Comments for The Tyrant at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 13 out of 13 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Thu, 23 May 2013 15:04:44 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9880 @Stanley, Your statement, "It seems you say you believe in 'truth' just not forcing people to live by it" is right on the money. Most people believe in truth, if by truth you simply mean the harmony between our mental concepts (and subsequent mental and linguistic claims) and reality. The problem is that agreement about these things is relatively easy when it comes to empirically demonstrable propositions and far more difficult when it comes to propositions that are farther (or completely) removed from empirical demonstration. So, there are two choices: either the government gets the power to enforce some vision of the highest good, which means that greater or lesser coercive forces will be used against everyone who happens to disagree with that principle or its ethical conclusions, or the government refrains from making such judgments, in which case coercive force will only be used to enforce laws regarding primary goods - the nature and management of which are within easy grasp of reason and empiricism and in which the demonstration and empirical evidence is more complete. In the latter situation, everyone is allowed to pursue the truth; some may get it wrong, others right. In the former situation, you must agree with the government's version of the higher good or face persecution (is it any wonder that state religion, pagan or Christian, have always been marked by the superficiality of their programs and the noncommittal faith of its followers?). - Scotty Ellis Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:05:36 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9873 The wonderful congressman Kucinich from my home town Cleveland supports a Department of Peace. There is legislation out there. This is why I brought it up. Regarding "homonia", we are in a situation of "paranoia" if you look at the extreme sides taken by the media. I don't see reconciliation between the current meaning of "liberal democracy" and the more conservative "Republic" approach. What is the cause is anybody's guess. It seems you say you believe in "truth" just not forcing people to live by it. While the others are saying there is truth that we can agree upon via reason and agree to live by it because it strengthens the community. - Stanley Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:51:03 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9867 @Achilles We do speak the same language. I am very familiar with the mindset expressed by Fr. Schall. I just happen to believe that his definition of freedom as "doing whatever one wants" is flawed from the standpoint of liberal democracy. @Stanley Your idea works fine when there already happens to be like-mindedness. It fails when there is a pluralistic society, because 1) there is no agreement on matters of highest importance in such a society and 2) only coercion could create such an agreement (though superficial in nature). How, then, to create a healthy community when there is disagreement? Liberal democracy's answer is by governing strictly on the basis of primary goods - that is, those goods and services which anyone would need in order to pursue their own vision of the good. If you can think of a better way, please share. @Stanley I think the peace here is what St. Augustine was referring to in the City of God: "But a household of human beings whose life is not based on faith is in pursuit of an earthly peace based on the things belonging to this temporal life, and on its advantages...So also the earthly city, whose life is not based on faith, aims at an earthly peace, and it limits the harmonious agreement of citizens concerning the giving and obeying of orders the the establishment of a kind of compromise between human wills about the things relevant to mortal life.” I believe that there are interpretations of liberal democracy (such as that offered by Rawls) that could serve this purpose quite well, even if instantiated in a republican or other form. - Scotty Ellis Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:51:41 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9863 The funny thing about "peace" as mentioned a few times here in the comments...When you hear of a country having a "Ministry of Peace" or "Ministry of Friendship"...you know to run for the hills. Historically, Ministries of Peace were established in communist countries that committed plenty on un-peaceful acts on its citizens. - Stanley Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:57:35 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9862 It is almost impossible to imagine a reconciliation between the two views stated in the comments. A healthy community cannot be formed by contract (rights) but by "homonoia" - a like-mindedness. An agreement on what is important etc. - Stanley Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:47:33 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9859 Scotty, I was just lodging my protest to your anthropocentic musings. Fr. Schall and you do not speak the same language. - Achilles Thu, 09 Feb 2012 04:09:50 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9844 @James I am a Catholic. I have no beef or problem with religion. I simply oppose religion having secular power. I also oppose misconstruing the notion of