Enemies of the Permanent Things

     I have had, in the last couple of days, a deeply disconcerting experience. I'm reading the book above by Russell Kirk, an erudite and tightly reasoned set of essays on what he calls the recurrent Gnostic heresy: the frankly fanatical belief, mingled with a hunger for power, that one can build a society from the abstract ideals spun out of one's own spidery mind.  Kirk was writing in 1969, and at that time the principal threat to the west was the Soviet experiement against reality.  He saw, however, that the hatred of traditions (and, by implication, of independent localities, of natural aristocracies, and of the Good which measures man, and which man of himself does not create and cannot attain) had infiltrated the humane letters, with pretty dreadful results.  He quotes the old-fashioned liberal Lionel Trilling as wondering whether, in fact, the novel had already died.  I don't think the novel is in any better shape now than it was then, but in 1969 Kirk could still write that professors of English had held the line against the politicization of literary studies, and their consequent flattening.  English professors could still be relied on to foster the moral imagination of their students by introducing them, without swastikas or hymns to Five Year Plans, to Homer and Hesiod, Virgil and Cicero, Dante and Erasmus and Shakespeare and Milton and Dostoyevsky.  That was then.

     At the same time -- and excuse me for the shameless plug -- I've been on a few radio shows to talk about The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization.  Naturally, most of the shows are what is called conservative, meaning that the hosts believe that there is something they ought to conserve: traditional morality, American sovereignty, some shreds and patches of civic liberty in our nation.  I have enjoyed these interviews, yet I have wanted to cry out, "Don't be fooled!  Detach yourselves from the flies of the day!  Read Kirk, read Eliot, read something written by men of letters before last week, something written by people whose long view of history included Thucydides and Tacitus."  That might not make me too popular a guest -- though I do try to pepper the interview with what my students would recognize as typical lines, as for instance that a man has more freedom of speech in the bar across the street from the college than in the college itself.  Still, I'm beset by that disjunction between keeping one's eyes on those Permanent Things, the truths of human nature that do not change, and following, wide-eyed and gaga and breathless (hey, we are all blondes now) the latest chatter of the latest political nonentity.  Back in the day, when a William McKinley blathered, though he was a regular Edward Gibbon compared with our "orators" now, he at least blathered in the style of a responsible man of the world, who had read a lot, fought in a terrible war (the Civil War, wherein he attained the rank of Major), ran a business or was the child or neighbor or friend of dozens of people who owned farms or ran businesses, and was old enough to know what people were like, and religious enough to know what to think of it.  Now we blather like spoiled and ignorant children; our political discourse is below the juvenile.  And "conservatives" take part in it, too.

     I have wanted to say, "When a high court overthrows over two millennia of western tradition, all English common law, and the express will of the people, to engage in an unheard of experiment touching upon the most intimate matters of human society -- marriage and the family -- and when the people supinely put up with it, at best hoping to tweak the decision or overturn it in some vainly hoped-for election, then it is not the case that civic liberty will soon be lost.  It already has been lost.  Quit looking at the ephemeral!  Your forefathers rebelled over a few high-handed taxes without parliamentary representation.  They and their descendants for a hundred and fifty years would have tarred and feathered the silly members of that court, denouncing them as fools and tyrants, and putting them back in their place."  Tarring and feathering, by the way, if carried on with a due consideration for sex and age and physical debility, need cause the honoree no permanent physical damage, and yet it is an excellent deterrent.

     To one host I did say, as I've said in my book, that I believe that the ideals of western civilization will not pass away, because they are based upon truth, and guaranteed by Truth Himself, the one who keeps His promises.  Whether those Permanent Things survive in a nation called The United States (or the Corraled Geldings) is another question.

Comments

[Matthias]

Tell us more about this "vainly hoped-for election"? I confess I was kind of counting on there being one on November 4. Do you know something the rest of us don't?

[Joe Long]

"Tarring and feathering, by the way, if carried on with a due consideration for sex and age and physical debility, need cause the honoree no permanent physical damage, and yet it is an excellent deterrent."

A few years back, National Review sold shirts, coffee mugs, mouse pads and other junk with characteristic quotes from some of its writers - I have a John Derbyshire jersey which declares, "I do hold some opinions which aren't very respectable," and I wear it to church picnics.

Dr. Esolen, it might be a violation of your entire idiom to put this on a t-shirt - but perhaps a necktie? With a feather pattern in the background, maybe?

