The narrative some have come to trust from talk radio or from public personalities like Pat Buchanan, Justice Antonin Scalia or libertarians such as Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell, is that it is in our best interest to return to the vision of the American Founding Fathers, who, in their estimate, were God-fearing men, lovers of liberty and risked life and limb to save their progeny from tyranny. Voting Republican, in their view, will ensure judges interpret the constitution according to original intent, protect the Church, and our free speech.
There is only problem with this account. It simply isn’t true. Making this case is Christopher A. Ferrara in his latest book, Liberty: The God that Failed.
Weighing in at over 600 pages, Ferrara’s work is a relentless assault on the critical problems our culture is facing today with one significant difference. Rather than blame liberals and multiculturalists for destroying civilization, Ferrara takes aim at the foundational and philosophical make-up of the United States, of which extreme liberalism is but a symptom.
This is a polemical position, not only because it goes against the grain, but because to prove this thesis, a number of taboos, philosophies, histories and complex ideologies must all be tackled and examined closely. It would be inadequate to pluck one figure, cherry-pick a phrase or blame one event to demonstrate how the constitution breaks with western tradition and is an assault on the Church.
By no means did I disagree with the thesis ex hypothesu when I bought the book. I am a monarchist, though sometimes more of a constitutional monarchist, along the lines of Magna Charta, not the Absolutism of Henry VIII or Louis XIV, nor the neutered monarchy that resulted from the so-called “Glorious Revolution”.
Of course, Ferrara is not making a case for monarchy either, rather he appeals to its freedom in contradistinction to the regime established by our Founding Fathers in blood. Nevertheless, we normally hear that kings are tyrannous, King George was evil, and our Founding Fathers broke the spell of monarchy to deliver true freedom from tyranny, which only this country has enjoyed for 200 years.
We will first examine the basic outline of the book and then determine whether or not Ferrara really makes the case.
The Plan
Ferrara begins by writing about the constitution of Western tradition from the Ancient Greek civic tradition epitomized in Plato and Aristotle, realized with the Catholic faith through Christendom, characterized by the relationship of Throne and Altar, the Catholic tradition of civic freedom and state limits until the break-up following the Protestant Reformation. After that, he moves on to the chief philosophical movements that culminated in the English Civil War, and then, the American Revolution. Ferrara hones in on two philosophers: Thomas Hobbes (a royalist) and John Locke (a Parliamentarian and supporter of revolution against the Stuarts), who, in spite of their different loyalties, essentially possessed the same philosophy. After considering their principles and their employment by American revolutionaries in the war against King George, Ferrara shows their thought unfolding in the subsequent conflicts, in the formation of the Constitution, slavery, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War (American Revolution II) and in the legal and constitutional evolutions leading to where we are today.
Ferrara’s central thesis is that the Leviathan created by our branches of government is neither caused by its current occupants nor Communism, but from the very philosophy which created and is enshrined in the American Revolution and Constitution.
Tradition and its destruction
It is important to make the distinction that when Ferrara describes “monarchy” in the Catholic tradition he is describing what is a limited monarchy, restricted principally by the Pope and the Church, but secondarily by nobles and the people themselves, since kings receive their authority from God to do good, not to resort to despotism. By removing the Church from that equation, the Reformation made Her subservient and removed one of the balancing forces against abuse of power.
This is no more evident than in England where Henry VIII created the act of Royal Supremacy (which violated Magna Charta and his coronation oath which promised not to interfere in the rights of the Church), making him the head of the English church. This conflict produced two English Civil Wars over monarchical limits of power, the question of “popery” and the red-red hand of Rome—a non-issue turned into a major issue by Puritans believing Charles I was secretly Catholic.
As the country divided itself between King and Tradition, a new edifice was created for the temple of liberty with the eventual overthrow and execution of the king, the establishment of an even more dictatorial “liberator”, and a short lived restoration before Enlightenment principles were put into place to make the monarchy subservient to “liberty”.
The major philosophers to influence the thought of liberty, Hobbes and Locke, likewise were divided, but not on the core issue of their philosophy: complete political power to guarantee security, namely, Leviathan. They simply disagreed on where that Leviathan resided. Hobbes believed that the absolutist King, judged by none save God, could protect our security, while for Locke it was the sovereign will of the “people” provided in some representative assembly.
