Tag: Values

CDXVIII – Treasure and Terms

I was thinking of how to answer the prompt in a recent post about what things we treasure. I tried answering it and I found a good pattern, and thought that might be helpful to some of you.

The prompt was to think about “Non negotiable, unalterable terms”. These are things–treasures–which we resolve to protect with violent force if necessary. These are things offenses against which we will not tolerate in any company. The benefit of thinking about this is that we create a “confidence circle” within which we can operate comfortably and confidently knowing that we are doing a good and right thing, and we will not let anyone or anything disturb our peace about that. If someone disturbs our peace about our non negotiable, unalterable terms, then something is wrong with them and not us.

The rules I set for myself when thinking about this was that I would start from the inside out: What is the biggest treasure and most fundamental term, which supports all other treasures above it, and without which none of those treasures matter, and against which all other treasures must be capable of transgressing. And once the foundation is established, work my way up.

The pattern that developed was something like this.

First Level: God – God is the root of everything, so sensibly ought to be the first and most fundamental. My God, my faith, my Church, my devotions all fall under this category. No offenses against God ought to be tolerated; and nothing else I have matters without God.

Second Level: People – My life, [and] families fall under this level. They are treasures in their own right, but also capable of transgressing against the first level, which is God. We ought to educate ourselves, those people close to us, so that they do not transgress against God; we ought to resolve to protect these people with violent force if they face determined offense; nothing else we have matters if we do not have these people in our lives.

Third Level: Life & Livelihood – These are the things we do in our lives that support and enhance every preceding level. Our jobs, our education, our recreation and hobbies, I also include our possessions and belongings here. I would not accept a job if it required me to sacrifice anything on the preceding levels; I would not engage in a recreation if it offended against any of the preceding levels; I would not purchase a good for my use or my home if it was contrary to the previous levels. Yet, once I have properly aligned my life & livelihood, anything that transgresses against these things I would reject with violent force if necessary. No one may take my possessions or limit my recreations unjustly.

Fourth Level: Beliefs and Ideals – These are the truths we hold dear. You may be surprised it is this far out from the center, but rather than being fundamental, it serves as a protective shield. We don’t hold beliefs that transgress below, neither do we allow higher levels to transgress against our beliefs and ideals. Think of it this way: Once God is foundation, and the people are in place around us, and once the people around us are taken care of, then our beliefs will solidify. The beliefs and ideals serve as the foundation for everything beyond, which is not much.

Fifth Level: Community – These are the friends and relations who are in our lives but not essentially so. They enrich our lives but I would not defend them with the same vigor that I would defend […]. Yet–as my community, I would defend them against anything that sits at a higher level.

Beyond – Anything higher than this fifth level falls under the category of Enemies, Strangers, or Foreigners–which are words I use to signify people we don’t like, people we don’t know, and people we don’t understand, respectively. Each of these three categories can transgress against our community, and we ought to defend and protect our community vigorously, and seek to support them. Enemies we ought to keep at arms length, strangers we ought to employ reasonable suspicion, foreigners we ought to make reasonable pains to make them understood.

Now, in each of these levels there are specific items which are worth listing. My writing endeavors fall under the third level: they are recreations I enjoy which help make me whole, yet which ought not offend against any of the people closest to me, nor God. This is not to say my writing can be offensive against my beliefs and ideals and my community, but rather that if I am compliant with the preceding levels then I will have no difficulty remaining consistent with the succeeding levels.

Maybe this is all very obvious to you already, but it was a helpful exercise to me to think about, and I hope there is something valuable in all this for you, too.

AMDG

(s) – I Don’t want “Freedom of Religion”

…I want to require everyone to be Catholic. That way, if people behave badly, they are behaving contrary to some discrete set of values. Modernity tends to excuse bad behavior as a unique and individual “lived experience”, and most justice is effectuated by appealing to some pantheon of higher ideals like being on the right side of history or something something FREEDOM.

When I am a hypocrite, it means I am behaving in a way that hurts me, hurts society, and hurts God. When your average modern is a hypocrite, it necessarily means that they are behaving in a way that is beneficial to society, since their core values are unmoored by considerations of good or God.

AMDG

(Zippy made a comment somewhere like this, I haven’t been able to find it. If you can, please let me know and I will give him proper credit for inspiring this line of thought.)

CCLXXXVII – High Bloodline Pressure

There’s a new blog I discovered in my poking about wordpress, the Catholic Monarchist and it’s author JackYankton, who has been writing an interesting series on the virtues and values of Monarchy. I don’t know if he realizes he is a traditionalist reactionary, but I encourage those of you interested to check him out and I hope he finds his way to the broader traditionalist reactionary circle which inspires my writing here.

His latest article led me to comment about the stability of bloodlines, which connects to a thought I’ve been considering for a long time, regarding how to prevent a monarchy from devolving into tyrannical despotism.

First, regarding bloodline driven transfers of power. The least stable time in any government is always the transfer of power. In America they have become decreasingly peaceful over time, and in Medieval times they were almost always perilous (as I understand it). The important thing when any transfer of power happens is 1) That the incoming sovereign has a legitimate claim; 2) that the incoming sovereign is seated using valid forms; 3) that the incoming sovereign is seated using licit forms. Legitimacy, Validity, Licity, are the three pillars that make for a stable transfer of power. The popular acclaim will accept a new sovereign only if he has all three. If any one is questionable, there will be instability. This is true of any political system.

