Comments for The Fading Sense of Citizenship at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 9 out of 9 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:12:16 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-fading-sense-of-citizenship.html#comment-8456 Dr. Arkes: You are the law professor so I should defer to you, but I have a very difficult time defending the measures taken in a "war" which was never declared. Extraordinary rendition, foreign citizens in prisons in what was formerly an Iron Curtain country to be tortured by the CIA, waterboarding? How can this ever be sanctioned? The last declared war we fought ended in 1945. We have killed millions of people since including 53 million aborted Americans. I new in the 1990s that Iraq was going to be invaded because Saddam had fired Scuds into Israel during Desert Storm and he had paid the families of suicide bombers who had struck in Israel. I received a phone call on 9/11 from one of my friends who had told me of the anticipated invasion to tell me that the "political cover" to invade Iraq had just occurred and the invasion was just a matter of time. A recent book reviewed in the Sunday NY Times by an author named Pillar states that the Bush Administration "will go to their graves" without announcing the real reason for the war. - Manfred Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:21:53 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-fading-sense-of-citizenship.html#comment-8455 Before I dash to the airport and get a flight back to Amherst, Mass., I wanted to thank the readers who responded, even though a few had not quite grasped the argument here. There is far more to be said on this subject, in all of its layers, than I could say in the space we have here. Perhaps this should be the first installment. I want to point out to my friends how the subject looks to us differently when we speak of the 'government' making these decisions rather than the community acting through its government. And so the pro-choicers will say that the "government" is trying to tell us what we may do with our own bodies, The pro-lifers will say that "the law casts its protection" on the unborn child. Instead of saying that the government strips people of their citizenship, it is much different when we say that the community has come to the judgment that certain people have severed their connection to us by their moral defection--by their willingness to share secrets on weaponry with an enemy putting American soldiers in danger--and indeed putting the country itself in danger of losing its freedom when the secrets were put in the hands of Stalin's regime. During the Civil war the Congress voted to remove American citizenship to people who served as officers under the Confederacy--people, that is, who had been willing to defect in order to sustain a regime of slavery and to make war on the fathers and sons of American families. During the Second World War the Nazis landed saboteurs in Florida and New Jersey, and the group contained at least one American citizen, as I recall. His citizenship did not win him any special favors, including the trial by jury to which he might have been entitled under the Constitution. FDR ordered military trials, which meted out swift justice--and executions. It used to be thought that serving in the armed forces of another country, or taking up citizenship by voting in a foreign election, were grounds that could justify the removal of citizenship. But the Supreme Court has peeled away these layers of restriction one by one in a pattern of incoherence; for what the judges have unfolded is an understanding of citizenship quite detached from moral significance--and moral requirements. When readers lament that they are living in a hotel right now,they are merely confirming the world that the courts have taken the lead in reshaping for us. When people point out that Catholics are indeed at odds with the law, or the principles that are coming more and more to define our way of life, they are confirming what Fr. Schall and I have been arguing. But that means that we have no choice but to meet that challenge of the "culture wars." We cannot find the solution or a remedy in ordering up a polity utterly divorced from moral meanings,reflected in the laws. There is no way for that to be done. We are constituted, as human beings, with a moral nature, and our moral judgments will find expression in the laws. We cannot have a law that does not enforce judgments of right and wrong. The only question is, Whose judgments will they be? If we recede from the field, we know the morality that will be imposed on us, more and more surely, with the hand of law. When my friend Chris Manion raises the question of who will make these decisions, the answer in the past was that they would made through laws passed by a Congress elected by the American people and reflecting then the moral temper of the American people. They should not be made in arbitrary decisions by people in administration, quite untethered from any statute passed by Congress. If we ask how these decisions would be made, the answer is that they would be made in the way that Chris Manion's late, distinguished father would make them as I listened to his radio broadcasts in the 50's. I'm certain that his warnings about Communists, posing lethal dangers to the country, were not instructions to deal with the problem through administrative discretion. He was sounding again the moral requirements of citizenship, and the measures he sought were measures of the law, measures that were deliberated upon in public before they were enacted. As I say, there is far more to be said here--and that for another time. - Hadley Arkes Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:28:01 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-fading-sense-of-citizenship.html#comment-8450 