Virtue Quest

Who wouldn't want to wear one of these fancy hats?

When talking politics with people, I often mention that I’m in favor of monarchy. It’s half-joking: my last name is King, after all, and I do answer to “Your Majesty.”

But it’s only half joking.

With a monarch, especially a hereditary monarch, you’re under no illusions that the guy (or gal) on the throne is there for any reason other than the luck of the draw. He’s not king because he’s smarter, or more popular, or more effective than anybody else. He just happened to have the right parents.

That said, you also have a pretty good idea if somebody’s in the running to be king from childhood, and you can educate the kid accordingly. So you can give him the best chance at being a good ruler that anyone can have.

I’m not saying there are no problems with monarchy; there are plenty, and when it goes bad a monarchy becomes the worst form of tyranny. But I like to stir up a discussion, and I’m far from convinced that “democracy” – especially as practiced here in the U.S. – is the best solution for every time and place. That rather knee-jerk adoration of democracy seems to be one of the few things Democrats and Republicans can agree on, which is one of the many reasons I don’t trust either major party.

So imagine how delighted I was to run across some well-reasoned articles by a smarter guy than myself, John Médaille, on the notion of monarchy. He’s planning a three-part series, and has published the first two here (1) and here (2). The second, especially, is worth a read because he lays out some of the differences between monarchy and the early modern abuses of it which tainted our ideas of the institution. I’m looking forward to his third installment!

I had been hearing about the Christmas Tree bomber in Portland all weekend, and was very glad to finally hear somebody mention the word “entrapment.” But it’s not just Mohamed Osman Mohamud I’m concerned about.

I’m worried about an FBI team who contacts an isolated individual who’s failing to make contact with jihadist radicals, teaches him how to make a bomb, helps him to plan and carry out an attack, and chooses a large and public venue to arrest him.

I’m worried about an Attorney General who claims “that if Mohamud hadn’t come in contact with the FBI, he ‘would have made his plans tragically real.’”

And I’m worried about mass media outlets that just repeat the line that this is a plot that has been “thwarted” or “foiled.”

For the record, it sounds to me like this Mohamud fellow may actually have become a threat on his own someday. He very well may have warranted observation by the FBI. But the way the Bureau pursued this investigation sounds very much like entrapment for Mohamud and fear-mongering for the rest of us.

“Look!” says the FBI & co., “here’s a home-grown terrorist you should be afraid of! It could be anybody! What’s a little inappropriate pat-down compared to the risk of being bombed while lighting a Christmas Tree? What’s a little warrantless wiretapping or email surveillance next to, you know, a west coast 9-11?”

What would have been wrong with just watching this kid, and seeing what he does on his own? At least then, he might have actually led investigators to a real terrorist cell, and could have led to some genuine intelligence of real plots to commit terrorist acts. And, when arrested, he might have been guilty of a real crime.

As it is, he’s just become the solitary target of an FBI plot to … to what? boost their own ratings? I hope not. To foil and thwart terrorist attacks? Not very effectively.

I want good security and I want active intelligence gathering on terrorist activities. But that’s not what this was. At best, this was a colossal mistake. If anyone in the FBI is reading this, please, don’t make the same mistake again.

I mentioned a little while ago that I wanted to strike up a conversation with my elected officials in an attempt to be a better citizen. The first step, I think, is learning a bit about them. Since I’m not much of a politics wonk, this will take me some time. But I hope that, by January when the new terms of office begin, I’ll have an idea of who they are and what they stand for – and, therefore, what I want to say to them.

My mother, drunk or sober

Here in Washington State, we have a “Find Your Legislator” feature on the website, as well as contact info for our elected officials. I happen to live in north Seattle, which is Washington’s 46th Legislative District (for state offices) and 7th Congressional District (for federal offices). That means the people I’ll be looking up are: (more…)

A hit-and-run suspect gets his charge dropped from a felony to a misdemeanor … because a felony has “some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger’s profession.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

They’re basing this, apparently, on how much they think they can get out of him in restitution. In other words, it’s not about punishing crime; it’s about raking in the cash.

And it’s not the victim, either, who’s after the cash. It’s the lawyers.

Hat tip to Mark.

A New York judge is allowing a lawsuit to be brought against a 4-year-old.