[Michael D. Harmon]

Without wanting to put words in Dr. Esolen's mouth, he might mean that when California voters decide in November whether or not to amend their state Constitution to negate their Supreme Court's ruling, whatever they do will not put this djinni back in its bottle. Laws are a thin and easily breached barrier when a society's foundations crumble. The fact that the justices were not immediate targets for impeachment (or tarring and feathering - and let's not leave out being ridden out of town on a rail) shows that the crumbling is already well-advanced. A society of pagans (neo-pagans, that is) does not create a culture based on Christian morality. It creates -- well, it creates what it is creating.

"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

[Gabriel Sanchez]

A few thoughts…

First, why is Kirk perceived so heavily as a hero of intellectual conservatism in light of the fact most of his thought is derivative at best? A case in point would be his lifting of the term “Gnostic” from the philosophical vocabulary of Eric Voegelin. Certainly Voegelin’s definition of “Gnosticism” (a definition he vigorously worked through in his lifetime to amend and, it would seem, ultimately discard due to its insufficiency) varied from Kirk’s seemingly reactionary one. I am not so sure one could accurately lump the various communist movements of the twentieth century under the banner of “Tradition Haters”—a term which, at best, implies that is not much more than Scythian fury against “traditions” per se which animates these movements. (I would concede that in the history of revolutionary movements in the last century, there were certainly individuals who thought this way. Bakunin comes to mind, but he wasn’t a communist.) But setting that all aside, it seems Kirk’s horizon is quite limited, if indeed his interest lies in defending a “tradition.” (What tradition? Any tradition!). Tradition for tradition’s sake is as empty, if not as nihilistic, as any revolutionary pathology. Unless one is still high on the intoxicating fumes of a progressive view of history (which Kirk wasn’t) or ensnared by the most ancient of prejudices, i.e., that the “good” can be identified with the “ancient” (cf. Plato’s Minos and Laws), his position—loosely sketched—doesn’t appear very appetizing.

Now, I say all of this as a man who has no quarrel with reading the ancients or, really, any book. But Kirk, like so many of his admirers, loves to collapse history into a box of consistent answers. Surely, the most average of classics students in their second semester of college knows how trite this imaginative reading of two and a half millennia is. They have everything to learn from these books (perhaps), but if they are laboring under some delusion that they are the prolegomena to the final insights delivered around 33 A.D., then, assuming they study well, they are in for a sad surprise. On the other hand, maybe the point here is only to say that we live in an era which discards the old books (a not particularly new observation) and that this is a very bad thing (an observation needing more justification than simply longing for the old). Fine. To what extent that disregard is moored in a visceral hatred for the old or whether it is not an outcome of certain strands of dubious perspectives on the world, history, and human nature (or the lack thereof) is a distinction worth making. Kirk, I think, didn’t make it at all. He tied himself, ironically enough, to a strand of thought originating in Burke, amplified through the French counterrevolutionaries, disseminated in Germany, radicalized, and, once exposed and reworked through the minds of Nietzsche and Heidegger, probably had more to do with prejudices of the day which rejects the old books, fosters megalomaniacal ambitions, and allows for existential horror to become a political program. I’m speaking, of course, of historicism.

As for courts and their tossings and throwings, any impulse to lament should be tempered with a real desire to know “why.” But perhaps the justices are fanatical haters of tradition as well? That’s almost comforting in its simplicity.

[Rob G]

"why is Kirk perceived so heavily as a hero of intellectual conservatism in light of the fact most of his thought is derivative at best?"

Of course it's derivative. I don't recall any claim on Kirk's part that he was an "original" thinker; he'd probably find the description appalling. I've had this same objections from liberals who've read 'The Conservative Mind' and have come away unimpressed, thinking that it's a work of political philosophy, which it really isn't. It's a history, or historical catalogue, of ideas, not a foundation for an ideology.

"Tradition for tradition’s sake is as empty, if not as nihilistic, as any revolutionary pathology."

But very few conservatives, Kirk included, do not argue for tradition for its own sake. To use an analogy not original to me, but for which I can't trace the source, modernism has a definite trend in it of overturning the old simply because it's old. Many modernists are thus like remodelers who go into an old building and begin tearing out pillars and walls indiscrimately. Kirk, and conservatives of his sort, are those who stand off to the side and say to these remodelers, "Uh, hadn't you better determine if that's a load-bearing wall or not before you tear it out?"

What conservatism seeks to do, then, is A) to prevent the tearing out of walls and pillars too soon, and B) to try to prevent the removal of supporting walls and pillars altogether, as modernists often are unable to make this distinction, even when instructed. There is nothing more dangerous than a liberal with a crow bar.

[Beth from TN]

Rob G: did you mean "very few conservatives . . . DO argue for tradition for its own sake"?

