American "Freedom": Can it Shed Its Enlightenment Roots?

TCRNews.com ^ | 6/26/02 | Stephen Hand, editor TCRNews.com

[cathway]

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away [with] all this artificial scaffolding..." ---Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 11 April, 1823; Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon II, 594

" Most people's sex lives...are coming into closer accord with their true desires. I've often thought one attack that could be made on the [restrictive] sex laws is that they are unconstitutional. The Constitution does guarantee us the pursuit of happiness...and the freedom to assemble might also be regarded as freedom for sexual assembly. We may very well find that common law is unconstitutional." ------Gore Vidal, Views From a Window Lyle Stuart Inc. Seacaucus, NY, 1980

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A federal appeals court found the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional on Wednesday, saying it was illegal to ask U.S. schoolchildren to vow fealty to one nation "under God." The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a 1954 Act of Congress that added "under God" to the pledge, saying the words violated the basic Constitutional tenet of separation of church and state....A profession that we are a nation 'under God' is identical ... to a profession that we are a nation 'under Jesus,' a nation 'under Vishnu,' a nation 'under Zeus,' or a nation 'under no god,"' it said. The court's ruling, the first of its kind in the country, overturned a lower court ruling that dismissed a case against the Pledge brought by the father of a school girl. ----Wed Jun 26, 2:54 PM ET

Now, of course, the Supreme Court of the United States may have to take its almighty hand to the wax nose of the Constitution. But let's look at the larger picture.

With practically the whole world enamored of ill-defined universal democracy, especially since the end of the Cold War, it is important to reflect on that paradigm of messianic democracy, the United States; this with a view to studying its philosophical roots which doubtless account for so many bitter fruits, so many kinds of excess and even ruthlessness, since the United States has always pointed to democracy and the "pursuit of happiness" as the human ideal, and its radicalized concepts of secular "freedom" and "liberty" as practically the last and only metaphysical truths for mankind.

The United States of America has always been more than a mere country. And, of course, that is the problem, so far as many traditional Roman Catholics are concerned. Unlike many nations which were born of natural alliances of families and tribes, conquests or treaties, America came into being essentially as an idea; or, more precisely, as the product of a complex of ideas, whose roots remotely can be traced in some respects to the Magna Carta, the charter of English political and civil liberties granted by King John at Runnymede in June of 1215, but especially to the Enlightenment liberal political philosophy of such seminal thinkers as Thomas Hobbes (d.1679), John Locke (d.1704), Jean Jacques Rousseau (d.1778) and many others. It is the connection to the Enlightenment, which is the concern. It is because the Church is solicitous for the salvation of souls, and the ordering of societies toward that supernatural end, that she must be concerned about ideas where the ends differ radically. For ideas, needless to say, have consequences, some of them happy, some of them unspeakably terrible. Thus the Church considered herself morally bound to move cautiously where this mixed, revolutionary constellation of ideas called America was concerned. Because the Church does not view the state as ultimate, but rather as that association of families (not of mere individuals) which is ordered to foster the common good under the rights of Christ the King, she has ever been wary of importing new ideas into such magisterially defined philosophical concepts as "liberty," "freedom," the "pursuit of happiness," justice, etc.

Now, it should be clear that in the so-called "Age of Reason"--- a presumption is obvious from the start here in the very designation of that era where rationalism is meant--- which lasted, roughly, from the time of the French philosopher, Rene Descartes (d.1650) to the end of the eighteenth century, these very concepts began to spin in quite different directions from the way the Church had always understood them. It was in this era--- in which also the very appellation, "Enlightenment", amounted to another presumption---that the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) lived and took his famous daily walks, as predictable as clockwork. He was evidently not praying during those walks; rather, he was imagining a new "world", a new philosophical ground-zero on which to build a new humanity in a community of nations. When in his seminal essay Kant asked the question, "What is Enlightenment?," and answered by suggesting that "Enlightenment" amounted to man "freeing himself from religious dogma", it goes without saying that the Church would have to pay very close attention. For here the very concept of Enlightenment itself, that seed-bed of incendiary ideas and movements, is defined in explicit opposition to the Church. That the movements it spawned were also resolutely set against Catholic political and moral philosophy was only natural. Kant held to the error that

"the end (goal) of political society is the reciprocal limitation and harmony of the liberty of its members". (Brother Louis of Poissy, Christian Philosophy, 1948, LaSalle Bureau, NY, The Brothers Of The Christian Schools P. 462f.)

