source:
Lucius Quinctius CincinnatusAs another
Presidential Inauguration draws near, one waits for things to fall apart because that is what we deserve.
Entitlement can serve as a reference to welfare programs and the welfare state. Or to the mindset of contemporary pampered Americans who believe they are owed everything. Possibly the two are not unlinked. Citizenship, however, is not something owed to us simply because we happen to be in the right place when we were born. Even if it is granted to us automatically it does not mean that we have earned it. It could mean that those who have the authority to grant citizenship have been foolish in their legislation.
Plato and Aristotle rightly criticized democrats and their erroneous understanding of equality. Both of them believed that only the virtuous had a valid claim to rule.
Republican government, government by the many, may be the best form under circumstances for a particular community. (Republican government = polity,
politeia.) (The Catholic Church has not endorsed any one form of government as being the best for all, though in recent times some clerics have tried to argue that modern mass "democracy" is best in so far as it respects human dignity and rights.) The prudent man will grasp this and will work to safeguard that constitution, for the sake of the common good.
Aristotle saw a link between republican government and martial virtue. Can we dispute that this was a feature of ancient Greece and republican Rome? Is this the reason why many early Americans identified with George Washington as the model citizen? Serving in the military seems to be an important component of civic republicanism. And yet, fewer Americans join the military or have ties to the military in some way.
Those who believe in the lie that we are 'fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here' should do their part; it is the duty of every citizen to defend his community, and if he believes his community is in danger, how can he shirk from fulfilling his duty?
Andrew Bacevich
argues that we do not need the draft--but we do need to realize that our professional armed forces are shouldering an unjust burden. If there really is a GWOT, why isn't the country doing more to support it? More consumption, as some sort of wrong-headed act of defiance (look at
who was promoting it), is not the answer to terrorism. While joining the armed forces may not be incumbent on all, I do advocate the restoration of local militias, and all able-bodied citizens who would claim to be such should participate.
In addition, the classical ideal of the farmer-soldier-citizen underscores the link between economic freedom and political freedom. Those who are not masters of their own lives should have no share in governing others. How many Americans are not the masters of their own lives? Granted, they are not working all the time, but how free are they to deviate from the daily patterns? It is said that the medieval serf had more leisure time than today's office drone.
How much economic freedom is necessary for a citizen? Can one become free merely through advances in tools and energy? Or is there more to economic freedom than not having to do much work? It is being the master of one's household and being able to provide for the needs of that household (or at least most of them). There is something to be said for having others labor, if that is all they can do.
Some cannot but be servants of other, because they cannot direct themselves, given their appetites or their lack of foresight. They live only for the present, and fail to understand what makes their comfort possible. (The thought that what is needed to make their life of pleasure last may not be sustainable in the long run does not enter their mind.) They are so enslaved to their pleasures and luxuries that in our political economy, they are willing wage slaves.
Aristotle reminds us that the citizens of a healthy polity need the virtue of moderation and the other virtues to be able to use leisure rightly. The virtue of courage, which is necessary for wars and securing peace, is not enough for the good life. It is true that some cannot be economically free because of the circumstances that have been forced upon them. Should they be denied citizenship as a result? But others are willing dupes of the present political economy. Perhaps they are looking to profit personally from the system, or they may be defending an abstract ideology because it is comfortable to do so.
Most Americans seem to be unwilling to make the sacrifices that are necessary for the good of society. The poor, unemployed or the middle class-- how many of them would be willing to accept a reduction in luxuries, for the sake of being their own masters in the production of goods required for daily living? (Much less for reasons of sustainability or protecting the environment.)
Given the moral degradation of the majority of Americans, the judgment that our system grants citizenship too freely follows rather quickly. Not everyone's opinion counts equally, though this may be the sort of fiction that is needed to maintain a pseudo-democracy, and not everyone should be participating in the political life of the community or of the state (or in Federal elections) . For justice to be maintained, unequals may actually have to be treated unequally. We can understand that those who commit serious crimes against others or the state may lose their right to vote. What I am writing here is nothing more than an elaboration of the general principle.
Universal franchise is a relatively recent phenomena, and may not last much longer. Who should vote? And what does voting do in a mammoth nation-state? It can seem so distant from the real exercise of authority and the actual law-making. I will have to address voting at some other time.
I would note that many so-called conservatives lack any real roots in community. They are have few or thin ties to family, community, and the local Church. They also have no clue what they are doing when they "defend free markets" and the like is to maintain the power of the existing oligarchy. Something's wrong with one's liberal education if after receiving it, one still treats people like Rush Limbaugh as serious conservative intellectuals.
Excessive American mobility, in the name of individual advancement and economic opportunity, is the enemy of community and of justice, and generally works against citizenship instead of enhancing it (in the name of choice).
Conservatism and ReligionWhat is the place of religion (or Christianity) within conservatism? A few years ago,
Heather MacDonald sparked a discussion of whether it is possible for there to be a conservative atheist. I chanced upon this article recently:
Mark C. Henrie,
Opposing Strains (from
Modern Age 44:1, Winter 2002):
In The Conservative Mind (1953) Russell Kirk delineated six “principles” or “canons” of conservative thought. First among these was “belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as consciences.” The life of the political community is not a mere artifact, and human rights and duties cannot be disposed at our convenience; rather, we are responsible to the divine. And this responsibility has public consequences. Kirk went on to argue that conservatives believe “political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems,” and thus, technical or procedural fixes offer no lasting solutions.
In the introduction to his anthology, The Portable Conservative Reader, nearly thirty years later (1982) Kirk again placed a “transcendent” orientation as the first of conservative principles, observing that “conservatives generally believe . . . there exists a transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society.” He contrasted this view with liberal utilitarianism and with a philosophical radicalism that detests “theological postulates” and that attempts to conceptualize human society as just so much matter in motion. For Kirk, any genuinely conservative mind had to it a religious cast, a sense of piety, a concern, as it were, for the rights of God—though he demurred from doctrinal disputes.
More recently, however, Professor Jerry Muller, in a widely reviewed “anthology with an argument” entitled Conservatism (1997), takes a far different tack. Implicitly in his selection of texts and explicitly in his carefully argued introduction, Muller reinterprets the tradition in such a way as to leave little room for any genuinely religious dimension to conservatism “properly understood.” As with religion, so too with the other mytho-poetic elements that many have associated with the conservative mind. All “romantic” nostalgia for “lost causes” championed by such “literary” conservatives as Kirk appears as an aberration to Muller. In contrast to Kirk’s transcendent view, holding first place among Muller’s conservative principles is the prudent defense of existing human institutions based on a profound sense of the limits of reason, an “epistemic modesty” directed equally against grand ideological schemes—and against every form of religious “enthusiasm.” Conservatives, according to Muller, properly hold religion at arm’s length, and they view the prophet and the saint with suspicion.
Edward Feser
responds to Heather MacDonald (One of his responses, at any rate.)
Related:wiki:
Roman citizenship,
CincinnatusWestminster Wisdom: Livy's CincinnatusGoogle Books:
A Companion to the Classical Tradition,
American Republicanism: Roman Ideology in the United States
