Most of us, I daresay, are thankful for the Bill of Rights. Apart from the Tenth Amendment (‘a truism’, according to the Supreme Court), and perhaps the Ninth Amendment (‘the right to choose an abortion’), we would support emphatically every right listed — except, perhaps, the Second Amendment. In these days of professional military, even the first phrase rings hollow. Is a well regulated militia really necessary to the security of a free State? Manifestly not. Clearly, by its own provisions, the Second Amendment ought to be struck down.

There are only two situations in which the right to carry and bear arms might be of use for the security of a free State>: on the occasion of a military coup occurring without popular consent, or on the occasion that an elected representative becomes a tyrant.

The rise of the great Western democracies — America, England, France, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, New Zealand — clearly dates to around 1800 or 1900. These democracies are all vastly different, both in the composition of their citizenry and in the form of their government. The only thing that they have in common is this: that since their democratic inception, no duly elected government has ever assumed powers without the majority consent of the electorate. Even where these governments have assumed powers which we would consider tyrranical, they have held those powers only with the majority consent of the people.

This is most clearly evident in 1930s Germany. If ever there was an example of tyrrany, fascism in the 1930s provided it. Hitler was a totalitarian dictator. But unlike Stalin or Mao Tse Tung, he was elected, and therefore his survival hinged on keeping the populace happy. Despite all the setbacks which occurred from 1939 to 1945 to the German war effort, he refused to put his manufacturing industry on a war-time footing until 1944, simply for fear of popular outcry. This explains the paradox that, in the final year of the war, German war materiél production actually rose, despite heavy Allied bombing. Hitler, the worst totalitarian dictator of the century, could not rule without popular consent.

The criterion of public consent to governance, however, does not date to the 1900’s. It is a primeval principal, and I would assert that it was as true in Ancient Greece or Anglo Saxon England as in 20th century Germany. It may be objected that these were not democracies. In a kingdom — say the kingdom of England — at the time of say, Alfred the Great — it is true that there was no democratic election of representatives. But successive kingship, like successive priesthood, was considered to be from God, and therefore condoned by the public. To be a good king it was absolutely necessary to have popular support, or, at least, to avoid popular outrage, regardless of the equipment or organization of the people. Popular consent to governance is a fundamental principle of Western civilization.

Let us consider the second case: the possibility of a military coup without majority consent. What would such a coup involve? The standard tale of any military coup requires an Army officer, who is popular with both his regiment, and perhaps with the people at large, to seize power from the legitimate authorities. But it is clear that if a military leader is popular enough with both the Army and the people to seize power, then the government ought to be changed anyway.

That was the case in 19th century France, when Napoleon rose to power. The defeat in Italy and the woeful administration of the Directoire provoked a general desire in the people for a change of leadership; his personal charm and military success made him popular; in an evening, the government had changed. A military leader who is supported by the people to overthrow the government can never be prevented.

But what prevents the Army from coming unhinged, and overthrowing a government that the people do support? What prevents an Army leader, eager for glory, from marching on Washington, D.C.? What, in other words, prevents America from becoming second century Rome?

As we all know, Rome was plagued for years by civil war. After 100 BC, it was disturbed, in quick succession, by the wars of Marius and Sulla, the wars of Julius Caesar and Pompey, the wars of Augustus and Brutus, and the wars of Augustus and Anthony. Initially, these wars stemmed simply from a deep antipathy between the patricians and the plebeians. Later, as Rome grew to empire-wide dimensions, the wars became titanic power struggles between individual men. These men did not spring from nowhere.

In the beginning, as elected representatives (consuls) they commanded continuously warring armies in France, Spain and Persia. Their proportion of fame was entirely due to their success in war, and the fact that there were always two consuls lent itself well to producing archenemies. Another problem was that they were really under no control from the Senate in Rome. Outside Rome, they were supreme commanders of the Roman army, with full authority to levy war. On the other hand, they also feared the Senate: while they were away conducting campaigns, the Senate was quite able to control the city, and summarily ruin them on returning. This mixture of fear and guns was obviously disastrous.

