On Political Authority
Is it not true that, in expounding your criticisms, in effect you undermine the political regime and thereby impiously foster anarchy?
Your question is actually three questions: 1) By speaking thus, is one undermining the political regime? 2) Is one thereby fostering anarchy? 3) Is one thereby acting impiously?
I
With regard to the first question, the answer is No. The reasons are as follows.
To undermine a regime, there must first exist a regime to be undermined. Stated otherwise, the question posed is actually a question begged. In the final analysis, this is not an inquiry about whether or not Catholics should support the existing political authority or abide by presumably just laws. Rather this is an inquiry into whether or not political authority exists in the first place.
To answer such a question one must ask, “What is political authority?” To answer this one must further ask, “What is politics?”
In the first book of The Laws, Plato offers a definition of such: “Politics is the art whose business is the care of souls.” This is correct, and yet it requires further precision. Aristotle later provides such. In both his Nichomachean Ethics as well as in his Politics, Aristotle notes that the political art is architectonic. The latter is a word derived from the Greek arche (“principle or ruler”) and the Greek techne (“art”). The denotation is obvious: The political art is master or ruler of all other arts, crafts, sciences and activities within the polity. To be sure, this art does not dictate what truths geometry, for example, will consider or establish. In this sense the political art is not a master. Yet to the extent the political art determines whether or not someone will actually study or pursue geometry (or other sciences and arts), and to the extent it determines when, and to what extent, someone should do so…to this extent the political art is master, is Architectonic.
But by what standard or measure (one might ask) is this art to determine such things? Is not such a determination simply arbitrary?
Again, the answer is No. Granted, the exercise of the political art clearly presupposes the exercise of the will or arbitrium. Yet this fact alone does not render its activity arbitrary. And why? Because the political will itself is determined by reason. Reason, however, is determined by nature. It is determined by the nature of Man and, more specifically still, by the End or telos proper to man qua man, proper to man-as-man.
But what is the nature of Man? That of a rational animal. Wherein, then, lies the perfection of man qua man? In the attainment of that which perfects his rational nature. Nota bene: the end proper to man-as-man lies in the perfection of his rational nature. It lies in the perfection of his rationality; and this because rationality or reason constitutes the specific difference separating or defining man from all else. Rationality is that which makes man Man.[1.]
What does Aristotle call the end or perfection of this rational nature? Happiness. And what is Happiness? “The active exercise of the soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue or, if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best or most perfect among them.”[2.] Wherein lies this “best and most perfect” of exercises? Posed otherwise, what is the highest and therefore happiest activity of that rational creature we call man? It is the activity of contemplating the Absolute, which Absolute men variously call God, the Good or the Supreme Truth.[3.]
At this point one must note the following. Aristotle quite rightly indicates that men do not enter the polity for the sake of living merely. Rather they enter it for the sake of living well. But man is said to live well when he lives happily. But happiness (for the human) does not consist in mere fulfillment of generically animal desires. Such is not, strictly speaking, human happiness. Such is, at best, a kind of animal pleasure. At worst it is a kind of bestial indulgence. Alternatively the happiness proper to man qua man, qua rational, is the state wherein the rational desires are fulfilled. Hence to distinguish this rational state from the aforementioned animal or sensual state, this happiness – or rather the fruit thereof – is called not pleasure but joy.
This fulfillment or happiness proper to man is completed in contemplation of the supreme Truth. In this regard one must note the obvious: for whatever reasons many if not most men will not achieve the complete happiness of the contemplative act. However from this it does not follow that most men are without hope of sharing in genuinely human happiness. Quite the contrary. In his Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle demonstrates how the political art strives to move all men to their highest activity in the degree to which they are capable. Hence in proportion to the level of this highest activity’s achievement will be the level of happiness among the citizenry. Further, in this life many men may never achieve the full activity of the intellectual virtues requisite for the contemplative life. Nevertheless, Aristotle shows how men may still enjoy a large measure of such when their passions and opinions conform to, and are rightly ordered by, the laws or dictates of reason. And as already noted, these laws or dictates are themselves determined by the highest rational end or telos. In sum: men will be happy as men to the degree they possess the virtues moral and intellectual.
