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Quote of the Day: An Unjust Law Is No Law at All
Published in Religion & Philosophy
So, your solution is use what power the right wields today to create the machinery to impose your idea of conformity on everyone in the United States – machinery that will be turned against you the instant the Left regains control of our government. And, when they do, you will have no defense because you will have already granted the right of a majority – or of a determined minority – to impose its beliefs on every individual.
Chicken or egg argument.
But, Richard, the Left has been using the courts to impose their ideas about “justice” (listen to Biden and Bernie — it’s all about “justice” — “economic, gender, sexual preference, racial, . . .) for at least a couple generations. You and I may be willing to leave leftists alone, but they will never, never return the favor.
The battle for freedom is never won, but that doesn’t justify abandoning freedom and turning into a mirror image of the Left – clawing for every scrap of power so that we can impose our own brand of conformity on the country.
I also desire limited, local government. The US Constitution as originally understood was a good model for that, though it offered little defense against local tyrannies. And I believe the limitation of powers is more significant than democratic process, which originally served more by impeding the inevitable growth of government than by directing government to good legislation.
Though I want all people to share one understanding of truth (which includes correction of my own errors), and thus desire all people to be Christians of orthodoxy (“right belief”), I do not think government is an appropriate vehicle for conversions.
A society can be both Christian and tolerant of many belief systems. In fact, history suggests that no other belief system is so tolerant as Christianity. We might say the same of Judaism if Israel was not its sole experiment.
Secularism is atheism in disguise. Any government which claims to be indifferent to religion is actually contemptuous of any religion which claims contrary authority on morals.
But selectivity and assimilation have always been conservative ideas: it’s imprudent to allow immigration of large numbers of people with fundamentally incompatible–even hostile–values, and it is essential to demand and facilitate assimilation.
The left, in contrast, has done its best to replace the idea of assimilation with the “salad bowl” metaphor in which nobody is expected to assimilate and indeed in which immigrants are encouraged to despise America and American culture and values.
The Founding Fathers hosted prayers in Congress and legislated the funding of Christian missionaries to the indian tribes. Some early politicians were preachers.
If you think the Constitution was established with an idea of wholly separating politics and religion, as opposed to institutions (such as placing government under the authority of a Catholic or Methodist hierarchy), you are imagining it.
No one is talking about a theocracy such as terrorized Britain, back and forth, for centuries. We don’t want priests to double as politicians. We just want Americans to agree on basic principles and acknowledge that laws inevitably reflect the values of the people who make them.
Locke again!
When people share a common set of values, then there is widespread trust: We know how people will behave (aside from criminals.) But with increasing diversity of values there is decreasing trust because people’s behavior is less predictable. Furthermore, conflicting value systems mean distrust between those groups.
Where did I say that? I believe I said the best we could hope for was divorce, but that’s highly unlikely. I haven’t offered any other solutions.
I’m pessimistic that we can recover the ideals of the founding without a major religious revival. The founders accounted for competing ideas being a part of our constitutional republic (federalism), but they were operating in a predominantly Christian environment where natural law and objective truth were assumed. Where human nature was thought to be imperfect and imperfectible. That framework has been weakened by Darwin’s influence on the secular Left. They’re enamored of the idea of evolving humanity and the “living” constitution. I highly recommend that article linked at The Claremont Review of Books.
The argument isn’t about their validity. In fact, my view of things allows them their ideas in their nation while the ideas I think are better or true exist in my nation without us competing for control over a central government to enact our version on the other.
My point is that the two views can not coexist peaceably without one imputing their belief system on the other through sheer will and control of the government (in democracy, majority).
And you can’t REASON with it, because the assumptions aren’t borne from reason, but moral conviction.
I don’t want to force the left to live “my way”. I want them to occupy their territories and do what they want and I want to be able to retreat to a territory with like minded people where we can run things OUR way. We wouldn’t impose things on them, and they can’t impose things on us.
But still, on the right, exists this idea that does not comport with reason (see Aquinas and Augustine) or observable reality that competing value systems can occupy the same space and time without subjecting those in disagreement to tyranny or devolving the civilization to lawlessness (because what is Just to me is not Just to someone on the left).
It was people seeking what was best for their groups. It’s how humans exist and perpetuate themselves.
It is human nature.
