Anyway, it is really a sad and pathetic commentary on the state of conservatism and the GOP today that one’s reverence or lack thereof for Reagan remains a vital test of acceptability, moreso for the punditocracy than the people themselves, for whom the ex-prez is a fading memory. This Leninesque personality cult certainly befits the style and motives of the ex-Trotskyite cadre that subverted the American Right in the last 30 years or so, but it really has become a debilitating disease that has caused more harm than good for those of us who actually want the size of government reduced, the budget balanced, the Fed reigned in, and the Constitution restored.

The most obvious sign of Gipperitus is the much-lamented “chaos” of the GOP primary taking place now, with no candidate emerging as the “true conservative” (as if that were important as the true constitutionalist, and we know who that is – sigh). This is largely due, in my opinion, to the shadow of Reagan. He was so charismatic that he made everyone forget his flaws and his treachery against their own principles – and everyone who came after him has paled in comparison to his public presence. The GOP has been unable to produce a single individual capable of recapturing even to a small degree what he possessed. The “coalition” of social conservatives, war hawks, and libertarians, which was really more of a universal toadying as opposed to some sort of principled alliance, is shattered. So the whole fraud has unraveled, and the GOP stands exposed as a party of confused, inconsistent, callous hypocrites.

Never mind how the left sees the party; the success of Ron Paul is proof enough that this is how many independents and conservatives see it as well. The real test will come at this year’s convention: will they let him speak? Will they even try to negotiate with him, as Charles Krauthammer has suggested? Or will it be more of the same unbelievable, breathtaking arrogance and condescension?

Let’s take a look at some of his arguments. Right at the beginning, he states:

Capitalists wonder why we distributists oppose capitalism. Distributists, on the other hand, wonder why so many good people continue to support it. I think the problem lies in the fact that there is no consistently held definition of capitalism.

One might think, in the interests of fairness and accuracy, that the definition that people who say they support capitalism use for the word capitalism is relevant. Not so for Cooney, or for any other Distributist I have known for that matter. The links he offers up in attempting to explain it lead to traditionalist anti-capitalist polemics; the definition he offers is more or less guesswork. It’s “what he’s heard”, not even from Wikipedia or some other easily accessible source. One trip to the Mises website might even suffice. Having established what pro-capitalists think capitalism is, a fair and honest critique might ensue, instead of demolition derby in which poorly-constructed arguments supposedly representing the other side are crushed by a monster truck of specious logic and invective.

This isn’t even really the worst part of his opening arguments. Of course, as he says, “the problem” of any failure of two groups to understand one another is based upon a mixing up of definitions, or a lack of clear ones at any rate. We’ve already seen how Cooney himself is contributing to this very problem. It might further be said, however, that there is no consistently held definition of any socio-economic-political system. If you read The Federalist Papers, for instance, you might find a few different definitions of a republic. If you read Marxist literature, you will find different definitions of socialism and communism. And I guarantee you that there isn’t a consistently held definition of Distributism either.

I’m not sure if I am in a position to offer a definition of capitalism that will satisfy everyone. But I have read my share of libertarian-capitalist literature, and I would offer the following: capitalism is what exists when the natural, individual right to private property (recognized and defended by the Catholic Church, I might add) is fully respected by any number of people in a transaction or an arrangement. One might say that this is “the free market” as well; free in that no one is forced to participate against their will, and a market in that an exchange of values is taking place. If I trade my private property freely with you in exchange for something I find useful, then this is capitalism. Cooney and others might argue that his piece states as much. I would say it barely says it, as a sort of mumble, in passing.

The problem with Distributism is the deafening silence on the matter of freedom and coercion. I was amazed when I read Murray Rothbard’s reflections on left-wing syndicalism a while back; I had the same thoughts about Distributism, and you could replace his references to left-wing anarchists and syndicalists with “Distributists”:

The question of whether a future free society will be “co-op” or communal or capitalist brings up the most disturbing problem about the anarcho-syndicalists and communalists. This is the famous “question of Auban” – the question that “Auban,” the individualist anarchist hero of John Henry Mackay’s novel The Anarchists, put to the left-wing anarchists. In essence: would you, in your proposed anarchist society, permit those who so wished to have private property, to engage in free-market transactions, to hire workers in “capitalist” relations, etc.? The communist anarchists in Mackay’s book never answered the question clearly and lucidly, and neither do any left-wing anarchists that one may encounter today. Generally, the left-anarchists reply that, in their utopian society, no one will be so base as to want to indulge in private property or in capitalist social relations. But suppose they do? one persists. The answer is generally either a repeat of the utopian answer or an evasive silence.

I have pressed these questions myself many times, and I have met a similar silence from Distributists. Granted, Cooney’s piece does attempt to give the reader some idea of how much regulation is enough, and at what level it ought to occur – something I’d like to see more of from the Distributist camp. As we will see, though, the real problem becomes this: if the problems that you believe justify regulations are in fact not problems, or if their nature is misunderstood, or if it can be shown at any rate that regulation would not help in the least, will you support regulation in principle, for its own sake? Or will you, as I was forced to do by my own intellectual conscience, abandon this cure for a misdiagnosed illness?

In other words, is this really about the common good? Or is it about the establishment of an ideological regime that must be imposed, regardless of the consequences, because of some inherent goodness it possesses? That is the question I put to Distributists, and to everyone and anyone in fact, who promotes any sort of scheme that involves petitioning a body of armed men to dictate to others what they can and cannot do with their legitimately-acquired private property.

Let us get down to some specifics. Cooney says some things that any free market capitalist would find agreeable. For instance,

We would not have cases like the government setting up regulations that inhibit the ability of small businesses to effectively compete in the market, or actively working against one type of farming in favor of the interests of a big corporation.

So far so good – because such activity clearly benefits a special interest at the expense of the common good. But then he goes on to repeat what, I am sorry to say, is a canard that cannot be fully addressed here:

[T]he ability of corporate interests to use their economic power to manipulate government is bad for society in general. However, corporate interests cannot manipulate the government until they have already become a significant enough economic force to do so.

All libertarians agree with the first sentence. And that alone ought to be enough for both groups to sit down and have a rational discussion. Then we come to the second sentence, which always dashes such prospects; namely, the idea that if there were a purely free market, the winners of the economic competition then claim the once-impartial state as their ultimate prize. They then retain perpetual monopolies and keep everyone else down. So argued Karl Marx, so argue the syndicalists, and so argue the Distributists.

