Secular Theocracy: The Foundations and Folly of Modern Tyranny, Part 2
By David J. Theroux • Thursday January 12, 2012 12:14 AM PDT • 60 Comments
We live in a secularized world of nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is unwelcome. Rooted in the “Enlightenment,” this view supports a secularized and authoritarian public square enforced by government and that progress requires forcing religion ever backward into remote corners of society. In short, America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God.
Continued from Part 1:
During the Enlightenment, nationalism became the new civic religion, in which the nation state was not merely a substitute for the church, but a substitute for God, and political religion benefited from being more tangible than supernatural religion in having the physical means of violence necessary to enforce mandatory worship and funding. Nation states provided a new kind of salvation and immortality; one’s death is not in vain if it is “for the nation,” which will live on.
This “myth of religious violence” lived on with legal theorist John Rawls who claimed that the modern problem is a theological one and the solution is political. For Rawls, since people believe in unresolvable theological doctrines over which they will kill each other, a secular state must rule. Similarly, Stanford law professor Kathleen Sullivan, a secularist, has claimed that as a necessary condition for peace to avoid a “war of all sects against all,” religion must be banished from the public square.
As William Canavaugh notes, “[O]nce the state had laid claim to the holy, the state voluntarily relinquished it by banning religion from direct access to the public square . . . then what we have is not a separation of religion from politics but rather the substitution of the religion of the state for the religion of the church.”
Hence, in Abington Township School District v. Schempp, Supreme Court Justice William Brennan stated that the function of public schools is:
the training of American citizens in an atmosphere in which children may assimilate a heritage common to all American groups and religions. . . . This is a heritage neither theistic nor atheistic, but simply civic and patriotic. A patriotic and united allegiance to the United States is the cure for the divisiveness of religion in public.
In his dissent, Justice Potter Stewart correctly warned that the Abington ruling would be seen “not as the realization of state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism.”
The reality of today’s secular theocracy is its hypocritical authoritarianism that circumvents the natural-law tradition of Christian teachings. Cavanaugh well sums up the incoherence of the secular theocrat who claims that, “Their violence—being tainted by religion—is uncontrolled, absolutist, fanatical, irrational, and divisive. Our violence—being secular—is controlled, modest, rational, beneficial, peace making, and sometimes regrettably necessary to contain their violence.” The appalling problem with the “myth of religious violence” is not that it opposes certain forms of violence, but that it not only denies moral condemnation of secular violence but that it considers it highly praiseworthy.
In Politics as Religion, Emilio Gentile notes that the “religion of politics” is “a system of beliefs, myths, rituals, and symbols that interpret and define the meaning and end of human existence by subordinating the destiny of individuals and the collectivity to a supreme entity.” A religion of politics is a secular religion because it creates “an aura of sacredness around an entity belonging to this world.” And according to Cavanaugh, “People are not allowed to kill for ‘sectarian religion’. . . . Only the nation-state may kill. . . . it is this power to organize killing that makes American civil religion the true religion of the U.S. social order.”
. . . .
For full Part 2 of the article with footnotes, please click here.
For the complete article (Parts 1 and 2) with footnotes, please click here.
Tags: American History, Censorship, Christianity, Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Conservatism, Culture, Law, Liberalism, Liberty, Morality, Nanny State, Nationalism, Natural Law, Peace, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Politics, Power, Privacy, Progressivism, Propaganda, Regulation, Religion, Science, Socialism, Surveillance, The State, War 
David Theroux, 1/12/2011
I concur and agree with you. Man has created his own versions of heaven and hell, here on earth. This is a mandate or decree that the State is equal to “God.” Eternity is then predetermined for everyone, by the prophecy of the State. The real “Patriots”, heroes and “good citizens” will spend eternity with their “God.” The less fortunate are condemned. Millions of people pay homage to their State, looking for guidance and support in knowing how to live their lives, in the here and now. Their religious beliefs – pertain to the here-after.
Thanking you for this opportunity to comment,
James de Laurier | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
Great post! I’d only qualify that you seem to mean the Continental Enlightenment and not the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment? Am I correct?
Jonathan Bean | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
Jonathan, I am afraid not as you will see in the books by Cavanaugh and Stark. As for problems with John Locke’s views that have led to an unfounded unraveling of natural law in the minds of many post-Enlightenment thinkers, I would recommend the following book:
The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy, by Henrich A. Rommen
David Theroux | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
What’s happening in America can in no way get better without help from our leaders! It seems to be elected to office is more important then fixing the country’s problems! My kind of America pulls together to make things better; Republicans and Democrats, we are all in this together! The working class are taking a hit, and never ending price increases on everything are putting it out of reach for for us! Prices have to come down to get back to normal again!
Joseph R | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
We have forgot out motto (In God We Trust) And without him we fail!
Joseph R | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
Religious as our forefathers knew it is slowly melting away! When we have Magazines on the market denouncing God! Other countries wanting to bring their beliefs into our schools! You no longer have to speak English to become a citizen of the country anymore! Sorry I didn’t use my last name before–been used to comments where you only use a first name! Thank you and God Bless America.
Joseph R Lyell | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
The late Vincent Miceli S.J. wrote that there is no commandment that we believe in God because everyone believes in some kind of god, even those who call themselves atheists.
Plenty of people – not just atheists, either – believe in strange gods and the state is one of the greatest examples of a strange god.
Frank Chodorov once wrote that Washington D.C. was “where the great god government works its miracles.” I think it’s worse now than in Chodorov’s time.
Chris Sullivan | Jan 12, 2012 | Reply
Shared:
http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2012/01/secular-theocracy-the-foundations-and-folly-of-modern-tyranny-part-2.html
Debbie | Jan 13, 2012 | Reply
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/101209
Doc Kimble | Jan 13, 2012 | Reply
Thank you for this very helpful information. I am hoping this is not helping the proponents of this new religion and new “God” whereby America becomes like China. But if it happens, I’m ready to go underground.
Sam GB | Jan 13, 2012 | Reply
What if there is no “up there” and heaven is what we make here? It appears that neither religion or law can keep man from damaging the thing they need to worship the most...Mother Earth!
