Latin Integralism Justifying Statism

Click below for the video of @thomaspink1 discussing 'Natural Law and Why Do We Need the State?' for The Common Good Project. https://t.co/5QkFYF2gUb

— CommonGoodProject (@CommonGoodProj1) March 12, 2021

A Reminder: Confucianism Is Allied to Statism

in practice, if not in spirit, and "imperial Confucianism" is not such a distortion of Confucianism as some modern proponents of contemporary Confucianism make it out to be.

How does the American administrative state look from across the Pacific? In the new @AmericanAffrs, Daniel Bell (@DanielB89913888) puts @Vermeullarmine & @CassSunstein’s Law & Leviathan in dialogue with Han Feizi as well as Confucian political thought 👇 https://t.co/e6d25hj8vO

— Gladden Pappin (@gjpappin) February 22, 2021

TCA Podcast with Vermeule and Deneen

This discussion by ⁦@GChristiemd⁩ with ⁦@Vermeullarmine⁩ and then ⁦@PatrickDeneen⁩ is compulsory listening for all sound (and even unsound) people on the unwritten constitution, the Leviathan state & Liberalism’s unmourned passing. https://t.co/Emh4awTvhd

— Gray Connolly (@GrayConnolly) October 7, 2020

TCA Podcast Ep 74

Thomas Pink on Latin Integralism

Public Discourse: Philosophy, Politics, Religion and the Public Square by Thomas Pink

Integralism, Thomas Pink writes, "involves a rejection of the metaphysical foundations of most current legal and political philosophy." https://t.co/jGwe2SIcnh

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) May 10, 2020

Brilliant new article by @thomaspink1, explaining why integralism matters even nand especially in our curret, secular age: https://t.co/hkf1ncZfDl

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 10, 2020

Integralism further involves a conception of the church as an authority over religion that replaces the state. The church is a sovereign potestas, with the authority to make laws and enforce these through punishments, just as is the state. Its authority is based not on natural law as is the state’s, but on the revealed law of Christ. Any interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae that denies this conception of the church as potestas over religion runs directly against the interpretation of that declaration given officially at Vatican II by the commission that drafted it. (For more on this, see my “Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XIII”.)

Latin integralism depends upon and promotes Latin maximalist conceptions of ecclesial authority, especially the authority of the bishop of Rome.

It is tempting to suppose that there are two quite different kinds of state: an integralist state that prioritizes the good of the community, and a liberal state that fosters the autonomy of the individual. But perhaps the better view is that there simply exist states that serve the common good in a way that involves enforcing an ethical consensus.  

The questions that should be asked are: what is the common good, what defines a political community, and is any state, integralist or otherwise, able to bring about the common good. Maybe integralists will have a new response to MacIntyre and Cavanaugh--until they do, they theorizing merely serves statism, and at best they serve as controlled opposition, inconsequential and no threat to the status quo.

James M. Patterson on Roman Catholic Integralism

After Republican Virtue

Too much reliance on Tocqueville for a description and explanation of republican virtues in early America in this essay? But typical of a certain kind of American conservative.

Or tldr?

In the end, this is all integralism really is. It is an internet aesthetic of mostly young men alienated from the public life and consumed with the libido dominandi. In the absence of those institutions that had once made America a place of deep faith and committed to liberty, these young men have had recourse to the Internet and attach themselves to the sublime historical experience of sacramental kingship, Iberian Falangism, or straight-up fascism supported by the general ideas purveyed by Vermeule and the like. The only alternative is for the Church to train and appoint new bishops committed to participating in public life with their congregations and raising them up in the republican virtue that so defined American Catholicism.

The author is wrong to identify some of friendship or social virtue as "republican virtue." Republican virtue will include friendship and the social virtues, but it is more than those two, and his example of parish life doesn't even come close to giving a full illustration of what republican virtue involves and requires. He is correct to criticze the Latin integralists but he is ignorant of his own precarious situation vis-a-vis the state.

An Interview with Adrian Vermeule

Le Grand Continent: Adrian Vermeule : « L’échelle géographique d’un programme de bien commun devra être celle de l’État administratif » (via MOJ)

Unfortunately it is available only for subscribers.

It is clear from the title though that he is a proponent of a centralized national government and a statist.