This is not, of course, how it is normally presented. It is usually depicted as though Hobbes supported tyranny as a safeguard for society while Locke supported “freedom”. Ferrara takes the issue head on with a careful examination of Hobbes and Locke, their religious views, their political ideas and concept of the popular will. From there he shows us the influence of the principles of Hobbes and Locke on the French philosophes and the American founding fathers, principally the ideas in Essay on Toleration and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, both which deconstruct and reject the Ancient Greek and Catholic metaphysical and epistemological tradition in favor of the Enlightenment’s radical doubt.
The social theory of Locke provided the framework for Rousseau’s The Social Contract, which in turn, also influenced Thomas Jefferson. Locke’s social theories flowed from their denial of substance and with his Unitarian “clockmaker god”, rubs out natural law just as it does metaphysics and the soul. As Ferrara notes,
For Hobbes, natural law in the state of nature is not God’s law written on man’s heart, but merely “a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same, and omit that by which he thinketh it may be best reserved.
According to Hobbes, while God has decreed the laws of nature, man has no innate understanding of them, as is shown by varying human opinions over what the natural law requires. Hence, man must be guided solely by the decisions of the civil authorities… Hobbes then, is a legal positivist and a voluntarist: right and wrong are determined solely by the will of the legislator upon emergence from the state of nature, for ‘Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice.’ The doctrine seems shocking until we realize that it represents the juridical status quo of political modernity: the will of the majority trumps the objective moral order. (Liberty, pg. 57)
This would find its way into Locke’s thought, but slightly changed.
A few decades later, the “cautious Locke, standing in Hobbe’s shadow, announces the same new doctrine but with far more prudent language, adding a fundamental development regarding private property…Locke’s doctrine is essentially the Hobbesian state of nature with an emphasis on private property as the primary means of defending the right to self-preservation. His description of the state of nature pleasingly presents it as one of “Peace, Good Will, Mutual Assistance, and Preservation”, with ‘Men living together according to reason, without a common Superior on Earth, with authority to judge between them’ only to concede- literally one page and one section later- that it inevitably devolves into Hobbe’s “State of War” on account of the “want of positive Laws and judge with Authority to appeal to…’ Man is born, says Lock with “a title to perfect Freedom, and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the Rights and Privileges of uncertain and constantly exposed to the Invasion of others.’ The inevitable State of War ‘once begun, continues, with a right to the innocent party to destroy the other whenever he can, until the aggressor offers peace’. No matter what Locke’s apologists in academia labor to find by way of distinctions, Hobbes and Locke are essentially at one in their teaching on a state of nature that is really a state of war, giving rise to a “natural law” that is really a natural right to self-preservation by any means necessary. Like Hobbes, Locke declares in the state of nature ‘every man hath a right to punish the Offender, and be Executioner of the Law of nature’ which is none other than the right to self-preservation. (Liberty, pgs. 58-59)
The false concept that the individual precedes society should sound familiar to followers of Lew Rockwell or Glenn Beck. For Hobbes and Locke, whose philosophy Ferrara dubs “Hobbe-Lockean”, man is essentially a brute, free from natural law in the Aristotelian tradition, and does what he wants, with his rights and morality originating from the state (which presupposes they can be taken away). Why is this important? Because this underpins the legal positivism that guided the formation, body and interpretation of the American Constitution.
The American Revolution
How the ideas of a philosopher inspires culture and movements is a difficult question for an author to answer since it is hard to prove that philosopher “x” had so much sway that he actually caused “y”. Yet Ferrara indeed delivers.
The American Revolution fought to achieve objectives most people particularly didn’t care about. In response, the revolutionaries threatened despotic power that would rival their own invective against King George III, who couldn’t even raise an army or tax without Parliament. Merely thinking anti-revolutionary opinions was considered treasonous. Propaganda was used wholesale, and threats of force or force itself, confiscation of property, and imprisonment rather than a yearning for “liberty” stimulated revolutionary support. Once the American Republic had been set up, the old radicals became the new monarchs persecuting those who would do as they had done previously. Ferrara presents the stark reality of the Whiskey Rebellion, Shays’ Rebellion, and others where colonists resisted taxation imposed by the new government, exceeding the previous burden placed on colonists by King George.
