Month: August 2004

We’re hearing a lot about how the Republicans are showcasing their “moderates” at the convention in an attempt to woo swing voters. The puzzling thing about this claim is that the so-called moderates don’t seem to necessarily have much in common, nor are they necessarily moderate in any straightforward sense.

Consider: the three prominent “moderates” are Sen. John McCain, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Ah-nold. Now, McCain is ultra-hawkish on the war (both Iraq and the broader war on terrorism), and so, apparently, is Giuliani. However, McCain is a well-credentialed social conservative (pro-gun, anti-abortion, etc.) whereas Giuliani is, by all accounts, extremely socially liberal. I’m not sure where Arnold stands on the war, but he is also pro-choice, pro-gay rights and liberalish on gun control. McCain has been known to oppose tax cuts and pork spending (but on general “fiscally conservative” grounds) and has championed campaign finance reform and certain environmental legislation. Arnold also seems to have a soft spot for green causes, but has generally positioned himself as pro-tax cuts.

So, wherein lies the moderation that supposedly unites all these worthies? One suspects that “moderate” is just being used to refer to anyone who departs in any way from the standard conservative Republican positions (anti-tax, socially conservative, hawkish on defense), which ends up looking like an attempt to paint the standard “conservative” positions as extreme by definition. Hardly a sporting way to conduct political debate.

Really, it’s McCain who’s the odd duck here. Giuliani and Arnold can both be classified as more or less what used to be called “liberal Republicans,” “Rockefeller Republicans,” etc. Though the classic liberal Republicans were not quite so bellicose on foreign policy. In fact, a lot of the liberal Republicans of yore were actually quite dovish or even isolationist (e.g. William Borah, Gerald Nye and other progressive Republicans of the WWII era, plus more recently Mark Hatfield of Oregon). On the other hand, McCain – socially conservative and interventionist – is in many ways the mirror image of this old-style “progressive Republicanism.” What perhaps does connect McCain to the older tradition of progressive Republicanism is his advocacy of various reform movements to clean up the political process (campaing finance reform, etc.).

Another complicating factor is that until about 35 years ago, “social issues” weren’t really on the agenda. Everyone basically agreed (for good or for ill) about what we consider the hot button issues like abortion and gay marriage.

All in all, the reality’s a lot more complicated and interesting than the simple labels of “conservative” and “moderate” make it out to be.

Sed Contra and Scandal of Particularity both have follow-up posts on the Rod Dreher article mentioned here yesterday.

Hugo Schwyzer has a good post on “supply” versus “demand” approaches to reducing abortion.

And check out Beliefnet’s Steven Waldman’s blog from the GOP convention covering the religion-and-politics beat.

I admire the boldness with which these persons undertake to speak of God. In addressing their argument to infidels, their first chapter is to prove Divinity from the works of nature. I should not be astonished at their enterprise, if they were addressing their argument to the faithful; for it is certain that those who have the living faith in their hearts see at once that all existence is none other than the work of the God whom they adore. But for those in whom this light is extinguished, and in whom we purpose to rekindle it, persons destitute of faith and grace, who, seeking with all their light whatever they see in nature that can bring them to this knowledge, find only obscurity and darkness; to tell them that they have only to look at the smallest things which surround them, and they will see God openly, to give them, as a complete proof of this great and important matter, the course of the moon and planets, and to claim to have concluded the proof with such an argument, is to give them ground for believing that the proofs of our religion are very weak. And I see by reason and experience that nothing is more calculated to arouse their contempt. — Blaise Pascal

Bill Vallicella has an incisive post on the meaning and importance of reverence, a concept that has fallen into much disrepute in our culture. Postmodern culture despises the idea that we owe anything or anyone reverence, because it flies in the face of the kind of debased egalitarianism, unthinkingly embraced by many, that flattens distinctions and denies the truth of any moral or aesthetic judgments that might imply a hierarchy of values. How long any civilization that embraces this kind of nihilism can last is an open question.