C.J. Dauber | Jan 13, 2012 | Reply
C.J. Dauber, I would suggest that pantheism (e.g., worship of “Mother Earth”) gets us nowhere but into a muddle. If all that exists is the natural world (energy, matter and the laws of physics), we would then simply be “matter in motion” in which everything including our minds are determined mechanically by physical laws. As a result, there could logically be no free will, individual agency (including the self), objective goodness and truth, reason, science and moral conscience. But of course, we must first assume free will and mindedness to then claim such or any view. As C.S. Lewis noted, science requires the existence of individuals whose own minds are not determined by the system they are examining, and such necessary independence for the existence of minds means that a non-natural, extra-natural, or supernatural reality must not just exist but make existence possible. This is what is called “substance dualism” and theism (God exists) must be true.
Perhaps the following article will be of interest:
“Economic Science and the Poverty of Naturalism: C. S. Lewis’s ‘Argument from Reason’,” by David Theroux
As for protecting the natural world, I would recommend the following:
Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy, edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close
“Property Rights vs. Environmental Ruin,” by David Theroux
David Theroux | Jan 13, 2012 | Reply
Well done!
This is written from a “Western” point of view but I can see so many application in the conflicts of the mid-east as well.
Thanks for sharing this David.
Ben Stone | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
Ben, Thank you very much!
David Theroux | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
Lewis was indulging himself in some lazy, self-serving thinking in regards to supernatural minds, of course. Science in no way requires minds that not determined by the system, and it also does not require minds that are located in any way outside the system to work. On the contrary, while science doesn’t place requirements about the metaphysical constitution on minds on its method, science is necessarily all about natural explanations for natural phenomena, which makes “supernatural” incoherent as a concept to science. If minds are supernatural, they are inherently problematic for science, not just as the subject of investigation, but also as the *means* of investigating natural explanations for natural phenomena.
Happily, the more evidence we dig up, the more fantastic, implausible, and most powerfully, IRRELEVANT the “god hypothesis” becomes as an explanation for minds, or any other phenomenon.
On the rest of the post, this is a very good example of debasing the language in the mode of Orwell stories. Secularism is a theocracy in the same way pacifism is just another form of violence. Debasing the language as you have tries to inoculate the language that (rightly) stigmatizes theocracy, and this is increasingly common in the political-apologetic rhetoric of retreating Christianity in America.
At some point, it becomes advantageous to just poison the well, or scorch the earth — pick your favorite of the two metaphors; anything that opposes religion or theocracy must be denigrated as religion as well, so that the question does not become a referendum on religion, but rather just a trifling debate on which flavor of religion and theocracy one prefers. And thus is the language debased...
eigenstate | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
It must be a strange nation, this alternate America where David Theroux resides. Where I live, the physical public square is full of churches, synagogues, and mosques, their schools are much used, and they participate in all manner of civic functions. That religious presence is even more obvious in the media public square, with bookstores, magazines, websites, and radio and TV stations dedicated to all varieties of religion. Even if a recluse never leaves his house, never turns on a radio, and never browses the web, he will observe the public expression of religion every so often as adherents from different sects knock on his door to share their beliefs.
Of course, the America where I reside also includes myriad writers from the Christian right who scream “oppression” because their religion isn’t allowed a special place in the government or the public schools, or when their religion is treated by law and government just like all other religions that fill the public square.
Russell | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
eigenstate, My article is on how the post-Enlightenment crusade of “secularism” has formed the basis for the creation and exaltation of the nation state and that this statism compels conformity to its Zeitgeist through compulsory compliance to its edicts and mandatory funding of its government-imposed domains of education, legal institutions, research, transportation, military, welfare, etc. And that in all such domains, metaphysical secularism is the mandatory dogma. If Catholic, Jewish, or Protestant institutions had such powers we would call this theocracy, why is secularist statism somehow exempt? As William Cavanaugh documents in The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict, the secularist hypocritically turns a blind eye to its support for state coercion because such predation is viewed as “sacred” to its nationalist crusade. If you have evidence to dispute my claims, please present it, but so far you have only tried to dismiss my points out of hand as being some sort of “debasing the language.” Cavanaugh reveals the absurdity of the secularist position:
“Does Religion Cause Violence: Behind the common question lies a morass of unclear thinking,” William T. Cavanaugh (Harvard Divinity Bulletin)
And as I note in my article:
Regarding your views of science and naturalism (e.g., atheism), as C.S. Lewis and the renowned philosopher Alvin Plantinga have well noted, science first requires the tautological assumption of free will, mindedness, and order in reality. In other words, one must assume that one’s mind exists in order to discern independently of physicalism prior and infer anything, meaning that a dualist reality must exist even to claim the opposite, as you then do. The problem with naturalism is that its inherent materialist determinism and reductionism renders it sterile and self-refuting.
Here is a sampling of key books that show naturalism to be self-refuting and incoherent:
Warrant and Proper Function, by Alvin Plantinga (Oxford University Press)
Naturalism, by Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (Eerdmans)
Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism, by Alvin Plantinga (Oxford University Press)
Naturalism: A Critical Analysis, edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland (Routledge)
C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, by Victor Reppert (IVP Press)
Here also are sample articles:
“The Argument from Reason,” by Victor Reppert
“Naturalism Defeated,” by Alvin Plantinga
“Religion and Science,” by Alvin Plantinga
“The Ultimate Question of Origins: God and the Beginning of the Universe,” by William Lane Craig
“Darwin, Mind and Meaning,” by Alvin Plantinga
“Economic Science and the Poverty of Naturalism: C. S. Lewis’s ‘Argument from Reason’,” by David J. Theroux
“Introduction: The Resurrection of Theism,” by William Lane Craig
“Naturalism and Libertarian Agency,” by Stewart Goetz
“Theism, Atheism, and Rationality,” by Alvin Plantinga
David Theroux | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
Russell, No one is denying that church institutions exist in private domains in society, but you still refuse to confront the reality of the secular theocracy that dictates an ever expanding and imperial government realm that is imposed on everyone. As I have noted:
David Theroux | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
David,
There are deeper problems at work, but it’s hard to get to them because of the dialectical noise you are putting in the channel here – which I was why my first object is about your language. Look at your first sentence:
“eigenstate, My article is on how the post-Enlightenment crusade of “secularism” has formed the basis for the creation and exaltation of the nation state and that this statism compels conformity to its Zeitgeist through compulsory compliance to its edicts and mandatory funding of its government-imposed domains of education, legal institutions, research, transportation, military, welfare, etc.”
