June 2013 Vol. 32, no. 7 $5
Is Proprt Proprtyy Tht? Tht?
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editr e. Micha Js, Ph.D.
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leTTeRS ReAGAn: A CounTeR-ReVoluTIonARy? My co-worker is a member o the Nez Perce ribe o Colville, WA, where Chie Joseph’ Joseph’s band o warriors were sent ollowing the cessation o war with the U.S. military; she says she cries when she crests the Cascade Mountains coming back to the Puget Sound area or work. I concur with her opinion that the problem with the U.S.A. is the absence o the amily units, which brings me to comment on your claim that President Ronald Reagan was counter-revolutionary to the pro-abortion and atheistic communist world (see “Culture Jihad in ehran,” ehran,” Culture Wars , April 2013, pg. 14). Being anti-abortion and against atheism is good, however the recent death o a 3-year old daughter by a son’s co-worker’s rst relationship (child not brought to Children’s Orthopedic in Seattle, but kept in a county hospital across the state), reminds me to point out that while Governor o Caliornia, Reagan was tasked with implementing the Caliornia Legislature’s sweeping noault divorce law overhaul. Rather than being a responsible executive and implementing what proponent members o the community believed would reduce the incidence o divorce through interventions like marital counseling, divorced and remarried Governor Reagan put in charge o implementation, a man with an inherent conict o interest. Te bureaucrat was going through his own divorce as he was setting up procedures or the new no-ault codes and saw no reason to set-up systems to und proven 4 / CulTuRe WARS
counseling methods to reduce the divorce rate. Since Caliornia was the rst state to import the Archbishop o Canterbury’s sea-change no-ault Divorce system rom Britain, it set the tone or the rest o the U.S.A.’s No-Fault Divorce sea changes. Ater Governor Reagan became President Reagan, he opened the gates to oreign labor competition, thereby ruining the hopes o many U.S. men to obtain amilysupporting work. Other countries protect their labor orces by taxing oreign workers, or example warranty workers (on American built airplanes, when provided in Japan), must pay Japanese income taxes. We do not even tax our own workers i they work or an American company over 12 months on oreign soil! What an incentive to get workers to run plants overseas. We We let legally ormed American companies retain their “American” corporate status and place on the stock exchanges when they take the majority o their workorce oshore. For example, a ormer classmate told me that I.B.M. laid o 2,000, employees in the San Francisco area, opening up shop oshore; each manager had to lay o 10 workers, and only one became violent (a oreign worker visa holder who knew he would have to take his amily and return to his country o origin). o add insult to injury, many o the Americans being laid o in these American corporation o-shore moves are orced to train the oreigners sent here to learn their jobs. I was orced to train my replacement by the president o a law rm or which I worked. Ater this humiliating and degrading experience, it took me 6-years to nd another career position that was
not temporary, and that position does not utilize my Bachelor o Arts, my Associate o Arts degrees, my 13-years o Catholic education, nor my law oce background. I am a mechanic. Another executive who ailed to exercise his oversight or legislated change is President William Clinton. He never should have signed his Congress’s Welare Reorm Act, which has destroyed the prospects o normal lie or so many amilies. My ormer neighbor with three sons went to the Washington State Department o Social and Health Services or the two week program on how to nd and keep a job. Burger King hired her or second shit work, though the manager promised to put her on rst shit once the summer was over and her sons’ schools began. Burger King changed management; the new manager reused to honor the ormer manager’s agreement. Te mother’s love relationship broke up. Soon thereater, one son ended up in juvenile court and juvenile jail, another son ended up in the mental hospital or children, and a third son later had an out o wedlock child. Some years later, the mother has a job cleaning hospital rooms, but was sent to jail or a week or driving under the inuence o alcohol. So there you have it. Men, athers, cannot nd lie sustaining jobs. Te women, mothers, orced onto welare because o the lack o lie sustaining jobs or their men, then get to join the labor orce and put their children into the hands o others to raise or to raise themselves. We all know that things can easily go wrong or the children, yet meanwhile the powerul congratulate themselves or employing
people in other countries (or rom other countries) in amily wage jobs, while their American neighbors, ellow church members, and extended amilies are starved or the pride o an honest day’s work or an honest day’s pay, and a day o rest each week to spend as a amily. Rosmari Dicso Coo Sohomish, Washigto
THe SAMe SA Me WAVe WAVe oF ReVul R eVul-SIon
ible picture you painted or your lucky readers! I only wish I could have been there to see the aces o the Iranian people whom you enlightened with your incredible analyses o the current situation. I the neocons get their way and we do indeed make war against these honorable people, it will be a blunder o tragic proportions. laura Shao Smiy aura.smiy@comcast.t
IlluMInATInG AnAl An AlySIS ySIS
As Paul Craig Roberts said in a recent blog, war with Iran is inevitable and coming up soon as our Imperium, (the brains, Israel and Zionists; the body, US) wants a puppet state near Israel, not an independent one. (Te same with Syria.) Te little tap dance that the US has been doing with the military option o the table, on the table, o the table is a distraction to make the US appear sincere. But according to Roberts the nonpuppet status o Iran is long-term intolerable to the Imperium. Everyone knows this has nothing to do with Iran developing nuclear weaponry. weaponry. With regime change in Iran it would 1) give Israel much more o the hegemony it wants in the
Your Your piece on Iran and the HoI did not claim that Ronald Reagan was a counter-revolutionary, lywoodism conab that I or one but rather that he and the Ayatol- have heard nothing about beore lah Khomeini rode the same wave was very illuminating. Fine reporto counter-revolutionary revulsion age and analysis here. at the sexual revolution that was sweeping the world in 1979 into political oce. Unlike the Ayatol- Cutur Wars wcoms ttrs to th ditor. lah Khomeini, Reagan betrayed the Prrc wi b giv to ttrs which da people who voted or him or mor- Prrc al and religious reasons. He used with topics discussd i th magazi. lttrs the abortion issue to get Catholic votes and then betrayed the Catho- shoud iday b imitd to o sig-spacd lics by turning on the unions. Once pag, but w ow how difcut it is to oow Reagan was in the White House, he ensured that there would be no idas i this word. lttrs ca b st by mai political intererence with the war to Cutur Wars, Wars, 206 Marqutt Av., South against labor which Paul Volcker 219-289-1461; or or by had already begun waging as head Bd, In 46617; by ax to 219-289-1461; o the Federal Reserve System. ctroic mai to Jos@cuturwars.com. e. Micha Jos South Bd, Idiaa
TRAGIC TRAGI C BlunDeR BlunD eR I had to write to tell you I stayed up past three last night reading the April 2013 issue o Culture Wars cover to cover especially your exceptional piece on the hollywoodism conerence. What an incredJ 2013 / 5
region, and 2) buy the US a little more time or the seriously doomed petrodollar and the dollar itsel as a viable international reserve currency. Both ironic objectives as 1) Israel may not last over ten more years as a viable state because o the native Islamic greatly increasing population, and 2) the $ as international reserve currency is going by-by very soon anyway. Look or some very ingenious and sneaky alse ag to pin on Iran to provide an excuse to bomb, bomb, bomb. Tis would be such a tragedy since Persia is such a great culture and ancient one, and they are so damned innocent. It would be almost akin to how the Imperium already wiped out the cradle o civilization in Iraq and let it radioactive, promoted by the US Jew neocons and their phony WMD rationale —(advanced ater the 9-11 mass murder, now plain-to-see Israel/Imperium sel perpetrated—wake up you doubters, can you pronounce “Mossad” and “Cheney”?) For Iran invasion you can bet your bottom dollar that it will again be US boots on the ground with US body bags back, not Israeli ones, as has been the case or the Jewish wars o this and the last century. (It’s so clever how the Jews have alway gotten the big guy on the block to do their dirty work, e.g. Romans to do their murder o Christ, the US soldiers to die executing their wars.) But with this one, el Aviv will surely be leveled and some cities in the contiguous orty-eight will probably see some hell.
FInDInG ouR WAy
Tese days an air o resignation can settle upon the most casual o conversations, whenever the discussion turns to the dreary subject o our economy. As the country slogs its way through the atermath o 2008’s nancial meltdown, our resolve is tested by recurring tales o insider trading, municipal budget short alls, and multiple EU nations declaring bankruptcy. Meanwhile, conservative pundits have resumed their cheerleading or capitalism and the ree market, ocusing primarily on the theoretical benets, as i we are all living in a classroom, under controlled circumstances. It requires no specialized training to realize something is deeply wrong with this picture. Five years on, it is business as usual or the investment houses that survived the 2008 crisis, ater enduring nothing more challenging to their modus operandi than a ew awkward congressional hearings, some unattering publicity, and the payment o blip-on-the-radar-screen nes. Te 24/7 news cycle continued to churn, the spotlight moved on to its next target, and our notoriously short attention span allowed these institutions to escape urther scrutiny and emerge relatively unscathed. Reckless speculation is now an art orm. Te sophisticated schemes o the large banks have outdistanced the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ability to provide oversight, because the SEC does not understand what is going on, and cannot keep up. Teir too-big-toJams d Just ail status has catapulted them into Prscott, Arizoa a special category, rendering them beyond the reach o any regulatory
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reproach, and provides a sort o get-out-o-jail-ree card that lesser business mortals can only dream about. Each new season brings orth yet another best-seller that looks behind the scenes, and describes in excruciating detail still more ethical lapses by people at the top. Te author du jour gets some play in the press, appears on the cable news outlets, and scores the coveted eature interview slot on NPR. Book and author soon disappear, however, lost in the latest round o insider trading, municipal budget short alls, and EU member nation bankruptcy. A ew brave conservative souls have stepped orward to declare capitalism has gone astray, and needs a massive recalibration to once again exert a stabilizing inuence on our civic lie. Tis is preerable to the mainstream claim that capitalism retains its essential goodness, as i the world is populated even now by a cadre o small business people who are kept in line by their neighbors. But suggesting capitalism may be broken, though warranted, still miss the larger point that it is undamentally wrong. Despite the agrant abuses, and the resulting damage to the social abric, nothing seems to change. Any meaningul reorm o the present system seems beyond us. Tings have developed a momentum o their own, and so continue to roll on as beore. Te prot motive is very powerul, and has overwhelmed all other social considerations. Free market capitalism is seen as not only the reason or our wonderul growth as a nation, but also or the spectacular increase in the material well-being o the general populace. And there is no
viable alternative economic system on the horizon. Socialism may have initially been viewed as a reaction to the excesses o capitalism, but it had serious aws o its own that soon became apparent. Distributism was championed by Catholic writers such as G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc early in the twentieth century, but holds no weight in the minds o successul, college-educated olks who came o age in the post WWII era. Indeed, today’s right-leaning Catholic intellectuals are oursquare behind capitalism and the ree market, to the point o being dismissive o whatever our popes have said to the contrary. Does this mean we are stuck with capitalism? How did the world unction, economically speaking, beore capitalism and the ree market came on the scene? And is capitalism really so bad, apart rom a handul o rapacious traders and a ew greedy CEOs? Te capitalist ideology now so engrained in our thinking sprang rom the Enlightenment o the 18th century. But capitalism actually got its start in the sixteenth century, when Henry VIII conscated Church land as part o his Reormation. Tis thet, and the break with Rome that inspired it, established or the rst time an aristocracy out o touch with other segments o society they once elt a responsibility towards. It brought to an end the cooperative spirit that created a community inormed by a Catholic understanding o how society should best unction. We see ourselves as ar removed rom a time o country lords and squires, ree peasants working the land, and artisans plying their trade. Just as we reexively consider our present-
day “democracy” as ar superior to anything that has gone beore. In tracing the roots o the current economic chaos, and o the depraved state o popular culture, a more orthodox reading o recent history might prove instructive. Over the course o the 16th century, Capitalism revolutionized the social order. From its earliest days, it created a divide between the small number who owned productive property and the majority who had no control over capital or land. It gave us, or the rst time, the capitalist and the proletariat. Te latter was stripped o any hope o ever owning anything other than his own labor, his own productivity. Unlike the ree peasants and the artisans o the guild era, who beneted rom a system o ordered liberty and widely dispersed property, the new proletariat was at the mercy o the capitalist, since the capitalist no longer elt a moral obligation towards those he might employ. In terms o one’s identity and sense o place, this change did not represent a net improvement over what came beore. Even today, i one is lucky enough to avoid an eviction or repossession due to an unexpected lay-o, being saddled with a mortgage that requires a lietime to pay o, with access to an addictive stream o unnecessary consumer goods, does not compare avorably to what has been taken rom us in the bargain. Te break rom Rome represented by the Protestant Reormation paved the way or the break rom God that was the essence o the Enlightenment. Te Enlightenment built upon the schism that was the Protestant Reormation, and in so doing brought capitalism to the people, i you will. Te
Enlightenment jettisoned “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, in avor o a radical new understanding o reedom and liberty. It replaced guiding principles such as “air price” and “just wage” with the morally ambivalent “what the market will bear.” It saw a competitive model as an improvement over the cooperative one, and determined the common good could now be achieved by pursing sel-interest. In holding up “competition” as the great purier o man’s otherwise base motivations, capitalism has al ways oered an alternate worldview to the Gospels and Catholic teaching. In relying on the ree market to regulate itsel, capitalism has never recognized any moral absolutes. It has thereore always lacked an ethical ramework to reign in human nature. Te abuses we witness on a recurring basis should not be considered aberrations, but rather as integral to the system. Te Enlightenment changed our cultural DNA. Te economic system it spawned always represented a serious move away rom Revelation, even i its originators did not see it that way at the time. It may have taken several hundred years or this ssure to reach completion, but the ault lines were there rom the beginning. All the literature about capitalism’s success being directly tied to the virtue o its practitioners only serves to muddy the waters or Catholics trying to understand the big picture. Tere is a undamental disconnect between what we want to believe about capitalism, and what is really happening under our capitalist system. For historical reerence, please see the “Industrial Revolution”, the “Gilded Age”, and the J 2013 / 7
“Robber Barons” or additional details. In contemporary terms, we accept as an article o aith that the competition provided by a ree market can be counted on to consistently deliver what we take to be the best o both worlds, consumer choice and product innovation. It is what keeps business people on their toes. It eliminates waste, and maintains a ocus on customer satisaction through quality products and services. And nally, it completes the circle by allowing workers to sell their labor on the open market, to the highest bidder. Tis all has merit, and plays out according to script, at least some o the time. Te system works ne, except when it doesn’t. We have no language with which to address the little murders that occur every day, or the tsunami-like downturns that hit us at regular intervals, when everything seems to all apart. So we keep repeating the same optimistic mantra noted above, as we overlook the daily conniving. And, ater the passage o some years, we collectively overcome the selshness and short-sightedness that brought on the latest crash. Ten we move orward as beore, as i nothing bad has happened, or continues to happen. Tere is an unspoken assumption in the hosannas we hear oered up to the ree market. In the role o job creator, the business owner is automatically put on a pedestal. He or she is the possessor o unassailable motives, and can always be counted on to make good decisions. In the event a business venture overcomes the odds and succeeds, the owner is due whatever reward may come his or her way, because he or she risked their pri8 / CulTuRe WARS
vate capital to start the business, and also presumably put in the most hours and worked the hardest to ensure its success. Pointing out the injustice at the core o capitalism should not be conused with being an automatic indictment o the basic premise o entrepreneurship. Te cheerleaders tend to make just this mistake, when they deect any criticism o our present system as mere jealously on the part o the great un washed who might not have a marketable idea, access to investment capital, or the drive and supreme mental gits o those who have “succeeded.” But these assumptions are by and large o the mark. Many hard-working employees are quite intelligent, and posses a good bit o drive. Tey realize the owner deserves more o a return than they do. Most are not the least envious o the entrepreneur who starts a business. Tey would never want to deal with the hassles and stress the boss aces, because they have interests in lie apart rom what they do or a living. Tey generally respect the eort that goes into starting and running a business, and do not begrudge the ounder his just deserts. Te risk and uncertainty o starting a business should not, however, entitle an owner to write himsel a blank check i and when things go well. Capitalism has no builtin mechanism or equitable distribution when success occurs. Te ormula or being competitive— namely, keeping costs in line— needs adjusting to accommodate some orm o improved compensation or all the many contributors. Employees should be more than a xed cost on a balance sheet. Suc-
cess is not just the result o the entrepreneur’s smarts and sweat, plus some investment capital. As many other noteworthy observers have noticed, capitalism tends to re ward capital and ownership, at the expense o non-owners or “labor.” Once the owner makes it through the gauntlet, it is the rare individual or ownership group who turns around and rewards those who ran with him. Tere are always a multitude o sound reasons or maintaining the status quo on employee compensation. Who knows what the uture will bring? But this rationale rarely prevents the typical owner rom rewarding himsel. When conservatives make the business owner into a kind o contemporary saint who can do no wrong, they discount the behavior o all the bad actors making headlines as not being representative o the breed. But it is human nature to ollow the leader. Te unortunate example set by Wall Street hotshots and marauding CEOs has ltered down into everyday business lie, in ways we do not routinely notice. Applying the philosophy o “what the market will bear” too oten creates the economic version o a wol in sheep’s clothing. In good times or bad, it becomes a license to price gouge, cut corners, and short change employees, on the corporate level and in small business alike. Does this sound overly harsh? Many otherwise good people manage to rationalize some aspect o this sort o behavior, much like the country lords and squires no doubt managed to do ater they ound themselves the beneciaries o Henry’s pique. Bigness creates distance between the decision-
makers and those aected by the decision. And distance makes the rationalization much easier. Under capitalism, bigness is the common denominator o success. o be sure, there are still many decent people in all sectors who do not manipulate the system to their advantage. Tey are the reason things have not come tumbling down around us. But these are, or the most part, the little people. Te vast majority at the top, who sel-identiy as our cognitive elite, have no qualms about manipulating the system. Tey are sons and daughters o the Enlightenment, and understand capitalism as the perect vehicle or their behavior, which by any objective standard would be judged as amoral. Tey see themselves as smarter than the rest o us, we who are too slow or simply too timid to take whatever we can get our hands on. Tese people are the reason our world is teetering on the brink. And rankly, too many o the rest o us have taken our cue rom these captains o industry, these masters o the universe. oo many o us have internalized “getting ahead” as our personal operational model. Capitalism and the ree market have turned “making money” into a dening trait o America, and o most Americans. o comment unavorably on this development would be to render onesel an outcast. Yet the Gospels tell us that no one can serve two masters, especially when the choice is between Mammon and God. And philanthropic eorts—no matter how generous—do not justiy the questionable acts that may have been involved in generating the wealth to begin with.
