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I wish theologians who write about social matters would learn a little more about politics and economics.  Especially about unanticipated consequences, ulterior motives, and political snake oil.

Consider a society of a few enormous landowners, some modest landowners, and a mass of propertyless laborers.  Suppose one must have a little bit of land to vote.  Then the middle class will choose the rulers; of the two enfranchised classes, they are more numerous.  Now suppose even the poor can vote.  The poor are even more numerous than the middle class.  So now the poor will choose the rulers, right?  No, the upper class will choose them, because the poor are utterly dependent on the wealthy, and will vote as they are told.  The rich, with the votes of the poor, will squeeze out the middle class.  But the naïve will think that universal suffrage in such a society would help the poor.

Now consider a society like ours.  At the top is a small technocratic and bureaucratic elite.  In the middle is a middle class of workers and middling professionals.  At the bottom is are people who are economically precarious.  Suppose there is a strictly regulated dole and only citizens can vote.  Then the middle class will choose the rulers.  Now suppose there is a wide-open dole and even noncitizens can vote.  So now the poor will choose the rulers, right?  No, the middle class will be squeezed out and the elites will rule, because the poor are utterly dependent on the dole and will vote as necessary to keep it coming.  But the naïve think that a wide-open dole and unregulated voting help the poor.

What, aren’t such policies merely Christian generosity and godly charity?  No, they are cruel.  They aren’t ways to help the poor, but ways to make ourselves feel better about not helping them – worse yet, cynical ways of using them.  What the poor want is jobs, education, and hope.  What our welfare state gives them is permanent, demoralizing dependency on the government.

NEW STUFF

One-minute Author Video on Amazon.com

“Is the War in Iran Just?” Catholic World Report. 

“Deep Down, Are People Good or Evil?  The Camp of Cynics vs. The Camp of Utopians.”  Excerpt from my new book Pandemic of Lunacy in New Oxford Review.

“Dr. J. Budziszewski on Cultivating Rational Thinking.”  Interview by Steve and Becky Greene on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

UT Austin Professor Tackles Cultural ‘Pandemic Of Lunacy’ in New Book.  Interview by Micaiah Bilger in The College Fix.

What words could I offer to express my dismay and revulsion for Mr. Trump’s post on his Truth Social account, picturing himself as Jesus Christ, healing a sick man in a hospital?  The president says “I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and it had to do with Red Cross.”

But of course Red Cross workers don’t typically wear white robes with red sashes, aren’t typically surrounded by glorious aureoles, and don’t typically have light radiating from their left hands.  They aren’t typically surrounded by adoring, prayerful figures, and aren’t typically backdropped by flying warrior angels.

No.   The president was depicting himself as the Christ.  What’s more, He was depicting himself as the Risen Christ:  He who was crucified, died and was buried; who descended into hell, and on the third day rose again from the dead; who ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; who will come again to judge the living and the dead.  The messianic iconography of Mr. Trump’s AI-generated image was more lavish than that which the North Korean regime uses to promote the cult of Kim Jong Un.

Without in the least diminishing the shock and filth of this blasphemy, allow me to offer a reminder that we have a history of presidents comparing themselves to Christ and of allowing others to do so.  One would think that after the fall of emperor worship, we in the West would have got over that sort of thing.  Unfortunately, no.  As belief in the real God has waned, the urge to make gods of other things -- our rulers and ourselves included – has waxed.

Have we already forgotten the messianism of the Barack Obama presidency?  Jesse Jackson said that the man’s nomination was so significant that “another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance.”  A contributor to the left-wing website Daily Kos said in reference to him, “What if all of the religious nuts were bashing the second coming of their Christ and they didn't even know it?”  Numerous bloggers on the left wrote that he was “no ordinary man” and that he “communicate[d] God-like energy.”  Whenever they could, photojournalists framed their shots in such a way as to make his head appear to have an aureole of holy light.  At Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, New Jersey, teachers made up a song about him for the students to sing, borrowing words from the traditional children’s hymn “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”  At a gathering sponsored by the Gamaliel Foundation in Washington, D.C., the crowd chanted not the traditional litany “Hear our cry, O Lord,” but “Hear our cry, Obama.”  Mr. Obama himself reveled in messianic language.  After securing his party’s nomination, he exulted that “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

But political apotheosis didn’t begin with Mr. Obama either.  Bill Clinton went so far as to call his political platform the New Covenant, which is the term Christians use for the new relationship among God and His people which was made possible by the atonement of Christ.  Then he misquoted scripture for support.  "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what we can build," he boasted in his convention speech.  This was an obscene misquotation of 1 Corinthians 2:9 (itself a quotation from Isaiah 64:4), which reads in the original, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."  The Biblical passage gives sovereignty to God.  The modified language still sounds Biblical, but gives sovereignty to man.

