FOR THE COMMONWEALTH

Aquinas: The Treatise on Law Qu. 90. The Essence of Law

2. Is the law always directed towards the Common Good? A: Every part is ordered to the whole as the imperfect to the perfect. The individual is part of a perfect whole that is the community. Therefore, law must concern itself in particular with the happiness of the community.

Many may decry Aquinas of proposing Communism. This would be a rather unfortunate rendering of what he had to say. He was far more concerned with law than economics, and he saw community in the form of a commonwealth rather than a communitarian utopia. He was, after all, quite aware of the flaws of man and the reality of inequality.

While many may wish to toss Aquinas to the wind, I think America would do well to consider his insight. There was a time when America understood the idea of a commonwealth. There was a time when America understood the idea of a nation. To be quite frank, there was once a time when America knew what America was! All of this has fallen to the wayside. Americanism - not the heresy - has become as elusive as a three-legged ballerina. To say that this is a tragedy would be a gross understatement.

America must regain its sense of identity. This requires common heritage, common traditions, a common religion, and common values. It takes Americans realizing, and accepting, that while the promises of "you can do anything you want" are nothing more than empty platitudes, they can most certainly do what they do best. And only they know what this is and how this is to be done.

But it is here where the individual and the common meet. It is here where we find a tension between what is good for the one and good for the many. This has been the trial of our times. Thankfully, we are not left to wander on our own. Those who came before us faced the same questions, and dealt with them in ways that we shouldn't take for granted.

These saints and sinners balanced out these two extremes with an archaic form of fusionism. On the one hand, they insisted on private property. On the other hand, they wished for the owner to feel a familial commitment to those around him. Likewise, they saw in man the right to elect a statesman. Still, they held them accountable to the wellbeing of the commonwealth. They also saw man's desire to pursue happiness as a great goal to be achieved. But they never mistook liberty for license. It was a balancing act, but one they did fairly well.

The cult of radical diversity, led by the Diversicrat ayatollahs, is tearing this country apart at the seams. Laissez faire tolerance of moral deviancy is eating away at our culture. It is long overdue for the people to rise up, to stand for God and country, and fight back the tide of degeneracy dominating this once great nation. Until we can balance our cultural institutions upon the tightrope of the one and the many, we will continue down this road. Unfortunately, this road is one that has been traveled by all great empires that once were but are no more.

WHEN GUNS ARE OUTLAWED

"The old saying that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns isn't entirely true; it's also true that when guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns, and that statement is just as important to remember as the first."

Sam Fracis, from the book Shots Fired

THE GOOD, BAD, AND UGLY ON DR. KING

Olivet College will be honoring, and rightfully so, Martin Luther King Jr. on January 23rd. We will hear a presentation delivered by George F. Francis III, a member of the Olivet Board of Trustees. The speech will attempt to demonstrate how King's dream of a color-blind society must now be seen through the lens of personal responsibility.

I agree that a color-blind society is ideal. It is for this reason that I have been outspoken about the conflict between that dream and the goals inherent within multiculturalism and diversity. Both of these, all arguments to the contrary, rely heavily upon racial and cultural separatism. As long as we continue to encourage this subtle separatism, color-blindness will be nothing more than empty rhetoric.

All this to the side, I wish here to detail a number of facts that may be overlooked in the celebration of Reverend King. As with other heroes, we too often gloss over those things that do not fit into the nostalgic mold of them that we've created. This holds true of people from all races and cultures. President Jefferson was a slave holder; President Lincoln had what appears to be constitutional illiteracy; Theodore Roosevelt was quite open about his racism; the founder of Planned Parenthood believed in eugenics and saw abortion and contraception as a way to weed out blacks; and President Bush has done more to fund abortion with federal tax dollars through Title 10 and Title 19 than any other president before him. The list could go on, but I think my point has been made. Heroes, regardless of all the good they may have done, all too often have skeletons in their closet that their followers seek to keep hidden from public view.

With this in mind, let us take a look into the life of the beloved Reverend.

For starters, he was no friend to the free market. Granted, I share his concerns with anarcho-capitalism, but I certainly wouldn't identify my economic thought with the works of Karl Marx. He did this in a note to himself in 1951.

To make matters worse, he surrounded himself with advisers who were active in the Communist Party USA. This began with his time spent in the Highlander Folk School but went well into his public life. Names would include, but are not limited to, Hunter Pitts O'Dell, Stanley Levison, and Bayard Rustin. Interestingly enough, Rustin, who began his life of activism working with the Young Communist League, went on to be the chief organizer of the March on Washington in 1963.

We also have the sorrowful anti-American speech he delivered in 1967. Within this speech he went so far as to praise Ho Chi Mihn and even compared American soldiers to Nazi Storm Troopers. Regardless of what one may have thought of the war, this most certainly went over the line. But none dare call it treason.

Still, some may object that I am engaging in McCarthyism. So I think it only fair to examine a matter that, were it to happen at Olivet College, would result in serious penalties. It is the issue of plagiarism.

King had a bad habit of stealing from other people's work. It went so far as to infect both his written work and the various speeches he delivered throughout his career. For example, his "Contemporary Continental Theology" was largely stolen from a book written by a certain Walter Marshall Horton. His doctoral dissertation contains no less than fifty sentences taken from the PhD dissertation of Dr. Jack Boozer. According to the "Martin Luther King Papers," only 49% of the sentences in his dissertations section pertaining to Tillich were original. Even the New York Times published a story where Boston University admitted to their belief that there was "no question" that he cheated on his paper.