It is unfortunate that not all of the i's were dotted and t's crossed in the assassination of Al-Alwaki. Like the situation in Gitmo, there was a legal procedure that could have been followed in pursuit of the same ends, but which wasn't. One thing I'm still unclear on is whether an American citizen can have dual citizenship. I always thought that it was a don't-ask-don't-tell situation. In other words, if I was also a citizen on Finland, I had better not let the U.S. find out. Al-Alwaki was also a citizen of Yemen. If so, I thought that his U.S. citizenship could have been revoked. - John Anderson Tue, 11 Oct 2011 07:47:23 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-fading-sense-of-citizenship.html#comment-8449 It should be obvious by now that most in the Democratic Party as it is presently led, believe that the ends justify the means and that intellectual consistency is regularly sacrificed in the interest of temporary political advantage. In other words, moral principles are not gauged in any real sense at all. Justice itself becomes an unmoored, motor-less hulk driven by the winds and tides of political expediency. For the atheist there are only goals. Pathways need not be followed. In the matter of citizen combatants for a foreign power, those individuals make the choice, which used to be called treason. Likewise the enemy who declares war defines the initial conditions of combat. Those who conduct war without uniforms, without borders, hiding among non-participants for "cover" and who make a policy of slaughtering those unable to defend themselves, narrow greatly the possible responses. Also, any government can turn on its own people at any time. The only thing that prevents it is a shared moral outlook. We see again and again that atheist governments are unable to pull back from violence against the governed when some end is desired or diminution of power is feared. - Other Joe Tue, 11 Oct 2011 07:46:43 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-fading-sense-of-citizenship.html#comment-8448 A fine discourse, but begging the question in the penultimate paragraph. "[T]he community may tenably sever the connection of citizenship," but the fundamental question remains, how and by whom? By a secret cadre of unelected White House employees who decide, in order to shield the president from possible accusations that such decisions are made by presidential whim and fiat? That is the fundamental issue. For the rest, it's clear that a "community" can't "communicate" very well if it has no goods and acknowledges no truths in "common." That is where we are. hence, the entire exercise "tenably" tends towards a positivist foray, commingled with a constitutional collapse that parallels the moral one. Some years ago -- under Clinton, I believe -- Fr. Neuhaus' magazine suggested that the regime was illegitimate. What has made it more legitimate since, that a secret army (run by the former commanding general, Petraeus) can, on the direction of people whose names we have never known, decide who has sundered his ties with his fellow man, and is thus required to be killed? - Christopher Manion Tue, 11 Oct 2011 06:08:20 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-fading-sense-of-citizenship.html#comment-8446 It is ironic that Dr. Arkes begins with a reference to Fr. Neuhaus, as his argument is precisely that which is now being used to force Catholics (and others) from the public square - e.g., Illinois, where the Church is being forced out of handling adoptions & foster care. As Manfred suggests above, religious believers are considered by many, especially the ruling elite, to have "reject[ed] the principles that mark their country." - Tony A. Tue, 11 Oct 2011 05:28:21 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-fading-sense-of-citizenship.html#comment-8445 I really have been trying to figure this out. I can see so many sides of this argument. Yes he was a US citizen, but he was in a foreign country waging a war on the US. Does that not make him an enemy combatant, and therefor a legitimate target for military action? On the other hand, where does the geographic distinction end? If he were in say, North Dakota, hiding out in the hills, would he still be considered a legitimate military target under the rules of engagement that are being used here? If he is a legitimate military target, who would NOT be considered a legitimate target under these rules? If he is not a legitimate military target, and is a civilian engaged in a criminal or treasonous endeavor, would this be an extra judicial assassination? - Bill G. Tue, 11 Oct 2011 03:43:51 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-fading-sense-of-citizenship.html#comment-8444 But if the government is permitted unilaterally to declare that a citizen is no longer a citizen, and even to launch a lethal attack against him, how is that not in effect making him the subject of a bill of attainder? Or is the executive permitted, in this case, an action expressly prohibited to the legislative? - Richard A Tue, 11 Oct 2011 03:04:37 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/the-fading-sense-of-citizenship.html#comment-8443 Gosh, Dr. Arkes, I feel that I live in a hotel. In the room next to mine, two men are copulating, but the manager assures me they are married. On the other side, a woman is aborting her baby, but again, the manager assures me it is legal. Down the hall, a lesbian couple had one partner inseminated and they are the proud parents of a bouncing baby boy. In ten years they will be discussing transgender surgery for him. The polis? I can't discuss morality with Catholics! You know your society has turned a corner when the living envy the dead. - Manfred Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:31:49 +0100