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Another week, another dismal article in The New Republic (a former magazine) to beat up. We promise not to make a habit of this, lest TNR get an anti-stalking injunction, but this week's TNR howler, "Originalism Is Dead; Long Live Catholic Natural Law," is so stupid that we had to smack it around as another stepping stone to our ongoing conversation about constitutional originalism. Key question: if Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Jefferson were placed in the same room together, would they understand and agree with each other? The left, mired in historicism, thinks not. Harry Jaffa knew better.
Speaking of Harry, I did look up the quote I paraphrased (badly) in last week's episode on his 1991 warning that the end of the Cold War was going to make the left more dangerous. The full article is here, and here's the concluding paragraph:
The defeat of communism in the USSR and its satellite empires by no means assures its defeat in the world. Indeed, the release of the West from its conflict with the East emancipates utopian communism at home from the suspicion of it affinity with an external enemy. The struggle for the preservation of western civilization has entered a new—and perhaps far more deadly and dangerous—phase.
But along the way, we also get in a pillow fight, take in some reviews of Kosher whisky (!!), wonder why Iranians are illegally crossing over our southern border, and the wonky and obscure clue this week that demonstrates how radical the Biden Administration intends to be. So in other words, something for everybody!
Hosted by Steve Hayward, with guest "Lucretia"
Discussion (6)
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My brother-in-law grew up as a Chicago democrat. I remember 10 or 15 years ago he would joke about the Republican Party worrying about socialism in the Democrat party. The implication was, he wasn't like that and it was completely over blown. Then last election he had Bernie and Elizabeth Warren signs in his yard.
Talking to him, I think people on the left just reflexively want to support any collective action the left comes up with no matter what. They don't care if it comes from the top or the bottom but they just really get off on that. They think it has to work because they just believe in central planning and more and more non-public goods. If everybody has the right attitude and pulls together it will work. That's the way he thinks.
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Thanks for the podcast. The discussion of natural law is great. I have heard it said that Protestants may have a harder time then Catholics in battling the secular culture because they do not have natural law in their toolkit (so to speak). The Church spent about 1500 years working on and articulating the creed, philosophy, theology (including dealing with the rise of Islam) before the Protestants came along. The Protestants have, so to speak, piggybacked on the all that work. Without natural law and other parts of philosophy and theology, will the Protestants be able to hold off their secularization by the culture? For that matter, will the Church if they turn away from these parts of the Faith?
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