Is there any truth to this at all? Not only does there not appear to be any historical evidence to support this narrative – merely pointing to the confluence of big corporations and the state will not suffice to establish causality! – but in fact the opposite often happens. Case in point: Cooney’s own example that he holds up as some sort of indictment of free market capitalism, Microsoft’s alleged “monopoly.” Like everyone else, he simply takes for granted the government-media complex’s narrative: big bad Microsoft sought unfair advantages over its rivals, and the brave lads at the Justice Department had to step in and fight for economic justice. This of course is complete and total nonsense.

Cooney writes, “the case clearly illustrated how a business can grow to be a monopoly without relying on the government to help it along the way.”  But was Microsoft truly a “monopoly”? Did Microsoft prevent rivals from entering the market? No. Did Microsoft use force or fraud to coerce people into buying their products? No (though Cooney, like most Distributists and agitated leftists, sees in all marketing something illicit – a debate for another time, I suppose). Microsoft just happened to sell more of its product to more people, presumably because the people who bought it found it worthy. But then he writes,

“Any accusations claiming Microsoft uses its economic power to manipulate the government includes an implicit admission that it had to grow into an economic power before it could do so. How did it do this? “Free market” capitalism.”

Who made such accusations? What if such accusations are never made? Never mind that for now. The more pressing issue is this: It wasn’t Microsoft who manipulated the government – it was Microsfot’s rivals. It would take a lot of time to go into all the details of this case, but I strongly suggest reading Dominick Armentano’s Antitrust: The Case for Repeal, which covers this case in some detail. There is no good reason to blindly accept the official narrative of this case. At the very least, inform yourself with facts you may not be aware of, even if you don’t like the source, to form your opinion.

In short, what we really have here is a case in which the losers, and not the winners, of the economic competition lobby the government to take care of them. Has it not been this way throughout history? People who can make a profit meeting the needs of others don’t need government to make them powerful or keep their rivals down – this is the commonest of common sense. Rather those who have failed, for whatever reasons, to meet the needs of consumers as efficiently are the ones who rally for government interference in the economy. History amply demonstrates that.

Thus Cooney’s claim that the government regulators were protecting the interests of the consumer are simply and totally false. The consumer made Microsoft rich, without guns to their heads, and without any sort of fraud I am aware of. He seems to sort of admit that “the free market” made Microsoft rich, even as he accuses Microsoft of wrongdoing. But here he simply conflates “the average citizen”, who benefited by and large from Microsoft’s products, with Microsoft’s jealous, conspiratorial rivals, who were really the only losers in the entire game. Yes, the free market makes efficient producers rich, it makes rational consumers happy, and it ultimately forces the inefficient to adapt or to put their capital or their income somewhere else.

Cooney makes some other statements that I just find incredible. I cannot cover them all, but consider this:

Would all of the economic, industrial and trade problems truly go away simply by getting the government out of the picture? This seemed to be suggested by some commenting to Kevin O’Brien’s recent article, but I don’t believe this position can successfully be argued. After all, some who promote getting the government out of the picture also promote the continued issuing of patents, which effectively become government regulations controlling the use of a technology or idea.

Really? The position, which is held by most if not all libertarian capitalists, can’t be argued because “some” hold a position that most if not all libertarian capitalists reject? This isn’t even an argument. Who cares what “some” promote? Aside from the fact that most if not all actually reject the fraud of intellectual property, the fact that some people hold a view on something can’t possibly be proof that an economic idea would succeed or fail. Cooney goes on to argue and argue from this point as if it really mattered, distorting the entire issue beyond understanding.

Cooney’s real agenda becomes clear as the article draws to a close: the protection of small business. This again is conflated with “the average citizen”, even though there are far more non-business owners than there are business owners. There are far more poor or average-income consumers who benefit from Microsoft and other large producers than there are small business-owners who benefit from consumers being coerced, more or less, to buy their expensive goods. How can the common good be served by an economic agenda – Distributism – that is clearly meant to favor the small business owner at the expense of consumers?

I’m sure I didn’t convince anyone on the other side, but I would like to put it to them one more time: let’s say you were convinced that free market capitalism met the greatest amount of need for the greatest amount of people. Would you still insist that the government make possible a small-business, worker’s-guild utopia for its own sake? Or would you yield to that which would clearly work best for everyone, or at least the vast majority? Let there be silence no more on these questions.

Recent discussions have raised doubts about the plausibility of a pro-life libertarian position. In this post, I will argue that the only conception of libertarianism I find plausible and coherent necessitates a pro-life position.

First, we must define terms. What does it mean to be pro-life, and what does it mean to be a libertarian? I would submit that as with virtually all political ideologies, there are different factions with different conceptions of what it means to adhere to that ideology. Within libertarianism there are generally recognized “right” and “left” factions, and others who do not find these distinctions useful. There are anarchists and minarchists, individualists and collectivists. And there are plenty in each camp that will declare the others not to be “true libertarians.”

Though some may have a problem with resorting to Wikipedia, I’m going to assume that interested libertarians keep tabs on it, and state – for what little it may be worth – that I find the definitions offered here to be consistent with what libertarian literature I have read on my own:

Libertarianism is the advocacy of individual liberty, especially freedom of thought and action.^[1] Roderick T. Long defines libertarianism as “any political position that advocates a radical redistribution of power [either "total or merely substantial"] from the coercive state to voluntary associations of free individuals”, whether “voluntary association” takes the form of the free market or of communal co-operatives.^[2] David Boaz writes that, “Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others” and that, “Libertarians defend each person’s right to life, liberty, and property–rights that people have naturally, before governments are created.”^[3]

On the face of it, I see nothing here that would contradict the pro-life position, which is simply that unborn human beings are worthy of the same defense mentioned here as born human beings. But one of our contributors has raised the following objection, re-stated in a manner I found a bit more understandable by one of our readers in the comment boxes (no offense to the contributor, who acknowledged this as an accurate representation of his views, intended):

[L]ibertarianism has no way of adjudicating between competing claims of rights–in this case [of abortion], the right to property versus the right to life–so that any adjudication of this issue must rely upon extra-libertarian premises. Perhaps the libertarian would say, “Well, the right to life is more basic than the right to property, so in cases where they conflict, the right to life would have to take priority.” But on what basis would he make this determination? (my emphasis)

This is certainly a worthy objection to raise, but I think it contains a crucial flaw: that “adjudication of this issue must rely upon extra-libertarian premises.” As I will show, there are libertarian premises that actually do provide for this very task, but they are not accepted by all libertarians. I would argue that libertarians who cannot accept these premises are the ones who are not “true” libertarians, in fact. Also problematic is the very notion that it is a right to life and a right to property that are in conflict; as I will argue below, this is not the case.

