More Academics Earning a Paycheck

Really looking forward to chairing a stellar panel on ‘constitutionalism and the common good:classic and contemporary debates’.Some really top class senior and upcoming scholars here - will be great, come see! @Vermeullarmine @michaelpforan @rachaelawalsh @xavierfm3 @SpesScotorum pic.twitter.com/FYitdEfluX

— Conor Casey (@Caseyco231) July 6, 2021

Another Interview with Ahmari

"This liberal absolutism makes it so hard for people to find a sense of communal good," says @SohrabAhmari, on how Solzhenitsyn predicted the rise of Ibram X. Kendi and the like

FULL INTERVIEW: https://t.co/KX7pAArTiQ pic.twitter.com/5McGi5q0qx

— American Moment (@AmMomentOrg) May 17, 2021

McGinley on Danielou's Book on Prayer

Brandon McGinley @brandonmcg and I discuss an interesting/confounding little book by Jean Danielou - it's ahead of its time, before its time, and (irksomely) of its time. Danielou insists that prayer forms a constitutive part of the temporal common good. https://t.co/6GbrVRQYBA

— Catholic Culture Podcasts (@CatholicPods) June 7, 2021

An Attempt to Summarize the Discussion of the Common Good

In the last couple of months, we've seen many discussions around the common good by greats such as @sancrucensis, @yhazony, @SohrabAhmari, @Vermeullarmine, etc.

I tried to summarize them here and give my humble opinion.

Enjoy and share:https://t.co/g8NoHc206q

— Edgar Beltrán ن (@edgarjbb_) April 30, 2021

Which shows how undeveloped it is with respect to the problem of the state.

Taken Down... for Re-Editing?

In case you missed it, here’s the video of the panel with me and Dan Burns on “Catholics and the Political Common Good" at @UofDallas excellent conference on America, Liberalism, and Catholicism. Watch, and share! https://t.co/nSQ4X9cIUu via @YouTube

— Professor Pecknold (@ccpecknold) April 17, 2021

All Statists are "Platonic"

even if they are clerics or Catholic "intellectuals."

Friends, in the political arena, the option for a Platonic rather than an Aristotelian framework has dangerous implications. Any political program that subordinates the individual to collective categories and ideals is dangerous.

Read my latest article: https://t.co/ZRv4SKJ97y

— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) March 16, 2021

A Historian Who Doesn't Understand the Nature of the Current Existential Crisis

@Vermeullarmine @iusetiustitium @SohrabAhmari @PatrickDeneen others have been indispensable for recovering the intellectual framework of the common good, government power, classical law, integralism, etc. and shoeing how far we have strayed under a liberalism.

— University Bookman (@ubookman) January 30, 2021

@Vermeullarmine, @iusetiustitium, @SohrabAhmari, @PatrickDeneen: Thread Reader App

And What Answer Do They Reach?

What is the common? What is unity? Is it possible or desirable to have political unity in a pluralist society? Come join @ChristineEmba @shadihamid & Samuel Kimbriel, moderated by Anne Snyder, with me emceeing, on Tuesday, at 7 pm EST https://t.co/NlEXTYvFjE

— 𝔖𝔲𝔰𝔞𝔫𝔫𝔞𝔥 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔠𝔨 (@suzania) January 23, 2021

T minus 3 minutes https://t.co/kqNF0Uemjt

— 𝔖𝔲𝔰𝔞𝔫𝔫𝔞𝔥 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔠𝔨 (@suzania) January 26, 2021

Let Catholic Higher Ed Burn

Academic "mutual admiration society."

There will be no honest grappling with race issues and identity politics, or the principles of political community, just PC platitudes about racism being bad, etc. Note that there is no session on "What We Owe to Men."

We just posted the full schedule for our Winter Conference (Jan 12–14)! Join us for 3 days of excellent conversation about what it means to “dwell together in unity” and pursue the common good. Details & free registration: https://t.co/4GWv5dJHBD #WinCon21 pic.twitter.com/y0n4pVc5F6

— de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture (@ND_EthicsCenter) January 4, 2021

program

Nature Writing for the Common Good

"The scientist stands before the intricacy of nature and asks ‘how?’. The artist stands before its majesty and breathes ‘wow!’."—Tim Jackson

Our new online collection of essays on nature, ecological challenges and connections between people and places. >> https://t.co/1qFYTwXctM

— CUSP (@CUSP_uk) November 26, 2020

A New Conservatism, A New Right?

The only respectable option for "conservatives": more "civic nationalism," one that recognizes ethnic diversity and populism go together! As if these professional conservatives don't recognize that they don't have the $ or the influence to reform the GOP; rather the GOP will just use them for a cover of populist legitimacy.

.@Vermeullarmine and I along with a few other friends and allies are preparing to unveil a project that will set the agenda for a new conservatism that serves the multiethnic, multiracial working class. Watch this space.

