The future of our time: Rewriting ‘Westphalianism’

Past master. (Image via Outside the Beltway)

Reading Henry Kissinger’s typically well-considered and intelligent article for the Wall Street Journal this weekend (“A Path out of the Middle East Collapse”), I had a growing sense that it isn’t so much a prescription for the future as a description of the past.

The sense began with the first paragraph, in which Kissinger defines the scope of what’s collapsing, and dates it only to 1973, when the U.S. moved to stabilize the Middle East during the Yom Kippur War.

But far more than recent U.S. policy on the Middle East is collapsing today.  What we’re seeing is more like the collapse of “Rome” itself:  the organization of Western power as a Europe-centric territorial phenomenon, setting unbreachable boundaries north, south, and west of a restless and perennially “unorganizable” Middle East.

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Campaign against religious freedom: Orwellian? Demonic? Both?

Mocking freedom of religion, to weaken your commitment to it. (Image: 21alive Indianapolis)

A campaign against religious freedom – the central purpose for which America came into being – had been underway for some time before the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case, on 26 June.  But the campaign went into overdrive with the news of that ruling, and it’s becoming increasingly furious and determined.

The principal method of the anti-freedom campaign is owning the terms in which it is discussed.  The anti-freedom contingent insists, in essence, that what traditionalist Christians want is not legitimate freedom, but a license to hurt people.

Fascist collectivism always makes its arguments in these terms, and the campaign against religious freedom is no different.  It picks a specific demographic target and vilifies the members of it, based on a garbled and inverted premise about social harm.

Independence Day, 2015

Detail, Patrick Henry before the Virginia House of Burgesses; Peter F. Rothermel (1817-1895)

Another national holiday rolls around, and Americans ponder where we have been, and where we are going.  For those who are deeply troubled by recent events, taking time to celebrate a spirit of liberty and a national declaration that remain unequaled in human history may be a welcome break.  But it can’t instill a sense of complacency.

Now is not the time for the emptiness of false cheer.  But it is a time for taking courage from the remarkable deeds and thoughts of our political ancestors.  What they did was as impossible as what we may need to do.

So please give serious consideration to two selections from LU for Independence Day.

The spirit of liberty

America facing the truth II: The dialogue

The watchmen wait for morning.

This post is a follow-on to the earlier post at Liberty Unyielding, “A time for facing the truth.”  The link is in the text below.

I realized after posting the lengthy comment copied below that I had basically written another blog post.  I’m not going to bother cleaning it up or adding points to make it more comprehensive.  Spurring the dialogue on this topic is the most important thing.  So this post will be a summary of the counterpoint created by much-appreciated reader comments from NaCly Dog, Stephanie O’Leary, and teejk, at my original post “A time for facing the truth.”

Disclaimer on my extended comment below:  there are of course other points to make about the vision we need for government and what has to happen to get there.  I haven’t tried to make all of those points, or even give a complete list of what the most important ones are.  Feel free to add your ideas; I’m not neglecting things that may be important, just keeping this going, because we’ve got to stay engaged.

Same-sex marriage: Supreme Court cries ‘Havoc!’

The law, as she is practiced in America.

It’s been a banner week for the opponents of reason and the rule of law.

It will also turn out to have been a banner week for the opponents of tolerance, which includes most of today’s political left.

The left has never been about tolerance.  It has always been about opposing what other people believe, as the left defines it – which may or may not even be what those other people actually believe.  The left is about opposing things: about setting up definitions that require either affirmation or enmity.

And it’s the tide of the left’s “affirmation or enmity” proposition that will quickly rise around us, now that the Supreme Court has declared that people have a “right” to have their specialized definition of marriage recognized by the state.