The League of Bearded Catholics

Wikithoughts

In trying to tease out just what I think of the ruction over the latest Wikileaks scandal, I begin more and more to wonder what our Four Patrons would have thought of it. Tolkien had anarchist leanings (not the violent Rage Against the Machine kind) and one can perhaps imagine Chesterton and Belloc not being just too awfully sympathetic to Caesar as they see his laundered robes aired in public.

I've wondered again and again what life is WARSHington might be like if there were absolute transparency... if there were no such thing as meeting behind closed doors. I've even daydreamed of that creative and whimsical president who decides to live stream every meeting he attends, installing web-cams all over the White House (except, you know, in the washroom). One immediate effect would likely be a lot of lobbyists hanging around the washroom.

Then, there is that part of me that finds it easy to see Julian Assange as a reckless, attention-seeking punk... a more continental and sophisticated version of James O'keefe. I don't know if the damage he is causing is the good kind that humbles governments a bit, or the bad kind that really compromises security. I don't expect he knows, either (how do you thoughtfully read through 250,000+ documents?), which is why I think he's probably something of a punk.

But, truthfully, I confess I've reached the point where the spectacle of politicians in a panic is not something I find wholly unpleasant... and so, my ambivalence.

What's a Bearded Catholic to make of it?

Electorate Comes Out Swinging

The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.

- G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw In America, 1922

 

Chesterton penned that about 90 years ago. The question is, of course, have voting and elections come any closer to destroying our confidence in the "assumption of the equality of citizens"?

I ask because I have been trying all morning to think of someone I know who really believes that our government is at all concerned anymore with "the people", their problems or welfare. There is a growing recognition of two classes in society; the hoi polloi and the ruling elite.

I don't believe this is mere cynicism, either, but is just an acknowledgement of something more or less transparently true. As the saying goes, and Randy Quaid might insist, "You're not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you.".

One sees, though, glimmers of life in the electorate, yet. We can be a cantankerous and still (hopefully) unpredictable bunch. The recent shuffle in Congressional seats, though welcome, I don't read as any sort of deep tectonic shift. It strikes one more as, well... I opened with GKC... migth as well close with him;

 

The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings. - "The New House" Alarms and Discursions

Is Jon Stewart Reading Chesterton?

If not... is he ready to?

Here he is talking about Glenn Beck (from a recent NPR interview);

The beautiful thing about what he does is, it's very difficult to argue with his facts. It's the conclusions [that are problematic]. ... It's that slippery slope. ... So what you do is, you just grab together facts and put them together and then do a grab bag of conclusions. Everything is discovered as evidence of secret plots, of secret things that could be occurring.

This reminds me of a classic passage from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy;

Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable;

Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way.

Disclaimer; I am not saying Glenn Beck is a lunatic. However, he does have what seem to be some pretty looney ideas, which a disturbing number of people seem to accept as real explanations of the world and the state of our Republic at present. Why is it that, far from tempering the excesses of the other,  the Right and Left so often end up mirroring one another's most ghastly mental traits?

Oh, wait. C.S Lewis nailed that one;

Opposite evils, so far from balancing, aggravate each other.

Or, as he noted regarding his semi-biographical allegory The Pilgrim's Regress;

The attack on the soul from north and south represent, in Lewis's words, "equal and opposite evils, each continually strengthened and made plausible by its critique of the other."

So... evil is a two party system, where we are allowed the tormentor of our choice. And that passes for freedom.

Incidentally, The Pilgrim's Regress was my first exposure ever to C.S. Lewis and the first chapter had me howling with laughter, in recognition of my own confused religious upbringing. Not that this was anyone's fault, but so much of my boyhood grasp of the Gospel boiled down to this (from the aforementioned chapter 1);

...it all ended with pointing out that the Landlord was quite extraordinarily kind and good to his tenants, and would certainly torture most of them to death the moment he had the slightest pretext.