One of the institutions conservatives want to conserve is the family. They rightly observe that intact families are a necessary condition for any stable and healthy social order. So why do conservatives tend to support policies that undermine the stability of families? That’s what Rod Dreher wants to know:

I stand with the late Russell Kirk, the philosophical godfather of modern American conservatism, who said, “The family is the institution most necessary to conserve.” Which is why it’s hard to be a Texas Republican some days.



Last week, the front page of The Dallas Morning News told the story of the Kimbers, a working family that lost benefits under the radically scaled-back Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. Result: They have to decide between filling their children’s teeth or their stomachs. The Kimber children are doing without dental care so they can eat.

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This is very basic, I know, but it’s startling to realize how much empathy one lacks, simply because one doesn’t see the suffering around us. I posted the Kimber story and my commentary to a conservative Catholic blog I frequent, and was startled to read the feedback. Some of my fellow Christian conservatives were appalled by the idea that children in a working family had any claim on society’s compassion or resources, even for basic health care.

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Look, I’m a conservative, and I know money doesn’t come from a pot of gold under the Alamo. The state had a massive budget shortfall, and something had to give. Of all the programs to face hacking though, why this one? Is the principle of “no new taxes” so sacrosanct that my fellow Republicans have to grind the face of the poor to be faithful to it?

A society that pushes struggling families to the wall and that denies minimal health care to children who had nothing to do with the circumstances, is not a good society. It is a society that attacks the family and calls it conservative virtue.

“Communitarian” thinkers like Christopher Lasch and Charles Taylor would agree with Dreher and have pointed out that right-wing support for untrammeled capitalism and minimal government actually undermines the local communities and intact families that conservatives want to preserve. As Lasch has argued:

Conservatives assume that deregulation and a return to the free market will solve everything, promoting a revival of the work ethic and a resurgence of ‘traditional values.’ Not only do they provide an inadequate explanation of the destruction of those values but they unwittingly side with the social forces that have contributed to their destruction, for example in their advocacy of unlimited growth. The poverty of contemporary conservatism reveals itself most fully in this championship of economic growth the underlying premise of the consumer culture the by products of which conservatives deplore.

This kind of analysis questions whether “family values” and the invisible hand automatically go together. As Marx saw, capitalism is one of the most revolutionary forces in history. Anyone concerned with conservation – whether of the family, the environment, or the social fabric – should be wary of leaving it to the forces of the unregulated market.

David Brooks lays out an agenda for a re-invented GOP.

Plot your place on the political map (via Naked Villainy). Looks like I’m a shade to the right of Tony Blair and a bit of an idealist. (Though, why are Stalin and Hitler classified as “idealists”??)

(The continuation of a long-neglected series. See Part I here and Part II here.)

To deal with evil requires understanding and dealing with the sources of evil. Christians believe that human evil is rooted in a primal turning away from God. In rejecting God, we set the stage for all kinds of evil (cf. Romans 1). For instance, if I no longer find security in my relationship with the divine, I may try to create a sense of security by hoarding possessions. Or, if my sense of self-worth no longer comes from my status as a child of God, I might try to find it in a series of sexual conquests. The idea is that alienation from God is the root sin from which all other sins flow. The entire sordid human history of hatred, envy, domination, resentment, and conflict is simply the outworking of humanity’s rejection of our proper end, which is union with God.

If this is the case, then the solution to human evil will have to be radical in the etymological sense – it will need to get to the root of the problem. This is precisely what Christians believe God has done in the Incarnation and Atonement (which are really two aspects of a single divine action). In Christ, God has come into the world to heal the broken relationship between God and humanity.

The church has, probably wisely, never made a definitive pronouncement on how God accomplishes this. The New Testament contains a variety of images describing God’s action, and theologians down through the ages have constructed a variety of models to shed some light on this divine mystery. No single theory, however useful, should be identified as the definitive way to understand the Atonement. Still, some have had more staying power than others.