Charles Taylor on Solidarity and Fairness

Church Life Journal

This is how the source of the deep cracks in modern capitalist societies presents itself. There are two contexts that justify our deeds; we can define them as the “democratic” and the “capitalist.” To be honest, we cannot reject either one. We cannot reject the democratic context, because it has become a central, inseparable element of our vision of legitimacy. We also cannot reject the capitalist context, because we have long ago passed the stage where we would be satisfied with a stagnant economy. Thus, we have to come to terms with them both. The first context is a great source of solidarity. When we manage to awaken and activate the feeling of our common citizenship we are capable of acting in often surprising ways by authentically devoting ourselves to others or in the name of the common good. This is especially apparent during times of war or during movements of national liberation—in a certain sense the Polish Solidarity movement was an important instance of such a movement. The second context demands that we put solidarity to the side and agree to bend or even break the rules of reciprocity in the name of effectiveness, which, it is apparent, we cannot renounce.

These are the two contradictory principles -both are illusionary and the illusions of "democracy" and "greater wealth" are used by the oligarchy to provide a cover of legitimacy. Does Taylor realize this, or has he drunk the Kool-aid as well? Being subject to the same state is insufficient to create "solidarity" and Taylor fails to recognize "civic nationalism" cannot overcome substantial differences in group identity or culture. Comparing Canada (or the U.S.) to a rather homogeneous ethnic state like Poland is comparing apples and oranges.

Solidarity is a solution but Taylor has no adequate means to promoting it because he doesn't acknowledge real divisions. Moreover, the state itself is opposed to solidarity and will not permit any true solidarity (as opposed to companionship in subjugation) to exist because solidarity is a threat to its power and existence.

Another Response to Vermeule

Adrian Vermeule’s Nosebleed by Thomas FitzGerald
Originalism has plenty of tools within itself to advance the common good.

Professor Vermeule can better serve the cause of Catholic integralism by pairing his laudable zeal for the natural law and for statecraft as soulcraft with a statesmanly rhetorical restraint in better accord with sensibilities shaped over centuries by the democratic republican traditions of America’s providential constitution. I would respectfully suggest to the learned professor that if he continues to puckishly troll the American democratic and scholarly publics with visions of an authoritarian bureaucracy that suppresses all vices, the integralist project he has seemingly made his life’s work risks being the work of a hero with a tragic flaw—an admirably pious and zealous, impressively clever, scorchingly witty, but recklessly imprudent crusader for Christendom who “violently bloweth his nose, and bringeth out blood.”

The question to be asked of integralists: "How many divisions do you have?" Do they realize they have no political power to implement their "ideals" at the national level or even at the state level? If we need political theorists doing intellectual work, it's to continue the work of Aristotle and the localists, and to look for concrete solutions to oligarchy in specific places.

Adrian Vermeule on the Constitution

(via MoJ)

The Atlantic: Beyond Originalism by Adrian Vermeule
The dominant conservative philosophy for interpreting the Constitution has served its purpose, and scholars ought to develop a more moral framework.

But originalism has now outlived its utility, and has become an obstacle to the development of a robust, substantively conservative approach to constitutional law and interpretation. Such an approach—one might call it “common-good constitutionalism”—should be based on the principles that government helps direct persons, associations, and society generally toward the common good, and that strong rule in the interest of attaining the common good is entirely legitimate. In this time of global pandemic, the need for such an approach is all the greater, as it has become clear that a just governing order must have ample power to cope with large-scale crises of public health and well-being—reading “health” in many senses, not only literal and physical but also metaphorical and social.

Vermeule is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard? And he doesn't know that the Constitution is for the Federal Government and its powers are limited for a reason? Nor does he realize that the common good that is proper to the political community is not the same as the good of a federation because of the scale involved. In addition to being an integralist, Vermeule's a statist and a nationalist with respect to the Constitution. Those who disagree with him (I've included some reactions below), do so not because they disagree with the scope of power he is advocating for the Federal Government, but because of his favoring a confessional state or some other moral or religious principle. They would have a strong centralized government, so long as it promotes their ideology, and they too could talk about ruling for the common good as well, it's just that they have a different (and erroneous, though in their minds they think it correct and humane) opinion about how that common good is achieved and preserved.