freedom espoused by modern liberal states, which does have a notion of right and wrong: a notion that is founded on intrinsic human rights. I did not mean that the way in which religion and the state were intermingled in both the ancient and medieval world were identical (indeed, there was much variety even within those periods). I mean simply that Catholic monarchies, even if they engaged in power struggles with the Church (itself a secular power) governed with a particular view of the highest purpose in life (even if they did not hold to such a view personally) and that the laws reflected these beliefs. A particular religion was patronized. This remained true even in many Protestant dominions after the Reformation, and generally until the rise of more or less liberal-secular governments. @Other Joe The existence of evil (which I affirm, given a correct understanding of evil as simply the absence of good) is rather immaterial to my arguments. Oddly enough, it is not I who posit the necessity of some clear-sighted philosopher who knows the good: quite on the contrary, I am wary of such claims. It is precisely for this reason I do not support a political regime founded on some higher notion of the good, and prefer a regime that sticks to more easily verifiable claims. As for the rest of your comment, I can only note once again that liberal democratic principles do not support pure license. I would say more, but you seem to be a man without much time for reading these comments. @Achilles I believe I have seen this post before. Reposting it in this context does not make much sense. - Scotty Ellis Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:46:32 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9827 Dear Scotty, I left you this post at the other article, but it is buried beneath an avalanche of words. Your verbosity is exceeded only by your apparent confusion. I would have to change only a few key words to make this applicable to your stunning comments here in reference to Fr. Schall’s excellent essay. I imagine that many will see what I am driving at. I wish you good luck. Dear Scotty Ellis- I was unable to read all your posts, they were too reminiscent of that spectacular Madonna halftime extravaganza. I did however get the gist of your statements about the prolife movement. If you will permit me the observation, sophistry would seem to be your stock and trade and you are obviously very convincing, at least to yourself. Your position reminds me of something I heard Gilson say “many a man, subjectively with utter sincerity, has rejected a conclusion which he nevertheless affirms in principle”” Our duty as Catholics is to teach all nations. This says nothing of compelling the free will of others to learn the Truths we propagate. Your take on things seems to suggest that us “pro-lifers” must ‘calculate’ in order to get “pro-abortion” people on board. You have it just backwards sir. We are to speak the Truth on principle. Calculation is a tool of Satan and only serves to erode our position in the eyes of God. The Truth doesn’t necessarily meet us where we are if we are steeped in error. We must go to the Truth. Our best foot forward as witnesses is in living in the Truth and on principle by calling abortion what it is, murder. Anything else is calculation. You have used a lot of words to subvert the plain and simple truth. - Achilles Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:52:54 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9826 @ Mr. Ellis. Some of us have to work and haven't the time to parse out and rebut your voluminous outpourings. Might one point out that you fail to mention the existence (or non-existence) of evil? You seem to posit a world that is not fallen in which some philosophers (and top liberals) see through the glass not darkly. In such a world rights and outcomes are clearly visible and deception is easily corrected. Yes, mistakes happen as you note, but not important ones. Wisdom becomes technical in nature and only attainable by experts. And clearly the liberal democracy is not about license. One may not buy light bulbs of a certain variety. Morality gets shifted from an interest in the welfare of the unborn, (or the welfare of one’s soul) to an interest in the proper ordering and balance of material resources which experts are able to define nearly unerringly and in great detail. Quality of life is then defined by material pointers rather than the transcendental. When the quality is degraded there should be a dignified exit strategy. It sounds like heaven to some. - Other Joe Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:42:55 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9825 @Scotty Ellis I will begin by assuming that your response to Father Schall's excellent article derives largely from a thinly disguised distaste for organized religion and a belief that any sort of objective teaching on Truth or God is inherently totalitarian. A fallacy, of course, but nonetheless a fashionable one. However, you choose to disagree with the simple historical truths which Father Schall has pointed out here. The great Greek tyrants (a name meaning not "brutal, evil leader," but rather "an individual who has come to power through unusual means, typically by seizure of power rather than popular election or direct inheritance") all did come to power through democracy--specifically, the great tyrants were Athenians, and could only come from Athens, the great ancient