In fact, the messianic urge in presidential politics begins even further back than that.  Abraham Lincoln, a reverent man, would have firmly resisted any comparison between himself and Christ, but not all of his admirers were so restrained.  The lyrics of Julia Ward Howe’s stirring Battle Hymn of the Republic proclaim, “I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: ... Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel.”  The burnished rows of steel are the steel swords of soldiers.  The image of the Hero born of woman who crushes the serpent with His heel is taken from Genesis 3:15, which Christians regard as the first messianic prophecy.  Biblically, the serpent is a symbol of the tempter, but politically, it depicts the Northern supporters of the Southern cause, who were called “Copperheads” after a variety of poisonous snake.  Between the lines, Howe was saying that the war president, Lincoln, was an image of the divine redeemer, Christ, and a precursor of His second coming.

I hope that today’s godless politicians would be more like Lincoln, the keynote of whose Second Inaugural Address was not vaunting human pride and vanity, but humility for both the country and himself.  Whatever one may like or dislike about their policies and political deeds, sometimes Messrs. Clinton, Obama, and Trump have seemed as though they were trying out for a different role.

The notorious “God is dead” thinker Friedrich Nietzsche is supposed to have remarked that he felt as though he were a new pen that some power was trying out.  We are beginning to see a lot of those pens.

It has been said that the first casualty of war is truth.  I wonder whether we should say instead that the first casualty of war is clear reasoning, even on the part of intelligent and knowledgeable people.

One the one hand we have the Pope’s warning that God does not listen to those who wage war.  On the other, we have the president’s warning of a possible end to Iranian civilization.  Neither is helpful.

The Pope speaks as though he had forgotten that the Church distinguishes between just and unjust wars, and that justice in war does not require that nobody is hurt.  In turn, the president speaks as though he had forgotten that there is a difference between defeating an adversary and destroying his entire civilization, and that one must not do what is intrinsically evil so that good will result.

In charity, I will assume that neither of these two men meant what his words seemed to mean.  The question remains:  Is the war in Iran just?

In order to apply the principles of just war – principles, by the way, to which not only the Church but also the United States has formally committed itself, including them in the training of its officers -- we must bring the facts to mind and keep them there.  An obvious fact is that the United States is far from perfect.  The more salient fact, however, is that the Iranian regime is not just imperfect.  Iran is ruled by terroristic fanatics who systematically undermine peace in the region, already possess missiles which can hit Europe, are very close to the achievement of nuclear weapons by which they can threaten and utterly destroy their neighbors, and have a history of negotiating in bad faith.

Let us also dismiss the cynics, relativists, and believers in moral equivalency.  A terrorist is not just a freedom fighter by another name, for the term “terrorist” has an objective meaning.  Terrorists refuse to abide by the principles of just war, although they may opportunistically employ the language of just war and international law in order to advance their aims.  The Iranian regime is properly called terroristic, because it routinely targets innocents and noncombatants, explicitly preaches hatred and death, and supplies and funds terror groups in other nations.

Like the term “terrorist,” the term “fanatic” also has objective meaning.  A fanatic is not merely someone who holds his beliefs strongly; the question is what he believes strongly.  Nor is he merely someone who strongly holds beliefs other than one’s own; the question is whether he strtongly holds evil beliefs and is willing to act on them to the harm of others.  The belief of the Iranian regime that Allah countenances the deliberate targeting of innocents and noncombatants is simply evil.  This fact should not be controversial.

Yet for the war against the Iranian regime to be just, it is not enough that the regime consists of very bad people.  Just war tradition embraces a series of principles, first concerning whether a given war may be started in the first place (jus ad bellum), second as to how it must be fought (jus in bello).  Let’s see how the present war measures up.

Jus ad bellum:  Criteria for justice in going to war

Just cause.  War may be waged only to vindicate justice, restore a just international order, protect innocent life, or restore human rights.  By this criterion, it is very difficult to argue against the justice of the American cause.  The aims of the United States are first, to prevent the Iranian regime from attaining nuclear weapons, and second, to degrade its ability to commit aggression against its neighbors, both in the region and beyond it.  Apparently, although the United States would welcome regime change, it would be satisfied if these two aims could be achieved, with regime change or without it.

Competent public authority.  War may be waged only with those who are responsible for public order and have the authority to commit forces.  Despite claims to the contrary, the administration has followed the provisions of America’s War Powers Act.  Critics ignore and misrepresent them.