But first: In the definition we see above, there is a key word without which the edifice of libertarianism collapses, choice. To choose is to exercise one’s free will, and to possess free will is to possess an immaterial soul, of which the former is a property; finally, to possess an immaterial soul is to be a creation of God. If choice is an illusion generated only by our lack of knowledge of the multitude of casual factors that determine the outcome of every event – as materialism and determinism posit – then libertarianism is likewise a total illusion.

I reject the notion that there is no connection between metaphysical and political libertarianism. It is no coincidence that those who have rejected God and spirit for matter and determinism from Hobbes to Stalin have also had very little respect for the choices of individuals. If we are not choosers, we are simply compelled hither and thither by external forces. The state becomes one more “force”, usually the overriding one, to push and pull, to shape and to mold. Of course the leaders, from Leviathan to The Party, are always exempt from this unbreakable chain of causality – amazing what “class consciousness” can do.

Thus I would say that not only can there be a “Catholic libertarianism”, but that there can’t be a non-Christian or at least non-theistic libertarianism. Liberty is meaningless without choice; choice is an illusion without the soul; souls in turn are creations of God. We are free because God made us that way, and only because God made us that way. That many libertarians are in fact atheists and agnostics is irrelevant. Like many others in our society, they take for granted the religious and philosophical heritage that produced the ideas and the society that they operate with. Some may content themselves with the notion that free will is a product of animal evolution, but materialist science does not appear to support that claim.

In any case, my pre-political commitments are to God, His Church, and the certainty that I possess a soul and free will, that “I’” really exist because God wants me to exist. To me this not only allows for but necessitates at least a degree of political libertarianism, but it must also stop short of libertinism. Moreover, while not all metaphysical libertarians must totally embrace political libertarianism, I would argue that all political libertarians must embrace metaphysical libertarianism and all that it entails.

To begin with, God did not simply create men with absolute liberty; he established divine and natural laws to which our free will must conform. It is in examining these that the pro-life libertarian position becomes evident, since the very condition for liberty – God’s will – also establishes certain obligations.  First I will turn to John Locke, who is arguably the founder of classical liberalism and libertarianism as we know it.

For Locke, the right to life is a corollary to the natural law of self-preservation, which is stated in the following terms:

“Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind” (Second Treatise, 6)

A natural right is a claim on that which we must possess in order to obey the natural law. Thus we have a right to our own lives (self-ownership), and to private property. We also have a right to charity in extreme circumstances, and to steal as a last resort. (First Treatise, 41) Finally the natural laws, as maintained by Locke, are identical to the will of God. (ST, 135) This is also what Pope Leo XIII says in Immortale Dei. Any law that finds its source in nature has God for its author.

This is what the right to life amounts to: we have a right to life because God values our lives as His property, commands that we take responsibility for them while sojourning on the Earth, and that no one else take ownership or possession of or commit an act of aggression against our bodies and souls.

All other rights follow from this one, either as corollaries (they necessarily follow), or as subsidiary rights (various civil rights). Chief among these corollary rights is the right to private property. Here is Leo XIII, from Rerum Novarum:

The preservation of life is the bounden duty of one and all, and to be wanting therein is a crime. It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live. (44)

[T]he State has for its office to protect natural rights, not to destroy them. (51)

I would also argue that this is not only what Locke also argued in both Treatises, but also what Aquinas argued in his Summa Theologica, when he states that what the needy thief takes becomes his property by reason of his need. Labor, industrious effort, legitimate work, etc. is the normal and ordinary way that a man takes what belongs to everyone in nature and makes it his own; begging or theft are the, shall we say, extraordinary ways that a man does so, under extreme circumstances. In both cases, however, what is appropriated becomes private property.

Now we come to the topic of abortion, which ought to be easier to adjudicate now that we have brought natural law back into the picture as the very reason for natural rights.  The unborn child clearly has a right to the resources required for life, which become his property when used by him. So we see that we are actually not adjudicating between a right to life and a right to property, but rather two claims to the same property; it so happens that one of the parties will die if denied their claim. In my view this automatically makes the unborn child’s claim to property in its mother’s womb stronger than the mother’s claim to that property. She will not likely die, especially given modern medicine, if her womb is occupied, but the child will die if evicted.

But how can the unborn child have a legitimate claim, if the principle of self-ownership excludes the ownership of any other person? As it should be clear, the unborn child does not actually have a claim to its mothers whole person, nor does it have permanent property in the part it does possess. Once the pregnancy is over, no one maintains that the born child retains property rights over his mother’s womb. It so happens that for a period nine months what is required for the life of the unborn child can only be procured through it’s residence in the womb.

I fail to see how his situation is any different than that of the needy thief (again, Locke, the classical liberal, acknowledged his rights as surely as Aquinas did). Radical feminist and pro-choice libertarians who approach the issue from a property rights standpoint do indeed view the child as an intruder, a trespasser and a thief, but this poses no problems for the natural rights libertarian. If a man has a right to steal in order to live, and if what he steals becomes his property, an unborn child would have a similar right, and an even stronger right, to occupy and use the womb of its mother.

In the vast majority of cases, the child is invited into the womb by the freely chosen behavior of the mother. To invite someone into your home on the understanding that he will be using your resources for nine months, and then decide three months in that you don’t like the deal anymore and are going to evict him even if it means his death would be a transgression of the law of nature. The same applies if you carelessly leave the door of your home open to innocent beings that cannot comprehend that a possible consequence of their entrance will be their death. If you don’t want to share your resources with another person, lock your doors.

What about cases of rape? The child wasn’t invited in and he didn’t wander in – he was placed there against his will (in reality he is always there against his will, but not for the purposes of my shoddy analogy). If anything that gives him a stronger claim to his mother’s resources, no matter how traumatic and unjust the means by which he was placed there. The child is not the aggressor or the violator. If a someone invaded your home and left an infant behind, you wouldn’t have a right to kill it, but rather an obligation to care for it until at the very least someone else could do so.

Some may ask: if the right to life, and to that which is needed to sustain it, is a corollary to the law of self-preservation, how can an unborn child or an infant obey a law that it cannot comprehend, not having obtained the use of reason? How can it therefore have a right to property in its mother’s womb?

There is another provision of the natural law that protects the interest of the child, again recognized by both Locke and Leo: the obligation of parents to provide for their offspring. Both declare that children have a natural right to have their parents provide for them. Locke argues that children “have a right to be nourished, and maintained by them, till they are able to provide for themselves.”(ST, 78). Leo argues that “it is a most sacred law of nature that a father should provide food and all necessaries for those whom he has begotten.” (RN, 13)

Though Leo here is referring to the obligation of the father, to suggest that the mother has no similar obligation would be unfounded and obscene. Referencing Aquinas, he goes onto say: “and for the very reason that “the child belongs to the father” it is, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, “before it attains the use of free will, under the power and the charge of its parents.” Thus the law of nature referred to here applies to the mother as well as the father. And it is really just an extension of the first natural law of self-preservation; what the child ultimately has is a right to the property of both of his parents, his father’s labor and his mother’s womb.

