AnarchoCatholic: Musings of Ultramontane Liberals

The Anarcho-Catholic Dorothy Day

Joshua Snyder writes an intersting article about Dorothy Day and her Anarcho-Catholicism.  Day held left wing political beliefs with regards to workers.  She also held great anti-tax code political views with a lamentation of the whole bureaucratic notion of 501(c)(3) tax exempt organizations:

We believe also that the government has no right to legislate as to who can or who are to perform the Works of Mercy.  Only accredited agencies have the status of tax-exempt institutions. After their application has been filed, and after investigation and long delays, clarifications, intercession, and urgings by lawyers - often an expensive and long-drawn-out procedure - this tax-exempt status is granted.

I've always said that amidst all the red tape in the US, Mother Theresa could never operate here the way she did in Calcutta.  The modern US nation state crowds out and seriously impedes our ability to perform the Works of Mercy. 

Day also held what I would like to call a universal view among Anarcho-Catholics, "And while many on the Left worry about Church influence over State, Dorothy Day knew the dangers when the State exerts its muscle on the Church."  That's right, the earthly powers are a great danger to our relationship with Holy Mother Church.  I say they are a danger to our relationship, but not to the mystical Church itself, as the world could never defeat it. 

Servant of God, Dorothy Day, Pray for us.

CK

Wealth and Holiness

Eagerly awaiting the human transcendence of biology and the coming nanotech age,  Johnny Kramer stands in awe at the industrial revolution:

Consider that the poorest people in this country who at least have jobs and places to sleep literally have a higher standard of living than the wealthiest person on the earth did less than 150 years ago; 150 years ago, the wealthiest person on the earth didn’t have anything that the poorest today consider basic necessities, like indoor plumbing, electricity, central heating or air-conditioning, antibiotics or a refrigerator – much less things that may not be life-sustaining necessities, but are the luxuries of yesterday that most consider the necessities of today, like cars, televisions, computers, etc.

What would Jesus say about all this? We don't have to wonder (Luke 18, NAB):

24 Jesus looked at him (now sad) and said, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! 25 For it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God." 26 Those who heard this said, "Then who can be saved?" 27 And he said, "What is impossible for human beings is possible for God." 28 Then Peter said, "We have given up our possessions and followed you."

Here, kitty kitty...

Joshua Katz illustrates my nation-state argument that evolved from the Corporations Aren't Capitalism post with an apt analogy:

You try once again to explain the situation, "the cat you are taking in is small now, but that tiger in front of you was once just as small – he grew up."

Finally, your message seems to get across to your beloved friend, and you silently give thanks. He has seen the problem, and seems ready to abandon his plans. Then, however, a smile creeps across his face, and he shouts, "ah, but there is a way to handle this! I’ll simply demand that my cub not grow larger – in fact, I’ll write him a contract, explaining what he may and not do. I’ll enforce the contract with the power of my newspaper! Surely I can discipline a small tiger cub this way, and he’ll be contractually obligated not to grow up. If he does grow up, I’ll hit him until he stops."

The modern nation-state will not cease until it has consumed you. That's just what it does. I have not yet figured out what the best replacement for the nation-state is, whether one is needed, or any other such solutions. Perhaps you have. Feel free to suggest them.

It's not clear whether Katz intended to limit his analogy to the nation-state, but meant to apply it broadly to all governments. I don't think I'd go so far (but then again maybe I would), but he places it in the context of America's founders' seeing other large national(ist) governments springing up across the civilized world. I hope this helps answer Charles' question on the difference between corrupt nation-state (a redundancy) and the corrupt constituency of a guild system or papacy; they are different animals.

JMM

Ron Paul's Boston Tea Party

Corporations Aren't Capitalism

From the LRC Blog:

When I was running an import business in CA I used to startle people with the revelation that I was regulated by 14 different agencies. The bureaucrats in D.C. must get too much vacation time, because their California counterparts are really working overtime. If you ever thought about following the relatively simple business model of importing a product and selling it to a store, meet your regulators:

US Ag Dept. (inspections), FDA (inspections, information filing), Customs (import taxes, arrival notification), Homeland Security (inspection, fee, scanning), IRS (payroll, income taxes), CA Highway Patrol (truck i.d. number), CA franchise tax board (biz income taxes), CA Department of Industrial Relations (State Workers Comp Ins, posting requirements), CA Secretary of State (state incorporation, yearly updates), Board of Equalization (excise tax filing), Dept of Conservation (can sales filing/recycling), CA Employment Development Department (payroll tax withholding, unemployment insurance), County Health Dept (warehouse permit), local city business (license, zoning).