My first reaction on reading this was that you were offering a good natured bit of self-parody as a way of engaging the language issue. But reading it through, I see this is offered without irony. Look at the terms you use — “crusade”, for example. This nicely captures the problem; secularism is not god-motivated, and not subject to any supernatural imperative. There is no “Deus vult” animating secularism, and there CANNOT be, because secularism is the repudiation of such motivations.
Which is not to say that secularism renounces power. It does not, but it has a profoundly different, and profoundly “non-crusading” foundation upon which it grounds it warrant for violence and controlling state power: pragmatic requirements for law, commerce and social order (not to mention liberty in societies that embrace personal liberty). It’s realpolitik rather than theocracy.
Abuse is a danger in a secular framework, as well. But not all risks are created equal here, and that is what your language-mangling confuses. A secular argument for political violence, by definition, rests on non-religious bases. That doesn’t mean it’s ipso facto legitimate, or rational or benevolent. But it does mean, necessarily, that it has avoided the dangers and traps of credulous superstition that serves as warrant(!) in theocratic arguments for the use of political violence.
I could go on. “Exaltation” is similarly debasing and misleading. Secularism is “non-exaltative” in a theocratic sense. It is non-theocratic as a matter of tautology. This is another attempt to confound the distinctions between secular and religious rationales, and no different, as I said, from claiming that pacificism is just another kind of violent inclination like militarism. It doesn’t respect the underlying concepts or allow them to be addressed on the merits, but rather just goes all Orwell on the terms so as to muddy the waters so all impulses might appear as muddled and muddy as the religious impulse.
A good question to ask that shows the poverty of your comparisons is just to ask: how would secularism be practically implemented without any coercion being considered “sacred”. It can’t, because you are debasing “sacred”, here, and just trying to sully a non-theocratic approach to pragmatic problems with comparisons and language that derive from theocracy. There’s nothing “sacred” about coercion in a secular framework. Civic order and rule of law are not practical goals without some level of coercion, and political violence. It’s not a matter of “dogma” or “sacred” – it can all be questioned and challenged in a critical fashion. It’s just a means to an end, and one that obtains of practical necessity, in the absence of any other measure toward a stable and ordered community.
On science, please note that neither Lewis nor Plantinga (Plantinga is embarrassing in terms of his understanding of science!) are scientists, or are considered good sources on science, its epistemology and practice by scientists themselves, or leading philosophers of science, to go one more level down. Lewis might as well be offering his objections to the Copenhagen Interpretation. You are as expert as he, and probably more, as you are at least the beneficiary of a whole lot of available new knowledge gained since Lewis died.
In any case, what you’ve asserted is false, or more precisely, there is no reason to suppose what you say is true, or required as a condition of science. I have a transcendental warrant for using my mind — I wouldn’t be “thinking about this” if I didn’t have one (by definition). But that in no way makes this mind TRANSCENDENT, but merely TRANSCENDENTAL to proceeding. Transcendent != transcendental, perhaps that is where you are getting tripped up.
If I say “I cannot communicate in English”, I’ve committed a transcendental error, because my statement cannot be true unless it is (transcendentally) false; I must be able to communicate in English to say that I cannot communicate in English. Similarly, I cannot say “I can think about science without a mind”, because “think about” is contingent on a mind. It cannot be true without being false in a primary sense (that’s the transcendental error).
But there is no reason to impose any restriction on my mind be “supernatural” or “transcedent” or “supervenient on the physical”. That may be the case (logically), but it may just as well be that your mind is a biological machine, a part of nature cogitating about other parts of nature. If I assume that’s the case, arguendo, it all works. Science is not impeded in the least from proceeding as it does.
That set of restrictions, so far as I can tell, is pure superstition, masquerading as some kind of faux-axiom, attempting to avoid notice or critique by being offered as a beginning-point-just-trust-me-this-is-what-we-start-with. Doesn’t wash, and such errors are really very conspicuous.
eigenstate | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
I made no mention of private domains, except where religious proselytizers attempt to move from the public square into private homes. I discussed churches that anyone can enter, the schools they provide, bookstores and print media, radio, TV, and the internet, and other PUBLIC institutions. It is a very strange twist that the religious right makes, when it tries to equate the government with public institutions, in pretending that religion has been evicted from the public square. Religion is pervasive in public America.
The people I know who view the flag or other national symbols as sacred mostly are religious. This is something else that many on the religious right fail to understand. They think the non-religious want to substitute something else for the god they worshop, whether it is the nation or capitalism or science or ourselves. I urge you to stretch a bit, and to imagine what it means not to have a religion, not to consider anything sacred, not to replace one god with another god, but to leave all notion of that behind. I’m not asking you to agree with that. I’m just suggesting you might want to honestly think about those who think differently from you.
Russell | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
eigenstate, You unfortunately believe in the secularist myth that has long pervaded western elite culture and as I have noted, forms the basis for the statism of our age. In my article I briefly traced the origins of this myth but the deeper meaning, as shown by William Cavanaugh, has been manifested in the rise of utilitarianism in ethics (your presumptuous and tyrannical realpolitik) based on the moral relativism it embodies. The result is the situational ethics and authoritarianism of “Progressivism” that continues to produce and champion the contemporary secular theocracy that intervenes with impunity domestically and globally. And the entire Zeitgeist that it draws upon is based on clear philosophical and historical fallacies that its intolerance and arrogance refuse to confront. Such is the nature of insular paradigms and the vanity of man.
As for your concern about the misuse of language in categorizing secularism as a religion, many scholars have shown this to be the case. Since Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism are religions, even though none of of them include belief in God or gods, and religion includes politics, economics, and environmentalism, secularism clearly qualifies. Again, I would refer you to Cavanaugh’s book, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict.