None of the foregoing matters, however, if one assumes that the unborn child isn’t a real human being subject to the same natural laws and therefore possessed of the same rights as born human beings. Fortunately we have seen this assumption become less and less pronounced in pro-choice rhetoric, since it is untenable.  The “personhood” diversion changes nothing either, since no one has been able to credibly demonstrate that an unborn child magically becomes a “person” upon exiting its mother’s womb, or even for several years after. Whatever denies “personhood” to a fetus certainly denies it to infants and possibly the mentally ill, all children below the age of reason, the comatose, etc.

What we have also seen more frequently is perhaps a conflict between a mother’s liberty and a child’s right. This often boils down to the obscene notion that what an unborn child “is” at any given moment – a valued member of the human community, or an unwanted parasitic intruder – and consequently, what we can “do” to it at any given moment, depends entirely upon the mother’s subjective and fluctuating wishes. Certainly such nonsense does not follow from libertarian premises; not even they argue that liberty can change fundamental facts.

On the other hand if we really are dealing with conflicting property rights, then we are dealing with conflicting human beings, since all human beings have rights. And once we’ve accepted that, it is hard to argue that the unborn child has the weaker claim or no claim at all in most cases. This is something more and more pro-choicers are coming to understand when they actually think about the issue instead of adopting the insane viewpoint in the previous paragraph, and it’s probably why public opinion is steadily drifting towards the pro-life position.

Read Ron Paul’s book on abortion and liberty! 

You may have noticed that I made my blog private for a couple of weeks. This is because I was doing a bit of soul-searching and spiritual renewal.

It has become clear to me that I need to do two things at this time in my life (well, among other things that aren’t relevant for this blog): 1) I need to focus on my vocation, and 2) make use of the talents God gave me, preferably at the same time.

I have done this partially with this blog, and with much of what I have written over the last few years. But I’ve also gotten involved in a number of topics that I probably didn’t need to be engaged in at the level I was engaged with them at.

Those of you who know what my “position” is on the situation in the Catholic Church can know that it hasn’t changed. I believe now what I came to believe over the last year. But I’ve come to believe a few additional things too, and I want to share them with you.

1) I believe in solidarity and most importantly, charity and fraternity among traditionalist Catholics, even if they don’t believe in it for whatever reasons. Just as there are spectrums in politics and within the very broad tent of Catholics, there are sub-spectrums within traditionalism itself.

2) While I don’t think it is intellectually invalid, I simply can no longer justify on a personal level the practice of “excommunication by implication.” That is to say, refusing communion with other Catholics because they hold belief x, which necessarily implies y and z. I value logic and consistency, quite highly, but they won’t save anyone on their own. Others who aren’t as logical or consistent, on the other hand, have fine qualities and virtues without which a logical person cannot be saved. I need to belong to a community in which all of the people have at least some of the virtues distributed between them. We all need one another.

3) I don’t think I need to be a theologian to figure out what the correct theological positions are – for myself. I never claimed any authority to impose my view on anyone else either, but I did believe that people who did not see what I saw simply weren’t looking hard enough. I’m done with that attitude. There is a bare minimum that I do believe any reasonable person who cares about the Catholic faith must see, but the further beyond this minimum we move, the less certain things become. At the same time, I still think that any traditionalist who speaks of the need to submit to authority needs to be quite certain that they are not applying double-standards, which, unfortunately, they sometimes are.

4) I will spiritually die without the sacraments. Whatever flirtations I had with a “home alone” position are finished. I am also quite through questioning the validity of priest x or y, either because of the views he espouses (i.e. on controversial historical and doctrinal issues that are anything but settled), or because of doubts about his lineage and the rites of ordination. This is spiritually unhealthy, unless there is a clear-cut, obvious reason to doubt someone’s beliefs or lineage (i.e. not what group x has to say about priest y, often with a personal ax to grind).

With all of that said, here’s how it will impact my blogging, and hopefully future writing projects:

1) I am not going to write about theological issues. It isn’t my place. It’s not that I think I can’t, but rather that, at least for now, I shouldn’t.

2) My God-given talent is to take complex ideas and distill them down so that the majority of people can better understand them. My area of study was political science, specifically political philosophy/theory/history. My vocation, aside from being a husband and father, is to teach and write. Put all that in a blender, and I believe my purpose is this:

In these times, I believe that certain religions, and particularly the Church, and even more particularly traditional Catholics will face increasing difficulties. There will be mounting social pressures from the state and from the larger society to conform to certain values and to practice them institutionally. At a certain point we may be facing the prospect of sanctions, imprisonment, and even martyrdom as the price we must pay for adhering to our faith.

My goal, for now, in addition to fulfilling my other duties, is to put my talents, through my vocation, at the service of the Church and her rights. This will be a continuation of my arguments from a Catholic/paleolibertarian perspective, and a Ron Paul campaign supporter. Traditional Catholics must become familiar with political liberty, to understand it, to critique it when necessary, to embrace it when necessary, to be aware of its history within Catholic social thought, and so on. So this will be the aim of my endeavors here on this blog, and hopefully in other venues as well. I am not an uncritical, unthinking, dogmatic libertarian. But I do believe that liberty has a place in the Catholic hierarchy of values that is not well known or well appreciated.

Of course when I must I will defend traditional Catholicism theologically or liturgically or aesthetically. But only when asked, only in response to very specific criticisms, and only if there is no one around better suited to the task.

I’m grateful for the friends I’ve made in almost every traditionalist camp imaginable, from FSSP/Indult-Mass attendees through SSPXers, CMRIers, independent chapel goers, home-aloners, and so on and so forth. I’ve met priests from many of these different groups as well. Everyone is doing what they believe is right, and even the Maccabean resistance fought among itself in the Old Testament. On the divisions between trads, I take no sides. We confess the same faith, we value the same things, and we face the same threats.

So no more aimlessness! I know what I have to do, and I’m going to be doing it much more often. I hope you’ll keep reading.

I have never considered myself an anti-Semite in the sense I always understood this phrase. To me, to be an anti-Semite is to harbor a hatred for Jews as a people, or Judaism as a religion, and since I do not harbor such a hatred, nor do I believe that I advocate any political or social views that would amount to oppression of Jews, I had no reason to think of myself as an anti-Semite.