The acquisition of such virtues presupposes a faculty capable of striving for and achieving them. This faculty is called natural liberty. Of all the varied animals possessing differing faculties, man alone possesses this particular one. Man alone possesses natural liberty because natural liberty is founded in reason itself. Yet insofar as this natural liberty has not yet acquired the perfections of the moral and intellectual virtues, and insofar as it has not been shaped and formed thereby, to this extent this faculty of natural liberty is imperfect. When perfected, however, this faculty acquires another name: moral liberty. Hence moral liberty is a condition or quality of the human soul consequent to acquiring or living in accordance with the moral and intellectual dictates of reason. And because reason itself is determined or ruled by its own end – truth – to this extent men will only be happy as men, and will only possess the freedom proper to men, when they possess or live according to the demands of truth: “And the truth shall set you free.”
Hence natural liberty stands to moral liberty as the imperfect to the perfect. More generally, natural liberty stands to moral liberty as potency to act.[4.]
This much is confirmed by men of good will and thoughtful habit: nothing is both active and passive in the same respect and at the same time. This first law of the speculative intellect (the law of non-contradiction) applies to man and his faculties no less than to anything else. Whence follows that, if the natural liberty of man stands to moral liberty in the relation of potency to act, to this degree the “un-formed” man requires the aid of the “formed” man.
Strictly speaking: if he is to achieve the happiness proper to man qua man, the individual must be led thereto by the instrumentality of an external agent who himself possesses the form of virtue. In the natural political order this external agent is called the statesman or legislator; and the art by which the latter reduces the potency of men to the perfection of full act is called the political art.
From this it follows that the political art is not something purely conventional. Still less is it something purely arbitrary. Rather it is – properly and precisely understood – something quite natural. It arises from the very nature of man. It addresses the very needs of such a nature. And it – the political art – is itself governed by that wherein man’s nature achieves its proper end. It is governed by the demands of Truth and Truth Alone.
♣
At this point further elaboration of the political art is in order. “Any art,” writes St. Thomas Aquinas, “seems to be nothing more than an ordination of reason in such a manner that human actions may arrive at a given end by way of determinate means.”[5.] Three aspects of this Thomistic elaboration bear emphasis. 1) Art is an ordination of reason. 2) Art seeks to bring human actions to a given End. 3) Art achieves this given End through determinate means.
These aspects or qualities pertain likewise to the specifically political art. To wit:
1) The political art must be an art whose ordination is derived from reason. Its proper application must therefore not be determined by what is apart from reason. In other words its proper application prescinds from the influence or taint or accommodation of passion.
2) The political art must strive to bring human actions to a given End. This End, as already noted, is the perfection of the moral and intellectual virtues requisite for happiness. No other ends – save only as they are subordinate or intermediatory to the cultivation and achievement of these virtues, are ends proper to the political art. Stated otherwise: if other ends usurp the place of virtue-as-telos, such ends will not strictly speaking be political. Nor, strictly speaking, will that art which seeks to procure them be political – save perhaps in name only.
3) The political art must seek to cultivate virtue by determinate means. The means employed by the political art will be the laws, customs and mores – together with appropriate rewards and punishments – which the political art fosters or prescribes. Doubtless these means must provide for the material well-being of the community. Such well-being is a necessary condition for the formation of virtue. Nevertheless such provisions will always be viewed as ancillary to achieving the proper end of law, namely, the right ordering of the sentiments, passions, opinions and reasonings of the citizenry.
From the above one perceives that the notion or ratio of the political art is the notion or ratio of an architectonic enterprise. It is an enterprise consciously seeking, through determinate means, to achieve a given end. It is an art seeking to render the potentially good man actually good. This is but another way of saying the political art, properly speaking, strives to render man actually (i.e., morally) free by first making him actually (i.e., morally) good. In this regard the political art begins its undertakings with the following axiom ever in mind:
No man can be truly free who is not also truly good; the good man and the free man are one.
♣
From this it is manifest that men do not enter the polity simply to preserve their natural liberty. Rather they enter, or are born into, or remain in a polity in order to achieve the perfection of their natural liberty. And the achievement of this perfection of natural liberty is denominated by a still more specific name: moral liberty.
