Units of Resistance

One of the more popular topics on the Christian circuit is the strength of the family. Poor family units are suspected of weakness and brokenness; wealthy ones of coldness and distance, though admittedly the former concern is much more pronounced than the latter. But policies are always a much easier sell in the Christo-sphere when they can be shown to strengthen the family, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But it has certain outcomes.

Back in the day, in much third-way Christian literature suspicious of both capitalism and socialism, one used to read that the point of strengthening the family was to set it up as a bulwark against the onslaughts of un-Christian cultures/states. So while the state and dominant culture might instruct a bad set of ethics, your dominion in your family would allow you to counteract those narratives with positive ones. Thus families would be, in effect, units of resistance against bad external regimes.

Which has historically been the case, at least in a variety of interesting examples. Sophie and Hans Scholl, members of the Christian anti-Nazi resistance group The White Rose, were siblings. This is a positive example of a familial pocket of resistance.

Yet negative examples keep piling up. The Tsarnaev brothers, of Boston Marathon Bombing infamy, developed their ideology and plot together. Two of the shooters believed to be behind the attack on Charlie Hebdo are brothers. Siblings and cousins grouping into clusters and pairs is not uncommon in cases of insurgency. Islamist terrorism is not an exception here: all sorts of terrorists come in familial sets.

In other words, it’s quite true that the family can serve as an incubator for (pardon the pejorative associations here) anti-social sentiment, which can germinate into outright resistance. It appears to be a shaky compromise of the liberal order to imagine that we can simultaneously form independently powerful units of identity-construction, intentionally built for resistance, and then suppose that they will passively cooperate with a culture that marginalizes them. It rather seems that the opposite happens; the more liberal cultures tolerate the marginalization of particular groups, the more families function more or less as they’re ‘supposed’ to: as bulwarks of resistance. The more inclusive these cultures become, the less need there is for families to form specific identities that contribute to resistance.

My prayers are with the families of those injured or killed in these terrible attacks.

Logic Problems in Christian Libertarianism

I was inspired by Mike Konczal’s (@rortybomb) appearance on Stossel, wherein he discussed the unlikely possibility of strictly voluntary charity replacing social welfare altogether. At roughly 7 minutes, Mike quotes me on the topic of charity versus welfare, which is something I think about a lot. But this particular conversation got me thinking about what the role of the state is, in the mind of the Christian libertarian.

One of the things a person encounters when they argue against libertarianism is the notion that no two libertarians think exactly alike, and that there are in fact as many versions of libertarianism as there are libertarians. This makes the school of thought virtually impossible to argue against, as you would have to deal with each individually, one at a time. So I will get this out of the way early: this argument deals with libertarians who think in the Rothbard, Hoppe, and Von Mises stream, not libertarians who could also be described as ‘socialists’ or ‘social democrats.’

The logic problem in Christian libertarianism has to do with the role of government and the nature of property. Christian libertarians typically maintain these two things:

I. Property rights are pre-political, that is, human beings are entitled by nature to property ownership prior to the existence of the polity.

II. It is the role of the state to recognize and protect people’s rights, including their right to own property.

Based on these premises Christian libertarians argue they should suffer no interference with their property, either by state or individual. Assume both of these premises are true.

In this case, pre-political property rights are attached to all people, because they arise from human nature, i.e. the way God made people and things. In this case, the question is: how do we know who gets what? Remember, this has to all be pre-political; we can’t say ‘let market exchanges determine who gets what’, because those institutions are post-political and presuppose property. So we look to the telos of material creation to determine how it should be allotted.

Creation was made, so say the church fathers, for the sustenance of all people. It came to all men in common, but to make orderly use of it, we institute regimes of private property. So we know all persons are due ownership of what resources they need to live. So far, so good.

But this means that when people, through post-political institutions of acquisition, manage to extend ownership over more than what they need, and meanwhile others have less than they need, those with excess do not actually own the excess. Consider Basil of Ceasarea:

“The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you put into the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help but fail to help.”