Defenders of Israel, whether they are Jews themselves, Christian evangelicals, neoconservative hawks, or whatever else, often have a different view. To voice some criticism of Israel, or for America’s unflinching, unreserved support for this state, is often equated with anti-Semitism.

Ron Paul, for instance, is often denigrated as an anti-Semite  because he proposes cutting foreign aid to all countries, and Israel happens to be a recipient – one of many, and never actually singled out by the congressman – of American tax dollars. It wasn’t Ron Paul that made Israel the issue, but rather the pro-Israeli bloc in the government-media complex.

Then there was a rather interesting clip of Glenn Beck explaining to a caller that he is considering supporting Ron Paul in spite of his foreign policy positions, which both Beck and the caller loathed. Again, central to the topic was Israel and its interests. Will Paul be good or bad for Israel? This was the primary concern.

I have Italian friends, I have Irish friends, I have Lebanese family members – not once have I heard a political discussion among them revolve around what would be best for Italy, Ireland or Lebanon. Even if such a topic came up, the interests of our nations of origin never equal, let alone supersede, the interests of the country of which we are all citizens. And yet to hear some of the aforementioned political blocs speak about American electoral politics, you would think that they were all Israeli citizens themselves, and perhaps some of them have that dual citizenship.

If one wishes to make Israel their primary electoral issue, they are free to do so. But to make a candidate’s net positive or negative effect on the perceived interests of Israel a litmus test for public and social acceptability is irrational. That Ron Paul is considered disqualified by large sections of the GOP voting-bloc for his positions on Israel alone is yet another sign that this bloc has lost touch with reality.

The deeper problem is this, though: while I never put much stock in theories that “the Jews control everything” or some variation thereof, one thing has become evident. The range of possible positions that a person can hold on Israel without being considered an anti-Semite has been so narrowed by the government-media complex that anyone who puts the interests of their own nation first will eventually be labeled an anti-Semite. Such political realities do not take shape randomly; they are, at least in part, pushed forward by a conscious agenda.

A deep-seated anti-Semitism among growing sections of the American population, and which is said to exist on both the far-left and far-right in this country, will end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we can’t even have a discussion about whether or not a policy that is good for Israel is also good for the United States, what else can you possibly expect? We are reaching a point in my view at which support for Israel can no longer be expressed in terms of rational self-interest, but rather as a prerequisite to avoiding the anti-Semite label and being allowed to participate in mainstream political discourse.

I for one am prepared to be labeled an anti-Semite. I am a traditional Catholic after all. I do believe that Jews – and everyone else, for that matter, but not that that matters to many – must convert and accept Christ and His Church if they want to be saved. Combine that with my views on foreign policy, which are essentially Ron Paul’s, and I’m sure many would not hesitate to label me as a Jew hater. My response of course is that it is love and not hate that motivates me to pray for the conversion of Jews (and everyone else), and that it is love of country and not hate of Israel that motivates me to put America first.

But I don’t expect too many people to believe that or take it seriously. Call me a cynic.

Since we still live in a nominally free country for the moment, and the 1st amendment still exists, albeit as a fading relic of a bygone era, I am going to use my right to free speech to express why I believe the sovereign nation of Iran should possess a nuclear weapon. Rights are like muscles, people: use them or lose them.

1. Nuclear weapons keep the peace

Nuclear weapons may be the best thing that has happened to the world since the Magna Charta. The presence of massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons in any two nations all but guarantees that they will not engage in a protracted conventional war and all of its attendant horrors. Since the end of World War II, I am fairly certain that no two nations with nuclear stockpiles have gone to war, and it is arguable that a third world war (and possibly a fourth or a fifth) was prevented by their presence. Unlike democratic peace theory, which is demonstrably false and theoretically absurd, nuclear peace theory is based on the simple premise that no conflict is worth escalating when the threat of total or near-total annihilation is a real possibility. Nations will either settle their differences, or fight proxy wars (Korea, Vietnam, etc.). Proxy wars will end when all nations are nuclear armed.

Think I am insane? Nuclear peace theory was developed and championed by one of the most respected political theorists in the field of International Relations, Dr. Kenneth Waltz. You really don’t need a PhD to figure it out, though. It is blind idealism that prevents many on the pacifist left from seeing this, and crass opportunism (see #2 below) that drives many on the right to ignore it. A nuclear Iran may well prevent another war that America cannot afford in terms of blood, treasure, and prestige.

2. Iran has a right to defend itself.

Yes, I know, I am commanded by Fox News and the GOP to believe that Iran is run by insane, irrational men who have no regard for their own lives, and would thus have no problem lobbing a nuke at Israel. Even Democrats must believe a milder version of this, so hath spoken the government-media complex. We are told by Michelle Bachmann, who is quite simply a liar, that President Ahmadinejad has actually declared that he would immediately use a nuclear weapon to attack Israel or the U.S., perhaps the moment it rolled off the production line. I’ll address these claims later; for the sake of argument, assume they are false, and Iran is just a country that dares to have a national interest that may conflict with some interest of ours, or any other nation’s.

As a sovereign nation, Iran has every right to defend itself. The chief reason for a nation to acquire a nuclear weapon is deterrence. In a nuclear world, nations with nuclear weapons can initiate wars against nations without them with relative ease, all other things being equal. Nations without nuclear weapons might be able to initiate wars against other nations without nukes, as Saddam Hussein did in 1991 (though he had been led to believe that US would not oppose this action – I believe he was lured into the invasion of Kuwait, based on historical fact and basic political theory), but they will not be able to attack nations that do possess nuclear weapons or their allies, at least not without great risk and potential annihilation.

Iran has been the target of Western interventionism for decades, first from the UK, and then from the US. It was invaded by Iraq, with the support of the United States, which used biological and chemical weapons against its citizens – weapons developed in Western Europe and the United States. It has seen its leaders overthrown and tyrannies installed to secure Western interests in the region. To deny this not only makes one factually and historically incorrect, but immorally dishonest. Therefore it is reasonable to expect that Iran would want to acquire a weapon that would deter another nation from trying to invade it, or pressure it into accepting terms on any number of issues that would go against its national interest. It would be nice if Americans could have an honest debate as to what the ramifications of a nuclear Iran would mean for geopolitics; instead we have psychotic lies about Iran’s unalterable and self-destructive irrationally crammed down our throats every day by the government-media complex.

3. There is no good reason to assume that Iran is fundamentally irrational

The entire case for conflict with Iran that is made to the American people – as distinct from what elites know and frankly discuss among themselves – is that Iran is run by a madman who cannot be deterred from using nuclear weapons to wipe out Israel and possibly even an American city just to make a point. This madman is rational enough to not simply send all of his conventional forces over the border to conquer his neighbors, or even over to much hated Israel. Somehow he knows that won’t work. As soon as he gets his hands on a nuclear weapon, however, he will immediately use one, throwing all caution to the wind.

