light & truth february 2014

Conservative Social Justice, p. 11 • Swedish Prisons, p. 7

Our FinestTRADITION

The Case for a Core Curriculum

by RADHIKA KOUL

V O LU M E 21, I S S U E 1 • F E B R UA RY 2014

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LITHE & TERSE

Shameful Censorship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Isaac Cohen

Dean’s Office Blunders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Thomas Hopson

FROM THE COVER

Swedish Prisons: Reform v . Retribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Michael Gregory

Establish a Core Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Radhika Koul

Conservative Social Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Dimitri Halikias

FEATURES

Ideas Have Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Bijan Aboutorabi

The Catholicism of William F . Buckley, Jr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Rich Lizardo

Liberalism v . Pluralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19David Lilienfeld

A Piece of Yale’s History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24The Editors

REFLECTIONS

Misplaced Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Thomas Hopson

Interview: Charles Hill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Hannah Carrese

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VOLUME 21 , ISSUE 1 FEBRUARY 2014

Top Photo: Derek Key derekskey, Flickr. All images are Creative Commons-licensed.

4 / LIGHT & TRUTH FEBRUARY 2014

At the end of winter, we wait for spring . But as we focus so intent-ly on the future, we risk losing

sight of the value in our present . Light & Truth thus invites its readers to take a pause from tomorrow to consider the wisdom of yesterday . Remembering our common traditions may just give new di-rection to our February blues .

Yale College, originally named the Collegiate School, was founded in re-sponse to spiritual decay and ecclesiasti-cal laxity at our rival to the north . As a liberal faction in Harvard’s administra-tion lost touch with its traditions in sin-gle-minded pursuit of Veritas (“truth”), ten Congregationalist ministers relo-cated to Connecticut, where they hoped to preserve their principles and religious orthodoxy for generations to come .

These men knew that any study of Veritas was hollow without an eye to-wards Lux (“light” or “goodness”) . Man is not merely a rational actor, confined to details and temporal affairs; he is also a “religious animal,” naturally oriented towards the good and the ultimate . As such, the best college must devote itself to both the phenomenal and the noume-nal, the world as it is and the world as it ought to be, to Lux et Veritas .

Yet despite these men’s example, the modern Yale risks losing sight of this noble standard . As relativist doctrines in the classroom and political correctness

outside of it suppress an honest search for knowledge, it is up to Yale’s students to push back . Only through our own initiative can we reclaim the abandoned standards of our Founders .

Light & Truth was born out of this necessity . Like the original Collegiate School, we are humble in our size but ambitious in our mission . In this issue, Ms . Koul implores Yale to establish a core curriculum, Mr . Gregory challenges our ideas of punishment, and Mr . Hali-kias elucidates the true meaning of social justice . The issue also features commen-tary from Mr . Lilienfeld on the writings of Isaiah Berlin, Mr . Aboutorabi on the conservatism of Richard Weaver, and Mr . Lizardo on the role of Catholicism in William F . Buckley’s philosophy . Editori-als characteristically critical of Yale’s ad-ministration round out our longest issue in years .

Light & Truth would never have been possible without the thoughtful contributions of its writers, the financial support of its benefactors, and intellectu-al curiosity of its readership . Thank you all for joining us time and time again .

With that, the editors and I are proud to present our newest issue . We hope you enjoy it . &

—Thomas HopsonThe Editor

Editor-in-ChiefThomas Hopson

Editor-at-LargeDimitri Hailikias

Managing EditorsIsaac CohenUgonna Eze

Associate EditorsBeatrice BerresiElena GonzalezRichard Lizardo

Business EditorSamuel Sussman

WritersDavid LilienfeldHannah CarreseMichael Gregory

Radhika Koul

Contact InformationLight & Truth

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LIGHT & TRUTH / 5 FEBRUARY 2014

Shameful Censorship How CourseTable Became GutTable

Before this semester, I had never experienced the social buzz sur-rounding “gut classes .” As some-

one who arrived at Yale determined to take those challenging classes that my high school didn’t offer, I usually side-stepped the conversations about which classes had the easiest grading, the least work, or frequently showed movies in class . This semester, though, they were unavoidable . By allowing students to effi-ciently rank courses by workload, Cour-seTable, a .k .a . Yale Bluebook+, made identifying guts easier than ever before .

Faced with a post-graduation world where employers liberally use GPA to weed out job candidates, students flocked to and discussed these classes in droves . Archaeoastronomy, a course described by one of its many evaluations as “basi-cally a humanities credit that somehow got hijacked into a science credit,” and The Structure of Networks, a class (and I use that term loosely) whose evaluations contain the word “easy” six times, with “gut” coming in a close second at three mentions, overflowed with students ea-ger for a low-effort GPA boost . But al-though rampant careerism is partially responsible for these issues, Yale is itself somewhat culpable for this distortion of higher education . Other honorable mentions—which I include only to em-phasize the sheer ridiculousness of the current gut situation—go to Exploring the Nature of Genius, a writing credit de-scribed by one evaluation as having “not a lot of writing or reading,” and History of Life, a class described as having “almost no work .”

Yale’s Information Technology Servic-es blocked CourseTable halfway through shopping period after demanding its creators, Peter Xu and Harry Yu, take it down . The brief statement that replaced the webpage on Yale’s networks cited “malicious activity” as the basis for

the administration’s action, and there are plenty of good reasons to be disappointed by the use of such duplicitous language—if you’re going to censor something, at least be honest about it! Yale also warned the website’s creators that the site was using private, copyrighted data, as well as Yale’s name and logo . I’ll grant that if these claims are true, Yale was justified in protecting its property . But given that the original Yale Bluebook was also student-run application before Yale purchased it last year, it strains credulity to think that copyright claims were the only issue here .

Rather, it seems that hundreds of stu-dents showed up to the easiest classes, leaving professors with either subpar teaching evaluations or more challeng-

ing syllabi in empty classrooms . And because Yale didn’t like that at all, it did what any business would do to protect its assets (here, its esteemed faculty): block-ing the website responsible for such a disruption . It appears that Yale wants its course evaluations to be available to stu-dents, but not too available . This entire debacle is nothing more than an exer-cise in dodging accountability, because Yale’s administrators—positioned as they are at an institution with the tri-partite mission statement: “to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge”—know, perhaps best of all, that the gut classes CourseTable so clearly displayed should not exist.

To be clear, the website and its creators were not in the wrong here . In fact, in the sense that they revealed Yale’s tacit ac-ceptance of these classes, they did a great deal of good . There is simply no place for guts in a university that is truly dedi-cated to the pursuit of knowledge . Their

presence is a direct affront to any claim of excellence in education, to Yale’s po-sition among the best institutions of the world, and, most of all, to the students who came here to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge . &

—Isaac Cohen, Managing Editor

Vibrancy & DiversityHow the Yale College Dean’s Office Messed Up, Big Time

Last September, Yale could boast an impressive 617 registered un-dergraduate organizations . At the

start of this semester, thanks to new registration requirements implemented by the Dean’s Office, it could claim less than half that number, a measly 279 . A university that prides itself in its under-graduate community should be seriously concerned .

Every fall, student organizations are required to renew their registration with the Yale College Dean’s Office . Those that fail to do so lose their abilities to apply for university funding and reserve uni-versity spaces, such as classrooms or the-aters . For many groups, this amounts a semester-long moratorium on their most basic activities . Traditionally, however, this registration process has been simple, straightforward, and therefore accept-able; groups completed it largely without a hitch .

Last Fall, however, the Dean’s Office altered the process; in addition to fill-ing out an online form and attending the standard registration meeting, stu-dent organizations were required to send three officers to three distinct “leadership workshops .” Such meetings were poorly advertised, tucked away in least conve-nient corners of campus, and scheduled in those hours of the afternoon when most students are either in class or at athletic practice . But at least the work-shops, to use the administration’s lan-guage, “[promoted] a respectful and safe

In a university dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, gut classes have no place and should not exist.


campus climate,” right? Not quite . These workshops were,

by any standard, an utter waste of time . Ostensibly focused on the noble goals of eliminating hazing and other unsafe practices, these graduate student-led di-sasters instead broached such relevant topics as the “proper” way to organize “naked paint parties” and “sex-toy scav-enger hunts .” Many students walked away, not enlightened, but uncomfort-able . And rightfully so; a University that really cares about promoting a healthy campus culture doesn’t force religious and sexually conservative students to lis-ten to this stuff . All things considered, it’s fairly clear that the Dean’s Office devoted only cursory attention to planning these workshops .

So what then was the purpose of creat-ing them in the first place? Why require 617 undergraduate groups to reconfigure their officers’ schedules in the middle of the semester? Why drag students away from their studies, their organizations, and their friends? Light & Truth fears that the Dean’s Office had an ulterior motive .

The Yale Undergraduate Organiza-tions Committee, the group responsible for allocating funds to student organiza-tions, has a yearly budget of $205,000 . Assuming that all 617 groups applied for the maximum amount of funding, the UOC would barely be able to fulfill half of their requests . Light & Truth admires the students who volunteer with the UOC; the group does fantastic work that truly contributes to campus life . Knowing this, we expect that, an-ticipating the demand coming from 617 groups, the students on the UOC asked the Dean’s Office to increase the amount of funding they had to allocate .

Going back to registration, Light & Truth contacted Ben Ackerman,

Student Organizations Director of the Yale Class Council for comment on the new registration requirements . “The [YCC] did not play any role in establish-ing requirements for registration,” he told us . Additionally, “the Leadership Work-shops were planned and executed by the Yale College Dean’s Office without the involvement of the [Council .]” Further-more, “when the [YCC] was informed of these new requirements, we expressed concern that some student organizations would lose their registration .”

This interview and the aforemen-tioned financial circumstances allow for two explanations of the new registration requirements . It’s possible that the Dean’s Office simply miscalculated the burden these requirements placed on student organizations . The whole episode may well have been an honest mistake, born out of simple misunderstandings about students’ schedules . But there are prob-lems with this narrative . The YCC in-formed the Dean’s Office that the work-shops could harm student organizations; it just didn’t listen . Furthermore, if the Office was truly troubled by the number of groups that failed to complete the reg-istration requirements, it could have is-sued a temporary stay on the sanctions that accompanied deregistration . For ex-ample, it could have granted groups an-other semester of funding before getting financially suspended .

With these problems in mind, Light & Truth would like to offer a second explanation for this whole affair; per-haps the Dean’s Office instituted these new requirements with precise intent to reducing the number of student organi-zations . Fewer groups means fewer appli-cations for funding, thereby invalidating the UOC’s request and easing the burden on the administration . That the leader-ship workshops were hastily and poorly

planned fits with this story; they weren’t really intended to promote a healthy culture, but to filter out groups that the Dean’s Office now considers ‘unworthy’ or ‘second rate .’

Such a criterion for classifying or-ganizations is absurd . Although Light & Truth begrudgingly met the new requirements, it rejects the idea that a group’s willingness to learn about “naked paint parties” is in any way indicative of its contributions to student life .

