A Sensible Life

Category: Temporalities

Living in the World with Freedom and Responsibility

  • The Great Boycott Controversy

    The Great Boycott Controversy

    I recently initiated a boycott of Gilbert Magazine, not because I dislike the magazine but, on the contrary, because I love it (though I recognize its failings) and I love the American Chesterton Society (ACS). I love these institutions in much the same way that I love the United States of America and in much the same way that I love my alma mater, the University of Notre Dame. I do not love them because of their perfection but, rather, I love them because of their potential good, their potential beauty and even because of the beauty and goodness that has been, hoping that it may be again. I love them with their failings.  In fact, I love them so much that I am willing to expose their failings to the light of day.  I am eager to love them in a manly way and I fear any failure of love that may manifest itself in the form of indifference.  So, in the case of Gilbert Magazine and the ACS  my love took the form of a boycott.

    The occasion that gave rise to this action of love was the editorial by Dale Ahlquist in an issue of Gilbert Magazine published in the months leading up to the recent presidential election (“Why I Won’t Vote for Mitt Romney”, May/June 2012).  I laid out my objections to Mr. Ahlquist’s editorial in another article here at A Sensible Life so I will not say much more about it in this piece other than to say that I found it impossible to get through to folks at the ACS without resorting to the step that I eventually took, the Boycott.  The good news is that the Boycott had an almost immediate positive effect.  I was able to get the attention of some folks at the ACS.  The Boycott engendered some conversation on Mark Shea’s blog as well as on the ACS blog and the ACS Facebook page.  Unfortunately, the folks with whom I interacted remain entrenched in their support of Mr. Ahlquist’s position.

    Let me just say that though I find Mr. Ahlquist’s position poorly reasoned and indefensible, I would not normally make a public objection to an individual’s privately held belief.  The problem with Mr. Ahlquist’s error is manifestly that it is not a private error but one that he made publicly not only in his own name but also “for the editorial board of Gilbert Magazine“.  In effect, he relied upon his position on the editorial board of the magazine and as president of the ACS to attempt to sway readers away from a sensible approach to our 2012 elections.  Rather than remaining silent or, better yet, encouraging Gilbert readers to actively support the candidate on the correct side (if not absolutely correct, then most certainly correct on a relative basis compared to his opponent) of the great moral absolutes of our day (marriage, life, religious freedom), Mr. Ahlquist led those who would follow him to disregard their civic duty.

    In the somewhat jovial though serious debate that ensued as a result of the Boycott, Mr. Shea and other Ahlquist/ACS supporters objected strenuously to my objection but their objections can broadly be summarized in two points: (a) Gilbert Magazine and Mr. Ahlquist have minimal influence in this country and (b) Mr. Romney was a flawed candidate (a point to which I stipulated over and over again).  I don’t know which of these objections I found more troubling.  The first indicates to me a frivolousness (and by that I do not mean Chestertonian frivolity!) that is unbecoming of an organization founded upon the memory and thought of the great apologist and social/political commentator, G. K. Chesterton.  I cannot imagine Chesterton taking a controversial position and then when that position runs into some public resistance, tucking his tail between his legs and saying, “well it doesn’t really matter what I say because no-one reads what I have to say anyway”.  Further, this frivolous response to my objections seems to me to indicate a failure on the part of  Gilbert Magazine  and the ACS to embrace the significance of the role they could (and frequently do) play in reclaiming our culture and society and the positive impact they could have in the public square.  I am glad they had some fun with the Boycott but I am disappointed that to a certain extent their fun became a cover for their inability to defend an indefensible position.

    With regard to the second point the Ahlquist/ACS defenders raised, the faults of Mr. Romney as a candidate, I can only say that I found it to be a red herring.  Of course, Mr. Romney was a flawed candidate.  However, this objection merely served to attempt to distract the conversation away from the fact that they were unwilling to act positively to remove President Obama from office.  In all the dialogues in which I engaged, none of the Ahlquist/ACS crowd was willing to admit the obvious: no matter how bad a candidate Mr. Romney was, he was substantively better than President Obama on all three of the great moral absolutes facing us this election cycle (defense of real marriage, protection of innocent life and protection of religious liberty).  Why did they refuse to acknowledge this reality?  I fear it is because of an ideological bias against Mr. Romney’s party.  I also fear there is a substantial contingency within the ACS that appears to hate the Republican Party so much that it is unwilling to ally itself with the Republicans in order to save the lives of innocent children, save the institution of marriage in our country and safeguard our religious freedoms.  I realize Mr. Romney would likely not have done all we could hope in any of these areas.  But there is no doubt that as a result of having President Obama in office for another four years we will lose more lives of innocent unborns that we would otherwise have done; our religious liberties will be further eroded; and marriage will suffer greater and more powerful attack.

