Here’s a reminder that the ‘weak fas­cism’ that comes about when we dilute the gov­ern­ment down to use­less husk unable to pro­tect any­one’s rights brings with it anoth­er the threat of anoth­er awful social struc­ture: Theoc­ra­cy

Talk 2 Action
Opus Dei Priest’s Seces­sion­ist Roadmap to Theoc­ra­cy
Frank Cocozzel­li

Tue Apr 01, 2014 at 02:28:34 PM EST

Fr. C.J. (“John”) McCloskey is in many ways the Amer­i­can face of the secre­tive Catholic orga­ni­za­tion, Opus Dei. He is a for­mer Wall Streeter, who is well-con­nect­ed on the Catholic Right and among the polit­i­cal and media elite of Wash­ing­ton, DC. There, he fos­ters his mes­sage of tra­di­tion­al Catholi­cism and sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics framed with a reac­tionary view of the Amer­i­can peo­ple as being either “Bible Chris­tians and faith­ful Catholics” or a “...cul­ture of death.”

McCloskey recent­ly raised the stakes of his geo-polit­i­cal vision in an essay in which he con­sid­ers seces­sion in response to and the con­tin­u­a­tion of Roe vs. Wade as the law of the land, which he sees as epit­o­miz­ing the “tyran­ni­cal regime” that is the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States.

Then there is anoth­er pos­si­bil­i­ty course of action, which, while rank­ing low in prob­a­bil­i­ty with the book­mak­ers, should not be ruled out: seces­sion. I wrote about this else­where some years ago and stirred up no small amount of con­tro­ver­sy. The red state/blue state dichoto­my could–perhaps soon­er than we might think–result in states opt­ing to pull out of the union. My guess is that if that were to hap­pen, the armed forces of the Unit­ed States (who tend to be more con­ser­v­a­tive and reli­gious than the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion) would be reluc­tant to exer­cise mil­i­tary force to stop seced­ing states. In addi­tion, per­haps para­dox­i­cal­ly, the gen­er­al­ized mod­ern sense that we should not dic­tate per­son­al lifestyle choic­es for oth­ers (although it coex­ists in many lib­er­al minds with intol­er­ance of tra­di­tion­al moral­i­ty) may make blue states reluc­tant to impose con­tin­ued mem­ber­ship in the Unit­ed States on red states that choose to secede. On the oth­er hand, giv­en the Unit­ed States’ sta­tus as a major super­pow­er for the past cen­tu­ry, for strate­gic rea­sons there may be more offi­cial resis­tance to seces­sion than we might think. We pray the seces­sion option does not hap­pen, but ulti­mate­ly the pro­tec­tion of inno­cent life trumps any tyran­ni­cal regime that can­not pro­tect even the small­est of its future cit­i­zens.

As star­tling as these asser­tions may be, they are not new for McCloskey. As I observed in a post in 2013, the Opus Dei prelate is linked to Catholic neo-Con­fed­er­ate activist Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Indeed, McCloskey is no stranger to the con­cept of seces­sion:

It is there­fore no sur­prise that among Woods’ admir­ers is the influ­en­tial Opus Dei priest C. John McCloskey. The for­mer Ivy League-Wall Street lais­sez-faire apos­tle-turned-prelate has him­self rumi­nat­ed on the appeal of seces­sion to achieve theoc­ra­cy. In his infa­mous futur­is­tic dystopi­an essay 2030: Look­ing Back­wards he glee­ful­ly imag­ines a vio­lent sep­a­ra­tion from the Unit­ed States:

The tens of thou­sands of mar­tyrs and con­fes­sors for the Faith in North Amer­i­ca were indeed the “seed of the Church” as they were in pre-Edict of Milan Chris­tian­i­ty. The final short and rel­a­tive­ly blood­less con­flict pro­duced our Region­al States of North Amer­i­ca. The out­come was by no means an ide­al solu­tion but it does allow Chris­tians to live in states that rec­og­nize the nat­ur­al law and divine Rev­e­la­tion, the right of free prac­tice of reli­gion, and laws on mar­riage, fam­i­ly, and life that reflect the pri­ma­cy of our Faith. With time and the real­i­ty of the ever-decreas­ing pop­u­la­tion of the states that wor­ship at the altar of “the cul­ture of death,” per­haps we will be able to reunite and ful­fill the Found­ing Fathers of the old Unit­ed States dream to be “a shin­ing city on a hill.”

McCloskey’s key phrase is this: “...and laws on mar­riage, fam­i­ly, and life that reflect the pri­ma­cy of our Faith.” such a state­ment can­not be mis­tak­en for any­thing but the inten­tion is to cre­ate a theoc­ra­cy through seces­sion.

