Libya

Sigh. Catholic Priest Whoops It Up For Unconstitutional Military Assassinations

by on May 3, 2011 @ 12:54 am · 4 comments

in Imperialism, Police Statism, The Left, The Right, Vulgar Politics, War

One thing about Catholics is that, when it comes to partisan politics, they’re split pretty evenly. Only deeply ignorant people lump Catholics in with the “Religious Right” since about half of them are on the religious left. Many are admirably antiwar, and of course, there is even a nice anarchist pacifist tradition, in which one finds Dorothy Day or Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy.

Some Catholics, however, are absolutely terrible on issues of nationalism and war. This article below, written by a priest with whom I broadly agree on almost all theological and liturgical issues, was particularly tasteless. Fr. Zuhlsdorf, who is generally sound when writing about things that he actually knows something about, always ends up toeing the neoconservative line every time he ventures into foreign policy. Most clergy can be safely ignored when opining on political matters, and this case is no different. The text of his irreligious column is below with my comments in brackets.

Usama Bin Laden … Rest in… well… whatever… [How classy. Zuhlsdorf must have forgotten about Matt 5:44.]
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Pres. Obama announced tonight, fairly late on a Sunday night, that Usama Bin Laden was killed a week ago, as it seems.

I am guessing that he made this announcement tonight, USA, time, so that people rising in other parts of the world would get the fresh news during the morning at the beginning of a week, as markets open, etc. Had it come at the end of the week, it would have been fodder for Friday evening Muslim sermons. [Because all Muslims liked Osama bin Laden, you see. This assumption that all Muslims support violence is at the heart of the neocon ideology. Always ignored is the fact that a majority of "Christian" Americans support the dropping of American bombs on Muslim women and children.] It still will be, but after several days.

Nevertheless I find the timing of both the event of his killing by a small team of US operatives in a fire fight and the release of the news interesting. One friend called me to opine that they actually found him at a Taco Bell in North Carolina and flew him back to Pakistan before… you know. [ho ho] Moreover, the President seems now to be ready to quote a standard of American patriotism, the Pledge of Allegiance, with its strong invocation of God, when for sometime he couldn’t bring himself to quote the Declaration of Independence [written by an anti-Christian Deist] correctly with its reference to a Creator who gives us our rights. [Yeah! Why can't Obama be more like Bush who once said that the Constitution "is just a goddamn piece of paper."] Color me cynical.

[Keep reading…]

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On Decapitating the State

by on February 27, 2011 @ 8:22 am · 2 comments

in Anti-Statism, Libertarian Theory

In Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s writings on problems with democracy, he points out that one advantage of monarchy over democracy is that there is a clearer distinction between the ruler and the ruled; so that if the monarch starts to become despotic, he can at least in principle be killed or removed from power. At least the people know who to aim their ire at. In democracy, the state is bureaucratized and distributed, and the line between ruler and ruled is blurred–because citizens can vote, they accept the propaganda that “we are the government.”

Recent protests in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen help illustrate this–there, the people are fed up with rule by brutal strongmen, thugs and dictators, so demand their ouster. Success is not guaranteed but the people at least have a target for their anger. In the western democracies, protests of this type are inconceivable. Half the country voted for Obama, so there would never be mass protests. And he’ll be out of office in 2 or 6 years in any case, so why bother protesting to kick him out a bit earlier. And even if he is somehow ousted, he’ll be replaced with another plastic man. While regicide is possible with a monarchy or even dictatorship, it’s not so easy to decapitate a democratic state; it’s more like a hydra. The most we can expect in a democracy are protests by special interest groups demanding more loot from the state (such as the pathetic protests by the state teachers’ unions in Wisconsin) or reform of a particular law (such as medical marijuana or gay marriage). And when 5% of the populace pays most of the income tax, don’t expect widespread protests against confiscatory tax rates.

This is not to say that rule by dictatorial thugs is preferable to modern democracy–Hoppe’s work compares modern democracy to limited, traditional monarchies, not to dictators and absolute emperors–but it does help highlight why it’s so difficult to reform a democratic state.

[LRC cross-post]

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