Suppose You Were an Idiot: On the Importance of Acknowledging Incompetence
by Dylan Pahman
within Philosophy, Politics
May 31, 2017 07:00 am http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/05/19281/
Political theory typically attributes political action to one of two main motivations: idealism or self-interest. But incompetence plays a much larger role than many assume.
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Despite their many differences, many theorists from Plato to John Rawls agree that one needs the right ideal of justice, and then a just society can be formed on that basis. In pop culture, we might call this the West Wing pole of politics. In that NBC drama, in spite of corruption, scandal, and stupidity, nobler forces ultimately prevail, and every episode ends with the philosopher king confidently asking, “What’s next?” In real life, we might think of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who boldly ran for president as a self-identified socialist, or Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan’s third district (my own), who Reason dubbed “the last honest man in Congress.” These men certainly have their own interests, but their principles, however opposite, clearly animate their actions in significant ways.

At the other end of the spectrum, the American Founding Fathers, Frédéric Bastiat, and Public Choice theorists such as James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock all saw self-interest as one of the greatest motivators of human activity and explored ways to control and harness its power. I call this the House of Cards pole of politics, after the hit Netflix series. Sure, there are people in politics pursuing altruistic ends, but they are just chumps waiting to be exploited by more intrepid and cutthroat forces. The politician puts on a good face, but overtures to the common good merely mask the private interests that more accurately predict political action. Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), the show’s antihero, sums this up, “Shake with your right hand, but hold a rock in your left.” Whether it takes the form of cronyism or outright corruption, real-life examples of unchecked self-interest in politics are sadly numerous. From the paranoid self-preservation of Watergate to the Clinton campaign’s cooperation with the DNC and CNN to undermine Sanders’ presidential run, self-interest clearly drives much political action.

Yet these two poles alone cannot explain politics or the human nature from which it stems. There is truth to both, but if they are the only lenses we have, we will find ourselves too easily sliding into believing conspiracy theories. To be fair, sometimes such theories turn out to be true—there really was a secret war in Laos, after all, and Watergate did happen. But unless we add incompetence as a category of analysis, we will tend to view every victory for our own team as a triumph of justice or freedom or equality (idealism), and every failure the result of deep and convoluted corruption (self-interest). This is not a productive approach or an accurate reflection of reality. Whatever the relation between the Trump campaign and Russia, for example, no conspiracy caused Secretary Clinton to neglect Rust Belt states like Michigan. That was just incompetence. Adding incompetence to our analysis keeps it grounded in a constant of human nature and provides support for more limited government.

Even Our Intelligence Needs Intelligence

By way of illustration, and to further push back against conspiratorial thinking, incompetence even affects our intelligence agencies, which are so often the supposed masterminds of conspiracy theories. Federalist’s Ben Domenech pointed this out in late March with regard to (now former) FBI director James Comey’s use of social media. While his recent firing certainly serves the president’s self-interest, he didn’t always inspire the utmost confidence in the bureau:

Comey mentioned in passing at a public event the other day that he had to be on Twitter these days, and that he has an Instagram account but only follows his family and his daughter’s boyfriend. This was a very foolish thing to say, because it immediately set the internet sleuths going—and thanks to Instagram’s algorithm, it made it very easy to find Comey’s accounts. He even named the blasted thing after Reinhold Niebuhr—the subject of his college thesis. It took a lone Gawker writer four hours to find him.

We might wonder whether his account password is simply “password.” This is the same man who in October 2014 publicly confessed that the FBI was at the mercy of Apple programmers, complaining about new iPhone security features. Again, this is the FBI we’re talking about. They’re supposed to be hiding evidence of extraterrestrials and covering up assassinations, but it seems that they can’t even handle smartphones and social media.

All that is to say, the grand conspiracy theory of government has seen better days. What is at work here is profound incompetence. But what is incompetence?

Incompetence Defined

Incompetence is a popular explanation for human behavior, particularly the behavior of politicians, but it is rarely used with precision. It is not uncommon for people to complain about how stupid Trump or Obama (or whoever they don’t like) is. It makes us feel smart to call someone else—especially someone important—dumb. But offhand insults to other people’s intelligence do not provide a theory or a definition of incompetence.

The French literary critic Émile Faguet is one of the few to attempt a theory in his book The Cult of Incompetence, now over a century old. Faguet wrote, “That society . . . stands highest in the scale, where the division of labour is greatest, where specialisation is most definite, and where the distribution of functions according to efficiency is most thoroughly carried out.” But, according to Faguet, democracies are a form of government particularly ill-suited to such efficiency. Incompetence is a failure of the division of labor, and democracies demand and seek out such failure.

How so? On the whole, a democracy is a group of people with no relevant qualifications or experience for government claiming political sovereignty for themselves. Rather than choosing the most competent persons for any given public position, they often elect people who reflect their passions and prejudices, and those people appoint others who will further their political careers. I think Mark Twain understood this when he wrote, “Reader, suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” This is not exactly a formula for competence.

Faguet explains this in terms reminiscent of Tocqueville, though he prefers to cite Aristotle and Montesquieu. It is the people’s passion for equality in everything that fuels the cancerous spread of incompetence throughout democratic societies: “Democracy is thus led quite naturally, irresistibly one may say, to exclude the competent precisely because they are competent, or . . . because they are unequal, or . . . because being unequal they are suspected of being opponents of equality.”

I call this the Veep theory of politics, after the HBO comedy, because the results are as comical as they are tragic—or perhaps they’re even comical because they are tragic, if one has a dark enough sense of humor. In Veep, Vice President Selena Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her staff fumble through life as the ultimate runners-up. They are eternally second-best, like an Aldi brand version of the American presidency. They would be corrupt, if they weren’t so bad at it. They’d pursue high ideals, if they could remember which ones they liked in the first place. They succeed most often by accident, and continually fail despite everyone’s best efforts.