Certainly there is nothing inherently wrong with ambition, entrepreneurship, or with wanting to get ahead. But neither is there anything inherently right about them. In order to maintain social order and the common good, all economic activity must respect the dignity o the human person. Tat means respecting the dignity o each person aected by a given economic transaction, even those without an ownership stake or capital to invest. Tis respect should also extend to those who may not be in the room with us at the time, whose concerns we routinely put out o our minds or reasons o nancial expediency. A talent or business is as much a git rom God as any other. And society needs the gits these people can bring to the table. But ill-gotten gains are corrosive to the body politic. And an unbridled desire to get ahead is directly responsible or some o capitalism’s everyday injustices: the slow or non-payment o vendors and suppliers, the underpayment o employees, and the seeking o unair advantage through nearious means. Ironically, on the larger scale, the most successul ree market practitioners are requently those who manage to eliminate competition, through monopoly or lobbying eorts. Since we are all allen creatures, this litany o social ills has been with us since the beginning. Such disdainul traits were once considered among the seven deadly sins. But capitalism has turned the world upside down, as demonstrated by the way good old-ashioned greed has been re-purposed as enlightened sel-interest. And by the way lying, cheating, and stealing
have become standard operational procedure. Tere are no more sins, as long as you are turning a prot. Or, to put a slightly more polite spin on it, as long as you are turning a prot, everything else is negotiable. Te ree market provides socially acceptable cover or behavior that should not be tolerated. Yet we continue to tolerate it, in the name o “progress” and “prosperity.” An important tenet o the American gospel is the bedrock belie in a pluralist society as our single greatest achievement. Accommodating those who may dier rom us is proudly heralded as a sign o tolerance, and this acceptance o diversity has earned America the moniker o being “the melting pot”. When invoking pluralism, the cultural commissars paint with too broad a brush, and miss an important distinction. It is right and just to appreciate our dierences, since we are all children o God. It is another thing when we allow a misguided sense o pluralism to release us rom the obligation to ollow the truth o Christ, or the corollary obligation to preach the Gospel and seek the conversion o all nations. Restoring Christ to the center o our economic lie need not be a mysterious undertaking, nor should it require any magical thinking. I Catholics have not ound a workable model o a modern economy based on the Gospels and the papal encyclicals, perhaps it is because we have been looking in all the wrong places. Catholics have abandoned their own intellectual heritage, and have ceded the high ground on nancial matters to their Enlightctid p. 33. J 2013 / 9
Cutur o Dath Watch
Pushig A Qada to ta o Hzboah “Tis is one damn ne idea, what took us so long to see a simple solution that was right in ront o our eyes or Christ’s sake”, Senator John McCain o “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” and “no-y zones or Syria” notoriety, reportedly demanded to know rom Dennis Ross during a recent Washington Institute or Near East Policy (WINEP) brain storming session in Washington DC. Ross, a ounder o WINEP with Israeli government start up cash (presumably reimbursed unknowingly by American taxpayers) and currently WINEP’s “Counselor”, reportedly responded to the idea o acilitating Al Qeada to wage jihad against Hezbollah with the comment: “Shiites aren’t the only ones seeking death to demonstrate their ‘resistance’ 10 / CulTuRe WARS
to whatever. Plenty o other Muslims also want to die as we saw last week in Boston. Let ‘em all go at it and Israel can sweep out their s--- when it’s over.” One Congressional staer attending the WINEP event emailed me, “Dennis spoke in jest -- well I assumed he did -- but who knows anymore? Tings are getting ever crazier inside some o these pro-Israel think-tanks around here.” Featured on the ront page o its April 25 edition, the Zionist-compliant New York imes writes that the Assad regime is apparently recovering but, “it must be understood that or all o the justied worries about the (al Qaeda aliated) rebels “Assad remains an ally o Iran and Hezbollah.“ Te imes adopts the views o Is-
lamophobe, Daniel Pipes, who recommends that the US try to keep the two sides in Syria ghting as long as possible until they destroy each other. Pipes, now serving as an advisor to John McClain, wrote in the Washington imes on April 11, “Evil orces pose less danger to us when they make war on each other. Tis keeps them ocused locally, and it prevents either one rom emerging victorious and thereby posing a greater danger. Western powers should guide enemies to a stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their debilitating conict.” Both Jerey Feltman, U.N. Under-Secretary General or Political Aairs and Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N, have at a minimum impliedly joined in the intriguing idea o sic-
cing Jabhat al Nusra on the Party o God. Tis scheme, i launched, would be Feltman’s 14th attempt to topple Hezbollah and deeat the Lebanese National Resistance to the occupation o Palestine since he rst arrived in Beirut rom el Aviv in 2005 to become US Ambassador to Lebanon. Tis observer, among others in this region sense that given the aura still enveloping the American Embassy here, Jerey never really let his Lebanese ambassadorial post and continues to occupy this position rom his new UN oce. Isn’t Hezbollah the Lebanese National Resistance to the occupation o Lebanon? Tis week Feltman warned that the spillover o Syria’s war continues to be elt in Lebanon, as Susan Rice echoed him and condemned Hezbollah or “undermining the country’s “dissociation policy.” Te latter being a bit obscure in meaning but connoting something like sitting around doing nothing while this country is being shelled by jihadists rom among the 23 countries currently ghting in Syria. Feltman inormed the media on 4/22/13 that “Te Secretary-General is concerned by reports that Lebanese are ghting in Syria both on the side o the regime and on the side o the opposition, hoping that the new government will nd ways to promote better compliance by all sides in Lebanon with the “disassociation policy.” Given current divisions in Lebanon, that will not happen anymore than Lebanon’s June 9th Parliamentary elections will be held on time. For her part, Susan lectured the UN Security Council that “Hezbollah actively enables Assad to
wage war on the Syrian people by providing money, weapons, and expertise to the regime in close coordination with Iran.” Tis position was expressed also through a statement by US. State Department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell, who said that Washington “has always been clear concerning Hezbollah’s shameul role and the support it is providing or the Syrian regime and the violence it is inducing in Syria.” Ventrell added: “We were clear rom the start concerning the destructive role played by Iran as well as the Iranian role.”
ISRAelI AGenTS Several Israeli agents in Congress are today promoting a Jabhat el Nusra-Hezbollah war even as the Obama administration terror-lists the jihadist group. Meanwhile, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.),
years in Libya, that shadow o a country, reveals countless examples, three witnessed rsthand by this observer, during the long hot summer o 2011. What we saw was Gul sponsors and unders oering young men, oten unemployed, $100 per month, ree cigarettes, and a Kalashnikov to do jihad. Plenty down and out lads still accept these oers in Libya, as they do in Syria. One reason why the militias prolierated so quickly in Libya and never melted away was the phenomenon o a wannabe jihadists deciding to be a leader and recruiting perhaps a brother or two, maybe a ew cousins or tribe members, and presto, they have created a militia with power they never dreamed o. Teir new lie can oer many perceived benets rom running rough shod over the civilian populations and setting up myriad mini but potent
Isamphb, Dai Pips, wh rcmmds that th uS try t p th tw sids i Syria ghtig as g as pssib ti thy dstry ach thr.
McCain’s neocon Islamaphobe aco- criminal enterprises specializing in lyte, goes a bit urther and explains kidnappings, robberies, drugs, trato Fox News, once Assad alls and cking in women, and assassinaHezbollah is out o the picture tions or cash. How many o these “We can deal with these (jihadist) young men have turned in their weapons in Libya and returned ellas.” Recent history in Libya instructs to their ormer lives? Or will do otherwise. As urkish commenta- so when instructed by the likes o tor Cihan Celik recently noted: McCain or Graham? On 4/24/13 Jabhat Al-Nusra “A divorce with al-Nusra will not be easy in Syria.” Te past two Front intensied its threats to oJ 2013 / 11
Hassa nasraah
cials here including the Lebanese president by releasing a challenge rom its media oce: “…we inorm you – and you may think o that as a warning or an ultimatum – that you must take immediate measures to restrain Hezbollah, otherwise, the re will reach Beirut. I you do not abide by this within 24 hours, we will consider that you are taking part in the massacres committed by the Hezbollah members and we will unortunately have to burn everything in Beirut.” In addition they are calling or Jihad and the establishment o the “Resistance Factions or Jihad against the Regime in Syria” and also in Saida and ripoli, Lebanon.
RoSS/PIPeS PRoPoSAl Israeli ocials appear to be in agreement with the Ross/Pipes proposal to arrange or Al Qeada to launch a war against Hezbollah. Te Director or External Aairs at “Te Moshe Dayan Center or Middle Eastern and Arican 12 / CulTuRe WARS
Studies repeatedly claimed that the Shia are the real threat to Israel, not the Sunni and with the least threat coming rom the Gul monarchs. He oered the view recently that “Israel is now a partner o the Sunni Arab states.” Indeed, Israel hopes that Hezbollah will orget Israel when tasked with trying to repel Al Nusra and other al Qaeda aliate attacks. According to various Israel ocials who have issued statements on the subject, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan and several other members o the Arab League constitute an “alliance o anxiety or Israel” because they claim that “Sunni Arabs are not as competent as the Shia and Iran and, as a result, they express doubts that Israel can rely on the Sunni states in the same way that the Sunni states can rely on Israel.” In a documentary about the Iraq war, an American soldier explains: “Actually, we don’t really have much o a problem with the Sunnis. It’s the Shias who we are araid
o. Te problem has something to do with their leader who was killed centuries ago and these ellas are willing to lay their lie down or the guy. Anyhow, that is what they told us in Special Ops class.” Al Nusra ghters currently occupying parts the south west areas o Yarmouk Palestinian reugee camp in south Damascus, recently expressed eagerness to ght Hezbollah which they claim would give them credibility with Sunni Muslims and, oddly, in this observers view, “credibility with western countries”, who supposedly are al Qaeda’s sworn enemies. It’s sometimes hard to know who precisely is whose enemy these days in Syria as the rebels continue using areas east and southwest o Damascus as rear bases and as gateways into the capital. Despite boasts to the contrary rom Jihadist types in Syria and Lebanon, it is not clear to this observer i Jihadist and al Qaedaaliated groups living among Hezbollah communities in Lebanon like Fatah al Islam, Jund al Sham or Osbat al Ansar which have been here or years would actually join the Zionist promoted anti-Hezbollah jihad. But it is evident that some Lebanese Islamists and jihadists directly connected to al Qaeda do have the
ability to target Hezbollah. Elements rom each o these groups are starting to associate and identiy with Jabhat al Nusra, inspired partly by their successul military operations in Syria.Again, we saw the same thing in Libya. Enthusiastic, ambitious young men who want to improve their lot in lie try to go with a winner. According to sources in the Ain al Hilweh Palestinian reugee camp, jihadist leaders such as Haytham and Mohammed al Saadi, awc aha, Oussama al Shehabi and Majed al Majed are recruiting ollowers and ghters in Lebanon and oer a ticket out the the squalid army-surrounded, Syrian-reugeeinated camp. Homs-based media activist Mohammad Radwan Raad claims that “the embattled residents o the rebel-controlled Homs prov-
members in the area…We need anyone who can get rid o them.” Tis week Assir urged his ollowers to join Syrian rebels ghting troops loyal to President Bashar al Assad and Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. Al-Qusayr has been under rebel control or more than a year and on the scene reports indicate that it is about to be returned to central government control. In response, two Salast Sunni Lebanese sheikhs urged their ollowers to go to Syria to ght a jihad (religious war) in deense o Qusayr’s Sunni residents. “Tere is a religious duty on every Muslim who is able to do so... to enter into Syria in order to deend its people, its mosques and religious shrines, especially in Qusayr and Homs,” Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir
sir argue that Jabhat al Nusra and riends are not organized enough to ght against Hezbollah in a conventional war, but they could cause great damage by organizing bomb attacks against the Party o God’s bases and militants. Te latter would be enough initially or Ross and WINEP and their Zionist handlers. Creating chaos in Lebanon being one o their goals but more importantly weakening the National Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah and also challenging Syria and Iran. In a recent speech, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah oered his party’s view about a Western-promoted Sunni-Shia clash, with Al-Nusra, AlQaida and all the groups which ocked to Syria, saying that what was wanted o them was to kill and get killed in Syria, in a massacre which will only serve the enemies o the Arabs and Muslims. I a rct spch, Hzbah ScrtaryTe coming months will reveal to us i the several pro-Zionist Arab Gra Hassa nasraah rd his regimes as well as Islamophobes, party’s viw abt a Wstr-prmtd including those at WINEP and other Israel-rst think-tanks, are Si-Shia cash, with A-nsra, AQaida delusional in believing that John ad a th grps which fcd t Syria, McCain’s “simple solution” to those resisting the Zionist occupation o sayig that what was watd Palestine, would be to assist Jabhat thm was t i ad gt id i Syria, el Nusra type jihadists to make war against Hezbollah. i a massacr which wi y srv th Whether they could deeat Hezmis th Arabs ad Msims. bollah is uncertain but whether Jabhat al Nusra and riends are capable o igniting yet another catastrophe in this region is the looming ince town o Al-Qusayr welcome told his ollowers. For now, experts question. Saida, Lebanon-based Sunni say, such calls on the part o LebaSheikh Ahmad al-Assir’s call or non’s Salasts are largely bluster FRAnklIn lAMB Jihad in Syria. Claims Raad, “Al- because the movement is ar rom Qusayr residents welcome As- able to wield either the arsenal or sir’s call and hope the Lebanese the ghting orces o Hezbollah. people help kick out Hezbollah Local analysts like Qassem KasJ 2013 / 13
How Cathoicism Datd Marxism i th Batt or th Grma Mid by E. Michael Jones
One o the unoreseen consequences o the Irish Potato Famine was Communism. wenty years ater the Black ‘47, Karl Marx’s magnum opus Das Kapital nally rolled o the presses. In it Marx wrote that “Te Irish amine o 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only” (Capital , i, pt vii, chapter 25).98 Ograda claims that Marx was “almost right” because “many who were not abjectly poor and starving died o amine-related diseases.”99 Marx claimed that “in the time o Cromwell, the English had supplanted the Irish Catholics with Protestants, but during the amine they supplanted them with cattle.” 100 Marx, we are told, “was heavily inuenced by events happening in Ireland as he wrote in London.”101 In Germany, meanwhile, an independent labor party had come into existence, thanks mainly to the activities, not o Marx and Engels, but o another communist, Ferdinand Lassalle.1 Lassalle (1825-1864) was a Jew who was born into the amily o a wealthy merchant rom Breslau, now Wroclaw. He studied philosophy and literature at various universities and during the 1850s and early 1860s was in regular contact with Marx, but the cordiality o their relationship was undermined by Marx’s contempt, which seems to have been at least partially motivated by racial considerations. In correspondence with Engels Marx reerred to Lassalle as the Jewish nigger. Reerring to his dark complexion and coarse hair, Marx claimed that Lassalle was “descendant rom the negroes who joined in
e. Micha Js is ditr Ctr Wars magazi.