One argument I have heard is that Iran itself may not use the nuclear weapon; it may give one secretly to Hezbollah or some other terrorist group, and then claim some sort of plausible deniability. But this argument also fails. If Iran develops a nuclear weapon that we actually know about, and Tel Aviv suddenly goes up in a mushroom cloud, everyone would know where it came from. If Iran develops a nuclear weapon in secret, however, we would have absolutely no justification for going to war or punishing Iran in any way.  In short, we cannot prevent Iran, or any nation, from secretly developing and deploying a nuclear weapon by any just or rational means. If we wanted to absolutely sure that Iran could never harm anyone, we would have to pre-emptively destroy the entire nation. I think we’ve been through this before, and most Americans seem to believe that it was a mistake. I am among those who also believe that it was immoral on its face, and a crime against humanity for which Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and all of their associates should be arrested and tried.

Then there are the quotes. Supposedly President Ahmadinejad has said that he will “wipe Israel off the map”, which we always hear about in conjunction with this alleged Holocaust-denial. The simple fact of the matter is that he never said it. If you research the issue for two minutes, you will see that he was not well-translated, and that what he said was that the government in Israel ought to be replaced. He was speaking of “regime change” in a sense, or even something as simple as the Likud Party (the war party in Israel) being voted out by the Israeli citizens themselves. He was most certainly not declaring his intent to use nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. People who continue to promote this lie are endangering the stability of the entire planet and the lives of countless millions, and they absolutely disgust me.

As for Holocaust-denial, all I have seen on this is that he posed a hypothetical: if the Holocaust really happened, why wasn’t a part of Germany, which was the offending country after all, set aside for the Jews? Why did they have to expropriate the Arabs living in Palestine, a process which continues to this day through the expansion of settlements? In my view, these are entirely reasonable questions, and again I am disgusted that I live in a country in which even raising these simple questions of human justice are met with such enraged anathemas, and in which an entire people – the Palestinian Arabs – are quite literally demonized, as if they are beings that originate in the pits of hell by the command of Satan himself.

4. The American Empire is arguably more dangerous

When I consider how this government – this empire – denies rational interests and puts forward a self-narrative of psychotic narcissism as its justification for everything that it does, I consider that it may be a greater threat to the stability and prosperity of the world than any other, certainly moreso than Iran. Mitt Romney’s recent remarks about America’s divine destiny are no less disturbing than anything Ahmadinejad has said.

As a traditional Catholic, I do not believe that any nation is “destined by God” to rule and lead the world. Rather, nations are obliged to follow the same moral laws as individuals, or at least an equivalent such as just war theory, developed by Catholic theologians over many centuries.

The leadership of the United States, both Republican and Democrat (don’t you dare be fooled into thinking that the Democrats are not a part of this), has been captured by an ideology that many call “neo-conservatism”, which in my view is chiefly defined by the belief that military force can and should be used to a) maintain American hegemony in the world and b) spread American/Western culture, politics, etc. in an attempt to make the world more uniform. In the pursuit of these goals, all notions of just war theory have gone out the window. They have been replaced by the narrative that America is fundamentally and inherently good, and therefore all that emanates from it is good. In other words, America is defined as God, and is incapable of injustice or wrongdoing. All dissent is defined as evil. To the extent that a nuclear Iran disrupts this insanity, I support it.

Perhaps now you will understand why I believe the medieval era was the ideal epoch in human history, for it was the Papal check on the sovereign that reminded all men that there are powers higher than man to which man must be accountable. Without this check, human ambition will lead to the destruction of the entire planet. God’s ultimate judgment upon this nation and this planet is simply this: to let us become what we would become without truly answering to Him.

The commentary I have seen recently has been truly astounding, though not really surprising. Ron Paul supporters have trudged through years of indifference, skepticism and mockery about their candidate. Now that respectable sources give him a heavy chance of winning Iowa, the narrative has begun to change a bit, from he can’t win to he must not win. Of course we fully expect that the old canards will be amplified and retooled for maximum effect: Ron Paul is unelectable, Ron Paul’s foreign policy is – in spite of its concurrence with what the founding fathers said about the topic – unpatriotic and un-American, Ron Paul wrote racist newsletters, and so on.

More interesting things are also being said. The political class is not simply focusing its fire on Ron Paul and his supporters, but on the people of Iowa as well. I’ve read a few articles declaring that a  Ron Paul victory in Iowa would mean absolutely nothing for Ron Paul (who can’t win even if God Himself endorsed him, remember), but that it would mean that the entire primary system is flawed, perhaps beyond all hope of repair. Iowa, and New Hampshire should it dare to follow along, would no longer be considered accurate measures of the electorate as a whole. The primaries would no longer have any value.

What implications might be drawn from this, I haven’t fully considered – perhaps David Frum, Michael Gerson, and Charles Krauthammer will form a sort of troika to determine who the GOP nominee will be in 2016. Perhaps Rush Limbaugh will bring forth a sword and tap some lucky neocon on each shoulder with it, dubbing him conservative America’s official choice for Emperor. Maybe we can just get it over with and have Israel nominate the GOP candidate. Lord knows that they can’t seem to find a candidate who meets the basic criteria most people seem to hold for sanity, respectability, consistency, integrity, or linguistic coherence. Someone will simply have to be appointed.

The test of our republican form of government will really begin when the gulf between the political class and the rest of the population can no longer be concealed. The Ron Paul revolution is an entirely peaceful one, occurring through the ballot box, spreading by the force of its ideas and their appeal to growing segments of the population. A Ron Paul victory in Iowa may have the effect of convincing those on the fence that he has a serious shot at going all the way to the nomination, and this is what the political class fears more than anything else. Should Ron Paul dare to succeed, they will no longer be able to cloak their utter contempt for and disgust with the vast majority of the American people. The commentary on Iowa is only a preview of what would follow.

One might think, though, that at least some of them would be pragmatic enough to pick the winning team, or serve as some sort of loyal opposition. This might occur, but I would count more on opposition being bitter, thorough, and as destructive as possible. Ron Paul will be demonized. His supporters will be called traitors to America, a fifth column of dissent and possibly terrorism. This already happens routinely, in fact, but it will simply be intensified as Paul’s success continues.

What we certainly will not see from the Frums and Limbaughs is any sort of critical self-reflection. In modern America, the rise of almost any candidate is usually nothing more than the sum of the failures of all other candidates. We are extremely negative about politics and are apt to pick the least terrible candidate. While Ron Paul, like Obama, is able to garner a much more loyal and dedicated following than an empty suit like Romney, on the whole the American people are looking for the least terrible candidate. This would be a great time for the GOP establishment to reflect on how utterly abysmal its candidates have been since the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. But it won’t. It will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, smashing its own nose with a sledgehammer to spite its face.