I have tried to provide you with ample references that challenge and refute your claims and it is up to you to examine them and make up your own mind. If you wish, I can make further references on theism, free will, the mind, etc., but it appears that your naturalist religious devotion may be a sacred doctrine for you and I am addressing my article to people who honestly want to explore the truth and not just dismiss contrary views. Incidentally, I believe you will find that Plantinga has refuted each and every version of naturalism and I would counsel your taking note of this work.
David Theroux | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
Russell, I am well aware that you did not mention “private domains,” which is why I did. My point is that government defines what is “public” with coercive zeal and apparently you are unaware of the secular basis for all government domains both those that are overtly socialist in structure and those where government has thrusted its tentacles into private institutions to form mercantilism and corporatism. The point is that statism insists on allegiance to the apologia for its existence and government schools, research, welfare, and all other areas demand compliance. Indeed, we must all fund such theocracy or prison awaits.
As for the flag and other symbols of nationalism, they are intrinsic elements of the political religion of the secular theocracy. The secular theocrat’s religion is nationalism and the politics of statism, and those in power are superstitiously worshiped as “saviors” if just given enough power and time to rule others. The entire spectacle is a pathetic display of naked and criminal power dressed up for “moderns” who believe they have achieved “enlightenment.”
David Theroux | Jan 14, 2012 | Reply
Well, yes, we all have to pay our taxes. And we all pay taxes for things we don’t like. That’s inherent to any state at all, and would remain the case even in your ideal world, unless you dream of some kind of anarchism.
Other than taxes, I’m curious just what allegiance is required of you? In the America outside my window, you are free to spit on the flag, teach your children that Yahweh created the world 6,000 years ago, plan your own retirement, grow your own food, proclaim yourself a prophet, damn the rest of us for our sinful ways, and take all sort of political action against any aspect of our nation you don’t like.
Yeah, if you marry 14 year-old girls, you might find yourself sharing a cell with Warren Jeffs. But even he would have been left alone to go his own way with his own flock, had he preyed only on those not quite so young. He no doubt feels religiously oppressed in that.
I understand that there are areas that our society quite tightly regulates, not much free at all. As one example, those who want to grow and smoke marijuana are under constant threat from the legal system. What I find odd, though, is that you have not mentioned any such area. Instead, you carp on areas where you actually are quite free. Allegiance? None is required from you. Research? Feel free to ignore it. Government schools? You’re not required to use them. Religion? You are Constitutionally protected in its practice, either a traditional one or a new one you invent.
Your complaint would make more sense if you were a marijuana grower or aficionado of raw dairy products. Those who object to American military involvement around the world certainly have an argument. Maybe I’m misreading you, and those are the kinds of things that are raising your ire. But none of those issues involve the religious-secular dichotomy. And it is there that I don’t understand how you’re being oppressed.
Russell | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
Russell, Again and to answer your questions, I would respectfully recommend your reading William Cavanaugh’s book, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict.
As for taxes, by any definition and despite any hand waving, taxation is theft and involuntary servitude because it is expropriation of the private property of people. And the compulsory funding of taxation is crucial to the existence and operation of the nation states of the secular theocracy:
“Taxation, Forced Labor, and Theft,” by Edward Feser (The Independent Review)
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
David Theroux:
So, you’re an anarchist, advocating the abolition of any state whatsoever?
Russell | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
I’ve been reading the give and take and can’t resist the temptation to make a fool of myself.
Russell: I’m trying to use my imagination. I’m probably not very good at it. As hard as I try I do find myself coming back to the notion that some things are sacred. You, however, seem to have done it. I’m in awe.
As I think about it, though, I think there is something you hold sacred. I think that perhaps Russell thinks Russell is sacred.
When it comes to oppression I think here are times when one side of a dialogue itself can become oppressive.
Phil Dillon | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
Russell, I am an advocate of natural law, but an opponent of statism. As my article attests, I am defending the universal, natural-law principles of individual rights to own and peacefully use property, personal responsibility, civic virtue, and the rule of law, and that acts of aggression against the peaceful choices of people are crimes and should be outlawed. In other words, murder, rape, theft and fraud are what any sensible person is against and the rule of law should reflect this moral standard. As a result, no one is above the law or exempt from such rules and this includes any government officials and institutions that might exist. All human institutions should be voluntary and contractual among individuals, and compulsory funding is theft by definition.
The “modern” believes in the incoherent myth that “the end justifies the means” and that to accomplish “collective” aims, the natural-law standards must be compromised or even abandoned, even in the name of such standards. For the secular theocrat, theft, invasive wars, attack drones, national surveillance, and countless edicts are all legal and indeed the most “noble” so long as they are practiced solely by the theocracy itself. For the secular “modern,” individual rights are quaint relecs that just “get in the way” since the nation state has a “higher” national calling, and after all, individuals and souls do not really exist because we are allegedly simply swarms of matter determined by the laws of physics.
The issue here is that the rise of the nation state has meant the legalization of enormous powers to steal, control and kill on a mass scale, and secularism is the creed that leads the parade.
If I may make a couple further book recommendations on natural law, they would be the following:
The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis (also free online here)
The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy, by Heinrich A. Rommen (also free online here)
This is the dilemma we face and which my article addresses. Do we continue the path of moral abandonment of the natural law so that the secular theocracy can pursue its grand schemes.
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
You ducked the question: Are you advocating anarchism? The absence of any state whatsoever?
Russell | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
eigenstate to David: “... but it may just as well be that your mind is a biological machine, a part of nature cogitating about other parts of nature. If I assume that’s the case, arguendo, it all works.”
Six centuries before Jesus Christ the Buddha already knew that if God does not exist then it logically follows that there is absolutely no source for self—soul, intellect,self-consciousness, conscience, will. Thus man is nothing, his body an illusion. This is nihilism.
Beginning with Descartes, then more clearly with Kant, “self” was separated from body. Man was a machine. Matter (body) is evil. Soul floated somewhere nearby. This was neo-Gnostic nihilism.