In consequence of this fact: Political authority or government is not – pace modern theorists – is not (we repeat) a necessary evil. It is instead an absolutely necessary and indeed essential good.
More emphatically: If man enters or remains within the political community not for the sake of living merely but for the sake of living well; and if to live well means to live according to the end or telos of reason; and if the end or telos of reason is apprehension or knowledge of the Truth; and if the latter – as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and countless others opine – is “something Divine”; and if, finally, “we become like that which we know”[6.]… it follows that in a very real respect Man – whether consciously or subconsciously – enters or remains within the political community for the sake of becoming Divine.
♣
Does this mean that the political artist must also be a supreme metaphysician? No. Yet the political artist must accept as true the principles and truths presented to him by the latter. He must, moreover, accept them as actually existent and objectively knowable, and strive with all his might to bring those in his charge to submit to (by moral virtue), if not apprehend (by intellectual virtue), these truths. Finally, if the Absolute should condescend – as He has done – to reveal Himself more fully to man and thereby to refine man’s understanding of the rational telos, then it is according to this more perfect understanding that the political artist must strive to form all men. To do otherwise would be to act contrary to the demands of reason itself.
From what has been said thus far we may conclude as follows. Remove any of the aforementioned determinations of the political art; remove architectonic power; remove acknowledgement of objective truth; remove the conscious attempt to bring men efficiently, and through the determinate means of the laws, to this truth; remove the primary intention of forming men morally and intellectually; remove the distinction between natural and moral liberty; remove the distinction that only the good man is the free man; remove the understanding that men enter society not to guarantee but rather to achieve their human freedom – remove all or any one of these, and one will thereby destroy the very ratio of the political art.
II
Bearing the above conclusions in mind, we are now in a position to answer the first of the questions we posed: By speaking thus does one undermine the political regime? The answer is No. The reason, most broadly speaking, is that there does not exist a political regime to be undermined. Put otherwise, this is a political regime by predication only.
To see this more clearly, we must understand the following. Strictly speaking, the art employed in the present regime does not fall under the ratio of the political art. There are several reasons for this.
Only in an equivocal sense is this art architectonic. It does not presume to order all other arts, crafts, sciences and activities within the society. True, it will order them in the sense that it regulates their activities with a view to subduing the violence of faction. Yet it will not, and indeed cannot, order them with a view toward leading those engaged therin toward the end proper to the human animal: virtue. To see that this is so, one need only review those papers granted to the legislative branch. A perusal of Article I, section 8 of the Constitution shows that the powers granted the legislator are essentially the following: the power to regulate money and taxation; the power to regulate naturalization; the power to regulate the post-offices; the power to establish inferior courts; the power to provide for, and wage, war; the power to establish the District of Columbia; and, finally, the power “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.”
Nowhere, we must note, is there granted anything like those powers necessary to lead men to the properly human end called virtue. Now it goes without saying that the above-enumerated powers are indeed necessary for such a task. No thoughtful man would think otherwise. Yet while such powers are necessary, they are not sufficient. To insist otherwise, to argue that the power to lead men to virtue, and to do so not accidentally but determinately, i.e., to argue that the legislator may justify his actions by publicly insisting that leading men to virtue is his primary intention, is to argue that there is such a power to do so either hidden or implicit in these others. And yet such a reading contradicts the explicit language of articles IX and X in the Bill of Rights: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In a word, no such power has been delegated to the government. Hence no constitutional law can lead men to virtue essentially, but only accidentally. And yet, as we have already seen, the conscious leading of men to virtue is paramount in the political art.