This liberty, according to Kant, pertained irreducibly to the individual, and not to families and to their common good; even less to God and His Church. Likewise Descartes, with his Cogito Ergo Sum, had done much the same thing by shifting the philosophical starting point away from God, Being, to man’s subjectivity. The almighty self was poised to usurp the prerogatives of Almighty God. All of this had a devastating effect on public morals and contributed directly to moral and religious indifferentism, since many sins and crimes, as expressions of interiority, do not encroach on the "liberty" of others, so defined. It is directly from such notions that the awful acts of Dr. Jack Kervorkian, the incontinence of same-sex fornication, and the judicial crime called Roe v. Wade become understandable. Likewise all kinds of decadence proceeding from human interiority (now considered the only source of anything sacred) which is indulged in the name of "art". According to such ideas, blasphemy, perversions, and all manner of other crimes become mere acts of "individual conscience" or expression. They are defended---or at least tolerated----by all who subscribe to this new idea. Many who do not subscribe to the total version of the idea are often nevertheless supportive of it by necessity or default, since the very definitions of "freedom" and "liberty" from the time of the Enlightenment have increasingly and consistently precluded any abiding criticism of the "values" of others (we observe the toleration threshold raised almost daily). For value, according to these philosophical deviations, is reduced to the altogether subjective, existential, and even "evolutionary" realm. Thus sin reigns under the mask of "freedom", "liberty" and the "pursuit of happiness."

When individual liberty is viewed as the primary subject of society’s raison d’etre, and the rights of the family are excluded, then it should not surprise us to find woman pitted against man, or child against parents where, say, abortion and so many other matters are concerned. When such sentiments regarding liberty are viewed as the most profound of political ideas, and integral to the idea of the state, then we should not be surprised to have awakened to find ourselves living neck-deep in the swill of a pornosophic society. Pornographic undertones were inextricably bound to the Enlightenment’s understanding of "freedom" from the beginning. Writing about the onslaught of pornographic literature which preceded both the American and French Revolutions, Robert Darnton of Princeton remarks:

"Studied closely, this philosophy (of voluptuousness satisfying the taste, and philosophy the reason of Enlightenment man) would reveal an admixture of elements derived from many sources---Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Hobbes, and the whole gamut of libertine literature that circulated in manuscript throughout the first half of the eighteenth century." (Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Bestsellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, W. W. Norton & Co. NY, NY, p.100)</font size="2">

Scholars say Mr. Jefferson was a connoisseur of such literature, which does not surprise me. He was a quintessential revolutionary spirit in more ways than the merely political. His contempt for the Gospels is notorious.

Here we see how "liberty" had moved rapidly away from the older political reasonableness of the Magna Carta and had become corrupted into libertine individualism. The Enlightenment showed that pornography and blasphemy, each the deliberate and assaultive violation of the sacred, were of a piece. That is why the pornographers of Rousseau’s day enjoyed nothing better than to depict nuns being violated by priests and similar things. It was such literature which inspired the self-serving calumnies directed against priests and religious orders of the day. (Incidentally, such tactics continue to this day as the fruits of liberalism, as witness when pedophile priests, often themselves the victims of decadent liberalism, are paraded before the public in order to justify the sexual transgressions taught by liberalism iself: "if priests do it, we can’t be so bad; at least we’re not hypocrites! So it goes...) Of course the Puritan and later Victorian tributaries which flowed into American culture kept the dike from completely bursting until the 1960's. But it burst all the same. Such tributaries were no match for the fundamentally flawed and transgressive philosophical ideas which exploded all quaintness.

Many are nostalgic for the days when those tributaries made themselves felt; and these are the same ones, often, who emotionally equate such moments with the America of their dreams. It is easy to lose oneself in that Notre Dame/ Bing Crosby naivety if one was born in this country.

All of this shows why the Church has always cautioned Catholics in this country not to drink from those same draughts where the philosophical wells were poisonous indeed. This is not to say that the Popes have had nothing good to say about America. Especially after the No-Nothing and other similar riots came down on the heads of poor, immigrant, Catholics, when their churches were looted and burned by Protestants in the 19th century. The Popes at the time diplomatically praised anything they might find in America which might by any reasonable stretch be harmonized with the teachings of the Church, all with a view to creating the conditions of peace. But there was no surrendering of principles either then or now.

The fundamental tensions remained until the Second Vatican Council. No wonder the Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, during the 1960 Presidential primary, had to grovel before Americanist Protestant pastors and go out of his way to say he was really and truly and no kidding going to break with the principles of the Church prior to John XXIII, whose views, Kennedy simplistically thought, were in many ways identical to his own. He was there to announce that the world (especially the Catholic world) was changed and that he would, as President, put the Constitution and conscience above the Church if a conflict arose **. It seemed quite innocent at the time, asserting the primacy of conscience and the Consitutition---increasingly an easily turned wax nose---- over the truth. But, set upon that slippery slope, especially with Catholic politician's who followed him, we were led to reap the whirlwind. From decadent consumerism and materialism, viewed as the pursuit of happiness, came the sexual revolution, Gay liberation and AIDS, Roe v. Wade, radical Feminism, Euthanasia, Population control, and so on. America is the vanguard of the ongoing Revolutionary "Enlightenment" which is being exported all over the world, forced on the poor if they want American dollars.