14 / CulTuRe WARS
the ight o Moses rom Egypt unless his mother or grandmother on the ather’s side was crossed with a nigger.” Marx also criticized Lassalle or his “niggerlike” importunity, although it was Marx who importuned Lassalle or a 30 pound loan.2 Lassale was a member o the Communist League, but he was considerably less dogmatic in his approach to the labor issue. Te act that he was not dogmatically committed to either internationalism or revolution eventually alienated him rom Marx and Engels but allowed him to organize German workers on a national basis more eectively. On May 23, 1863, two months beore the coalition o French and English workers were having the rst exploratory meetings in London which led to the creation o the First International a year later, Lassalle created the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein or General German Workers’ Association. Because ADAV was national in scope, it immediately alienated Marx and Engels, whose ollowers in Germany reused to join it. Ater creating the rst German labor party, Lassalle became its rst president, an oce which he held until his untimely death on August 31, 1864. Lassalle’s pragmatism can be seen in the German Labor Party’s goals, which eschewed Marxian revolution in avor o equal, universal, and direct surage attained by peaceul and legal means. During the summer o 1864, Lassalle met a young woman by the name o Helene von Doenniges, who agreed to marry him, until her ather, a Bavarian diplomat, objected and persuaded her to marry a Wallachian count by the name o Bajor von Racowitza. Lasalle challenged the count to a duel, which was carried out on the morning o August 28, 1864. Te
Frdiad lassa trampig th gd ca
sponded with Lassalle while working on his book Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christentum, a book which was published in the same year that Lassalle died. Ketteler was born in 1811 into an aristocratic amily in the traditionally Catholic state o Westphalia, then under Prussian control. Ater a year in the military, Ketteler entered the Prussian civil service as a government trainee in Muenster in 1835. 5 Ketteler’s legal training combined with his aristocratic heritage gave him a hands-on attitude toward the relationship between Church and state in post-Revolutionary Europe. It allowed him to present a critique o the contemporary situation in general and the labor issue in particular which combined delity to basic ethical principles with realistic organizational thinking. Ketteler’s delity to principle maniested itsel in the ateul year o 1837, which turned out to be a turning point in his lie. It was in that year that the Archbishop o Cologne, Clemens August Freiherr von Droste zu Vischering was arrested by the Prussian government, because o his reusal to go along with government regulations concerning mixed marriages between Protestants and Catholics. Tis was the occasion which led Ketteler to leave government service in 1838 in wound which Lassalle received in the duel led to his protest. Ater telling his brother Wilderich that he had death three days later. Because o his relative youth no desire to serve a state which demanded the sacrice at the time o his death, Lassalle’s legacy was more in o his conscience, he spent the next three years trythe orm o political organization than in the realm o ing to discern whether he had a vocation to the priestideas. Te ADAV, which had only 4,610 member at hood. Ketteler then studied theology rom 1841 to the time o Lassalle’s death would eventually become the German Social Democratic Party in 1875, which Th mai ida lassa t bhid was th exists to this day.3 Te main idea Lassalle let “Ir aw wags,” a phras which lassa behind was the “Iron law o attachd t th ida, rst psitd by David wages,” a phrase which Lassalle attached to the idea, Ricard, that “th avrag wag abr rst posited by David Rica vr ris abv what is cssary r cardo that “the average wage o labor can never rise above th wrr’s bar sbsistc.” what is necessary or the worker’s bare subsistence.”4 Lassalle’s pragmatism also allowed him to talk with 1843 in Eichstaett and Munich, and ater studying gures across the entire political spectrum in Germa- pastoral theology in the seminary in Muenster as well, ny. Tose gures included Bismarck, who eventually he was ordained a priest there in 1844. Even in his implemented Lassalle’s ideas on universal surage and pastoral activity as chaplain and later as pastor Ketteler censorship, as well as Bishop Wilhlem Emmanuel von showed a religiously rooted determination to address Ketteler, ordinary o the diocese o Mainz, who correJ 2013 / 15
Bishp v kttr
the charitable and social questions o his age.6 Even though he was to come to many o the same conclusions as socialists like Lassalle, Ketteler’s views were diametrically opposed to the utopian dogmatism o the Marxists. Yet unlike many o his Catholic conreres he was disinclined to throw the worker baby out with the revolutionary bathwater. Eventually Ketteler’s principles would nd their way into Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum as solutions to the worker question. It is not without reason that Leo XIII reerred to Ketteler in his homage to the Bishop o Mainz as his “ grand predecesseur .”7 Ketteler’s engagement with the social issues o his age nally led him to be consecrated Bishop o Mainz in 1850 and earned him the title o “Worker Bishop,” even though the labor issue was a relatively new phenomenon in Germany, where it lacked both the depth and pathology which it possessed in a more industrialized and proletarianized country like England. One sign o Ketteler’s willingness to study all sides o an issue without prejudice was his now amous correspondence with Ferdinand Lassalle during the summer o 1864 on the “Iron Law o Wages,” the gist o which he incorporated into his book Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christentum. 16 / CulTuRe WARS
By the time Ketteler wrote his book, the situation among the working classes had become too desperate to ignore, and the best indication o just how desperate it was could be gleaned rom the statistics documenting the high morality rate among the working classes in both England and Germany.8 Among the middle classes in England, the average lie expectancy was 35 to 44 years. Among the working classes, however, it was 15 to 19 years. In Muelhausen in Alsace, o 100 actory owners and merchants only 32 reached the age o 50, while o 100 weavers only 8 reached the age o 50 and o 100 spinners only 3 reached the age o 50. In manuacturing cities in England beore the onset o the industrial revolution the average lie expectancy was 31 2/3 years. Ater the introduction o actory work, it sank to 19 years. 9 In Germany things weren’t as bad as they were in England, but they were ar rom good. Te cigar makers o Berlin had an average lie expectancy o 30 years, while in England the average lie expectancy o this group o workers had already sunk to 15 years o age. Following Lassalle, Ketteler claimed that the cause o this deplorable state o aairs could be traced to the act that work had been turned into a commodity. Just as the price o a commodity is determined solely according to supply and demand, the same is true o wages or labor. Just as companies subjected to market orces end up selling their wares below production costs, so the laborer, who is subjected to the same market orces ends up working or a starvation wage.10 Te employers, according to Ketteler, stand in the labor market and ask: Who will do this work or the lowest pay? And the workers compete with each other to be lowest paid according to the measure o their necessity. Ten it comes to that terrible point where this human commodity is oered at a price below its production cost.11 Te end o this trajectory is ruin, rst o labor and then, since an economy without labor cannot exist, ruin o the economy as well. Ketteler made use o Lassalle’s “Iron law o wages” to explain the plight o the working man. Te worker’s wage is a commodity, whose price is determined daily by the interplay o supply and demand; the axis around which it revolves is physical necessity. I demand is higher than supply, it rises above this axis; i the supply is greater than demand, it alls below it. Te all o wages cannot resist this mechanical-mathematical motion, which means that the most extreme necessity can’t be covered by the price o labor, leading
to slow starvation o the working class and working commercial activity.15 General ree trade, however, is class amilies:12 nothing more than the initiation o the highest orm o competition, and the highest orm o competition No more illusion are possible now; the entire matedrives the price o commodities down to the most exrial existence o the entire working class, which is treme margin o the necessary production costs. When to say the overwhelming majority o the populaproducts rom all over the world can end up in one tion o the modern state as well as the existence o their amilies, the daily question o bread or man, market, the cheapest commodities o the same quality woman and child is a unction o the market and win the battle, and every other producer is orced to commodity prices. I don’t know o anything more the wall or required to sell at the same price.16 lamentable than this act. What eelings must this Te equivalent o the removal o all barriers to ree evoke in these poor people whose entire existence, trade in commodities is to be ound in the removal o including everything they need and love, is depenall barriers to competition or the working class. otal dent on the coincidence o market prices. Tat is reedom in the labor market will lead to general comthe slave market o liberal Europe, made to order petition among the workers with the same mathematiaccording to the pattern set by our humane, enlightcal necessity that leads two times two to equal our. ened, antichristian Liberalism and Freemasonry. 13 Te highest degree o general competition must with Von Ketteler and Engels agree that it wasn’t always the same necessity drive the workers’ wages down to this way. Te situation came about as a result o the the lowest possible level.17 Te rst reason or the workers’ situation is generally French Revolution: accepted laissez aire reedom o trade. It is impossible this volatility in the lives o the entire working class, to deny this act: according to which the worker is dependent on a daily wage or his entire existence, and according to which the daily wage however has become a commodity, whose price is daily determined through the
working o supply and demand, and it is almost al ways determined according to the absolute minimal amount necessary to keep the worker alive and that it oten sinks below that level—all o this was totally alien in the past and rst became widespread ollowing the rearrangement o political arrangements which came into being ater the [French] Revolution.14
It is important to repeat this act because the political parties try to suppress it. It is worth repeating at this point because the parties that cajole the people or their votes suppress this act. Tis is especially true o the Liberal Party, which preers to draw its support rom the Masonic lodges, rom the representatives o big capital, rom the rationalist proessoriate and the run-o-the-mill literati, which east at the tables o the rich and in order to earn their keep have to write and speak or their rich patrons on a daily basis, but it is also true o the “national union” and the “progressive party” as well as the radical party, which distinguishes itsel rom the liberal party by a certain measure o honesty about the consequences o this policy. Both are united in their agreement that reedom o trade is a premise which can no longer be disputed. 18
Tere are two reasons or this state o aairs: ree trade and competition. Te one is a unction o the other. Competition is brought to its highest degree by the removal o all natural and articial obstacles, especially by the removal o all o the barriers which hinder
At this point, Ketteler takes the debate over economics and re-situates squarely within the purview o the moral law, whose authority comes rom God. In doing this Kettler attacks both the position o classical economics as proposed by Smith in his theory
Fwig lassa, Bishp v kttr caimd that th cas this dprab stat aairs cd b tracd t th act that wr had b trd it a cmmdity.
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Grma Factry i th 19th Ctry
o moral sentiments and the position o the French Revolutionaries, who claimed that authority comes rom the will o the people. Since authority comes rom God, it is unspeakably ridiculous to want to nd a surrogate or this authority in the will o the people.19 Tis authority. . . can be abused in service to egotism and can bring the aairs o men on this earth to the point o complete ruination. At this point you can be sure that an equally abused understanding o reedom will make its entrance on the scene with a predictability similar to natural necessity. Freedom also has at its root an ineradicable divine idea its basis, but it too, put into human use, is unspeakably abused as well. Te orm which the abuse o reedom takes is disobedience, and rage against just laws, and legitimate authority. In Christendom this is a sin. Freedom too can be abused to such an extreme degree that it leads to general ruin, at which point it calls or its opposite with a certain necessity. 20
Te moral law, in other words, supercedes the Iron Law o Wages. Concretely, that means that anyone who works or another man and who needs to earn a living rom that labor has a moral right to a secure continued existence as well as protection rom the threat to his daily existence which competition poses.21 Why should the worker be put into a situation where he wonders what would happen i tomorrow I were underbid by a group o laborers rom some remote region who are more hungry than I am, so 18 / CulTuRe WARS
that my wie and children and I would starve as a result? Te rich capitalist has in his capital a protection or his business in his capital which is a thousand times more powerul than what the worker has. When it comes to the ability o the worker to sell his labor, reedom is a cruel hoax because lacking the resources which capital and land provide to the upper classes, and deprived o the protection or labor that unions provide by the ongoing campaign o demonization in the press, the worker stands naked and uprotected against the orces which Capitalism has unleashed to destroy him. 22 Tis is not to say that the history o protecting labor that accompanied the development o the unions or the closed shop [ Zunftzwang ] was without its problems. Te act that authority can be abused doesn’t mean that authority should be abolished. Te closed shop was oten put at the service o laziness and selshness, which made commodities unnecessarily more expensive and violated the consumer’s right to a quality product. Te relationship between the closed shop and ree trade is similar to the relationship between Authority and Freedom. Te closed shop with its abuses and calcied selshness brought about the public outcry or ree trade. 23
Liberalism is antithetical to any authentic social order because in its most basic orm it is nothing more than a methodical orm pulverizing the entire human race into a mass o disconnected individuals, or into equal particles o human dust, which the economic winds can distribute over the entire earth, this way and that. It is as erroneous as its intellectual oundation. Human beings are not numbers which all have the same value.24 English Liberalism contradicts both the German spirit and the social nature o man, both o which are based on collaboration, not sel-help.25 Te German alternative to English individualism is “Genossenschaft ” or solidarity. Te spirit o “Genossenschaft ” is not new, but it stands in direct contradiction to the essence o English liberalism. Everything that the German Spirit has brought to light in the various
areas o human existence came into existence via collaborative eort. A signicant part o that collaborative eort involved the guilds.26 According to a law o nature, men must bind themselves together i they want to reach the destined end and i they want to satisy their needs. Te German principle o solidarity springs rom an entirely dierent world and contradicts the system o Manchestrian Liberalism, which wants to overturn that world. Te more the Liberal system pursues its own ends, the more it leads to urther contradictions.27 Te principles o the Liberal Party are radically Jewish because they necessarily must progress to the dissolution o the national union and must proceed to the creation o a cosmopolitan new world order, in which every community in Germany has to grant to the alien the same rights that the native born German enjoys.28 Ater exposing the contradictions which are inherent to the system o Liberalism, Ketteler claims that the answer to the worker question can only be ound in Christianity because it was Christianity, ater the collapse o the ancient world, which discovered the true meaning o labor derived rom Christ’s redemption o
tire working class would end up in exactly the same situation again i the world were restructured according to the principles o Liberalism.31 Work was the business o slaves among the Germans as well. Ketteler claims that his Germanic orbears held work in contempt. Teir work was war, hunting, and otherwise lazy lying about or taking part in games and drinking. Even agriculture, which became the dening mark o German culture, was held in contempt by the pagan Germans. Slaves and women took care o the arm work.32 According to Ketteler, the same antichristian Zeitgeist which haunted pagan antiquity is now in the process o resurrecting the old slavery in a new orm, with the help o atheist proessors and scientists who are promoting the evolution o man rom matter. Tis new ideology results in the hardening o the hearts o a man against his brother. I we’re all just animals and plants anyway, what is to prevent us rom slaughtering our ellow man in much the same way that we slaughter animals? And the new slavery, now backed up by this mean-spirited materialism, threatens to become crueler and harsher than the old slavery.33 Ketteler blamed the new slavery o capitalism on the scientic materialism which got a rm hold on the English mind during the late wrds, spr17th century:
Th mra aw, i thr cds th Ir law Wags.
the human race.29 Te only reason that the European nations can conceive o a worker question is because o Christianity’s rehabilitation o man. Without that rehabilitation, labor has only instrumental value o the sort it had in antiquity not intrinsic value. Te Greeks granted the ull portion o human dignity only to the ree Greek and the Roman only to the Roman citizen, to the Civis Romanus . Te slave was treated like an animal and not like a human being. Christianity gave human dignity back to large segments o the human race. It was the spirit o Christianity which turned the slaves who worked the arms into our rural population o landed armers and the slaves in the cities into what is now the middle class.30 During the pagan era, labor was the business o slaves, and without doubt the en-
On February 7, 1249, when the eutonic Knights signed a peace treaty with the newly converted Prussians, the papal legate spoke these noble words, “Tese new converts need to be taught that all men are equal, insoar as they remain ree rom sin, and that sin alone brings misery and makes men slaves.” Te new materialistic science seeks to deprive the majority o the human race o this insight by making men into animals; it atters itsel by calling this the highest orm o enlightenment, but it leads inexorably back to a situation in which men are treated like animals. 34 Te ull orce o this development has allen upon the shoulders o the working class. It is once again the task o Christendom to liberate the world rom this orm o slavery.
Ketteler then examines the proposals o both the liberals and the socialists then current in Germany and nds them both wanting:
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Fridrich egs as a yg ma
We can best summarize our position by saying that Lassalle [the socialist] is right when he attacks Schulze-Delitzsch [the representative o ree trade, classical Liberalism], and Schulze-Delitzsch is right when he attacks Lassalle. Both are right in their critique o the other. But both are wrong in the solution they propose to better the situation o the working man. Both are right when they negate, but both are wrong when they arm. 35
Any time the liberals propose some type o social program, they end o contradicting their own principles because the essence o capitalist liberalism individualism and the net result o the implementation o its economic system is the reduction o the entire social order to a pulverized mass o inviduals. So when Schulze-Delitzsch proposes social programs to ameliorate the eects o capitalism, he is in eect contradicting himsel. I the system leads to total atomization, then it is radically awed and no amount o education or social programs, which in eect contradict the tenor o the system, can save capitalism rom its innate tendencies. Given the number o hours that the German worker is expected to work and the type o labor he is engaged in, education is meaningless because the great mass o workers is physically exhausted by the work that it does. Only a ew would be in a position to take advantage o this whole shiny apparatus o educational opportunities, only a ew would be able to understand what the educated gentlemen were telling them.36 In addition to that the quality o the education which the liberal party is oering to the working classes is decient because religion and Christianity are missing rom it entirely.37 Te materialist educators, as a result, will spread addiction to pleasure and darkness, and rip Christian principles out o the heart o workers, 20 / CulTuRe WARS
and plant in their stead lack o aith and absence o consolation; they will promote godlessness and immorality, and will awake in their hearts all o the passions, which will make his poverty unbearable, and deprive him o any consolation which can come rom the exertions o his labor.38 Convinced o the supercial nature o the policies proposed by the liberal reormers, the radical party then stepped orward to make its own proposals. Te state should hurry to the assistance o the worker and lend or give him the necessary capital to become the owner o these businesses.39 Ketteler, however, elt that a proposal like this raised more questions than it answered. Aside rom the questions surrounding the practicality o this proposal, the larger theoretical issue lurking in the background remained unaddressed, namely, did the government have the right to re-direct the wealth o the owning classes by taxation? Beore Ketteler elt that he could examine the nature o property and distinguish between the Liberals who declared that property rights were absolute and that they justied withholding ood rom the starving, as happened in Ireland during the potato amine, and the ollowers o Proudhon, who claimed in reaction to Liberalism’s exaggerations that property is thet, he had to make an even more basic distinction between those who believed in a personal God and those who didn’t: At this the people in the present age all into two separate camps and must all into two separate camps because o their religious worldview. Te one group which believes in a personal God as the source o all things, and who believe in revelation and especially in Christ, and who believe in the truth that we are through him and the natural order o things, will see God as the highest source and the norm or the law and its sanctions. Te other group, on the other hand, which denies the existence o a personal God, who see no connection between man-made laws and the lex aeterna , the eternal law, which nds its oundation in the eternal intelligence o God, which in addition to all that denies any supernatural revelation and Christ as well, can only nd the norm and sanction or the Law in the volunte general , and since there is no such thing, and since at any rate no one can apprehend it, this group must seek the aid o a Fiction, which at one point may be the king, or at another the majority o some legislative chamber
or in some national assembly, or at another both at the same time as the interpreter o the volunte general.40
Ketteler makes use o this distinction to explain his understanding o property. Deprived o belie in God, both the British Liberals and the Socialists who re jected their creed came up with a distorted notion o property which ranged rom absolute value according to the ormer group and immorality according to the latter. Blackstone’s denition o property as “that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the things o the world, in total exclusion o the right o any individual in the universe” 41 led quite naturally to Proudhon’s idea that property is thet. Both notions o property are wrong, Ketteler attacks both. He counters Proudhon, when he writes: Te claim that property is thet is thereore without a doubt a denial o one o the rst and most necessary natural laws. As important as it is to recognize this act, it is not in any way sucient to give property rights their proper and secure oundation. 42
PRoPeRTy