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) November 12, 2020

Progressives are demonstrating how their race-obsessed lens prevents them from even comprehending the emergence of a multi-ethnic, working-class, conservative coalition. But that won't stop it from arriving. My latest on The Commons @AmerCompass. https://t.co/usy1SdPeJo

— Oren Cass (@oren_cass) November 9, 2020

In America’s two-party system, a socially conservative, multiracial, multiethnic, working-class populism will be Republican or it will not be at all. Keeping the party on this trajectory after Trump will be a challenge for the right.https://t.co/1pQV6XIWrF

— Darel E. Paul (@darelmass) November 10, 2020

My latest for @amconmag featuring the insights of @McCormickProf and @CCamosy on the GOP's great opportunity: https://t.co/2Zkc5C6nM5

— Jonathon Van Maren (@JVanMaren) November 12, 2020

It’s Not Your Father’s GOP by Ben Hachten

We must act better than our counterparts on the left. We cannot succumb to the violence and destruction that has plagued our cities for the last several months. We must be above name-calling and petty jabs that tear others down, pollute our own souls, and lead to further division. We must nevertheless resist all of the moral lies of the soft-totalitarian elites, never exchanging our souls for temporary comfort. At the same time, we must reach out to our friends on the left with humility and charity. They are all children of God, and we are all prodigal sons and daughters. Let us embrace them with open arms, just as our Father has done with us.

This is just more bowtie conservatism that doesn't recognize the severity of the political crisis and the real divisions that exist between peoples. In the end it's just a cover for more statist solidarity enforced with a gun.

Related:

As an educational exercise, the National Constitution Center commissioned progressive, libertarian and conservative teams to write constitutions. I had the pleasure of serving on "team conservative" with Michael McConnell, Colleen Sheehan, and Ilan Wurman.https://t.co/ZBjbs2wtNV

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) November 12, 2020

My favorite part of this proposal (from Michael McConnell, @McCormickProf, @ilan_wurman, & Colleen Sheehan) is the oath "to promote the common good and long-term welfare of the nation and not the interests of any party or class."

We should do that.https://t.co/1eelMy5WAW

— William Baude (@WilliamBaude) November 12, 2020

But the Land is for the People, a Community

Not for atomized individuals to claim based on the rights defined by liberal justice

"The idea that #land should be treated from an economic point of view as it if were a commodity that you buy and sell and make money on has to change. Land can’t be treated that way. It has to be treated as a form of #trust, and we have to be stewards of the land."

-Bob Swann

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) November 12, 2020

An Imperial Mindset?

Building an Orthodox Parish by Archpriest Lawrence Farley (originally published at No Other Foundation)

Much of this is good. But I think the last direction is problematic:

Finally, the community must be eschatologically oriented. That is, they must regard themselves not primarily as citizens of this world or as Americans or Canadians or as citizens of any other country, but as citizens of the Kingdom. Patriotism is wonderful, but the good must not be allowed to become the enemy of the best, and the Church stands under the Cross, not under any national flag. To make the flag paramount is idolatry. Through his preaching the priest must encourage his flock to see themselves as sojourners in this age, with their eyes fixed on the horizon to behold the blessed hope of the Second Coming with the cry of “Maranatha!” in their hearts.

Living this out consistently will mean that the society around them will increasingly regard them as aliens, as unwelcome intruders, and as disturbers of the secular status quo. We all know where the front line of this battle is being drawn, and we must not flinch or compromise. Our Lord’s words to the apostles, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19) have lost none of their relevance. The priest must preach and the people must accept that to become an Orthodox Christian is to leave one moral universe and to enter a different one. And they must read the fine print before making this decision—that of inevitable conflict with the world and of possible persecution.

It is true that Christians primary focus is God; but to say they are "citizens" of the Kingdom in this case, as if their political citizenship is not a relevant moral concern, can be misleading. After all, being a member of the people of God, while it does entail "duties" to God and other Christians, also entails that one lives up to one's duties to one's neighbors who may not be Christian but nonetheless are members of the same political community. Christians don't enter a "different moral universe"; their moral universe has been clarified. I say that this may reflect an imperial mindset because it may be similar to the mindset of early Christians living in the Roman Empire. And it is probably even more reflective of how certain non-Western Apostolic Christians in the Anglosphere view things. Perhaps even some Russian Orthodox in Russia think in this way as well. But I think it is incorrect, though there is another error of identifying the state as one's political community, and this must be corrected as well.

Who Will Hold the Power?

The purposes are noble even if badly stated (inalienable human right), but the means are utopian.