The Founding Fathers also threatened the private opinions of their adversaries. In the section “The Tyrannical Apostle of Liberty”, Ferrara notes the following about Thomas Jefferson:
The Loyalty oath statute Jefferson drafted for the Virginia legislature is typical of these totalitarian measures. The purpose of the loyalty or test oath was, of course, to flush out suspected Tories whose hidden thoughts were threats to the revolutionary cause. Jefferson’s definition of a Tory, written in defense of the loyalty oath, is supremely illustrative of the manner in which he and his fellow radicals imposed what they called Liberty on those who would dissent even inwardly from their program: A Tory has been properly defined to be a traitor in thought, but not in deed. The only description, by which the laws have endeavored to come at them, was that of non-jurors, or persons refusing to take the oath of fidelity to the state. (Liberty, pg. 160)
He goes on to document the oath of allegiance compelling every man over the age of 16.
[S]wear or affirm that I renounce and refuse all allegiance to George the third, king of Great Britain, his heirs and successors,, to profess absolute allegiance to Virginia as a free and independent state, and to turn over to the authorities anyone known to be involved in treasons or traitorous conspiracies which I now or hereafter shall know to be formed against this or any of the United States of America.
Ferrara continues,
Whoever refused to take the oath was disarmed, stripped of his voting rights and barred from holding public office, serving on juries, suing for money or acquiring property. Jefferson also participated in drafting a statute that subjected non-jurors to triple taxation. (Liberty, pg. 160)
One of the shining examples is that people voted for Jefferson to avoid the oppressive regime of Adams’ government, however, in his second term Jefferson declared “We’re all federalists now” and pursued the same policies as Adams. (Liberty, pg. 213)
Meet Thomas Jefferson
One of the more interesting elements of this book is the level to which Ferrara deconstructs Jefferson from primary sources. Far from the libertarian “limited government” hero, in his second term Jefferson is a big government ogre. Ferrara provides countless examples of Jefferson’s overreach which, in contrast, makes the caricature of King George look positively saintly:
1. His call for the shooting of Tory counter-revolutionaries who should have been treated as prisoners of war, pursuant to a bill of attainder he himself drafted and pushed through the Virginia legislature.
2. Jefferson’s support for the early Jacobin massacres as expressed in the “Adam and Eve” letter.
3. His lifelong ownership of slaves, some of whom he had flogged for attempting to escape, and his continued slave trading while President.
4. Endorsement of state law prosecutions for “seditious libel” against the President and Congress.
5. His approval of an expedient and quite illegal “amendment” of the Constitution by the Republican-controlled House to expand the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in order to facilitate the impeachment of his Federalist opponent, Judge Pickering, for drunkenness.
6. Jefferson’s declaration that “where the laws become inadequate even to their own preservation… the universal resource is a dictator, or martial law.”
7. His embargo of American shipping, including the federal seizure of ships and cargoes, without due process.
8. His instigation of “treason” trials and his demand for the death penalty for American citizens who had merely attempted to recover their own property from federal agents.
(Liberty, pgs. 237-239)
In popular culture, Jefferson is presented to us as the quintessential Founding Father whose model we ought to follow. He has become the archetype of “liberty”. Yet when Jefferson came to power, he brought into being the truth of the words uttered by David Starkey in his monumental documentary on the English Monarchy, “What is a president, but a king?” Jefferson’s power was greater than that of medieval kings, unchecked by tradition, custom or the Church, and Jefferson far from following any concept of limited government ruled like a tyrant. Likewise Robespierre, whose terror Jefferson approved of in the “Adam and Eve” letters, committed greater crimes and exhibited a vastly greater tyranny than even the lies about Louis XVI!
Constitutional hegemony
Ferrara’s legal analysis is especially prescient when we consider most of the Founding Fathers were lawyers, and that they constructed a legal framework that cannot be easily navigated by the rest of us. Ferrara does a superb job of discussing the supremacy clause, states rights and nullification.
Today, those who oppose traditional Catholic social order in favor of Americanism argue that the system itself is not at fault. Our failures are a consequence of bad maneuvers by those who have not truly applied the constitution, and healthy remedies to nullify bad federal laws is the right of the states. This is the argument of “tenthers”, that is, those who see the Tenth Amendment as granting the rights of the states to nullify federal laws, based on the opinion of Jefferson and Madison.
Ferrara demolishes this myth. As unfortunate as it is, because it would in fact be a potent defense against the system, Ferrara shows how the Hobbe-Lockean principles of absolute supremacy of the state guarantee obedience to legal positivism.