All I can say to the mainstream Republican politican/pundit is this: you should have been paying attention. While you were sleeping, the American people began taking all of that “limited government” talk seriously. And the more seriously they took it, the more serious Ron Paul looked to them, and the more phony and hypocritical you looked. How long did you think you could talk about limiting government without actually doing it?

You’re about to find out, it seems.

I’ve been hearing a lot about Tim Tebow recently. I tried not to care, but the controversy surrounding this young man was too inflamed and passionate to simply ignore. So here’s my two cents.

I remember when the Tebow pro-life ad was the hot topic of discussion a few years ago. I thought it was a great idea at the time, and I still do: abortion is pure evil, unjustifiable evil, and should be denounced and exposed as often as our resources permit. While the left wins battle after battle in the culture war, this is one front on which they have been successfully opposed and worn-down. No one wants to defend abortion anymore. There is almost no passion left in the pro-baby murdering camp. The killing continues of course, but we may well see the demise of federally-protected abortion “rights” in our time.

Now Tebow is gathering attention because he prays in public. During games. As an apparent “thank you” to the Almighty for a successful pass or something along those lines – to be honest, I don’t really know, because I don’t watch sports.

Combined with all of the other work he does for charity, his clean and healthy lifestyle, and his athletic accomplishments, Tebow’s faith was bound to draw a great deal of envy, hatred, and ridicule. The reasons for this will vary, but they are all irrelevant: there is absolutely no good reason whatsoever to dislike this young man, none at all. You couldn’t ask for a better citizen, even if some think he could be a better ball player.

Of course, he’s some sort of Protestant, so I could criticize his theological views, but if I did, it wouldn’t be out of hate, but rather love. Tebow is someone I would love to see embrace the true Catholic faith, and I will be praying for it. Maybe the Protestants can take Newt back.

The bottom line, of course, is this: anyone who tries to be good, and especially if they do so in the name of God, must be attacked and harassed by a society of degenerate scumbags. Tebow simply reveals, especially to the middle to upper-middle classes, the extent to which they are complete moral failures. It reminds me of stories I have heard about labor unions punishing workers who work too hard, who perform a little too well. As soon as one person pokes his head up, expectations upon everyone else rise. Risen expectations create anxieties and fears for some. For others, they make it harder to remain lazy and corrupt. A high performer at anything will make the mediocrities and total failures cringe with bitterness and resentment. It is as true with social class as it is with moral character. Tebow’s success is like a thousand-watt lightbulb going off in a densely packed, filth ridden, rat infested sewer.

It of course must be said that if he were rolling out a prayer mat and bowing to the east at some point during the football game, half the people who ridicule him now would be silent out of abject terror of offending a protected minority, and the other half would be praising religious diversity, sensitivity, and calling him brave, courageous, etc. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

Likewise, if he were a non-white expressing Christianity, I don’t think the ridicule would be nearly as severe, if it ever came up at all. Which brings us to the second, deeper layer of this phenomenon: I think most people in this society cannot imagine why a successful white male (who isn’t a recovering alcoholic or running for public office) would profess faith in God or need Him for anything at all. White liberals can see in the faith of “persecuted minorities” all sorts of noble responses to alleged oppression and injustice, even if they trivialize those religious experiences and subsume them into “culture”; even many of the jaded, cynical atheists can be a little more understanding in some of these cases.

But it’s both barrels blazing at Tebow. What does he need God for? In the leftist narrative, he practically is a god. He is a member of the white heterosexual capitalist patriarchy, and a professional athlete with earning potential in the tens of millions on top of that. He is a colossus bestriding the Earth; every white liberal/atheist loser knows that if he were in Tebow’s place, he would act as if he really were some kind of deity.

Instead they’re confronted with the absolute spectacle of a successful young white male proclaiming his reliance upon God and wanting to share generously with those around him, and who doesn’t appear to revel much in all that the typical pro athlete may revel in – wine, women, song, and all of that. Tebow has the keys to the kingdom, that is, the Earthly hedonistic paradise that is the true heaven of the know-it-alls, and he’s not opening the door. How infuriating! The nerve!

Educational fun fact:

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.” — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

What am I talking about? Well, I’m talking about College Humor’s “Facebook History of the World.” Upfront I will say that this is really a funny concept. The problem is that it is put together by pretentious young liberals who think they understand religion and human history.

Thus I was not really surprised to see appalling historical ignorance, moral idiocy, and a character masquerading as “common sense” that really ought to be named “arrogant projection of modern liberal sensibilities onto all of human history.” If you’ve read this, you may know what part I am referring to by now. So here is my re-write.

Byzantine Empire: Help! The Muslims are coming!

Common Sense: Yikes. That sounds… not PC.

Informed Common Sense: Um… who cares if it’s PC or not? They’re slaughtering thousands their citizens and attacking Christians everywhere. Don’t you think that warrants some response? No? Really? Well, at least you can finally admit, modern liberal (oh I’m sorry – you like to be called “common sense”) that the Crusades were a response to something, instead of just something that was cooked up by Christians one day for an excuse to steal people’s land. That’s… kinda progress. I think.

Pope Urban II: all true Christians must go fight against the Muslims to protect Christianity.

Common Sense: doesn’t that seem a little… extreme? Islam isn’t THAT different from christianity. if this is a land thing, or a racist thing, don’t shroud it in false piety.

Informed Common Sense: Awww crap. Just when I thought we were getting somewhere with you, modern – er, common sense! A land thing? A racist thing? Do you have any evidence to substantiate that?

Common Sense: Well, not exactly, but -

Informed Common Sense: But what? It just has to be that, right? Why would Christians in the West care at all about Christians in the East? It’s not like we have this thing called a universal Church, of which we are all members (despite the schism, which at that time could have been healed much more easily than it can be now). No, I guess the West should just leave the East to be totally conquered. That makes sense.

After, all, we wouldn’t want to be “extreme.” It’s not like going to war has been the normal course of things that all peoples and cultures have engaged in from time immemorial. No, here, for a reason that is actually understandable and legitimate, it would be “extreme.” Right, of course, no, that makes so much sense. Screw the East. Let ‘em rot.

And you are so right about that Islam not being that different than Christianity thing too! I mean, what a brilliant, insightful statement that makes this entire war pointless. It isn’t like Islam has had from the beginning a mandate to spread by the sword, or that according to previous FB history entries that you’ve scanned here – such as the Battle of Tours – Muslims have been trying to conquer Western Europe for the last 400 years. No, this is all because Western Christians think differently about God than Muslims, and because white people think tan people are icky.