    Herein lie the reasons behind the Great Boycott. I wanted to awaken Gilbert Magazine, the ACS and Mr. Ahlquist to their responsibilities as the foremost commentators on Chestertonian thought in the United States.  Have fun, by all means but do not be frivolous!  Also, I would like to see the ACS work with others of us out here in the hinterlands to educate the American public in authentic Catholic social teaching.  For too long Catholic social teaching has been misconstrued in such a way that it has led many men and women of good will to believe in progressivism.  Progressivism and big government control of social programs are not authentic manifestations of Catholic social teaching.  A proper understanding of gratuitousness, freedom, responsibility, subsidiarity and solidarity will lead us to a distributed approach to dealing with the needs of our brothers and sisters and with our economic activity.  These concepts will lead us away from a focus on centralized government.

    Let us unite in guiding and informing our society.  Let us have fun doing it but let us be serious about it.  Let us be willing to work for small victories (like defeating President Obama) when no greater victory is within our grasp!

    “Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of ‘touching’ a man’s heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.” (GKC) Hence, the Great Boycott…

  • Charter – Joseph Lane Farm & Academy

    Charter – Joseph Lane Farm & Academy

    Following is the charter for the Joseph Lane Farm and Academy, established July of 2012. Joe Anderson, the editor and primary contributor to this online journal also serves as the headmaster of the JLF&A. The Academy has two students and one faculty member.

    ___________________________________________________________

    Established to serve as a path of holiness for her members, Joseph Lane Farm and Academy will provide a daily regimen of prayer, study, work and leisure aimed at the pursuit of our three fundamental values; Truth, Goodness and Beauty. We will embrace these values and seek a profound encounter with their Author, which encounter will lead to a relationship both radical and enduring, in this life and the next.

    To achieve these ends we will strive individually and as a family to:

    • Grow in confident abandon to the Will of the Author.
    • Form our members in freedom according to our discernment of His Will:
      • Spiritual, moral, human and intellectual formation.
    • Cultivate our sense of wonder.
    • Nurture docility in our relationships with God and each other.
    • Explore Creation together.
    • Fully and effectively participate in Creation.
    • Immerse ourselves in the works of those who have best participated in Creation (writers and artists) or studied and described Creation (scientists and mathematicians).
    • Develop our artistic, literary, analytical and rhetorical talents.
    • Study history in order to understand the challenges, successes and failures of those who have preceded us.
    • Prepare all members but particularly the youngest to live in the world well:
      • Grow in virtue (love, humility, honesty, purity, obedience).
      • Express themselves clearly and with gentility.
    • Maximize our freedom to pursue these ends:
      • Reduce time constraints – freedom from imposed schedules.
      • Economic freedom – reduce needs and dependencies.
      • Freedom to engage culture on our own terms.

    Caritas in Veritate

  • Mitt Romney the Social Justice Candidate

    Mitt Romney the Social Justice Candidate

    A few days ago I published an article explaining why Catholics and others of good will have a moral obligation to vote for Mitt Romney. The crux of my argument centered around the non-negotiable moral issues that are in play in this election as they never have been before.

    I enjoyed the healthy give and take resulting from that last article.

    That article dealt with moral imperatives. Now I would like to write about an issue of prudential judgment. However, I believe the argument in favor of Romney in this case is just as clear, if not as imperative. If you care seriously about living authentic Catholic social teaching and social justice in the United States of America then you must vote for Mitt Romney.

    Romney is a distributist. That is, he believes in a distributed economy wherein the primary economic engine is small business – an economy of multitudes of independent businesses whose capital is provided by innumerable individuals and whose laborers are not separated from investors by multiple layers of bureaucracy. Business owners are close to their workers, close to their business partners and close to their customers. This creates an economy of relationship, an economy in which the providers of capital and the providers of labor work together and share equitably the rewards of the production that results from their collaboration. This is an economy whose participants understand that they best serve each other and the best serve their own interests by cooperating with each other. This is an economy living solidarity. This is the sort of economy that made America great and it is the sort of economy to which Mitt Romney wants to return.

    Let me bring to your attention several quotes from Mitt Romney of comments made during the presidential debate on Tuesday, October 16 (emphasis added):

    “Fifty-four percent of America’s workers work in businesses that are taxed as individuals. So when you bring those rates down, those small businesses are able to keep more money and hire more people.”

    And…

    “My five-point plan does it: energy independence for North America in five years; opening up more trade, particularly in Latin America, cracking down on China when they cheat; getting us to a balanced budget; fixing our training programs for our workers; and finally, championing small business. I want to help small businesses grow and thrive. I know how to make that happen. I spent my life in the private sector. I know why jobs come and why they go.”

    And in response to a request to point out how his positions differ from those of President Bush…

    “And then let’s take the last one, championing small business. Our party has been focused on big business too long. I came through small business. I understand how hard it is to start a small business. That’s why everything I’ll do is designed to help small businesses grow and add jobs. I want to keep their taxes down on small business. I want regulators to see their job as encouraging small enterprise, not crushing it.

    And the thing I find most troubling about “Obamacare” – well, it’s a long list, but one of the things I find most troubling is that when you go out and talk to small businesses and ask them what they think about it, they tell you it keeps them from hiring more people.