In one typical scene, an eccentric reporter asks Meyer, “Why does God allow suffering?” In response, her press secretary turns away from the interviewer and whispers into his iPhone, “Siri, why does God allow suffering?” Meanwhile, Selena can be heard in the background beginning to answer by saying, “Um, well, I wouldn’t ever presume to know the mind of God, but that said. . . .” The reporter shouldn’t be asking the question, the press secretary shouldn’t expect Siri to have an answer, and Meyer shouldn’t attempt to answer anyway. Clearly, none of them are competent for the tasks at hand.

What to Do

If Faguet is right, incompetence is inherent to democracy. His own proposed solution, however admirable, turns out a bit vague on the practicalities. Despite all his criticisms, he supports democracy but thinks it insufficient on its own. What is needed is to combine a people of an aristocratic temperament with a “demophil” (people-loving) aristocracy. He cites the ancient Roman Republic as his prime example, but he gives little guidance for how to achieve this in modern times.

I would go further by insisting that incompetence is actually inherent to human learning. To some degree, it is unavoidable in any form of government or organization. All competence is learned, though different people have more natural aptitude at some skills than others.

It would be wrong, however, to conclude that the solution is simply education—at least not as it tends to function in modern democracies. As Faguet himself observes, “We search conscientiously for competence or efficiency, and we believe that we have found it when we find knowledge, but that is an error.” Competence is more a matter of know-how than knowledge.

Instead, my solution is to support limited government. It may be hard to achieve in practice, but we have recent historical examples (e.g., Ronald Reagan) of significant reigning in of the scope of the state. In Faguet’s words, the private sector is one of the “refuges of efficiency” in democratic societies due to market feedback. Expanding its scope by limiting the regulatory state in particular should help incentivize competence in society as a whole. In this, incompetence gives us further support for many of the measures recommended by self-interest theorists. However, it also gives additional caution against trying to make any dramatic changes sometimes recommended in those same circles, like amending the Constitution. What confidence do we have that the democratically elected members of an Article V Convention, for example, would be competent to the task?

Instead, knowing that it is, to some degree, natural and unpreventable, we should also acknowledge that sometimes incompetence is a feature, not a bug. Incompetence limits idealism when politicians accidentally overestimate the popularity of policies. Incompetence sometimes also exposes the self-interest that may lie beneath those who are popular, through slips of the tongue, the publication of private emails, sloppy financial records, and so on. Contra Faguet, incompetence may even be one of the strengths of democracy . . . as long as one has a dark enough sense of humor.

Dylan Pahman is a research fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty, where he serves as managing editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality. He is also a fellow of the Sophia Institute: International Center for Orthodox Thought and Culture. Follow him on Twitter @DylanPahman.

Bishop Schneider: 10 Elements of Renewal in the Liturgy
Steve Skojec Steve Skojec May 30, 2017

And why speak I of the world to come? Since here this mystery makes earth become to you a heaven. Open only for once the gates of heaven and look in; nay, rather not of heaven, but of the heaven of heavens; and then you will behold what I have been speaking of. For what is there most precious of all, this will I show you lying upon the earth. For as in royal palaces, what is most glorious of all is not walls, nor golden roofs, but the person of the king sitting on the throne; so likewise in heaven the Body of the King. But this, you are now permitted to see upon earth. For it is not angels, nor archangels, nor heavens and heavens of heavens, that I show you, but the very Lord and Owner of these.

– St. John Chrysostom, Homily on 1st Cor., as cited in Dominus Est, by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, p. 34

On February 14, 2015, Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan, was sponsored by the Paulus Institute to give a talk in Washington, DC. During the talk, he proposed concrete actions — ten essential elements — which should be implemented to accomplish liturgical renewal.

As an attendee, I was impressed once again by his excellency’s concern for reverence and piety in Catholic worship. Because of the deep value of the insights he presented, I would like to offer to you my own summary of his principle themes.

The bishop instructed that ever since apostolic times, the Church sought to have holy liturgy, and that it is only through the action of the Holy Spirit that one can truly adore Christ. Exterior gestures of adoration that express interior reverence are vital within the context of the liturgy. These include bowing, genuflections, prostrations, and the like. His excellency cited St. John Chrysostom’s writings on liturgy, particularly focusing on the following theme: The liturgy of the Church is a participation in and must be modeled upon the heavenly liturgy of the angels.

The notion of heavenly liturgy, and our participation in it at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, offers some perspective to those of us who may be tempted to take for granted the incredible miracle in our midst. The reality is that each Catholic church is, itself, a place wherein dwell angels, archangels, the kingdom of God, and God’s own Heavenly Self. If we were somehow able to be transported to the heavenly liturgy, we would not dare speak even to those we know and love. When we are within a Church, we should therefore speak reservedly, and then only of sacred things.

In the early church, the altar and other sacred items were veiled out of respect for the sacred mystery in which they played a role. There was not, contrary to popular belief in our present time, a versus populum celebration of Mass or even a widespread practice of communion in the hand. The priest and the people faced together towards God in the liturgical East.

When we celebrate liturgy, it is God who must be at the center. The incarnate God. Christ. Nobody else. Not even the priest who acts in His place.

It impoverishes the liturgy when we reduce the signs and gestures of adoration. Any liturgical renewal must therefore restore these and bring about a more Christocentric and transcendent character of the earthly liturgy which is more reminiscent of the angelic liturgy.