One of the more famous (and controversial) theories of the Atonement is the “satisfaction” theory propounded by Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century. In a nutshell, according to Anselm, human sin has disrupted the moral order of the universe created by God; by failing to offer God the obedience that is his due, we have alienated ourselves from him. Human beings are unable to make reparation (or satisfaction) for this disruption because we already owe everything we have to God and are therefore unable to offer any kind of supererogatory obedience. Thus, Christ the God-man comes to fill this gap by living a life of perfect obedience to the Father and going to his death on the cross. This heals the breach between God and humanity and makes a new relationship possible.

Let’s clear away a couple of common misconceptions about this account. First, it is often claimed that it paints an unflattering portrait of God the Father as a petty despot who insists that his honor be satisfied before he will save sinful humanity. Why can’t God simply overlook sin and let us off the hook? Wouldn’t this be the mark of a truly gracious God of the kind we meet in the teachings of Jesus?

It’s important to remember that for Anselm, “honor” doesn’t mean anything like personal vanity. Living in a feudal society, Anselm would have seen honor as key pillar of a stable social order. Giving one’s lord his due was a key requirement for ensuring that the lord would fulfill his duty to maintain law and order. So, in these terms, God’s honor might better be seen as the justice that God upholds in the cosmos. For God to simply ignore sin would be to fail to treat it with the seriousness it requires. More, it would be to treat us with less than full seriousness. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “God does not ‘overlook’ sin; that would mean not taking human beings seriously as personal beings in their very culpability.” God does better than overlook sin; he does something about it.

Another way of thinking about it is to replace the concept of honor with the biblical idea of “holiness.” Since God is completely holy no sin can exist in his presence. This is not simply a matter of God being personally offended, but is due to the very nature of things. In order for us to approach God, we have to be cleansed of our sin. By living a holy life for our sake, Christ makes it possible for us to approach God in a renewed relationship.

The second mistake to avoid is seeing the crucifixion as something that God the Father inflicts on God the Son. This has given rise to accusations that Atonement theology provides a kind of divine sanction for child abuse. But this concern can be defused by recognizing that there is no division in wills between the Father and the Son. It is God himself, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who becomes incarnate in Jesus and willingly lives out a life of perfect obedience “even unto death on a cross.” The cross is not a punishment inflicted by the Father on the Son, but the inexorable outcome of a perfect human life being lived out under the conditions of sin.

What God accomplishes in the life and death of Jesus, according to Christianity, is nothing less than a reconstruction of human nature. Human beings have strayed off course; Christ comes and lives human life as it was meant to be lived. And in his Resurrection he offers the definitive blow to the powers of sin and death. In doing so, he opens to us the path of genuine humanity lived in fellowship with God and each other. By uniting ourselves with Christ in faith, we can begin to be healed of our sin and set back on our proper course toward union with God. In the Atonement, God begins the process of pulling out evil by the roots.

Alan McCann at Via Fortunata takes issue with my post on St. Thomas and private property. He accuses me of “uncritical leftist thinking” in drawing the conclusion that Thomas would have endorsed a role for government in ameliorating the plight of the poor:

This is typical of a lot of uncritical, leftist thinking within and without the church: if something is morally right to do then it is ok for the government to force people to do it. This argument misses the point that forced behavior cannot, by definition, be moral behavior. At best, it is amoral.

Jesus didn’t force anyone to behave a certain way. He helped them to change their minds (metanoia) which would result in changed behavior. Christianity goes off the rails when it tries to enforce individual external moral behavior through the use of social or government force.



Now, I could take a cheap shot and say that this is typical of a lot of uncritical, rightist thinking within and without the church: that the church should not attempt to advance its moral precepts, especially those concerning economics, by means of public policy. But I won’t take that cheap shot.