    My priority is jobs. I know how to make that happen. And President Bush had a very different path for a very different time. My path is designed in getting small businesses to grow and hire people.”

    Our current president has an abysmal record when it comes to the economy and small business. One of the reasons for this is his failure to understand and support small business. He believes government creates jobys. He is wrong and his policies have stymied growth in small business, have discouraged individuals from investing in small business and have set up road blocks to individuals who want to embark on their own small business ventures.

    By getting government out of the way, Romney will turn small business loose. This will lead to more jobs, less poverty, greater freedom and a renewed sense of responsibility among private citizens. Consequently we will see a flowering of authentic social justice, a social justice focused on bettering the condition of all rather than what we see as the focus of the current administration, a promotion of strife between social and economic classes policies directed a pulling some groups down in order to “level the playing field.” The fruits of authentic social justice are solidarity and communio. We certainly are not seeing these fruits now.

  • Bishop Speaks on the Moral Obligations of Voters

    Bishop Speaks on the Moral Obligations of Voters

    Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois has provided some beautiful clarity with regard to our moral obligations in the upcoming presidential election.  He speaks of intrinsic evil and warns us of the consequences of our actions in voting.  I encourage you to watch this video:

    Bishop on Moral Obligation of Voters

    Wow!

  • Presidential Campaign

    Presidential Campaign

    I launched A Sensible Life back in June with the intent to write about authentic Catholic social teaching: gratuitousness, solidarity, subsidiarity and a distributed economy. My intent was and is to cover these subjects from a theoretical and practical standpoint. I want to write about public policy relative to these topics as well as writing about down to earth ways we can live these principles in our families and in the larger economy.

    These topics still serve as the primary reason of being for A Sensible Life. Unfortunately, as I was launching A Sensible Life I failed to take into account the fact that we were entering into the prime season for what one could reasonably call the most important presidential campaign in the last several generations. Because of this presidential campaign, I have allowed myself to focus the attention of A Sensible Life on politics more than I would have otherwise liked. Please be patient with us. I will steer the ship back to more weighty and interesting matters. However, pardon me if I spend some more time now and in the next few weeks on the more imminent issues surrounding the presidential campaign.

    That said, I feel the need to lay the cards on the table. Here goes. There is no moral or rational posturing that can justify a Catholic or other person of good will in not supporting Mitt Romney for president. That is to say, it is our moral obligation not only to vote against Barack Obama but to vote for Mitt Romney. How can I say that with absolute certainty? Here is how.

    Moral absolutes: The first issues we must examine as discerning Christian electors are those non-negotiable issues involving intrinsic moral good and intrinsic moral evil. The moral absolutes at stake in this presidential election include: the defense of life from birth to natural death, the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman and the protection of each individual’s freedoms of religion and conscience. These are issues that touch upon the most basic rights of men and women in this country. They are incontrovertible and they trump all other issues.

    On each one of these issues Mitt Romney’s position is without any question or doubt better than that of his opponent. His statements support this conclusion as do his actions. No amount of equivocating will get around this fact. No matter how many people repeat, “well, Romney isn’t perfect on these issues either”, the fact remains that Mitt Romney is substantively better on these issues. No amount of cynicism about the honesty of politicians will relieve us of the moral burden of acting upon this reality.

    Matters of prudential judgment: There are other issues that women and men of good will may debate. These matters, subject to the conclusions of our well-formed prudent judgments, can include important issues like the death penalty, the most just and prudent way to engage in international policy and the application of Catholic social teaching to domestic policy. In a presidential election, these are important issues and should be issues upon which we form our political decisions so long as the are not trumped by issues of a higher magnitude.

    However, in this particular presidential election all issues are trumped by those involving the moral absolutes. And, what is more, there may never have been an election like this one in the history of the United States: an election (a) that involved so many questions concerning moral good and evil and (b) in which there was so much clarity on each of these questions with regard to the positions of each of the candidates.

    I just want to say one more thing about issues involving prudential judgment and that has to do with the question of Catholic social teaching. Many Catholics have taken the position during this presidential campaign that we are justified in voting for or even obligated to vote for Barack Obama because of what he has done with government money and policy in support of the poor. First, as I have said above, matters of prudential judgment cannot trump matters of moral imperative. However, this fact aside, these folks are simply wrong in their understanding of Catholic social teaching. Catholic social teaching (and Christian charity) tells us that we must care for those in need (the poor, the sick, the weak). We do not fulfill this obligation by passing it along to the government. To the extent the government takes my tax dollars to care for my brother, it robs me both of my freedom and my responsibility. Moreover, such activity by the national government is in direct opposition to the Christian principle of subsidiarity. This principle states (for purposes of this conversation) that the needy must be cared for by those closest to them; their brothers or very local institutions. The national government not only bungles such work but it de-humanizes the recipients of its efforts and robs others of the opportunity to fulfill their obligations in Christian charity.

    In summary, there is no case in support of Barack Obama. On the contrary, we are morally obligated to oppose him and to support his opponent, Mitt Romney.