The Marxist materialists who controlled Russia attempted to annihilate and subsume all God-endowed expressions of individual-self into an impersonal collective-unconsciousness. This position approximates Buddha’s denial of soul.
For two hundred years the West has been moving closer to Buddha’s denial of self.
Thus when eigenstate denies the supernatural God and reduces “self” to a biological machine he is engaged in a metaphysical program (nihilism) which he imagines as empirical science.
Linda Kimball | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
Russell, I have answered the question quite clearly. I am in favor of law, not statism. Self-government based on natural law and proprietary contracts among consenting individuals is the opposite of the chaos, lawlessness, and might-makes-right of “anarchy.” The secular theocrat has difficulty imaging how moral principle can also be practical, but we know that natural law is not just the basis for civil and personal ethics but for economic principles. Here are some presentations of how such systems have and do work:
To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice, by Bruce L. Benson
The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State, by Bruce L. Benson
The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society, edited by David T. Beito, Peter Gordon, and Alexander T. Tabarrok
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
For some reason, you have difficulty explicitly saying that yes, you do favor having a state. That reason might be because you then have to justify the taxes that that state requires. Having already declared those verboten.
Russell | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
@Linda Kimball,
Science is a research program, a method for developing natural knowledge. Man-as-machine, even if that is true in the most reductionist sense, is not hindered by any narratives about Buddha, Marx and nihilism. This is anti-science, speaking.
And that’s fine, your prerogative and all that. But with respect to David’s claim, it’s nonsense — science proceeds apace if mind is a monist, physicalist entity. Natural models get developed, tested, judged for falsifiability and satisfaction of empirical observations put to the model. Better performing models are kept, honed, improved, poor performing or failed models are discarded, etc.
Unlike self-satisfied superstitions, this research programs provides a grounding for values and a context for meaning that religion — Christian, Buddhist or otherwise — has not been able to provide for man: a basis of real, natural, objective knowledge from which to work in making value judgements, and employing semantics toward meaning. Science, then, in contrast to religion, is a potent enemy of nihilism, and an attachment to reality that makes credulous superstitions like Christianity’s “meaning” shallow and empty by comparison.
eigenstate | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
Russell, Being against statism means exactly that and taxation is not required to have a uniform system of law. Your problem is that you do not understand the difference between law and government, but the refernces I have provided discuss this in depth.
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
@David Theroux,
“Russell, I am an advocate of natural law, but an opponent of statism.”
This is anarchy. Your posts and comment replies only make sense in reading them as coming from an anarchist point of view. The irony abounds; one who is concerned about theft is begging for a mayhem and gratuitous theft — and that’s on good days — when one opposes statist (that is, one promulgates anarchy).
” As my article attests, I am defending the universal, natural-law principles of individual rights to own and peacefully use property, personal responsibility, civic virtue, and the rule of law, and that acts of aggression against the peaceful choices of people are crimes and should be outlawed. In other words, murder, rape, theft and fraud are what any sensible person is against and the rule of law should reflect this moral standard.”
First, “natural law” is not “law” in the same sense of “civil law” or “rule of law” — this is a näive kind of equivocation. Plantinga’s embrace of sensus divinatus, in the mode of theologians before him, does NOT establish or concern law as a means of governance or civil order. “Natural law” in that sense just speaks to a moral sensibility. It must be reified as law as practical law by a state, by an organized force of some kind willing and able to use force to enforce imperatives, meaning that “natural law” without civil law is perfectly impotent.
” As a result, no one is above the law or exempt from such rules and this includes any government officials and institutions that might exist. All human institutions should be voluntary and contractual among individuals, and compulsory funding is theft by definition.”
This hardly even rises to näiveté. When your neighbor supposes that your cattle are actually his, the folly of your utopianism is made clear. Unless the coercive institutions of a state are there to compel, enforce, levy and incarcerate (should it come to that), you are a but a life long victim of theft — real theft, the taking of your property through sheer law-of-the-jungle might, without assent to, or any knowledge of the law.
Perhaps consider that you again have a basic problem with language, here: you have confused and conflated profoundly different senses of “law”. One can be, and it appears you are, a vocal proponent of “natural law” and a thoroughgoing anarchist. There is no conflict between those two. There is, however, a contradiction in advocating for the “rule of law”, without state power as arbiter, as the means of means of securing and enforcing those laws, law of the civic, political kind.
You have those two senses thoroughly confused.
eigenstate | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
A uniform system of law requires social institutions that enforce that uniform system. Those are, by definition, a state. And a state requires taxes.
You speak of being against “statism.” That is not the question I asked. I asked whether you favored any kind of state. Or whether you are an anarchist. What I see isn’t an answer, but an attempt to shift away from the question. Perhaps you could answer, without any reference to “statism.”
Russell | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
eigenstate, Science is indeed a “method” or technique for examining the material world. But science is an idea that is based on metaphysical arguments. In other words, empirical science consequentially rests first on philosophy which is itself rooted in non-material assumptions about reality. Your assumption of metaphysical naturalism is the atheology that God does not exist and that all that exists is matter, energy and the physical laws that govern them. But there is no evidence for this and such a view is simply pure belief on your part. And as Plantinga and others have shown, such a view produces an unworkable and incoherent dead end in which any inference you then make including your own assumption cannot be known to be true, only determined. As I have noted C.S. Lewis’s insight, science requires that a scientist’s own assessments cannot be determined by the system he/she is examining. If we are simply “matter in motion,” then no independent ideas can exist or have any validity because all is determined and there is no such things as ideas. As the biologist J. B. S. Haldane stated:
All individuals (including all scientists) must assume dualism to make any inference, including any self-refuting claim by you of monism. The secular theocrat’s belief in naturalism is a remarkable reflection on the pitiful state of what passes for scholarship, but since in the hyper-specialist research silos of the secular theocracy, virtually no scientist knows or cares about philosophy (and if he/she did, they would greatly hesitate to question the naturalist doctrine upon which their own research position and funding depends), such folly endures.
