Posted on 02/25/2009 11:01:13 AM PST by Zionist Conspirator
The title "Dorothy Day and the American Right" promises a merciful brevity, along the lines of "Commandments We Have Kept" by the Kennedy brothers. After all, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement and editor of its newspaper lived among the poor, refused to participate in air-raid drills, and preferred Cesar Chavez to Bebe Rebozo.
But there is more to the "right" than a dollar bill stretching from the DuPonts to Ronald Reagan, just as the "left" is something greater than the bureau-building and bomb-dropping of Roosevelts and Kennedys. Maybe, just maybe, Dorothy Day had a home, if partially furnished and seldom occupied, on the American right.
(Excerpt) Read more at findarticles.com ...
As a former John Bircher, I am certainly aware of some of the more unsavory aspects of the "old right," the distributists, and World War II isolationists. I am not posting this because of those factors but for other reasons.
We live in a moral sewer because "social justice" has become separated from G-d and seemingly welded to irreligion, immorality, and anti-Biblicism. I have never been a dogmatic "economic" conservative and so I don't have a rock-certain economic doctrine other than economics, like every other aspect of existence, should be governed by G-d's laws.
I am wondering if there is any possibility whatsoever to separate "social justice" from its death hug with irreligion and rejoin it to its original Theonomic partners in general (and sexual) morality. I am aware that those FReepers to whom conservatism is nothing but capitalism, more capitalism, and more capitalism will probably scold me for even asking these questions. But my position is simply this: if we can halt the moral rot of our society with regard to such things as abortion and homosexuality, we can argue about economics in good faith for as long as we want. But if our country crashes down into the sewer no one's concept of economics is going to be working.
I have no position on Dorothy Day whatsoever. I merely find this article about her refreshing. I seek input from my fellow FReepers. I welcome criticisms of the position advocated by this article, but would similarly welcome other thoughts as well.
One thing that makes this article particularly relevant at this time is the proposed/and/or/alleged nationalization of the banking sector. As I understand it, certain sectors of the Right (such as the ditributists and the followers of Father Coughlin) actually regard privately owned banks as an evil and regard banking as something that should be a state monopoly, like minting currency. Again, I am well aware of the anti-Semitic tendencies of many who hold this position, but the fact that a number of anti-Semites hold a certain position (when that position does not impact Jews, Judaism, or Israel) does not make it an anti-Semitic position. Again, I have no hard-and-fast opinion on these matters. I seek the thoughts and ruminations of my fellow FReepers on all sides of these issues.
Thank you.
Ping. Please read the article and my comments above.
Wish you were here, widey. You’d be able to offer insights no one else could.
I know you guys don’t like me, but I am still open to any insights you might have to offer on the issues dealt with in the article and in my own comments.
Don't personalize it. It's not about you, it's the things you sometimes post.
Two different things.
This is not about Roman Catholic theology. Neither you nor I agree with Roman Catholic theology, just as we do not agree with each other's theology. This is about whether "social justice," whether legitimate or misperceived, can be legitimately separated from the moral depravity of its quasi-allies. Is morality more important than economics?
Bookmarked for further reading.
For what it’s worth, I happened to watch the movie “Entertaining Angels: the Dorothy Day story” recently. It was made about 10 years ago, and stars Moira Kelly and Martin Sheen.
I have no opinion to share on Day herself, but the movie was pretty good.
I always thought too much was made of Dorothy Day.
If you separate theology from improving man all you have is socialism or some other such misguided philosophy.
Bump.
I agree. Our bishop just adored Cesar Chavez, he was nothing but a socialist. There is nothing wrong with trying to change things for the better on a personal basis but when you ask someone else to do be forced to do it, it is no longer a vocation. They may have had good goals but they went about it wrong.
Socialists and liberals want everyone to have everything without working for it but they don’t want to provide the everything with their own money, they want someone else to work and slave and pay for it all and they usually skim off the top for their own pockets.
Yes, I think there is such a possibility. It is in fact a necessity. It is something we must seek to do.
What should be the conservative response to the demands of social justice? Before trying to answer this question, we must determine what we mean by "a conservative", and we must determine in what sense social justice makes demands of him.
In my view, a conservative is someone who recognizes the objective validity of primary values and seeks to preserve them. He feels they are worth fighting for. Foremost among these is truth itself, then beauty, goodness, justice, etc. Along with these are truths about man: that he is made in the image of God: that he has free will, that he is not a deterministic mechanism. Then, truths about the family, marriage, human life, and human sexuality; and truths about human rights and obligations -- that they come not from the opinion of the masses nor from social contracts, but from the ordinances of God. A conservative will defend all these, especially the first, truth itself, because when that is denied, all the others are also denied. In defending these, however, the conservative can find himself in the unenviable position of being pitted against every end of the political and philosophical spectrum. But defend them he must. I do not believe in the existence of "fiscal conservatives", in the sense that some, who use the term, insist they be known as conservatives because they uphold some particular financial policy, while denying or failing to uphold the values I listed.