Ten Elements of Renewal

Bishop Schneider offered these 10 points of implementation which he views as fundamental for liturgical renewal (audio begins at 27 minutes):

1. The tabernacle, where Jesus Christ, the Incarnate God, is really present under the species of bread should be placed in the center of the sanctuary, because in no other sign on this earth is God, the Emmanuel, so really present and so near to man as in the tabernacle. The tabernacle is the sign indicating and containing the Real Presence of Christ and should therefore be closer to the altar and constitute with the altar the one central sign indicating the Eucharistic mystery. The Sacrament of the Tabernacle and the Sacrifice of the Altar should therefore not be opposed or separated, but both in the central place and close together in the sanctuary. All the attention of those who enter a church should spontaneously be directed towards the tabernacle and the altar.

2. During the Eucharistic liturgy – at the very least during the Eucharistic prayer – when Christ the Lamb of God is immolated, the face of the priest should not be seen by the faithful. Even the Seraphim cover their faces (Isaiah 6:2) when adoring God. Instead, the face of the priest should be turned toward the cross, the icon of the crucified God.

3. During the liturgy, there should be more signs of adoration — specifically genuflections — especially each time the priest touches the consecrated host.

4. The faithful approaching to receive the Lamb of God in Holy Communion should greet and receive Him with an act of adoration, kneeling. Which moment in the life of the faithful is more sacred than this moment of encounter with the Lord?

5. There should be more room for silence during the liturgy, especially during those moments which most fully express the mystery of the redemption. Especially when the sacrifice of the cross is made present during the Eucharistic prayer.

6. There should be more exterior signs which express the dependence of the priest on Christ, the High Priest, which would more clearly show that the words the priest speaks (ie., “Dominus Vobiscum“) and the blessings he offers to the faithful depend on and flow out from Christ the High Priest, not from him, the private person. Not “I greet you” or “I bless you” but “I the Lord” do these things. Christ. Such signs could be (as was practiced for centuries) the kissing of the altar before greeting the people to indicate that this love flows not from the priest but from the altar; and also before blessing, to kiss the altar, and then bless the people. (This was practiced for millennium, and unfortunately in the new rite has been abolished.) Also, bowing towards the altar cross to indicate that Christ is more important than the priest. Often in the liturgy — in the old rite — when a priest expressed the name of Jesus, he had to turn to the cross and make a bow to show that the attention should be on Christ, not him.

7. There should be more signs which express the unfathomable mystery of the redemption. This could be achieved through the veiling of liturgical objects, because veiling is an act of the liturgy of the angels. Veiling the chalice, veiling the paten with the humeral veil, the veiling of the corporal, veiling the hands of the bishop when he celebrates a solemnity, The use of communion rails, also, to veil the altar. Also signs – signs of the cross by the priest and the faithful. Making signs of the cross during the priest by the Eucharistic prayer and by the faithful during other moments of the liturgy; when we are signing ourselves with the cross it is a sign of blessing. In the ancient liturgy, three times during the Gloria, the Credo, and the Sanctus, the faithful made the sign of the cross. These are expressions of the mystery.

8. There should be a constant sign which expresses the mystery also by means of human language – that is to say, Latin is a sacred language demanded by the Second Vatican Council in celebration of every holy Mass and in each place a part of the Eucharistic prayer should always be said in Latin.

9. All those who exercise an active role in the liturgy, such as lectors, or those announcing the prayer of the faithful, should always be dressed in the liturgical vestments; and only men, no women, because this is an exercise in the sanctuary, close to the priesthood. Even reading the lectionary is directed towards this liturgy which we are celebrating to Christ. And therefore only men dressed in liturgical vestments should be in the sanctuary.

10. The music and the songs during the liturgy should more truly reflect the sacred character and should resemble the song of the angels, like the Sanctus, in order to be really more able to sing with one voice with the angels. Not only the sanctus, but the entire Holy Mass. It would be necessary that the heart, mind and voice of the priest and the faithful be directed towards The Lord. And that this would be manifested by exterior signs and gestures as well.

There is a great deal to reflect on here. Each of these ten points seems, to me at least, indispensable in our pursuit of truly reverent worship in our churches. None of these points is incompatible with either the Church’s ancient liturgy or, perhaps more importantly, with the liturgy envisioned by the Council Fathers in Sacrosanctum Concilium.

It would be a tremendous blessing if more bishops would take up these ten points as essential guidelines for liturgy in their dioceses. I encourage you to send them along to your own bishop for his consideration. There were more treasures in the Q&A, which I have elected not to transcribe due to the length. (If you are interested in the full audio of the talk, see below.)

I also had the opportunity to meet briefly with the bishop at the conclusion of his talk. When I thanked him for his leadership in a time where it seems so many of our shepherds are not speaking with clear voices for the teachings of the Church, he said to me, “It is you who must do this. You, the faithful, your families. You must be holy. You must teach the faith to your children. You must inspire the priests.” On the subject of vocations, he said that we must offer our children to God if we wish for them to receive a call. It would seem that with this advice — paired with the concrete suggestions he previously offered in his article published earlier this year — he is calling on us, the laity, to begin a holiness revolution if we wish to see reform the Church.

It seems we had better get started.

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His Excellency, Bishop Athanasius Schneider and Steve Skojec

VATICAN CITY, VATICAN – MARCH 13: Newly elected Pope Francis I appears on the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on March 13, 2013 in Vatican City, Vatican. Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th Pontiff and will lead the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

MAHOUD’S PARADISE

TUESDAY, MAY 30, 2017

The Horrific Math of the Evolving Cardinalate

The following table shows the proportion of papal electors that will have been selected by Pope Francis, beginning on June 28th, when the five new designates will be confirmed, and extrapolating out, in case Pope Francis continues to occupy the chair in another one, two or three years. Since it’s probable that some cardinals under age 80 will die in the interim – to be replaced by Francis – the actual proportions will, of course, almost certainly be higher.