In the Kentucky Resolutions, where that state complained about the Alien and Sedition Acts, contemporary libertarians tell us that Kentucky, with Jefferson contributing to the resolution, threatened to nullify the law based on the Tenth amendment. As Ferrara points out in his book, Jefferson did not oppose the Alien and Sedition Acts, believing that the states should carry them out. The Kentucky resolution as a whole, did not say each state can nullify laws they do not like, but that all the states together could (Liberty pg. 207). Kentucky implicitly acknowledged that it would follow all the laws of the Union. This makes sense, because it would be a recipe for anarchy if some states followed laws and other states did not. Madison, the “Father of the Constitution”, argues likewise:
In some of the States, the carriage-tax would have been collected, in others unpaid. In some, the tariff on imports would be collected; in others, openly resisted. In some, lighthouses would be established; in others denounced. In some states there might be war with a foreign power; in others peace and commerce. Finally, the appellate authority of the Supreme Court of the U.S. would give effect to the Federal laws in some States, whilst in others they would be rendered nullities by the State Judiciaries. In a word, the nullifying claims if reduced to practice, instead of being the conservative principle of the Constitution, would necessarily, and it may be said obviously, be a deadly poison. (Liberty, pg. 206; cf Madison, Notes on Nullification)
Moreover, the remedy Madison argues for is more or less a protest to Congress, not the idea that each state should nullify laws it doesn’t like.
Thus, the American founders built their Leviathan well, with no possibility of resistance, unless of course if you should successfully revolt, which we will pick up in the second part of this review.
Download to PDF
at 9:34 AM
I have not read this book, although I intend to soon (consider it a New Year’s resolution). I see it has recieved many favorable reviews on Amazon. It seems to raise questions requiring deep and serious consideration. I have a few of my own.
Does Ferrara find fault with the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution? The DoI actually forms the philosophical framework for the establishment of the United States. Also, does he disagree with the ideas expressed in The Fedralist Papers written to defend the Constitution? Many of the “Founding Fathers” did.
Finally, is the problem really not just a confusion of liberty with license?
at 12:13 AM
In my opinion the most sophisticated Catholic defense of the United States remains Orestes Brownson’s The American Republic. I say this because he at least attempts to defend the constitution as implicitly Catholic rather than claiming that liberty somehow advanced and replaced Catholic ideas of social organization. Not surprisingly he ends up being very critical of many of the Founding Fathers, is very skeptical of the Declaration and of authority from “the consent of the governed,” that the nation will end in socialistic pantheism if the confused religious ideas of its founding are not replaced with Catholicism, and insists that this form of government should not be brought to other nations. Quite a few interesting admissions for a book that attempts to show the American Republic is the fulfillment of both natural and Christian principles of government! The fact that most conservative Catholics today will not go even so far as Brownson in these criticisms is in my mind a poor sign. I think the U.S. is much worse than Brownson ever guessed, but if one really wants to defend the constitution there’s already a brilliant Catholic political philosopher who did this without all the absurd “founderism” of modern conservative circles.
at 10:29 AM
I’ll just quote Ferrara directly:
“As professor Peter Onuf of the University of Virginia explains, the Declaration of Independence was part of a hidden “clockwork” that had been set up not by “the body of the people”, but rather by self-appointed patriot leaders who had to maintain the “myth of spontaneous resistance” as a “crucial prop to congressional legitimacy”. (Liberty pg. 159)
For this, Ferrara has:
“The Federalist Papers, written by Madison, Hamilton and Jay under the pseudonym “Publius” are not only a defense of the “American experiment” in Lockean liberalism but also a classic work of the Enlightenment whose pages are made of Hobbes and Harrington, Locke and Montesquieu, Hume and the Encyclopedie. The Federalist reflects the entire socio-political program of the Enlightenment as first laid down by its Moses, including the dialectical movement away from Christianty to modernity and the pessimistic though wholly secular appraisal of human nature coupled with optimistic confidence in human arrangements – a confidence that would be shattered during hte Founders’ own lifetimes.” (Liberty pg. 129)
For this, the best answer is to read the book. Ultimately it is yes and no. On the one hand no because Ferrara is documenting that “Liberty” is understood by the framers, our documents and our laws as a specific construct, whereas in the tradition libertas means the freedom, that is a power to do the good (what is morally right). The American system taken in toto, that is its inheritance from Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau, the framers, and American positive law, has no reference to what is morally good, only to what is determined by the state to be morally good. Yes, in as much as the popular mind does not see this and takes liberty to mean license, thus conservatives react by condemning the view that liberty is license without any reference to the fact that in fact it is license to the state to decree law with no reference to any prior tradition or to natural law.
at 10:44 AM
Did you read Liberty and determine that Brownson has a better argument and is more sophisticated than Ferrara, or have you not read Liberty but like Orestes Brownson’s work and decided to plug it in the event that anyone might be unaware? I’m just trying to figure out what you are trying to get at.