In the name of "diversity," which rightly protects all human beings against racial or ethnic discrimination, other basic Christian principles are attacked day after day and the seven deadly sins are made to sound like recipes for the "successful" life. Meanwhile the manufacturing of the "consent" of the majority is assigned to those corporate hustlers in business suits and skirts, the advertising world and other media. Who would have believed that in so short a time men and women would not know what to do with their genitals? not know what is right and what is wrong?

It is all too clear that what we are living through is not the corruption of those Enlightenment principles upon which this country was founded, but their bitter fruit. The Church existed 1,776 years before the United States. Only Her truth is the manifest destiny we can safely anchor our souls upon. A builder builds in vain who does not set the teachings of Jesus Christ and scripture as his foundation. There is only one answer: we must work and pray to realign America with the Church's teachings and finish the work heralded by Our Lady of Guadalupe; no other compromise will suffice. Nothing is impossible with God. Anything less than metanoia, conversion, (and that includes converting the U.S. Constitution) is a lie. Church and state must be distinct but not radically opposed. Nor may the state fashion a new syncretistic religion of its own with our consent. For the rest of the world to follow or be bribed into accepting the secular Americanist notion of "freedom," uncritically, would be tragic indeed.

The weakness of the American experiment lies in the vagueness of its philosophical foundational concepts and its orientation to capitalistic materialism. And it may very well be that the chickens show signs today of coming home to roost. People have so much, yet feel so bewilderingly empty. So the rule of law and love erode and are replaced with the mere political "will to power," ala Nietzsche with a few Jeffersonian twists.

JPII sees the world very realistically, I believe, and he calls us to engage in the New Evangelization, existing again as counter-cultutal witness and leaven, teaching as the Holy Father does the philosophical first principles regarding freedom, liberty, truth, the pursuit of happiness, democracy's potential and its potential for collapse; just as in Fellini's "Orchestra Rehearsal" the Conductor had to teach the musicians, who rose up against him in the name of "freedom" and "art," how to play the notes again, since they had won their "freedom" only to lose the music! Truth as leaven must be the new model of evangelization in a post-christian world.

Is there any hope for the United States? Yes. A consitutional Amendment which will finally align the above-mentioned ill-defined concepts according to the Common and Natural Law would be a start; a change which undergirds the moral law, respects subsidiarity, rejects the imperialism of empire, protects the poor, the weak, the unborn and elderly, and keeps Big Brother, the Federal government, limited, non-ideological, making "enlightened" judicial activism a thing of the past.

This is progressive, not merely conservative. Progress is not amnesia, a total divorce from the goods of the past. We cannot live under the delusion that the world was waiting to be born in 1776 and that tradition has nothing to deliver us from. Political parties must exist in a democracy, and that is fine, but the common good, rooted in the moral principles of the common law must be the presupposition of true "freedom" (Jn 8:32). Otherwise the revolution is not finished. Democracy and radicalized democracy may be very different things.

The Holy Father has highlighted the temptations of democracies today, pointing out the:

"spiritual roots of the crisis which the Western democracies are experiencing, a crisis characterized by the advance of a materialistic, utilitarian and ultimately dehumanized world view which is tragically detached from the moral foundations of Western civilizations." He stated that "economic and political structures must be guided by a vision whose core is the God-given dignity and inalienable rights of every human being, from the moment of conception until natural death. When some lives, including those of the unborn, are subjected to the personal choices of others, no other value or right will long be guaranteed . ... Never has it been more urgent to re- invigorate the moral vision and resolve essential to maintaining a just and free society." (VIS 9/13/01)

The Church recently asked the world for forgiveness for the sins and contradictions of her erring children down through history; will the United States be as humble, and find a way to amend its wrongs also?

** "Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected -- on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling, or any other subject -- I will make my decision...in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictate. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise. " ---JFK, Address to Southern Baptist Leaders (1960)

[D-fendr]

I remember one framework of The Enlightenment this way:

Science, Philosophy and Religion were no longer fused but differentiated; this was necessary for the growth and integrity of each. Then each sphere promptly went on its way toward believing (and "proving") it alone could know all possible truth.

[Aquinasfan]

Wow! Great, succinct essay on such an important matter, especially for a forum such as Free Republic. Hopefully you'll get more than two responses.

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Is there any hope for the United States? Yes. A consitutional Amendment which will finally align the above-mentioned ill-defined concepts according to the Common and Natural Law would be a start

That's good, constructive advice, although it doesn't stand a snowball's chance in the immediate future.

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The rise of Islamic terrorism might just be the occassion for a return to Natural Law. I've often proposed to liberals and libertarians the problem of tolerating a religion that proposes the abolition of religious tolerance. That theoretical problem is no longer theoretical.

Islamic intolerance of republican democracy may just be the catalyst for shaking us out of our moral and religious indifference and possibly into a regime founded on Natural Law and common law. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the good Lord keeps them around.