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Excellent thoughts, Mr. Cella. Your remembering my obscure Anglican essay on this occassion is a humbling surprise.
Assuming ignorance rather than malice, it is appalling beyond words to think that an educated man gets away with comparing the saintly Charles I to a beast like Saddam Hussein - a beast who is himself a creation of "democracy".
The refusal of such men to distinguish between the grand tradition of Christian monarchy (however flawed) and the sordid history of modern secular states almost makes one despair...
Conservative historians are imperfect too. I do like the revisionist histories that have been sprouting for the past 70 years, beginning, in my view, with Belloc.
Arthur Herman's comparison and linkage seem nothing more than an epistemological exercise. It's like comparing Hegel and thermodynamics. Though they don't have much in common, the exercise of comparing them brings out some interest facts and history. Both comparisons make good narrative starting points.
“All political authority requires the consent of the people.” Has anyone heard of the US Supreme Court? California Proposition 187? Louisiana’s voted-upon recent constitutional amendment against gay marriage, struck down?
This is more a theory than tragic reality. If there is one thing we should have learned in the history of Man, this is it: Elites rule in every age. It is just that people sometimes get angry with elites and occasionally overthrow them, only to be replaced by another elite – hopefully better, but not necessarily.
Rule without elites is an oxymoron. The attempts to achieve it have led to such manifestations of human wickedness as the French Revolution, the Cultural Revolution, and the Khmer Rouge.
The best one can expect from democracy (and it is a very good best) is that democracy will establish political incentives for the elite to rule benignly. Such a democracy cannot be a pure democracy. The U.S. Constitution remains an inspired if imperfect model for limited democracy.
We have good reason to condemn our present elites, particularly over their decisions on questions like abortion and religious tolerance. If we can persuade our fellow citizens that this condemnation is just, it is still in their power to remove these elites.
Kent:
True. The biggest flaw of democracy (and our particular version of it) is that it requires a rather virtuous citizenry to work well, and the current state of our society provides few short-term incentives for being virtuous.
c matt:
Every form of government requires virtue to work well. The peculiar advantage of democracy is that it requires the mass of the people, rather than the elite, to be the ones with the virtue.
Why do I call this an advantage? A virtuous elite is almost a contradiction in terms, given the human susceptibility to pride - the root of all sin. It is remarkable that the elite of post-Revolutionary America, who framed the Constitution, were as virtuous as they were. One is tempted to call it a miracle.
I do not claim that the mass of the people are automatically virtuous. A people lacking in religiosity are almost certain to be lacking in virtue. (The reverse does not follow, of course.) As a member of a religious minority, I have a hard time feeling very warm about establishments of religion, but the need for religion in public life - if we can find a workable pluralistic basis for it - should be obvious to any person of conservative inclination.
IRAQ: WELCOME GENERATION-CHOICEMAKER !
Man is earth's Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by nature
and nature's God a creature of Choice - and of Criteria.
Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and definitive characteristic
is, and of Right ought to be, the natural foundation of
his environments, institutions, and respectful relations
to his fellow-man. Thus, he is oriented to a Freedom
whose roots are in the Order of the universe.
See the complete article at Homesite:
"Human Defined: Earth's Choicemaker"
http://www.choicemaker.net/
the need for religion in public life - if we can find a workable pluralistic basis for it - should be obvious to any person of conservative inclination.
The framers' solution (First Amendment) seemed a rather workable basis until it was twisted to essentially ban, rather than plurally allow, religious expression in the public square. It seems the original solution was to maintain the public square as an open market on religious ideas - it has now become a closed economy, allowing none for public display (except atheism).
I agree except for one quibble. The First Amendment forbade Congress to make a national establishment of religion or pass any law prohibit the free exercise thereof. This did not affect any establishment of religion by the states until the legal doctrine of incorporation (via the 14th Amendment) took hold. But by then religious pluralism was already the custom and sentiment of many Americans. Of course, this did not prevent some ugly episodes, such as the forced closure of Catholic schools in Oregon, or the disenfranchisement by test oath of Mormons who merely believed in polygamy without actually practicing it.
It is difficult today to imagine a President leading his people in prayer on a momentous occasion, as FDR did on the morning of June 6, 1944. We are reduced to singing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps and hoping the ACLU doesn't choose to make an issue of it.
Quibble duly noted and agreed.
Nothing in the history or wording of the 14th Amendment supports the view of incorporation. Incorporation is a tyranny. Interested folks are directed to Government By Judiciary by the liberal, Raoul Berger. I rather think that it was not Charles the 1st but rather Charles II-we must be careful not to accept Whiggish histories anymore than would would official Soviet ones.
I agree that the doctrine of incorporation does not arise from a reasonable reading of the 14th Amendment. It comes by way of an unreasonable and self-serving reading of the 14th Amendment by influential members of the judiciary.
However, I doubt there is any significant popular sentiment for overturning the doctrine of incorporation. If it's tyranny, it's tyranny of the majority, the most problematic to reason against and the most difficult to defeat.
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