Moreover, there is no acknowledgement of objective truth as the telos guiding the political art. It is true that the Preamble employs such fine words as Union, Justice, Tranquility, Welfare and the Blessings of Liberty. Yet what does it mean by these words? Do we not see here an equivocation, or, at the very least, a manifest begging of the question? For example, what is the real nature of the Union? Is it not that of an essentially military and economic alliance such as that described by Aristotle in Book III, chapter ix, of his Politics? Indeed, the Federalist Papers themselves testify that such is indeed the case. In Number 15 thereof, we find that the only difference distinguishing a commercial and military alliance on the one hand, and the American government on the other, is that the powers residing in the latter extend beyond the compacting States to reach the individuals themselves: “…we must resolve to incorporate into our plan those ingredients which may be considered as forming the characteristic difference between a league and a government; we must extend the authority of the Union to the persons of the citizens, – the only proper objects of the government.”[7.] And yet, as pointed out above, the powers enjoyed by this authority are no more than those elaborated in Article I, Section 8; and such powers are insufficient for attaining the end of the political art.
To put a finer point on this: according to the opinion expressed in The Federalist, the distinction between a military and economic alliance on one hand, and the constitutional government on the other, is a distinction purely quantitative. The authority reaches further, but is not different in kind – is not qualitatively different – from that of a mere alliance. And yet an alliance, however extensive its powers, is not strictly speaking a government.
♣
Let us take another phrase of the Preamble. The people of the United States form a more perfect union for the sake of “securing the Blessings of Liberty.” Throughout the Federalist Papers, moreover, as well as throughout the writings of contemporaries, there is found a manifest understanding that government exists for the sake of protecting the liberties or rights which the people have not consigned to the government. Examples of such could be quoted virtually ad nauseam.
Now, let us ask ourselves: Can one have blessings of liberty in need of protection if one does not already have liberty itself? Can one seek to protect the liberty of the individuals if they are not already free? And yet what kind of freedom can this be? Moral liberty? If this is so, then we are saying the people already possess moral liberty; and this is tantamount to saying they already possess rightly-ordered wills. They are already good. And yet if they are already good, for what reason, pray tell, would legislators strive to incorporate more “factions,” more “parties,” and this in order that their mutual opposition may ensure public tranquility?[8.] Do good men need to be divided from each other? Are not good men of one mind? – at least on the principles which determine moral goodness – and therefore friends of one another? Are good men “ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious”?[9.]
Our point should be obvious. Good men do not need to be divided from one another. Yet there is such a division, a quite open and consciously taken division. There is a division of powers, a division of states, a division of factions, of parties, of people. Therefore, the liberty which these men are so determined to preserve cannot be that liberty which men call moral liberty. It cannot be that liberty which has reached a degree of moral perfection. Hence if it is liberty, it must be natural liberty.[10.]
But natural liberty stands to moral liberty as potency to act. Hence, insofar as the liberty enjoyed by the people is essentially natural liberty, the people are in principle, at least, in a state of potency with respect to the good of human nature. Hence they are in need of another, of the political artist, the legislator, the ruler. And yet, the people themselves are manifestly the ruler, for their representatives in the legislative are precisely that – representatives. They are there to re-present the sentiments and views of their constituents. In this sense representatives are not rulers, but ruled. As for the people themselves, they become both ruler and ruled, and in the same respect. The interposition of representatives, of “other selves” like the interposition of additional terms in a circular argument, cannot remove the fundamental contradiction: by the very terms of the Constitution, the American people become both ruler and ruled, and in the same respect. This is manifest contradiction.
One may attempt to avoid this by insisting that the representatives are not representatives but genuine rulers. Yet if this is so, universal suffrage effectively removes the power to rule. For insofar as the notion of the ruler is a relative one, i.e., one implying a ruled; and insofar as these latter relative notions imply the further relative notions of superior and inferior; and insofar as the notion of universal suffrage implies the veto by the inferior of the legal prescriptions of the superior; it follows that here, too, we find the polity involved in a practical and theoretical violation of the law of non-contradiction. The superior, who should rule the inferior, is instead ruled thereby. The ruler becomes the ruled, the ruled the ruler.
At this point a passage from Aristotle’s Politics is illuminating. “Of the forms of government in which one rules, we call that which regards the common interests, kingship or royalty; that in which more than one, but not many, rule, aristocracy; and it is so called, either because the rulers are the best men, or because they have at heart the best interests of the state and of the citizens. But when the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name – constitution. And there is a reason for this use of language. One man or a few may excel in virtue; but as the number increases it becomes more difficult for them to attain perfection in every kind of virtue, though they may in military virtue, for this is found in the masses. Hence in a constitutional government the fighting men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens“[11.]
