Comments for On the Eve of the Election at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 4 out of 4 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Tue, 21 May 2013 20:20:58 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-the-eve-of-the-election.html#comment-5084 I’d thank JBL for his note, and he is right on two points: the question of slavery in the Church is an apt one, but in the scale of things it is also, as he says, not an especially important one. In fact, it is a point that threatens to distract from the moral questions right on the line, before us. On his first point: It is worth recalling that Thomas Jefferson was an owner of slaves, though he also gave us the proposition “all men are created equal,” and put in place the premises that called slavery into question, for himself as well as others. John Locke, as I recall, owned stock in plantations that used slaves. It is not surprising that people could articulate principles that ran beyond their own flawed lives—and took hold in the larger world. Thomas Aquinas was clear that slavery was in opposition to the natural law, and the Church was strong in condemning slavery at least from the 15th century on. Leo XIII, whom I mentioned, urged the bishops in Brazil to take steps to remove the vestiges of slavery in their country, and he put the weight of his office behind the opposition to slavery elsewhere in the world. There is a tangled story of Pius IX and Jefferson Davis, the President of the slave republic of the Confederacy; but as JBL no doubt knows, it’s a story that lends itself to careful telling and disentangling. But I post the caution again: we can trace the turns of doctrine and teaching in the Church on slavery, and yet nothing in those turns, or in the lives of Jefferson and Locke, alters the understanding about the moral ground that justifies and limits rights of property. We have to face the question, today as ever, on its own terms. And if Leo XIII had it right, the Church has been teaching something for a long while that runs beyond the clichés of liberalism in our own time. With Mr Danielson I’d point out that it was well understood, in this classic understanding, that any taxation that could not be justified offered a version of legalized theft. But that did not mean that the community could never lay fair charges on its members to meet the responsibilities borne distinctly by the community. Not all taxation is theft. The question here, as with any other use of the law, is whether the law is restricting our freedom, taking our property, with or without justification. The critical test, as ever, is the test of moral justification. We’re back, that is, to the “laws of reason and nature.” - Hadley Arkes Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:25:43 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-the-eve-of-the-election.html#comment-5083 Thanks, in part, to you and your colleagues, there is more and better teaching going on now than during most of my 72 years. Unfortunately, it is mostly adult education. In our public schools and colleges, and even in our professional schools, teaching is either from the perspective of the left, or is philosophically agnostic. Thus, for example, we receive justice from a judicial system directed by lawyers who, for the most part, have little or no familiarity with the philosophy underpinning the law, or for that matter, any philosophy. Is it any wonder then, that nationwide the sanctity of contract and the rule of law is undermined? Is it surprising that a personal view of what is "equitable" has become the preferred method of passing on great and small controversies? A long journey starts with the first step. Thanks to you and others who write on these pages and who teach elsewhere, the first step is behind us. - Ray Hunkins Tue, 26 Oct 2010 06:15:02 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-the-eve-of-the-election.html#comment-5082 The passage from Locke quoted here more than suggests concerns the author does not approach. If we each have property interests in our persons that no one else has a right to, and if this extends to the labor of our bodies and the work of our hands, then all coercive taxation is theft. Not even appeals to the common good can polish up the rude reality that a class of people claiming the right to wrest our property from us by force is a band of robbers. But we have no such appeal, for neither left nor right in our political "order" acts in defense of the common good. So, if the prediction holds, in November voters will transfer the State's confiscatory power from one party of thieves to another. The nature of the plunder will change, but the plunder will continue. - James Danielson Tue, 26 Oct 2010 03:12:03 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2010/on-the-eve-of-the-election.html#comment-5081 "The claim to property began with the rejection of slavery and the affirmation of the natural freedom of human beings, those distinctly moral beings who could understand the rightful and wrongful uses of their property." Prof. Arkes: Whose claim is this? Though you speak here of Americans, you know, of course, that the American hierarchy--and the hierarchy the world over--was not opposed to the institution of slavery absolutely. Or, if they were opposed to it in principle, they were not opposed to it in practice. Not exactly. They did not inhabit the pseudo-Lincolnian mindset that many do today, that slavery is abhorrent and must be expunged at all costs. Rather, they were in favor of a gradualism that comes from a sense of time and eternity; they were, while not comfortable with its evils and evil in general, fully aware that in this life we cannot avoid contact with evil. It is part of our lot here. In any event, it's a small point, but an important one. So, you must be speaking of Locke's thinking on slavery and private property, no? It certainly ISN'T America's--though the work of variously scholars has served to confuse the two. - JBL Tue, 26 Oct 2010 03:11:00 +0100