[bd]

Rob,

This might be the quote you are referencing:

"In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

http://www.chesterton.org/qmeister2/19.htm

[Rob G]

Yes, Beth. Tx for the correction.

And bd, that may be the original source for the analogy, but the one I read definitely had to do with load-bearing vs. non load-bearing walls. It probably was someone more recent simply expanding on GKC's analogy.

[Christopher Check]

It is a vain celebration when a state passes a referendum declaring marriage the union of a man and a woman. What kind of a people put this question to a vote? A people who have no idea at all who they are, from where they come.

Always the best of insights from Dr. Esolen. I encourage all readers to follow his advice and not look at a blog for the rest of the summer (if not the rest of your life). Every moment you spend reading a blog you could be reading Dr. Esolen's magnificent translation of Dante or Livy's tales of the Punic Wars or Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter or hundres of other great works written not only not last week but also not in the last 50 or 500 years.

[Gabriel Sanchez]

Rob G,

The opposite of “derivative” is not “original” or, I perhaps should say, my intent was not to leave anyone with that impression. Perhaps I should have just called Kirk a “Burke epigone” and been done with it, but I feared that might leave some with the impression that I think Kirk a good interpreter of Burke (which I do not).

I don’t have the foggiest clue what liberals say about Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, but it seems strange to me that they would interpret it as being something other than the foundation of an ideology. (Theory, in this case, being the opposite of ideology.) Of course Kirk wasn’t a theoretician; I doubt his works contain one theoretical insight. But that he picked which ideas to bring forth and slap with the label of “conservative” (an act which bestows upon them a certain dignity for a certain crowd) wasn’t motivated by blind chance. In his discernment of what constitutes conservatism as can be found in his various writings lies his ideology. Original or not, it is there. I am glad to see we’re in agreement that he wasn’t a theoretician, though we’re probably hitting that conclusion from two different angles.

I also agree with you that Kirk wasn’t for “tradition for tradition’s sake” period. One would have to be quite daft not to see he is trying to conserve a particular tradition or, rather, a particular conflation of traditions lumped under the shifting category of “Western Civilization.” I would contend that if you follow his thought (untheoretical though it is), there is no argument for anything but the cultivation of tradition for tradition’s sake. You certainly can’t derive from the thought of Kirk alone that “Western Civilization” (or his understanding of what that comprises) is worth holding in its totality, especially in light of the fact that there are deep-running contradictions and conflicts there. (Again, no one except the most daft would fail to see this.) I am sure Kirk saw a very “linear” tradition, pointing to the same “right answers,” and no doubt heralded this as good. But his personal proclivity or unique idea isn’t the stuff of a thoroughgoing analysis; it’s hardly a proof. So, again, what lesson do I learn from Kirk? To cultivate “a tradition” and hold onto it at all costs? Even the load-bearing wall of your quoted analogy can be held up with the basest of traditions so long as those base traditions appear good to one or more of us today.

I suppose your definition of conservatism is correct and it certainly describes Kirkian conservatism. I just don’t know about the “too soon” part. Is there a place to meaningfully determine the “right time” when some pillar should get the hammer taken to it? I’m not being coy here, but I really have never seen “too soon” dealt with amongst conservatives. Maybe that’s because it’s really not a problem in an era—as you have rightly identified—which swings quite madly at the pillars themselves.

[JackOfClubs]

I don't see how we have lost "civil liberties" by the new decision. If there is a balance point between tyranny on the one hand and libertine chaos on the other, we have definitely moved in the libertine direction but we were already pretty far gone down that road to begin with. Casting the discussion in terms of loss of liberty concedes the point that liberty is now the only value worth preserving. What we have lost here is righteousness and, perhaps, God's blessing on our nation which are things that Christians should arguably value more. But, even waiving that point, it won't do to try to portray ourselves as victims. No one will believe it for one thing and we will doom ourselves to losing our moral high ground the minute things start to go our way for another.

I feel that the battle against gay marriage was lost in the 60s and 70s when we began to decriminalize homosexuality and instituted no-fault divorce. At this point we cannot defend marriage by denying it to a group to which we have been granting social acceptance and encouragement for decades. In any case, my wife and I are no less married now than we were a week ago and I cannot see how this decision, wrong as it may be, will affect us or any like-minded people.

[labrialumn]

Of the article: hear, hear!

As to the New Mexican HRC, the Canadian HRCs and the tyrannical court in California: the civil authority binding people's consciences against their conscience, is tyranny.

The people still have the right and the duty. . .

[Michael D. Harmon]

"I cannot see how this decision, wrong as it may be, will affect us or any like-minded people."