democracy. Your claim that "every form of regime has bred tyrants" is obviously untrue by the Greek definition. While it is true that there have been individuals who, in every form of regime, have taken too much power to themselves, such as the dictators who pretend to lead a republic or the absolute monarchs who claim authority from God, no true tyrant can come to power save in a system where the choice of leader comes from nothing short of a popularity contest. I would imagine you feel that the modern West is characterized by the "liberal democracies" which you so frequently mention in your comment. This idea, that the United States, the United Kingdom, France, etc., are all "democracies," is a direct misapprehension of the systems of government which the ancient Greeks discussed. While there are democratic elements in these nations, such as the popular election of a leader, the system is not one of democracy, but rather of a republic, since each nation of the West has an established Parliament or Congress where the people have chosen others to represent them on the national level--hence the etymological connections between "republic," "represent," and "representative." It is this system, and not that of a "liberal democracy," which believes in establishing regulations on the power of the government. In short, the reason for the success of freedom in the West is because they are NOT democracies, but rather are republics. Finally, you assert that the problem of tyranny is actually a person "who tells you what you must believe about the world, what you must believe about the highest good, what worship is permitted and what worship is forbidden: he establishes what virtue is, who the virtuous man is, and imprisons, censures, or executes those who oppose him. He does not remain focused on the mission of government to procure earthly peace and prosperity, and instead sees government as a tool to secure his vision of the highest good, ideal state, or perfect man." While I find your thinly veiled opposition to religion to be tiresome, I can certainly understand why you assert this idea: this is, quite apparently, the desire to do exactly as you will. Yes, yes, you want to do as you will as long as you don't affect any one else, but neither idea is correct. Man's greatest happiness comes not from doing his will, but rather from fulfilling the Divine Will--this is plain historical fact. The joy of the saints, which supremely triumphs over the happiness of the heterodox or the secularist, is obvious. While you were probably attempting to remind readers of this website of the horrible (imagined) atrocities which organized religion has caused, you have also denied the wisdom of even those outside of religion: most grievously, you have denied the wisdom of Socrates, the father of philosophy, when you claim that true liberty has nothing to do with virtue. One of the central points of Socrates' teaching was always that freedom is not licentiousness, but rather the decision to do what is objectively right--it is this idea which Father Schall is drawing from. I also find it particularly striking, as an historian of both the ancient and medieval West, that you claim that both periods used religion as a means of fortifying the secular authority of the tyrants. How, then, do you explain the frequent conflicts between certain secular rulers who desired complete authority over their people and the Church, who asserted the boundaries of the king's power? In the ancient world, especially the early Roman Empire, the ruler is deified, made into the supreme scion of power; in a fascinating paradox, it is only after the Church is allowed the opportunity to exist in Rome that she suddenly begins to deny some of the authority of the secular rulers, a fact which continued throughout the Middle Ages. It was constantly the Church which acknowledged the political position of the people and restrained the authority of the monarchs. It is no surprise whatsoever that Henry VIII, the first true absolute monarch, had to divest England of its Catholic heritage: to retain Catholicism would be to place opposition to his own power. - James Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:06:34 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9820 Father Schall,once again you have seized a teachable moment and taught with great erudition. The tyrants bred by democracy, if left to pursue their inclinations, use the democratic process to pursue totalitarianism. To resist, the polity must be well grounded in morality, civic virtue and common sense. That is why your mission and the mission of the Catholic Thing are so important. - Ray Hunkins Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:42:24 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9818 I will begin by assuming that this piece, among other things, is a only thinly disguised (is it disguised at all?) criticism of a modern liberal democratic principle of freedom. "What else strikes us as odd is that the tyrant almost invariably arises out of a democracy. Democracy breeds tyrants." A glance at history reveals that every form of regime has bred tyrants. Furthermore, contemporary liberal secular states that operate on democratic principles (even if not always operating as complete democracies) often operate from constitutions that limit the powers of an individual office or governing body. "A democracy is a regime in which “freedom” rules. Here “freedom” is defined, not as allowing us to follow