The Court’s reasoning was absurd, rejecting the schools’ expressive association argument in part because the school was “free” (for now, anyway) to explain that hiring Barrett was merely “involuntary compliance with civil law.”
(source: Court Rules Christian School Has to Hire Gay Married Man)
This is the sort of lawless violence masquerading as “reasoning” that anybody not already a slave really can only respond to in the words of this old Virgina seal:
Actually, none (zero) of the great Christian political philosophers recognizes either the criterion you lay out here or the criteria you lay out in your last comment on the previous thread (which I was just about to reply to) as adequate grounds for rebellion. You might reread Thomas Aquinas with profit.
One can subscribe to a sentiment–and I certainly do earnestly pray for and support the overthrow of tyrants by those with the effective power and right (except as denied by the tyrant in his own favor) to do justice–without subscribing to every conceivable application of the sentiment. Bear in mind that the dichotomy between cooperating with the dominant ideology and mass revolt is just what I oppose when I speak of resistance.
Also, I think your understanding of St. Thomas is pretty doubtful, from past experience. I’ll stick with my own.
You quote the sections where he calls defective laws defective; I have in mind the sections where he addresses the limits of legitimate resistance.
Everything I have called for (see links) falls within those limits, but has as its explicit object the lawful end of lawless violence (i.e., unjust law, tyrannical usurpation, private violence without legal authority, etc.).
This is resistance: the middle ground between cooperating with the prevailing ideology of the regime–not an option for a Christian when the prevailing ideology is evil–and total revolt–usually not an option for any Christian *unless* already possessed of lawful authority and considerable practical force.
Resistance thus defined does, over time, tend to create martyrs, exile communities, or successful leaders (whether reformers-in-place or tyrannicides is a matter of historical circumstance, though the former is better if you can get them). And that’s all to the good, because the alternative is to rationalize increasingly near material cooperation with evil, and try to convince ourselves it’s not formal cooperation if we sorta say “I dislike what I’m doing” once in a while.
Not what “resistance” means in most political philosophy. I guess I can’t complain; changing use of language is, after all, one reason tradition can’t be a source of political authority!
Heh. I know of no tradition which is not a history of changing uses of language. 🙂
Yes, that’s precisely why it can’t be a source of political authority. Political authority requires language with stable meaning.
Language requires authority to stabilize it. See under “Author,” “author-function,” and “Legislator” for details. The notion that you can govern by an unsecured consensus on the meaning of words has more about it of the cargo-cult than the functioning society. Either the consensus is secured by a strong intergenerational culture, with customary laws that undergird and give meaning to a common or civil law protected by effectively enforced criminal law, or the consensus is sheer delusion. That is, you can have written law to precisely the extent you have tradition. Breach the tradition, you will have totalitarianism or anarchy, which as a matter of justice are indistinguishable.
Within a given legal system this is more or less true. Jurisprudence needs tradition. But you can’t justify the legitimacy of a system by appealing to the logic that operates within that system; it’s circular.
Authority is the right to resolve disputes, and tradition can’t give anyone the right to resolve disputes. It all breaks down on the question of “who judges?”
The belonging you seek is not behind you; it lies ahead.
Ahead, in the Eschaton, yes. Also behind, in the Creation. One according to the order of causation, the other according to the order of generation. But we are in the middle, and that is an actual place with an actual character.
Your theory of language is too thin. Stop thinking about laws for a moment, and just think about the attempt to tell truth, in speaking or in writing. When the listeners differ about the meaning of the text, their natural and correct recourse is to the author. When the listeners differ about the truth of the text, they will have to appeal beyond the author to something that both the author and they find intelligible–to an understanding that is communicable, in principle and therefore (even if only partially) also in practice. If we deny that communicable understanding of reality is intelligible and binding on the conscience, then we destroy the principle of authority and the utility of language.
The cohesiveness of a society, the realization of the formal principle of any society, whether a nation-state or a bridge club, requires that such a denial not take place–and *specifically* that particular positive assertions of the formal principle of that society be made on the understanding that some intelligible reality is implicated in those assertions. You can make a game about a fantasy, but you can’t make a game in which the rules are a fantasy.
And because Creation itself is a text, and ontology an allegory of the Creator, and our study of it is an apprehension of revelation, it is inconceivable that we should separate the recourse to the Author from the history of the text or the resolution and understanding at the End. No, there is no endless deferral; just repeated evasions of a constantly repeated, constantly unfolding, singular Truth.
And if we insist on treading down the intergenerational communication of what we have understood of an intelligible reality, either recklessly (as unthinking moderns so often do) or in principle (as Satanists, anarchists, and their Progressive/Romantic stooges incessantly do)–if we reject tradition–then we put ourselves in the camp of those Paul says the servant of the Lord must correct patiently: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Timothy+2%3A23-26&version=RSVCE
I’m not saying that rhetorical appeal to tradition, especially not a merely authoritarian appeal, is useful when you’re dealing with those who do not share the tradition or do not recognize the author-ity/jurisdiction of the author/legislator. What I am saying is that you cannot have a functioning society that does not find those things–so if we actually believe we are irremediably divided on these issues, it behooves us to figure out how to have multiple societies that overlap as little as possible. And in the meantime, we will have to fight rearguard based on current understandings, without regard for consistency, because we have taken it for granted that consistency is meaningless or impossible.
You can argue that a meaningful consensus–a reality-based, authorized, communicable understanding of an intelligible reality–exists to undergird meaningful authority in society (to legitimate government), or you can argue that we need to restructure society while fighting a rearguard action, but there is no possibility that you will convince me, or succeed in fact, by asserting the possibility of subscribing to a society in which meaningful authority is not possible and rearguard action is to be endlessly deferred in hopes of a bright terrestrial, secular future. Not going to happen. Never has, never will. It is not a possibility for human creatures.
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