Let us not the obvious. For Aristotle, the rule of the many is not what we today call universal suffrage. What he calls the rule of the many would still be viewed, at least in the minds of our contemporaries, as the rule of the few, the “fighting few” as it were.[12.] That the rule of the many be actually the rule of the fighting few, however, is necessary, for the political art of ruling requires the rule of the virtuous in order that others may be led to virtue. It requires that the form of virtue be present in the ruler. And because virtue is a thing not found in the whole of the multitude, but only in a part thereof, the “rule of the many” means something completely different for Aristotle than it does for modern man.
♣
We have noted that there is neither explicit nor implicit acknowledgement of a binding, objective truth; however, the latter may be understood. In noting this, are we saying that any constitution must explicitly acknowledge such? No. But it must at least implicitly acknowledge it, and do so in a way which strives to preclude equivocation. And yet, even were the acknowledgement of such an objective truth to be found in the Constitution, the efficacy of such truth would demand the powers necessary to bring men to conform themselves to it. And yet such powers are non-existent.
The reason for this absence becomes manifest when examining such writings as Federalis No. 10 and Federalist No. 37. “From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.” In other words, the sentiments and views of men, i.e., their feelings, opinions and knowledge, suffer from the influence of their relation to private property.That this judgement implies an essentially Lockean notion, or subjectivist understanding, of the human psyche – replete with a kind of “environmental determinism” – Federalist 37 confirms. More than half thereof is an elaboration of what amounts to an empiricist account of perception, language, the mind and the world. And yet such an account cannot be reconciled with the ratio of the political art, which ratio demands objective truth as the final cause of its activity.
To continue: We have noted that the political art presupposes the intention of first and foremost forming men morally and intellectually, and that this in turn presupposes a clear understand of the difference between natural liberty and moral liberty. Yet from what has been said above, and from what will be shown later in this work, we see that such an intention and understanding are not present in what we call the American regime. The Founding Fathers insist that all men are equally free, yet they simultaneously insist that all men are not equally good. This can only mean, at most, that all men are free naturally, but not morally. In brief, the Founders’ words betray what is at best an equivocal usage of language. Yet equivocation is the accomplice of intellectual error, and intellectual error the mistress of moral error – sin.
Further, in his Politics, Aristotle writes that “the state or political community …aims at the good in a greater degree than any other [community], and at the highest good” (I, i). He contends that “the final cause and end of a thing is the best” (I, ii). He remarks that the distinction between ruler and ruled is not a difference of degree, but of kind, and that this difference results from the presence or privation of a certain kind of virtue (I, xiii). He proclaims that the cure of public disorders is to be found in the cultivation of moderation, temperance, and a philosophic disposition (II, viii). He refers to “another error, equally great, into which [men] have fallen. Although they truly thing that the goods for which men contend are to be acquired by virtue rather than by vice, “they err in supposing that these goods are to be preferred to the virtue which gains them” (II, ix). He reasons that “whenever the chiefs of the state deem anything honorable, the other citizens are sure to follow their example” (II, xi). He opines that because of these and other reasons, “it is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition” (II, v). He anticipates, and disapproves, the Social Compact understanding of man, or, put otherwise, the notion that men are naturally independent and would not enter the polity were they secure in their persons and properties: “…man is by nature a political animal. And therefore, men, even when they do not require one another’s help, desire to live together” (III, v). Finally, as a consequence, he offers a further reflection which should be of particular interest to ourselves:
“But a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only: if life only were the object, slaves and brute animals might form a state, but they cannot, for they have no share in happiness or in a life of free choice. Nor does a state exist for the sake of alliance and security from injustice, nor yet for the sake of exchange and mutual intercourse; for then the Tyrrhenians and the Carthaginians, and all who have commercial treaties with one another would be citizens of one state.
Whereas, those who care for good government take into consideration virtue and vice in states. Whence it may be further inferred that virtue must be the care of a state which is truly so called, and not merely enjoys the name: for without this end the community becomes a mere alliance which differs only in place from alliances of which the members live apart; and law is only a convention, “a surety to one another of justice,” as the sophist Lycophron says, and has no real power to make the citizens good and just.” [13].