We need a system of global governance that recognizes the global commons -- forests, rivers, insects, biodiversity, and soil -- as an inalienable human right. https://t.co/w4lxQXapKc

— Karl Burkart (@greendig) September 17, 2020

"Common Good"

📹 VIDEO | During the General Audience today, #PopeFrancis said the wounds inflicted by the #coronavirus crisis will only be healed if we put the common good first. Read the full story here:https://t.co/KmTWveg6Ps #Catholic #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/B2vjL67XqV

— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) September 9, 2020

press release

Pope Francis’s Call to the Apostolate of Politics https://t.co/lAoqZSaImd

— Rafael de Arízaga (@RafaeldeArizaga) September 10, 2020

My comments:
Lots of Latins making much out of yesterday's Wednesday audience text because the political principle of the common good is used by Pope Francis. When the number of misunderstandings concerning the common good cannot even be resolved by the thick Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (i.e. the patriarchate of Rome), a short presentation by Pope Francis in relation to COVID-19 will be insufficient and may even be dangerous in so far as it is open to misinterpretation and distortion. While the exposition of the common good by Pope Francis (or his ghostwriter) is generally correct with respect to its primary use, it is erroneous in so far as it applies "common good" to different scales of political ordering in an univocal rather than equivocal manner. Such a naive understanding of the "common good" leads to statism even if it is out of "good motives," because the intention and that which is ordered to the end intended are both disordered. As you may be able to tell, to actually unpack those claims would require more than the amount of time allotted for a Wednesday audience. But scale is an issue of which those specializing in Roman Catholic social teaching (i.e. moral theology with respect to political life) are generally ignorant. The tentative nature of RC social teaching should be admitted, but the more this pope makes use of it, the less possible this will become, given the Latin tendency to over-inflate the authority of the bishop of Rome. I suspect the next encyclical will highlight the problems of Latin ecclesiology once again, despite scholastic musings about what makes for ex cathedra teaching (e.g. having the proper formula) and conditions for infallibility.

Religious Art

She is one of the best. https://t.co/7OIHuqFLbP

— 🌪Bo G Bonner🌪 (@RuinUrLifeWell) September 3, 2020

the artist's website
Her religious art is generally quite good, but it wouldn't be considered iconography.

Meritocracy and Liberalism (Michael Sandel)

Meritocracy and its discontents: A book event with Michael J. Sandel | American Enterprise Institute - AEI listening to this now. https://t.co/X48FY7g0ak

— University Bookman (@ubookman) September 3, 2020

The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

Subsidiarity

WHAT STATES CAN'T DO by Andrew Willard Jones

@suzania wrote a critique of Andrew Willard Jones' recent piece on subsidiarity, and you should certainly read it.https://t.co/O0MhqflqdY

— New Polity (@PostliberalTho1) September 1, 2020

Andrew Willard Jones and Marc Barnes respond to Susannah Black @suzania on the question of subsidiarity within the new, postliberal, Christian society.https://t.co/TAeKe5f16X

— New Polity (@PostliberalTho1) September 2, 2020

I'm not going to take the time to cover all of the problems in both essays. With regards to Black's reply: Subsidiarity was always an unsuccessful attempt to deal with the state; authority proper to a political community does not scale up, and organization of political communities requires something other than the unitary state and its centralization of authority which it usurps. If we're going to try to discern political relationships in Genesis, perhaps the first political community, if it were truly self-sufficient with respect to political goods was constituted by Adam and Eve. But the more important political relationship would have been the one existing between Adam and his sons Cain and Abel, not as father and sons, but as political equals. (And I disagree with Filmer and his Patriarcha on this point.) With regards to the reply of Jones and Barnes to Black: While the production of virtue is an end of the political community, it is an end order to the primary end of the political community, which is political life or life in civic friendship. The state cannot produce virtue but it can produce habits in those subject to it. These habits are useful to those who are rule and make a man good for a particular (bad) regime, but not good simply. The family does have a role to play in forming its members in virtue, but because the family is an incomplete society, the formation it offers must be done in conjunction with the formation offered by the political community. The father has a role to play in educating his sons, but other men in that community have roles to play as well, and the goal of that formation is not to erase the inequality that exists between father and son by nature (as "biological" cause and effect) but to elevate the son to the status of a political equal in the case of a republican regime. As for using the mystical language of the Bridegroom and the Bride the Church to explain this, that has its own problems. Just one word on the mystical marriage of the Son and the Church: much of Latin theologizing about the mystical marriage involves imposing of human ideals and norms regarding marriage, and we see how ideas about "equality" and even "complementarity" influence theology. Even when the ministers of the Church are ordered to the ministry of the sacraments, this is not the Church being "given power over the distribution of God's grace" (what a Latin way of thinking about it), but the Church serving the Bridegroom, Christ, to whom She is conformed.

More Liberalism Next Week

This promises to be a great discussion with my good friend @McCormickProf and Yuval Levin, hosted by @AEI. Join us. https://t.co/NAbzaPrpBT

— Rabbi Sacks (@rabbisacks) September 3, 2020

Another Disappointment

Apparently he doesn't really know what the common good is. Being subject to the same state power and having that as the only commonality is not a foundation for the common good or having a common identity. Given the psychologically conditioning imposed on UKers with respect to guns, of course he would respond this way and not only that, think the UK is more civilized. What happened to the free peoples of the UK?

And the citizens shall have the right to bear arms - not against the state - but against the each other - truly rights do not secure the common good https://t.co/SCUFOVBi3D

— Phillip Blond (@Phillip_Blond) August 26, 2020