A Culture Against Culture - Continued Ramblings

This got too long for the combox.

Reader Artaban writes (in response to this post),

"I would argue there was a common religion--insofar as it was Judeo-Christian."

There was certainly a greater commonality of outlook, though I think both Jews and Christians would agree that "Judeo-Christian" is not a religion, but a kind of cultural penumbra. It was the culture that flowed from Christianity with its Jewish roots, but it was not The Thing itself.

There were always those who were agreeable enough with the moral assumptions and outlook of the Faith, but who also did not hold that faith themselves. They coasted, more or less, on the philosophical momentum of Christendom, with little complaint.

But there was no *official* provision made to maintain this Judeo-Christian cultural prominence. I think the founders assumed that it would continue, but they made no real provision to assure that it would. For instance, though the Ten Commandments are enshrined in stone on the great frieze atop the steps of the Supreme Court, they are nowhere in our founding documents.

This is not to say that a Christian basis for law and government would require that any individual profess the Christian faith. It is just a matter of stating plainly, "The laws of our land are based on the Ten Commandments and on Christian principles of natural law. You need not believe or practice any religion, but you will follow the law." I don't think any reasonable person could have much of a problem with that, just as any reasonable person would abide by the laws and customs of a foreign country when visiting (unless they flat-out contradicted one's own fundamental morals, or positively compelled one to do evil).

The founders were so skittish, so anxious about the effects of organized religion (most especially anything like the Catholic Church) on the state, that they insulated the Republic from any such direct religious influence. I don't think they could have imagined the full-frontal assault on religion that has taken place in the last century. The primacy of Christian thought was so secure, in their minds, that they believed they could get by without explicitly favoring it. They were counting on its continued influence. George Washington said, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

But no official measures were taken to preserve religious principle. It was assumed. The elephant in our national living room.

It was Sola Scriptura, Enlightenment thinking. Every man his own magisterium. What could go wrong?

So... now we are reduced to battling it out among our various tribes, seeing who can get the upper hand politically from season to season, seeing who can sway the masses a little one way or the other. Morality by referendum, and principles that change with the weather.

A Culture Against Culture

Little time for blogging or much else, lately, as your humble blogmaster has been blessed with an abundance of paying work and has been keeping his beard to the grindstone.

One line of thought has been bubbling on the back burner; TLBC is primarily about Western culture and how to save it... while having "a jolly time". Of late the following has been running through my brain;

1) It is impossible to maintain a healthy national life without a common culture.

2) It is impossible to maintain or develop a common culture without a common religion.

3) We decided - as a people, at the very inception of our republic - to have no common religion.

Discuss.

(In other words, we've been trying for centuries to cobble together a culture out of the tattered remnants of other cultures with no central organizing principle other than individual liberty. Can it be done? It doesn't appear so.)

Did I Miss Something?

This blog is really not intended to muck about in politics, but... *harrumph*... perhaps I was busy trimming my beard, or maybe my nose hair (which requires far greater concentration), but I seem to have completely missed out on any national conversation or debate over this, which I'm sure must have been vocal and abundant.  Far be it that anyone should get all worked up over such a trivial matter, but in looking over the instructions for the IRS Form 1040, I recently found the following;

 

Expiring tax benefits.

The following benefits are scheduled to expire and will not be available for 2010.

... The exclusion from income of qualified charitable distributions

 

Tax-deductible charitable contributions are... just gone? In the words of my old Building-and-Loan pal, George Bailey... "Do you realize what this means?"

Did I read this wrong? Am I dreaming?

UPDATE: So, a couple of knowledgable commenters at Jimmy Akin's blog have pointed out that, unlike the "charitable tax deduction", the "exclusion from income" is limited to direct contributions of things like IRAs to charitiy. So, a follow up question: how will this affect charities and donors? How greatly do charitable organizations count on this sort of funding?

It doesn;t sound as dire as I had imagined.