The Ghost of John Cal­houn

Seces­sion­ism has its roots in the phi­los­o­phy of 19th cen­tu­ry South Car­oli­na Sen­a­tor John Cal­houn (1782–1850). Dis­trust­ful of democ­ra­cy, Cal­houn was a fire­brand who, unlike oth­er South­ern politi­cians who not only described slav­ery as “a nec­es­sary evil,” open­ly pro­claimed the pecu­liar insti­tu­tion to be a pos­i­tive good, not only for African-Amer­i­cans (of whom he pater­nal­is­ti­cal­ly described as, “a peo­ple unfit for it [lib­er­ty]”) but as a means of dri­ving away poor whites he viewed as “shift­less.”

Unlike his con­tem­po­raries Daniel Web­ster and Abra­ham Lin­coln, Cal­houn did not believe Amer­i­cans were a peo­ple; instead, only indi­vid­u­als and groups of peo­ple who took their iden­ti­ties by their home state or by their par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of Unit­ed States. Dis­dain­ing numer­i­cal democ­ra­cy, he believed that minori­ties had to be pro­tect­ed — albeit, cer­tain elite minori­ties: the slave­hold­er but not the slave. To that end, Cal­houn devel­oped the con­cept of “con­cur­rent majori­ties.”

Cal­houn knew that the north­ern urban cen­ters had the num­bers to polit­i­cal­ly pre­vail over the agrar­i­an south. So in place of numer­i­cal expres­sions of a nation­al will Cal­houn sub­sti­tut­ed the idea that votes would not mere­ly be count­ed but weighed pur­suant to sec­tion­al inter­ests and prej­u­dices.

(This view is con­sis­tent with what con­ser­v­a­tive icon Rus­sell Kirk observed to be one of Cal­houn’s fun­da­men­tal beliefs: com­plete equal­i­ty is incom­pat­i­ble with lib­er­ty.)

In any case, Cal­houn’s notion of weight­ed sec­tion­al inter­ests would serve as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for indi­vid­ual states to nul­li­fy Fed­er­al stat­ues local­ly deter­mined to be uncon­sti­tu­tional. And accord­ing to Thomas E. Woods, if nul­li­fi­ca­tion is not wide­ly sup­port­ed a state has anoth­er rem­e­dy:

In Cal­houn’s con­cep­tion, when a state offi­cial­ly nul­li­fied a fed­er­al law on the grounds of its dubi­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty, the law must be regard­ed as sus­pend­ed. Thus could the “con­cur­rent major­i­ty” of a state be pro­tect­ed by the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al actions of a numer­i­cal major­i­ty of the entire coun­try. But there are lim­its to what the con­cur­rent major­i­ty could do. Should the three-fourths of the states, by means of the amend­ment process, choose to grant the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment the dis­put­ed pow­er, then the nul­li­fy­ing state would have to decide whether it going with the deci­sion of its fel­low states or whether it would be bet­ter to secede from the Union.

There­in lies the excuse for seces­sion. Upon clos­er inspec­tion, it is a flim­sy excuse to avoid a com­mon min­i­mum stan­dard of basic rights. For all his con­cern about minor­i­ty rights, Cal­houn was down­right hyp­o­crit­i­cal.

A close review of “con­cur­rent majori­ties” reveals that the con­cept is not only ignores the pre­vail­ing will of a nation­al con­sen­sus it also does not pro­tect the rights of all minori­ties. Instead, the real life appli­ca­tion of con­cur­rent majori­ties would real­ly mean local self-select­ed minori­ties rule. In oth­er words, what would be a nation­al minor­i­ty in terms of sec­tion­al­ism would then become that sec­tion’s pre­vail­ing major­i­ty.

We need look no fur­ther for a good exam­ple than the Amer­i­can South on the eve of the Civ­il War. In 1860 there were 9 mil­lion indi­vid­u­als liv­ing in Dix­ie; of those 4 mil­lion were African-Amer­i­can slaves with no rights what­so­ev­er. Under this scheme not all indi­vid­u­als share the same min­i­mum stan­dard of rights. At the same time, the white land own­ing class­es ful­ly enjoyed the right to vote, to serve on juries and engage in oth­er civ­il func­tions. The notion of con­cur­rent majori­ties is noth­ing but a sham; an excuse to cast oppres­sion as a lib­er­ty inter­est.

Nei­ther Woods nor McCloskey advo­cates the restora­tion of the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery. How­ev­er, they do seek a dif­fer­ent sys­tem of oppres­sion: theoc­ra­cy. Ideas such as nul­li­fi­ca­tion, seces­sion and con­cur­rent majori­ties can be used inter­change­ably to bring about theoc­ra­cy as they were once used attempt­ing to make per­ma­nent human slav­ery. And just as African-Amer­i­cans were once denied a min­i­mum stan­dard of nat­ur­al rights so too would those not prac­tic­ing a tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholic or fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian reli­gious belief. Per­son­al deci­sions regard­ing birth con­trol, repro­duc­tive rights the mar­riage equal­i­ty would be lim­it­ed by the dic­tates of ultra-ortho­dox Chris­t­ian Appli­ca­tions to sec­u­lar law, not by the col­lec­tive will of the nation.

...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29669231

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