And one tenet of conservatism is to operate within the framework of the human condition to meet out the best chance of success. Not to ignore it or think we can evolve into better, more enlightened Human 2.0
What now?
The just law vs unjust law.
Two groups with fundamental differences on what is just or unjust can not co-exist without devolving into lawlessness or tyranny. Because either (A) both sides ignore unjust laws that are just to the other or (B) one side forces the other to follow their idea of just laws.
The idea on the right is that we can keep bringing in people with different values and beliefs and it will all be ok because our constitution protects us.
But based on the current relationship between the right and left, that is not true.
And you think you’re disagreeing with Augustine and Aquinas on this?
As an aside, Augustine, for some reason those baby blue shelves make your office look more like a pharmacy than a philosopher’s study.
No. I agree with them.
But I don’t know if they addressed a world that tried to mash so many different kinds of people under one governing system while trying to give them all a voice.
Multicultural democracy was a foreign concept to their time. Greece was not multi cultural, but limited democracy to a certain few within city states. Every one else was ruled by kings and the worries of the minorities were not addressed beyond how you treat them – not giving them a voice in the running of your kingdom.
I think that if you agree with Augustine and Aquinas on just law being no law from a philosophical, political theory perspective,
BUT also, in the practical application of your politics, you believe multicultural, fully franchised democratic (more) republic (less) is a good, then you’re political views lack consistency and need resolution.
And I’m not saying that’s the case for the OP.
But I do think there is still a large bit in the conservative right that would uncritically agree with both those political thoughts without ever trying to put them together.
Correct as far as I know!
Ah! Perhaps that is so. I would need some serious time–and caffeine–to think through it.
I don’t think it comes into this passage of Aquinas. But it may be very relevant to other related passages–particularly his account of the common good.
St. Augustine – is that you giving the lesson? Wow – that is a lot to think about, especially in these times. This virus has up-ended everything and now the world is forced to sort out the very things that are described here.
Unfortunately, we’re not just talking about two groups. If we were, Progressives and Conservatives could split the country down the middle, shift populations and live in peaceful co-existence (one would hope). But both the left and the right are riven by countless disagreements and there are also plenty of Americans who don’t fit neatly into the traditional left-right spectrum. What is the limiting principle of your call for secession? When do we stop Balkanizing?
Woodrow Wilson set off something of a firestorm when he grandly declared that all peoples should have the right to self-determination. Here’s a link to a map that shows how Europe would look if all separatists groups got their way.
I provided an example.
But all I hear you saying is that we should persist in fighting for control over a centralized government.
This country was not founded thusly. It was many, smaller governments choosing to work cooperatively.
Keep moving that idea downward and you get closer to my idea.
And Woodrow Wilson is right. There is nothing wrong with that view. What IS wrong is when one group tries to overtake another. And this country was formed to provide peaceful resolution over such disputes.
Regardless, fighting over the central government is not working and leads to constant feelings of existential crisis.
Yes, I am that nerd.
Indeed.
I thought Richard was saying the government should do less and have less power. A Lockean model of protecting rights to life, liberty, and property–and beyond that letting people, and those different groups, manage their own lives.
And it’s a fine idea, until the ends-justify-the-means-Left takes over all means of transmitting ideas (outside of talk radio), including public schools, universities, entertainment media, the Press. . . and then corrupts the various arms of government with the power to enforce its ideas, including the courts, the Intelligence Community, the IRS, . . .
As Bill Whittle might say, the “web of trust” is in tatters. I don’t have a solution, I’m just identifying a problem the founders may not have anticipated — a privileged, protected class with designs on ultimate power and no guiding principles to moderate their behavior. I believe this is the Achilles heel of the American system. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams. I’m not sure Adams and the others imagined the ascendance of secular/atheistic leftism.
Yes. It’s a fine idea, until we abandon it.
Right on, right on.
We haven’t abandoned it, the Left has. And the Left has positioned itself over many decades to the commanding heights of the culture and government. Donald Trump has been chipping away at their power (the courts, for example), but his efforts have been under a barrage of hate and, frankly, fear from the Left. He’s a threat. God bless him and his efforts.
Indeed.
I mean the country no longer sticks with that idea; I don’t mean the people abandoned it, or that the change happened by fair means.
Yet another attempt to devise a rational explanation for Trump’s irrational behavior.
Do we at least agree Trump has done some good with the courts?
Absolutely