JoC: Do you belong to a church? Does your church, perchance, run a school? Do you want the state to tell it that it must hire an open homosexual as a teacher or administrator?

Did your 14-year-old niece have a baby? Was it given up for adoption? Do you want to see it adopted by a gay or lesbian couple?

How will all marriages be affected when wedding licenses say "Partner 1" and "Partner 2" and birth certificates, "Parent 1 and Parent 2" (and parent 3 and 4, along with partner 3 and 4, et al., are on their way)?

What will happen to the culture your marriage exists in when everyone is taught as a matter of government policy that ''husband" and "wife," along with "father" and "mother," are obsolete, meaningless terms?

You do not live in a hermetically sealed bubble, immune from all this. Most certainly, your children do not.

[Joe Long]

"I feel that the battle against gay marriage was lost in the 60s and 70s when we began to decriminalize homosexuality and instituted no-fault divorce..."

I agree, except for the use of the definite article. A battle was certainly lost; but there are no permanently lost causes in society, particularly when permanent human things are temporarily weakened (as marriage has been) or unnatural institutions, unstable in themselves, are foisted upon us and upheld through the strenous efforts of government.

Our society, or the one which replaces it, will someday look back on the "gay marriage" period as an anomaly in history.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Rob G.: "There is nothing more dangerous than a liberal with a crow bar."

I must say, that is a rather frightening thought.

P.S. Hollywood should consider making a movie about scary, demonic, liberals terrorizing people.

Well, maybe they did already. Will Smith's "I am Legend" might be a metaphor for scary liberals dangerously out of control.

;-)

[JackOfClubs]

Michael: You essentially prove my point. All of those ill effects were already in place before the current decision. It was already illegal to discriminate against gays when hiring for non-clergy church positions. My church does not run a school but we do have an organist and the law is pretty clear: if you advertise the position to the general public you have to have a non-discriminatory policy. There are ways of getting around this, of course, but the point is the current decision doesn't change anything except that the people we are forbidden to discriminate against may now be "married" gays rather than just cohabitating. Not much of a difference from a civil liberties point of view.

Similarly, it was already possible for gays to adopt children, at least in the state of California. Again, the only difference from a legal perspective is that now there may be a legally enforceable structure to their relationship. Then again there may not because it is also possible for single people to adopt, whether gay or straight.

I grant the point about the marriage licenses. But do you really consider the freedom from seeing "Partner1" and "Partner2" a civil liberty? Birth certificates are not going to change since it is still impossible to have more than one biological mother or father.

As to your final question you ask, "What will happen..." but don't you really mean what has happened? There are already major cultural forces in place that devalue marriage, no-fault divorce being chief among them. Governor Reagan signed that legislation in 1970, a fact I alluded to in my original post. There is no question that this decision will further erode the cultural value of marriage, but that is not the same as saying that the civil liberties of those of us who do value it are being threatened.

I do not claim to live in a bubble, hermetically sealed or otherwise. But it is just because I don't that I know what cultural and legal factors have been in play for the last 30 years. Those factors have gained ascendancy at least in part because American Christianity at the time was largely disengaged with the political process and didn't pay sufficient attention to where things were headed.

But, now that we are engaged and aware, I don't think it furthers our case to try to portray ourselves as victims of oppression. The people that are undermining marriage (and Christianity in general) are doing so because they think it is in their best interest. They are wrong about that, of course, because in rebelling against God's will they become their own worst enemies, but they aren't going to see that without the help of the church.

We can turn this around in two ways: by persuading them of the error of their ways or by exercising raw political power and putting a stop to the nonsense until they come to their senses in God's time. Either will work but complaining about how unfairly we are being treated will not. The victim strategy only works when your opponent has a better nature that can be appealed to and (in this specific context) that is not the case. We cannot appeal to the sympathies of gay activists to forgo their agenda because it disgusts us.

Joe: I agree with every thing you say, but I really meant that this battle has been lost. Much as Samson lost his penultimate battle to the Philistines, not during the melee but previously when he trusted Delilah. We can still win the next battle, of course, and I didn't intend to suggest that we shouldn't prepare for it. My objection is to the terms in which we are allowing that battle to be framed.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

"it is still impossible to have more than one biological mother or father"

I'm a professional scientist. I give this, at most, another decade. People are already talking about how 3+ people might contribute their genetic material to a new baby. They're already engineering human-animal chimeras in G. Britain.

[tony o]

"At this point we cannot defend marriage by denying it to a group to which we have been granting social acceptance and encouragement for decades."