2017 – 4 years: 49 of 121 (40%)
2018 – 5 years: 53 of 120 (44%)
2019 – 6 years: 59 0f 120 (49%)
2020 – 7 years: 67 of 120 (56%)

At her blog, What’s up with the Synod, and in a recent article in The Remnant, Hillary White wonders whether Jorge Bergoglio might have already served his primary purpose for the Modernist revolution/demolition:
A while ago Mike Matt asked me how it could possibly be worse. I said, “Oh, I don’t know. How about someone smarter, more wiley and less obvious, more politically skilled and more plausible, and 20 years younger?”
“Has Bergoglio reached the end of his usefulness? And if so, what’s next on the agenda?” Broadly, he was to sever the connection of the Church’s power structures to her doctrines, most especially the doctrines that the secular world finds most objectionable; that is, on sex and marriage. He was to complete the desacralization of the Church as an institution and remove the last obstacles for a functioning union between Catholicism, “liberal” factions in other Christian confessions and other religions and the globalist, transnationalist elites in Brussels and New York.
All of these things he has accomplished, and the time has come for the Revolution to move on to the next phase.
[…]
The short version is that at the end of 4 years of Pope Francis Bergoglio, every bit of the power and money of the institutions of the Catholic Church is now in the hands of the completely triumphant post-Conciliar, secularist, globalist, neo-modernist Revolution. And that is why I think that Bergoglio’s reign will not last much longer. His purpose has been accomplished; Maradiaga’s “irreversible renovation” of the Church is done.
Bergoglio himself has been recorded saying that he thought his pontificate would last about 4 years. And here we are. We know that certain people put him in place for certain reasons. He was to accomplish some very particular tasks and I think he has done so. I think overall, his job was to complete the demolition project of the radical revolutionaries of the Vaticantwoist project; that is, the total reconstruction of the Catholic Church along the lines of their vision.
What I believe is that now that the Wrecking Ball has done his work, we will next have the Surgeon.
As Miss White mentions, one of the most important projects of Bergoglio was packing the voting-age cardinalate with the Modernists’s men.

The American Conservative
Fusionism & The Conservative Future
By ROD DREHER • May 30, 2017, 2:20 PM

Jim Larkin/Shutterstock)
Writing in the conservative journal Modern Age, Samuel Goldman counsels fellow conservatives to move with extreme caution in the Age of Trump:

Conservatism does have to adapt if it is to survive the Age of Trump. But a conservatism that panders to populist fantasies and embraces the morality of professional wrestling is not worth saving. One place to start rebuilding amid the ruins is a return to the blueprint developed by political theorist Frank Meyer as the modern conservative movement was first taking shape. “Fusionism” is part of the conservative past. But it may also be the future.

Fusionism, as you probably know, is the concept that united the libertarian Right and the traditionalist Right in the 1950s. It found a way to accommodate the small-government/pro-market beliefs of libertarians with the concern for virtue and social order among traditionalists. Ronald Reagan was the ultimate fusionist conservative candidate.

Goldman delivers a good basic explanation of fusionism (which readers new to the term will recognize as mainstream American conservatism of the last half-century), and contrasts it to Trumpian populism. He notes fusionism’s failures, and concedes that however crude Trumpism may be, it didn’t come from nowhere. Yet he believes that Trumpian populism does not provide any kind of solution to the problems fusionism has failed to resolve. Excerpt:

[T]he insufficiency of one solution does not necessarily mean that a better one is available. The midcentury industrial workplace really did provide a stable and dignified life, especially for men who took pride in their mastery of things rather than facility with numbers or words. Unfortunately, we have no idea how to bring it back.

We also have no idea how to restore a “thick” national identity without employing unacceptably coercive means. It is easy to forget that the common culture of fond memory was made possible by policies that included the legal suppression of America’s largest immigrant culture (the German-speaking Midwest) during the First World War, and mass conscription and a virtual takeover of the economy and media during World War II. The comfortable sense of belonging many Americans enjoyed half a century ago was also buttressed by the formal and informal exclusion of black people from the mainstream of American life. These were bad measures that no one seriously proposes to revive.

I think Goldman has hit on the very serious dilemma facing conservatives now. The old way of doing things — fusionism — has failed to address deep structural problems in American life. Populism, though, proposes solutions that are arguably unjust and unworkable. Giving the state more power does not bother traditionalists as much as it does libertarians, but only because traditionalists don’t mind using the state to achieve virtuous ends. But trads (like me) have to confront the fact that we are a post-Christian democratic nation, and that concentrating power in the hands of the state will in most cases be used against us.

Read Goldman’s entire essay. He contends that conservatives should abandon the idea that we will ever have a polity as unified as we once did, and that a reformed fusionism — reformed in light of the failures of the fusionist status quo that gave rise to Trumpist populism — still gives us the best principled hope for realizing conservative ends in this environment.

I guess I agree with this by default, if only because I see no prospect that Trumpism, for which I have a certain sympathy, can work. Even if Trump were to seek to empower and to encourage virtue — that’s okay, I can wait for you to stop laughing — the plain fact is that we are now too fissiparous a society even to agree on what virtue is. What fusionism works out to in practice, it seems to me, is business interests using traditionalists (chiefly Christian conservatives) as useful idiots to get what they want out of government. Do you see the Republican Party standing up for traditional values and virtues in the face of the LGBT juggernaut within corporate America? Of course not. And the truth is, traditional values on matters of sex and sexuality are increasingly unpopular. We really are a post-Christian nation.

That said, it still makes sense for trads to work within the Republican Party. If the GOP is not promoting our interests, at least it is not outright hostile to them, as the Democrats are. The long-term trend in our country, however, is running against traditionalist Christians. We cannot expect GOP politicians in a democracy to stand up for values that a diminishing number of American share. And we cannot expect politics to solve, or even adequately address, the core crises of American culture and society. We are much more likely to get the breathing space to work on our own localist solutions if Republicans (either populist or fusionist) are in power, but that’s about all we can hope for.