♣
We will not pause here to dwell on all of the considerations which arise from contrasting the Aristotelian notion of politics with that of the American Founding Fathers. Such is in large part the work of the coming chapters. We will note only the following.
The Founding Fathers state that “the first object of government” is the protection of property and the faculties capable of acquiring such a thing; in so doing they clearly aim not at the highest but at a lesser good.[14]. They beg the question of what constitutes the final cause and end of human happiness. In so doing they beg the question of what is the highest and most directive of human truths, and thereby they beg the question of what are the properly human virtues, both moral and intellectual. They leave the determination of the latter to the private individual’s own resources, and thereby leave it, in effect, to the determinatioin of those who are themselves undetermined. In other words, the Founding Fathers leave such considerations not to the mindful direction of the political art, but rather to mindless direction of chance. The founders believe the distinction between ruler and ruled is a matter of degree, not of kind. In so doing they follow the teaching of their Enlightenment masters, leaving – at least in principle – the cultivation of moderation, temperance, and the philosophic disposition to the gropings and accidents of private judgement. (Granted, these things have been regulated, but only insofar as they touch upon the protection of property and freedom from violence, not insofar as they bear directly upon education in virtue itself as the final end or cause. And even the attempts to justify such regulations, by citing dangers to persons and property, have almost all fallen before the constitutional trumpeting of “equal rights.”) The founders establish a society in which men, following the example of their representatives, are easily led to suppose that material goods are to be preferred to the virtue which gains them.[15]. They limit the power of government to the primary concerns of money, commerce, and defense. Yet given the historic mistrust of standing armies and the haphazard training of local militias, the cultivation of courage has been a changeful enterprise at best. It has been allowed to lapse with the accidental circumstances of immediate threat to the security of the nation from foreign attack. Matters of money and commerce, on the other hand, are with us always and everywhere. Hence the “chiefs of state [seem] to deem these more honorable [than virtue for its own sake]; and the citizens are sure to follow their example,” as indeed they have. By promoting the number of factions, moreover, and by encouraging the counteracting of private ambition with still more private ambition, and by seeking to balance religious sects with still other, implicitly antithetical religious sects,[16] the founders show they do not think it is “the special business of the legislator…to create in men [a] benevolent disposition.” (Or, if they do, they have a strange way of fostering unity by encouraging disunity.[17]) The founders believe, and clearly state, that theirs is a Social Compact [18], and they hold that men are naturally independent and, were their safety and possessions secure, would not necessarily seek to enter the political community.[19] Finally, the founders confess that theirs is the creation of an alliance, one differing from others in respect only of the extent or reach of the supreme power.[20]
This list of contraries could go on and on. But the point should be obvious. The founders do not treat of politics as an architectonic art; they do not acknowledge objective truth; they do not consciously attempt to bring men efficiently, and through the determinate means of laws, to this truth; they do not distinguish between natural and moral liberty as found in the people; they do not accept the principle that only the good man is the free man; they do not believe that men enter society to achieve their moral liberty; and they do not subscribe to the notion that the difference between ruler and ruled is a difference in kind, rather than degree. In a word, they do not participate in, nor do they rightly employ, that art which falls under the ratio of the political.
Do we maintain that this defective product of art is immoral? No: but we do maintain it is amoral. In sum, we argue that what such men have created is not, properly speaking, something political, and this despite whatever name we may choose to give it. For this reason one does not undermine the political regime when he questions its principles and practices. There is simply no political regime to be undermined.
III
From this the answer to the second and third questions become manifest. In posing the questions we pose, neither do we act in a manner which is impious, nor do we encourage that which is anarchical.
We do not act impiously because, while it is true we should respect the wisdom of our predecessors, this does not excuse submission to their errors. As G.K. Chesterton once pointed out, we may indeed insist, “My country, right or wrong.” But this is no different from saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”
Still less are we justified in continuing to revere as a political masterpiece that which is at most a brilliantly constructed economic and military alliance. Do we deny the good the founders have done? No, we praise it. Do we deny they were men far superior to those who followed them? No, we acknowledge it. But we also do more: we ask why still greater men did not follow. For if the founders produced a political regime superior to anything which had preceded, would it not ex hypothesi have produced men who were at least not inferior to their predecessors? And yet it has not [21]. Quite the contrary. As some of the many quotations below will bear witness, virtually from the inception of the new Constitution men were noting a marked decline in the manners, mores, customs and law-abidingness of the citizenry. As for the manners, mores, customs and law-abidingness of our own contemporaries, we let the facts speak for themselves.