Later, under the emperors, the army was more obviously a State pawn, and not a loose cannon. Unfortunately for the emperors, however, the armies were made up of soldiers who served for years without seeing their capital or head of state. They were not rotated, and so they developed an extreme loyalty to their legion and region. They were not paid very well, and so they were discontent. The soldiers employed were not Roman citizens. They felt no particular dedication to the Roman system of government, their country, or the well-being of other members of the Roman Empire. Combined with the fact that they were commanded by rich, powerful and occasionally inspirational members of the Imperial Court, this was, again, a very bad situation.

What makes it so unlikely that America should succumb to a military coup? A quick comparison to Roman insurgencies indicates that distance was a significant factor in all these revolts. Roman legions were at days’ distance from each other, and therefore they were impossible to supervise. American armies are always within radio call of Washington. Roman legions rarely saw the emperor, and felt more loyalty for their immediate commanders. American armies are connected by television and regular personal presence with the President and members of Congress. Roman soldiers became citizens after they left the Army. American soldiers are chosen for their patriotism, and only American citizens are chosen. They get paid enough so that they don’t riot.

More factors could be listed, but the difference is plain for all to see: American soldiers value their government for very strong reasons. They are not going to be subverted to the will of their commander. No militia is needed to guard against the revolt of these soldiers, and no militia could defend the people if the professional soldiery did revolt.

In sum: the spirit of popular government pervades Western democracy to such an extent that it is almost impossible to reverse it. In cases where the military have attempted to overthrow legitimately elected government, they have failed. Or, if they have succeeded, they have only succeeded where they have been practically foreign conquerors — as in the case of the Roman legions. In 1787, the reasoning employed in the Second Amendment may have been valid. It is not so now, and the conclusion is obvious: a well regulated militia is not necessary to the security of a free state. According to its own provisions, the Second Amendment ought to be struck down.

PHILIP HILTON

That is to say, when people look at the human psyche, I want the first thing they recognize to be that it’s broken and destructive. Inversely, when people think about depravity, I want them to recognize that it’s most apparent in the human psyche — our bodies in themselves don’t immediately evoke depravity; what goes on inside our heads that makes us do the things we do with our bodies does. Somewhat tangentially, I also want the church as a whole to find some way to interface its categories of mind, body, and spirit with psychological categories. I want to know how the soul relates to the superego.

2. I want a politics based on the church

I want Christians to stop being conservative and liberal. I want Peter Leithart to be right. I want a church that doesn’t put itself into cubbyholes and isn’t afraid to transcend the category of “religion”. More specifically, long-term, I want the church to make secular politics completely irrelevant.

3. I want an island geography

I want to live by the ocean, with a sailing boat and a small house. I want there to be beaches and islands, and I want to work every day by the water and then come back to my house. I want there to be people, but I don’t want them to live nearby, and I don’t want there to be any cars.

4. I want a historical and reactionary theology

If the early Christians weren’t intensely thinking about it, it’s not intensely important to me. Conversely, if something was important to them, it’s important to me. Out with the cult of the saints, in with eschatology and eucharist. I want theology to look less like scientific discovery and more like intellectual archaeology.

5. I want a liturgy that’s centered on reformation

Again, back to the early church; I don’t hold Luther in very high esteem, but I like the idea of reformation. In most of the circles I’ve been in, the church seems to me to be either dry or substanceless. I think that’s because the modern church has allowed itself to be cubbyholed (see #2) in ways the early church was not.

6. I want an ideology based on pragmatism

Cost-benefit analysis over self-righteous ideology. E.g. Don’t oppose welfare programs that actually help people just because it’s not conservative: if a UN program is feeding the hungry, then on some fundamental level, that’s a good program.

7. I want a glamorous indie rock & roll

I want knives in my music, and I want them to slice and sculpture ideas. I heard a love song by one of my least favorite bands today on a Top 40 station that talked about wanting to have ten kids and giving them everything. It’s a dumb song, but that’s interesting and subversive, and music today can be more influential than poetry ever was to any previous culture. I want mainstream music that makes people have ideas and messes with the ideas that they have. I want music to be a forum for emotions. And I want it to sound really good.