Going forward into this new semester, Light & Truth hopes that the Dean’s Office will listen to the YCC’s sugges-tions on how to improve the registration process . Although “new student organi-zations” (including those 338 that failed to renew their registrations last semes-ter) can normally apply for only half of the standard Yale grant, the Dean’s Office should temporarily lift this limit to ac-count for last semester’s mishaps .

Furthermore, if some groups must receive funding over others, Yale should be prepared to select X over Y by more meaningful criteria than workshop at-tendance, perhaps on the grounds that X contributes more to the University than Y . Of course, publicizing such an admin-istrative position would mean telling future donors (and the children of cur-rent donors) that their debating society, performance group, or cultural club just isn’t as important as the other guy’s, that their contribution to campus wasn’t truly welcome . That’s a poor strategy .

Instead, the Dean’s Office should in-crease the UOC’s budget . &

—Thomas Hopson, Editor-in-Chief

Lithe & Terse represents the editorial positions of Light & Truth magazine.

Comments? Questions? Rebuttals?Light &Truth welcomes your input! Contact us at: [email protected]


Inmates at Anstalten Kolmården, an ‘open prison’ in Sweden, have the keys to their own rooms. Image

Courtesy of the Creative Commons.

FROM THE COVER

We’ve all heard of the Swedish prison system . It’s a cultural item for us, an object of bewilderment: open facilities, cells that look like hotel rooms, op-

portunities for work, pay, and education .I’m generally disposed to ridicule the “Scandinavian ex-

ample,” so much so that I’m inclined to create a logical fallacy (Verum Est in Suecia) out of its use: just because something is possible in Scandinavia doesn’t mean that it’s possible here .

Yet there’s something different and particularly odd about Swedish prisons . Who wouldn’t want to stay in them? Were it not for extradition, prison might be a nice way to stay in Scandinavia without having to worry about room and board . Don’t such prisons—if they can even be called that—encour-age rather than discourage criminal activity?

Their recidivism rates argue oth-erwise . Though the estimates vary between one-half to one-third of American rates, the consensus is clear: Scandinavian criminals only rarely reoffend, while Americans can’t seem to stop . What is it about these prisons that works so wonder-fully? And where has America—the nation of the penitentiary, the admi-rable institution that, my readers will remember, first drew Alexis de Tocqueville to the United States—gone wrong? To understand these problems, one will first have to reconsider justice itself in the manner of Thrasymachus, Adeimantus, and Glaucon .

Justice as punishment must be understood according to a rule: the criminal receives what he deserves and reaps what he sows . That is, when a criminal harms society, equal (but not identical) harm is done to him in return . Our justice system is founded on this principle of proportional retribution: the wrongdoer receives punishment according to the severity of his crime .

At first glance, there seems to be nothing wrong with this

picture . Justice is fairness; it is equality . In this spirit, we hold our maxims dear: “Equal justice under the law;” “Justice is blind;” “Let justice be done, though the world perish;” “An eye for an eye .” Many of us even eagerly anticipate a Last Judg-ment . Justice is karmic; it is cultural . In fact, compared with the role of justice in various states of nature, an unabashedly Thrasymachean justice, the whole edifice seems a remarkable monument to progress and restraint .

Yet there is, nevertheless, something unsound about it, something that undermines its claims to both pragmatism and right . Justice—even perfect jus-tice—breaks people; it turns its pa-tients against itself .

To understand the truth of this assertion, we need only ask our-selves, how many prisoners leave prison as reformed people, with a full understanding of their er-ror, and a full respect for the value of the law? We answer, very few . In order to understand why, one need only look to basic human psychology, to the two strongest and most organismic features of human nature: self-interest and its correlate, pride .

The fault of justice is that it de-mands that criminals deny both of these primal forces . By re-quiring us to both willingly submit to our punishment, a sort of harm, and make ourselves subservient to our punishers and arbiters, a blow to our pride, it demands the impossible . Consider the best example from the history of philosophy; a highly developed—and, it must be said, an extreme—sense of justice demanded that Socrates drink the hemlock . (He was, of course, not guilty, but abided by the decision of the reign-ing body nevertheless) . Who among us could do the same? Justice settles for nothing less and, if we can’t meet its de-mands, it becomes coercive and hateful towards us for cross-ing the most central facets of our very psychology .

A cogent analogy can be made here with personal

Reform vs. Retribution What the Swedish Prison System Can Teach Us About Justice

By Michael Gregory

To punish one who is not ready to endure that punishment is to deter, and to deter is to

treat another as an animal.


by turning them back into productive citizens . One is immediately impressed by this model’s commitment to com-munity; it demonstrates a recognition of the political infeasibility and moral unjustifiability of exile, of tearing out and ostracizing someone who is also a brother, sister, father, mother, son, or daughter . It also demonstrates an un-derstanding of certain psychological realities; justice as punishment assaults our pride in a way that few can with-stand, gives rise to resentment, and so undoes itself . With that in mind, we should view the penitentiary as a real-ist, not an idealist, institution .

That said, it takes enormous restraint to pursue this sort of reform . Justice as retribution serves a vent for our moral outrage in a way that reform does not and, in this way, is self-serving . Reform, on the other hand, requires mercy and understanding, the ability to stay our hands and hold back from the mea-sured retribution that we are owed . It requires that we treat offenders with dignity and honor, even when we feel that they deserve little . One might even say that it requires a self-negating Christian love: agape . (Seeing as it was a Quaker invention, this may not be far off) . It is our own psychological com-plexes, then, that stand in the way of the penitentiary .

So does expediency . Many will agree that it’s not politically or fiscally feasible to devote individual attention to each offender, and this is certainly true . It is eminently important for a politician to appear “tough on crime;” justice serves, after all, as a social vent . We also haven’t the facilities, money, or manpower . A shift towards a reform-based prison system would obviously require a cor-responding shift in legal apparatus: perhaps reduced prison sentences or decriminalization .

This would, of course, be a huge gamble; one would have to hope that reform would be effective enough to decrease prison numbers, and so keep costs down . It seems risky, but after all, the Scandinavians did it . So Si Verum Est in Suecia…! &

relationships . Imagine a commonplace scene . A husband with average, non-Socratic judicial sensibility wrongs his wife in some significant way . Does the wife seek the justice to which she’s en-titled? In ideality, yes . In this world, only if she’s a fool . For, by demanding an apology from her husband, she de-mands his temporary subservience and an admission of fault—a recognition that runs contrary to pride . For most couples, this means that the wife will only receive a nominal and undoubt-edly qualified apology . It also means that the issue is never further resolved; this requires a power of self-denial that few who have done wrong possess . And this same scene can be repeated be-tween friends, siblings, co-workers; it is ubiquitous . Justice is, in fact, most alien to our human nature, except, of course, when we’ve been wronged . Only then it is most natural .

The justice system is scarcely dif-ferent . How many people have been truly “corrected” by their experience in prison? Only those who were open to it from the beginning . With this knowl-edge, we rightly encircle the “Correc-tions” in “Department of Corrections” with sarcastic air-quotes . We might well call it the “Department of Deterrence,” since that is its tacit aim: to use harsh punishments to discourage those who would commit crimes and to use the memory of those punishments to dis-courage those who already have . Yet, in this way, we find that our “corrective systems” operate on the animal princi-ple of operant conditioning . We might instead call it the “Department of Dis-appointment;” recent studies in recidi-vism show that those who committed crimes were, in fact, more likely to end

up back in jail than those who hadn’t . In addition, research found no signifi-cant difference in recidivism between those who, having committed the same crime, received a community sanction and those who received a prison sen-tence . Deterrence thus fails at both the aim it pretends to and the one it secretly pursues .

This is not to discredit deterrence entirely . In fact, there is no doubt that recidivism rates and crime rates would both drop dramatically if deterrence were perfected according to the rules

of operant conditioning, i .e ., if pun-ishment were made to follow soon and with certainty after the crime . But is this any way to deal with America’s most troubled elements? By exacting their conformity?

The Quakers had a different idea: the penitentiary . They didn’t believe in punishment, but reform, recuper-ating society’s losses by changing the hearts and minds of those who rebelled against it, by leading them to a true un-derstanding of the error of their ways,

Justice as punishment assaults our pride in a way that few can withstand, gives rise to resentment, and so undoes itself. With that in mind, we should view the penitentiary as a realist, not an idealist, institution.

Michael Gregory is a sophomore in Cal-houn College. He studies Ethics, Politics, and Economics.

Working tirelessly for prison reform.Image from the White House Flikr.


FROM THE COVER

What is a liberal education and at what is it aimed? Implementing any curriculum, even the chaotic caf-eteria that passes for a liberal education in American

universities today, assumes some answer to that question . As different points in the history of the West have responded dif-ferently, it is important that we too understand the necessity of wondering: why are we here?

Over the last two years, I have pondered why I am not doing what my parents expected I would at university: studying engi-neering, computer science, or anything, for that matter, which might earn me a lot of money in the future . Many of us spend our time at Yale reading books, learning languages, and talk-ing about it all, but to what end? Prof . Kagan’s farewell lecture provides a wise and comprehensive answer to these questions .

“From the very beginning (let’s take the example of Cice-ro’s artes liberales), the champions of a liberal education have thought of it as seeking at least four kinds of goal:

One was as an end in itself, or at least as a way of achieving the contemplative life that according to Aristotle was the great-est happiness: knowledge, and the acts of acquiring and consid-ering it were the ends of this education and considered good in themselves .

A second was a means of shaping the character, style, taste of a person—to make him good himself and better able to fit in well with and take his place in the society of others like him .

A third was to prepare him for a useful career in the world, one appropriate to his status as a free man .

The fourth was to contribute to an individual citizen’s free-dom in ancient society . Servants were ignorant and parochi-al, so free men must be learned and cosmopolitan . Servants were ruled by others, so free men must take part in their own

government . Servants specialized to become competent at a particular and limited task, so free men must know something of everything and understand general principles without yield-ing to the narrowness of expertise .

The Romans’ recommended course of study was literature, philosophy, history and rhetoric .”

A good education liberates man . Most college students in America do not think of learning

in such a way and would scoff at the notion that some things, say a Directed Studies-like core curriculum, ought to be studied by all . Since I have had the misfortune of taking three classes steeped in “theory,” I can recount some of their more creative arguments . Such a core curriculum is sexist, not only because most of the authors it covers are dead white men, but also by virtue of its works belonging to a past sans birth control—a past whose condition is so different from ours that it is a criminal luxury to spend our time engaging with it . Furthermore, this core is racist, since its authors belong to the same Western tra-dition that tyrannically colonized the rest of the world—I once heard someone make the case that learning French is a tacit ap-proval of French colonialism . As such, it would be tyrannical of Yale to impose such a curriculum on free individuals who can make their own choices and learn from their own mistakes . And we should not forget the skeptic’s objection: how can one have the gumption to think that one is “right” in defining and imposing a certain course of study?

