For some years now I have tried to get people to appreciate the explanatory value of looking at the present state of the so-called “Two-Party System” in the United States as a sham; a fabrication dominated by the powers-that-be in control of a single elitist faction. The participants in that faction are hostile to the constitutional self-government of the American people. They reject the premise of God-endowed right, its provisions available by nature to every human being. They reject the constitution of just government, constrained to respect the rights that arise from the willingness to put right into practice (exercise it) by deliberately respecting its terms for the use of human freedom.
In a word, people who embrace the agenda of the elitist faction reject the promise of the American Republic, the promise of liberty and justice that is made by all, and may therefore be presumed to be their common good and shared responsibility. In our constitutional republic the conjunction of liberty and justice, according to the standard of right as God endows it, is supposed to guide and therefore constrain each individual’s power to act freely. In human terms that power is the natural capacity to act in this way or that according to one’s own self-determined and deliberate choice.
Human freedom is, of course, not the only form of power. As Thomas Hobbes suggests somewhere, power is made manifest throughout nature as each object acts according to the terms of its distinct existence, like water running downhill, or the sun heating some portion of the earth. But the distinct power of human nature has something to do with the special capacity to defy the terms of our existence in respect of nature in general. Something within us can stand apart from the inclination to run this way or that. We can consider alternatives in light of the future each implies, and decide which will represent(s) the commitment of our being.
This is the capacity that allows each human being to be, like Lady Macbeth, “transported … beyond this ignorant present” and to “feel … the future in the instant.” Present and future commingle in the prospect of the different possibilities that will follow from the different actions we may take, until the moment comes when we commit in action to one of those possibilities so that, because we are acting in one way we are no longer free to act in another. We call the process of consideration that precedes that moment of commitment “deliberation,” precisely because it is the process that, by choice, will set a term or limit to our freedom to take action, as what we are doing carries us away from all that we otherwise might have done.
Though in his account of nature the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, sometimes speaks as if this process of deliberation applies to all natural objects, we make an implicit distinction between the inclination within us that accounts for our deliberate actions, and what comes over us when we act without deliberation. A sudden access of rage or lust may lead individuals to do something that, even a moment later, they disown with deep and genuine regret. Thus, though we are capable of deliberate choice, some actions that we take seem to be the immediate result of overpowering force, ruling us as an apple is ruled when it falls from a tree; driving us according to a will we do not, in the instant, feel free to resist.
In his epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul refers to this as “the law in our members.” It is the law by which plants are governed, as well as insects and animals, who appear to be more reliably ruled by instinct than we are. But as we disown, with deep regret, actions that arise from following this natural law, we become more poignantly aware of our will, which is to say our capacity to imagine alternative courses of action. This work of our imaginations may inflict enormous pain upon us following actions we sincerely regret. As the thought of our action recurs to us, our pain is exacerbated because we can imagine ourselves in a situation where we somehow prevented or avoided the action that causes it. We disown the one and feel deeply that the other somehow belongs to our true selves.
Ironically this deep sense of belonging in some world other than the one that corresponds to our impulsive action bears witness to the existence within us of a will that does not correspond to the will that governs nature in general. We can distinguish, for example, between an act of love replete with a deep sense of longing, and an act of rape perpetrated in the throes of selfish, violent passion. One we affirm as our belonging, the other we inwardly disown, even if and when we are called to answer for it.
What constitutes the difference between them? It is partly a feeling, partly a thought. When the feeling of belonging coincides with the thought of our responsibility for what we have done, we are comforted, we feel strengthened and affirmed, as if all is right with the universe. But when the thought of our responsibility coincides with a feeling of revulsion, we are alienated; we feel oppressed, burdened and estranged as if nothing we do can ever set things right. The knowledge of and within ourselves that sets up this conflict is the combination of reflection and immediate experience (thought and feeling) that answers to the vocation of conscience. It is the existential proof of our natural disposition to do right.
But obviously the standpoint of right this disposition involves does not simply correspond to the general rule of nature, for conscience may lead us to regret and mourn actions that result from a sudden access of natural passion. Conscience must therefore be governed by another law, rooted in some inward disposition of our mind. It allows us to stand apart, at least in thought, from the natural flow of existence. Thus we can ponder possibilities that differ from its present tenor. These possibilities represent different “futures,” a different “will,” a different rule, arising from a different idea of the destination, resting point or goal of human action.
What is right according to nature may thus differ from what is right according to human nature. Actions that comport with our existence as natural things, not unlike stones or apples, may be incompatible with our existence as human beings, capable of perceiving and responding to a vocation that seems called to constrain nature in general, precisely because it is the will that preserves, understands and calls into existence everything within it.
This understanding comprehends the perpetrator of the deed, but also each and every thing his deed affects. It represents the irony of Creation, which preserves the universe for its own sake, but only by way of being the will that is given up so that everything, other than itself, may come into its own.
It is this aspect of conscientious grief that makes Macbeth lament: “If I had died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessed time.” Death itself seems preferable to the self-estrangement that accompanies the breach of law that betrays our distinctly human avocation — i.e., the natural calling that departs from the call of nature in order to answer the call of its Creator, God and so reflect in action the will that gives rise to all His creatures.
If we do not choose for ourselves, we reject the freedom that distinguishes our nature. But if we choose for ourselves alone, and not for the sake of God’s will for all the universe, we reject the calling that makes that nature our belonging as well as our responsibility. Liberty evokes the belonging. Justice evokes the responsibility. Their union is the unity that defines our common good, our common duty, our common sense of right. Nothing is more vital to our survival as a nation than to preserve that good, perform that duty, and respect that sense of right.
As we consider the choices we must make as citizens, what issues are more important than those that bear upon these tasks? Why is it then that, of the two choices the elitist faction’s parties are likely to offer us in the fall, the Democrat addresses these issues wrongly, and the so-called Republican doesn’t seriously address them at all? Instead they both invite us to obsess over external dangers and material deficiencies that are the consequence of our national dissolution, not its cause.
The partisan sham is turning our election into a contest of mutually degrading personalities, intended to distract from the fateful challenge to our national identity and character, a challenge that can only be addressed by restoring our good conscience, good faith and good will as a people. This sham is not good enough for liberty. It is not good enough for justice. There is nothing serious in such “politics” but frivolity and its really deadly moral and spiritual consequences.
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.
This is not good enough for the survival of our Republic, or the nation, under God, it is supposed to serve. So why are we accepting it?