Someone who is an epistemic or moral relativist cannot be a conservative. Between parties who are relativists there can be no sincere reasoning or genuine argument, since they are arguing over nothing which they honestly believe is true to begin with. All becomes propaganda -- a relentless battle of specious arguments intended to sway opinion. That is leftism, not conservatism.
A further characteristic of conservatism is deference to the cultural and intellectual heritage of society. The contrast between leftism or liberalism is here so clearly seen: the leftist is ever-ready to break with the past, to force change merely for the sake of change, to promote unproven and untested theories because they are the latest fad, to scoff at the thoughts, culture, and achievements of those who came before him, especially if they were Christians, or to simply write them off as old, out-moded, irrelevant. Our forefathers passed on no wisdom worth preserving or remembering, says the leftist: yeah, we are the people, and wisdom will die with us.
That is my view of what it means to be a conservative.
As I said, it immediately leads to conflicts with every end of the popular ideological spectrum. "Thou shalt not follow the multitude to do evil: neither shalt thou yield in judgement, to the opinion of the most part, to stray from the truth." [Exodus 23:2.] Keeping that in mind, let us pass on to social justice.
For the past two centuries or so, social justice has been gradually embedded into a matrix of murderous ideas which a conservative has no choice but to reject. The danger is that, in rejecting these murderous ideas, social justice is rejected along with them. I'm sure the devil is quite happy to put us in this predicament: it makes it all the more difficult to respond to social justice. These murderous ideas can be classified under two species: those of Malthus, and those of Marx. There is a certain commonality between them, they strengthen each other, both borrow from each other.
Part of Malthus's motivation was to counter the utopian socialists of his time. For this he is remembered as a "conservative". But he was not a conservative in the sense that I defined above. Not at all. Nor did he come from a conservative intellectual circle. Opposing certain forms of socialism is not enough to make someone a conservative. Even the Nazis can claim as much. What is the relationship between Malthus and Marx? I wrote elsewhere:
What is the connection between Malthusianism and socialism? It is this. Both theories hate the poor, and offer not the slightest "scientific" reason or motivation to help them. In the Malthusian system, one who tries to alleviate the misery of the poor breaks the laws of nature. In the Marxist system, one who alleviates the misery of the poor is a counter-revolutionary. The poor should be made more miserable, not less. In the Malthusian world-view, making the poor more miserable serves to discourage their multiplication. In the Marxist perspective, making the poor more miserable sows class-hatred, which is good. So, in a sense it was only a matter of time before these two philosophies discovered that they were allies, not enemies. The most extreme totalitarian socialists (Julian Huxley) were also the most extreme Malthusians.
These two doctrines, of Mathus and Marx, have so saturated every crevice of our intellectual and moral universe, that there is probably nobody in the western world who has not been affected by them or is free from their taint. And that includes us, the conservatives, too. You are familiar with Marx and his class-hatred zero-sum game. Now listen to Malthus:
A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society does not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favour. The report of a provision for all that come, fills the hall with numerous claimants. The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those, who are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been taught to expect. The guests learn too late their error, in counteracting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all her guests should have plenty, and knowing that she could not provide for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full.
If the parents desert their child, they ought to be answerable for the crime. The infant is, comparatively speaking, of no value to the society, [others] will immediately supply its place. Its principal value is on account of its being the object of one of the most delightful passions in human nature -- parental affection. But if this value be disregarded by those who are alone in a capacity to feel it, the society cannot be called upon to put itself in their place and has no further business in its protection...
The Abbe Raynal has said that, "Avant toutes les loix sociales l'homme avoit le droit de subsister"... but the affair... is principally an affair of power, not of right... he who ceased to have the power, ceased to have the right... we are bound in justice and honour formally to disclaim the right of the poor to support.
To the punishment therefore of nature he should be left, the punishment of severe want. He has erred in the face of a most clear and precise warning, and can have no just reason to complain of any person but himself, when he feels the consequences of his error. All parish assistance should be most rigidly denied him: and if the hand of private charity be stretched forth in his relief, the interests of humanity imperiously require that it should be administered very sparingly. He should be taught to know that the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, had doomed him and his family to starve for disobeying their repeated admonitions...