Second, if you had read the book, you would see that Ferrara does not argue that the entire constitution must be eviscerated (although I do personally, but that is neither here nor there), he simply argues that an amendment needs to be put in the Constitution that it acknowledges Christ the King, and all American law has reference back to Divine positive law and natural law. That is dealt with more in part 2 of my review. Lastly, Ferrara’s work is not to ignore Brownson, rather it is an approach that deals with another 100 years of events since Brownson (who Ferrara quotes frequently) and addresses contemporary issues. Personally, and I think Ferrara would agree, comparing the two works let alone setting opposition between them would be foolish, because they were written in different times and have different aims. It would be like me coming onto a forum reviewing a current work on Metaphysics that is attempting Thomistic answers to modern metaphysical errors and saying “The best metaphysical work in history is St. Thomas’s de ente et essentia“. While true, its out of place because the work is not seeking to displace great intellects of the past, but deal with problems now. Likewise here, Ferrara is not trying to set the standard and write the book of all time, he is writing a polemical argument for our time. Whether it becomes as classical as Brownson is for posterity to determine.
at 11:54 PM
Well, I’m very much looking forward to reading this book. It seems to address many of the issues I’ve been questioning lately.
I’m reminded here of a Chesterton essay from
The Well and the Shallows. He writes about Liberalism, Liberty, State and Church:
“The Church, roughly speaking, almost always remains at about the same distance from the State and its experiments… . It is the State that changes; it is the State that destroys; it is nearly always the State that persecutes. The Totalitarian State is now making a clean sweep of all our old notions of liberty, even more than the French Revolution made a clean sweep of all the old ideas of loyalty. It is the Church that excommunicates; but, in that very word, implies that a communion stands open for a restored communicant. It is the State that exterminates; it is the State that abolishes absolutely and altogether; whether it is the American State abolishing beer, or the Fascist State abolishing parties, or the Hitlerite State abolishing almost everything but itself.
“Now suppose I thought the time had come to remind men that there really is an intellectual advantage in hearing all sides; a help to order in a measure of liberty; a healthy irritation in government by debate. Suppose I said (as I do say) that every government ought to be checked by an opposition; suppose I said (as I do not say) that free international exchange is demonstrably better than all this economic nationalism. Suppose I said that recognized majority rule is better than random minority rule; suppose I said that Democracy as a failure is better than Dictatorship as a success. I could say all this, and much more, and remain a quite ordinary and orthodox member of the ancient Church. But I could not say it, over a great part of the modern world, without being punished by the modern State. Rome with its religious authority would not silence me. But Fascism with its secular authority would silence me. Bolshevism with its secular authority would silence me. Hitlerism with its secular authority would silence me. When I began to live (alas) to write, all the other Liberals had inherited a huge legend that all persecution had come from the Church. Some of them still mumble old memories about the Spanish Inquisition (a thing started strictly by the State); with the fact staring them in the face that the actual persecution now going on in Spain is the spoliation of Spaniards, simply because they are Catholic priests and schoolmasters. But anyhow, it was supposed that what was called superstition was somehow the mother of persecution. I appeal to all my fellow-Liberals to admit that the facts have flatly contradicted this idea. Every Catholic enjoys much more freedom in Catholicism than any Liberal does under Bolshevism or Fascism. I might have been a Liberal and belonged to the Centrum in Germany or the Partito Popolare in Italy; it is not the Church but the State that would stop me. For the State has returned with all its ancient terrors out of antiquity; with the Gods of the City thundering from the sky and, marching with the pageant in iron panoply the ghosts of a hundred tyrants; and we have begun to understand in what wide fields and playgrounds of liberty, the Faith that made us free has so long allowed us to wander and play.”
(The Return of Caesar, The Well and the Shallows, 1935)
at 6:28 PM
I have not read Liberty yet, but I am already certain that I agree with almost all of it. I only mentioned Brownson because I think he’s an interesting counterpoint both to conservative Catholics who accept the revolution in basically American terms and to the sort of traditionalist (like myself) who see the American revolution as basically masonic and bad.