carry out the satisaction o his needs through recognition o the right o private property. I man wants to live in peace and order, then the right to private property must be recognized as part o the natural law every bit as much as breathing. Any disputing o this act will lead to the war o all against all.45
In reacting to the main threat o his day, namely, the rise o socialism based on the claim that all property was thet, Ketteler established the right to private property in a allen world without repeating Aquinas’s more basic claim about mankind as the common beneciary o all creation. It is the sinul disposition o man that makes private property a necessary convention. Metaphysically, property is common, and that metaphysical truth is xed in the nature o creation. Private property may be part o the natural law ater the Fall, but property, i by that we mean all o creation, is naturally common and meant or the benet o all. It is due to sin that private property is a necessary convention or peace and order, not because o the order o creation. It was the Scottish Enlightenment, not communism, which divorced the man-made laws rom the eternal law and made them a unction o sentiment, which could then be articulated by elected assemblies as the voice o God. Once that idea gained widespread currency, it was only a matter o time beore someone came along and took the notion o vox populi vox Dei to its logical conclusion. Because both views o property derive rom the Enlightenment’s denial o God, Communism ows ineluctably rom Liberalism:
But he counters Blackstone and the tradition o British Liberalism by putting property into the context o not English positive law but God’s divine law. When viewed in the light o that divine law, property has “only a conditional justication,”43 based on the prudential application o the moral law. Tis is so because “Nothing is unshakable in itsel other than I there is no personal God, . . . i the liberal party is correct, then the whole structure o private property God alone and his holy will. Everything else has only 44 with all o its laws, which regulate it, is a unction a provisional existence and provisional justication.” o human will and nothing more than human will, Both property and authority can only be understood and i that is the case then I see no reason why the in a larger contex which includes their deep and ast overwhelming mass o people, who own no proproots in religion and in the living aith in God, and in erty, shouldn’t by majority decision take part o the Christianity which teaches us the true and eternal aith property rom the property owning classes as a loan. in God. Dening property apart rom this context, And i there is no reason to prevent that then there which is what happened during both the atermath is no reason not to appropriate the same amount o o the Reormation, which created absolute property property outright. 46 rights, and the atermath o the French Revolution, which abolished them, is tantamount to separating the I everything depends on the will o the majority, tree o society rom its theological roots: then: I you cut o these roots, then society is like a tree with its roots cut, it looks the same, but it alls with the rst big wind. Tis inner impotence has made itsel apparent time and time again. Man can only
Te ineluctable conclusion which ows rom this whole system is: one chamber, and whatever this chamber decides is the law, and whoever resists this law by invoking his conscience, or his aith, or J 2013 / 21
custom, or Christ or God, is a traitor, and he sins against the majesty o the will o the people. Why in God’s name should this majesty all o a sudden stop short beore the money bags o the rich capitalists? I these people have the right to trample our conscience underoot, the right to ridicule our aith, the right to deny Christ and God, it would be unspeakably preposterous to want to claim that all o a sudden the new world order juggernaut will suddenly roll to a halt as i enchanted in ront o the money bags o the millionaires. No, no, God is not going to prevent that rom happening. Tat will never happen. We must drink the consequences o our principles to the last drop, no matter how bitter that drop may be. Te new assembly will have no qualms about enorcing the justice o Lassalle’s proposed measures. In act this is just a preview o things to come. 47
Ketteler responds to the Capitalists who let their tenants starve to death on the one hand and the Communists who would expropriate everyone’s property on the other by reiterating the dual theory o property rst enunciated by Aristotle that the right to private property is licit but it is not absolute. Te right o private property cannot grant to any man in any way an absolute, unlimited right; this right comes rom God in whom the source and measure o all things is ound, and His measure determines the limits o property rights. According to the Catholic point o view, God alone is the absolute property owner, and man only a provisional property owner, according to the degree which God has ordained.48 Property is an arbitrary social convention whose details are within the prudential range o authority o the state to determine on the basis o which will return the most reliable contribution to the common good. Ketteler does not address the Irish potato amine, but he deals with the underlying issue it posed to a world that was enthralled with Capitalist theory when he claims that it is the unanimous view o Catholic theologians that the obligation to respect the conventional right o private property does not extend to men who nd themselves in the extremes o necessity (in extrema necessitate ).49 Te right o private property dissolves at the moment it makes contact with the great need o the disenranchised. Tat means that anyone who nds himsel in extreme need is justied, when all other means have been exhausted, to satisy this need any way he can. Because o this the state can demand that the propertied classes in any community 22 / CulTuRe WARS
have a duty to care or their own poor, which is to say that they are bound to provide whatever it takes rom their property to the poor in moments o lie and death necessity. Te state can and should appropriate the property o its citizens in extreme cases like the potato amine to alleviate extreme need. In act the citizens themselves have this right without recourse to state approval, but the property owner cannot be orced to give up his property simply to better the lot o his ellow man.50 Te wonderul economy o God’s plan or man on earth prevents the abuse o reedom rom leading to a general uprising, a phrase which neatly summarizes the history o economic thought rom the writing o Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations to the Revolution o 1848. Te strictures which Ketteler laid on property apply a fortiori to the amily, which was also to be abolished according to the program o the communists. I anyone needed proo that the suggestions o the radical party aren’t really humane, it could be ound in their desire to abolish the amily. As in the case o property, the radicals were abetted in their project by the right-wing British Liberals, who downgraded the sacramental and sacred nature o marriage to the status o a civil contract, which a man can terminate whenever he wants with the agreement o both parties, leading to an enormous increase in divorce.51 Te destruction o marriage, either by revolution or Liberal legislation has had a devastating eect on society as a whole, but it is elt most acutely by those who have the least. Poverty is bad enough, but when it is combined with promiscuity it can degrade any people to the lowest conditions ound in antiquity.52 Tis will happen i the worker lets himsel be persuaded to destroy amily and marriage and surrender to the corrupting pleasures that are daily oered to the people, in organs o the Liberal party and praised as the highest orms o lie’s pleasures.53
CHRISTIAn FAMIly In response to the Communists’ proposal to abolish the amily, Ketteler elt that the Christian amily was indispensable as a solution o the worker problem.54 As long as the worker had a Christian amily, the husband a Christian wie, the wie a Christian husband, the children Christian parents, and the parents Christian children who obey the ourth commandment, the worker would have a bulwark that would not be swept
empyrs wrigig my t thir mpys
away by the disintegrating orces o Capitalism. Te amily provides a bulwark against moral corruption, which in turn provides the basis or physical well-being. “I,” Ketteler wrote, “we encounter certain peoples who hardly have enough to eat in glowing health the main reason or this is chaste and pure morals.”55 Te low pay o the worker, Ketteler continues, is augmented by the Christian amily. Te dollar which the worker gives to his Christian wie attains through her eorts an entirely dierent value than the dollar which the rivolous wie receives.56 Te amily is a God-ordained association which provides the worker with the best and most eective protection or his existence, without which no other association, no matter what you want to call it, has any meaning.57 Ketteler has no hesitation in saying that the Christian amily and Christian marriage with their roots in the teaching and grace dispensing Catholic Church has an innitely greater value in bringing about a solution to the worker question than all o the proposals and endeavors o the liberal and the radical parties put together. 58 Te ultimate solution to the worker question, however, is the conessional state, which will dispense with the ctions o the Enlightenment state-- one o the most prominent is the ction that the will o the people nds expression in legislative assemblies, which is in turn an expression o reality, or the will o the actual people59--and strive or a concrete amelioration o the lot o the worker. Te socialists want to improve the lot o the worker by turning him into a businessman; Ketteler has something more concrete in mind. Te main question that needs to be asked in light o both British liberal and
continental radical proposals is: how is this going to bring about the situation wherein the worker gets a higher wage or his labor?60 Te revolution may bring about the millennium, but that’s not the way to get the worker higher wages. Te way to higher wages is the restoration o Christianity’s hegemony over European culture because the cause o the current worker problem lies in the departure rom the spirit o Christianity which has taken place in the past century. 61 Because the spirit o Christianity no longer inorms minds with the highest and eternal truths, the lower levels o political and social lie have allen prey to alse principles, abstract one-sidedness, and liberal anaticism which can destroy the social abric but can’t restore it. Because Christianity is no longer in the position to keep selshness and its passions in line, we see dangerous developments on the horizon. Ketteler reminds his readers that capitalism began with the thet o Church property. Te money which is owed to the Church because o the violent act o secularization has a very large value. I this stolen church property could be used to ameliorate the lot o the poor, this would count as a kind o restitution o church property.62 Te Church could then ound and maintain institutions to care or workers who are no longer able to work.63 Te typical ather o a amily rom the working poor has spent the ten best years o his youth working in a actory; he oered up the best part o his health there; because o the division o labor in the actory he learned no other skill, other than the little mechanical adjustments which are part o the entire production process but have no value in and o themselves. Te average lie expectancy o a actory worker is at best perhaps 40 years, and he begins to get sick at the very moment when he needs the job the most. According to Ketteler, there could be nothing more Christian than to ound this sort o productive association o workers on a Christian basis.64 Ketteler concludes by claiming that only Christianity has the means to improve the condition o the working class, which in spite o all eorts to the contrary is now heading in the direction rom which it emerged under paganism.65 Christianity smashed the slave’s chains, which had been so stoutly orged that they were considered part o the nature into which man was born. Christianity broke the back o slavery in the ancient world, something that seemed impossible at the time, and it did so without recourse to revolution. Church history doesn’t record one instance J 2013 / 23
in which the teaching o the Church broke the chains o bondage by urging the slaves to revolt or to murder their masters. I Christians were to treat their slaves in the manner which Paul demanded, then slavery would soon disappear peaceully. Christ overcame slavery by announcing eternal truths which healed the soul. Te chains o slavery dissolved over the course o centuries through an internal spiritual process that was nothing short o miraculous. By the dawn o the Middle Ages, this process was virtually complete in every Christian land in Europe. It was destroyed by the Reormation, which allowed even “the executioners’ assistants who crucied Christ, the right to claim that they were Christians, riends o Christians, and Christian supporters.”66 Te Reormation was the biggest deception which ever got oisted on the German people and the working class because it allowed people who use the words o Christ to attack the Christian church. I we took the trouble to look closely at the people supporting these “Christians,” we would discover a big pack o Jews and an even bigger pack o atheists who praise themselves daily as the true representatives o Christianity.67 Te worker question would be easy to resolve were it not or the split in Christendom.68 Te Reormation has done much to obscure the act that only Jesus Christ, the son o the living God, can help the working class in the uture. When aith in him and in his spirit permeates the world, the worker question will be resolved.69 I, however, the liberal spirit prevails, then all the great endeavors which are undertaken or the working class will ail and the working class will revert to the position it held when the gods o the Pantheon ruled the world: Let’s hope that the working class will recognize this. Let’s hope that it will turn away rom “riends” that want to rob him o his aith in the divinity o Christ. Tose are his biggest and most dangerous enemies, the avant garde o the spirit that is now orging their chains.70
no SySTeM oF CHRISTIAn eConoMICS Midway through his discussion o the labor issue, Ketteler complained that there was as o then no complete system o Christian economics.71 Sixty years ater Ketteler wrote those words, that would no longer be the case, when Heinrich Pesch’s Lehrbuch der Na24 / CulTuRe WARS
tionaloekonomie appeared in print in 1924. In his history o economics, Othmar Spann claimed that Pesch “penned the most comprehensive economic treatise every produced in the German language—a work instinct with true scholarship.”72 Pesch was ten years old when Ketteler’s book on the labor issue appeared. He joined the Jesuits just as the Kulturkampf was heating up in Germany and spent the next ew years in exile in England learning about capitalism in the country where it had achieved its ullest expression. Pesch was inspired by Ketteler’s example: “Our approach to this matter is by no means new. It was the venerable Bishop o Mainz, Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, who gave emphatic expression to this idea. We recall only one especially classic statement o it in his work: Te Labor Problem and Christianity : i the great liberal action is right [when they say that there is no personal God or that the question o God’s existence poses a scientic problem] then the private property right and all o the laws regulating it represent purely and simply the will o men and nothing more. I can see no valid reason thereore why anyone should decide one day by majority vote that the owning classes should lend them some o their wealth. In act, it would seem inevitable that they would presently go a step urther and decide to expropriate a part o the property o the wealthy. 73
With Ketteler as his inspiration Pesch worked out a Catholic critique o socialism which saw it as epiphenomenal: Socialism as a political party was essentially nurtured by growing impoverishment and by every sort o exploitation and suppression. Tereore, it would be oolish and even dangerous i, aside rom bolstering the inuence o the Christian religion, we were to look or the most eective way to combat democratic socialism on any other eld o battle than in the realm o practical social reorm. Only ater the causes underlying actual justied complaints are dealt with, then and only then will socialist agitation lose its eective orce. 74
Te real enemy is not socialism but liberalism: Tereore, what we ear more than all socialistic theories and election victories is the paralyzing inuence o Liberalism which resists all attempts to restructure competitive and property relationships along Christian lines. So long as those who are running things do not recognize that the time o Lib-
eralism has denitely run its course, and so long as its corrupting spirit intereres with governments and determines what kind o legislation there will be, democratic socialism will continue to celebrate victories and overwhelm the opposition with righteous indignation.75
euphemistically reerred to, which has lent its name to the nearly 400 year long revolutionary period, and which has at the same time become the ultimate source o all o its religious, political and social misery.82
Te Reormation was the rst major maniestion o Socialism became a orce in 19 century political this craving in history, but it doesn’t bear all the blame lie, not because it had original ideas, but because its because “without the emptying out o the ecclesiastical program was seen as the antidote to British laissez- spirit which stemmed rom . . . the Renaissance and aire Liberalism, which was the real source o the prob- Humanism and the alienation o Christian thought lem. Even Engels conceded that Communism’s great- and action which derived rom these, Luther’s ardent est thinker, Karl Marx, “never based his communistic enterprise would have remained without signicant demands on any new application o Ricardian value results.”83 Protestantism, which “took the principle o theory, but solely on the ever more complete break- individual sel-reliance and extended it to religious exdown o the capitalistic mode o production that is perience,” combined in England with the thought o taking place daily, as i by necessity, beore our eyes.”76 Lord Verulam to create a radically impoverished view Modern socialism is “a philosophy o history.”77 It is in o man and society which ound in Hobbes the noEngels’ words, “a continuation o, and a clearly more tion that the state arose rom a mere contract. 84 Sexual consistent carrying out o, the principles established degeneracy was added to the mix by French philosoby the great French Enlightenment.”78 It is a continu- phes like Voltaire and the Marquis de Sade, and the ation o the atheistic-materialistic worldview which result was “a rabid hatred toward Christianity, the pure burst on the scene with the French Revolution. As teachings o which ran counter to his immoral liethe heir o the Enlightenment, socialism, especially its style”:85 Marxist variety, purported to be a science but it was in Te only bond which united these degenerate liteact “the unhealthy product o a delusive antasy and rati was . . . the hatred o God which simmered in all o a reasoning process that has been badly beogged by o their hearts. . . . Tey were o one mind . . . to drag allacies.”79 Te rise o socialism is predicated upon the in the mire anything that was until then considered rise o liberalism, and the rise o liberalism is predi- respectable, and in this regard they portrayed in whatcated upon moral decay: ever way possible the Christian aith and Christian morality as ludicrous, passe, and contrary to reason.86 Socialistic doctrines would not have made such an Modern socialism constitutes the conclusion o the enormous impact i Christian thought and lie had 400-year period o revolution because it is the ultimate not already been so devastated among the higher, as well as among the lower classes, and i unbridled pasconceivable consequence o the revolutionary notions sion and relentless greed, had not be predominant o Liberalism. With the arrival o socialism, the train 80 instead o reason, conscience, and ear o God. o Liberalism reaches its destination. Tis destructive idea has piled up more ruins in Europe and provoked Socialism thrives: more violent upheavals than the original migration o nations once caused. And it ends up notably in the where reverence or Mammon had reached the level o public worship, and where depraved vices have same country where it all started . . . . in Germany. also reached their apotheosis by the corruption o “Socialism. . . is a complete Weltanschauung, as Mr. the art and the denigration o science, when selBebel says: atheism in religion, democratic republicanseeking has attained the status o virtue; and nally ism in the state, collectivism (state production) in the were pettiness, cowardice, deceit, and attery have economy and. . . unbridled absolutism in ethics, natutaken the place o noble and generous sentiments. 81 ralistic materialism in metaphysics, loosening o amily ties and the marriage bond and whatever pertains to it Te real enemy, in other words, is Liberalism, which, in the home, state monopoly in education, universal “in the broadest sense o the word, involves: “enlightenment” in instruction. All o that adds up to that craving or reedom against every divine or hureedom and equality with the accent on the latter.”87 th
man authority standing in the place o God, was
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Chid abr i a Grma actry
Te hatred or the moral law which reached a ever pitch in the Communist Maniesto was only the logical conclusion o a train o events that got started during the looting o the Reormation but which ound its ullest articulation in the writings o Hume and Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment: In the area o economic activity and economic endeavor everything was to be let to “nature,” the natural instinct o sel-love, and the natural acquisitive instinct in people. For this purpose a new “natural law” was discovered; and there was talk o the eternal “natural laws” o the economic order, so that any inconvenient intervention by state authority could be branded promptly as “unnatural.” So what happened, in act, was that there was ushered in an unnatural situation which in the sharpest contrast to the Christian natural law, allowed a clear track to even the most brutal selseeking, and permitted capitalistic egotism to east unimpeded on the torment and suerings o those who were sacriced to it.88 Like Ketteler, Pesch elt that the only antidote to 400 years o moral decay resulting in the revolutionary ury o the 19th and early 20th centuries was a return to true, i.e, Catholic Christianity, which could then mount an attack on Liberalism, the real source o the problem: I today in this nal hour all the better elements in society would, in courageous and sacricial ashion, rally around the banner o the Christian Church and the Christian state or an intense but ultimately victorious battle against liberalism—the embodiment o the Revolution in the area o thought, religion, politics, and economics—it would still be possible to 26 / CulTuRe WARS
work out a peaceul solution to the social problems which ace us in our time. Failing that, however, the chasm created by the Revolution will not be bridged until democratic socialism will have come to a realization the ultimate absolutist consequences o liberalism also in the area o economic lie, and until sad experience will have highlighted the corruption o human society.89 Socialism is not the antidote to Liberalism, nor, as is more commonly supposed in the period ollowing 1989, is Liberalism the antidote to socialism, because between the two there is “no basic dierence in principle.”90 aken together, Liberalism and Socialism create a dialectic according to which each keeps the other in power, in at least cyclic ashion. It is pointless to expect the representatives o Liberalism to preserve the integrity o the state because they share the same antipathy to the Christian social order that the revolutionaries harbor. “Tereore,” Pesch concludes: whoever wants to combat socialism eectively should direct his attacks against liberalism. Socialism will nally be vanquished not as socialism itsel, but as it is incorporated in and together with liberalism.91
Tat is the lesson Pesch learned rom Ketteler, and it is the lesson which he transmitted rst to Pope Leo XIII, who incorporated this thought into Rerum Novarum, the rst encyclical on the social question, and then to Pope Pius XI, through Pesch’s disciple, Oswald Nell-Bruening, who articulated urther ramications o these principles in Quadragesimo Anno, when he wrote: A double danger must thereore be careully avoided. On the one hand, i the social and public aspect o ownersip be denied or minimized, one alls into “individualism,” as it is called, or at least comes near to it; on the other hand the rejection o diminution o its private and individual character necessarily leads to “collectivism” or something approaching to it.92 Pesch’s critique o Liberalism reached its high point ater World War II in Germany when Konrad Adenauer made it the ocial policy o the CDU, creating thereby the rush to prosperity that came to be known subsequently as the Wirtschaftswunder .93
