Against Conservatism
4) Against Unity
Mr. Medford Stanton Evans
It has been my custom to write a little without knowing my interlocutor, and then to look into his background. Now I use this term, “interlocutor”, on account of the fact that it is a fair assumption that you Conservatives are attempting to persuade me. Because who am I? I am a young man, in my twenties, with two children and a third on the way, poor and common, in a happy marriage, religious, concerned, and moderately educated. I am that group of people simultaneously the most respected and the most despised within America, and this often even by the same people.
But who are you, Mr. Evans? You are an intellectual, a graduate of Yale, from Texas and Tennessee, but the most artsy areas of those two states. For both of them are known by those outside as rural backwaters, but by those inside, as the states that happen to contain liberal cities and conservative country, just like New York is known by upstate or city New Yorkers, and California is known by northern and southern California-dwellers.
You are also a journalist. Your co-worker Mr. Meyer’s (see the first of this essay collection, Against Freedom, Tradition, and Conservatism) is the man who is credited with unequal yoking of libertarians with “traditionalists”, called fusionism, and this is what you are known for supporting. Being lauded by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, it seems as if you are the one who worked this abominable thing out into the public sphere in the theater of politics of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, in the first decade of which you wrote this.
I am a suburban son of intellectuals converted to the peasantry of my Irish ancestors. You are the suburban son of intellectuals who advanced in that path, going to D.C. and Yale. Perhaps you are a picture of the hell which would have been mine if I had not converted, I do not know. When I had become a conservative in Seattle, Washington, there was a time when I had nursed an ambition of becoming President of the United States, or at least a journalist. I remember a man telling me that God had raised up Ronald Reagan and this immediately before the election of Donald Trump (the very day before). It was the next day that I began to pay attention to politics. I also read many biographies of Presidents, because I thought this was the highest achievement of my society. I started with Harry Truman and ended with Abraham Lincoln, and anyone who reads about how those men became President might understand why when I moved to Tennessee, I made a bonfire of all my biographies, together with my self-help and leadership books.
Ronald Reagan is responsible for abortion being permitted in California. When he was governor of that state, it was Republican, afterwards, it became Democrat.
I venture to say there is not a single career of any Conservative who died such that, if looked into, would not make a man turn with disgust and repugnance at the whole scheme of American politics, and if they keep looking afterwards, American history, and finally, with enough endurance, American philosophy.
Against A Conservative Case for Freedom
Hello Mr. Evans, and I hope you have something more substantial to say than you do in your introduction, which simply says that America is going off course. Now, despite this seeming to be an empty attempt at common ground, I actually disagree with you substantially, as does reality. America is most certainly not off course, but there is some question between two possibilities: either she was always intended to end up this way or else she never had any course at all.
Built on Chaos
As to the former, I have usually argued that way, and I have as evidence the freemasonic membership of all the men of which people think when the term ”founding fathers” is used. I have the history of freemasonry, as well as the personal actions of each, such as Jefferson’s editing the Scriptures or Washington’s fixation on petty errands in his final agony, and many more besides. Indeed, this approach may be better for its rhetorical value, as it provides force to dislodge persuaded men from their positions, entrenched by the assault of Communists.
But in a scholarly mood, the latter answer might be more informative. I have learned from your colleague, indeed it has been recalled to me, just how much those men hated each other. The cross purposes of every side of every debate, the arbitrary vices, the pride and ambition which has determined American history from its beginning, always every man’s hand against every other, might be the most persuasive science against Americanism. And Conservatives calling this “good”, desiring to conserve it, unable to define it, helps against your errors, Mr. Evans. It is how I learned. Anyone who takes any of the beloved topics (for example, the lives of presidents, the cause and breadth of war, the origins of the parties, etcetera) and applies the discursive method, taking only a single step beyond the locations extolled, will easily see how ludicrous it is. (For instance, take a step backwards from the Civil War to the Mexican-American War, or forward to the Spanish-American War; take a step from Valley Forge to the speech of Washington keeping the army together and then forward to the fate and reward of the Revolutionary soldiery, seeing how little they received for their service, and generally were punished for it; take a step before the Republican party to the Whig party, which was its foundation, and how much they scraped and bowed to industrialists, and then see the real reason for the Civil War, or War of Northern Aggression, and also the origin of American imperialism.)
But then, men easily lose hope. And if one thing they love disappears, then they think nothing is loveable. And even though you tell them that there is a broad history of a thousand years of government truly under God, greatly pleasing Him, protecting all children, widows, orphans, priests, Truth, Goodness, Virtue, etcetera, then they act as if you are joking. If it were not so important and feasible, I would grow very tired, because I have poured heart and soul into reading, writing, laboring, and raising my family in order to show it. But God, Who is our hope, sustains me amicably and gently.
Non-Contradiction
Thomas Aquinas describes a process of learning, the acts of the intellect, first as apprehending something such as this essay before me or my essay before my reader. This is called intelligence. Next, it directs this apprehension to either adding knowledge, as in the case of my reader simply agreeing with me, or to some operation, as in the case of your reader, Mr. Evans, crafting a rebuttal of your work. This is called intention. It progresses to invention, which is the completion of what we intended. At times when the intellect measures its findings against certain (meaning true) principles, as in heresy being sinful, error producing error, Catholicism being the only true religion, nothing good coming of sin, good only coming of God sometimes in response to sin (justice, mercy, enlightenment, for instance), then this act is called wisdom. This is what may cause agreement or rejection of one essay or another. This is the judgment that our Lord commands us to practice well. Next, after a new certainty is known, as Conservatism being erroneous or sinful, then the intellect seems spontaneously to consider how to communicate this to others, which act is called ordering of interior speech. Then, from this flows exterior speech. And these last two are shadows of the Word and the Holy Ghost.
