This is the Change Obama Promised?

Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets Large U.S. Loan

From the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON -- A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a $529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000.

The award this week to California startup Fisker Automotive Inc. follows a $465 million government loan to Tesla Motors Inc., purveyors of a $109,000 British-built electric Roadster. Tesla is a California startup focusing on all-electric vehicles, with a number of celebrity endorsements that is backed by investors that have contributed to Democratic campaigns....

Fisker's top investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a veteran Silicon Valley venture-capital firm of which Gore is a partner. Employees of KPCB have donated more than $2.2 million to political campaigns, mostly for Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign contributions.

This is the "change" voters wanted when they backed Obama? Remember during the campaign when he promised -- moral government, an end to politics as usual, no more corrupt government, concern for the little guy? (Have you stopped laughing yet?)

How much is Al Gore going to make from this sweet deal? Not only does it provide tax money to liberal investors, but it takes jobs from Americans to subsidize luxuries for the rich. Interesting, isn't it, how liberal Democrats excoriate "the rich" while they provide the people's money to fund rich liberals' projects?

Don't get cynical, get even. Vote conservative in the next election. If no conservatives are on the ballot from either party, write in your own name. Stop enabling liberal politics. If Republicans want your vote, insist they return to true conservatism. If you want to know what that is, read Russell Kirk. The Democratic Party is evil and the Republicans are becoming irrelevant. Michael Steele, Republican Party Chairman, recently stated that pro-abortion candidates are welcome. I guess that means pro-lifers aren't. No wonder so many are bolting.

Russell Kirk: Ten Conservative Principles Part 3 -- Witness to Truth

In the final installment let's look at Kirk's last four principles of conservative thought and how they mesh with Catholic truth.

7. Seventh, conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. Labor and Property was the subject of Pope Leo XIII's famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum, "On the Condition of the Working Classes." The Pope rejected both the greed of unscrupulous employers who "laid a yoke almost of slavery on the unnumbered masses of non-owning workers" and the Socialist Utopians who "contend that it is necessary to do away with private possession of goods and in its place to make the goods of individuals common to all" with Government as the administrator. Pope Leo clearly stated that "nature confers on man the right to possess things privately as his own.... And this same right has been sanctioned by the authority of the divine law, which forbids us most strictly even to desire what belongs to another. 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor is house, nor his field, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his.'"
Kirk likewise warns, "Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all."
Is that not what we see happening in the United States as the government implements the forced redistribution of income from those who work to those who don't? "Upon the foundation of private property," Kirk continues, "great civilizations are built. The more widespread is the possession of private property, the more stable and productive is a commonwealth." Why? Because allowing men to keep the fruit of their labor teaches them responsibility and industry. It makes work worthwhile and gives men a reason to labor dutifully and cheerfully. Certainly assistance is necessary (and a requirement of charity) to those who are truly needy, but Government redistribution of income from some to others simply because some have more is immoral thievery.

8. Eighth, conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.Kirk argues under this principle for local/voluntary vs. centralized/remote decision-making. He points out that "Americans...have been a people conspicuous for a successful spirit of community. In a genuine community, the decisions most directly affecting the lives of citizens are made locally and voluntarily. Some of these functions are carried out by local political bodies, others by private associations: so long as they are kept local, and are marked by the general agreement of those affected, they constitute healthy community. But when these functions pass by default or usurpation to centralized authority, then community is in serious danger.... [A] nation is no stronger than the numerous little communities of which it is composed."
Bravo! This was the belief of the Founding Fathers and is also the position of the Church under the principle of subsidiarity. Pius XI described subsidiarity in this way, "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view of the common good." Subsidiarity, according to the Catechism, is "opposed to all forms of collectivism. It sets limits for state intervention....Excessive intervention by the state can threaten personal freedom and initiative." Bingo! The gargantuan state that regulates from the womb to the tomb is like a combination straight jacket and "comforter." The one ties the hands making productive efforts impossible. The other, behind the mask of "compassionate" care, smothers life and initiative -- exactly where we are today under liberalism. Kirk hits the bulls eye once again.

9. Ninth, the conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. This is the rule of law and the antidote to the false philosophy of "might makes right." Power must be controlled in order for justice to prevail. "The conservative," says Kirk, "endeavors to so limit and balance political power that anarchy or tyranny may not arise." This principle guided the Founding Fathers to create a democratic republic with three separate branches of government designed to be watchdogs of one another. "A just government," according to Kirk, "maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty."
Indeed, the Catechism too discusses both the rights of the individual and the common good both of which should be the foci of government authority. "The exercise of authority," it says, "is meant to give outward expression to a just hierarchy of values in order to facilitate the exercise of freedom and responsibility by all." Kirk says, that "Constitutional restrictions, political checks and balances, adequate enforcement of the laws, the old intricate web of restraints upon will and appetite" are the "instruments of freedom and order." The Catholic could well paraphrase his words to discuss the claims of a moral order where one "renders to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."

10. Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. Kirk describes the tension between stability and progress emphasizing that the prudent man recognizes the necessity of both, the first to protect "enduring interests," the second to prevent stagnation. Conservatives, according to Kirk, favor "reasoned and temperate progress" as opposed to a cult of change where "everything new necessarily is superior to everything old."
Kirk's final principle reminds me of Jesus' words in Matthew 13. "Every scribe who is learned in the reign of God is like the head of a household who can bring from his storeroom both the new and the old." Throughout his ministry He stressed that He did not come to overthrow the Old Covenant, but to fulfill it. Kirk too recognizes the value of the permanent, but also the necessity of reasonable change. "Change is essential to the body social...just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation."

For Kirk, conservatism has less to do with party than principle. In fact, he says "conservative interest appears to transcend the usual classification of most American voting-blocs....The moving power behind the renewed conservatism of the American public is not some scheme of personal or corporate aggrandizement; rather, it is the impulse for survival of a culture that wakes to its peril near the end of the twentieth century. We might well call militant conservatives the Party of the Permanent Things."

One can argue that Kirk's words, written fifteen years ago, are out of date, that Obama's election proves that conservatism is dead and liberalism has won. But consider: Obama ran and was elected (by a small popular vote) as a so-called moderate. He did not run against a conservative, but a hawkish big-government Republican liberal. When accused of a socialist agenda, Obama and Biden feigned horror and called it a slur. Only since the election is the mantra openly embraced as Newsweek illustrated when they chortled, "We're all socialists now." Obama never acknowledged openly that his goal was redistribution of income; in fact he ran from the accusation. Will he succeed as a modern Robin Hood who robs from the workers to support the welfare state? It won't be just "the rich." If Obama took every cent of income of "the rich," he could not support his trillions in spending for one year as the Wall Street Journal wrote in The 2% Illusion.

Time will tell whether the American people will embrace liberalism and reject outright the permanent things. The disintegration of moral values obviously makes that a distinct possibility, but there are glimmers of an enduring spirit of conservatism among many of the young. You can find it on Facebook and YouTube and on blogs created by the under 40s. The permanent things have an appeal that the radical change agents can never suppress. Look, for example, at the popular resurgence of Gregorian Chant and the trditional Latin Mass, among young Catholics.

I think young conservatives would respond with enthusiasm to Kirk's words, "Conservatives cannot offer America the fancied Terrestrial Paradise that always, in reality, has turned out to be an Earthly Hell. What they can offer is politics as the art of the possible; and an opportunity to stand up for that old lovable human nature; and conscious participation in the defense of order and justice and freedom." You can hear the echo of the Founders in those words as well as the voice of Catholic apologists like Chesterton and Belloc, and many popes. They are words to stir the human spirit.

Pray for the repose of the soul of Russell Kirk, a giant among Catholic conservatives or conservative Catholics. He is a man who joins both words together in a joyful witness to truth.

Russell Kirk: Ten Conservative Principles Part 2 -- The Lilies of the Field

Kirk's next three principles also correspond well to Catholic thought.

4. Fourth, conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. So are Catholics. In his book, The Four Cardinal Virtues, Joseph Pieper quotes Church teaching that prudence is the "mother" of the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance). "In other words," says Pieper, "none but the prudent man can be just, brave, and temperate, and the good man is good in so far as he is prudent." Kirk and Pieper both look to Plato because the ancient philosophers also saw prudence as the first and head of the other virtues. It is not a novel idea. Kirk explains it saying, "As John Randolph put it, Providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries.... The conservative...acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences. Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery." The Catholic too is encouraged to "discern" before making decisions. That means taking the time to pray, study, and consult the wise before making a decision. So again, Kirk's fourth principle corresponds to Catholic action.

5. Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. This is probably my favorite principle because it recognizes the good sense of multiplicity and how it reflects the abundance and generosity of God. Think of the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Variety illustrates the beauty and wonder of God who made every individual unique. The true conservative isn't interested in creating a society where man is a cog in a machine or in producing the stripped bauhaus architecture of utility. He also is a realist who recognizes, like Kirk points out, that, "For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at levelling must lead, at best, to social stagnation." Kirk isn't recommending subjugating the masses here; rather he recognizes that men have different capacities and talents and that a healthy society recognizes it. Catholic teaching says the same. "There are different gifts, but the same spirit gives them," says St. Paul. The head is not called to be the foot. In the body of Christ, all the parts are valuable in their diversity. Kirk hits the nail on the head again.