Situated rmly in the German idealist tradition o economic thought created by Fichte, Mueller, and List, Ketteler and Pesch brought to that body o thought an understanding o the moral underpinnings o economic lie that had been previously lacking. Pesch and Ketteler administered the coup de grace to Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment by showing that sel interest cannot serve as the basis or economic lie, because: Te acquisitive instinct as such. . . contains in itsel and o itsel no limit, no restriction; and that moreover it needs restrictions i society is not robbed o its happiness so that it will indeed be ruined. . . . Sel-love is thereore o its nature not a social principle, and it is not a uniying bond with any constancy, but a generally divisive orce leading not inrequently to the harshest kind o antagonism, which will eventually also divide into hostile classes a society in which it comes to be applied without restriction.94
THe FAIluRe oF SyMPATHy In his Teory of Moral Sentiments , Smith tried to explain how sympathy could place restrictions on sellove, but he ailed to do so, and i any proo o his ailure were needed, the history o economic development under his aegis provided that. In the end, all that Smith could depict were the “nature and causes o individual private wealth.”95 He could not explain how one man’s private wealth interacted with another’s in any convincing way, nor could he explain how the wealth o a nation unctioned or how the private oten contradicted the public spheres o lie, especially when it came to sel-interest. Tis ailure is precisely what Germans like Ketteler and Pesch set out to remedy. o the extremes o Communistic unity on the one hand and individualistic ragmentation on the other, they proposed the middle ground that the moral-organic concept o social lie allowed, according to which property was a right but not an absolute right, and the road o amelioration which held concrete issues like raising the workers’ wages beore its eyes was espoused in lieu o revolution which threatened to destroy what little the worker had in terms o property and amily that protected him rom the rapacity o the capitalists. When given a choice, the workers in England and Germany began to eel, like their conreres at the barricades in Paris during the June days o 1848, that they might in act have
more to lose than their chains by engaging in the revolutionary Armageddon which Marx and Engels had planned or them. Bishop von Ketteler responded to Marx’s theory o enmiseration with a concrete plan o amelioration, which got articulated in a speech Ketteler gave to 10,000 workers on Liebenrauenheide near Oenbach in 1869 96 and which eventually ound its way into the constitution o the Bundesrepublik and the economic policies o Erhard and Adenauer ater World War II. More than anything else, Ketteler and Pesch claimed that the only suitable basis or the economy is “the divine moral law which stands ast amid the ow o phenomena.”97 Te word “capitalism” entered the political and economic vocabulary o the 1860s, largely as a result o the publication o Karl Marx’s book Das Kapital in 1867 but also because the global triumph o capitalism in the period ollowing the Revolution o 1848 seemed like an undeniable act o lie: It was the triumph o a society which believed that economic growth rested on competitive private enterprise, on success in buying everything in the cheapest market (including labor) and selling in the dearest. An economy so based . . . would, it was believed, not only create a world o suitably distributed material plenty, but o ever-growing enlightenment, reason and human opportunity, an advance in the sciences and the arts, in brie a world o continuous and accelerating material and moral progress. Te ew remaining obstacles in the way o the untrammeled development o private enterprise would be swept away.102
Te industrial growth which took place during this period silenced all but the most ardent critics o Capitalism: By 1870 France, Germany, and the US each produced between one and two million tons [o coal], though Britain, still the “workshop o the world,” remained ar ahead with almost six million or about hal the world output. In these 20 years world coal output multiplied about two and a hal times, world iron output about our times. otal steam power, however, multiplied by our and a hal, rising rom an estimated 4 million HP in 1850 to about 18.5 HP in 1870.103
Although Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christentum preceded the publication o Das Kapital by three years, Ketteler’s book lacked the scope o Marx’s. Tat and J 2013 / 27
himself, but to exchange it for other commodities , is the act that Pesch’s magnum opus , which was compaequal to the quantity o labour which it enables him rable in scope to Das Kapital , would not appear or to purchase or command. Labour, thereore, is the another 60 years gave Marxian economics a temporal real measure o the exchangeable value o all comhead start that the Catholics were unable to overcome. modities.106 As a result, the labor theory o value, an idea compatible in its essence with the Benedictine motto o “ora David Ricardo developed a more complete labour et labora ,” and one which contributed to the creation theory o value which claimed that the value o como German economics, was corrupted by the materimodities in exchange was equal to or proportional alism o its largely English and, in the case o Marx, to the amount o labor embodied in them: “Te real Anglophile proponents. price o a commodity is here properly stated to depend on the greater or less quantity o labour and capital THe lABoR THeoRy oF VAlue (that is, accumulated labour) which must be employed to produce it.” Tis included “the current labour reTe labor theory o value ound its rst expression quired to produce them, plus the past labour embodin the writings o John Locke, who claimed in the Sec- ied in tools, building, implements, and equipment ond reatise on Government that property derives value (i.e. in the capital stock required to produce the comrom labor through the act o “mixing” one’s labor modity).”107 In Principles of Political Economy and ax with what man nds in nature. Adam Smith took up ation, published in 1817, Ricardo, claimed that “Te the idea in the Wealth of Nations when he wrote: value o a commodity, or the quantity o any other Te real price o every thing, what every thing really commodity or which it will exchange, depends on the costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil relative quantity o labour which is necessary or its and trouble o acquiring it. What every thing is reproduction, and not as the greater or less compensaally worth to the man who has acquired it, and who tion which is paid or that labour.”108 Te neatness o wants to dispose o it or exchange it or something his ormula did not prevent Ricardo rom being trouelse, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himbled by certain anomolies. He could not explain, or sel, and which it can impose upon other people. 104 example, how wine could be kept in a cellar or three 109 Sensing that things weren’t quite that simple, Smith years and constantly increase in value. Marx expanded on Ricardo’s theories without resolvcomplicated matters by introducing the paradox o ing the anomolies that troubled him. I 25 loaves o value: bread consistently exchange or 2 pairs o shoes, there Te word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two dimust be some common measure o value that allows erent meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility the two commodities to be compared in quantitative o some particular object, and sometimes the power terms. Te common denominator o value is the “cost o purchasing other goods which the possession o o production o each,” which can be reduced to the that object conveys. Te one may be called “value labor time necessary to produce each item. 110 “I we in use”; the other, “value in exchange.” Te things then disregard the use-value o commodities, only one which have the greatest value in use have requently property remains, that o being products o labour.”111 little or no value in exchange; and on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have Now this exchange value is not based on just any larequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more bour, but “are all together reduced to the same kind useul than water: but it will purchase scarce any o labour, human labour in the abstract. ... they are thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange or merely congealed quantities o homogeneous human it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value labour-power expended without regard to the orm o in use; but a very great quantity o other goods may its expenditure. ... As crystals o this social substance, requently be had in exchange or it. 105 which is common to them all, they are values -- com112 Smith elt that value in exchange was related to la- modity values.” While it is concrete labour -- that o the baker or shoemaker -- that is used to produce the bor but in a way which he could not speciy: respective goods, what is equal here is not the concrete Te value o any commodity, ... to the person who labour, but the labour time involved in producing the possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it goods. Tus the value o a commodity is the amount 28 / CulTuRe WARS
o homogeneous human labour or socially necessary labour embodied in the commodity.113 Neither Marx nor Ricardo deal adequately with the impact o land value in their theories, but, contrary to popular belie, Marx does not base his theory o value on what he dismisses as “ascribing a supernatural creative power to labor,” arguing in the Critique o the Gotha Program that: “Labor is not the source o all wealth. Nature is just as much a source o use values (and it is surely o such that material wealth consists!) as labor which is itsel only the maniestation o a orce o nature, human labor power.” 114 Te distinction is a crucial one, but it doesn’t save Marx’s theory rom the irrational consequences o the materialistic premises he brought to its ormulation. In ormulating his labor theory o value, Marx put “the nishing touches on the mechanical outlook o the classical economists.” Instead o making the claim that labor should be valued properly, something he couldn’t do because o the moral nature o the claim, Marx tried to turn value into an “objective substance,” i.e., into “congealed labor.”115
cably, time. “How,” Pesch wonders, “do you explain the increase in the value o wine solely with the passage o time? Te small amount o labor needed during the period o storage cannot explain the sometimes enormous increases in its value”117 because “the level o value is ultimately determined by the act that there is greater or less need, in other words by the relationship between need and availability.”118 Marx ignored this diculty because it “clashed too obviously with the dogma that is proposed or our belie in the rst volume o Kapital .”119 Te labor theory o value then led to the notion o “surplus value,” which led to the claim that “the capitalist method o production is based on the appropriation o unpaid labor,” or on the “exploitation o the worker” which in turn led to the enmiseration theory, which asserted dogmatically that things had to get worse, which would lead inexorably to revolution, ollowed by the dictatorship o the proletariat and heaven on earth. However: i it becomes clear that labor and time do not and cannot measure the value o products, then the surplus value theory also collapses; and the entire doctrine o the rise and accumulation o capital by the exploitation o manual laborers loses all o its scientic credibility. 120
Istad rsvig th ctradictis i Ricard’s abr thry va, Marx igrd thm ad assrtd “that th acta cstittiv sbstac va is abr a; ad that is masrd xcsivy i trms abr tim.” Instead o resolving the contradictions in Ricardo’s labor theory o value, Marx ignored them and asserted “that the actual constitutive substance o value is labor alone; and that is measured exclusively in terms o labor time.”116 Tis let him the same situation as Ricardo, which is to say incapable o explaining why “wine which grew in more suitable locations, even though there may have been less labor involved in its production, ha[s] more exchange value than wine which grew in less suitable terrain.” One wine has a higher price because it is better, and otentimes it is better because o actors which have no relationship to labor, e.g., climate and soil, and even more inexpli-
Tis not to say that there was no exploitation o labor. It is to say that the moral objection to the exploitation o labor could not be supplanted by materialist mechanisms that purported to provide an exact calculus o value based on labor. In spite o the salutory threat which socialism provided to unlimited capitalist exploitation, history ended up proving Marx wrong. Amelioration based on moral considerations ended up trumping enmiseration leading to revolution: In the broad context o the beginning o the 20 th century, there was apparently a much to be desired improvement in the condition o the working classes by socio-political legislation . . . and by labor unions, etc. It was a kind o improvement which could not even be denied by the socialists, and which on the other hand, also reuted the Marxian immiseration theory which was based on the exploitation theory.
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Th Grma Chacr ott v Bismarc
Tis showed that immiserization by no means had to proceed naturally by inevitable, immanent laws o development which were intrinsic to the capitalistic era. Wages had increased. Te conditions in the actories had improved, and there was eective protection o health, lie and morals. 121
“Tat the workers are not always paid according to what they contribute to the productive process and that there are not a ew cases o unacceptable exploitation and substandard wages cannot be denied,”122 but history ended up showing that the aws in the system owed rom moral deect, not natural necessity owing rom private ownership o the means o production and the production o commodities as such.” 123 Te source o the problem lay not in the mechanics o production o commodities or market, but in “absolute ree competition and the atomizing tendencies o economic individualism which bring about anarchy.”124 Because materialism makes no essential distinction between spirit and matter, it cannot address the needs 30 / CulTuRe WARS
o workers who have been reduced to the level o commodity by the capitalist wage system. Instead o ameliorating the lot o the worker by rst o all treating him as a person, the communist reaction to liberalism (which is in reality the culmination o liberalism) strips the worker o what little dignity has been let to him, replacing “even the amily, maternal love and paternal providence” with “the social care and training o youth.”125 By replacing moral choice with historicalmaterialistic mechanisms, the communist system denies the most basic reedom o economic lie, which is the ability “to spend private incomes according to one’s own individual choice”126 and with it “the most essential component o civil liberty,” and with choice goes the market place, and with the market place goes the ability to price goods, and with that the ability to produce them in any eective manner. Pesch sketched out the entire trajectory o the Communist era in 1924 when the rst glow o the NEP was engendering optimism in the nascent Soviet Union. One o the European leaders who was most concerned about the rise o Communism and the threat that it posed to the social order was the chancellor o Prussia and later all o Germany, Otto von Bismarck. Born into a Prussian Junker amily in 1815, Bismarck dominated European politics rom the mid-1860s until his dismissal at the hands o Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890.127 Having watched the German national assembly which was convened in Frankurt as a result o the upheavals o 1848 zzle into pointless talk, Bismarck decided that the only way to bring about the unication o Germany was by military orce under Prussian hegemony, a plan he articulated in his amous “iron and blood” speech on September 30, 1862. “Te great questions o the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions—that was the great mistake o 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood.”128 As Prussia’s chancellor, Bismarck waged a series o wars during the 1860s which culminated in his victory over France in 1870, which allowed him to uniy the German principalities under Prussian leadership in 1871. In a move that would have ar-reaching consequences, Bismarck imposed an indemnity on deeated France, which calculated on the basis o population was the precise equivalent o the indemnity which Napoleon imposed on Prussia in 1807. 129 Bismarck then turned his attention to the Catholic Church, which he perceived as a threat to German unity because o the politcal power it wielded. During
impunity and under the protection o the British the course o his Kulturkampf against the Church, Bislaw.130 marck imprisoned bishops and priests, and those he did not imprison he drove into exile. In 1872, the JeTe act that they were dogmatically and unbreaksuits were expelled rom Germany, and Heinrich Pesch took the opportunity to go to England to begin his ably committed to revolutionary violence proved study o economics. In attacking the Catholics, Bis- disastrous or the political strategy o the Marxists. marck unwittingly strengthened the hand o the anti- When the rst elections took place in England on the clerical let, a much more dangerous threat, and called basis o the reormed ranchise in 1868, not a single 131 into existence the Catholic Center Party, with which workers’ representative was elected. In both England he eventually had to ally himsel to deal with the more and Germany amelioration won out over revolution. Tis prompted Bakunin to attack the “German Jews” potent threat on the let. Bismarck was eager to put an end to the Communist in the movement, even though he did not include gthreat, but he ound himsel thwarted by the English, ures like Lassalle and Marx in his attacks or tactical who in keeping with their policy o promoting abroad reasons. Bakunin claimed that he rerained rom at what they banned at home, protected the Internation- tacking Marx because o “justice”: al. Lord Granville claimed that in England: Apart rom all the nasty tricks he has played on us, the International had limited its operations chiey to giving advice in strikes, and had only very limited unds with which to support such actions, whilst the revolutionary plans which ormed a part o its
we, or at least I, cannot ignore his tremendous services to the cause o socialism, which he has served or almost twenty-ve years with insight, energy and disinterestedness, and in which he has undoubtedly excelled us all. He was one o the ounders, the chie ounder in act, o the International and in my eyes that is a tremendous service and one which I shall always recognize no matter what he may have done against us.”132
Bismarc th trd his attti t th Cathic Chrch, which h prcivd as a thrat t Grma ity bcas th pitca pwr it widd.
program represented rather the opinions o its oreign members than those o the British workers, whose attention was directed chiey to wage questions. However, oreigners in England enjoyed the protection o the laws o the country in the same way as British subjects. I they violated these laws by conducting warlike operations against any country with which Great Britain maintained riendly relations they would be punished, but or the present there was no reason or taking any special measures against oreigners on British soil. Tis reasonable rejection o an unreasonable demand caused Bismarck’s semi-ocial mouthpiece to snarl that any measures taken against the International would or the most part remain ineective so long as British territory represented an asylum rom which all the other States o Europe could be disturbed with
As the communists contined to ght with each other, America and Germany, protected by their respective taris, made extraordinary progress in the era ollowing the American Civil War and German unica-
tion. American industrial expansion, though extraordinary, seemed less striking than that o Germany. Te xed steam power o that country had been extremely modest in 1850—perhaps 40,000 HP in all, much less than 10 percent o the British. By 1870 it was 900,000 hp or about the same as the British . . . ar outdistancing France. . . . Te industrialization o Germany was a major historical act. Quite apart rom its economic signicance, its political implications were ar-reaching. In 1850, the German ederation had about as many inhabitants as France, but incomparably less industrial capacity. By 1871, a united German empire was already somewhat more populous than France, but very much more powerul industrially.133
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On July 19, 1870, eight years ater Bismarck’s iron and blood speech and our years ater deeating Austria, Prussia attacked France in a campaign which consolidated Prussia’s position as the pre-eminent power on the continent. Paris ell on January 28, 1871, ten days ater the German states proclaimed the Prussian king, Wilhelm I Kaiser o the German empire uniting the German principalities which were the heirs o the Holy Roman Empire or the rst time as a nation state under Prussian auspices.134 When Bismark and Wilhelm I arrived in Paris to sign the Peace reaty, they stayed at Ferrieres, James Rothschild’s country estate outside Paris. “Here I sit under a picture o old Rothschild and his amily,” Bismarck wrote to his wie, “Negotiations o every sort hang on to my coat-tails like Jews round a market trader.” 135 Te “airylike” palace o the French “ Judenkoenig ” James Rothschild was a “revelation” to both men.136 “Folk like us can’t rise to this,” the Kaiser remarked. “Only a Rothschild can rise to this.” Te ubiqitous display o the initials JR throughout Ferrieres prompted the German delegation to translate them as “ Judeorum Rex ,” to general amusement. Bismarck seems to have taken “an especially malicious pleasure” in despoiling Rothschild’s wine cellar and shooting his pheasants, or attempting to shoot them. rying to assess the damage the Prussians inicted on Ferrieres, Anthony was relieved to report, ““Tere is not the least damage either to the House [or] the park [or] the trees, there are as many pheasants in the Park as ormerly . . they ought to thank God that they got o so well.”137
THe RoTHSCHIlDS Te Rothschilds had more important things than the well-being o their pheasants to worry about. Alphonse was convinced that the French deeat would lead to “revolutionary movements,”138 and there was the not unrelated issue o the reparations payments. Te French reparations payments were, “quite simply, the biggest nancial operation o the century, and arguably the Rothschid’s crowning achievement” as international nanciers.139 Between June 1871 and September 1873, France paid Germany 4,993 million rancs, around 8 percent o gross domestic product in the rst year and 13 percent in the second. Since the Germans insisted on being paid in coin, the sheer logistics o the transer were daunting.140 Brokering the deal was a nancial coup or the House o Rothschild, 32 / CulTuRe WARS
because it cut German bankers out o the deal, but it carried with it the “immense risk to become identied with paying such large sums o money to Berlin,”141 which gave rise to the anti-Semitism which swept over France during the last quarter o the 19 th century. Bismarck abandoned the Kulturkampf in 1878 to preserve his remaining political capital; indeed, he needed the Centre Party votes in his new battle against socialism. Pius IX died that same year, replaced by a more pragmatic Pope Leo XIII, who negotiated away most o the anti-Catholic laws. During the 1880s, Bismarck instituted social insurance programs, which included old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance, which became the basis o the modern welare state.142 His implementation o the suggestions o both Catholics and Socialists removed the political opposition o both groups. Bismarck met a number o times with both Lassalle and Bishop von Ketteler. In a speech on March 20, 1884, Bismarck claimed that: Te real grievance o the worker is the insecurity o his existence; he is not sure that he will always have work, he is not sure that he will always be healthy, and he oresees that he will one day be old and unt to work. I he alls into poverty, even i only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, let to his own devices, and society does not currently recognize any real obligation towards him beyond the usual help or the poor, even i he has been working all the time ever so aithully and diligently. Te usual help or the poor, however, leaves a lot to be desired, especially in large cities, where it is very much worse than in the country. 143