Right intention.  The aim of war must be the restoration of a just peace, not mere aggrandizement.  Preventing fanatics from continuing their terroristic policies, especially by nuclear means, is hardly an evil intention.

Last resort.  Nonviolent alternatives to war must be exhausted before hostilities begin.  This does not mean that one may never go to war, simply because it is always possible to say “Let’s talk” yet one more time, but that one should not go to war until it is plain to a reasonable person that talking has failed.  The Iranian regime has consistently violated all of its agreements and persistently used the pretense of negotiation to gain time, both to continue its aggression and to refine enough uranium for nuclear weapons.  In such a situation, force would seem to be the only way to make diplomacy in good faith possible again.

Proportionality.  The good expected from the attainment of the war’s aims must exceed the harm which the war brings about.  I do not think a reasonable person can doubt that the good of preventing the Iranian regime from attaining nuclear weapons, together with the good of deprecating its ability to inflict unjust harm on other countries, whether in the region, in Europe, or, ultimately, on our own side of the Atlantic, greatly exceed the harm which is brought about by closely targeted strikes on military and nuclear assets.  This is the case even granting that some noncombatants whose death is not intended will also die.  We are told that the next set of targets includes bridges and power plants used especially for military purposes.  Should the set expand to include facilities which are used not only for military but also for partly civilian purposes, the balance between harm prevented and harm brought about would certainly shift.  Even then, however, considering the horrifying prospect of nuclear-armed terroristic fanatics with long-range ballistic missiles, it would be difficult for a reasonable person to argue that the proportionality criterion is not satisfied.

Probability of success.  War should not be started unless there is a reasonable expectation that it can achieve its aims.  If the American objective is to destroy the Iranian regime’s military ability and nuclear prospects for good, then I don’t think success is possible until the regime is irrecoverably destroyed, something we cannot reasonably be sure of doing.  But if the objective is to destroy its military ability and nuclear prospects for now – recognizing that military action may again be necessary in the future – then this can certainly be attained.  From a military point of view, even the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to peaceful shipping does not seem to be overwhelmingly difficult.  The greatest difficulty in calculating probability of success is not military, but political.  Will the American public lose patience so quickly that the war is brought to an end prematurely, leaving not a weakened Iran but an emboldened one?  This depends in part on how well the administration explains what it is trying to do.  It could be doing better.

Jus in bello:  Criteria for justice in waging war

Proportionality.  As we have seen, the proportionality principle applies to the decision to go to war, but it also applies to how it is fought.  Even in prosecuting the war, deadly force should be employed only to the degree necessary to achieve a just purpose, and never if it produces more harm than good.  So far, the United States has employed deadly force only against military targets selected in accord with its just war aims, so this principle seems to have been satisfied.

Prohibition of evil means.  Intrinsically evil means may not be used even for just ends.  For example, one may not take hostages or execute prisoners of war.  United States forces have so far done nothing of the kind.

Discrimination.  The deliberate targeting of innocents and noncombatants is categorically prohibited.  Although some noncombatants are always harmed, American forces have never aimed at their hurt.  One must bear in mind that terroristic regimes often deliberately situate military facilities as close to civilian structures as possible, or even inside them, so that the military targets cannot be hit without risking unintended harm to civilians.  Taking such a risk is not in itself a violation of the discrimination principle, provided that the principle of proportionality is also honored.

Good faith.  So far as possible, one should wage war in ways which permit the possibility of a just peace.  One cannot achieve reconciliation with fanatics who loath the prospect of a just peace, but at least one must do nothing to encourage their loathing.  Unavoidably, losing will humiliate the adversary, but humiliation should not be the victors’ intention.

For all these reasons, it seems to me that this war is just.

It is unlikely that my words would ever come to the attention of either my Pope or my president, but I will close as though they would.

Mr. President, you could do a far better job of explaining why the war against the Iranian regime is just.  In view of our country’s commitment to just war principles, you must more clearly explain how the war complies with them.  Loose talk about the possibility of the destruction of Iranian civilization if the Iranian regime continues its nuclear intransigence gives the appearance that you intend the destruction of Iranian civilization, even if you have no such thing in mind.  Such carelessness gravely undermines your effort to justify the war’s morality.  Some say, “That sort of threat is the only language which the Iranian regime understands.”  But the Iranian regime does not seem to care about Iranian civilization; only the Iranian people do.  If at this point in time, the only language which the Iranian regime understands is force, then, reluctantly, use force.  Do not give the appearance of threatening what it would be wrong to deliberately bring about.

