When American conservatism becomes un-American
From Harvard Law School comes the latest conservative flirtation with authoritarianism. Professor Adrian Vermeule, a 2016 Catholic convert, is an integralist who regrets his academic specialty, the Constitution, and rejects the separation of church and state. His much-discussed recent Atlantic essay advocating a government that judges the quality and moral worth of public speech is unimportant as a practical political manifesto, but it is symptomatic of some conservatives fevers, despairs and temptations.
Common-good capitalism, a recent proposal by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), is capitalism minus the essence of capitalism limited government respectful of societys cumulative intelligence and preferences collaboratively revealed through market transactions. Vermeules common-good constitutionalism is Christian authoritarianism muscular paternalism, with government enforcing social solidarity for religious reasons. This is the Constitution minus the Framers purpose: a regime respectful of individuals diverse notions of the life worth living. Such respect is, he says, abominable.
Vermeule would jettison libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology. And: Libertarian conceptions of property rights and economic rights will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources. Who will define these duties? Integralists will, because they have an answer to this perennial puzzle: If the people are corrupt, how do you persuade them to accept the yoke of virtue-enforcers? The answer: Forget persuasion. Hierarchies must employ coercion.
Common-good constitutionalisms main aim, Vermeule says, is not to minimize the abuse of power but to ensure that the ruler has the power needed to rule well. Such constitutionalism does not suffer from a horror of political domination and hierarchy because the law is parental, a wise teacher and an inculcator of good habits, wielded if necessary even against the subjects own perceptions of what is best for them. Besides, those perceptions are not really the subjects, because under Vermeules regime the law will impose perceptions.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-american-conservatism-becomes-un-american/2020/05/28/336a953a-a0f6-11ea-b5c9-570a91917d8d_story.html
Even George Will is now recognizing the Republican Party as the party of traitors.
Me.
(35,454 posts)and explains Barr
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)Look at the historic violence of Europe (mostly the fault of the RCC).
BadgerMom
(2,771 posts)all are Catholic conservatives. I dont dislike Catholics (my dad was Catholic) or Catholicism. I despise authoritarians.
underpants
(182,823 posts)Thanks.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,348 posts)Karadeniz
(22,526 posts)Edwcraig
(290 posts)Democracy works when Democracy if allowed to work. When Democracy is perverted by anti Democratic forces, such as oligarchs controlling government by buying elected officials and using fascist propaganda to pit one group of citizens against another, Democracy fails. Enlightened despots by any other name are despots. Prevent the oligarchs from controlling government. Democracy will become again the best form of government.
Nay
(12,051 posts)Aristus
(66,380 posts)right around the time the House Un-American Activities Committee was formed...