I was not inserting Brownson into the comments here to argue with you, nor was I claiming that Ferrara wants the whole constitution gone (I’ve seen enough interviews with him to know that’s not the case), but was mentioning someone who I think is an important Catholic voice on American history and politics, whose ideas are often left out, because I felt it was relevant to a review of Liberty to say that there is at least one good Catholic defense of the constitution that is neither a defense of liberalism nor a “this is the government we have, deal with it” type of argument. I have not read Ferrara’s book yet, and I would not claim there to be an absolute opposition between the two works, but insofar as I have understood him from other sources he claims the American revolution was essentially liberal, whereas Brownson quite interestingly claims that it was implicitly Catholic and only incidentally liberal. Perhaps I’m wrong, but even if I’m right I would guess they would still agree on many details of analysis.
I actually do not know that I consider Brownson to be any kind of a standard (certainly not to the degree of St Thomas). Being a monarchist and basically disagreeable toward the American revolution I find him troubling. But I thought he was worth mentioning not to say “this book is better” (which I don’t think I said) but to say “there is a defense of the Constitution which is not a defense of liberalism,” which in my mind is a difficulty. Perhaps it was irrelevant to point this out, but since you asked what I was getting at I thought I would tell you.
If he frequently quotes Brownson, then I look forward to the new book more than I already was.
at 1:50 PM
I’ve gotten through five chapters – so far, his quoting of Locke (alone) has convinced me that the Founders (the main ones, anyway) were almost complete Deists and apostate “free thinkers”. Everything I hate about modern liberalism is totally implicit in Locke,down to the last degree. Locke is the focus point for the founding of this country. I don’t see how Brownson could claim the FOunding was Catholic – if he is, he must mean that the natural law ideas implicit in the more conservative strains that went into the founding are such as could be called “Catholic”; I know Rushdoony argued that the Founding was based on a “medieval Protestantism”, but the same difficulty applies here – pointing to a residue or current of traditional thought that should have predominated and ruled the rest does not get rid of the problem that, for most of the Presidents who ruled, the Constitution quickly became an instrument of power, and the elements which were “modern” came to the fore.
at 12:25 AM
“an amendment needs to be put in the Constitution that it acknowledges Christ the King, and all American law has reference back to Divine positive law and natural law. ”
An absurd idea. Is America a Catholic nation?
Locke needs to be subsituted by Aristotle and his Politics-that would be sufficient.
at 8:56 AM
Again, read the book! It was protestants in the 19th century who proposed that very amendment!
at 1:43 PM
I should add, substituting Locke in the constitution with Aristotle is not a cut and dry affair, you would have to rewrite so much of the constitution that you might as well scrap the whole thing and start over. Moreover, the Aristotelian tradition in itself is too fluid to serve as the basis for re-orientating our social order, it is the Aristotelian tradition united to the Catholic tradition and social order that gives it cohesion. If we look, at Islamic society in the middle ages, Aristotle featured very prominently, but had wildly different reactions, on the one hand a hyper rationalism and skepticism as in the schools of Baghdad or a complete rejection on the other. Islam was never able to successfully incorporate the aristotelian tradition outside of its intellectual class the way europe in the later medieval and early modern periods would. Its inherent rejection by the constitution and the federalist papers make it unworkable, except in as much as the prior tradition the founders rejected were restored via re-orientating the whole system toward traditional social order by declaring Christ the king and natural law with divine positive law (not american legal positivism) are the foundation of all law. This is what the protestant members of the national reform association advocated in the 19th century.
at 11:42 PM
By Aristotle’s Politics I mean the acceptance of the tenets:
1) The State exists by Nature
2) The State is prior to the individual and the family.
Now, Aristotle is describing and not prescribing here. All the States behave according to these tenets but philosophically, the Americans talk of Lockean tenets where the individual is prior to the state. This creates great confusion and only encourages the libertarians.
There is one natural felicity (whose guardian is the state) and another supernatural felicity (with the Church as the guardian). There is no need to confound them and no need to declare Christ as King as a Amendment. All that is needed is to re-orientate the philosophical discussion along the Aristotlean lines and gradually the libertarian and Lockean strains would die out.
at 1:09 PM
As a merely high school education person, I find myself struggling to follow all the fine notes and explanations here, but coming up with one simple thought regarding the American History of my younger schooling: we were fed a crock of crap by the victors.
It’s really that simple. The hard part now is to get not only my own understanding aligned with truth, but to tell others, who generally give me that “what planet are you from” stare when I say things less than complimentary about the Masons and Deists who founded this country.
Methinks of a proverb that continues to prove itself true: Truth walks on two feet but a lie has a thousand wings.