This is very typical of the Patristic view on property, and it springs from the notion that all people have some kind of pre-political relationship with creation (though whether or not this should be called ‘ownership’ is another matter.) Ambrose, Augustine, and Chrysostom certainly agree: excess belongs to the poor. They don’t mean this in the poetic sense of, say, ‘my heart belongs to my paramour.’ They mean this in the most literal sense: by the same decree you’re due what is not excess, they are due what is. You’re both due what you need to sustain you; that is what you are entitled to. If the poor are not entitled by right to the excess, then you are not entitled by right to any of it. God made the rich and poor of one clay, says Augustine, and he’s right.

Now we come to how the state should respond to these circumstances. It seems pretty clear. If the state is here to recognize and protect property rights, then the state must recognize that the excess of the wealthy quite literally is the property of the poor, and act accordingly. Just as the state would work to retrieve a stolen article, it must retrieve the hoarded wealth being stolen from the poor, and deliver it to them. If it’s not obligated to do this, it’s not obligated to protect property rights whatsoever: after all, why yours, and not theirs?

So a state that fits within these parameters of Christian libertarianism would be involved in redistribution for the protection of the vulnerable. Perhaps this is what Pope Francis refers to when he imagines a just redistribution of wealth. Sounds good to me.

Year’s End Review

2014. What a year! Looking back, it’s hard for me to believe how much everything changed. I wanted to round up a few essays I read throughout the year that shaped my thinking, inspired me, or weighed heavily on my mind. I also thought you might like to see my favorite picks of my own work. Not all of the pieces I’ve chosen from around the web are from 2014, but I read them in 2014, and in some way or another, they’ll stay with me as tints and flavors of this particular trip around the sun.

Tops from the Web:

Rich Parents Planned This When poor kids become poor adults, what happens to the concern for their well being?

Do What You Love? The labor politics of chasing your dream.

Evangelii Gaudium A tour de force in Christian love.

Ferguson is our Libertarian Moment But in a purely foreboding sense.

Madame Matisse’s Hat  Modernity is outwardness.

The Voluntarism Fantasy Did we ever take care of ourselves strictly voluntarily?

On Not Going Home On the choices you make that seem small until it’s too late.

Nothing Left of the Left Adolph Reed runs up a red flag.

Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain Really excellent look at women in lit.

The Shame of Our Prisons Unmissable consideration of how we treat those in our care.

Death Penalty versus Human Dignity Can one society value both? No.

What Will Happen to All of That Beauty? Gorgeous contemplation of faith, doubt, praxis, community.

Charles Taylor, Saint of our Age. And another one on modernity!

Tops from my Stuff:

Pope Francis’ 2014: Francis had a better year than all of us, I think we can agree. I’ll be discussing this piece on HuffPo Live today at 11:50 EST.

Pro-Life, Anti-Poverty: The more I think about a universal child allowance, the more I support it. Look for another piece on this topic in early January.

Mysticism & Empathy: My contribution to Boston Review’s forum on empathy. Have we lost a place for mystics in our modern world?

Mothers Work: Yes, mothers work. No, we should not create an EITC threshold to force poor moms to work more: they’re already working.

On Being Vulnerable: Life on the internet, as a writer.

Huckabee & Exemplary States: Theories of exemplary statecraft, from medieval kingship to Mike Huckabee.

Mourning in the Age of Skype: Saying goodbye. Related:

Grief for a Friend: Shortly after I left Cambridge, my friend and advisor Father John Hughes passed away unexpectedly, at a very young age.

Child Allowance = Strong Families: Gonna stump for a child allowance until you like it.

Property-Based Ethics: John Locke and the long shadow of liberal property ethics, in the context of post-Ferguson rioting.

Stories we Tell: For Jacobin, a consideration of what went wrong in the reporting of the Rolling Stone UVA case.

Rationalizing Vocation: Motherhood under capitalism.

Thanks so much for being such a stellar set of readers and thinkers. I’m so grateful to write, and so glad to share it with you. I hope everyone has a lovely New Year, and again, thanks for all your support and encouragement over the last year. You’re the best.