A Machiavellian would look at this and say that I am choosing an evil (neglect of my own health) in order to obtain a good I perceive as greater (knowledge and good grades).  But a believer in double effect theory would say (or at least hope) that I was rather choosing to study, and that the neglect of sleep and healthy eating were unfortunate, foreseen, permitted, but not deliberately chosen consequences of that choice to pursue the higher end of study.

Always Flight 93, Never Flight 93 (I)

The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (God rest her soul) has led to a predictably intense conversation about the who, what, why, where, when, how, and if of her replacement by President Trump.  And that's just on the right.  It's been ugly on Facebook, including among my own friends, people I like and respect, people who went to the same college with me, people who espouse the same religion.

A lot of the ugliness, I think, goes back to the question of the Flight 93 paradigm.  The (in)famous 2016 essay (read it here, if you wish to be annoyed, edified, scandalized, or whatever: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/the-flight-93-election/) posited that America was at a crossroads, about to be destroyed, and that any means should be taken to save it, up to and including supporting politicians lacking in moral fibre.

This position was, and remains, the position of many on the right--and, I might add, the left.  It has also been decried by many of those on the right for putting pragmatism over a real interest in the common good.  If the right becomes focused merely on power, how are we not the bad guys?  Are we any different from Boromir, wanting to use the ring for good?  How are we not Machiavellians, acting as if the good end (saving the country) justifies the bad means (electing the morally bankrupt)?

Shouldn't the Good Guys Be Better Than This? (I)

Fear not, mon freres.  No politics today.  It is simply that I have been reading in disparate places about the scandals of bad Catholics and bad bishops, and pondering the challenge that these realities pose to the Catholic claims about the sacraments.

In a nutshell, the case is this.  Catholics claim that the sacraments--Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation (aka Confession aka Penance, which is all a story in its own right), Eucharist, Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Extreme Unction are both external signs and conduits of divine grace.  Jesus Christ instituted them during his time on earth, taught them to his apostles, and the apostles in turn passed them on to the Church.  Or, as the Baltimore Catechism more succinctly puts it:

Q. What is a sacrament?

A. A sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace.

So if an ordinary Catholic has received at least Baptism and Confirmation--and presumably makes use of Penance and Eucharist as well--and more likely than not has received Matrimony--then why aren't we all much nicer than our non-Catholic neighbors?  And for priests and bishops, who have received Holy Orders, why are they not holier still?  Why are catty Catholics and wolfish shepherds a thing?

Bad Stuff Happens, I

 When I was in college, some of the other students liked making short films.  Although it was strictly a liberal arts school, a few of them had an interest in going into media and movies; it was good practice for them, and a lot of fun.  The films generally made it into the entertainment that opened our four or five annual dances.  They were almost always nerdy, full of inside jokes, frequently parodic of more serious fare (The Godfather, samurai cinema, murder mysteries, etc.).

One of the ones that has stuck with me was a film--I forget the title--with the oft-repeated tagline "bad stuff happens."  I could not tell you the plot, although a burglary was involved, along with serious bodily harm to (I think) the burglar.  At which the narrator solemnly intoned, as if we were in a Victorian morality play, "Bad stuff happens."  I believe his last iteration of the words was followed by the sententious statement, "It's for the children."

In the never-ending news cycle of 2020, with civil wars and dying supreme court justices and pandemics and fires and, well, bad stuff happening, I can't help but think of that movie and laugh.

Bad stuff happens all the time.  It always has.  History is not merely one darn thing after another, it's mostly one bad darn thing after another.  (Come to think of it, maybe that's what the "darn" was there for in the first place.)  And so we make funny films about people who take it too seriously.  I don't think this is apathy.  I think it's realism.  There's absolutely nothing I can do about the Bad Stuff that Happens.  It is not unique.  And that suggests that it's not as important as the never-ending news cycle tends to make us think.

Why I Studied Literature

 Sometimes I feel a need, probably false, to defend having studied literature, particularly as opposed to philosophy, in which I majored (more or less) as an undergraduate.  It's the sort of field that the Scott Walkers of the world tend to want smallified; and of course, if philosophy and literature meant merely what they seem to mean most everywhere these days, the Scott Walkers of the world would be right.  That's why the following piece was so refreshing.

https://theamericanscholar.org/teach-what-you-love/

It's a bit long, but the author has a way with words; and his point about the importance of loving what you teach is spot on.