Excellent point. How many times have I heard the argument that, although gays are worthy of our profound respect and admiration, and although we deplore prejudice and reject discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and although we appreciate the sincere wish of gays to form loving relationships, and although we accept civil unions of same-sex couples, and although we define purposefully childless couples as "married," and although we accept with little qualms the second (and third) marriages of our friends and family members, and although our son and his girlfriend are living together . . .we just believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Right. I'm convinced.

[tony o]

"At this point we cannot defend marriage by denying it to a group to which we have been granting social acceptance and encouragement for decades."

Excellent point. How many times have I heard the argument that, although gays are worthy of our profound respect and admiration, and although we deplore prejudice and reject discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and although we appreciate the sincere wish of gays to form loving relationships, and although we accept civil unions of same-sex couples, and although we define purposefully childless couples as "married," and although we accept with little qualms the second (and third) marriages of our friends and family members, and although our son and his girlfriend are living together . . .we just believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Right. I'm convinced.

[Kamilla]

"At this point we cannot defend marriage by denying it to a group to which we have been granting social acceptance and encouragement for decades."

Oh, really?

If we grant that two men or two women can be married to each other, then we've already lost the war. Whatever else they may be doing and whatever sort of union they may be forming, two men (or two women) cannot a marriage make. That's simply not what marriage is. And, however badly men and women may be doing it, they are still "doing" marriage.

The sinful and imperfect practice of marriage is not helped by including unions which are not marriage at all. If we cannot defend marriage from this current assault then we are very much in danger of losing the ability to proclaim the Gospel at all because terms such as Bride and Bridegroom will cease to have any meaning to the culture.

Kamilla

[Joe Long]

"P.S. Hollywood should consider making a movie about scary, demonic, liberals terrorizing people."

I thought that was what the Academy Awards were.

[Rob G]

"In his discernment of what constitutes conservatism as can be found in his various writings lies his ideology."

Perhaps we're defining 'ideology' differently, but Kirk and those conservatives who follow in his trail tend to be anti-ideological. There is no dream into which they try to make reality fit.

'I am sure Kirk saw a very “linear” tradition, pointing to the same “right answers,” and no doubt heralded this as good. But his personal proclivity or unique idea isn’t the stuff of a thoroughgoing analysis; it’s hardly a proof.'

Actually, if you read The Conservative Mind, you don't get the sense that the subtitle, "From Burke to Eliot", is at all meant to be strictly linear, except in a purely chronological sense. Kirk jumps around among various thinkers quite a bit, pulling threads here, applying concepts there, painting a picture, as it were, instead of creating a flow chart. In fact, I've seen quite a few critiques of TCM that fault it for being too scattershot, too NON-linear.

'So, again, what lesson do I learn from Kirk? To cultivate “a tradition” and hold onto it at all costs?'

It seems to me that with all the flailing about with crowbars going on, it's vital, first of all, to demonstrate that tradition, generally speaking, has a measure of value. After that fact is demonstrated, then one can seek to establish the worth of particular traditions or threads of tradition. Kirk, I think, assumed the former fact, as did most of the readers of his day, and thus went on to expound on the latter question. He didn't do this theoretically, however, but historically.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Me: "Hollywood should consider making a movie about scary, demonic, liberals terrorizing people.

Well, maybe they did already. Will Smith's "I am Legend" might be a metaphor for scary liberals dangerously out of control."

Joe Long: "I thought that was what the Academy Awards were."

Joe, you tryin' to be funnier than me? ;-)

[Philip]

Marriage? The CCC at 1660 says: "By its very nature it is ordered to the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children." Mandatory education, contraception, and free sex have successively and completely obliterated the purposes of marriage.

The recognition of gay marriage will not affect marriage, because it no longer exists legally anyway. What it effectively destroys is gender identity. It denies any rationality in deciphering between male and female, and it uses the defunct, if not archaic, concept of legal marriage to do so.

There can be no recognition that men and women form a natural complementarity or that anything natural can impede or limit the will of the people (in power).

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>"Tarring and feathering, by the way, if carried on with a due consideration for sex and age and physical debility, need cause the honoree no permanent physical damage, and yet it is an excellent deterrent."<<<

Let's be honest about this. Tarring and feathering was an horrific experience. First of all, victim was generally stripped naked (which is why I can't find any records of the punishment being applied to women), and the tar had to be heated almost to boiling in order to liquify it. When brushed onto the skin, it caused first and even second degree burns--and since it was applied to all parts of the body, burns on some very sensitive places as well. The tar stuck to the skin, to the hair, got into every crevice and orifice. The feathers merely added humiliation to the agony, which only began with the application of the tar.