It was a passage that could have been taken rom Ketteler’s book Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christenthum , and it shows Bismarck’s genius as a practical politician who was willing to adopt the policies o people he once considered his enemies. Bismarck’s political genius can also be seen in the act that his social reorms arrived at a time when: “Te Great Depression o 1873 to 1896 destroyed the oundations o mid-19th century liberalism which seemed to be so rmly established.”144 One o the main consequences o the crash o 1873 was the death o classical, laissez-aire liberal economics in the German-speaking world. Free trade died a quick painul death, ollowed by the erection o tari barriers.145 Another consequence was the rise o antiSemitism. Notes Available upon request
leTTeRS, ConTIn’D FRoM P. 9 enment-inspired Protestant and Jewish countrymen. Convinced we have nothing to oer, we have agreed to play the game on their terms. Te competitive business model we subscribe to is directly responsible or the economic chaos that threatens to overwhelm us. Tere is no unity o purpose, no sense o the common good, because everyone is looking out or their own interests. Despite the ake intimacy and the populist veneer o advertising and public relations outreach, everything about our current economic system is designed to maximize prot, without regard or collateral damage. Our present woe will not resolved by either o the two most commonly reerenced options, big government or ree enterprise, at least not as each is presently constituted. Only by reintroducing a Catholic-inspired model o cooperation will things ever begin to regain a sense o equilibrium. Integrating our religious belies into our business lives would constitute a counter-cultural act o the highest magnitude. But it will not be easy. Ater several centuries o capitalism, a wall o materialism and atheism has grown up around us. Tis wall undermines relationship and community. It makes us strangers to our neighbors, to our ellow Catholics, and even to our own amily members. Our consumer culture thrives on the overt manipulation o human behavior, and our democracy has been horribly distorted by this same heavy-handed manipulation. We do what the television, the internet, and now our smart phones, tell us to do. Not only do the media make it dicult to think, it ridicules the religious perspective in an unprecedented manner, where it hasn’t already removed it rom public discourse altogether. O course, we all realize big money is behind our government, our media, and the secularization o our culture. And everybody knows big money doesn’t want anything to change. But the journey o a thousand miles begins with the rst step. A good rst step in this case would be picking more appropriate role models or ourselves than the ones we currently hold dear. Hint: as Catholic business people, we should be thinking “justice” rst, rather than “prot.” “A theory that makes prot the exclusive norm and ultimate end o economic activity is morally unacceptable. Te disordered desire or money cannot but produce perverse eects. It is one o the causes o the many conicts which disturb the social order. A sys-
tem that subordinates the basic rights o individuals and o groups to the collective organization o production is contrary to human dignity. Every practice that reduces persons to nothing more than a means o prot enslaves man, leads to idolizing money, and contributes to the spread o atheism.” So states the Catechism o the Catholic Church, paragraph 2424. Let’s not allow ourselves to be talked into believing the modern conveniences and world-changing technologies we now take or granted would not have emerged without unettered capitalism, the ree market, or the cutthroat business practices o our entrepreneurial class. Just as the obvious increase in material well-being we enjoy should not blind us to the underlying moral anarchy that courses through our present economic system. Robrt Cavaaugh, Jr. Phiadphia, Psyvaia
elIMInATe uSuRy For our centuries, since 1609, private banks have created most o the world’s money on a piece o paper by lending money they do not own as “debt owed to the private bank.” In his 1932 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno Pope Pius XI taught that the banking maa is an “economic dictatorship”. He taught Catholic doctrine that “Tis dictatorship is being most orceully exercised by those who, since they hold the money and completely control it, control credit also and rule the lending o it.” When banks make loans, debt comes into existence as prot to the bankers and debt to the workers. I we have wars that means banks must create a lot o “debt money” as prot to the banks to nance the war. Could not the banking “dictatorship” promote wars to create “debt money” or the prot and power o bankers to rule the world? I agree with Editor E. Michael Jones. ”Te government should issue debt ree money directly into the economy: it should not determine the money supply by issuing debt money to big banks, the current system. . . .Te problem is compound interest and usury which must be eliminated rom the system.” All money should be created by the government or “common good” o society. Robrt J Coo rjcoo@us.t J 2013 / 33
Is Proprty Tht? by Garrick Small Beginning a book on economics with a chapter on the existence o God would not be expected today, but it was how Pierre-Joseph Proudhon began his 1847 economics treatise, Te Philosophy of Misery . In it he claimed that “o suppose God, it will be said, is to deny him”[1]. Te cover image o the Cosimo Classics edition currently in print eatures the eye in the pyramid o the Great Seal o the USA, perhaps raising some question as to whose eye it is meant to be. Proudhon was a Satanist. He is not usually remembered or either his work on economics, or his ondness or Satan, but rather as the originator o the sharp and surprising assertion that property is thet. Many people had written about property beore Proudhon, but no one had ever made such an outrageous claim. Property as we all know, or perhaps just like to believe came out o the ark, or maybe out o Eden. Either way, it is as old and necessary as man himsel. o claim that it is thet is to attach to it a metaphysical identity as a moral instrument o vice. Te Enlightenment excelled at promoting philosophies at variance to common sense, and Proudhon excelled at distilling the Enlightenment view o property into an extreme violation o common sense. His challenge to property ormed the oundation or socialism. Tere is a curious connection between a ondness or Satan and early socialist thought, amply illustrated in the poetry o Marx[2] and the prose o Bakunin[3]. Beore getting too excited about the Satanic Let, it needs to be remembered that the economic Right is Garric Sma is a prssr cmics at th uivrsity Qsad i Astraia. 34 / CulTuRe WARS
not above dancing with the devil itsel. Te Randian approach that almost makes virtues o thet and bullying built on Neitzschean oundations and evident in the thought o Vilredo Pareto has proven popular amongst the entrepreneurial class. When George Gilder wrote o the economy o heroes he detailed the way these heroes just happened to side step inconveniences like taxation obligations and regulations to become rich [4]. Tese are Ayn Rand’s heroes plagiarised rom Machiavelli’s admonition that leaders should “know how to do wrong, and to make use o it or not according to necessity”[5]. Te history o leading examples o capitalism, such as Standard Oil, rests on behaviours that are evidently Randian that included the ruining o competitors and squashing o worker resistance— hardly conormable to the Gospel. Property rights eature prominently in the execution o these strategies. Te problem with property is that it is not nearly as straightorward and objective as it seems. A two year old has a naive understanding o property and is ready to apply all his resources to asserting his claim to anything that takes his eye. Property to the two year old is the possession o a desirable thing that is within his ability to gain given his powers o persuasion. Parents know property requires something more than a tantrum to support it, but a tantrum in some cases represents sucient coercive orce to achieve possession. While property as no more than ‘possession due to coercion’ sounds absurdly childish, it is essentially the theory o property that Adam Smith held when he claimed that “small as well as great estates derive their security from the laws of their country”[6]. Tis appears reasonable till you understand that Smith and Hume believed that the laws were no more than an expression
“entailed ”, which was a orm o land property but which restricted the owner to passing on the land to direct descendants. Te problem or Smith was that his complaint implied that entailed property rested on more than merely the whim o the government and that somehow men could argue its merits on something more than the positive act o their legal status. Entailed estates were common in the eighteenth century though their orm is quite alien to most modern people’s idea o property today. Tey still exist to various extents in some western legal systems, including some states o the USA. Te idea that ownership could be limited in the scope o disposal options oends our modern sense o independence but it does lead to a degree o prudence and stability. Entailed land could not be used as security or a mortgage, meaning children are protected rom proigate parents. A close reading o Leviticus 25 reveals that the jubilee system was a orm o entailment or the children o Abraham, and thereore an expression o the will o God. Te point here is not the merit o entailment, but rather the recognition that property ownership has not always been what it is now. History reveals that the notion o property ownership has been rather turbulent, with the rights o property ownership sometimes contracting and sometimes expanding. Te ascendency o environmental consciousness in recent decades has put a restrictive pressure on the meaning property ownership. In Australia, rural landowners who were once encouraged to build dams on their properties as a means o water conserva-
o a community’s moral values and these ultimately rested on nothing more than the eelings o those in power. Political power in Hume’s time was closely associated with propertied interests. Overall Hume’s moral sentiment theory was no more than the moral calculus o the two year old. Tose with power use it to get what they want where the eeling o wanting supplies the necessary moral justication. Te intermediary o government is merely a strategy or sanitising the appropriation. Te state enorces its laws by no more than its exclusive right to use coercive orce. While we may hope that the laws o the state conorm in some way to the moral law, history amply illustrates this is not the case, with the laws surrounding abortion in the USA being only one evident case. I Th prbm with prprty is that it is t ary reemasonry is the best exas straightrward ad bjctiv as it sms. planation or the legal aberrations that swung Roe v. Wade [7] then the government and judiciary cannot be relied upon to be pillars tion and ood mitigation now nd that they no longer o moral integrity. Tere is no necessary reason why even have the right to build them as the rain water no this should be dierent with the laws governing prop- longer belongs to them. Likewise, i land contains trees erty. What Smith’s view o property boils down to is over a certain height, the land owners no longer have that property rests on no more than the laws o the the right to clear them. While these represent perhaps land. Something more is needed to deend the institu- the bizarre extreme o environmental politics they are tion. none the less evidence that property ownership is ar In the same passage Smith objected to the practice rom set in stone. common in his time o granting land in ee tail, or Legally, land ownership is conceptualised as a bun-
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Hawaii, 1848
dle o rights to land rather than ownership o the land as such, though most people are unaware o the distinction. o own a thing involves an open ended set o rights constrained only by the limitation o not using it to harm others. Land ownership by contrast is really a closed set o permissions granted by the state and oten urther restricted by regulation. In many places land use planning regulations implicitly prevent landowners rom using their land even or uses permitted under the planning scheme without specic permission. Tis means that despite ‘owning’ a piece o real estate, an owner is highly constrained as to its enjoyment. While it is easy to dismiss these limitations as instances o the unortunate advance o socialism, the act remains that they all moderate the meaning o what it is to own property. Indigenous people and customary societies generally have systems o property that are very dierent to those used in the English speaking west, though it is ar rom accurate to label them socialist. o deend the right o property is not as easy as it may initially appear. Modernity has witnessed a succession o attempts to justiy it in theory. Hernando DeSoto has made a career o promoting American style private property amongst societies that have long held diering systems, especially in the developing world [8]. His argument largely comes down to the claim that western private property enables owners to raise capital though mortgage borrowing which through the magic o capitalism will propel backward peoples into a dynamic trajectory towards afuence. He neglects to mention to his readers that one o the best examples o 36 / CulTuRe WARS
these transormations was Hawaii that in 1848 created exactly the land system that DeSoto advocates or customary societies today. Hawaii did develop rapidly and is now a thriving modern state, but not or the people who owned its land at that time. By 1862, a mere hal a generation later, 75 percent o the land had been lost to oreigners and the original landowners reduced to ringe dwellers on the island that had been their home or generations[9]. While it is easy to dismiss the unortunate result or the Hawaiians as being due to their lack o business acumen, the reality is more complex. Had the Hawaiians merely leased their land to newcomers at a air rent the western development o the island would not have been impeded, but the native owners would be in a very dierent position today. Leasing is the dominant orm o occupation in western cities or commercial, retailing and industrial property, so it is not without precedent, nor is it an impediment to development and commercial use. It is also within the scope o what is permitted within the traditions o customary people. However, the trick with development in developing countries is to take control o the land so as to capture the massive capital gains that accrue to the landowner as society develops over and above reasonable prot to those actually perorming the development. Tose who control land as it becomes more useul take the lion’s share o the upside despite not necessarily participating directly in the development undertaken on their land and shrewd oreign investors are not slow to want to push aside indigenous interests.
lAnD oWneRSHIP Tis principle is not new, in act Adam Smith summarised the economics o land ownership in 1778 when he concluded his chapter on land rent noting: every improvement in the circumstances of the society tends, either directly or indirectly, to raise the real rent of land to increase the real wealth of the landlord, his power of purchasing the labour, or the produce of the labour of other people [6]. Smith recognised that even while the landlord slept his land was not only earning him rent but increasing in value due to every advance in productivity that was undertaken by his tenants and society generally. Most people are aware that property value appreciates in normal circumstances aster than other prices and wages, but ew realise that this magical increase is not
due to the property itsel but rather to the advance- complained o was not ultimately lining the pockets o ment o the society surrounding it. industrial entrepreneurs but rather the landlords. BeDeSoto does not instruct his readers on the insights hind the landlords were the growing ranks o bankers, o Adam Smith so much as capricious delights o en- but that is another story. Te other extreme o property comes rom the regaging debt. ransorming customary landowners into mortgage borrowers eectively makes them tenants on action to this exploitation by the likes o Proudhon. their own land with the rent going to the bankers in When property is common, diligence is punished and exchange or the capital value o their land converted laziness is rewarded. I we share a eld, you may raise into money which can be applied to entrepreneurial the corn with your sweat, but I may eat it or ree. activities. Tat is, developing peoples who own land Communism is thet as well. Ultimately both extreme but are usually without business experience exchange private property and extreme common property, at their low risk land assets or high risk business ventures least o the socialist sort, both rob the labour o the in an environment where the greatest business risk is diligent man, but in dierent ways. Te moral chalthe inexperience o the entrepreneur, which happens lenge is to so arrange property as to give the diligent to be themselves. Vanity and slick advisors such as producer the greatest chance o earning an honest reDeSoto incline these people to bet on themselves on turn or his enterprise. It means avoiding using propa table that is heavily biased against them. Te result erty as a weapon to enslave one’s tenants while also is the humiliation o the Hawaiians revisited and the giving the enterprising man security over the works o distain o westerners who are content to look down on his hands. Aristotle recognised this in his ‘dual theory’ o propthe stupidity o indigenes while pocketing the prots erty in which he concluded that “ For, while property made o them. A more reective approach recognised that perhaps should up to a point be held in common, the general property does have a moral dimension. Tis can be principle should be that of private ownership” [11]. His perspective was based on political considerations as well as a realistic estimate o the moral limitations o man. St. Tomas Aquinas Hawaii did dvp rapidy ad is w a thrivexpanded Aristotle and ig mdr stat, bt t r th pp wh reocused property within moral and metaphysical wd its ad at that tim. rameworks [12]. Regarding private aspect o property St. Tomas noted: wo things are competent to man in respect o easily seen in the extreme systems o property consid- exterior things. One is the power to procure and disered today. Extreme private property opens the pos- pense them, and in this regard it is lawul or man to sibility o extreme rents that impoverish tenants. Tese possess property. Moreover this is necessary to human were evident in England in the nineteenth century. lie or three reasons. First because every man is more Fred Harrison noted that i one were to collect the 200 careul to procure what is or himsel alone than that wealthiest people in England in the nineteenth centu- which is common to many or to all: since each one ry “ one could be excused for thinking that the industrial would shirk the labor and leave to another that which revolution had never happened ” because they would concerns the community, as happens where there is a have consisted principally o landowners and not in- great number o servants. Secondly, because human dustrialists [10]. Harrison’s contention is that it was aairs are conducted in more orderly ashion i each land and not enterprise that captured the major share man is charged with taking care o some particular o the industrial surplus, which was simultaneously the thing himsel, whereas there would be conusion i evdeciency o wages. Tat is, the poverty that Dickens eryone had to look ater any one thing indeterminateJ 2013 / 37
ly. Tirdly, because a more peaceul state is ensured to man i each one is contented with his own. Hence it is to be observed that quarrels arise more requently where there is no division o the things possessed. It will be noticed that this is an argument rom the practical order, and especially relates to the allen nature o man due to sin. It is not a natural relationship, but one ashioned by agreement to oster a peaceul state where labor and diligence are appropriately re warded. Tat is, St. Tomas states “ the division of possessions is not according to the natural law, but rather arose from human agreement which belongs to positive law ”. o understand St. Tomas’s thought here it is necessary to understand his metaphysics. Property takes its name rom the philosophical concept o the same name that reers to a quality that a thing must have in order to be itsel. Tese necessary ‘properties’ are what help dene a thing. Wetness is a quality o water at room temperature that it must have i it is water. I you nd a substance that is not wet at room temperature then you are assured that you do not have water. Hence we can say that a property o water is that it is wet. Property iners a connection that cannot be broken without doing violence to a thing. When Christ spoke o salt that had lost its savor He was speaking o salt that had lost one o its principle properties. It was no longer salt. Humans have various properties including a distinctive anatomy, the ability to think abstractly, an immortal soul and most undamentally lie itsel. aking any o these rom the human person leaves him violated and perhaps no longer even human. A thing with human anatomy but no lie is not a man but a corpse. Lie then is a property o the human person, but a spatially limited section o the earth’s surace is not. Te connection between people and parcels o land is only social agreement, not metaphysical necessity. St. Tomas is saying that connecting people to land parcels is a useul and social practice, but it is only ever a convention. As a convention it is only ever positive, that is, arbitrary even i done with the most prudential intentions. Tere are two important natural properties pertaining to humans that are relevant in connection to ownership o things separate to them. Te rst is that since people have property in their lives, then they have natural property in those things that their lie is spent producing. I you spend an aternoon composing a song, then the song exists because o the hours 38 / CulTuRe WARS
o your lie that were absorbed in its production. Tat part o your lie comprises the material cause o the song, you being the ecient cause while also supplying the ormal cause o the thing. It would be similar i your time was spent digging a hole or xing a car. Te product o your eort can be considered as the embodiment o so much o your lie, and i you own your lie naturally and completely, then you own the product that it was devoted to producing. Tis has never been seriously questioned and is ound explicit in the thought o John Locke, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, amongst others. Tere is a undamental dierence between the way people may own a song, or a painting compared to the way that that they can own land because land, conceived o specically as an unimproved section o the earth’s surace, does not have any debt to human agency in its production. John Locke attempted to argue that a man’s property in his labour meant that the land on which his labour was expended, say in clearing and sowing, gave the man title to the land itsel [13]. While it is true that the armer is violated i someone else reaps his crop, it is not true that he has thus gained title to the land under the crop. Locke only established partial title to land property limited by the un-depreciated value o improvements. Despite Locke trying to provide an argument rom natural law or absolute property, his argument ails. rying to nd a natural law argument or property in land became a preoccupation with modern thinkers. Usually Locke is cited as supplying the rationale or modern private property, but the deects in his arguments are seldom mentioned. Tis is despite the unimproved part o the land essentially being the element within a real estate asset that appreciates and captures the rental premiums. Hugo Grotius argued that the act o living necessitates that people occupy space and that constitutes exclusivity, hence justiying property [14]. It is easy to see that two people cannot occupy one bathtub or two armers cannot plough the same eld, but this is somewhat short o establishing that the occupant thereore holds property rights. When it is recognised that these enterprises in creative natural law were mainly conducted in countries where the attractions o property ownership were not directed towards owner-occupation, but rather to support the property rights o owners who seldom dirtied their hands with manual labor the theoretical enterprise rings very hollow. Grotius was not interested
in the tenant armer’s occupation o land, but in the landlord’s claim to ownership even when he never did. For the propertied class the whole point o property was the power to extract rents remotely rom the occupants o the land. Strict imposition o both Locke and Grotius actually militates in avour o property rights or tenants as these are the occupants and the suppliers o labour, however such a conclusion would have devastating implications or capitalism.