Despite what you’ve heard from some quarters, the Benedict Option does not call on Christians to abandon political involvement. Rather, it calls for Christians to re-prioritize their concerns. For too long, too many conservative Christians have acted as if the most important thing we can do for the country is to vote Republicans into office. Meanwhile, our churches have rotted from within. Massive numbers of Millennials are drifting away from the church, and those who stay are, like most of the older generations, really Moralistic Therapeutic Deists. As Robert Louis Wilken said back in 2004:

At this moment in the Church’s history in this country (and in the West more generally) it is less urgent to convince the alternative culture in which we live of the truth of Christ than it is for the Church to tell itself its own story and to nurture its own life, the culture of the city of God, the Christian republic.

This is not surrender. It is a strategy for facing our post-Christian reality. It is not a call for Christians to abandon politics entirely — I don’t believe we can or should do that — but it is a call to understand the nature of the times, and to commit our attention and our resources to building up the life of the church in truly countercultural ways. We cannot expect as much from Republican politicians or politics itself as many of us wish to think that we can. Continuing to respond as if we were in normal times in this regard amounts to a fruitless shoring up of the declining imperium, when what is most needed — not exclusively needed, but most needed — is what we have neglected among ourselves for far too long: building up the culture of the city of God, the Christian republic.

In his most recent column, Dennis Prager (who is Jewish) criticizes Trump-opposing conservatives:

I have concluded that there are a few reasons that explain conservatives who were Never-Trumpers during the election, and who remain anti-Trump today.

The first and, by far, the greatest reason is this: They do not believe that America is engaged in a civil war, with the survival of America as we know it at stake.

While they strongly differ with the left, they do not regard the left-right battle as an existential battle for preserving our nation. On the other hand, I, and other conservative Trump supporters, do.

Well, I wasn’t one of the Never-Trumpers, and I do believe that we are indeed engaged in a great battle in this country. The difference between Prager and me has to do with the nature of the war. The idea that Donald Trump is in charge of the forces of righteousness is farcical. And the idea that the line between the forces of good and evil in this war is drawn between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, is delusional.

Prager also makes the shopworn “Georgetown cocktail party” criticisms, accusing Never-Trumpers of being too prissy and self-involved to embrace Trump:

They can join the fight. They can accept an imperfect reality and acknowledge that we are in a civil war, and that Trump, with all his flaws, is our general. If this general is going to win, he needs the best fighters. But too many of them, some of the best minds of the conservative movement, are AWOL.

I beg them: Please report for duty.

What, exactly, is Donald Trump fighting for? And why is the righteousness of that cause so overwhelmingly clear that it requires conservatives to abandon their principles for the sake of winning power? This is not clear at all to me. The Trump phenomenon is, to me, a sign that we traditionalist conservatives have already lost the war. The Benedict Option is the most important form of resistance open to us.

As I have written here, a conservative Evangelical friend who doesn’t like Trump told me that his crowd has gone all-in for him because “they don’t have a Plan B” — meaning that they have no idea what to do if they lose power. They don’t realize that they — that we — have already lost power, and if we keep telling ourselves that we can win it back, we will continue to neglect the most important work we can and should be doing right now.

We are not engaged in a battle to “preserve the nation”. We are engaged in a battle to save the church. It is entirely possible that we could preserve the nation, whatever that means, but lose the church. Both are important to me, but I know which one matters more.

UPDATE: Patrick Deneen has an essay about conservatism in the Age of Trump in the same issue. Excerpts:

In the roughly half century of political ascendancy of American conservatism, little was recognizably conserved. The economic landscape of America was remade not only by a series of free trade agreements that accelerated globalization and economic integration but also by internal policies, both federal and local, that favored large corporations over small business. The rise of big-box stores was coincident with the postwar creation of suburbia and settlement patterns that found Americans increasingly living often at vast distances from work, school, church, and commerce. Findings by social scientists, most prominently Robert Putnam, demonstrated a consistent and substantial decline in the associational life of Americans and the rise of forms of what Tocqueville predicted would be the dominant democratic ethic of individualism. Every religious tradition, with the notable exception of Mormonism, saw extensive losses in adherents, especially pronounced among the millennial generation whose commitments to “none” began approaching the 50 percent mark. Schooling increasingly emphasized both sensitivity and utilitarian skills, rejecting traditional efforts to steward history and perpetuate a culture. Universities, in turn, became dominated by left-wing identitarians and a bloated corporate administrative class that together eviscerated distinctive cultural and religious institutional traditions in a deracinated commitment to vague social justice and job preparation. The media became saturated with explicit sexuality, incessant sarcasm, and default mockery of traditionalist beliefs. Pornography went mainstream. Demonstrations of bathetic patriotism became obligatory at every public event even though a tiny minority of Americans would ever be directly affected by the inconveniences of military service. In nearly every aspect of American life, little worth conserving was conserved.

American conservatism was ultimately a failure because it advanced a liberalism that has now been visibly revealed to be fundamentally destructive of the fabric of lives of a wide swath of countrymen, particularly those who are in many respects by design the “losers” in the liberal order. The rejection of American conservatism was most fundamentally a rejection of American liberalism, and Trump was the carrier of anxieties not over the course of the Republican and Democratic parties but the American order itself. Yet, far from ensuring the rise of a new and more credible conservatism, the rise of Trump may signal that no conservatism arising from the morass of contemporary American anticulture is viable. [Emphasis mine. — RD]

More:

If nothing else, the exceedingly narrow victory of Donald Trump may be understood as the last gasp of a dying conservatism that has been destroyed by American liberalism. That “instinctive understanding of inherent limits” may be the animating attraction to a vision of Trump’s promises for a nation with a border and a common culture; a foreign policy largely defensive instead of a de facto empire; a capital drained of cronies and riggers; and the liberty to call things as they really are, including men, women, and children. Yet protection of this instinct was given to a man with no apparent conservative values or vision, less a sign of hope than desperation. Conservatism may have a future in America, but it will arise most likely from families and intentional communities that live as a counterculture to self-immolating American liberalism, and not as something that will be created in a political laboratory by the educated or from the wreckage of a Flight 93 administration in Washington, D.C.