Your Holiness, careless language which implies that there is no such thing as a just war undermines the hope of encouraging nations to abide by just war principles.  The Church’s tradition no more forbids force to restore tranquillitas ordinis than it forbids the Swiss Guard from preventing the detonation of bombs in the Vatican.  Moreover, the Church teaches that the prudent application of just war principles lies properly in the hands of those responsible for public authority.  If the American public authorities have so grossly misapplied these principles that the Church must say so, then as shepherd and teacher of the faith, you are obligated to explain precisely how their reasoning errs.  I humbly submit that if you wish the moral authority of the Church to be taken seriously in such a case, you must also explain why the Church has not always condemned the far greater violations of these principles by the states which sponsor international terror.

For the one who was born as Son, and led to slaughter as a lamb, and sacrificed as a sheep, and buried as a man, rose up from the dead as God, since he is by nature both God and man.  He is everything: In that he judges he is law, in that he teaches he is gospel, in that he saves he is grace, in that he begets he is Father, in that he is begotten he is Son, in that he suffers he is sheep, in that he is buried he is man, in that he comes to life again he is God.  Such is Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever.  ....

Therefore, come, all families of men, you who have been befouled with sins, and receive forgiveness for your sins.  I am your forgiveness, I am the passover of your salvation, I am the lamb which was sacrificed for you, I am your ransom, I am your light, I am your saviour, I am your resurrection, I am your king, I am leading you up to the heights of heaven, I will show you the eternal Father, I will raise you up by my right hand ....

This is the Christ.  This is the king.  This is Jesus.  This is the general.  This is the Lord.  This is the one who rose up from the dead.  This is the one who sits at the right hand of the Father.  He bears the Father and is borne by the Father, to whom be the glory and the power forever.  Amen.

-- Melito of Sardis, c. 160-170 A.D.

Query:

My Hindu friend claims that the Bible endorses slavery.  I don’t buy this for a second, but since you’ve written on the subject of the Old Testament Law, the New Testament Law, and the natural law, I would like your thoughts.

Reply:

Fortunately, since you and your Hindu friend are able to have frank conversations, you can ask him about the status of untouchables in the Hindu caste system.  I would highly recommend doing so.

But in the meantime:

An old, old theme in both biblical theology and the natural law tradition is that although we should always do what we can against evils, sometimes earthly laws cannot entirely forbid them, lest imperfect men “break out into yet greater evils.”  In such cases, we must look for ways to limit and to mitigate them – and if possible, gradually eradicate them -- bearing in mind the condition of the people for whom we are legislating.

For example:  The New Testament forbids divorce, but the Law of Moses didn’t.  Then was the Law of Moses wrong?  No, Christ explains that it permitted divorce “because of the hardness of your hearts.”  In other words, it wasn’t approved, but tolerated.  Elucidating this passage, the Patristic writers said that if those ancient men hadn’t been allowed to divorce their wives, they would have killed them.  In the meantime, even in the Old Testament, through the prophet Malachi, God says “I hate divorce.”

Again:  The New Testament forbids private retribution, but the Law of Moses says “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”  Then was the Law of Moses wrong?  No, because but Torah wasn’t commanding private retribution, but limiting it.  If no limit had been imposed, then angry people would have taken a life for an eye, and an eye for a tooth.  Moreover, even in the Old Testament, God praises mercy as highly as justice.

Now for to your friend’s question:  The same pattern that we have just seen applies to bondservice as well.  The New Testament makes clear that “in Christ there is neither slave nor free,” but even the Law of Moses, which permitted bondservice, limited it in numerous ways, for instance by requiring that bondservants be set free every seventh year.  So bondservice was neither commended nor endorsed, but confined within limits.

Christians view the Old and New Testament as a whole, understanding the Old through the lens of the New.  Leaving aside fixed moral precepts such as “Thou shalt not murder” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” the Old Testament civil ordinances were not God’s final expression of His will.  They were provisional rules, meant to give the people their first lessons in holiness and to prepare them for the Gospel, which actually provides the grace to become holy as the rules command.  This is why St. Paul compares Torah to what the Greeks called the paidagogos or boy-leader, the household servant who guards and conducts the children on their way to the Teacher.

NEW PODCASTS AND INTERVIEWS ABOUT MY NEW BOOK, PANDEMIC OF LUNACY:

“Anchoring Truths” podcast with Garrett Snedeker, produced by Hadley Arkes’ James Wilson Institute.

Three-part interview with me by Terrell Clemmons in Science and Culture:

Part 3, The Flocking of Crowds: The Secular University and Unstable Mass Conformism

Part 2, Motivated Irrationality: Why Even Smart People Swallow Crackpot Ideas

Part 1, Back from the Wasteland: J. Budziszewski on His Intellectual and Spiritual Journey