In addition, as a technique of material study solely of what “is,” science can tell us nothing about what “ought” our choices to be, and your defense of science implodes into nihilism, as Linda Kimball has well noted. You have inverted science into the religion of scientism. And in case you had not noticed, the positivism that you embrace is dead in philosophy, having been refuted decades ago.
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
Russell, Please just read the references and you will understand.
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
eigenstate, You have clearly not read what I have provided and your echoing the conventional positivist views does not work. As Aquinas and other natural law proponents have noted, law is NOT the state and the state is not law. The “rule of law” is not the rules of any state but is rooted in the private law tradition (religio) that exists apart and above the machinery of any government. Government officials are as subject to the natural law as the basis for the rule of law as is anyone, despite the claims of the secular theocrats. The secularist has a problem with this, as you have suggested, because for you as a materialist there is no objective ground for natural law. However, it is legal positivism and realism, as with all versions of positivism, that has no ground and is erroneous. Here are further references:
Freedom and the Law, by Bruno Leoni
Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition, by Harold Berman
Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition, by Harold Berman
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
I’ve read quite enough of C. S. Lewis, thank you. He’s an eloquent source of fallacy, but not of much substance.
You misquote Haldane. Here is a little more context, that shows he was describing a view that he no longer credited:
Personally, I’m amazed that anyone today can take seriously the argument that the validity of reasoning is somehow undermined by the substrate that executes it. Is it impossible for an adding machine correctly to sum numbers, because the result is determined by the motion of electrons? An argument that is correct is correct whether it is implemented by digital circuitry, by biological nervous systems, or by the mind of some god. It’s not the execution substrate that makes it correct or not.
Russell | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
Russell, The adding machine also does not have consciousness, free will, moral conscience, and rational agency. The adding machine required an intelligent agent to design, build, and use it. Once again, Plantinga devastates all forms of naturalism as incoherent and self-refuting.
Thank you incidentally for including the entire quote from Haldane, who as a Marxist was not just mired in his own incoherent materialist determinism but embraced the epitome of ambitions for the secular theocrat, totalitarianism. QED.
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
All of which is irrelevant to the issue.
Adding machines are what we made them. That in no way implies that people are designed, or that intelligence requires a designer.
And you still aren’t willing to ‘fess up to wanting a state. Just your kind of state.
Russell | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
Russell, Everything that comes into existence has a cause and since the adding machine did not assemble itself, it is trivially true that the machine had a designer. If you then wish to reduce the designer to being undesigned as a random or necessary event, then you embrace exactly the kind of absurdity I have been claiming is inherent in the naturalist view. Your view would then be to claim that the machine is itself undesigned after all because human action (including all mindedness) is not purposeful or rational but simply the unfolding of the laws of physics in the natural world. This unworkable dilemma leaves with you with a choice: either humans think, chose and act purposefully or they are merely “matter in motion,” including your ability to asses this question.
For the last time, a state is not and cannot be law, and I have given you many references that show this clearly. A state is simply a system of organized violence that expropriates the peacefully created wealth from a citizenry. In the “modern” era, secularism forms the theology for the secular theocracy and the “rule of law” is needed to make such oppression “legal.”
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
The problem when philosophy tries to address “cause” isn’t just that it comes up with the wrong answers, but that its answers are imprecise. Just what model of causality are you using? Precisely. Mathematically. “Causes,” to the extent that we have any reason to credit them, belong in the realm of science. The vacuum energy has real and measurable consequence, despite the fact that your philosophy would deny it. That is a consequence of quantum mechanics, which still is our best model of physics. Now, QM plays havoc with most of the classical notions of causality, from Aristotle onward. Tough. The universe doesn’t have to play by anyone’s philosophical rules.
And again, you duck the question. I didn’t ask whether a state was law or blue or abelian or freshly squeezed. I asked whether you are advocating anarchism, where there is no state? Or are you advocating some kind of state?
It’s really a very simple question about your politics. And it’s telling in a politician or a pundit, when they refuse to answer a simple question.
Russell | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
Russell, Quantum Theory in no way changes what I have noted regarding origins and causality. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is itself not uncertain and neither is Schrödinger’s equation. The universe does in fact operate according to specific laws and moreover the anthropic principle of fine tuning, and the entire basis for such insights rests on a philosophical grounding. Incidentally, there are excellent studies by leading philosophers and physicists that show that Quantum Mechanics supports theism. Here is just one article that discusses such issues and there are numerous books I would recommend by the renowned physicist Sir John Polkinghorne. Here is just a sampling:
Science and Religion in Quest of Truth
Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship
Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion
Theology in the Context of Science
However and as a reality check, my article is not on Quantum Theory, Vacuum Fluctuation models, etc. It is on political economy and if you wish to discuss other matters, there are plenty of websites eager to do so.
David Theroux | Jan 15, 2012 | Reply
eigenstate: Science is a research program....man is a biological machine... the more evidence we dig up, the more fantastic, implausible, and most powerfully, IRRELEVANT the “god hypothesis” becomes as an explanation for minds, or any other phenomenon
True science, as opposed to the occult science of pre-Christian pagans was made possible only when Christian theism dedivinized nature.
Your so-called science eigenstate, is nothing more than revised, revamped hylozoism, that is divinized matter (animism), made palatable for the modernist mind. Hylozoism in tandem with monism, evolutionary conceptions and of course, the inventive intuition of the magician (you, eigenstate) and all of this profoundly influenced by Buddha’s denial of soul. There is absolutely nothing empirical about your occult science.
Excerpts from The Materialist Faith of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/02/the_materialist_faith_of_commu.html
“America is founded on the Judeo-Christian creation model. Materialist faith rises or falls on the assumptions of metaphysical materialism and evolution.”
“Materialism belongs to the family of Naturalism, which refers to the view that nature (or matter) is the Ultimate Substance of which the universe and all life are made, thus “all is one.” C. S. Lewis describes naturalism as a box with its top sealed tightly closed in order to keep out God and the supernatural realm. The ancient Ionians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and Aztecs were, for example, naturalists. In this view there is but one realm (the material or natural) as opposed to Judeo-Christianity’s creation model with its two interacting realms: natural and supernatural.”