Yes. This. Shore up the imperium if you like, but understand that in doing so you are conserving very little that matters, or should matter, to socially conservative religious traditionalists.

Posted in Christianity, Culture, Culture war, Decline and Fall, Benedict Option, Weimar America, All Things Trump. Tagged traditionalists, libertarians, Samuel Goldman, fusionism, Donald Trump, Dennis Prager.

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7 Responses to Fusionism & The Conservative Future
Brendan says:
May 30, 2017 at 2:31 pm
I honestly think fusionism is as serious a mistake as populism is. Fusionism brought the libertarian vandals into the heart of conservatism, with their distaste for traditional morality and religion. It has had a disastrous impact on the conservative political movement, full stop. The conservatives should abandon the libertarians and let them swim on their own. Yes, it means neither would win politically on a NATIONAL level, but it’s likely that even a “united” conservative/libertarian coalition still will struggle nationally anyway.

Overall, the political situation is not winnable, in any meaningful sense, from the perspective of a social/religious conservative. Noone is on our side. So I don’t really care that much about what happens to “conservatism”, per se, because it certainly doesn’t have our backs. But if I were a tactician for “conservatism”, I’d dump the libertarians once and for all.

djc says:
May 30, 2017 at 2:38 pm
For the life of me I will never understand this hatred of Trump. He said he’d appoint conservatives to the SCOTUS and he did. He said he would begin to dismantle excessive regulations and he has. He said he’d appoint conservatives to prominent positions and he has.

He said he would attack abortion and his appointees have done so. He has done so himself as well.

He is trying to keep us out of wars in the Middle East and he is not backing down from building a wall, though who knows what it will look like, on the Southern border.

He has authorized the building of the pipeline in the Dakota’s.

What conservative could be against this?

As far as his sordid past—-well, it is what it is. Does anyone believe Obama’s past is substantially any better? I don’t.

If Trump ultimately fails, and he may, the biggest loser will be the Republican Party for being shown to be the hypocrites I’ve discovered them to be.

Rod, I love your blog but I will never understand, though I have read pretty much every post, why there is such a dislike of Trump.

PS I called every state except Wisconsin in the last election.

Caleb Bernacchio says:
May 30, 2017 at 2:44 pm
“That said, it still makes sense for trads to work within the Republican Party. If the GOP is not promoting our interests, at least it is not outright hostile to them, as the Democrats are. The long-term trend in our country, however, is running against traditionalist Christians. We cannot expect GOP politicians in a democracy to stand up for values that a diminishing number of American share. And we cannot expect politics to solve, or even adequately address, the core crises of American culture and society. We are much more likely to get the breathing space to work on our own localist solutions if Republicans (either populist or fusionist) are in power, but that’s about all we can hope for.”

I think you overlook the real issue here and thus grossly underestimate the conflict facing conservatives, in a way that is not unrelated to my criticisms of the BenOp. While you might be right about the relative indifference of the GOP when compared with the hostility of the Democrats what this analysis overlooks is just how harmful the neoliberal program initiated under Reagan and championed by the Republicans was to the American communities where traditional morality was nurtured. So there is in reality an equally asymmetric relationship between the Democrats and the GOP when it comes to neoliberalism, with the former acquiescing in what was championed by the latter and has now become the only game in town. Again, if MacIntyre is correct traditional morality needs precisely the types of communities where good work, flourishing local organizations, and relationships with neighbors are commonplace. Because of this, traditional conservatives are faced with something like a tragedy: support candidates who vehemently and militantly reject all of your ideals or vote for the friendly and sympathetic conservative who will give your job and community to the highest bidder.

In this situation why can’t a case be made for conservatives to work out a space within a coalition of supporters of Bernie Sanders, articulating clearly where there is common ground and where there are differences that must be respected?

DocBroom says:
May 30, 2017 at 2:45 pm
I think I’m a bit closer to abandoning all hope in the American imperium then you are Rod. If traditional Christians as a bloc are to remain engaged in the political arena, I think we need to put distance between ourselves and the Trumpistas, the Establishment GOP and the Democrats. Our votes and support ought to be earned rather than assumed. But I am more and more convinced that whatever hope we as traditional Christians have is to be the Church and change the culture by changing the allegiance toward the Kingdom, one person at a time. I’m still wrestling, after reading Benedict Option three times on how beyond myself I can get those around me to begin ‘building’ monasteries of the heart and mind in our neighborhoods, churches, and communities.

Lord Captain Cecil Harvey says:
May 30, 2017 at 3:07 pm
Rod, I don’t understand why you can’t see that we’ve already lost the cultural civil war. Badly lost. What’s left is negotiating the terms under which we conservatives will live under.

There is absolutely no political solution. Not stressing this enough is my biggest criticism of the Benedict Option. We *should* withdraw from the political arena, because we have zero hope there.

Our only options are those involving community and spirituality. Forming strong bonds, prayer, fasting, etc. — all things you recommend. We *should* be running for the hills — at least those of us with families. We should live good lives, and opportunistically look to convert others whenever we can, especially those of us that can still work in the world (we’ve got maybe 10 years left where traditionalists can work in corporate America). Every able-bodied Christian man should learn to shoot a rifle, because it will come to that if we live uncompromising lives.

But engaging in politics is a complete waste of time. It will accomplish nothing. If the majority of this country, both left and right, think Trump is conservative, what do they think of us?

Viriato says:
May 30, 2017 at 3:28 pm
I agree with this piece overall. Trump is clearly not one of us, as his well-documented support for transgenderism shows.