It is unfortunate that the twentieth century has made such skeptics of us all . The scars from the abuse of authority, from the horrors fascism and communism, have underlain mistaken appeals to reject all authority . In this tragic spirit, Barthes and Foucault questioned whether the “author” of any work is an

Dead White MenA Defense of the Liberal Tradition and the Case for a Core Curriculum

By Radhika Koul


entity that can be pinpointed at all, or whether this entity had now ceased to exist – partly because of the echoes, both pho-netic and semantic, of “authority” in this word . Thankfully, it is Derrida, not God, who is dead, yet it is frightening just how much post-modern dogma masked in erudite skepticism has pervaded the educational system . We don’t know who is right and who is wrong; we don’t know who can make normative claims and who can’t . And so we impose a nihilistic non-im-plementation of order on everyone, from the most ignorant of freshmen to the most blasé of seniors .

But what better safeguard against abuse, I ask, than a dia-logue with the past? What could be more open than engaging with different societies at different stages of human history on their own terms? Certainly not lounging content in our own intellectual myopias . Most of the works in the Western Canon have made it there because they speak a universal language and can expand one’s horizons further every time one engages with them .

We should not forget that humanistic inquiry and the study of civilizational history are the surest marks of civilization itself . These are also values that are not evident to the naïve and the juvenile or to the frogs that live in a deep well . As an ancient Sanskrit metaphor puts it, consider the walls of this well to be the bounds of an ocean .

Whereas eighteen year olds, many of who drink themselves

into Yale Health, may claim the capacity to direct their own educations, it is up to the university to inculcate in its students the habits of study that will not only serve them, but also their civilization as a whole . No people can flourish without respect for their literary, historical, or philosophical heritage, not to mention a zeal for the pursuit of truth . And the very richness of the West lies in its Canon, which carries its roots, its essence, and most importantly its history of mistakes . Without an un-derstanding of this past, one cannot be a full citizen of the West and, worst comes to worst, may just repeat the mistakes of the forefathers he neglected .

This is obviously not to say that Yalies should be prevented from studying literature, history, and philosophy of all kinds and from all sources . Yale both introduced me to the Western Canon and allowed me to study ancient Indian texts . And, of course, not everyone will spend their life studying the classics or the humanities . But let us remember Prof . Kagan’s words—apart from providing one with a job after college, education must also shape our characters and contribute to our freedom .

In sum, to make sure that Yale students study not only the objects of their tastes but also what they must, it is imperative that Yale adopt a core curriculum . &

Radhika Koul is a senior in Timothy Dwight College and a Literature Major.


On almost every issue of consequence, conservatives have lost the war of words . Progressives and liberals cast themselves as defenders of justice, crusaders against

the corruption of modernity’s capitalist hegemony, while con-servatives stumble clumsily to find words to defend entrepre-neurship and free markets . This is not to say that conservatives have lost the war of ideas, but simply that rhetoric tends to favor the sensational . Liberals offer the people abstract ideals, moralizing trium-phalism, and the promise of fundamen-tal transformation . Conservatives, on the other hand, praise the homely virtues, the strength of families, and the importance of moral character . While conservatives offer the people “nice sentiments,” they cannot compete with the stirring language of radi-cal change and progress .

Nowhere is this more seen than in con-temporary debates over “social justice .” For progressives, everything is a matter of social justice—access to abortion, income inequality, and carbon dioxide emissions—these are all grave moral issues of the day . Conservatives have largely failed to offer an alternative and are seen as champions of an ever more oligarchical economic elite . How-ever difficult, conservatives should not give in and define social justice on the progres-sive’s reductivist terms . Instead we should defend a social justice that understands the human good to be variegated and not a sta-tistic to be calculated . Social justice is not simply a function of progressive taxation or faster economic growth . It is built on the recognition that man cannot live on bread alone, and that supportive families, strong communities, and virtuous moral character all play vital roles in promoting hu-man flourishing .

The Poverty of Modern “Social Justice”

Debates over social justice today deal not with moral ques-tions, but with statistics . The vocabulary of contemporary de-bate ignores the language of “dignity” or “virtue,” and instead finds itself obsessing over marginal tax rates and levels of in-come disparity . This is largely a product of the two materialistic philosophies that inform much of modern discourse: Marxism

on the left and Utilitarianism on the right . As Russell Kirk explains in his essay, “The Question of Social

Justice,” the leftist understanding of social justice has its roots in Karl Marx’s perversion of the labor theory of value . Marx be-lieved that all labor was equal, and because labor was the source of value, the rewards to all labor should be equal . As Kirk ex-plains: “Marx refused to recognize that there are various kinds and degrees of labor, each deserving its peculiar reward; and he ignored the fact that there is such a thing as the postponed reward of labor, in the form of bequest and inheritance .” For Marx, the mere fact of material inequality implied injustice, never mind that as Aristotle observed, it is not “unjust” to treat different people differently .

Modern leftists for the most part have distanced themselves from Marxism, yet they nonetheless continue to value equality as the quintessential virtue . John Rawls, in his work A Theory

of Justice gets off to a good start, writ-ing: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions .” Yet difficulties arise when it comes to defining that justice . For Rawls, equality is a fundamental politi-cal good, albeit not always a perfectly attainable one . When considering what society is best behind the “veil of ig-norance,” we must accept some level of material inequality as a necessary evil—an inescapable fact of society, but an evil nonetheless .

The problem with the left’s confla-tion of equality and social justice is immediately apparent . What is wrong with inequality itself? It is true that

inequality is often associated with so-cial phenomena that are intrinsically wrong—economic exploitation and slavery chief among them—but that it is often correlated with evils does not make it evil itself . Consider an island with only ten residents, each of whom makes an equal salary and has an equal net worth . Now imagine that Alfred, one of our residents, comes across a fortune previously unknown to the community . He is now far richer than anyone else on the island, a fact that has created economic inequality in an oth-erwise perfectly egalitarian society . Is

the island now somehow more unjust than it was before? Surely not . Alfred hasn’t stolen the money, nor is he oppressing his less fortunate neighbors . Nobody is worse off, and indeed one is-lander is better off .

It seems clear that the mere fact of inequality does not imply injustice . Perhaps the sources of inequality (slavery, theft, op-pression) are inherently unjust, but then our ire should be di-rected, not towards inequality, but towards those moral crimes themselves . But regardless, the modern left’s obsession with in-come disparity and material equality is surely misplaced .

Yet although the left mistakenly takes equality as its highest

Social Justice:A Conservative DefenseBy Dimitri Halikias

Occupy Wall Street protest on 9/30/2011. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

FROM THE COVER

Society’s task is not simply to provide men with a living wage or to affect Pareto efficient outcomes; it is to promote the comprehensive state of human flourishing, described by Aristotle as

“eudaimonia.”


political virtue, some on the right may be too quick to shift the focus to economic efficiency and growth . Rejecting the leftist hypothesis that inequality is the source of injustice, many con-servative and libertarian commentators are quick to defend free market capitalism—a source of great income inequality—as an engine of economic growth and of combatting poverty . This is the thesis of Milton Friedman, who sought to teach the pub-lic that it is government control of the economy, not unfettered markets, that brings misery to the people .

Kirk has sympathies for the Milton Friedman understand-ing of social justice, in particular for its opposition to the leftist belief that justice is simply the “enforced equality of rewards .” Kirk also shares Friedman’s respect of property rights essential institutions for any ordered, just society . Nonetheless, the mod-ern libertarian view also often reduces man to a strictly mate-rial creature, placing economic growth above all other politi-cal goods . Here the influence of Utilitarianism on modern free market thought is particularly felt . Increasing incomes becomes a stand-in for increasing utility, and constant economic prog-ress replaces equality as the answer to all of society’s ills . And through all this, the public is subjected to unending metaphors about the size and distribution of the economic pie .

But as Kirk points out, society is not simply a machine that can be mechanistically monitored . Figures on the growth of GDP or the standard of living do little to tell us about the state of society . The more important statistics are those concerning marriage rates and single parenthood, both of which are largely unconnected with the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest reports . But the modern libertarian impulse to place inordinate faith in the power of the market reflects what Kirk calls “the Benthamite delusion that politics and economics could be managed on con-siderations purely material .” Society is too complicated a beast to be modeled simply by statistics and economics . A genuine commitment to social justice must consider more than material conditions and outcomes; it must appreciate the integral role a strong civil society and a healthy moral culture play in the culti-vation of individual wellbeing .

Restoring Social Justice

Conservatives interested in reclaiming social justice must recognize that man is, in Edmund Burke’s paradoxical telling, a “religious animal .” That is to say that man is part beast, who requires material comforts and nourishments to survive . But that man is also capable of rising above his appetitive circum-stances to lead a nobler and higher life . It is this transcendence of the animalistic towards which society is oriented . Society is, as Burke explains, “a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection…a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born .” Society’s task is not simply to provide men with a liv-ing wage or to affect Pareto efficient outcomes; it is to promote the comprehensive state of human flourishing, described by Ar-istotle as “eudaimonia .”

Society no doubt plays an important role providing basic ma-terial supports for those least fortunate among us . Much of this work should be done through voluntary associations, which teach citizens that there is more to charity than voting for new

welfare policies . Yet the state too has an obligation to provide a level of economic support to those in need . While most of America’s leviathan welfare programs are in desperate need of repair, such programs ought to provide individuals and families with some degree of stability and support . The goal here is not income equality, but is rather securing sufficient material goods requisite for human flourishing .

Yet despite all this, the state’s most important role lies in de-fending those institutions that are most essential for man’s flour-ishing . Indeed, the forces that most directly form the virtuous soul are not laws or welfare checks, but rather the humane ties out of which society is constituted . Friendship, for instance, the common pursuit of basic human goods, is a relationship that improves all who share in it . Civil society plays a vital role in empowering citizens to pursue causes greater than themselves, and to come to know and care for the common good . .

Even more importantly, a belief to social justice requires a commitment to the basic building block of civilization: the fam-ily . The family, as Professor Robert George often observes, is the original department of education, health, and human services . It is the source of man’s greatest moral instruction and of the relationships that define him in life . Man’s most meaningful fulfillment comes from the unshakable bonds of love that only family can provide . Yet the family today is weaker than ever be-fore and finds itself in desperate need of support . Here simple economic reforms, like Senator Mike Lee’s proposal to expand child tax credits to support struggling parents, can go a long way in sustaining the family, and in promoting the conditions in which individuals can flourish .

The end of social justice is not simply the satisfaction man’s material needs through redistribution or faster economic growth . Its work is to furnish men with the means to fulfill their spiritual nature . It is to uplift that which is high and noble over the vulgar and base . As Kirk explains, the signs of our societal decay are now impossible to miss . The “reduction of public libraries, intended for the elevation of the popular mind, to mere instruments for idle amusement at public expense” and the “cacophony of noise which fills almost all public places” are symptoms of a society that has lost sight of cultural and aes-thetic value .