“There are two basic kinds of Naturalism: materialism (i.e., Communism) and pantheism (i.e., Nazism and New Age Spiritual Communism). The two kinds differ chiefly about whether the First Cause or Absolute Substance is nonliving, non-intelligence bearing matter or an unknowing, unknowable, amoral mind. However, both kinds are united by their rejection of the transcendent, personal God and the supernatural realm and by their acceptance of some form of evolution, which serves as an impersonal, mechanical process of development”.
excerpts continued:
“Though Christianity reared a mighty barrier against Atomism, it would be resurrected— along with the hylozoism of the Ionians and Stoics—during the Renaissance by among others, pantheist Giordano Bruno and the heretic Paracelsus, an alchemist described by C.S. Lewis as a magician in his book, The Abolition of Man”.
“Hylozoism (Greek hyle=nature; zoe-life) is the doctrine according to which all of nature’s bodies (i.e., sun, earth, moon, trees, man) possess life, mind, soul, and even divinity. By infusing Atomism with Ionian hylozoism, what might be called materialzoism was invented by Bruno, Paracelsus, and others. In short, dead matter was not just brought to life but deified.”
Linda Kimball | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
russell to David: It’s really a very simple question about your politics. And it’s telling in a politician or a pundit, when they refuse to answer a simple question.
On one hand, politics are always about someone’s idea of morality, i.e., “Thou shalt not fetter us in any way by moral considerations,” proclaim anarchists.
On the other hand, your “very simple question” arises from a narrow-minded either-or dichotomy that lends itself to confusion.
Simpleminded thinking also results in extremism, i.e., David is an anarchist. He is not. What is needed is discernment.
Excerpts from “Statists and liberals: where they are located on the Founders’ political spectrum”
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/100812
“On the Founder’s yardstick, the two extreme forms of governance are Anarchy and Tyranny, or in today’s vernacular, Utopian Statism and its’ co-dependent, the Liberalized masses”.
“These two extremes are placed at either end of the spectrum. Statists, whether described as oligarchs, totalitarians, or despots for example, are on the far left while the cult of the unrestrained (Liberals) are on the far right.”
” Included within the definition of Liberal are all who demand an end to moral restraints, which means for instance that certain Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, militant atheists, Liberal Christians, and Democrats are anarchists as measured by the Founders yardstick.”
” At the one extreme there is neither moral law nor cultural restraint. At the other extreme there is oppressive control and too much government — Big Brother, in other words.”
” Both extremes are united by moral relativism, unrestrained passions, will to power, and arbitrary edicts, which are merely politicized caprice, whim, envy, vengeance-seeking, lust, resentment, and covetousness.”
Linda Kimball | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
Well, QM does describe particles constantly appearing from nothing. That is what creates the vacuum energy. Which doesn’t much fit your claim that “Everything that comes into existence has a cause. I suppose you could equivocate on “cause,” and try to make QM itself a cause of sorts. But theories of physics aren’t causes — they’re models or descriptions.
Where you still duck the first question, and have yet to say straight up whether you advocate a state, or advocate some kind of state-less anarchy.
Russell | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
David,
As I said before, science is a research program, a “what if” enterprise. As such, it posits two metaphysical premises, neither of which it needs to or can possibly provide a priori warrant for, but both of which are assumed as predicates that allow the practice of science to proceed:
1. Nature is intelligible to some degree or another.
2. Our senses reflect to some degree the state of an extramental reality that supports (1).
Either or both of those pre-conditions may be false. Science isn’t an argument resting upon them, but instead an enterprise that provides inquire into the soundness of those premises. As such, if (1) is false, then science should not be able to make any headway in providing some framework of intelligibility for nature (laws, order, models and maths that work predictively, etc.). If (2) is false, then even if (1) is true, empirical feedback loops won’t help us, and no experience at all will help us.
Happily, science has has made demonstrable progress on both fronts. All you need to believe is your lying eyes – the evidence available through your senses.
And none of the above presupposes atheism, or materialism. Science is 100% compatibility with superstitious or non-superstitious overlays at the metaphysical level. One can be a top-notch scientist and be a theist (and indeed, many are), just as well as one can be an agnostic or a thoroughgoing atheist. Science has nothing to say on the matter insofar as it remains a question of the “supernatural”, which is a term it regards as incoherent and nonsensical in its epistemology. One can believe in a “holy spirit”, but science won’t be the basis for that so long as that entity is not a natural phenomenon.
In order to preserve its epistemology — to keep its knowledge intact and performative — science has to require that all parts of the framework are testable, scrutable, falsifiable, empirically grounded. Zeus as a “natural god”, who throws real thunderbolts, and has real muscles and skin, etc., would be a legitimate subject of scientific inquiry, but the Christian idea of a “holy spirit” would not, because it’s defined (for good reasons!) to be beyond the reach of anything science could test.
I do not assume metaphysical naturalism, and if anything, as one raised as a devout Chrisitian in a devout Christian family, my assumption (or, that which was “trained into me”) was a seemingly unimpeachable axiom of theism. Materialism I’ve arrived at a conclusion, rather than a premise, the verdict of a consilience of evidence rather than a restriction against theism to even compete as a model. It has and it does compete as a hypothesis, it just fails, or more importantly, doesn’t even try to compete on its own terms.
But, harking back to the original complaint, science as this method does not presuppose monist or dualist metaphysics. It only needs to posit (1) and (2) above, and then, only provisionally, as a the means of allowing the enterprise to proceed at all. If you don’t assume (1) and (2) at least provisionally (they could both be wrong!), you can’t do science, simple as that.
So claims like this just fail on their face:
“All individuals (including all scientists) must assume dualism to make any inference, including any self-refuting claim by you of monism.”
Neither (1) nor (2) need make any claims about monism or dualism to proceed. There’s nothing self-refuting or logically contradictory about embracing (1) and (2) from a monist or dualist metaphysical view of ontology. I understand that’s giving away the game for theists, though, as a long time Christian and fan of apologists like Lewis; if you don’t bake God into your inuitions, into the assumptions you begin with, you don’t end up there by method. It has to be introduced and maintained prior to the investigation, because every year that goes by makes that investigation more robust not just interms of working models of nature, but also makes God just that much more irrelevant and inconsequential.