6. Sixth, conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectibility. Men are not angels; we are inflicted by the reality of original sin. This understanding is implicit in Kirk's point. "Man, being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created....All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk....The ideologues who promise the perfection of man and society have converted a great part of the twentieth-century world into a terrestrial hell." Amen! Look at the Enlightenment with its adulation of reason and the false promises of Communism and its less violent sister, Socialism, for the reality of Kirk's thought. As Obama imposes his liberal revolution on the United States, we have a birdseye view of the "terrestrial hell" Kirk mentions. This principle sounds very much like what Cardinal Stafford said recently when he warned, "For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden." The Utopia promised by liberal politicians and their cohorts like Planned Parenthood looks more like Huxley's Brave New World than the Garden of Eden before the fall. We embrace their false promise of a new world order at the risk of getting another hell-hole of history.

To be continued...

Russell Kirk: Ten Conservative Principles Part 1 -- The Moral Order

In this post we'll take a look at the first three of Kirk's "conservative principles" and how they correspond to Catholic truth.

1. First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. For a Catholic this is pretty much an a priori point. We know there's a difference between right and wrong and that truth exists and doesn't change with the seasons. God created us in His image and likeness and embedded in our nature a moral understanding that enables us to recognize the truths of the Ten Commandments. He also revealed himself throughout history, first through His people Israel and then, in the fullness of time, through His Son, Jesus Christ. So Kirk's first principle corresponds well to Catholic teaching. Kirk elaborates saying, "A society in which men and women are governed by a belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society -- whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society -- no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal consitution may be." As our own culture abandons the moral order we prove exactly what Kirk is talking about. Divorce, homosexual indoctrination in the schools and workplace, the murder of the innocent, etc. are contributing to societal freefall. Consider the violence in our cities the movement from abortion to infanticide and euthanasia, etc. We are reaping cultural chaos by our abandonment of moral principles.

2. Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. We can compare this to Catholic tradition. Man doesn't have to constantly reinvent the wheel. A culture that appreciates social conventions, for example courtesy, is a well-ordered society. Hillaire Belloc illustrated that in a poem saying, "The grace of God is in courtesy." Catholic conventions such as genuflecting before the tabernacle, making the sign of the cross with holy water on entering a church, etc. are meaningful reminders of who we are as a people. Kirk isn't a slave to convention; rather he stresses Edmund Burke's opinion saying, "The continuity, the life-blood of society must not be interrupted. Burke's reminder of the necessity for prudent change is in the mind of the conservative. But necessary change, conservatives argue, ought to be gradual and discriminatory, never unfixing old interests at once." Consider what happened in the Church after Vatican II for an illustration of the damage caused by precipitous and mindless change. The disastrous experiments with the liturgy, the stripping and wreckovation of the churches, persecution of the faithful who continued to kneel for Communion, etc. all damaged the faith. Had the bishops of the world followed Kirk's principle things might be very different in the Church today.

3. Third, conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. Kirk's third principle follows naturally from the second. Prescription means that some things are established by their "immemorial usage...There exist rights of which the chief sanction is their antiquity." Kirk refers to things like rights of property. Catholics might think of doctrines taught consistently for thousands of years and liturgical norms as well. Contraception is one example. The Church's consistent and unchanging teaching was upheld by Pope Paul VI through Humanae Vitae. As science develops ever more invasive reproductive technologies, the common sense of the encyclical is more and more obvious. As for liturgical norms, the recognition of the Latin Mass and the statement that it was never abrogated shows how foolish and mean-spirited the attempts to crush it were.

Real Catholics are Conservatives - Just Ask Russell Kirk

I've been reading The Politics of Prudence (published in 1993) by Russell Kirk , a hero of the conservative movement. After the first two chapters I had to find out whether he was a Catholic because his thought is so consistent with Catholic principles. Sure enough, he married and converted to Catholicism in the same year -- 1963 when he was 45. He and his wife, Annette had four daughters. They named their home "Piety Hill" and entertained there often. What an exciting dinner table that must have been. Kirk would not drive or own a television. That no doubt gave him more time to think, write, and enjoy his friends.

I'm a newcomer to Kirk but I don't plan to remain one. He not only wrote books and articles of conservative thought, he also wrote three novels and 22 short stories, particularly in the ghost-story genre. Over the next few days I want to describe Kirk's "Ten Conservative Principles" which could just as easily be described as "Ten Catholic Principles."

In my opinion, to be a Catholic in the public square means to be a Kirk (not a Bush or even a Reagan) conservative. In the political realm Kirk is one bookend for Catholic thought. The other is Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany who wrote Liberalism is a Sin. A Catholic would be well advised to position himself between Kirk's and Salvany's principles, embracing authentic conservatism and rejecting the egregious errors of an immoral liberalism.