But I’m very skeptical about the desirability of any sort of return to fusionism, because fusionism is, as you write, fundamentally about “business interests using traditionalists (chiefly Christian conservatives) as useful idiots to get what they want out of government.”

For a coalition to be worthwhile, the parties to it need to have some fundamental values in common. For instance, in Francoist Spain, the regime was buttressed by four main forces: Falangists, Carlists, constitutional monarchists, and members of Opus Dei. There were many ideological differences between these groups, far too many to be summarized here. But they nonetheless had one value in common: a profound Catholic faith and a commitment to preserving Spain’s Catholic heritage and character. One can easily imagine why these groups were willing to tolerate each other’s idiosyncrasies for the sake of the greater good.

What do libertarians and traditionalist conservatives have in common, exactly?

What do we “get” out of a coalition with libertarians? Do libertarians ever have our back in the culture wars?

NO. As you’ve written about many times, free market types consistently align with big business interests against the interests of traditionalists.

Do libertarians and traditionalists even have a common enemy? I, for one, don’t see why I should regard the Democratic Party as any more of an enemy than… libertarians.

In contrast, many Trump supporters share with traditionalists an appreciation for traditional Christian culture and values (see, for instance, Pat Buchanan, or many of the pro-Trump commenters here on this blog).

In terms of economic and environmental regulation, the Trump movement is not as interventionist as I would like, and even seems aligned with the fusionists on getting rid of regulations and pulling out of the Paris climate accord. But at least Trump is in favor of protectionism, has killed TPP, and has signaled his intent to withdraw from NAFTA. It’s a start, and in any rate far better than the fusionist Republican vision.

So, given the choice between a fusionist GOP and a populist GOP, I’ll take the latter.

JZ says:
May 30, 2017 at 3:30 pm
I always chuckle a little bit when I hear people talk about Trumpism as if it’s some sort of coherent political philosophy. Rod writes two things:

“I see no prospect that Trumpism, for which I have a certain sympathy, can work”

and

“What, exactly, is Donald Trump fighting for? And why is the righteousness of that cause so overwhelmingly clear that it requires conservatives to abandon their principles for the sake of winning power?”

I suppose I agree with both statements, but I only believe in the first because of the second. Since Trump isn’t really fighting for anything, of course Trumpism (whatever that means) can’t work. One thing we do know is that globalism can’t work…at least not for the lower middle and working classes, so it’s hard to tell Trump supporters to toe the historic fusionist globalist line. Could somebody come up with a COHERENT political philosophy that includes most modern conservative ideas along with things like limited free trade, restricted immigration and limited foreign military involvement? I’m not sure, but I don’t think it would be necessarily more flawed that globalism.

I would suggest that Trumpism really comes down to “not the mainstream left”. That’s why it’s not coherent, and that’s why it can’t work. But that’s why folks like Prager accept it despite my guess that he knows there’s no there there. When your religion is politics, you’ll accept “not the devil” even when the other option is incoherent.

From my Christian world view, there’s no hope in Trump, and there’s very little hope in secular politics at all. I think I may be more cynical about politics than Rod. That said, while I didn’t vote for Trump, I find it easy to vote for Republicans knowing that the Dems pretty much hate my guts and see me as a deplorable.

Marriage in light of Creation, Fall, and Redemption
Eduardo J. Echeverria

TUESDAY, MAY 30, 2017

Friends: We’re into the stretch now and frankly I’m a little worried. Many of you have responded very generously to our current fundraising drive in these days before our anniversary on June 2. But we’re still $10,000 short at a time when we’re hoping to develop some new initiatives like Podcasts and TCT events in several parts of the country. We’ve been very successful in terms of outreach – not only has our readership grown in America beyond all reasonable expectation, our foreign readership is expanding as well. When I was in Hungary last week, we spoke to several publications about expansion there and other countries as well. Given America’s global reach and our profile, we have real possibilities to have an influence in the Catholic world no other publication has. Do you want to be part of that national and international work? It’s easy. Click on “Donate.” Invest in a better future for the Church and the world. – Robert Royal

The whole notion of marriage is so confused in our time, even among Catholics, that we desperately need to recover some basic and foundational truths. The mini-catechesis on the sacrament of marriage in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (¶1601-1617) proceeds in light of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. Marriage, it states, belongs to the order of redemption, is under the regime of sin, but is grounded in the order of creation.

John Paul II wrote regarding marriage: “Willed by God in the very act of creation, marriage and the family are interiorly ordained to fulfillment in Christ and have need of His graces in order to be healed from the wounds of sin and restored to their ‘beginning’ [back to creation], that is, to full understanding and the full realization of God’s plan.” (Familiaris consortio 3) This major claim, along with its undergirding theology of nature and grace, is developed throughout John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them.

The Word of God teaches that the redemptive work of Christ reaffirms and simultaneously renews the goodness of creation – and hence of marriage, of the human body sharing in the dignity of the image of God, of the complimentary sexual differentiation of man and woman, and of a faithful, reciprocal, and fruitful love. Yes, in light of the redemptive work of Christ, the Catholic sacramental tradition teaches that the sacrament of marriage renews and restores the reality of marriage – given that it is savagely wounded by the fall and our own personal sin – from within its order.

Thus, the grace of marriage communicated by the sacrament has two main ends: first, that of healing, i.e., of repairing the consequences of sin in the individual and in society; and second – and above all – that of perfecting and raising persons and the conjugal institution. “According to faith the disorder we notice so painfully does not stem from the nature of man and woman, nor from the nature of their relations, but from sin. As a break with God, the first sin had for its first consequence the rupture of the original communion between man and woman.” (CCC 1607)

Gaudium et spes summarizes all of this: “This [marital] love God has judged worthy of special gifts, healing, perfecting and exalting gifts of grace and of charity.” (49)

This two-fold effect means that the grace of the “marital sacrament is not a ‘thing’ added to the reality of the couple from the outside; rather, the couple itself is and must become the living sign of an invisible reality of grace,” as Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet puts it. There is an intrinsic relationship between the natural order and the order of Christ’s grace such that grace renews the fallen order of marriage from within, orienting it to its proper ends.