No doubt it all sounds demonic when laid out in full like this, but if we do a little bit of soul searching (we are conservatives, we have that ability) we may discover that there were times when we -- consciously or not -- allowed this doctrine to affect our judgement about social justice. From time to time I see flashes of it in conservative writings: it's hard to avoid the pavlovian reflexes of Malthusian brainwashing. On top of it conservatives are subjected to subversive ideological pressure and propaganda from faux-conservative libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who doggedly preach this same detestable Malthus doctrine all over the internet. Malthusian logic is everywhere; it is so very easy to sleepwalk into it. How is it that Malthus became associated with the political right, or some kind of conservatism, I cannot fathom, but a conservative must reject this entirely. Like Marxism, it is evil, and it isn't true. Marx teaches the poor to hate the rich. Malthus teaches the rich to hate the poor. What is the damn difference? The devil is the author of both.
A conservative who feels called to social justice is confronted everywhere with depressing alternatives: Malthus or Marx. Pick one or both. Go pass out free condoms. Raise money for abortion. Promote contraception. Lobby for gay rights. Sow class hatred. Fight the patriarchy.
Scripture is a sharp sword that separates truth from lies and convoluted ideologies, no matter how deep their rabbit-holes of sophistries descend. Malthus and Marx are archetypes of two attitudes toward the poor which are condemned by Scripture. One the one had, hardly a chapter of the Old Testament goes by without some form of condemnation of those who oppress and despise the poor. Malthus is an archetype of the spirit of those who do. But on the other hand, Scripture wisely admonishes the equally evil false concern and false partiality for the poor: "Neither shalt thou favour a poor man in judgement" [Exodus] "respect not the person of the poor, nor honour the countenance of the mighty." [Leviticus.] A striking example was Judas's false concern for the poor, when he said that the ointment offered to Christ should have been sold for their benefit instead. You could say that Judas was, in a way, the first Communist.
It cannot be disputed that Scripture commands social justice; it is there throughout: "therefore I command thee to open thy hand to thy needy and poor brother, that liveth in the land." [Deuteronomy] "Open thy mouth, decree that which is just, and do justice to the needy and poor." [Proverbs 31:9.] See especially Job 31. Social justice is both a good and an obligation, and as such it makes demands. The first demand is on the faculty of discernment. A conservative, in these sense I defined, must uphold the truth, regardless if it be popular or unpopular. Oppression, despisal and contempt of the poor are evils that have to be remedied. False concern for the poor is an evil to be rejected. A conservative has to steer a course clear of Malthusian and Marxist rocks -- which admittedly seem to be almost everywhere -- and seek ways to fulfill his obligations to social justice grounded in truth and genuine concern.
"The king that judgeth the poor in truth, his throne shall be established for ever." [Proverbs 29:14]
I have only one caveat to what you wrote, and it is with regard to a minor point rather than the main thrust of your message. You wrote:
A further characteristic of conservatism is deference to the cultural and intellectual heritage of society. The contrast between leftism or liberalism is here so clearly seen: the leftist is ever-ready to break with the past, to force change merely for the sake of change, to promote unproven and untested theories because they are the latest fad, to scoff at the thoughts, culture, and achievements of those who came before him, especially if they were Christians, or to simply write them off as old, out-moded, irrelevant. Our forefathers passed on no wisdom worth preserving or remembering, says the leftist: yeah, we are the people, and wisdom will die with us.
This is true with regard to a certain type of Leftism, but Leftism is not a single ideology. Certainly "first world" or American Leftists reject their heritage, but other Leftists--perhaps the greater number--present their Leftism as a return to their roots, a return to the "authentic" life of their ancestors before the "foreign devil" arrived and violated their virgin culture with his chr*stianity. Afrocentrism, Aztlan, "Native American" and Australian aboriginal activism are all examples of this strand of Leftism (and never seem to find themselves in the crosshairs of "science"). But sometimes white chr*stians themselves are the beneficiaries of this super-patriotic nationalist Communism: the most obvious example being the Irish and the other Celtic peoples who mix Marxism with mystical Celtic nationalism into a potent brew. Notorious Scottish Communist (ever notice that if you're Scottish you're Scottish but if you're English you're British?) Jon Maclane insisted that Communism was merely a return to the original Celtic way of life and declared "Back to Communism and forward to Communism!"
Sounds like a good deal. How do "rednecks" get in on it?
Thank you again!
Correction: “John Maclane” in my post should read “John Maclean.”
Thank you oh so very much for your beautiful essay-post, dear Ethan Clive Osgoode!
Jeepers, I've never heard the "might makes right" argument so crudely put! What a disgrace.
Thank you so very much, Ethan Clive Osgoode, for your outstanding, insightful essay/post!
A more complete view of Dorothy Day is now available in Carol Byrne’s 2010 book, “The Catholic Worker Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis” and at the blog “Dorothy Day Another Way,” which has the “Complete Supplementary Notes” to Dr. Byrne’s book—an entry that makes fascinating reading.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.