Apparently, the suit names both the girl and her mother, who was supervising her at the time of the accident.

The law won’t allow this girl to receive medical care without parental consent, won’t allow her to consent to sexual activity, won’t allow her to vote or to serve in the military, won’t allow her to drink alcohol. But sure, she can be held personally liable for damages.

If I were trendy, I’d call this a legal FAIL.

Ah, if only it were that simple and clear-cut.

I’ve mentioned before some of the principles I wish were more prevalent in political conversation. Here’s the list again, for those who hate clicking on links:

• Common good
• Subsidiarity
• Interdependence, aka, Solidarity

Many more good things worth talking about certainly belong on the list, but this is as far as I’ve gotten in trying to articulate some essential political principles.

However, while I generally like to focus on the positive, it’s important to recognize the genuine evils out there which undermine any possibility of real human life, liberty, and community.

Recognizing evil

A quick reminder: evil is not any thing in itself. Evil is the distortion or destruction of something good. So when my anger starts rising up, I have to remind myself to look for the good that’s being distorted. I have to remind myself that whoever is committing or supporting evil is actually trying to accomplish something good, albeit in a twisted way.

In other words, (more…)

Land of the free? Home of the brave?

I’m trying to figure out who and what to vote for this November. I’m nowhere near being able to recommend particular candidates or ballot measures to other people, but I am getting closer to articulating some basic principles for making political decisions.

It seems to me that the American government has, for quite some time, been doing all sorts of things that a government has no business doing; meanwhile, it has neglected the very proper and necessary work of governing.

The purpose of government

It seems to me that government exists to defend and promote the common good of society. (more…)

Jeana left a wonderfully provocative comment on an earlier post. I began to reply in the comments, but I realized that this merited its own post, so here’s a bit of Jeana’s comment, followed by my response:

Perhaps a start would be the argument that there is a natural order to the world, and things work better when we cooperate with it. Plants die without life. Cows were made to eat grass. We live longer if we exercise and eat our veggies than if we sit in front of the TV and eat cookies all day every day. Men’s and women’s bodies each operate in ways that the other cannot.

If you were able to argue that following the natural order is a moral obligation, you could argue that….

This touches on, I think, the different moral roles of virtue and law.

Virtue enables us to realize the full potential of our nature and, according to Catholic teaching, of our supernatural gifts. Law, on the other hand, prevents us from (or at least warns us against) acting contrary to our nature. Virtue motivates us to reach for excellence, but places no obligations, strictly speaking, on us. Law places obligations on us, both positive and negative ones, but only obliges us to a bare minimum.

Law does not ask us to fulfill our nature; it only demands that we not act contrary to it. It does not strive for excellence. It is a stop-gap against excessive vice.

Now, ever since the so-called “Enlightenment” (if I understand my history correctly) western culture has been obsessed with the notion of law, and has largely forgotten the idea of virtue. This is why “morality” immediately brings to mind the idea of obligation.

But virtue sets a higher standard. Or, to put it another way, it opens up a broader field of possibility. Morality is not just about jumping through hoop X and avoiding pitfall Q. Morality is about living my life in a way that fulfills its potential, that brings to reality the potential good that is within me.

And that good is both for me and from me. It is good for me to be healthy. It is also good for me to serve my neighbor with whatever gifts I have. Indeed, serving my neighbor with my gifts is good for me as well, because it exercises and brings to greater perfection those gifts themselves. And it feels good to do so, which is a sign of health in using those gifts.

When we’re focused on obligation, feeling good is taken as a sign of not meeting an obligation. But when we’re focused on excellence, feeling good is a sign of health, of growth.

So much more to say, but I also want to prepare a reply to bob. So, till soon…!

I’m cross-posting this both on my personal blog and on the Coalition for Clarity, because it’s the rare topic that fits both topics pretty well.