Which is why I’m fine admitting the openness at the start, and leaving the matter to conclusions based on the merits of the investigation, and the performance of various models. God just doesn’t compete well on the merits. Science just shrugs, in any case, having no idea how to even make sense of, or how to test or investigate something like what Christianity posits as the “holy spirit”.
By the way, here’s a recent and solid critique of Plantinga’s EAAN from Prof. Stephen Law. I take a very dim view of minds that only argue by saying, “well, just read all of that” (it’s a kind of evasion tactic by assigning homework, in my view), but as you are clearly interested in the relevant literature on EAAN, it seems this is a piece you are missing in your reading:
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2010/11/latest-version-eaan-paper-for-comments.html
Your posts don’t show any familiarity with this kind of critique, in any case.
eigenstate | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
@Linda Kimball,
This is quite a curious paragraph
“Your so-called science eigenstate, is nothing more than revised, revamped hylozoism, that is divinized matter (animism), made palatable for the modernist mind. Hylozoism in tandem with monism, evolutionary conceptions and of course, the inventive intuition of the magician (you, eigenstate) and all of this profoundly influenced by Buddha’s denial of soul. There is absolutely nothing empirical about your occult science.”
The salient feature of naturalist science is that matter is NOT divinized, or held in some animist view. It’s boring old materialism — no gods, no spirit, no magic, no occult, no designer, no cosmic mind. All of that has been found to be perfectly useless in build natural models that work, models that are mechanical, process driven, mindless, banal in terms of any kind of theology or spiritual content. It’s all physics, being impersonal, law-based physics.
There’s no denial of a soul, for example. The soul (in terms of soul-as-spirit, soul-as-personality in the sense, say, Doug Hofstadter uses it works for me in materialist terms) just isn’t useful as a component of any of our models. It provides no information, adds no content, assists in no predicitions. It’s a cypher in terms of science. It may “exist” in some non-scientific sense of that term, but science has perfectly no use for such a concept. No reason to deny it, it’s just not a concept of any use or interest, so far as science can tell. Models incorporating it don’t do any better (or, more damningly for the concept) any DIFFERENT than those same models with “soul” stripped out.
Lastly, it’s worth pointing out the nonsense in this kind of, uh, conceptual ontology:
“There are two basic kinds of Naturalism: materialism (i.e., Communism) and pantheism (i.e., Nazism and New Age Spiritual Communism).”
That ain’t the case. A materialist can be a Ron Paul style atheist materialist (that’s not me, but it works), just as well as a totalitarian Stalinist materialist. Materialism doesn’t speak to communism, or collectivism vs. libertarianism. You will find materialists spread well across that spectrum. Same thing goes for pantheism (and by the same token panentheism): a pantheist is not obligated in any way towards Nazism (!!!) or any form of New Age spirituality. Einstein is a good example of such a pantheist — he was not only NOT a subscriber to either of the concrete belief systems you name there, but was profoundly opposed to the animating principles of both, and for the very same reasons that made him a pantheist.
Which is just to note that whoever you are listening to in terms of your labeling and conceptual hierarchies has you horribly confused about what materialism entails (and pantheism, for that matter, and the idea that the ancient Egyptians were materialists — this is one I have some forensic knowledge from dealing with fundamentalist friends who’ve been to “seminars’ on the “materialist roots of freemasonry from the ancient Egyptians”, and related nonsense).
Neither the materialist or the science will recognize themselves in your descriptions of their beliefs and practices. That’s a problem, don’t you think?
eigenstate | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
eigenstate, Thank you for your further comment and I agree that science is neutral to the supernatural because as I have noted, science is merely a technique for measuring material phenomena. However, to do so requires a prior metaphysical argument of epistemology for what this means and why it is true or not. Science depends upon a philosophy of science, not the reverse.
Incidentally, I am well aware of the work of Stephen Law. Here is a video from the London debate on October 17th between Law and William Lana Craig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgwqgSmIdHY
Here also is a presentation by Alvin Plantinga on “The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism” (EAAN), which Law has very intelligently tried to refute now for years, but without success. Indeed, EAAN has become ever more sophisticated and influential. http://vimeo.com/23597847
Here also is a debate on “The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism” between Alvin Plantinga and Stephen Law on November 13, 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyQ5cFIoKts
However, my article is not on these subjects, but instead on political economy. It is instructive that secularists have focused on defending their naturalist beliefs per se instead of my article’s claim that secularism has produced a modern, secular theocracy by creating immense nation states that pursue domestic statism and invasive wars.
David Theroux | Jan 16, 2012 | Reply
Some partisans of materialist naturalism have tried to downplay the political concerns raised by David Theroux in relation to the reigning climate of scientism. (We may leave debate over that connection to one side.) Concern over liberty, some say, is misplaced because in light of global comparisons American government is “weak.” This is a fable widely believed by many American historians and by even more American political scientists.
The able legal historian William J. Novak has provided a good antidote to such fatuous claims in “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review, June 2008, 752-772. He writes that since power in America appears to be (and is) dispersed, scholars leap to the conclusion that government generally is weak and that the poor old federal instance is especially weak. With fifty state police entities and highway patrols, thousands of county and city police bodies, and myriad bureaucratic apparatuses of all types at all levels, Americans would seem to live in a virtual paradise of subsidiarity and federalism. Not so, says Novak. These bodies can and do cooperate and, more importantly, are increasingly at the service of the federal center. They are good for duplication of effort and for allowing the appearance of local self-government. Most of all, the appearance creates great leeway for dodging responsibility.
A dispersed national police state papered over with the forms of federalism and the lingering rhetoric of liberal republicanism is likely to be as effective in its own way as any foreign models on record. Anyone who hasn’t been asleep during the last three or four decades should have noticed the rise of this new system. (Here, for once, Friedrich Engels was right when he said that sufficient changes in quantity can yield a change in quality.) For other support, see Jonathan Turley, “10 Reasons the U.S. is no Longer the Land of the Free -– Guest Post.”
Joseph R. Stromberg | Jan 17, 2012 | Reply