Dear *******,
How’s law school treating you? It’s not too bad once you get used to it, eh? Time management for the most part. I have had the pleasure of meeting both Kmiec and Starr. Both great guys. Don’t let Kmiec sell you on that Protestant Reformation was a terrible mistake thing; his arguments on those issues are horribly weak when analyzed.
We are at a place in history where the Protestants have pretty much given up the practice of law and the study of jurisprudence. Fine Catholic scholars like Kmiec, McConnell, and Scalia have filled the hole left behind in the liberal Protestant exodus. But still, our ideas are the ones that have made the country great and established a new standard of personal freedom and responsibility, under law. Absolute monarchy, the divine right of kings, aristocracy, and a centralized church-state could never compete with that, as long as the personal ethics of the people were sufficient to counter the tendency toward social chaos with the application personal integrity.
Communitarianism is also no replacement for traditional constitutional civics. That a community has standards says nothing about whether or not the standards are good or evil. The common good is a relativistic Aristotelian standard that only works out well if it is applied to an already existing Christian context for the interpretation of the common good. That’s why a political liberal loves the idea of the common good. They think it is a standard in and of itself apart from an ultimate good or some standard for truth apart from or higher than the opinion of “the people”.
For a traditional conservative, we could care less about “states rights”, (the position of Jefferson and the pro-slavery south until and after the civil war) or erroneous conceptions of what the common good might be that carry inherent concessions to Marxist ideology.
The two sides were always, do the states have rights in and of themselves that are absolute and depend ultimately upon the will of the people? Or are even the rights of states and the people within those states, as those that vest their rights in their elected representatives, under a higher law that neither men nor states have the right to violate? The first is the view of the South under Jefferson and the French ideology of the voice of man as the voice of God. The second, is the view of the North under Lincoln and the Christian idea of all men as free under the moral laws of God. Everyone has to choose. The first are Democrats. The second are Republicans. Both have a “place” for God but the Democrats think they have his proxy.
That God has created all men equal and endowed them with inalienable rights that correspond to His eternal moral laws is our bread and butter, and if men’s individual Libertarian or group based Communitarian theories of policy are against His moral laws then all the worse for theory in the face of theology. This is why Libertarianism is not much more Christian than Socialism; some, but not much. The freedom of the individual is not God’s highest priority. It is that he freely does good. Freedom for freedom’s sake is a farce. It has no meaning.
Well this little note has grown beyond any reasonable explanation.
All the best,
Neiswonger
Neiswonger
Doug
Josh Hicks
Clay
Wormwood goes to law school?
And if Sotomayor makes it, it’s 6 Roman Catholics… (there are two Jews). Where are the Protestants?
Jefferson is interesting. Supported the “voice of man as the voice of God,” and still gave us our “bread and butter.”
Comment by RevK — May 31, 2009 @ 11:16 pm |
“The first is the view of the South under Jefferson and the French ideology of the voice of man as the voice of God. The second, is the view of the North under Lincoln and the Christian idea of all men as free under the moral laws of God.”
This is an overly simplistic or perhaps outright false statement. Since Lincoln supported nothing of the sort and Southerners were not what you say that they are. Southerners much more embodied Christian ordered liberty, even in their fallen and inconsistent practice (i.e. slavery) than Lincoln did.
Have you read DiLorenzo on Lincoln…he was an anti-christ…the man of lawlessness. If his ideals…total government, pro-slavery, white supremacy and ignoring the Constitution are Christian…then I am not one of those. Traditional conservatives, like myself, would be never want to be associated with Lincoln the Tyrant. Conversely, true conservatives are more libertarian than Republican (as in the party)…government restricted to its divinely appointed limits: protecting life, punishing evil under the rule of law…bearing not the sword in vain. Even anarcho-capitalism libertarianism is closer to pre-Saul Israel under the judges: law and courts and nothing else.
Comment by Will-I-Am — July 3, 2009 @ 8:50 am |
The “view of the South”, whatever that means, cannot be fairly characterized as the government (states or super-states) deriving their authority from the will of the people. On the other hand, like with Moses in ancient times, individual leaders derive their post as leader by the will of the people precisely because the Law of God says that such is the method for choosing them. Individuals, their leaders and the states all gain their rights, power and legitimacy through divine law. So, there is a sense in which it is the rights of the people that give their representatives the power of the state to enforce said rights; or else the state and representatives serve no purpose at all. It is just when the state through its agents, turns against or fails to vindicate the divinely given rights of individuals that states lose their legitimacy and should be lawfully resisted. One legal way is secession.
In the context of the separate states under the Constitutional Compact, they were in a sense legal persons in an agreement to form a Union. In that sense, the sovereignty of the States gave legitimacy to the Union…not the other way around. When people are talking about “states rights” they are talking about spheres of sovereignty. The Union’s sphere of powers are derivative from the agreement arranged by the individual sovereign states(nations). Since the Constitution says nothing about secession and all its powers are derivative from the Separate States original agreement…the right to exit the agreement is strongly implied. Hence the War of Northern Aggression. That’s not anarchy or humanism…its simply an example of a contract that has lost its use…more so today than a 140 years ago. All the more powerful is the idea that the Union, once it breaches the agreement by violating the terms, has left the States with no remedy but secession.
Comment by Will-I-Am — July 3, 2009 @ 9:31 am |