The advantage of a bloodline based system is it creates unambiguous legitimacy. Either you are or are not the child of the previous sovereign. Questions arise when a monarch has no children–then you turn to siblings or other more distant relatives. But there is a definitive hierarchy: if the previous sovereign was the eldest child, and is himself childless, then rule transfers to the sovereigns next youngest sibling, or their child. This is all made much more simple if the sovereign is a Perfectly Formed Catholic (PFC), as mistresses, divorce, and the like make determining the hierarchy confusing. If the Monarch behaves, then bloodline can be an extremely stable source of legitimacy.

Coronation Mass is a very stable form of ensuring a Valid and Licit sovereign. Once Legitimacy is established, the throne must be claimed following the prescribed rites and then the transfer of power is complete. In the biography of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain, St. Joan refused to acknowledge Charles as King until his coronation, until that point referring to him as “The Dauphin”.

In America, instead of bloodlines we have elections; instead of coronations we have inaugurations. Both serve the same purpose–establishing legitimacy and creating a rite which ensures the popular acceptance of the new leader. Elections are more ambiguous than birthright, so inherently introduces an element of instability which can fester and grow. We saw this throughout the Trump presidency–around that time I stopped paying attention to politics, so I don’t know if anyone is making similar agitations about the current president (please don’t tell me if they are–ignorance is bliss).

There is a natural question which follows from this: Once a leader has taken power and received popular acclaim, what stops him from descending into tyranny? We know as sovereign his filial obligation binds him to a duty of custodial care. But what if he ignores that duty? Really–what can we do if our father is a violent abuser? We have recourse to the Mother, she in prudence separates for a while to protect the health and wellness of herself and her children. In a Monarchy, it is really only the Queen Mother who plays that role (like Mama Mary). That is not a great control because the Queen Mother is as likely to be tyrannical as the Sovereign. The American Revolution felt that tyranny must inherently be overthrown, and took the attitude that all monarchy was tyrannical–this is too much of a reaction, as well.

There are three protections for the subjects from a bad sovereign. First is Tradition, which limits the sovereign in behavior and custom. Second is formation, which inoculates the sovereign against being tyrannical by forming him in the first place to have strong and positive values. Third is agitation, which is when the peasantry voice their discontent to the sovereign in varying degrees of peacefulness. Argument is a natural part of a family life, sometimes it is normal that a husband and wife should argue, or that children should argue, to ensure their demands are heard whether they are reasonable or not. The sovereign is not required to oblige every demand voiced, but the sovereign cannot address a problem he does not know about. A sovereign who is confronted with the ill fruit of his decisions on a daily basis must necessarily come to realize that he is the source of that fruit.

If a sovereign does not value tradition, is not formed with strong values, and is protected from hearing the vox populi, he will surely become a tyrant. This is true in a democracy as much as it is in a monarchy. Once a tyrant becomes a tyrant, we must pray for a change of heart, obey his lawful commands, and wait for him to die a natural death, and pray that his issue are more just than he is.

AMDG

CCXXXIV – The Law of the Gaps

It’s time to formalize a point I have made over and over again in articles not explicitly about this topic. The idea is that the Law lags behind society.

There are a few principles which I’ve settled on for this idea. Let’s work backwards through them.

Principle #4 – The importance of Law increases proportionally with Population Density. This makes intuitive sense: if there is a 1% chance that you will have a disagreeable encounter with any given person, in densely populous areas you will have more disagreeable encounters than in a loosely populous area. In densely populous areas, there is a requirement for more law enforcement because of this, and so the Sovereign Peace is monitored more closely. One of the functions of law is to resolve conflicts, so citizens of cities can rest easy knowing that if they get into conflicts, the party on the side of law will be the party protected. Conversely, on the frontier, law enforcement has a light presence because there are fewer people and fewer disagreeable encounters. Most people on the frontiers learn to resolve disputes inter-personally, because the Law is not near at hand. The Law matters less to people on the frontier because there is less need to invoke the Law to resolve disputes; the Law matters more to people in cities because there is more need to invoke the Law to resolve disputes.

Principle #3 – Government makes Laws to clarify gaps in what Society agrees is important. Lets approach this in a roundabout way: Laws can be written either to expressly state only those things which are permitted (lets call this positive law), or they can be written to expressly state only those things which are not permitted (lets call this negative law). The scope of possible positive laws is infinite, so are typically not the way Laws are written. Most laws–at least the Laws in the United States–are varieties of negative law. Negative Laws take the form of prohibitions on certain behaviors. Which behaviors are prohibited are determined by what Society thinks is important enough to prohibit. The gaps that need clarifying are where there are nuances or disagreements within society about how or what needs to be prohibited. Where Society agrees universally on something, there is no necessity of a law to codify it unless there is a risk of rogue citizens violating that law.

Principle #2 – Social Mores are antecedent to Law. This is implicit in the discussion of #3 above: Society must have some set of values to serve as the basis of law, and law follows that. When the law is written, it applies equally to all citizens, but can only be enforced where law enforcement is present. So law is less prevalent on the frontier and more prevalent in cities, Social Mores govern every human interaction and do not depend on the presence of law enforcement. Social mores keep the peace where law enforcement does not or cannot. Laws serve to strengthen or clarify these mores where necessary.

Principle #1 – Politeness is the true Law of the Land. Politeness is defined as the agreed upon customs of courtesy defined by society: It is the specific set of social mores which govern behavior. Citizens of cities tend to be rude–that is because the law is readily available to enforce the peace. Citizens of frontiers tend to be polite–that is because the law is not readily available to enforce the peace. What people consider polite will do more to preserve the Sovereign Peace than what people consider legal.

More to come on this topic–this opens the doors to a lot of areas and it is worth giving these ideas their due attention.

AMDG