The fight to retake the mantle of social justice will not be easy, especially in our evermore democratic culture . Bumper stickers lend themselves better to simple ideological abstractions than they do to the genuine complexities of society . “Equality now!” will always be far catchier than “Social institutions conducive to human flourishing!” Yet as T .S . Eliot reminds us: “[T]here is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause . We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ vic-tory . . . we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expec-tation that it will triumph .” The road may be long and difficult, but conservatives must fight to defend the family and civil so-ciety as essential institutions for a people to flourish . They must fight, in other words, for social justice . &

Dimitri Halikias is a sophomore in Ezra Stiles College. He is majoring in Ethics, Politics, and Economics and is the Editor-at-Large of Light & Truth .


Neither the name of Richard M . Weaver nor the titles of any of his works is likely to appear on

any syllabus at a “good” American uni-versity . This is not altogether surprising, for Weaver dedicated his fairly short ma-ture literary life to the preservation of all that was good and noble in Western civilization, whereas the “good” universi-ties have, for the most part, done the op-posite . What is somewhat more surpris-ing, however, and certainly more unjust, is that Weaver’s name should be as little recognized as it is among the conserva-tors of moral and spiritual values . This brief essay is one attempt to raise the profile of this most interesting thinker and to convey something of his essential insights to readers who, it is hoped, will recognize their value and then turn to the author’s own works .

First, though, some words about Weaver’s life . His undergraduate educa-tion occurred at the University of Ken-tucky, Lexington . There, as Weaver relates in his autobiographical essay, “Up from Liberalism,” he fell under the sway of so-cialism, pacifism, and what he would lat-er term “hysterical optimism .” He would write of this period in retrospect, writing, “practically every conviction I now hold I have had to win against the propositional sense and general impetus of most of my formal education .” After college, he stud-ied literature at Vanderbilt, where his first encounters with the Southern Agrarians, particularly John Crowe Ransom, left him impressed, for “although I disagreed with these men on matters of social and political doctrine, I liked them all as per-sons .” A lifelong student and theorist of rhetoric, Weaver would not be ashamed to admit the role played by ethos in his intellectual conversion to a conservative

worldview . But in fact his conversion to what he called “the ethical and poetic vi-sion of life” came later, in 1939, two years into Weaver’s post-doctoral teaching career:

I recall very sharply how, in the Autumn of 1939 . . . it came to me like a revelation that I did not have to go to back to this post, which had become distasteful, and that I did not have to go on professing the clichés of liberalism, which were becoming meaningless to me . I saw that my opinions had been formed out of a timorous re-gard for what was supposed to be

intellectually respectable, and that I had always been looking over my shoulder to find out what certain others, whose concern with truth I was beginning to believe to be not very intense, were doing or thinking . It is a great experience to wake up at a critical juncture to the fact that one does have a free will, and that giving up the wor-ship of false idols is a quite practi-cal proceeding .

From then on until his 1963 death—be-lieved by his family and friends to have been brought on by overexertion—Weav-er would be relentless in his upbraiding of “the clichés of liberalism .” His mind moved remarkably swiftly in process-ing the new worldview’s implications, as

it was only nine years after his conver-sion that the publication of Ideas Have Consequences launched him into the front rank—or one might rather say the rank, in those pre-Buckley and pre-Kirk days—of American conservativam .

If the definition of a great book is one that many rereadings cannot exhaust, then Ideas Have Consequences bids fair to that exalted title . In spite of its laconic, compressed approach to argumentation, the book was recognized immediately by thinkers from the liberal Reinhold Niebuhr to the conservatives Ransom and Robert Nisbet as “profound,” “im-portant,” and “deeply prophetic .” Weaver’s idiosyncratic thesis was that a seemingly obscure turn in medieval philosophy—the triumph of William of Ockham’s nominalist approach to the problem of universals over Aristotelian Thomism and old-school Platonism—was the be-ginning of the dissolution of Western man’s grasp on moral and intellectual reality, issuing now in the twentieth-cen-tury soup of materialistic pragmatism, effete sentimentality, “equalitarianism,” “fragmentation,” egotism, “the spoiled-child psychology,” artistic stagnation, and spiritual barrenness .

No summary can do justice to the depth and breadth of this volume’s cul-tural insights, and it would take a much longer essay than this to unravel the skein of thought that, in Weaver’s assessment, links every one of these maladies to Ock-ham’s teachings . In general, however, the evil lamented is that of the loss of an or-dered and intelligible world imbued with definite and interlocking values . The great sin of modern man, Weaver writes, is that he is “impious” and disrespectful towards the order of things that preex-isted him . Democratic equalitarianism, for instance, is at heart a radical denial of the fact that there are gradations of human excellence . The crack-up of the mental world—visible in the shift from the medieval conception of knowledge, in which theology and philosophy stood supreme, to the modern array of free-floating, “value-neutral” sciences—is another example of the same intellectual dissolution; a third is the abandonment of canons of excellence in the fine arts and in personal manners .

This article is continued on page 22.

FEATURE

Bijan Aboutorabi is member of the Class of 2013. He majored in the Humanities and served as the Editor-in-Chief of Light & Truth .

Weaver laments the loss of an ordered and intelligible world. The great sin of mod-ern men, he writes, is that they are “impious” and dis-respectful towards the order

that preexisted them.

Ideas Have Consequences: The Life of Richard WeaverBy Bijan Aboutorabi


Beginning his career in the halls of National Review, a young and still-conservative Garry Wills once showed his boss Bill Buckley an explanation that St . Thomas

Aquinas had written about the Catholic Church: “In judgments concerned with particular matters of fact, as in the settlement of property, the judgment of crimes, and such matters, the judg-ment of the Church can be erroneous because of false witness-es,” otherwise called propter falsos testes . According to Wills, “When I showed this text to Buckley, he said, ‘Isn’t testis also the word for “testicle”?’ It is . In Ro-man law, a testis was a ‘standby’ that gave supporting testimony, and one testicle ‘stands by’ the other .” This conversa-tion came up again afterward “when Bill phoned to ask about some other point of church teaching . I said I thought it was an uncertain matter, but he wanted to take a public position on it anyway . I asked why he did not just avoid the is-sue . ‘Because I do not have falsos testes,’ he said with a laugh .”1

This anecdote, characteristic of his wit and occasionally crude humor, re-veals how William F . Buckley, Jr ., ’50 thought about his religion and his poli-tics . This month, as we approach the sixth anniversary of his death, it is worth examining once more this public intellectual’s legacy . And while the incredibly influ-ential role he played in the formation of the modern American conservatism has been well documented, his distinctly Catholic voice is less well known .

Upon Buckley’s death in February 2008, some Catholic com-mentators described him as “the dominant figure of his time in shaping the Catholic contribution to American public life” as well as one of “the most publicly influential American Catho-lics of the twentieth century .”2 As such, a fuller understanding of Buckley’s enduring influence in American politics neces-sitates an investigation into his Catholicism—how his politics informed his religious faith and how his faith affected both conservative circles and American public discourse writ large . More specifically, investigating key moments like the contro-versy in 1961 over the papal encyclical Mater et Magistra sheds

particular insight into his conservative influence among Catho-lics . Additionally, examining the political issues that motivated conservatives during the formation of the New Right, including the rise of the pro-life movement, reveals his Catholic voice that influenced conservatives as well . All in all, this understanding of Buckley’s Catholicism challenges the view that sees his faith as merely incidental to his conservatism .

The Conservative Catholic

When Bill Buckley started what he described as “just about the hottest thing in town” with the launch of Na-tional Review in 1955, American Ca-tholicism looked quite different from how it does today .3 The last Catholic who had run for president had been Al Smith—in 1928 . The Second Vatican Council, widely credited with radically transforming Catholicism, had yet to convene . Therefore, the Church still hadn’t formulated or adopted its ulti-mate doctrine on religious liberty . Fur-thermore, Catholics were a decade away from having to deal with a papal decla-ration against contraception, more than a decade away from having to face the

Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, and half a century away from even encountering the idea of same-sex marriage .

Among American Catholics at the time, both Buckley and National Review had earned notable influence . In 1960, for in-stance, Buckley engaged in a public debate with William Clancy, an associate editor of the liberal Catholic magazine Common-weal, on the merits of left and right approaches to the mod-ern world . This first debate was so popular and the response so great that the pair of them initiated a series of three debates on “The Catholic in the Modern World .” Buckley, of course, pre-sented the conservative view, and Clancy the liberal view . This conservative view of Catholicism held that the liberals within the faith were wasting their time trying to appease people like Paul Blanshard, the author of a recent bestseller that argued that democratic America had a “Catholic problem” of having a significant Catholic population that expressed allegiance to the

William F. Buckley on Firing Line. Image courtesy of WikiMedia Commons.

FEATURE

William F. Buckley, Jr. A Life and Faith Intertwined

by Rich Lizardo

“the dominant figure of his time in shaping the Catholic contribution to

American public life;”


undemocratic institution of the Church . For Buckley, these lib-erals ran the risk of diluting the faith for no reward since Blan-shard and others would always find a reason to be anti-Catho-lic . Already on a national level, then, Buckley was individually challenging liberals within the Church and providing a voice to conservative Catholics . This fact became even clearer when, in 1961, the controversy over a papal encyclical broke out .

Athwart the Episcopacy

In July of 1961, Pope John XXIII released a social encycli-cal titled Mater et Magistra (“Mother and Teacher”), in which the pope dealt with economic inequality and social progress . In particular, the Pope called for public authorities to “increase the degree and scope of their activities in the economic sphere” in order to reduce the economic “imbalances” within society .4 Despite the fact that the document did go on to stress the im-portance of protecting private property rights and of avoiding tyrannical governments, the call for greater state intervention in the private economy clearly did not sit well with Buckley and National Review . In just over 200 words the following week, NR called the encyclical a “large sprawling document” that “may become the source of embarrassed explanations” and that “must strike many as a venture in triviality .”5 As if that were not enough to express its disdain for the document, NR printed the now-infamous quip in the gossip column of the following issue: “Going the rounds in Catholic conservative circles: ‘Mater sí, Magistra no .’”6

According to John B . Judis of The New Republic, the remark especially angered liberal Catholics, compelling them to re-spond to Buckley and his magazine . The Jesuit-run America, in particular (though other lay Catholic publications as well, including Commonweal), did not take kindly to these criti-cisms . America described NR’s treatment of the encyclical as “slanderous” and as an “insult to fellow Catholics .”7 The maga-zine’s editor, Fr . Thurston N . Davis, S .J ., continued the rebuke: “Buckley is no ordinary person . It takes an appalling amount of self-assurance for a Catholic writer to brush off an encyclical of John XXIII as though it had been written by [… Commonweal editor] John Cogley .”8 These Catholics found Buckley’s treat-ment of the encyclical to amount to a clear demonstration of disrespect for the authority of the Pope . Getting the attention of even the New York Times, this was no small squabble .