8. I want a narrative doctrine

I want what it means to be Christian to be most fundamentally tied up in whether one fits oneself into the long narrative in which Jesus’ death and resurrection is the most important point. I want this to be more fundamental than Trinitarianism or the precise mode of our salvation or whether Jesus had two natures and one person or one nature and two persons or whatever.

9. I want a girl with short skirt and a lonnnnggggggggg jacket

Yeah, and eyes that burn like cigarettes. Self explanatory.

10. I want a relational ethics

Ethics is not abstract. Therefore, there are various ethics: a modern ethics based around oneself, a down-home ethics based around one’s family, a civic ethics based around one’s country, and a godly ethics based around God. Good and evil only exist within these systems of ethics. For example, the down-home man with his down-home ethics doesn’t love his family because he thinks it’s good; rather, his concept of good and evil is centered around the fact that he loves his family.

11. I want a living, open, and covenantal sexuality

Two memories. First, reading Wicked, written by a gay man — the strange distance with which the book keeps observing fertility and straight sex. Second, my catechism teacher explaining that he and his wife didn’t “shack up and do the nasty” before marrying because they loved each other. I want people who spend time talking about why homosexuality is wrong to start talking about why marriage is right with words more potent than “natural” and “god-ordained”, and I want the people who won’t talk about sex at all because it’s private, sacred, and unspeakably dangerous to just get over it already.

12. I want a Christian criticism

Read “The Guilty Vicarage” by WH Auden ( http://harpers.org/archive/1948/05/0033206 ) and you’ll get an idea what I’m looking for. The way Auden takes apart the detective story and fits it into a Christian framework is something to behold.

In Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand, the age of drinking, voting, and generally coming into one’s own is 18. In America, the drinking age is 21, even though the voting age is 18. Why the difference? If you are responsible at 18 — responsible enough, apparently, to choose the government, and join the Army (e.g, die) — aren’t you responsible enough to drink?

This represents more than a simple, particular issue, but rather a delight in age-limits, which characterizes American politics. This is not just about teenagers who can’t keep it together, but about a more general American tendency to set age limits, even after people have reached technical adulthood. The Constitution reflects a great deal of the Fathers’ concern for age, in the form of a requirement that members of the House be older than 25, members of the Senate, older than 30, and that the President be older than 35. Apparently, according to the Constitution, full adulthood is at 35. Yet in Britain, and in most former British colonies except America, such restrictions either have never existed, or have been repealed. In the Commonwealth, when you can vote, you can govern.

Naturally, this raises many questions: is America simply ‘backwards’ (as alleged with regards to the death penalty), or is backwards really forwards, as it is for a lost man retracing his steps? Why did Britain recently (2006) repeal its restrictions on over-18 election to office? Do people reach intellectual adulthood more quickly, in these days of mass information and widely-available college education?

Regardless of their value in the (possibly less college-educated) past, do such restrictions provide real safeguards now? Is it really true that a wo/man of 23 years of age is incapable of voting wisely in the House? Or are candidacy and drinking limits alike completely obsolete? After all, it could be argued that if the voters think that a 23 year old is the best wo/man to represent them in the House — then why not? In the end, the law ought to be based, not on arbitrary decisions made by the founders, but on solid, defensible reasons, still valid today, and so it falls upon us to decide whether the law is still worthy to be upheld.

Should we defend time-honored American tradition, or look back to Mother Britannia for inspiration? What do you think?

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When faced with a choice between X evil and Y evil and X > Y, a conservative would chose Y. This is the utilitarianism behind the conservative justification of torture, the conservative justification of preemptive strikes such as Iraq, the conservative justification for a Democrat administration’s act of nuking two Japanese cities. When you have the choice between committing a small evil and having a large evil happen to you, you chose the small evil. If you need information to prevent a huge terrorist attack, it’s OK to torture your hostage to get that information out of him.

After all, if you’re Jack Aubrey, captain of the H. M. S. Surprise, and your ship is sinking because a man is about to drown, and you will sink if you don’t cut the man off, but then he’ll die – why, you’ve got to chose the lesser of two evils. Cut the man off and save the ship. The greater happiness for the greater number.