The real problem was its removal. Tar can be removed only by heating it or thinning it. And the only thing which could thin it was turpentine. The process was slow and painful, since turpentine is caustic in its own right. As the tar began to soften, it could be rubbed or peeled off, but often took the skin with it, leaving large raw patches on the body into which the seeping of the turpentine must have burned like fire. Imagine the suffering attendant from removing tar from the genital area, from the face, from the scalp.

When all that was done, the victim would likely be in shock or close to it. The exposed areas of raw skin provided ample avenues for secondary infection, which in the pre-antiseptic days could have lethal results. Indeed, a great many victims of tarring and feathering either expired from the experience, or never fully recovered from it.

In short, tarring and feathering was not some harmless lark, but a mob action similar to a lynching, although not nearly as polite and painless.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Of course it's derivative. <<<

Conservatism itself is based on the concept of building upon the work of our ancestors, hence all conservative though is--or ought to be--by definition, derivative.

[Simon Fleischmann]

Due to my profession, I have known/worked alongside gay people for the past 40 years. The gay "marriage" thing - from what I have learned over the years - actually had its genesis among same-sex couples who wanted the same tax benefits (and other benefits enjoyed by heterosexual "marriages" of the more traditionmal sort) as heterosexual "married" people enjoyed. Frankly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that objective.

The "nomenclature" got into the game. Younger and FAR LESS LITERATE gay people began agitatibng for "gay marriage" when all that was intended at the beginning was "civil, recognized unions" for tax (and other committed couple) purposes.

The the rabbi and preachers and pastors and priests chimed in "Marriage is a holy institution." This fell on the notoriously illiterate ears of the political classes. As a result, "holy matrimony" has effectively been "quashed". "Marriage" from a secular perspective is not "holy" nor is it left to religious clergy to perform marriage ceremonies. And that is where the secularists went wrong. Too bad it all comes down to literacy and semantics.

From a secularist's perspective, all "marriages" are "civil unions". Indeed, all religious marriage ceremonies legally performed by recognized clergy are recognized by government. The "civil unions" performed by justices of the pease/judges/ships' captains/etcetera - whether between people of the same sex or a man and a woman - are recognized as such by government. However, "civil unions" performed by non-clerical people are not examples of "holy matrimony" be they traditional heteropsexual couplings or same-sex couplings.

No one is forcing clergy or any religious institutions to recognize "civil unions" as "holy matrimony". Further, heterosexual couples who consider themselves "married" are applying colloquial definitions to particular words - much the way the young, illiterate Gay Lobby did to the equally illiterate government. Such hetersexual couples are - in point of FACT - merely "civil unions" which enjoy all the benefits of legal "marriages" (i.e. people who entered into 'holy matrimony' in their place of worship and presided over by a member of their religion's clergy). If the partners in such civil unions wish to actually enter into a commitment of "holy matrimony", they should re-enact their vows before a member of the clergy.

Public debate was so both more informed and frtuiful when citizens read books instead of watching CSI and THE SIMPSONS every evening. In those days, people even used dictionaries! Today, there is no dictionary in the average home.

Times have changed, but that does not mean we've actually enjoyed PROGRESS.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Public debate was so both more informed and frtuiful when citizens read books instead of watching CSI and THE SIMPSONS every evening. <<<

I actually do both, but then, I'm a polymath.

[redcrosseknight]

Note:
Grand Valley State University (Grand Rapids, MI) and The Russell Kirk Center (Mecosta, MI) are co-sponsoring a conference on T.S. Eliot this summer.

[Nick Milne]

Thanks, Stuart, for so eloquently and clinically stating what I was otherwise going to try to express in a sort of muddled outrage. Tarring and feathering is no joke. Not even slightly.

HBO's John Adams series had a tarring and feathering scene in the first installment, if I remember correctly, and they certainly didn't handle it delicately.

[Kamilla]

And, if I am not mistaken, the tar must be removed as quickly as possible or there will be little point in removing it at all - from the corpse.

Kamilla

[YaknYeti]

Going back to the original article, as much as I'd like to see a cultural revolution that would effectively kick out the judges who are tearing apart the definition of marriage, we have to be careful what tactics we use in fighting this war. Fools and tyrants they may be, but unless the system has become so broken that we plan to fully replace it, any tool we use against the tyrants may be used against us. Any tarring and feathering we do may be done back to us. If we impeach, we had best have a solid case for it, because judges we favor may similarly be impeached. And woe to us if, in the name of advancing the cause of marriage or the right to life, we support judicial excesses of our own to try to shortcut the legal process.

Are these judges actually impeachable for this? If not, peacefully rewriting the Constitution around them - and perhaps electing legislators or new judges who will do what is right - is our best option.