What I will note is that, according to Thomas, caring for the poor is not a matter just of Christian charity, but on the contrary “whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.” (emphasis mine) That is, care for the poor is a matter of justice, not charity.

The State is the institution in society charged with securing justice. And justice is giving to each what is their due by law, so if those in dire need are due the superabundance of what others have, then making sure they receive their due is a proper concern for the public authorities. Those of us who aren’t anarchists (which is to say most of us), recognize that securing justice will require coercion. Note that Thomas says that the poor may legitimately take what they need, not ask politely for a handout.

Now, I think what measures governments should take to help the poor is certainly a matter of legitimate debate. And the principle of subsidiarity would seem to imply that those more immediate institutions (families, churches, local communities) have the greater responsibility in caring for the poor. Nevertheless, the State has a proper role in ensuring that these smaller communities fulfill their duty, and to step in if need be.

Though I opposed the Iraq war, I’ve always tried to take seriously the arguments of the war’s proponents. Nor do I assume that war advocates were arguing in bad faith or from ulterior motives. I’m not a pacifist, nor am I reflexively opposed to the use of American military power. In thinking about these matters I try to be guided by the tradition of just war thinking as it was developed by the Catholic Church, adopted by the magisterial Protestant reformers, and extended and modified by various modern and contemporary thinkers.

That being said, it might be worthwhile to consider what I take to have been one of the strongest arguments for going to war in Iraq, the so-called humanitarian argument.* In essence, proponents of this argument said that the U.S. had the right, if not the obligation, to put an end to Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical rule. This argument appealed to one of the fundamental principles of just war theory: that the protection of the innocent from certain harm can provide a reason for going to war. Saddam certainly posed a threat to the Iraq people, thus it was just to remove his government.

In my view, the problem with this argument is that it failed to heed one of the other essential components of just war: the chance for success in creating a lasting peace. Neither punishing Saddam for crimes he committed in the past nor preventing him from committing future crimes would be sufficient to justify going to war without the additional prospect of creating conditions that would be markedly superior for the people of Iraq. Since war entails significant evil in the form of death and destruction, the good to be achieved has to outweigh this evil for the war to be considered morally licit. If the end result doesn’t differ significantly from the status quo ante we would be guilty of inflicting great evil for the sake of no, or little, discernible gain. In this respect, just war theory dictates that we consider consequences and not just past violations of moral principles.

It’s precisely with respect to having reasonable assurance of success in creating a lasting peace that I think the Iraq war failed the test. Though it would be foolish to offer predictions, right now it seems that the likelihood of a stable, democratic, and somewhat liberal Iraq is a dim prospect indeed. Certainly it’s far less likely than some war supporters had led us to believe. At the very least, it seems no more likely than the prospect of a) a takeover by a secular strongman, b) an all-out civil war among Iraq’s various ethnic and religious factions, or c) the emergence of an Iran-style theocracy. Any of these outcomes seems to have the potential for creating as much suffering as the continued reign of Saddam. That being the case, it’s hard to see how a realistic assessment of the situation beforehand would have justified going to war on purely humanitarian grounds.**

However, the principles outlined above would seem to imply an obligation for the U.S. (preferably working in concert with allies) to pursue every realistic means to foster some kind of stable Iraq that respects basic human rights. In other words, even if the invasion was a mistake, rectifying the mistake probably doesn’t mean simply unilateral withdrawal. Indeed, by going to war we may have incurred a greater obligation to seek a tolerable outcome for the people of Iraq.

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*I won’t address here the arguments for going to war for reasons of national security. Suffice it to say, it seems in retrospect that Iraq posed less of a threat to the U.S. than even war opponents thought at the time.



**I’m not claiming that humanitarian concerns were a primary, or even significant, reason that the Bush administration, with the approval of Congress, decided to go to war. While motives count, they are not the primary consideration in determing the justice of the war itself. It’s quite possible to do the right thing for the wrong reasons.