Buckley responded to the America editors and to Davis per-sonally . “Do they sincerely believe that I have decided to reject the depositum fidei because along came an encyclical whose rhetorical emphases disappointed me?” He further clarified that “Actually, National Review has made no substantive criti-cism of Mater et Magistra… It merely pointed out that ‘coming at this particular time in history,’ parts of it may be considered as trivial .” In fact, NR’s only problem with the encyclical, Buckley contended, was its “order of emphasis”: The encyclical overly emphasized economic inequality while hardly mentioning the global advances in material well-being or the growing threat of communism . He went so far as to call the acts and words of these critics “scandalous” and ones of “opportunism” that con-fused “decorum” with “fidelity .”9

Thus, Buckley sought to fend off the claims that he was either

disloyal or disrespectful to the Church . Invoking notable Catholic fig-ures who respectfully dissented from the Church in their day, he wrote that he considered “the body of papal literature… [to be] the most important literature, in behalf of the highest claims of humankind .” In addition, Buckley still sought to defend his readership of conservative Catholics . To Davis, he described NR as a “great body of American Catholic opinion” with a “tru-er political expression of the faith of our fathers” than America magazine . He further described his magazine as the “journal which for five years now has given [conservative Catholics] the very best that large hearts, cultivated minds and militant spir-its have to offer, in defense of Christendom .”10 In other words, Buckley’s view was not just that NR had a legitimate claim to writing about Catholic matters, but that it also possessed an even greater ability to do so than its liberal counterparts .

Catholics on the Left were defensive of the encyclical and denounced Buckley so harshly not just because of their politi-cal disagreements . Besides undermining the Pope’s authority, Buckley seemed to also undermine the liberal Catholic project in America . According to Wills, this encyclical represented the Pope’s “first signal that he was opening up the church to the modern world,” and this was a “heady experience for American Catholics, who felt they were at last escaping the suspicion… that they were opposed to freedom of conscience and liberal democracy .”10 To these Catholics, Buckley seemed to undo “this long-overdue validation of Catholic liberalism” by chal-lenging the encyclicals, and when he wrote those words on its being a “venture in triviality,” the “cult of encyclicals [that] had made these letters so sacrosanct … read this as saying Catholi-cism itself must be a venture in triviality .”12 Thus, Buckley truly challenged the Catholics that had come to espouse liberalism in American politics; and in so doing, he offered a dissenting voice of conservatism and crafted the distinct viewpoint of the conservative Catholic, a project he continued to build upon for decades .

The Catholic Conservative

From the sixties through the eighties, National Review continued to maintain and augment a large non-Catholic

A highly conservative image, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.


readership, in addition to its Catholic readers . And aside from the troubles and squabbles among American Catholics in these first decades of the late twentieth century, conservatism similar-ly faced an identity crisis of sorts . Abroad, the threat of commu-nism was only escalating . At home, debate over New Deal poli-cies and Great Society programs continued . Moreover, America was going through a radical period of empowerment for blacks and for women . Consequently, NR had a void to fill: In addition to those who were Catholic, NR also had to appeal (and did appeal) to the growing coalition of the anti-communist hawks who cared for nothing but the Cold War, the classical liberals who deplored the “War on Poverty,” and the religious moral-ists who regretted—among other things—the decision of Roe v. Wade. Yet in each of these areas, Buckley regularly relied on his own religion to make fundamental arguments; his Catholicism acted, not as a fallback position, but as a perspective worthy of introducing and incorporating into the larger conservative movement .

A Just War Framework

During these three decades, with the Soviet Union maintain-ing its dominance, and with escalation in Vietnam, Buckley and National Review had the task of presenting an intellectual coun-terpoint to both communism and pacifism . In the arguments he and his staff presented against these forces lay a salient Catholic influence . With regard to communism, NR regularly portrayed it as an evil—as did most other conservatives, including Presi-dent Reagan . In a 1964 editorial, NR praised the incoming pon-tiff, Pope Paul VI, for his “momentous encyclical” that “re-con-demned Communism” and its false materialism and atheism that “deny God and oppress the Church .” The encyclical, titled Ecclesiam Suam (“His Church”), was the new Pope’s first, and NR saw it as signal-ing a change in direction from Pope John XXIII . The editorial even called Pope Paul “an ex-tremist in defense of the word of God .”12 For National Review, to fully appreciate what com-munism represented, one had to acknowledge that it failed to take into account the whole of the human being—the spiritual in addition to the physical .

When it came to pacifism, Buckley and his board used simi-lar rhetoric . As early as 1959, Buckley was calling pacifism a “Christian heresy that springs from critical misunderstand-ings .”14 NR later wrote as its editorial that pacifism was inher-ently unjust: “For every pacifist who refuses to take up arms, some other citizen, who would also prefer to live in peace, must take his place .” Importantly, however, the board explicitly grounded this conception of justice in the just-war doctrine and tradition of the Catholic Church .

In matters of foreign policy, therefore, NR presented just-war theory as the clearest lens through which to evaluate the war in Vietnam, the Cold War, and nuclear policy in general . First ap-plying it in 1967 to justify the Vietnam War, NR wrote that the doctrine states that a war is just “when greater evils would ensue

from not waging, than from waging, war”; and a “Communist victory” qualified as a greater evil with “disastrous” implications for the U .S .16 Arguing in 1971 against a “precipitate withdraw-al” from Vietnam, Buckley invoked just-war theory and quoted from Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, the developers of the Church doctrine .17

Later in 1983, defending the U .S .’s policy of nuclear deter-rence, the NR editorial board expressed just-war theory as an easily accessible framework to non-Catholics, with its prin-ciples of proportionality and target-discrimination . Moreover, by respecting the fact that “military and police power has been necessary from time immemorial to preserve civilized societ-ies… against unjust aggression and brutal violation of rights,” according to NR, just-war theory had “stood the tests of time .”18 As such, Buckley’s Catholicism managed to provide an intellec-tual footing of conservative foreign policy in this period of time .

The Principle of Subsidiarity

As suggested by his role in the Mater et Magistra controver-sy, Buckley also managed to infuse elements of Catholic social teaching into conservative economics . In squaring the posi-tions of National Review with those of the Church magisterium, Buckley enumerated as follows:

National Review believes in the primacy of the in-dividual . So do the Popes (cf ., Mater et Magistra) . National Review believes in private property . So do the Popes (cf ., Rerum Novarum, Q. Anno, et seq.) . National Review believes that no political agency should undertake a job which can be performed by a

private agency; and that no political agency of higher instance should undertake any job which a lesser political agency can undertake . So do the Popes (cf ., Re-rum Novarum, et seq.) .19

With respect to that final point made by Buckley, such is the Catholic principle known as

subsidiarity . NR had applied this principle to specific policies, including federal aid for education, arguing that subsidiarity was “another version of the decentralist notion of government recommended by Jefferson, Lincoln, and even Wilson .”20 This theory of governance done by the most local authorities and in-stitutions possible directed (and continues to animate) conser-vative thought, especially at a time in which there was sweeping federal legislation for civil rights and for poverty programs .

Specifically with respect to poverty, the question for the con-servative was not “Should the poor be helped?” That they should was already granted . The question was instead, “Are programs funded and administered by the national government the most effective way of accomplishing that goal?” For National Review, subsidiarity offered the solution, for it stressed the “importance of intermediate institutions in the addressing of social prob-lems, including poverty .”21 In the midst of the “War on Poverty,”

Buckley offered a dissenting voice of conservatism in the American Catholic community and, in so doing, shaped the distinct viewpoint of the

‘conservative Catholic.’


NR wrote: “One of the major costs of the extension of govern-mental welfare activities has been the corresponding decline in private charitable activities,” the latter approach being “in many ways the most desirable .”22 The preference resulted, not from greater efficiency, but from greater direct contact that allowed for more personal obligations to be fulfilled . On a very practical level, then, Buckley’s Catholicism provided a different perspec-tive on an already widely held belief among non-Catholic con-servatives that local government is preferable to federal govern-ment in directly administering services . In so doing, Buckley infused his faith into his belief in local governance, a belief that motivated many economic conservatives of the time .

A New Right for Life

One of the largest political realignments of the late twentieth century centered on the issue of abortion . Where today almost all prominent pro-life politicians are Republican and all pro-choice politicians are Democratic, before Roe v. Wade in 1973, this was not the case . “The Democratic Party with its heavily Irish Catholic leadership was generally on the side of life—but moving rapidly toward embracing the abortion license,” notes Catholic journalist Fr . Raymond J . De Souza .23 On the other hand, the Republican Party was still one that embraced pro-choice politicians like Goldwater and Rockefeller; even Reagan had signed a pro-choice bill into law as governor of California . But after the 1973 decision, Catholic conservatives, with the help of their co-religionists, were able to transform the GOP into a more pro-life party . In fact, by 1976 the Republican Party had adopted an explicitly pro-life position in its platform . Bill Buckley with his staunch pro-life stance, largely shaped by his Catholicism, played a major role in bringing about that shift and in making the conservative movement predominantly pro-life .

Even before Roe and the subsequent mobilizations to roll back its effects, Buckley and his editorial board had already been publicly denouncing abortion for years on the pages of National Review. In a 1970 editorial, NR published that “the advocate of abortion who denies that the fetus is human can scarcely do so with complete confidence .” And regardless of one’s position, no one “can be at ease with the fact that the city hospital down the street—tax-supported, by the way—might, just might, be committing, say, twenty thousand murders per year .”24 In his own column a year later, Buckley called for a national move-ment to coalesce around protesting abortion: “The Catholic bishops of America should initiate… a drive for the formal sup-port of those other religious leaders, and for that matter non-religious leaders, who agree with them that abortion ought not to be civilly sanctioned .” Furthermore, a “manifesto should be composed” by the Council formed with arguments and posi-tions that “call for the repeal of permissive abortion laws .” The “political program,” proposed Buckley, ought to call for “’round the clock picketing of identified abortion centers,” for “every public figure seeking state office” to openly declare his views on abortion, and for there to be a full-scale campaign with “writ-ers and speakers, theologians and lay-moralists, whose words

would be heard on national television and radio, in newspapers and in the learned journals .” This, Buckley called a “modest program”—in 1971 .25

Once the Supreme Court announced its decision two years later, it became clear that the editorial position of National Re-view would favor the pro-life cause . Less than a month after the decision, NR argued that the Court had “short-circuit[ed] the political process,” predicting that the decision would lead not only to the “alienation” from society of many religious citizens but also to “more fragmentation and philosophical confusion” that would have a “weakening effect on American society .”