I'm wondering how to effectively bring this up in my Business Organizations class. A potentially undying legal entity which separates ownership from control, is created by, sustained by, and subject to the state, and removes liability from human beings conducting affairs which affect all of society doesn't seem to jive with anything resembling a free market. How can a corporation be anything other than a state agent? Our casebook even features law review articles describing multinational corporations touting their own corporate nationality and foreign policies, such as Nestle. Frank Rene Lopez, Corporate Social Responsibility in a Global Economy after September 11: Profits, Freedom, and Human Rights, 55 Mercer L. Rev. 739, 753-754 (2004).

Here's my hypothesis:

IF socialism = state control of economy/society
    AND corporations = state agents/states
        THEN corporations = socialism

Or am I missing something? As always, I'm open to being proven wrong. I imagine I'd be more well received by students at Scott's secular law school than my own, bastion of Catholic-flavored state-worship that it is.

JMM

Smearing Ron Paul

Dean Barnett may miss the obvious in comparing Ron Paul to Howard Dean and John Edwards in his shallow smear, but I think he's on to something in calling Ron the owner of the "don't tase me, bro" vote. At any rate the pictures were amusing, and they clearly illustrate how Barnett sees himself in his little scenario: the overweight female officer. JMM
 

The Last, Best Hope...

I am to no end amused by American Patriots who get misty eyed when waxing poetic about "America, the last, best hope of mankind."

I always thought that title belonged more to Christ and His Church, not the "democracies" enabling the death of 50 million unborn children and pre-emptive wars across the globe. Who knew?

JMM

Catholics Cannot Vote for McCain

Just in case you know of anyone naive enough to follow Brownback's misguided endorsement of John McCain... From ontheissues.org:

# Supports federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. (May 2007)
# Voted YES on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Apr 2007)
# Expand embryonic stem cell research. (Jun 2004)
# Supports fetal tissue research; against over-intensity. (Jan 2000)

# “Family Conference” if daughter wanted an abortion. (Jan 2000)

What a considerate father. Not such a good grandpa, though. At least he didn't offer to pay for the abortion, like Rudy did.

Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought on Neocons

Entry: Neoconservatism

The first generation of neoconservatives were a group of close-knit New York intellectuals, mostly Jewish, with roots in the political left of the 1930s and 1940s. Initially they were described as "right-wing liberals" and "new conservatives" before "neoconservatism" became the settled appellation in the 1970s. The name is an indication of their origins on the political left, as many had begun as Social Democrats or even Trotskyists...

Gotta know your roots!
So a bunch of socialists get together in Greenwhich Village and wonder how to slip socialism into the mainstream of America...

"I know! Call it conservatism!"

Wow, that was easy. And after over a century of public school failure factories, the Americans are still eating it up, unable to tell the difference.

JMM

The Secular vs. Religion?

Below are excerpts from a speech given by Bishop Murry of Limerick, Ireland. I suggest reading it straight through. Let us all seek to sanctify each part of our lives according to His will and in accordance with Christian love. SBW

More often, the opposing mindsets are hardly articulated at all. A great deal of modern life proceeds as if the question of faith did not matter .  We have passed from a society where faith and public manifestations of faith were the norm, to a society which is, at best, embarrassed by any public visibility of faith. Our world seems increasingly marked by what has been called "tranquil apostasy".
 
How many areas, even in the lives of believers, could be described as 'religion free zones'? What has faith got to do with the fluctuations of the stock market, with the looming energy crisis, with house prices, with multinational companies, with new research possibilities, with the information age?  Soap operas, for instance, are largely religion-free: nobody talks about God and, since the departure of Glenroe, nobody goes to church. I suppose you could make an exception for The Simpsons! Large parts of the world, even of the world in which believers live, function without any reference to faith.
 
Faith appears in the public arena in the form of controversies, scandals and personalities rather than questions about God. Moral questions are often misrepresented as a clash between secular and religious views, as if, for instance, one had to be a believer in God to ask questions about how we should regard the beginnings of human life.
 
There are two related assumptions, both of which need to be questioned.  The first is that religion has no place in public discourse and that what are termed 'religious views' may be ignored, perhaps after a token 'liberal' nod to say that "of course they should be respected".  The second is the assumption that if a person's views on social issues have been inspired and nurtured within a religious tradition, they can have no place in a rational discussion about what is best for our society. The same does not seem to apply to people who are agnostic or atheist, whose views have also arisen in the context of assumptions not shared by everybody.