On Virtue Quest, I’ve been blogging about my reading of Alisdair MacIntyre’s “classic,” After Virtue. At the Coalition, I’ve raised the question of what the basis is for actions permitted to agents of the State that are forbidden to private citizens, such as capital punishment and war. So, toward the end of After Virtue, I ran across this passage:

But my present point is not that patriotism is good or bad as a sentiment, but that the practice of patriotism is in advanced societies no longer possible in the way that it once was. In any society where government does not express or represent the moral community of the citizens, but is instead a set of institutional arrangements for imposing a bureaucratized unity on a society which lacks genuine moral consensus, the nature of political obligation becomes systematically unclear. Patriotism is or was a virtue founded on attachment primarily to a political and moral community and only secondarily to the government of that community; but it is characteristically exercised in discharging responsibility to and in such government. … Loyalty to my country, to my community – which remains unalterably a central virtue – becomes detached from obedience to the government which happens to rule me.

Now, I’m far from being in easy agreement with everything that MacIntyre says – or even with most of it. But his distinction between “political community” and “government” struck me as exactly the sort of thing that I have argued in saying that the State as embodied in modern nation-states is not necessarily the same kind of beast as the State as embodied in the variety of forms known to, e.g., Thomas Aquinas.

Here is how the very modern Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1910) describes the role of the State:

It is the role of the state to defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies.

I’m still reading through what Thomas has to say about the State, but my impression thus far is that the power of the State derives from its responsibility for goods that are common to society and therefore beyond the power of any single person as such. And the Catechism agrees, at least insofar as its authority is bound to the common good and does not bind whenever an agent of the State acts against the common good. Or, in a saying at least as old as Augustine of Hippo, an unjust law is no law at all.

Now, the first thing that almost everything I’ve read says about the authority of the State is that is “orders” things to the common good. That is, it resolves what is otherwise disordered and chaotic when left to individual persons or families. This is clearly the source of authority for laws and lawmaking. It also is fairly clearly the source of authority to tax or conscript, that is, to call individuals to a duty owed to society.

Now, I myself have to this point held the opinion that war and capital punishment are simply “public” forms of self-defense. In other words, I’ve assumed that the State does not have any “rights” or authority that is essentially beyond what is given to individuals; the authority of the State is simply exercised on a larger scale, with broader consequences. Yet almost everything I am reading implies or assumes that the State’s role of ordering things to the common good extends to acts that are different in kind from the moral responsibilities of individuals.

So I’m left with a couple questions at the end of this rather rambling post:

First, does a radical difference in the structure of government make a real difference in the relationship of individual persons to the State (such that Patriotism is no longer the same thing, for example), and in the role or authority of the State itself?

Second, does responsibility for the common good extend to acts that are beyond the normal scope of morality as applied to persons taken singly?

What seems to be the problem?

A cop pulled me over the other evening as I was driving home from work.

I had to move into a turn lane so that I could make it to the freeway onramp, and there were a couple cars in the lane with just enough room for me to squeeze in between them. So I flicked my turn signal, checked my blind spot, and moved over.

Immediately, the car behind me – a black, unmarked sedan – flashed police lights and a spotlight right in my rear-view mirror. There was no shoulder, so I turned into a parking lot and the police car pulls behind me.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asked. “You failed to signal for one hundred feet before changing lanes, and you cut me off so that I had to apply my brake to avoid a collision.”

After he let me go, I cruised on home. Driving along the freeway, I kept thinking how I’ve done the same maneuver a thousand times without an accident, and I was pretty sure he was actually accelerating to close the gap I had moved into, and didn’t this guy have anything better to do than pull me over?

But at some point it occurred to me that the officer was in fact correct. I had broken the traffic law. And he had every right, even an obligation, to pull me over.

For the record – or, thankfully, the lack of one – he let me off with a warning.

Now, this didn’t stop me from driving about five over the speed limit on my way home. And it didn’t make me call the police station to confess my every traffic violation. But it did remind me that I am not the standard by which the law should be set. I’m an ordinary schmoe, and I make mistakes, and I cut corners when I think I can get away with it.

Even so, the law reminded me that the road is a dangerous place, where I’m skimming the concrete at sixty-five, surrounded by two-ton juggernauts of aluminum and steel that are flying by at least as fast as I’m going. So I did drive a little more carefully.

And, meanwhile, I’m trying to be more open to correction in every part of my life. Because, just as on the road, I’m not always right. I make mistakes. I cut corners. I don’t always get away with it – and thank God! If there were never any consequences, I’d never learn from my mistakes, and I would hurt my friends much more often than I already do.