what is virtuous, but the relativist permission to do whatever we will." If you are talking about a modern liberal democracy, this is not true. Freedom is not doing whatever one wants: freedom is doing what one wants so long as that does not infringe on the rights of others to pursue ends of their choosing. In other words, liberal democracy uses rights as both the source and boundary of freedom, and this freedom is not collapsible with pure license. Furthermore, in many ancient and medieval regimes (and even contemporary religious regimes), freedom is not the ability "to follow what is virtuous," but is rather defined much more narrowly as the ability to follow what the governing body establishes as virtuous: that is, most of these regimes operate by patronizing one particular view of the highest good, which resulted in either explicit or implicit persecution of groups who did not espouse this view of the good. This can be considered freedom if one happens to share the state's formulation of this good, for sure, and given the use of coercion often found in such states the chances are that one does, but for persecuted groups this flavor of "freedom" is rarely experienced as anything but tyranny. "The democratic regime makes no judgment about right or wrong. As a result, right and wrong are defined by the polity, from which no appeal is permitted." This is, again, not true in a liberal democracy. Liberal democracies do begin with judgments about right and wrong, but it limits those judgments to strictly temporal, immanent matters. The liberal democracy uses as its basis of the judgments some principle governing the equitable distribution of primary goods (a distribution which does not depend upon the final ends towards which those goods will be used, but rather begins with the nature of those goods, their means of production, and so forth) as well as the protection of the rights of the individual. Theoretically, all arguments about right and wrong in such a state would begin and end with these sorts of consideration (that this is not always the case is granted, as all such states are imperfect when instantiated). "Though the tyrant rules for his own sake, he insists that his rule is beneficial to everyone. Only traitors have any criticism of him." I find this statement perhaps the most puzzling of the entire article, mostly because this description fits far better with the reigns of individuals who reject the liberal democratic definition of freedom as liberty which you are criticizing and instead uphold some variation of the view of freedom as being able to do what is good or virtuous: especially now, we see numerous regimes that, often but not necessarily religious in nature, have bodies of law based upon a vision of the highest good or a state philosophy. "Tyrants are safe so long as, in their souls, people define freedom as the doing of whatever they want." Again, this statement has little applicability to instantiated governments, especially in the modern world. In fact, the recognition of rights as a basis both of freedom of action and limitation of action has been an important factor in modern legislation and has done much to stem the possibility of tyranny. Or, to counter with my own image of the tyrant: he is the one who tells you what you must believe about the world, what you must believe about the highest good, what worship is permitted and what worship is forbidden: he establishes what virtue is, who the virtuous man is, and imprisons, censures, or executes those who oppose him. He does not remain focused on the mission of government to procure earthly peace and prosperity, and instead sees government as a tool to secure his vision of the highest good, ideal state, or perfect man. His enemy is the philosopher who recognizes the potential for tyranny in this power, who is wary of the mixing of secular, temporal powers with the trappings of religion or the authority of a pontiff. His enemy is the philosopher who has a vision of the good (indeed, who doesn't?), but who recognizes the folly inherent in using the tools of power to enforce such a vision. Instead, he governs with the goal of peace and prosperity, judging temporal things only by temporal standards, practicing his own religion if he wishes but not expecting others to share it and certainly not forcing them by the coercion of the state. He is not interested in the acclamations or praise of his people or a particular segment of people, or indeed even of those who share his particular views of the highest good: he is interested only in what can be studied by empirical science and only in respecting the rights of man, which he recognizes are unalienable and which he takes as a basic, necessary assumption for his rule. - Scotty Ellis Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:58:24 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-tyrant.html#comment-9809 Another excellent essay Father! And very timely too! "What else strikes us as odd is that the tyrant almost invariably arises out of a democracy. Democracy breeds tyrants." I will not forget these words, and I think all Americans should take this to heart. We too often imagine democracy itself unassailable and perfect, it's not. What makes things worse is that we take "freedom" to mean "license", and they are two very different things indeed. Once again, hats off to you Father, your essays always hit the mark. - Aeneas Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:30:12 +0100