21st century History Professor: That’s right!

Informed Common Sense: Sigh.

To learn more about what I think about the Crusades, read this.

A couple of days ago I came across an article titled “Would Jesus Join the Occupy Protests?” The author, a Rev. Howard Bess, answers unequivocally “yes.” In fact, he engages in a bit of liberation theology-style revisionism, completely ripping away any spiritual significance of Christ’s message and remaking Him into a 1st century Che Guevara whose true identity has been suppressed by the eeeeeeevil Church for around 2000 years.

Almost everything Bess claims is either false or ridiculous. It is also futile, given that these sorts of messages have just never really gone over well with revolutionary left in the Western world – Latin America may be a different story, I can grant. In the end, Bess will either have to admit he was wrong or apostatize (if there is anything left of his faith, and this is doubtful); the left wants no true believers in Christ, only in the power of the  violent mob, the vanguard party, and eventually the supreme leader.

After some reflections upon a rather dubious association between the civil rights movement, Bess indicates that it is now secular young people doing the work that “Jesus of Nazareth would urge us to do.” Cutting through the junk, here is the first supporting argument:

Today, Christian theologians and Bible scholars agree that the Jesus trip to Jerusalem at the end of his life is essential to understand what Jesus was about. Yet, Christian tradition has brainwashed followers of Jesus about the realities of his trip south to Jerusalem. We have all been exposed to the worship services in which children march waving palm branches and singing “Hosanna.”

Traditionally we have called the event “the triumphal entry.” However, put into the political and social context of Jerusalem in the early first century BCE, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was probably more like a protest march that mocked every leader in the city.

Political and religious “leaders” of the day probably would have ridden into town on a prancing horse, certainly not a humble donkey. So, Jesus’s choice of transportation was more street theatre than triumphal entry. It triggered a week of confrontations and arguments with the leaders of state and Temple.

Of course, what “theologians and Bible scholars”, usually better known as atheists, say about this matter is something I couldn’t care less about. Unless they are coming to me insisting that some word or phrase that has been translated one way actually means something else and can prove it, everything else they have to offer is nothing but their pretentious opinion. If ever there was a field of “science” in which the subjective values and naked desires of its practitioners were forced upon the subject matter and pawned off as “scientific analysis”, it is so-called Biblical criticism.

Next, consider the implications of the claim that “Christian tradition has brainwashed us.” The “Christian tradition” is what gave us the very Scriptures that Bess is attempting to use to justify his radical politics. So how can anything in them be trusted at all, if it is the product of people who lie to everyone? This is why it is easier to just shut up and join the CPUSA already. There is no Scripture without Tradition.

That said, I don’t need any tradition at all to debunk most of the garbage Bess serves out here, since none of it is supported sola scriptura either. Notice the word “probably”; it appears twice. And from “probably” we move directly to “Jesus’s choice of transportation was more street theatre than triumphal entry”, that is, to an assumed fact. Now, throw in words like “context”, and you’ve got a nice sleight-of-hand there.

Is this a possible or “probable” interpretation of Christ’s actions? Frankly, I don’t know. My inclination is to say no, it isn’t, because I don’t think Christ was attempting to mock anyone. Even Bess has to say that the choice of donkey is “humble”, and generally a display of humility doesn’t lend itself to the sort of bitter mockery of public officials we all like to engage in (myself included, for what it’s worth). I see it as one more statement against worldliness; the fickle masses are expecting a great warrior king to liberate them, and Christ presents them instead with a message of spiritual liberation. To emphasize this point, he does not ride in like a conquering hero on a warhorse, but rather on the simple donkey.

Now we come to the part of the story that liberation theologians such as Bess can never get enough of:

The key event of the week was the incident in the Temple. Once again church tradition has given us a special name for the incident, “the cleansing of the Temple.” But It was more likely another piece of street theatre that became a bit physical.

Again, the word choice is so very interesting. Of course we see the word “likely” again, because there simply isn’t a shred of proof to substantiate any of this. But even more amazing is the phrase “the key event of the week.” This is the week that begins with Palm Sunday and ends with the arrest, trial, torture and execution of Christ upon the cross. And yet the cleansing of the Temple is the key event of the entire week for Bess.

Of course, for Bess this had absolutely nothing at all to do with the sanctity of the Temple and its defilement by everyday commerce. No, he will give us “the context” once again: the Temple was basically making usurous loans to poor Israelites. Jesus’ sole reason for coming to Jerusalem was to put a stop to this entire system of banking, by chasing everyone out with a whip in a fit of rage. Why he decided to stick around afterward may be incomprehensible to us, but not for Bess:

Christians believe that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the whole world. However, from the perspective of history, Jesus died because he challenged a banking system that passed itself off as being righteous.

There simply is no spiritual reality (or the least bit of intellectual integrity) for Bess or those who believe as he does. They are already hardcore dialectical materialists, and the only way they can continue to pretend being Christians is to ignore anywhere from 95-99% of what Jesus actually said and did. Not only that, but if liberating the people from predatory lending was Christ’s sole mission in life, he did a pretty horrible job of it. As an emphatic statement of the priority of the spiritual over the base material compulsions of man, the cleansing of the Temple is an amazing moment; as some sort of daring attempt to free the people from material oppression, it was probably less effective than what the OWS kids are doing.

Which is probably why, in the end, the violent mob chose Barabbas over Christ. I mean, I have no doubts as to whom Bess would choose.

Now, what did Jesus actually teach?

Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matt. 6:31-33)

Could the message be more clear? Much of what Christ taught was related to the salvation of humanity from the dominion of the devil. One has to posit that everything He said on these topics was either made up (in which case there would be little reason to believe the rest of it), or really of no consequence (in which case he was speaking about meaningless nonsense). Lord, liar or lunatic still applies here. Che Jesus simply makes no sense at all.

With that said, I don’t doubt in the least that the materialism on the right is just as worthy of condemnation from a Christian point of view as the materialism on the left. Much of what Christ says is an indictment of our consumer culture, in which the reckless pursuit of pleasure has left millions spiritually shattered and broken. Dependence upon God for anything is an insult to many on the left and the right

Unlike socialism, however, which posits in the final analysis that life is not worth living unless everyone has a basic level of material comfort, capitalism does not force anyone to do anything. One can own private property and use it for good, or for evil. One can make money and use it for good, or for evil. The words of Pope Leo XIII are well worth repeating here, in closing:

As for riches and the other things which men call good and desirable, whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them-so far as eternal happiness is concerned – it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them aright — Rerum Novarum, 21