[Ethan C.]

>>The gay "marriage" thing - from what I have learned over the years - actually had its genesis among same-sex couples who wanted the same tax benefits (and other benefits enjoyed by heterosexual "marriages" of the more traditionmal sort) as heterosexual "married" people enjoyed. Frankly, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that objective.<<

Mr. Fleischmann, I must disagree with your second sentence. The purpose of those benefits are two-fold: first, to economically subsidize marriage, and thus encourage people to enter into it; and second, to express the popular belief that heterosexual marriage is the normative state that best expresses the proper ordering of human nature.

Because I believe that offspring-producing monogamous marriages are the most important foundation of a civilized society, I agree with the first purpose. And because I agree with the anthropological reasoning behind the second purpose, I agree with it also. I therefore see two very good reasons to accord tax and other benefits to heterosexual married couples (and particularly those with children) while denying them to all others.

But either of these reasons, by itself, would be sufficient to justify exclusive benefits for married couples, no matter what one may think of the other reason.

There are only two alternative positions that I think would lead to acceptance of benefit parity between married people and homosexual couples. The first is, of course, disagreement with both reasons. That position would need to be argued from both political and anthropological evidence. The second is the belief that the goal of "egalitarianism," "fairness,"or "equal rights" is more important than both social welfare and fidelity to natural law.

I'd say that both of these answers are quite common among supporters of civil recognition of homosexual unions. Which one would you agree with?

And out of curiosity, Mr. Fleischmann, what is your profession?

[Ethan C.]

Yaknyeti, you speak well. Outrage, no matter how justified, must not cloud deliberate strategic thought.

[James A. Altena]

I would also take issue with Mr. Flesichmann's statement:

"No one is forcing clergy or any religious institutions to recognize 'civil unions' as 'holy matrimony'."

In countries where "gay marriage" has been instituted, steps are being progressively taken by the state and liberal church hierarchs to enforce precisely that under "discrimination" ordinances.

[Michael D. Harmon]

If you read criteria for impeachment, you will find the standards are broad enough to be defined by the people desireous of that end. We just had a Democratic primary in my state for an open congressional seat in which three of the six candidates (one an elected county DA) campaigned directly for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. One of them (not the DA) won, and is the favorite to be elected in the fall. You can impeach whomever you want to impeach for whatever reasons you want, as it is not a legal decision, but a political one. Yes, there are grounds to impeach the judges -- IF YOU BELIEVE that what they did provided sufficient cause to remove them. Or not, if not. It's all a matter of votes, not legal standards of proof. And yes, judges (or president) who reach decisions that conservatives like can be impeached for them, if their political opponents can garner enough votes to do it. Let's not pretend this is a legal issue. It is purely a political one. It's just that so far our politics has rarely been as toxic as it is now becoming (has become?).

[Gabriel Sanchez]

This might be a dead topic by now, but on the chance that it is not...

The problem is that conservatism can become its own ideology. In fact, conservatism may always be an ideology insofar as it rarely (if ever) opens up questioning its own premises. Those who question conservatism or some alleged "principle of conservatism" are typically castigated as liberals or worse (Cf. Any "debate" featuring S.M. Hutchens). It does not strike me any different in type or motive than the classic Marxist "trick" of saddling those who do not see the "truth" of dialectical materialism and the alleged direction of history to be under "false consciousness" or, worse, part of the active superstructure beset on maintaining the current mode of production.

Conservatives, no less than liberals, have wholeheartedly signed onto the ideological categorization of the world: ideology is only comprehended and opposed by a different ideology. Maybe the conservatives believe their ideologies to be more true, just, noble, holy, etc., by virtue of an antiquity they claim to have cultivated, but alas, that doesn't pop the ideological bubble. In fact, it makes it worse. That conservatives decry being ideological is something I won't dispute. But so do Marxists (to an extent), and so do many others who believe that their pool of "knowledge" grants them insights others do not, and very well cannot, have. (At least, not until they've willingly signed-over their rights to question in favor of blind partisanship.)

Now, lest I be assailed here for claiming all conservatives are ideologues, I think there are limits. But most individuals who are typically seen as conservative and, yet, are inclined not to identify themselves as such, seem to be exempted from the confines of ideology insofar as they are at least open to the possibility of correction if not outright abandonment should facts or reason compell them to. Such a circle does not include Kirk, of course. He knew where he was tethered and so too should anyone who reads him lest they assume they're getting insights and not, rather, "the party line."