Most notably, the mobilization of the pro-life movement manifested in the way Buckley had advocated . There were a number of avenues, and they began unsurprisingly with the Catholic bishops, who were only “galvanize[d]” by the Court decision “into renewed public statements and political action”:

Most of the church’s political activities have centered around various attempts to reverse Roe v. Wade through a constitutional amendment: the establishment of the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment as a lobby group, the launching and financing of the National Right to Life Committee, which later would become the independent right-to-life movement, and the bishops’ intervention in electoral politics, particularly in the 1976, 1980, and 1984 presidential campaigns .27

De Souza claims that it is “generally conceded that without the steadfastness of the Catholic Church in the 1970s, there would be no pro-life movement .”28 It is difficult to gauge exactly how much influence Buckley had on the bishops and organizational structures of the American Church, but there is no doubt that having the Catholic and ardently pro-life Buckley head the chief publication for conservatives at the time played a pivotal role in reshaping the conservative movement toward embracing the pro-life position .

The Things that Mater

“If you want a description of the Catholic Buckley, it will not be like Gradgrind’s horse but Chambers’ witness .” For accord-ing to Chambers, “A witness … is a man whose life and faith are so completely one that when the challenge comes to step out and testify for his faith, he does so, disregarding all risks, accepting all consequences .”29 Bill Buckley’s life and faith so in-tertwined . His Catholicism guided his conservatism; his con-servatism informed his Catholicism . He did not seek to make or wish to see the conservative movement, let alone the United States, become an entity of his faith, for he understood the im-portance of respectful disagreement and genuine debate . But in lasting ways, Buckley charted paths both for those Catholics who held conservative beliefs and, more obviously, for a con-servative movement that could find social, economic, or foreign policy grounding in Catholic teaching and tradition .

This article has endnotes. Find them on page 23!Rich Lizardo is a junior in Jonathan Edwards College. He ma-jors in History and is an Associate Editor of Light & Truth.


FEATURE

Central to the philosophy of Isaiah Berlin is a rejection of a single, absolute truth . Instead, Berlin promotes the con-cept of value-pluralism, the belief that there are numer-

ous conceivable ends that differ in accordance with one’s back-ground and context . Societies, individuals, and cultures might have preferences of values based on their history and experienc-es . I might value equality over liberty, beauty over justice, fair-ness over affluence, or morality over self-determination – but these are only my choices . They are particular . Options between values are frequently incompatible and sometimes incommen-surable with one another . Accordingly, some radical choice be-tween rationally incommensurable options is necessary; as Berlin writes, the choice “between absolute claims is…an inescapable characteristic of the human condition .”

The concept of negative liberty, the freedom from interference and imposition, is equally central to Ber-lin’s thought . Negative liberty plays an important role in value-pluralism in ensuring that the individual has the freedom to choose his or her own ends . But, if one is free to pursue one’s own ends, he or she could pursue an end that imposes values onto me . In this scenario, I would be deprived of both my negative liberty from imposition and my ability to choose between values . As such, there is a potential problem between the compatibility of negative liberty and value-pluralism .

My goal is to show, within the context of preserving the free-dom of choice, how value-pluralism and negative liberty can be compatible . It is important to clarify that my goal is not to demonstrate if or when they can exist apart . Nor is it my in-tention to address Berlin’s conception of positive liberty – the freedom of self-mastery – and its relation to value-pluralism . Instead, my focus rests upon the reconciliation of pluralism and negative liberty when brought together . I argue that among the

many values, the negative liberty to choose must reign supreme . It is only under a guarantee of the freedom to choose that value-pluralism can survive . To reach this conclusion, it is first neces-sary to identify and elaborate upon Berlin’s value-pluralism and liberalism, respectively .

In his 1995 monograph on Berlin, John Gray emphasizes two distinct elements to Berlin’s pluralism – the inevitability of conflict and the necessity of contextualization . The first level elaborates on the moral tragedy of irresolvable conflict between competing values . As scholar John Gray explains, “within any morality or code conduct such as ours, there will arise conflicts

among the ultimate values…which neither theoretical nor practical rea-soning…can resolve .” Moreover, there exists no ultimate true end for mankind . Berlin firmly holds “that the belief that some single formula can in principle be found whereby all diverse ends of men can be harmoni-

ously realized is demonstrably false .” No system of logic or rational reason-ing can present us a winner between competing ends . Instead, the plurality of values gives way to a plurality of ir-resolvable conflict, leaving us “doomed to choose” between these conflicting values . It is because these conflicting values are so often irreconcilable that

we value the freedom to choose .The second element of value-pluralism claims that different

contexts generate different values, “constitutive ingredients in whole ways or styles of life .” Drawing heavily on the Counter-Enlightenment, Berlin borrows Herder’s belief that we can only understand the ends of others by understanding the contexts and cultures in which they make their choices between values . The ends of societies and individuals, then, “differ because lives differ .” In contrast to the theoretical models of Hegel, Descartes and Fichte, Berlin’s perspective contains a certain level of prag-matism . Our understanding of others is not rooted in theory

Liberalism Before PluralismReconciling Value-Pluralism and Negative Liberty in Isaiah BerlinBy David Lilienfeld

“…total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs…” - Isaiah Berlin,

Can we? Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

If a respect for value-pluralism comes before an assurance of negative liberty, the floodgates are open for individuals to pursue options that interfere with someone else’s pursuits and choices.


or a priori laws—it cannot “be savoured by the scholar in his armchair—but is intelligible only to those who have placed themselves in situations similar to the conditions in which such words sprang into existence .” It should be of no surprise that Berlin’s categorization of political theory is also rooted in expe-riential knowledge .

Surely, however, there are limits to the reach of Berlin’s plu-ralism . Perhaps these limits can even safeguard one’s freedom to choose from being encroached upon . What is clear is that his goal is in no way to justify atrocious actions by way of dif-ferent preferences of values . Berlin writes, “[if] I find a man to whom it literally makes no difference whether he kicks a pebble or kills his family…I shall not be disposed…to attribute to him merely a different code of morality from my own or that of most men, or declare that we disagree on essentials, but shall begin to speak of insanity and inhumanity…I do not regard such a being as being fully a man at all .” Thus, Berlin seems to suggest that there are a certain range of values that is acceptable to choose from . The values of a man who kills his family as easily as he kicks a pebble clearly fall out of any morally ac-ceptable range .

The killer, however, is an extreme example and gives us little guidance about where to find the begin-ning and end of this range . What then constitutes the boundaries of these universal categories of moral thought? The closest answer Berlin offers is that our understanding of morality is rooted in our idea of man . “Our conscious idea of man” he writes, “of how men differ from other entities, of what is human or inhuman – involves the use of some among the basic categories in terms of which we perceive… To analyse the concept of man is to recognize the categories for what they are .” Inherent to our conception of hu-manity is the recognition of these basic categories and to think of someone as a human being is to ipso facto bring all these notions into play . However, although these categories are cen-tral to our understanding of others, we cannot decouple them from our understanding others or articulate exactly what they are; they can only be expressed through the same epistemology that defines value-pluralism: the common sense of the human experience . This experiential epistemology allows Berlin to link value-pluralism with the categories it falls into . Value-pluralism necessitates our understanding that ends are many, and while we might not seek or agree with these ends, we can understand how others might . This understanding is determined by what we identify as common to our human experience . “Forms of life differ . Ends, moral principles, are many . But not infinitely many: they must be within the human horizon .”

Perhaps then, Berlin leaves his definition of categories inten-tionally vague, instead deferring its delineation to the individ-ual’s “empirical experience .” The man who would kill his family falls out of the universal categories not by some systematized set of rules, but by Berlin’s common sense and experiential

epistemology . The inherent weakness of this idea of moral cat-egories is that only those who have a similar common sense as Berlin can share it . For me to agree with Berlin that the killer is crazy (which I of course, do), necessitates that I have a some-what similar outlook as he .

What happens if my outlook is profoundly different? What if my experiences give me a different understanding of the “hu-man horizon”? A more realistic example than the man who kills his family is the practice of human sacrifice . The Aztecs, who were by all historical accounts a prosperous and advanced civilization, regularly engaged in rituals of human sacrifice as part of their religious observance . The Aztec’s empirical obser-vations and societal context dictated that sacrificing a young woman from their community to the gods was not only within the realm of moral categories, but was the norm . Would human sacrifice then count as within Berlin’s realm of universal moral categories? Was human sacrifice for the Aztecs not analogous

to taking communion or blowing the shofar is for Catholics and Jews today? The point I am trying to make is that perceptions of moral categories are not in fact universal, but can differ tremendously based on one’s starting point . As a result, there is nothing inherent in these categories that protects our free-dom to choose, To find such a pro-tection, we need to look elsewhere .

On one hand, negative liberty—the freedom from interference—is arguably the central component of value-pluralism because it ensures the agent is unconstrained in his right to choose between values .

Negative liberty, to use Gray’s language, has “pre-eminent value for Berlin, because it facilitates human self-creation by choice-making among goods and evils that are rationally incompa-rable .” In other words, negative liberty protects not only our choices, but also our very ability to choose . As men come to recognize, by way of experiential observation, that some val-ues are inevitably incompatible, they will savor their freedom to choose between these values . This affords every individual the right to live as he chooses .

Some claim that, because there are a given number of values that differ depending on the individual, a governing authority does not have a right to impose any particular set of values on its people . Consequently, individuals would be free from inter-ference to make their own choices among the plurality of val-ues . While this might theoretically be the case, it is highly un-realistic in practice . In keeping with Berlin’s inclination towards common sense as the best way of understanding, my common sense tells me that no illiberal leader would abandon his or her agenda just because value-pluralism dictates that they do not have the right to impose their values . Suppose that there was a despot who accepted Berlin’s thesis of value-pluralism . He be-lieved that values were numerous, determined by context, and sometimes come into conflict . Moreover, he accepted that ev-ery individual, himself included, sought different ends simply

There is a certain set of values that it is morally acceptable to choose from. The values of a man who kills his family as easily as he kicks a pebble fall far

outside this set.


David Lilienfeld is a junior in Ezra Stiles College. He is pursuing dual majors in History and Political Science, focusing especially on the History of Ideas.

Ideas Have Consequences, Continued

Great writers are wont to coin great phrases, and Weaver has left behind at least one: “The Great Stereopticon .” Such was his name for the media bar-rage to which Americans were nearly constantly subjected, and though in 1948 this consisted chiefly of the radio, the mo-tion picture, and the newspaper, Weaver was already horrified at the Stereopticon’s effects on cul-ture . He saw that it was no mere neutral medium but a steady in-travenous injection of material-ism, hedonism, sensationalism, and frivolity directly into the bloodstream of John Q . Public, “the systematic indoctrination from day to day of the whole citi-zenry through channels of infor-mation and entertainment .”

Though Ideas Have Consequences does not enjoy the fame accorded to many inferior books in the canon of Ameri-can conservatism (God and Man at Yale comes to mind), it has at least attained

the status of a cult classic, particularly among those associated with the Inter-collegiate Studies Institute, which Weav-er helped found . It is regrettable that the same is not true of his “Southern essays,”

the most characteristic and the most per-sonal department of his work . Weaver was always proud of his Southernness, regarding it as a bulwark of values against the greater materialism of American so-ciety in general . In a number of critical

essays Weaver refined this intuition into a compelling vision of the South and its place in the American Union .