ADAM SMITH’S ReTReAT Adam Smith’s retreat into simply accepting the positive act that property rights existed and consisted o possession sanctioned by the state cut through these natural law complications and tted very well into the empiricism o the British Enlightenment. It is no coincidence that British Enlightenment thought proved so successul. It permitted property owners to claim as licit any property right that were supported by the state and moved the ocus o property arguments to the pragmatism o what appeared to work best instead o what discredited Catholic thinkers like Aquinas could demonstrate rom common sense metaphysics. It is also not surprising that Smith’s mentor David Hume would be used to remove any recourse to common sense metaphysics rom the British intellectual tradition. For Hume once an argument was ound to contain any metaphysics it was sucient proo o alsehood since “ All this is metaphysics. Tat is enough; there needs nothing more to give a strong presumption of falsehood ” [15, p.289]. What can be seen peeking around the edges o arguments regarding property is the question o the split in payments between land and labour rom the income or productively using the land. Tis is an aspect o the problem o distributive justice and it has also exercised the minds o many modern thinkers. William Petty conceptualised the issue as the problem o the par – the relative value o land versus labour [16]. His approach revealed dependence on the labour theory o value and recognised that capital could eventually be regressed into land and labour components. Tis is curious since the labour theory o value was largely scuttled on the basis that value included more than labour, i.e. land. A close inspection o critics o the labour theory reveals that its supposed deects are overwhelmingly the result o some sort o external property rights. I the par was resolved and adequately included the labour theory
would be in ar better shape. As a matter o justice, the problem o the par, or distributive justice between land and labour, is a moral issue and not one easily reducible to natural laws. Land does contribute a distinctive productive dimension to the eorts o the tenant. I a armer tills good soil he reaps an excess compared to a similar eort tilling barren land. Likewise a merchant will derive greater turnover rom a well placed shop in comparison to a poorly placed one with no dierence owing to his sales acumen. Perhaps the merchant will be rewarded or the insight o recognising the ideal location to rent a shop, but only i the landowner is not shrewd enough to have increased the asking rent proportionately. Property consultants are retained precisely with a view to ensuring that rents do leave the merchant only marginally better o in the superior location and this has become a rened art in the management o retail malls. In addition to the implication o natural property in labour, there is a second species o natural property or humans related to the external world. It relates to the act that humans need access to the external things o creation in order to sustain their lives. People need ood, air, water and shelter to keep alive. I lie is proper to the human person then taking it rom him is the unjust denial o one o his natural properties. Hence denying him access to the resources provided in creation threatens his lie and thereore is a thet o his property in his lie. St. Tomas expressed this as: Te second thing that is competent to man with regard to external things is their use. On this respect man ought to possess external things, not as his own, but as common, so that, to wit, he is ready to communicate them to others in their need. From this comes the dictum adopted by the Catholic Church that private property rights dissolve in the ace o the urgent or extreme need o the dispossessed. In less adversarial circumstances it is an opportunity to practice charity as Pope Benedict XVI urges in his call or those in society who possess an excess to consider the social merit o git as an opportunity or them to reely participate in the example o Christ [17]. Private property in land is a orm o economic power. While one has the opportunity and obligation to use one’s power or the support o one’s amily, once this is achieved the excess orms a und that can be used or charitable works without cost to one’s personal standard o living. J 2013 / 39
Privatizing the external world, the economic actor o production generically called ‘land’ places a price on access to it. I that price becomes excessive it compromises the poor man’s ability to live, or at least his ability to live with dignity within his society. Indeed, St. Tomas explicitly states that private property does not extend the right or the rich to exploit the poor when he wrote: “In like manner a rich man does not act unlawully i he anticipates someone in taking possession o something which at rst was common property, and gives others a share: but he sins i he excludes others indiscriminately rom using it.” Te undamental mechanics o St. Tomas’s understanding o property is not based on religion or papal encyclicals but on classical realist metaphysics. It is based on the nature o man and his relationship to the created world on which he depends or lie. Tis means that it is accessible to any thinker. It is not a determination o the Church or the positive law o God. It is available to anyone with common sense and sucient disinterest to objectively pursue the matter. Tis is probably why Aristotle was able to arrive at this same conclusion quite independent o Christianity. It could be argued that St. Tomas was merely appropriating Aristotle into Christianity, but this does not stand scrutiny. St. Bonaventure arrived at similar conclusions to St. Tomas by using arguments rom charity and the social nature o man which are distinctively Christian and without any reliance on Aristotle [18]. Moreover, most ancient and contemporary customary peoples can be seen to have systems o property that embody the dual elements ound in Aristotle and St. Tomas [19]. In practice, Aristotle’s dual theory o property leads to private ownership conditioned by an element o common use that is oten reerred to as conditional private property, or ownership with obligation. In a high context society comprised o persons holding strong customs and traditions, acceptance o the social obligations attached to private property is not burdensome, especially when it is connected through a religious/spiritual tradition. As custom and tradition are marginalised in the march towards the secularised individual that oten comes with afuence, the individual tends to pull away rom social obligations o all orms. Te result is the transormation o property into absolute private property, that is, private ownership without social obligation. Karl Zimmerman, the mid-20th century sociologist, 40 / CulTuRe WARS
used history to demonstrate that civilizations tended to rise on the back o conditional property systems, but tended to crumble ater property was transormed into the absolute private ownership common today. Zimmerman cited the Greeks, Romans, Chinese and Indians as all ollowing this dismal trajectory across the stage o history [20]. He noted that the Germans brought conditional property back into the west as they took over political leadership o the west due to their dominance o the Roman army as mercenaries. In this he agrees with Hillaire Belloc’s assessment that the blonde haired blue eyed royal lines that dominated that period between the political ailure o Rome and the reunication o the western empire under Charlemagne were the descendants o the Roman generals who became kings ater entering the empire as mercenaries [21]. Te political, economic and social development 800 – 1300 AD is explainable by Zimmerman in terms o convergence o the return o amily values, sound property institutions and stable macro-political environment. Tese were certainly aided and coordinated by the adoption o Christianity. Te concise term or this rat o social institutions is civilisation. As civilisation re-entered the west rom about the time o Charlemagne most aspects o lie ourished. echnological development during that period was reected in the increase in grain yields rom 300kg/ ac, or less than twice the seed consumed in sowing in 800AD, to 1,300kg/ac by 1300AD [22]. Economically wages increased by a actor o somewhere between ve to eight times largely between 1100-1300AD [23]. Following 1300 grain yields were not signicantly improved until the advent o articial ertilizers several centuries later. From 1500 onwards most productivity increases were absorbed by rent taking that let tenants’ wages stagnant at best [24]. As a Lutheran, Zimmerman recognised an unortunate innovation in the sixteenth century, the advent o absolute private property. Te thrust o Zimmerman’s work was to advocate or the prudent and sel-restrained use o absolute private property. Te Romans had transormed their understanding o property rom conditional to absolute about 150BC and Zimmerman connected that change to a constellation o moral ad justments that abandoned any sensitivity to the common good on the altar o individualism. Te lesson rom history was that unless absolute private property was tamed in some way, the absolute private property
o some extent the rejection o absolute private property in the early nineteenth century by the likes o Proudhon was a orm o naive recognition o the deciencies o absolute private property. However, it has been shown that the robust orm o property is conditional private property which means the socialists were absolutely wrong in their assessment that property is thet. Private property may be thet, but it is not necessarily. Teir mistake was made largely because they were trying to critique absolute private property using the same jaundiced system o thought that supported it —that is modern Enlightenment philosophy o the Humean variety. Using Hume’s rejection o metaphysics and consequent rejection o God it is no surprise that they got their metaphysics wrong and their morals inverted. Te evil licence o absolute private property was evident in Lord Blackstone’s description o property in eighteenth century England when he summarised the institution as:“... that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the things o the world, in total exclusion o the right o any individual in the universe.” [25, p. 2] Private property was a depot that let no space or the rights o others, such as one’s tenants. I a tenant claimed a right to lie, it was only a right subordinate compared to despotic private property. Te lesser right could be disregarded i in conict, hence the lot o the Irish in the Prprty, accrdig t Bacst, was “that ollowing century, or the Ins ad dsptic dmii which ma dians in a dierent part o the empire, or any one o a number caims ad xrciss vr th thigs th o amines. Amartya Sen analywrd, i tta xcsi th right ay sed a selection o major amines o the past two centuries and idivida i th ivrs.” concluded that in most cases localities where people were dying in large numbers o amine class o powerless victims or simple economic benet. ood was simultaneously being exported [26]. PropOverall, a simple set o connections is evident in hu- erty rights and not biological ailure were the cause o man society. Where society is grounded on some mod- death, usually abetted by the orce o the state. All this suggests that the socialists may have had a erately benevolent or moral supernatural creator, amily values tend to ourish, property is private but con- point, at least they had some clear evidence to support ditional and the society will enjoy stability or growth. their case. Teir error was their method and perhaps When it loses aith in its spirituality it begins a moral their spirituality. An error in method will take valid slide into disintegration. Property is a part o the mor- premises to invalid conclusions, which is what socialal scheme o society and conditional private property ism is—an invalid conclusion. A diculty today is that appears not only metaphysically deensible but socially with the ailure o socialist communism their adversarnecessary. ies have attempted to take the moral high ground and that was ushered in with the Protestant revolt could well lead to similar social decay or the modern west. It was certainly associated with a rat o economic dysunction. Te parallels in morals between Rome and the modern west are surprising. In 150AD contraception and abortion were so well established in Rome that amilies o more than one child were rare. Zimmerman noted that the plural or child was used as a source o humour in Roman comedies about 150AD [20]. By that time Rome indulged two legal orms o marriage, the dignitatus and concubinatus orms, roughly equivalent to our de jure and de facto marriage today. Te taste or recreational spectator violence was more concrete in ancient Rome, though in content hardly more graphic than a good slice o cinema today. While today’s audiences may content themselves that what they watch is only ctional, camera technique and direction put viewers in almost intimate contact with hyper-realistic destruction o the human orm. While these are not necessarily connected with the dreary denitions o property law, Zimmerman demonstrated that moral connections appear to recur across historical examples. Exploitation o the human person or sex or blood lust is not that ar removed rom exploitation the same
J 2013 / 41
have claimed that since their conclusions and program were erroneous, then their premises were as well. Tis is bad science, but good rhetoric. Te Catholic Church has been a consistent deender o conditional private property. At the close o the nineteenth century Pope Leo XIII issued his great social encyclical, Rerum Novarum. In it he began with a scathing criticism o socialism but moved quickly into a comparable and more detailed condemnation o the economics that grows out o absolute private property. Te Church has always linked this dysunctional economics to absolute despotic private property and British liberalism and or the next hal century reerred to it simply as “liberalism” rather than the now amiliar “capitalism.”
QuADRAGeSIMo Anno A quarter century later Pope Pius XI rened and expanded Leo’s work in the light o subsequent developments in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. In it he condemned two dysunctional approaches to the problem o property when he wrote: Accordingly, twin rocks o shipwreck must be careully avoided. For, as one is wrecked upon, or comes close to, what is known as “individualism” by denying or minimizing the social and public character o the right o property, so by rejecting or minimizing the private and individual character o this same right, one inevitably runs into “collectivism” or at least closely approaches its tenets. Unless this is kept in mind, one is swept rom his course upon the shoals o that moral, juridical, and social modernism which We denounced in the Encyclical issued at the beginning o Our Ponticate. And, in particular, let those realize this who, in their desire or innovation, do not scruple to reproach the Church with inamous calumnies, as i she had allowed to creep into the teachings o her theologians a pagan concept o ownership which must be completely replaced by another that they with amazing ignorance call “Christian.” [27]
As twin aberrations they were both to be rejected and leading Catholic writers o the time had little diculty recognising their maniold similarities. Te Jesuit scholar Edward Cahill composed perhaps the most comprehensive summa o the Church’s social thought within the ponticate o Pope Pius XI [28]. In he denounced liberalism and socialism or their so42 / CulTuRe WARS
cial ailures and noticed the connections between both and international nance and the Jewish problem. He catalogued the Jewish membership o political leadership o communist Russia as well as its representation within the liberal establishment. In a separate work, originally intended to be a chapter in the Framework of a Christian State , but grown into a complete study in itsel, he also linked reemasonry to liberalism, socialism and international nance [29]. Both works remain outstanding resources or the Catholic social thought scholar and both are still in print despite no longer being used as standard seminary resources. Pope Pius XI’s recognition o two additional orms o modernism to the original theological modernism identied and condemned by his predecessor Pope Pius X has not been adequately appreciated within the Church. What Pius XI has given the Church is explicit recognition that Enlightenment method too easily leads into heresy. When applied to theology it easily moved down the slope greased by Hume’s Essay on Miracles into rejection o the supernatural which has been amply illustrated in aberrant Catholic theology post 1960. However a close reading o Pius X ails to reveal the moral ailure that attended it in the collapse o the Church in the west in the three decades to 1995. What attended the theological modernism was an acceptance o the sexual revolution that could have been torn rom the pages o the Marx’s agenda or the destruction o the amily and an overly accommodating approach to social issues that was indistinguishable rom socialism. As a constellation o positions it tted well with the liberal Let as liberalism is understood in the USA where to be a liberal is to be politically Let. Reerring back to Pius XI this ts precisely with the moral judicial and social modernism he associated with proponents o what he called ‘collectivism’. As a twin assault on the Church, the combination o theological and Let wing moral modernisms was a toxic cocktail. Sexual licence bolstered by the belie that God does not take interest in your personal lie because He does not penetrate into creation with miracles or judgement sotened and discouraged the larger part o an entire generation o the Church’s leadership, not to mention the laity. Te cocktail attacked the evangelical counsels o obedience and chastity, both in terms o their practice by religious and their expression in lay lie. It may even be argued that socialism with its covertness or the licit property o others constitutes a challenge to the spirit o poverty as well. It should be
no surprise that religious lie lost its raison d’etre as well and consequently its numbers. It is hard to estimate the damage that the dual modernist cocktail has done. It can be seen in the empty monasteries and convents and the dismal ability o parochial schools to communicate the aith. Indications can be quantied. At present in Australia, admittedly one o the more unortunate Catholic communities in terms o the scale o lack o loss o aith since 1960, well under 5% o Catholic school graduates practice their aith signalling a spectacular trajectory o decay. Deenders o the schools complain that this is because parents show no leadership having previously abandoned their aith. Tis is true or about two thirds o Catholic parents, but even i every one o the 3% or so o children who persist with their aith post school belonged to practicing amilies this would still mean that only one in ten children o practicing amilies ollow in the ootsteps o their parents. From their present position representing about a quarter o the population, this suggests that in two generations Catholicism will be practiced by about 0.25% o Australian society.
IT GeTS WoRSe Unortunately, it gets worse. Pope Pius XI did not identiy one strain o moral, judicial and social modernism, but two. A quick read o the New estament reveals ar more attention to the sins o avarice than to those o lust. Avarice is directly the love o money, but the principal tool or its execution is the misuse o private property. Tis is exactly the object o Pope Pius XI’s ocus on individualism and nds ample expression in the Church’s continual condemnation o liberalism, which is the Church’s term or capitalism. Te spirit o poverty has all but disappeared rom practical Catholicism over the last hal century and maybe linked to the ascendancy o success theology which is no more that the maturation o the absolute private property introduced by the Protestant revolt hal a millennium ago. Some time ago a Fr. Joseph Ratzinger recognised an older Christian belie that the Franciscan order would be the order at the end o history [30]. Tis is not to say that all religious would become Franciscans, but rather that the charisms o the order would be needed by all Christians who remained true to Christ. O these, the most evident is the spirit o poverty. It is also
the most lacking in Christianity today where both Let and Right covet property in one way or another. Te Gospels alone include over orty reerences to the right use o money and wealth but only a handul o reerences to lust. Te rest o the New estament continues in the same vein with numerous indications that avarice and individualist absolute private property was shunned in the early Christian Church. Te parable o the craty steward (Luke 16:1-13) presents airly succinctly God’s will or property. Te steward used the economic power he had available neither to steal nor to harm its owner, at least directly. Correctly understood, the steward as a middle manager had the authority to use his master’s property commercially. Te discounting o debts is within the scope o a middle manager’s authority, and does not even mean that his master is necessarily making losses on the transactions, merely less than the anticipated prots. Te theme o reely accepting the possibility o making less than optimum prots is a theme that can also be seen in the parable o the workers in the vineyard (Matt 20:1-16). As a strategy or encouraging repeat business, oering discounts to existing customers even has a marketing purpose, depending on how the debtors perceived the origin o the benevolence. Te real point o the parable is explained by Christ Himsel when he said amongst other things: “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations. “He who is faith ful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Luke 16:9-12 RSV) One can ask what is meant by being aithul using what is another’s, especially in the context o the admonition to use mammon to make riends. Te steward was using his master’s property not his own. He did use it socially, that is to make riends and reely benet others. All that we have property rights to in the external world ultimately came as ree git, or more precisely as loan, rom God “for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev25:23). It is not ours naturally, but belongs to God who has J 2013 / 43
promised us what is our very own, which is our nal end to be with Him orever in heaven. Using property which is ours by loan and git selshly is thereore to risk losing what ours naturally, though endangered by our allen nature. God’s nal end or private property, its telos , is evident. o use it against our neighbours is the antithesis o its positive divine telos , which is close to an explicit rejection o God’s will. Matthew 6:19-20 is more direct in ocusing on a disinterest in earthly property in avour o heavenly treasures. Suce to say, while there is no hint o property being thet in the New estament, there is ample evidence o a consistent theme that is can easily be a threat to our salvation. Treats to salvation are moral issues. Private property is a moral issue and morals are always situations wherein the person has the power and inclination to act in one way, but also the reedom to act in another that is more wholesome. Moral actions are concerned with the appropriate use o power, not the demonization o power. For private property, this means that that it comes with moral obligations to others, including the general community, which is the mean between the extremes o rejecting private property as necessarily thet and pretending that it can never used or thet.