In short, King was guilty of actions that are punishable with severe penalties at Olivet College, as well as most respectable colleges and universities around the nation.

All of this to say that while it is good to recognize men and women for the good things they have done, we should never do so at the expense of presenting a well rounded version of who they really were and what they really did. Heroes are human, all too human, and their lives reflect this. It is my hope that in recognizing the Reverend, we will do so without shrouding those areas of his life that were not exemplary examples of self or social responsibility.

*Edit: In the first draft of this post I said that King's advisers were part of the Communist Party of America. Turns out that it was actually the Communist Party USA. Minor oversight, but one nonetheless. Thanks to the reader who pointed this out.*

FREE TRADE MEETS DETROIT

From Paleo Radio, January 11, 2008.

THE ILLS OF FREE TRADE

Forrest Research projects these being the top-10 jobs in demand over the next 10 years:

1. Waiters and waitresses
2. Janitors and cleaners
3. Food preparation
4. Nursing aides, ordinaries, and assistants
5. Cashiers
6. Customer service representatives
7. Retail salesperson
8. Registered nurses
9. General and operational managers
10. Postsecondary teachers

As Lou Dobbs rightly points out, only three of these require a college degree.

BETWEEN WALL AND MAIN

As much as I hate to say this, I fear that the influence of special interest groups and lobby firms is radically disproportionate in light of the number s of people they actually represent. Wall Street has more influence than Main Street, and K Street has more power than Middle Class Boulevard. I sincerely believe that this has been problematic, regardless of the benefits such enterprises may occasionally benefit us.

Then again, this conundrum is very familiar to me. It is a tension I have lived with for a long time. I have wandered for many years on the dividing line between paleolibertarianism and paleoconservatism. Whether it be free trade or tariffs, open or closed borders, localism or nationalism, populism or federalist, capitalist or agrarian, I have found myself between a rock and a hard place. Good arguments all around, heroes and villains in both camps.

So why is this? I think that a large part of this has to do with my upbringing, both where I lived and the family values cherished within the home. As a middle-class Michigander I also see things from a middle-America perspective.

Take agriculture as an example. On the one hand we understand that farming tends to be work very few wish to do. On the other hand, we have seen corporations destroy family farming and jobs that were once offered to those with little immigration go to those with no documentation of citizenship.

Then we have trade. As middle-class people we certainly enjoy our Meijer's and Walmarts. We like the fact that what we buy doesn't cost us too much because we have seen our incomes go too far down. Then again, most of us in Michigan have our incomes go down because our jobs are being offshored and outsourced. NAFTA, CAFTA, and other so-called free trade agreements have assures that Michigan's number one export is manufacturing jobs.

This has resulted in a rise in populist sentiment. People are beginning to see that the real war going on is the one between corporatist and the Johnny Q public, capitalists and economic nationalists, as well as between foreign interests and the jobs over at local UAW.

The war is really between the abstract and that which we personally experience every day. It is a war between idealism and realism. More importantly, it is a war between a vision of what a minority hope the world may become over against a perspective that sees the world as it has been and how it ought to remain.

So here we are, between Wall St. and Main. We stand between the rock of special interest groups and the hard place of the realization that our nostalgia for things past may be nothing more than a phantasm. Where should we go? I am not sure. One thing I am certain of is that I don't enjoy this ride, and fear that we may be traveling the road to national ruin.

THE RISING TIDE OF POPULISM

Populism has gotten a bad rap over the years. It is used in a loose fashion by those in the media. Many have gone so far as to identify it with fascism, and a fascism grossly defined. Populism is as rich as fascism is awfully misconstrued by equating that particular philosophy with the tragic figures of Hitler and Mussolini. While I don't intend to justify fascism, I think that politicians and journalists alike would do well to reevaluate their understanding of its philosophy. Same goes for Populism. It is with the latter that I am concerned here.

Populism is rather broad. One can be right-wing, centrist, or left-wing, and still be classified a populist. At its core, it is little more than a view of society in terms of rivalries. It recognizes the reality of class distinctions, unjust inequalities, and the will to power. Typically, populists (at least in America) have taken aim at the social and economic injustices being done by a small group of people over against the general populace. They see a danger in oligarchy and plutocracy. They acknowledge the threats that a powerful and wealthy elite have on a people who lack both the political tools and financial resources to defend themselves from the onslaught.

This is especially seen when discussing trade, immigration, and multiculturalism. It is here that the will of the few appear to be imposed upon the public at large. Whether it is the damaging cost of free trade upon American workers, mass immigration (both legal and illegal) changing the culture, or mandatory multicultural sensitivity training, we see the minority elite imposing their ideology upon an unwilling and resentful populace.

Whether or not one likes those most commonly identified with populism (i.e., Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Thomas Flemming, Ralph Nader, Theodore Roosevelt), they cannot deny that much of what they say has roots in political and economic realism. The ideologues may see populist economic nationalism and a rigid non-interventionism as things of the past, but the numbers, both of lost jobs to so-called free trade and lost lives to imperialist adventures around the globe, speak for themselves. Numbers never lie, and the numbers are there for all to see. We don't need Ross Perot's charts, we need look no further than our paychecks and the ever growing number of those who have lost well-paying jobs to people in China, Mexico, and India.

However the political tides turn, one this is for certain, populism is on the rise. Some may call it reactionary, and they may be right. But it isn't a blind knee-jerk reaction to political phantoms and economic illusions. The reaction is a gut feeling that what they see and feel is very real, and that what they see and feel is reflected in the language of the populists.