Assured of this, conservatives ought to turn their attention to developing new and more robust alternatives to both originalism and left-liberal constitutionalism. It is now possible to imagine a substantive moral constitutionalism that, although not enslaved to the original meaning of the Constitution, is also liberated from the left-liberals’ overarching sacramental narrative, the relentless expansion of individualistic autonomy. Alternatively, in a formulation I prefer, one can imagine an illiberal legalism that is not “conservative” at all, insofar as standard conservatism is content to play defensively within the procedural rules of the liberal order.

This approach should take as its starting point substantive moral principles that conduce to the common good, principles that officials (including, but by no means limited to, judges) should read into the majestic generalities and ambiguities of the written Constitution. These principles include respect for the authority of rule and of rulers; respect for the hierarchies needed for society to function; solidarity within and among families, social groups, and workers’ unions, trade associations, and professions; appropriate subsidiarity, or respect for the legitimate roles of public bodies and associations at all levels of government and society; and a candid willingness to “legislate morality”—indeed, a recognition that all legislation is necessarily founded on some substantive conception of morality, and that the promotion of morality is a core and legitimate function of authority. Such principles promote the common good and make for a just and well-ordered society.

Let us do away with the pretense that the Constitution is even legally relevant with respect to preserving the order the Founders originally envisaged. That order disappeared a long time ago. What are we to do now? Do we do what we can to preserve observance of the moral law under the cover of the Constitution, interpreting it just so that for the sake of appearances, everything that is legislated is constitutional? Perhaps we would not disagree with this pragmatic approach so much, even if it involves a sort of "noble lie" or legal fiction that our observance of the Constitution is traditional. At least Vermeule admits that it is not. Our biggest disagreement remains - Vermeule looks to the central government as a solution; we look to decentralization and all that requires as the solution.

Common-good constitutionalism is not legal positivism, meaning that it is not tethered to particular written instruments of civil law or the will of the legislators who created them. Instead it draws upon an immemorial tradition that includes, in addition to positive law, sources such as the ius gentium—the law of nations or the “general law” common to all civilized legal systems—and principles of objective natural morality, including legal morality in the sense used by the American legal theorist Lon Fuller: the inner logic that the activity of law should follow in order to function well as law.

Doess the Anglo-American tradition recognize the Natural Law? It may depend upon its adherents, but I would think that the tradition would acknowledge that the Natural Law is embodied in the Common Law tradition; otherwise individual laws that are unjust are also invalid, and would or should have been nullified. Nonetheless, so long as we live in the shell of a federation of (sovereign) states we are tied to the Constitution, until that is replaced or some other agreement between the states is reached. Vermeule needs to stop imaging what power is able to achieve and consider instead what the limits of power are, after he has spent some time living in a true political community. Until that happens, his opinion (and that of integralists in general) is irrelevant as it has no basis in a true experience of community. It is just another version of received dogma with respect to political life.

How, if at all, are these principles to be grounded in the constitutional text and in conventional legal sources? The sweeping generalities and famous ambiguities of our Constitution, an old and in places obscure document, afford ample space for substantive moral readings that promote peace, justice, abundance, health, and safety, by means of just authority, hierarchy, solidarity, and subsidiarity. The general-welfare clause, which gives Congress “power to … provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States,” is an obvious place to ground principles of common-good constitutionalism (despite a liberal tradition of reading the clause in a cramped fashion), as is the Constitution’s preamble, with its references to general welfare and domestic tranquility, to the perfection of the union, and to justice. Constitutional words such as freedom and liberty need not be given libertarian readings; instead they can be read in light of a better conception of liberty as the natural human capacity to act in accordance with reasoned morality.

A "liberal tradition"? Perhaps some liberals wanted to restrict it. Maybe some oligarchs wanted to restrict it as well. But some originalists and paleoconservatives also wanted to restrict the reading of the general-welfare clause as well, because the Constitution enumerates the powers of the Federal Government, to which it is limited. Again, what sort of professor of constitutional law is this? One whose family background (his family name is Dutch) is tied to New England WASPs (Yankees), and a product of Harvard for both undergrad and law school. (A legacy admission? His mother was a member of the faculty for Radcliffe.) It's no wonder he is a Yankee Nationalist with respect to his understanding of the Constitution. He was also a clerk for Antonin Scalia -- was Scalia ignorant of the purpose and meaning of the Constitution as well, or were these lessons never given to his clerk, or never requested by his clerk? He converted to Roman Catholicism in 2016, and that grace is not going to remedy any defects in his opinions about the Constitution.