I relate this because it is simple and profound. I think, too, that it grinds away what Conservatism accomplishes in ambiguity (since they rarely nail down what they are conserving) by applying the certain principle of non-contradiction. You and I cannot both be correct, Mr. Evans, in our stances, because you are wrong, and I am Catholic.
Another thing which I have noticed, and I see it here in your opening, Mr. Evans, is that Conservatives always inform us of what Liberals are saying, especially about Conservatives. I have insinuated this above in my conclusion against Mr. Kirk, your colleague. It is not too different from the mechanic which I am using here in mentioning your words to my reader, who naturally has likely never read you, and now hopefully never has a need to do so. But I cannot think of a single time I have listened to a Conservative where they have not done this. If I think back to when I listened to them often, I can provide some examples:
Through Mr. Donald Trump, I discovered what the New York Times had to say.
Through Mr. Newt Gingrich, I discovered what Mr. Clinton had to say.
Through Mr. Stephen Crowder, I discovered what a homosexual man with some strange alias, as well as CNN, and a man thinking himself a woman, all these what they had to say.
These are just a few that come to mind. No doubt, having mentioned their names, I have prompted my own reader to think on them. This I regret. But the foolishness is very clear, and I have written on it before. It is just simply the case that the most hidden away and pure of the world are exposed to the worst of its errors because of the workings of Conservatives, who funnel it up from the next up the hierarchy from satan, in a similar, aping manner as the higher angels communicate their science to the lower angels. With this considered, it is hard not to say that the best thing that can be done by a man is to ignore all Conservatives, if he wishes to grow in holiness. But God provides. And often God provides men to combat these errors, so that the more pure may learn of it from those who suffered from it wounds and then were healed. For instance, Saint Sebastian, the comfort of martyrs, who loved Diocletian and interceded for him. Or Saint Augustine, who was abandoned to lechery, converted, and then communicated the most impure errors of paganism in his Civitas Dei, which seems should never be read by a virgin of God. If it is, it is probably pride that has accomplished it. Finally, Saint Peter, who was married, and whom Christ loved, yet not so much as Saint John, who was a virgin of God, and perhaps the only one amongst the Apostles.
Against Fusionism and Unity
Mr. Evans, I am going to change the title of this essay to “Against Unity”, on account of the fact that you are writing your “Conservative Case for Freedom” (your title) specifically in order to reconcile the “authoritarian”s, as you call them (your peers used the terms “traditional” and “prescription” and “order”: these are the people concerned only with good morals and not freedom, of which I am a member) with the “libertarian”s (those who support freedom, liberty, and essentially immorality, as I have described clearly in the essay against Mr. Meyer, the first of this collection). This is what has been so plainly implied by your biography above. This is your use and purpose to your peers. You are out to make “fusionism” popular.
Now, what are we to fuse together? On the one hand, the authoritarians believe in perfect authority. You describe this yourself: “the Christian conception of the individual as flawed in mind and will, with its demand for individual subordination to an objective, nonsecular order.” This “objective, nonsecular order” is the Church and nothing else. Some think it is the Bible, but those people simply have a worthless grasp of the contents of Holy Scripture, of the language used in it, or else they have not been working with it very long at all (less than three years even for the least intelligent).
Now, what is curious is that you attribute our belief (I am an authoritarian by your definition, as are all Catholics) in subordination (we call it obedience, a perfect virtue) to the flaw in will and intellect (we call it a result of original sin, which comes from Adam, who was a real, singular man). What this implies is that man was made to be free, and since freedom is a lack of some bounding thing, it must always be defined what this binding thing is. That means that you believe and assume all to believe that man is made to be free of authority: To be his own authority. To be his own author, if the definition of authority is understood well. To be a self-made man.
Now, you must not understand the first three chapters of Genesis in an orthodox manner, Mr. Evans (and so we may pity you and pray God for your salvation at the hour of your death, which occurred on the 3rd of the Month of Saint Joseph, Year of our Lord 2015). For man was perfect, and he was “demanded” to “subordinate” himself to God, clearly and specifically by not eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (which was a real fruit of a singular tree). There are some who believe, because of a misunderstanding of God’s omnipotence (taught by the heresiarch Calvin, a founding father), that man was meant to eat the fruit disobediently. These are the ones who believe in freedom, as you understand them.
Essentially, this argument is over the virtue of obedience, found in the first chapters of Genesis, as is everything. Heretics make a virtue of rebellion, and that is why they rebelled from their lawful king George. Conservatives draw on this tradition.
But Catholic orthodoxy says that all rebellion is a sin and all obedience is a virtue. Whenever authority is resisted, it is only due to obedience to a higher authority (which is not in any way the same thing as rebellion). All things are ordered upwards, and we subordinate ourselves if virtuous, and we even submit to unjust actions upon ourselves.
Therefore, Mr. Evans, your desire to fuse these two peoples together amounts only to persuading Catholics to sin. You wish us to reject the moral law in one particular area, because you hold a different philosophy, flowing from a different theology, so that the authority given us by the burden and obligation of voting might be used to legalize immoralities. This so that the arbitrary voting power of the sons of Belial might be used to acquire other things, such as tax relief or liberty of armament or, in other words, money and power.
Because of what I have said here in this section, it is clear that Catholics must refuse Conservatism, so far as it is represented by Mr. Evans, one of its principal actors, who brought it into the wider world. I labor onwards to show that it must be rejected in all its forms whatsoever, no matter if they be Catholic or infidel.