Of course, one may avoid these unpleasantries by simply ignoring Aristotle’s understanding of the political art. One may insist that the art of governing should leave considerations of virtue and vice and truth to the individual. One may insist the political art should content itself with providing material needs or conditions of human happiness. Thus the government would strive to keep us warm, healthy, housed, fed and free from physical violence to ourselves and our properties. This is, of course, exactly what our government has done and continues to do. But will we dare to call this enterprise “political”? Are we not re-defining the art, making it something which is at best economics? Are we not, then, begging the questions of human nature and human happiness? Are we not allowing human nature, imperfect and fallen as it is, to remain, as it were, unsupported? And are we not thereby committing the political equivalent of a sin of omission, and thereby condemning, in effect, the mass of men to an inescapable plummet into a moral and psychological abyss? “Very well, then, suppose we are: does it really matter?” For the sake of argument, let our interlocutor have it the way he will. We only ask one question in return, and content to let the thoughtful reader ponder it at his own leisure: How will such an “art” and its application – if defined in this new way and according to the “new science of politics” – how will such an “art” we ask again, differ from the art and application which we see exercised by the conscientious owner of a dog kennel?
IV
To bring to a close this discussion of piety and anarchy, we end with the following consideration. Piety is, strictly speaking, a term signifying man’s proper attitude toward the divine. Now, if it is true that the divine is Truth itself; and if it is also true that this Truth is the ultimate end of our rational nature; then the very demands of both this Truth and our own nature require of us that we continue to ask what is good and what is true. This is all the more the case with political questions, at least where such questions are provoked by the manifest failure of the political art to achieve that fro which it has been employed.
In sum, we insist that no good and thoughtful man can defend the legitimacy of the present regime. It murders the youngest and most innocent through the crime of abortion; it threatens the lives and souls of its youths be legitimizing and fostering the crimes of sodomy and fornication; it exploits its older men and women by ensnaring them in what the Holy Father has condemned as “a structure of sin,” a capitalistic structure which universally sanctions the sin of usury, and everywhere dehumanizes these same men and women by allowing and, indeed, rationalizing the monstrous psychological effects of Smithian industrial production [22]. At last, this enterprise has now reached the logical limit of its principles and practice: it is on the verge of justifying the murder of our very parents and grandparents by legalizing what is euphemistically called “euthanasia”. Now, virtually no class, and no age-group of the citizenry, can escape. Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, was right. Ours has become “a culture of death.” No man – if he is truly a man – can defend things as they are. The regime – if it ever existed, and we have argued that it never did – has destroyed the sine qua non of its justification. It has countenanced the exploitation, damnation, and murder of the very lives to whose care it has been entrusted.
So, again, the only question which remains to the good and thoughtful man is, Why? This is a truly philosophic question. It is therefore a truly human question. To ask such a question is not to encourage anarchy, but rather to strive to stem it. Let us face reality. This is only the beginning, so it seems, and already anarchy surrounds us. Law is now simply no more than the rule of force. Peace is but another name for a lull between battles. The mass of men “live lives of quiet desperation,” and virtually all openly or covertly hate one another. To ask why all this came about is simply to seek a cure. We cannot successfully seek a cure if we continue to beg the question of what is the ultimate cause of the disease. This asking of why, then, is the only way in which we can have any hope – humanly speaking – of restoring some measure of sanity [23].
Finally, if it is true that to have charity is to will the good of another; and if this other is a rational creature whose proper food is truth; then it is also true that charity itself demands we seek and speak the truth, and this however much pleasant or unpleasant, in season or out of season. This is true piety. This is true politics. This is the demand of reason. This is the demand of Christ.
Shadowed Walls: Notes from the American Cave 