MoDeRnITy Modernity has been largely about the elimination o the obligations attached to property. Perry Anderson noted that:“In other words, with the reorganization o the eudal polity as a whole and the dilution o the original e system, landownership tended to become progressively less ‘conditional’ as sovereignty become correspondingly more ‘absolute’. Te weakening o the medieval conceptions o vassalage worked in both directions: while it conerred new and extraordinary powers on the monarchy, it at the same time emancipated rom traditional restraints the estates o the nobility. ... Individual members o the aristocratic class, who steadily lost political rights o representation in the new epoch, registered economic gains in ownership as the obverse o the same historical process” [31, p.20] Anderson was not working rom the metaphysics o St. Tomas but rom the perspective political science, but or him the transition was no less apparent. Modernity was about reducing the political obligations on private property and increasing its personal economic revenues. Whereas in the eudal system the private 44 / CulTuRe WARS
property o the king produced the revenues needed to support the army, most o the political apparatus o the state and und the construction o public inrastructure, under the Protestant system the rents went no urther than the property owner. o support the government unctions that had previously been unded rom the eudal rents o the realm modern taxation was needed. Tis had the eect o shiting the burden o supporting the state down to the bottom o the social hierarchy who had to pay rent to private landlords plus tax to the king. Te transition had obvious benets or the landed gentry or whom land became considerably more valuable than it ever had been beore. In the previous Christian system intermediate vassals in the social hierarchy provided middle management duties or the king and were the more immediate providers o the patriarchal unctions o leadership that the king represented. In the Protestant absolute private property system these became independent wealth holders with no social obligation. Te transition to absolute private property concerned more than the deection o the upward eudal rent stream away rom the Crown and into private pockets. It changed the land lord rom a patriarch gure into a sel-interested individual. A patriarch is a ather gure with all that that entails. St. Bonaventure explored God the Father as the archetypical ather gure who despite holding all authority exercised that authority or the good o others. In the case o the most Blessed rinity, God the Father in loving the Son, the Logos, gives all to the Logos, holding nothing back in what St. Bonaventure called the generative love o the Father. While earthly athers and patriarchs seldom reect the perect love o their archetypal Father in heaven, the closer they do the closer they realise their role on earth. Having people such as these holding private property rights is not problematic, to the extent that they ull expectations. In the concrete, there has been sucient latitude or some degree o human railty amongst those charged with these obligations or it to still work tolerably well. Tere is a good argument to suggest that it worked ar better than the Protestant historians who have reworked the story care to admit. Te transition rom patriarch to sel-interested individual put a very dierent leader in command o private property. Tis is the anthropology o the Protestant world and i one adds ‘rational’ to the denition one gets the supposed economic actor o modernity and perhaps a creature that could be called Enlighten-
ment man. As either homo economicus or Enlightenment man this creature is not in any way organized to be a joy to his neighbours, unless in providing joy he can take a greater prot or himsel. Karl Zimmerman tied the turning points o civilization to the patriarch becoming homo economicus when he noted that it hinged on changes in the relationship between property and the amily. Tis unlikely combination o property and amily embodies the notions o patriarch versus sel-interested individual with the purpose o private property. Zimmerman did not need to consider socialism, since that is only a particular case o the sel-interested individual and not likely to sustain a society long term, as has been demonstrated over the last century. Zimmerman saw the rise and all o civilisation rather in the switch between private property with accepted obligations and private property without them. He associated the ormer with what he called the trustee amily. Te latter with either his ‘domestic’ amily or ultimately his ‘atomistic’ amily. In the trustee amily the amily is tied by strong cultural bonds and holds its private property as a amily treasure that the older generation is honour bound to pass on to uture generations as trustees. It relies on reely accepted obligations to act or the common good which allow it to respect its patriarch. Private property in the trustee amily is laced with obligations that are inculturated not imposed. Tis reliance on inculturation distinguishes the trustee amily rom the socialist state and some reection reveals its ultimate connection to the view o property ound in the New estament and perhaps even practiced by God the Father Himsel. Te omnipotent God despite possessing all does act eternally in love. An aspect o this love is the git He makes eternally and innitely to His Son, but also in the git o being He constantly makes to all o creation. Te Most Blessed rinity is a community animated by conditional property. Te personal property o the Father is perectly and innitely used in common by the Son and through Tem, the Holy Ghost. Tey are one God in three persons; one divine property o necessary being and innite capacity, used in common by three innite divine persons. God the Father uses His property reely or the good o others, which is the archetype o conditional property consistently upheld by the Church and even evident to pagans such as Aristotle and customary peoples. Te human amily is a vestige o this rinitarian reality. In the days o single income amilies a man ex-
pected to spend his lie in toil to provide materially or his wie and children. A child might reer to ‘his’ bedroom, but it is the private property o his parents and ormerly paid or with the toil o his ather. Te private property o the ather is unselconsciously used by all the amily. It is only in dysunctional amilies that children do not experience this ree and permanent access to the use o their parent’s property. As amilies have atomised into individuals this clear parallel with the property within the rinity is becoming blurred, but it remains the norm. Aristotle recognised that or society to be truly unctional it must be modelled on the amily. In terms o economic relations, the very word economics was coined by Aristotle rom the Greek expression or household management. Tat is, amily relations regarding the treatment o material possessions should be taken as the archetype or the economics o the greater society. At this point both the political let and the political right both throw up their hands in disgust. According to them this could never work because humans could never do that. Tey collude to belittle the Christian and agree that “everyone knows man is a selsh creature who can only look out or his own interests”. Mankind needs the coercion o market orces or the power o the state to play air, he is homo economicus , Enlightenment man. Tat it was Aristotle that said this well beore Christ came does not matter. Let wing moral judicial and social modernism agrees with right wing moral judicial and social modernism that Aristotle was wrong, and the Church was acting beyond Her competence by agreeing with him, and the medieval era was an abominable period o history and indigenous people should have their land privatised and then stolen and any other culture that claims to do property another way must be wrong. Ten there are the Muslims. Tose plagiarisers o Christian economic morals who agree more with St. Tomas Aquinas on property than with Adam Smith, DeSoto, or Michael Novak. ill recently there was only one Muslim country that did not extract its oil using a state owned corporation because according to Islamic tradition mines are amongst that handul o property assets whose benets should always be shared across the community. Tat one exception is Iraq and its state oil corporation ell with Saddam. Perhaps Iran will be the next one.
noTeS AVAIlABle uPon ReQueST J 2013 / 45
ReVIeWS Dar W Hop That Td kdy B Savd? eDWARD M. kenneDy, TRue CoMPASS (neW yoRk: TWelVe, 2009), 532 PP., $35, HARDCoVeR.
As a Catholic teenager o Boston Irish heritage, ascination with the Kennedys was almost a matter o aith to me in the 1960s. Pres. John Kennedy’s photo complemented Pope John XXIII’s in many Massachusetts homes, including my paternal grandmother’s. Perhaps that ascination will never be outgrown. But is there a basis in reality or this ongoing Catholic ascination with the Kennedy amily? Is it possible that ed, the youngest o the Kennedy brothers, was in good aith when he advocated gay rights and abortion; that he believed his positions were consonant with Catholicism? How could he? With those questions in mind, I approached the late senator’s memoirs, searching or his answers, or at least some insight that would let me orm an opinion. Unlike Bobby and Jack, ed had ample opportunity to reect upon his lie in anticipation o his death: he nished his autobiography, rue Compass, while aware o his impending death, and it was released shortly ater his demise. Te rst part is a paean to childhood among the Kennedy amily and their 46 / CulTuRe WARS
riends. He does not shy away rom discussing Catholicism; he embraces it. “Both o my parents were deeply religious, and the amily prayed together daily and attended mass together at least weekly,” writes Kennedy. “Yet it is to Rose Kennedy, mainly, to whom I owe the git o aith as the oundation o my lie. It is a core actor in my understanding o who I am.” ed was introduced to the Church’s princes early in lie. “Mother delighted in her acquaintances with Catholic bishops and cardinals, and, later, popes.” Boston’s Richard Cardinal Cushing and ed’s ather “enjoyed a long and proound riendship.” Te Cardinal would visit Cape Cod, and the two men “liked to go out on the Marlin, dad’s motor boat, with a pitcher o chowder and another pitcher o daiquiris, and talk theology and world issues as they cruised.” When Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli visited the United States in 1936, “one o his last stops was at our house. I remember crawling up onto his lap. I was ascinated by his long robe and scarlet skullcap, and his long aristocratic nose. We still
have the couch where he sat, and the plaque that Mother put on it.” ed witnessed Pacelli’s coronation as Pope Pius XII “rom the ront row o a stand in a portico outside St. Peter’s Basilica,” and several days later, “I received my First Holy Communion rom the pope himsel at the Vatican.” He was the rst person to receive First Communion rom that pope, who told him: “I hope you always be good and pious as you are today” — no doubt as an admonition rather than a prediction. Cardinal Spellman ociated at his rst wedding. (Kennedy had a civil ceremony or his second.) Particularly interesting is ed’s belie, “though I cannot be certain,” that Bobby was responsible or the excommunication o Fr. Leonard Feeney. Bobby was “troubled” that Fr. Feeney taught “that salvation or people outside the Catholic Church was impossible. … Dad could not believe that Bobby had heard Father Feeney correctly. ‘But,’ he said, ‘i you eel strongly that you did, I’m going to go into the other room and call Richard. Maybe he’ll want you to go up to Boston and see him.’ ‘Richard’ was Richard Cardinal Cushing.” “Bobby said he elt strongly indeed. Bang! Dad called up ‘Richard’ and arranged or Bobby to visit him,” leading, ed says, to the Cardinal’s banning Fr. Feeney rom speaking, the condemnation o his teachings and the suspension o his duties, and then his excommunication. “Nor did [Bobby’s] principled gesture end with the banishment o Feeney. Reinorced by Cardinal Cushing’s discussions with the papal hierarchy in Rome, it became an animating impulse o the Second Ecumenical Council o the
Digitaris attdig Td kdy’s ra
Vatican, which opened under Pope John XXIII in 1962.” Tose who think the Holy Spirit inspired Vatican II might be a bit surprised to nd out that Bobby Kennedy was its animating impulse. Ater discussing his childhood, much o ed’s memoir ocuses on politics, amily, and the tragedies that beell his amily, oten in the context o how they impacted his political ortunes and positions. Tere’s precious little introspection or examination o his lie’s meaning, but instead a celebration o his political lie. Tose searching or a companion to Augustine’s Confessions will be disappointed. In the nal pages, ed reiterates that “My aith, and the love o ollowing its rituals, has always been my oundation and my inspiration,” but other than photos o ed with cardinals and popes, the book doesn’t discuss Catholicism much, except to recite what churches he attended or weddings and unerals. He claims “an extraordinary religious experience … in Gdansk
with Lech Walesa,” but never describes it, and says Pope John Paul II’s inuence on him was “proound,” but doesn’t describe that either. He does, though, criticize the Church, “a potential bulwark or restraint,” or not acilitating the court-ordered school busing o
ceives only cursory mention, and then only in the context o opposing the Supreme Court nominations o Robert Bork and Clarence Tomas. “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be orced into back-alley abortions.” When, in the context o welare re-
Is it pssib that Td, th ygst th kdy brthrs, was i gd aith wh h advcatd gay rights ad abrti?
children in Boston’s public schools in the mid-1970s. “Richard Cardinal Cushing, my ather’s old riend, was in the waning days o his lie and physically too rail to be a orce. Sadly, some local priests actually went on the anti-busing marches.” ed’s position on abortion re-
orm, ed pleads that we should not “be hurting innocent babies who needed assistance,” the naïve reader might be orgiven i he thought ed also opposed abortion. rue Compass is a bit more orthcoming on gay rights; ed gives the issue two paragraphs, bragging that in 1980 he “he broke new ground in J 2013 / 47
Jh F. kdy ad Richard Cardia Cshig
campaigning openly or gay rights. … We were overwhelmed by V cameras. No major-party candidate had ever appeared at a und-raiser organized by gay supporters.” Nothing in rue Compass explicitly addresses the questions that interested me: Did ed believe his positions on abortion and gay rights were consistent with Catholicism? I so, how could he? Tere are hints, though. Richard Cardinal Cushing, ed recounts, “made unparalleled contributions to my own racial and religious understanding.” In From Patriotism to Pluralism: How Catholics Initiated the Repeal of Birth Control Restrictions in Massachusetts , excerpted and adapted in Boston College Magazine , Seth Meehan documents that Cardinal Cushing, a devotee o John Courtney Murray, acilitated the repeal o Massachusetts’s ban on contraceptives in the mid1960s. When the Massachusetts legislature voted to end the ban on contraceptives, it did so with the approval and assistance o the Boston Archdiocese in concert with the Planned Parenthood League o Massachusetts. It takes little eort 48 / CulTuRe WARS
to discern that the religious understanding imparted by Cardinal Cushing to ed was deective, particularly where it addressed human sexuality. rue Compass makes clear that whenever ed sought to understand a particular issue, he prided himsel in assembling the best experts to educate and advise him, oten sequestering himsel with them until he thought he had mastered the issue. In Te Politics of Abortion, Anne Hendershott recounts that in July 1964, an assembly o Catholic dissenters, including Fr. Robert Drinan, Fr. Richard McCormick, Fr. Charles Curran, Fr. Giles Milhaven, other theologians, and at least one bishop, went to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port to meet with ed and Bobby to discuss the position a Catholic politician should take on abortion. According to Milhaven, a Jesuit who later let the priesthood, describing it at a 1984 meeting o Catholics or a Free Choice: “Te theologians worked or a day and a hal among ourselves at a nearby hotel. In the evening, we answered questions rom the Kennedys and
the Shrivers. Tough the theologians disagreed on many a point, they concurred on certain basics ... and that was that a Catholic politician could in good conscience vote in avor o abortion [and that] in certain situations abortion is morally licit and may even be obligatory.” Here, no eort is needed to discern that the priests misled ed (though he may have been eager to be misled). In the 1960s, neither Bobby nor ed publicly espoused the position urged upon them by those priests. In an August 1971 letter to a constituent, ed said: “While the deep concern o a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal eeling that the legalization o abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human lie. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human lie, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized—the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old. When history looks back at this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to … ulll its responsibility to its children rom the very moment o conception.” Perhaps ed meant this; or perhaps it was posturing, reecting his read o the public’s mood; or perhaps he was biding his time, awaiting the proper moment to implement the recommendations o Drinan, Curran, et al. In any event, ed reversed his position ater Roe v. Wade , and thereater was stridently pro-choice. So, again, is it possible that ed was so ill-inormed or so misinormed that he believed his proabortion and gay rights stances
consonant with the aith? Let’s revisit the Fr. Leonard Feeney controversy. In ed’s retelling, Bobby’s objection to Fr. Feeney’s teaching was its “implied consignment o millions o worthy souls to Purgatory.” Purgatory! Not hell, but purgatory, ed? Didn’t ed know that any soul in purgatory is assured o eventual entry into heaven? I ed’s grasp o Catholicism was so tenuous that he didn’t understand the dierence between purgatory and hell, who knows what else he didn’t understand. Early in rue Compass , ed says Matthew 25 is “enormously signicant to me”: “Te ones who will be deprived o salvation—the sinners—are those who’ve turned away rom their ellow man. People responsive to the great human condition, and who’ve
Saying “I know that I have been an imperect human being, but with the help o my aith I have tried to right my past,” ed requested the Pope’s prayers, recited a litany o his political eorts, and avoided mention o, or any expression o repentance or, any positions he espoused contrary to Catholic teaching, including his abortion and gay marriage advocacy. My severely disabled grandson Liam was baptized by a Jesuit in Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital shortly ater his birth in May 2009 and enrolled on the baptismal record o the Basilica o Our Lady o Perpetual Help. Liam was unable to move and could breath only with the assistance o a ventilator. elling my daughter that the hospital had a quiet room with
Th ra smd a cbrati Amricaism r a prchasd idgc, r, prhaps,Td’s caizati.
tried to alleviate its misery—these will be the ones who join Christ in Paradise.” In his simplistic view, ed, who took Tomas More as his conrmation patron by accident, seemingly thought his political stances should place him in the company o the angels despite—or perhaps because o—his advocacy o abortion. A month or so beore his death, ed asked President Obama, “a man o deep aith himsel,” who “understands how important my Roman Catholic aith is to me” to handdeliver a somewhat mawkish letter rom ed to Pope Benedict XVI.
soothing music, the hospital sta repeatedly gave her the option o disconnecting his vent and allowing him to die in her arms. Some sta members pressured her to do so. One insisted vehemently that I persuade her to end his lie. Liam turned our in May o this year; he remains unable to breathe on his own; his muscles are such that he is limp, capable o only minimal movement. He lives with us in my home. He is intelligent, happy, cheerul, and a joy. St. Damien o Molokai is his conrmation saint. Tree months ater Liam’s birth, Boston’s Sean Cardinal O’Malley
attended ed Kennedy’s televised uneral Mass, which Father Donald Monan, S.J., ormer president o Boston College, celebrated at the same basilica. Te angle wood Festival Chorus perormed and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham sang Schubert’s Ave Maria . Cellist Yo-Yo Ma perormed Bach solo, and then joined Placido Domingo, who sang Panis Angelicus . President Obama and three ormer presidents attended, with Obama delivering a eulogy. Acknowledging that “the Senator’s wake and Catholic uneral were controversial because o the act that he did not publically support Catholic teaching and advocacy on behal o the unborn,” Cardinal O’Malley blogged that “there are those who objected, in some cases vocierously, to the Church’s providing a Catholic uneral or the Senator. In the strongest terms I disagree with that position.” He posted pictures o himsel with President Obama. But Cardinal O’Malley evaded the salient point: the ostentatiousness o the uneral was inappropriate, even scandalous, given that ed was a prominent pro-choice politician. Te uneral seemed a celebration o Americanism or, perhaps, a purchased indulgence. Some suggested it was ed’s canonization. Somewhere, Cardinal Cushing was smiling. Press reports suggested that ed Kennedy received the Church’s last rites shortly beore his death. Let’s hope he had sincere repentance or his sins, including any that clergy may have abetted. Say a prayer or the repose o his soul, and another or the members o the Church’s hierarchy.
JAMeS G. BRuen, JR. J 2013 / 49
Buts * Te new evangelization seems a ancy name or teaching bishops how to tweet. * Gays can marry in Massachusetts but not in reality. * Te NY imes corrected its article on the Easter celebration at the Vatican because it “mischaracterized the Christian holiday o Easter. It is the celebration o Jesus’s resurrection rom the dead, not his resurrection into heaven.” We wonder what the imes thinks Christmas celebrates. * Te Clown Mass is passé; now we have the Clown Cardinal. * Genocide Report. According to the Financial imes , the Chinese Health Ministry reported amily planning stats since 1971: 336 million abortions; 196 million sterilizations; and, 403 million IUDs inserted. Te Obama Administration must be green with envy. * Contrast America’s horror at the Boston Marathon bombing with its apathy over “collateral damage” done by U.S. drones. * Should the law require registration o pressure cookers? Mandatory background checks or those purchasing them? * Te Boston police turned away priests who rushed to the scene to anoint the victims o the bombing. “It is a poignant irony that Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who died on Boylston Street, was a Catholic who had received his rst Communion just last year. As Martin lay dying, priests were only yards away, beyond the police tape, unable to reach him to administer last rites,” wrote Jennier Graham in the Wall Street Journal.
50 / CulTuRe WARS
posal, about hal would be employment-based with tech companies the big beneciaries. “Te aim is to remake the immigration system so it has a much clearer economic ocus,” says Sen. Lindsey Graham. * im ebow would have received more adulation i he’d revealed he was gay rather than Christian. Te media will awn over the rst male pro athlete who declares he’s a gay Christian. Tere’ll be added glee i he’s Catholic. * Poison or eens; Death or the Preborn. Te FDA approved sale o Plan B morning ater pill over the counter to anyone 15 or older. * Te (Blue) Devils at Duke are raising student ees 0.3% to pay or students’ sex reassignment surgery. * I? At the request o the Pittsburgh diocese, Carnegie Mellon’s investigating a campus parade where a coed dressed as the pope, went naked rom the waist down with a cross shaved into her pubic area, and distributed condoms. Carnegie said: “I our community standards or laws were violated, we will take appropriate action.” * Gay Scripture? Te Rev. Dr. Tomas W. Ogletree, a minister in the United Methodist Church and retired Dean o Yale Divinity School, aces possible canonical trial or ociating at his son’s samesex wedding. “I have an advantage, because I have read the Scriptures so careully,” he said. * Dr. Kermit Gosnell would be a logical choice to be Obama’s Secretary o HHS.
* Not all bombings constitute terrorism. Read Mike Jones’ e-book Protectors of the Code: Te Christmas Day Abortion Clinic Bombing , available through culturewars.com or directly rom Amazon. * “Tank you, Planned Parenthood,” said Pres. Obama. “God bless you.” He must have been invoking Moloch. * Pills vs. Pillows. Writing in the NY imes , Vatsal Takkar, clinical ass’t pro o psychiatry at NYU School o Medicine, suggests that many people diagnosed with ADHD may instead have sleep disorders. * Anti-Family echnology. Google, Microsot, and Facebook are each spending millions on lobbying to change how eds grant JAMeS G. BRuen, JR. green cards. Most are now based e-Mai: cwbts@yah.cm on amily ties; under a Senate pro-
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