Though not blind to the South’s pres-ent failings and historical sins, Weaver

maintained that the traditional virtues of the region—its religious vision of the whole, its closeness to the earth, and its skepticism of overweening dialectical rea-son—were the Union’s only hope-ful ballast against nihilism . In two essays, “The Older Religiousness of the South” and “Two Types of American Individualism,” he artfully contrasts Southern real-ism—realism about God and hu-man nature, the most important kind—with the Yankee tendency to be lost in airy abstractions, the tendency that dissolved North-ern Protestantism into liberal-

ism and Northern individualism (here the exemplar is Thoreau) into eccentric self-righteousness . Weaver was fond of postulating that these virtues in South made it the “fly-wheel” of the nation, a fly-wheel being “defined by the science of

FEATURES CONTINUED

because their lives differed . However, although he recognized that some of his subjects would make different decisions than he would have, he imposed his own decisions upon them . Why? He’s got the gun; he’s in charge .

This situation presents most pressing challenge to Berlin’s project of value-liberalism and negative liberty—noth-ing in Berlin’s thought actually privileges liberalism . Although there are perhaps particular sets of values in which liberal-ism and value-pluralism are compatible and mutually reinforcing, these are only particular perspectives, dictated by par-ticular communities or individuals, and in particular contexts . Liberty might be the value of preference for most in the West, but it is just one of many . Perhaps in the East they would choose equal-ity over negative liberty, or in Polynesia, they might choose beauty . In any case, this objection of Berlin has some merit .

Nonetheless, it does not mean that negative liberty and value-pluralism are irreconcilable . Value-pluralism without

the freedom to choose is futile . Imagine a boy is given $2 by his mother to spend in the candy store . This $2 gives him a choice between 10 different types of candy . The boy has the freedom to choose the candy he likes best based on his personal pref-erences and leaves the store very happy . Now, suppose the boy enters the candy store with the same $2 and is presented with the same 10 choices of candy . How-ever, his mother makes him to buy one different from his favorite . What good is the selection of candies when he is forced to choose a particular one, especially the one he doesn’t like?

The phrase freedom to choose seems to imply that freedom predicates choice . If value-pluralism predicated choice, a more accurate title would be ‘the choice of freedom’ . Furthermore, if the respect of value-pluralism comes prior to an assurance of negative liberty, the flood-gates are open for individuals to pursue options which interfere with someone else’s pursuits and choices . Thus, negative liberty must be respected as an absolute,

not just one of many in the plurality, in order to ensure that individuals are free to choose among the plurality of further values .

I recognize that making negative liberty an absolute value consequently weakens the reach of value-pluralism, i .e . it denies the freedom to choose ends that suppress others’ freedom to choose . I also acknowledge that this, in turn, strength-ens the claim of liberalism, perhaps at the expense of other competing values such as equality or beauty . Nonetheless, my ar-gument rests on the belief that these con-cessions are necessary in allowing value-pluralism and negative liberty to co-exist harmoniously . In short, if the freedom to choose is itself only a choice, then Berlin’s project of value-pluralism is defeated . &

For all his attunement to history’s tragedies, Weaver never lost hope in Western civilization, though it seems that his hope held out more from a sense of duty than

asincere conviction.


FEATURES CONTINUED

William F. Buckley Jr., continued

1 . Garry Wills, Why I Am a Catholic (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003), 46–47 .2 . Rev . Raymond J . De Souza, “His Cath-olic Legacy,” in WFB: The Tribute (New York: National Review Books, 2008), 54; George Weigel, “Remembering Bill Buckley,” no date, http://www .eppc .org/publications/remembering-bill-buckley .3 . William F . Buckley, Jr ., “Standing Athwart History,” in Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animad-version, and Illuminations, ed . Linda Bridges and Roger Kimball (New York: Encounter Books, 2010), 6–8 .4 . John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, En-cyclical of Pope John XXIII on Christian-ity and Social Progress, Vatican Website, May 15, 1961, http://www .vatican .va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/doc-uments/ hf_j-xxiii_enc_15051961_ma-ter_en .html, sec . 54 . 5 . “The Week,” National Review, July 29, 1961 .6 . “For the Record,” National Review, August 12, 1961 .7 . “Rap at Papal Encyclical By Maga-zine Held ‘Slanderous,’” The Catholic Transcript, August 17, 1961, Accession 97-M-160, Group 576, Box 2, William F . Buckley, Jr . Papers, Manuscripts & Ar-chives, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut . Hereafter, WFBJP .8 . Quoted in John B . Judis, Wil-liam F . Buckley, Jr .: Patron Saint of the

Conservatives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 187 .9 . William F . Buckley, Jr ., “The Strange Behavior of America,” National Review, August 26, 1961; William F . Buckley, Jr ., “An Open Letter,” National Review, Sep-tember 23, 1961 .10 . Buckley, “An Open Letter”; William F . Buckley, Jr ., “Open Letter: Bill Buckley 11 . Replies to Donald McDonald,” The Wanderer, August 24, 1961, WFBJP .12 . Wills, Why I Am a Catholic, 45 .13 . Ibid .14 . “The New Pope,” National Review, August 25, 1964 .15 . William F . Buckley, Jr ., “Peace and Pacifism,” in Athwart History, 240 .16 . “Peace in the World Today: Catho-lic Perspectives,” National Review, April 1, 1983 .17 . “Laymen Lay Low,” National Review, January 10, 1967 .18 . William F . Buckley, Jr ., “The Bish-ops and the War,” in Athwart History, 436–37 .19 . “Peace in the World Today: Catholic Perspectives,” National Review .20 . Buckley, “The Strange Behavior of America .”21 . “We Say It’s Spinach,” National Re-view, March 18, 1961 .22 . Kevin E . Schmiesing, “Another So-cial Justice Tradition: Catholic Conser-vatives,” University of St . Thomas Law Journal 2, no . 2 (2005), 320 .23 . “The Alleviation of Poverty,” Nation-al Review, March 7, 1967 .24 . De Souza, “His Catholic Legacy,” 56 .25 . “Abortion,” National Review, June 30, 1970 .26 . William F . Buckley, Jr ., “How to Pro-test Abortion,” National Review, April 20, 1971 .27 . “The Death of Pluralism?” National Review, February 16, 1973 .28 . José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 193 .29 . De Souza, “His Catholic Legacy,” 56 .30 . Rev . George W . Rutler, “The Catholic William F . Buckley, Jr .,” Lecture, “A Cel-ebration of the Catholic William F . Buck-ley Jr .,” Portsmouth Institute Conference, Portsmouth Abbey School, Portsmouth, June 18, 2009 . &

mechanics as a large wheel, revolving at a uniform rate, the function of which is to stabilize the speed of the machine, slow-ing it down if it begins to go too fast and speeding it up if it begins to go too slow .”

At least one element in the Southern character, however, was not innate but acquired: the bitter experience of defeat and humiliation . In “Up from Liberal-ism,” Weaver related that the study of Southern literature from the period of the War between the States influenced him profoundly, teaching him that his-tory was something more complicated than the progressive triumph of liberty and enlightenment . Whether he actu-ally would have preferred that the South have won the war is difficult to make out; he venerated both Lee and Lincoln with an almost equal respect . At any event, he maintained that it was not an insig-nificant fact that “the Southerner is the only involuntary tenant in the American Union;” that this fact gave the Southern-er a knowledge of frustration and impo-tence, a “discipline in tragedy;” that this was the necessary complement to Amer-icans’ otherwise unchecked propensity for optimism . “The Southerner is like a person who has lost his innocence in the midst of persons who have not .”

For all his attunement to history’s trag-edies and turnarounds, Weaver never lost hope in Western civilization, even if it seems that his hope held out more from a sense of duty than from sincere conviction . Whether he would maintain this position were he alive today must be an enigma, although we can know that he would have deplored modernity . We can know also how he would have re-sponded to those who would dismiss his objections as the effluences of mere pes-simism and crankiness, the same way he responded to them in the mordant intro-duction to Ideas Have Consequences:

It will certainly be objected that the decadence of a present age is one of the permanent illusions of mankind; it will be said that each generation feels it with reference to the next in the same way that parents never quite trust the com-petence of their children to deal with the great world . In reply we must affirm that, given the condi-tions described, each successive

generation does show decline in the sense that it stands one step nearer the abysm . When change is in progress, every generation will average an extent of it, and that some cultures have passed from a high state of organization to dis-solution can be demonstrated as objectively as anything in history . One has only to think of Greece, of Venice, of Germany . The asser-tion that changes from generation to generation are illusory and that there exist only cycles of biological reproduction is another form of that denial of standards, and ulti-mately of knowledge, which lies at the source of our degradation . &

The above message from Yale’s fifteenth President, Charles Seymour, was published in the 1943 edition of the Yale Banner.

YALE HISTORY


REFLECTIONS

Negotiation requires trust, the conviction that both par-ties will keep their word even as the other looks away . With whom we negotiate, then, is a good barometer for

we trust . Read this into the dysfunction on Capital Hall . Our political

parties treat each other as opponents rather than teammates, enemies rather than fellow citizens . We talk of compromise, but negotiations continue to and through the eleventh hour, time and time again . We don’t trust each other, but we hesitate to say so outright, fearing additional political consequences . Such restraint is un-fortunate, for if we were more open about our anxieties, we might notice the absurdity of our outlooks .

Last November, President Obama confronted two “nuclear options” and, to the shock of many, elected to negotiate with Iran, a designated state-sponsor of terrorism, but not with his Republican colleagues in the Senate . In doing so, he show-cased the full absurdity of the grid-lock his administration has presided over .

Politics has always been and will always be dirty, yet something has changed in Washington . A “new normal” of dysfunction is working to our national detri-ment and it stems, I posit, from misplaced trust .

Two Nuclear Options

On paper, the interim deal with Iran—trading seven billion dollars in sanctions-relief for caps on and supervision of its nuclear program—seemed reasonable enough . Yet, the stron-gest critiques of the agreement related not to the details of the negotiated provisions but to the credibility of our negotiating partner . Should we really have placed our trust in an Islamist theocracy that has long supported the collapse, perhaps even the destruction, of a close ally? Do Iranian politicians, who have long decried the “corruption” of the West, feel any obliga-tion to keep their word to a Western power? Is this deal only

a smokescreen, giving the Islamist nation a breather before its final push for the bomb?

I don’t trust Iran; too soon, I fear we’ll see the Supreme Leader, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it, “laughing all the way to the bank .” But there may be something to be said for Obama’s idealism . His statement that “we cannot close the door on diplomacy” is predicated on the conviction that people can change, that rational argument and negotiation

can lead to peace and cooperation, even between bitter adversaries . He doesn’t believe that these methods are perfect—the several safeguards on the interim agreement attest to that—but he seems to maintain that a little bit of trust is worth a shot . This is, at a minimum, a noble sen-timent, though only time will tell whether its application was brilliant statesmanship or utter naiveté .