As a final note, I am not unaware of the fact that conservatives love to distinguish themselves from other conservatives all of the time. It's one of the things which makes the label so problematic. (And, I might add, no less problematic than "liberal.") Whether or not these conservatives who claim not to be "that sort" of conservative are not ideologues is another matter altogether. I suppose when pride enters into the picture--and it so often does--, the possibility of self-scrutiny folds up pretty quickly.

[Rob G]

That some conservatives are ideologues I will not dispute. That conservatism itself is ideological I disagree with. I see an ideology as a system of thought the proponents of which by various means attempt to refashion reality in the shape of a dream or idea, the accuracy of which may or may not have any connection to "the truth of things."

Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to form their ideas by looking at the world as it really is, and to try to keep those ideas connected in some way or another with reality. Hence their aversion to utopias, egalitarianism, and the myth of "progress."

Kirk, and other conservatives of his sort, are in a sense tethered, but not to an ideology or party line. If such were the case their opinions on all issues would be quite predictable. But if you actually read them, you'll find that their views on things take some quite unexpected turns. In fact, I'd argue that the more ideological a thinker or writer is, the more predictable his opinions are.

[Stuart Koehl]

Conservatism, being grounded in empiricism, can hardly be ideological, since ideology is a coherent worldview constructed from abstract first principles. If there is a grand theory, an overarching metanarrative, then by definition it is not conservative.

[Kamilla]

Stuart,

Then you wouldn't consider a Christian wordlview/metanarrative conservative?

Kamilla

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Then you wouldn't consider a Christian wordlview/metanarrative conservative?<<<

The Christian worldview does not derive from a abstract theoretical framework, but from divine revelation. Of course, there are Christians who try to reduce Christianity to an abstract theoretical framework, but the results usually aren't pretty.

Christianity, by its nature, can be neither liberal nor conservative, because those are secular, temporally-rooted terms, whereas Christianity is eschatological, and points to a new mode of being.

[Steve Nicoloso]

Worldviewism is largely a symptom of, if not a motivation for, the Liberal Project. As such, "Christian" Worldviewism is really just a competition for the scraps from the collectivist table--an attempt to build, as it were, a "better" mousetrap, but one that fails even to question whether or why a, or any, mousetrap must be built.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Ethan C.: "Outrage, no matter how justified, must not cloud deliberate strategic thought."

6 And when they came to Nachon’s threshing floor, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. 7 Then the anger of the LORD was aroused against Uzzah, and God struck him there for his error; and he died there by the ark of God. (2 Samuel 6)

13 Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. 15 When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. (John 2)

1 But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession. 2 And he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. 3 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? 4 While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”

5 Then Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last. So great fear came upon all those who heard these things. 6 And the young men arose and wrapped him up, carried him out, and buried him.
7 Now it was about three hours later when his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8 And Peter answered her, “Tell me whether you sold the land for so much?”

She said, “Yes, for so much.”

9 Then Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.” 10 Then immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. And the young men came in and found her dead, and carrying her out, buried her by her husband. 11 So great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things. (Acts 5)

Ethan C.: "Outrage, no matter how justified, must not cloud deliberate strategic thought."

[Mark Johnson]

Kirk was fond of saying....and he was quoting someone else..... "The reformer is fond of getting halfway down thwe stairs and then decides to throw themselves out the window just to get to the ground more quickly."

I met Russell Kirk in Indianapolis in 1992 and just today recommended this book to a young college student I know and that's how I found your post. Keep up the good work. Kirk wrote 30+ books and gave dozens of lectures at the Heritage Foundation. Anyone that passes judgemnet on his thoughts by reading one of his books is very shortsighted.

[Jack]

"Woe to those who call good evil and evil good"
Woe means basically a supernatural curse, something terribly bad in the line of cause and effect. People who pervert and mislabel what God calls "good" and what He calls "evil" will be found to be opposing the Almighty Creator God who has brought everything into existence, and sustains it by the sheer act of His will. In today's society, millions of people are calling what God says is good "evil" and calling things He has always called evil and wrong", "good and right". I don't see America lasting more than another twenty years at this rate of decline. We are self-destructing. If God allows us to have our own way...and does not intervene, America will be so weakened that it will simply collapse and turn into a dictatorship! Don't think it can happen here? Neither did Assyria, Babylon, The Persian Empire, The Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, and Brittish Empire and a thousand other major empires!
America is not a special exception. God is not partial. Read what happened to Israel in the 700-580 B.C.- These were God's chosen people!!!
God plays no favorites! America will become a place ruled by the tides of human whims and feelings instead of God's law, and it will be a scarey place to live in. Remember Nazi Germany? America is on the brink of entering a Millenium Dark Age. Think about it! Do you want this?