In manlier ages, Christians saw through situational ethics.

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In manlier ages, Christians believed in the sovereignty of God. “If there is calamity in a city, has not the LORD done it?” God’s law is perfectly clear. Thou shalt not kill. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is glass with Windex on it. There’s the verse. What’s your problem?

It is the act of a coward to choose the lesser of the two evils. If God wants to stop the terrorist attack, He can. But torturing the terrorist, if it’s against God’s law, is not an option. In ages when we put the primacy on the word Christian rather than the word conservative, we would have believed God was testing our nation. Calamity may befall your nation, or God will prevent it, but going against His law is still not an option.

Jack Aubrey had no tertium quid. You’d expect intelligent, classically-educated homeschooling Christian conservatives to see the false analogy. Jack Aubrey couldn’t have not acted. In not acting, he was choosing the greater evil. But it is the moral duty of a statesman, when faced with X evil and Y evil, and Z, which is inactivity, to choose Z. Here’s a nice example of how you can do the courageous thing and simultaneously not do anything. X and Y are not your affair. They are God’s affair. If you really believe in His sovereignty.

But even that is just a proof that conservative Christians don’t take their Bibles seriously. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We still don’t believe it. We still think carnal warfare is more effective than worshiping God. No matter how many times we say it, until we change our politics, we don’t really believe that singing Psalms actually makes the same difference – or a bigger difference – that torturing a terrorist would.

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Christians used to believe in just war. Now we believe it’s justified to nuke two civilian cities to stop a war. Even though – and it’s funny how, no matter how many times you bring this up, conservatives still try to justify the most massive murder act the United States has ever committed with utilitarianism – Japan tried twice to negotiate peace with America before the bombs were dropped. (source)

Christians used to believe in just war. Now we believe it’s our moral obligation to attack a country before they attack us. Who’s your god here – Utility or God?

Perhaps we don’t believe in just war anymore. Perhaps we can come up with a better way to reconcile killing people with God’s word. Utilitarianism – the greatest happiness for the greatest number – is not an option.

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In manlier ages, Christians criticized socialism for moral reasons. Now we criticize it because it interferes with “The Free Market”. Who’s your god here – The Market or God? The problem with socialism is that it’s based off theft. Government can steal your money, just as much as Enron or John Doe can. But, Christians don’t argue from morality any more. That’s too relative. Better to argue from efficiency. The Market doesn’t work as well under socialism. We won’t get as much money that way. Better not do it.

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Conservative Christians are oftentimes evangelicals. Oftentimes conservative Catholics. They pride themselves on taking their Bibles seriously, on believing in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Word. They actually believe the Gospel, actually believe the Nicene creed. But they don’t understand the Gospel – that much is obvious. Their liberal, unorthodox friends who believe in Social Gospel, Liberation theology, and a mix of Karl Marx and Karl Barth have things much closer to the mark. At the center of the Gospel is not conservatism. Not the free market. Not national security.

Jesus spends most of his time talking about the poor, the sick, the naked, lauding tax collectors over zealous conserv…er, Pharisees, and helping prostitutes. Just look at the word counts. How does his verbal concern for the poor, sick, naked, and hungry compare with his verbal concern about Roman political corruption? They’re doing a very bad job and using all the wrong methods, but our liberal friends who might not even believe Jesus existed are doing a better job of taking his gospel, his good news, his evangelion, more seriously than us, the Bible-believing conservative Christians. It’s time we decided which god we worship – the GOP or God?

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Post Script. For the record, I am not convinced torture is always against God’s law. My concern here is that its defense on the part of Christians reveals that they’d sooner side with John Stuart Mill than with the Golden Rule.

Post Post Script. I am convinced Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally reprehensible acts, on the same level as the mass murder committed under Stalin, though not as great in magnitude. But I admit to a great ignorance on the subject, and am certainly willing to hear arguments – made only from Christian presuppositions, not from utilitarian presuppositions – that it was somehow justified and was not murder. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t justified and was murder, though.