We will never know, however, whether this noble sentiment would have prevailed in the battle over judi-cial nominees, as the President never gave it a shot . Whereas Obama tout-ed peace and cooperation in nego-tiating non-proliferation with Iran,

these values were nowhere to be seen as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with the President’s express support, detonated the nuclear option in the Senate . This step, which eliminated the filibuster for all executive and most judicial appointments, will have a huge impact on the character of the judiciary .

The United States Courts of Appeal, over whose composition the President now holds unprecedented control, play an incred-ibly significant role in shaping the nation’s laws . Although rare-ly mentioned in the popular press, the federal appellate courts routinely resolve cases that are just as important as those before the Supreme Court . Additionally, all the lower courts, through the ways they rule, help determine which issues the highest court even considers .

Because these lower courts are so important, the judges on their benches matter . Thanks to the nuclear option, the Presi-dent was able to appoint his top-choice, radical judges to the

Misplaced TrustWhat Two “Nuclear Options” Tell Us About Federal GridlockBy Thomas Hopson

“One of the biggest obstacles we face is one of trust.” - Speaker of the House John

Boehner, on working with the President

Image Courtesy of the White House Photostream.


D .C . Circuit, the second most influential court in the country, well aware that their left-leaning dispositions will affect the court’s rulings for years to come .

But that’s not the worst of it . From now on, because neither Party will need to seek bipartisan approval for its nominees, they will both have the incentive to appoint radical judges who will most reliably aid their policy interests—in other words, those with the most rigid judicial philosophies . For every new Ginsburg on the court, there will be another Scalia and two few-er Kennedys . No interest group would favor such a lineup and the unpredictable doctrines it is bound to design .

That is what makes the elimination of the filibuster so trou-bling . In deploying the nuclear option, the President was con-scious of this long-term outcome; the fear of a polarized judi-ciary has been the argument in favor of the judicial filibuster for over a hundred years . He was also aware that Republicans held the same concern . So why go nuclear?

The answer is simple; he simply did not trust Senate Republi-cans . Although the two parties had common ground they could have built upon, the possibilities of peace and cooperation that Obama saw so vividly with Iran were blurry in Washington .

The nomination of Judge Sri Srinivasan gives us a picture of what this cooperation might have looked like . The type of mod-erate candidate whose service to the judiciary rarely made the nightly news, Srinivasan was the ideal choice for a nominee . It is not surprising, then, that when the President nominated him for the D .C . Circuit last May, the Senate approved him with a unanimous vote (97-0) . This overwhelming support showed that, despite the rhetoric of the Senator Majority Leader, Re-publicans were not opposed to accepting moderate, widely pal-atable judicial nominees .

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing for Judge Patricia Millett, an Obama nominee, further attests to this . The Republican members of the Committee praised Mil-lett’s credentials and remarked that, in another political climate, she would have been an obvious choice for the office . Yet before this meeting and in response to criticism of the two more radi-cal nominees to the court (Nina Pillard and Robert Wilkins), the President declared he would not settle unless all three of his nominees were confirmed .

Throughout the whole affair, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was told he had two options: support the appoint-ment of all three nominees or Harry Reid would change Senate rules and confirm all three nominees anyway . The possibility of compromise—perhaps accepting Millett in exchange for retain-ing the filibuster—was not on the table . The President, armed with the nuclear option, was not interested in negotiation .

Hence a startling picture emerged . The President was will-ing—against strong odds and the judgment of both his advi-sors and allies—to trust that Iran negotiated in good faith . If he miscalculated, one of our most dangerous enemies has gained the time and economic breathing room to build a weapon that threatens the world . And yet, he was not willing to extend that same olive branch of peace and cooperation to Republicans in the Senate . His fellow citizens failed to share his views on the federal courts and, because they might have delayed the filling of three federal judgeships, were unworthy of trust .

Misplaced Trust: Where We Went Wrong

The two nuclear options were not isolated events . In his State of the Union address last month, the President declared that his regulatory agenda, like his judicial appointments, would pro-ceed with or without Congressional approval; “America does not stand still, and neither will I .” In that spirit, the White House released a memo describing twenty “key” Executive Actions it will take this coming year . Highlights include those enacting new (expensive) energy efficiency standards, creating new (ex-pensive) “Manufacturing Innovation Institutes,” and raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers .

These executive actions, like the two nuclear options that preceded them, represent a dismissal of Congress as funda-mentally untrustworthy, a claim that is both factually tenuous and politically imprudent . Although the State of the Union promised heavy use of executive authority, it also made clear that the President’s most impactful policies could only move forward with Congressional, i .e . Republican, support . With that in mind, banning the Republicans from the negotiating table looks like a poor calculation .

Of course, this problem goes beyond the President . Readers have no doubt that Mitch McConnell thinks as little of Harry Reid as Harry Reid thinks of Mitch McConnell . Because un-usually high political tensions can be found on both sides of the American isle, placing all the blame on one man would be intellectually dishonest .

Yet, the role of the President is to lead . Past officeholders have had profound impacts on the national consciousness, not only through their legislative visions, but also through the examples they set for right conduct . As the United States waged war with Nazi Germany, President Roosevelt implored Americans at home to restrict their own consumption for the good of their countrymen fighting across the Atlantic . They listened, making what economists would call an “irrational” decision on the basis of moral and patriotic principles .

The claim, humble in nature, is that a President’s signaling—the tone that his words and actions convey—has a profound impact on the way the country understands itself . If President Roosevelt could inspire the American people to believe they were in all “in this” together, it seems rather straightforward that President Obama, through his demonstrated distrust of his countrymen, might provoke the opposite sentiments . By setting a poor example, he led those watching him down the wrong path .

That said, it is possible that a better example might help cor-rect their course . If the President is to make something out of his second term, he needs to address either the reality or the perception of his misplaced trust . Whether or not he actually believes Republicans are less trustworthy than Iran’s Supreme Leader, he needs to practice the values of peace and cooperation that he touted throughout the Iranian nuclear deal and reopen the negotiating table on Capital Hill . To do otherwise further fractures an already delicate political system . &

Thomas Hopson is a sophomore in Trumbull College. He ma-jors in History and is the Editor-in-Chief of Light & Truth .


Professor Hill’s vision of history spans from Homer’s Greece to Assad’s Syria . The past and the

present come together in his study of governance, for he believes that it is only through reading the great texts that we can formulate a ‘grand strategy’ fit for our time . In addition to teaching the sec-ond semester of Directed Studies, Grand Strategy, and Oratory in Statecraft, Pro-fessor Hill has recently introduced a new seminar called Aristotelian Statecraft . In it, he presents the idea that statecraft is a practical art that, just like fishing and rowing, requires the development of hab-its and the discovery of fixed principles . Practing the ideas he teaches, Hill keeps a skull on the Housatonic River . We met in his book-lined office to discuss these themes of practice and principle as they relate to Yale .

L&T: What you’ve been thinking about recently? What piques your curiosity?

Professor Hill: That usually is on two, or three, levels . One is what’s going on in the world, so that’s the Middle East and the question of the structure of world af-fairs . I’ve been working with Henry Kiss-inger on a book on world order, so we’re thinking about that, and things keep coming along like the Syria nerve gas situation and the remarkable diplomatic strange fiasco that’s come out of that . So that’s one thing .

The other is the courses that I’m teach-ing, because the courses are usually new and they drive me into works that — it turns out when I do a course that’s new that I realize after I’ve launched it that in fact I’ve been reading about that course in my head for forty years or so; it’s sort of all there, and I go back to the things that I’ve read that have led me in this di-rection and I go on into new avenues that open up .

For the course on Aristotelian State-craft, the are things like Captain Cook’s journals that I had read in part, and then I read the whole thing . There are aspects

of that course, like Alasdair McIntyre’s After Virtue that I’ve read a long, long time ago, but I go back and now I see new things in it that I didn’t see then . I’m get-ting into John Dewey, which I’ve never enjoyed, didn’t like, and still can’t really figure out, but I see that Dewey has this way of doing things that I now see more value in .

There’s that, and then the background below that are the things that I just read all the time anyway, no matter what else is going on, and that’s usually literature, and sort of poetry and great works -- not contemporary literature much, but things that are classic classics .

L&T: You do seem to have this holistic approach to teaching and to thinking: do you think that the divisions that we make between subject areas are artificial, or even damaging to the way that we think?

Hill: That’s a very important point: the

creation of the disciplines and depart-ments and majors was a great intellectual breakthrough, because you need to really focus on something to be able to know it fully and to make advances in it . I think what’s happened in the last quarter cen-tury or so is that it’s gone to far, and that we’ve become more fragmented than we should be, and more specialized, and so people don’t feel comfortable crossing fences .

That’s why I think that there is, as I see it, greater student interest in the multi-disciplinary places you can go, like the Humanities Major and Economics, Poli-tics, and Economics, things where you can pull it all together, and in some ways they’re not going to tell you “I’m sorry, you’re not allowed to talk about that because it’s not my field .” This has been exacerbated by the economic downturn, and a general trend anyway toward more materialistic and vocational thinking .

So this is a really significant matter in higher education: vocationalization . I think it’s bound to come, and it’s a good thing in a way . Too many universities, educational institutions tried to turn themselves into something like Yale, but they really didn’t do it, and they didn’t do a very good job at becoming a type of Yale, and they didn’t do the full job vo-cationally either, and now that’s perhaps rectifying itself .

The vocationalization of the univer-sity is a good thing in some ways, but it shouldn’t be taken into every aspect of education, it shouldn’t reach Yale, be-cause the most deadly words are “what are you going to do with that?” That phrase really killed one education after another; it means you’ll get a job right out of college, but you won’t be an edu-cated person .

L&T: Does Yale still retain, you think, that special quality, that liberal, broad education .

Hill: Yeah, I think very much . I know about some other universities [Hill spends his summers teaching at Stan-ford], and I think Yale is at the forefront of trying to hold that line . President Levin was very strong on this, and President Salovey is clearly in the same lineage . &

In Conversation with Professor Charles HillAn Interview Conducted by Hannah Carrese

Charles Hill encourages his students to see the big picture. Image Courtesy of Michael

Marsland/Yale University.

Q & A

Hannah Carrese is a sophomore in Pier-son College. She is a Humanities major.

“What are you going to do with that?’’ That phrase really killed one education after another; it means you’ll get a job right out of college, but you won’t be an

educated person.”

IPSA SCIENTIA POTESTAS ESTMATERIAM SUPERABAT OPUSETIAM CAPILLUS UNUS HABET UMBRAM

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LIBENTER HOMINES ID QUOD VOLUNT CREDUNTMENDACEM OPORTET ESSE MEMOREMLEVE FIT, QUOD BENE FERTUR, ONUS

TIMENDI CAUSA EST NESCIRENIL ACTUM REPUTA SI QUID SUPEREST AGENDUM

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LUX ET VERITAS

light & truth february 2014

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