"Originalism has now outlived its utility, and has become an obstacle to the development of a robust, substantively conservative approach to constitutional law and interpretation," Adrian Vermeule writes: https://t.co/kqEQ4HD8Ql

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) March 31, 2020

Some reactions:

“Common-good constitutionalism is not legal positivism, meaning that it is not tethered to particular written instruments of civil law or the will of the legislators who created them.”

That’s certainly one way of putting it. https://t.co/4JNkZrEXwP

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) March 31, 2020

Originalism had a good run. Time for common-good constitutionalism, reason of state, illiberal legalism and direct, authoritative rule for the common good, says Adrian Vermeule at the Atlantic https://t.co/sLHB9HNMS9

— Gladden Pappin (@gjpappin) March 31, 2020

To add even more context, Adrian Vermeule has stated he believes liberal democracy is demonically inspired. That’s the meaning of the Biblical quotes discussing “liberalism’s true identity” in the piece below. Did the editors at The Atlantic miss that? https://t.co/CLGHDeY3S2

— Mark R. Yzaguirre (@markyzaguirre) March 31, 2020

The New Republic: The Emerging Right-Wing Vision of Constitutional Authoritarianism

No surprise here, Vermeule is receiving support from other Latin integralists: Adrian Vermeule’s Brilliant Essay on Common Good Constitutionalism

Even some "conservatives" are sympathetic to his argument:

Leave it to Adrian Vermeule to make everyone in the broader legal academy, commentariat, and profession alike lose their collective minds even while he’s off Twitter for Lent.

Good for @TheAtlantic for publishing such a bold argument. https://t.co/1QrIXZ99K2

— Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) March 31, 2020

A critique: Rejecting Vermeule’s Right-Wing Dworkinian Vision by Lee Strang
NRO: Adrian Vermeule's 'Common -Good Constitutionalism': No Alternative to Originalism

The Problem with Catholic Integralism in One Tweet By Andrew T. Walker

What Is the End of Political Life?

CWR: Thomism and Political Liberalism, Part 3 by Joseph G. Trabbic
St. Thomas says that “the whole of political life seems to be ordered to contemplative happiness.” What would a life ordered to divine contemplation look like? And how would politics support it?

A take on this comment.

Is Thomism too rationalist in its conception of eudaimonia? More and more I think that it is unsatisfying, as it is usually presented, and perhaps Pinckaers' modification may not be sufficient. A political life should have sufficient members and organized in such a way that it makes a local ecclesia possible, including the selection of men to become presbyters/episkopos to minister the Holy Mysteries. Through the Holy Mysteries and the Christian life is the ultimate end attained, the encounter of God and man in love, and this Christian life includes prayer and "contemplation." While the
he political community is ordered to human happiness, which according to Christianity is supernatural, a Divine gift of friendship with God, its immediate end is political friendship, and it is on this point primarily that liberalism, which serves the state and statism, differs from Aristotelianism and arguably Thomistic political theology. It is also a first principles that is obscured in Roman Catholic social teaching, written mostly or wholly by men who have no experience living in an authentic political community. It is because of this that RC social doctrine is easily exploited to serve the purposes of the state, and I expect more to be written about obedience to the secular authority in the future.

An Interview with Stephen Bullivant

CWR: Why have Catholics in the UK and US been leaving the Church since Vatican II? by Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille

Theologian and sociologist Stephen Bullivant says a big part of his argument in Mass Exodus is “that the ‘social architecture’ that had sustained and strengthened Catholic life and identity was well on the road to passing away by the time the Council came along.”

Against Marriage by Clare Chambers

OUP

MoJ: "Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State" by Rick Garnett

Let Us Not Confuse the Goal of the Modern Nation-State with the Common Good, Either

A problem that has yet to be addressed by the bishop of Rome, who remains unaware of it. To make the goal of the modern nation-state the common good, as it is understood in the best of classical and medieval thought, is to justify statism and trespass the limits of political authority. (Because the limits of scale are thereby ignored and justice, which depends upon scale, violated.)

Pope: Let us not “confuse the ‘common good’ with ‘prosperity’”