The Marriage Feast at Cana by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1672 [Barber Institute, Birmingham, England]
Grace penetrating fallen nature and renewing it from within (“gratia intra naturam”) means there is an essential continuity in man and a link between creation and redemption. “Endowment with grace is in some sense a ‘new creation’,” says John Paul.

“New creation” does not, however, mean that grace is a plus-factor, a superadded gift, to the order of creation. Rather, nature and grace, creation and re-creation, the sacrament of creation and redemption are united such that God’s grace affirms and simultaneously renews the fallen creation from within its own internal order. As the Catechism puts it, “Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins.” (2336)

Elsewhere, the Catechism explains, “In his preaching Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning. . . . By coming to restore the original order of creation disturbed by sin, [Jesus] himself gives the strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the Reign of God. ” (1614-1615)

This sacrament not only recovers the order of creation but also, while reaffirming this ordinance of creation, it simultaneously deepens, indeed, fulfills the reality of marriage in a reciprocal self-giving, a joining of two in a one-flesh union that is a visible sign of the mystery of the union of Christ with the Church. (Eph 5:31-32)

The unity attained in becoming “two-in-one-flesh” (Gen 2:24) in marriage is grounded in the order of creation, and it is affirmed and simultaneously renewed and restored in redemption. Since continuity exists between creation and redemption, we can understand why John Paul II sees marriage as “the primordial sacrament.”

When we look at the visible sign of marriage (“the two shall be one flesh”) in the order of creation from the perspective of the visible sign of Christ and the Church, which is defined in Ephesians as the fulfillment and realization of God’s eternal plan of salvation, we can see John Paul’s point. He says, “In this way, the sacrament of redemption clothes itself, so to speak, in the figure and form of the primordial sacrament. . . . Man’s new supernatural endowment with the gift of grace in the ‘sacrament of redemption’ is also a new realization of the Mystery hidden from eternity in God, new in comparison with the sacrament of creation. At this moment, endowment with grace is in some sense a ‘new creation’.”

Let’s be clear that he calls it a “new creation” in the specific sense that “Redemption means. . . taking up all that is created [in order] to express in creation the fullness of justice, equity, and holiness planned for it by God and to express that fullness above all in man, created male and female ‘in the image of God’.”

Thus, nature and grace, creation and re-creation, the sacrament of creation and redemption are united such that God’s grace affirms and simultaneously renews the fallen creation from within its own internal order. For JPII and the main Catholic tradition: “Marriage is organically inscribed in this new sacrament of redemption, just as it was inscribed in the original sacrament of creation.”

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About the Author
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Eduardo J. Echeverria
Eduardo J. Echeverria

Eduardo J. Echeverria is Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit. His publications include Pope Francis: The Legacy of Vatican II (2015) and Divine Election: A Catholic Orientation in Dogmatic and Ecumenical Perspective (2016).

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Rod Dreher E-mail Rod
Yale Rewards Student Thugs, Bullies
By ROD DREHER • May 27, 2017, 8:43 AM

Yale students happy to be graduating. Take the caps off, and it’s a Yale mob (f11photo/Shutterstock)
James Kirchick reports the jaw-dropping news in Tablet that Yale University has given an award for improving race relations on campus to Alexandra Zina Barlowe and Abdul-Razak Zachariah, two leaders of the 2015 mob that bullied Prof. Nicholas Christakis over his wife’s suggestion that Yale shouldn’t try to police Halloween costumes. Excerpts:

But Nicholas Christakis was doing more than just defending the honor of his wife that afternoon in the Silliman courtyard. As video of the several hours-long ordeal revealed, Christakis was defending the most fundamental principle of higher education: that the university should serve as a place of free inquiry where individuals can respectfully engage with one another in the pursuit of knowledge.

At least, that’s what places like Yale claim to stand for. Not anymore.

Of the 100 or so students who confronted Christakis that day, a young woman who called him “disgusting” and shouted “who the fuck hired you?” before storming off in tears became the most infamous, thanks to an 81-second YouTube clip that went viral. (The video also—thanks to its promotion by various right-wing websites—brought this student a torrent of anonymous harassment). The videos that Tablet exclusively posted last year, which showed a further 25 minutes of what was ultimately an hours-long confrontation, depicted a procession of students berating Christakis. In one clip, a male student strides up to Christakis and, standing mere inches from his face, orders the professor to “look at me.” Assuming this position of physical intimidation, the student then proceeds to declare that Christakis is incapable of understanding what he and his classmates are feeling because Christakis is white, and, ipso facto, cannot be a victim of racism. In another clip, a female student accuses Christakis of “strip[ping] people of their humanity” and “creat[ing] a space for violence to happen,” a line later mocked in an episode of The Simpsons. In the videos, Howard, the dean who wrote the costume provisions, can be seen lurking along the periphery of the mob.

More:

The Orwellian veneration of racial agitators as racial conciliators is the logical conclusion of Yale’s craven capitulation to the hard left forces of identitarian groupthink. From the very beginning of this ordeal, the Yale administration refused to state some simple but necessary truths: that the missive Erika Christakis wrote was entirely appropriate; that the “demands” issued by protesting students (such as an “ethnic studies distributional requirement”) were ridiculous; and, most important of all, that the rude and insubordinate treatment to which Nicholas Christakis was subjected rose to the level of a disciplinary offense. (It was not so long ago that mobbing a professor, physically threatening him, and screaming in his face, for hours, would result in expulsion).

But Yale’s spineless leaders were never willing to say these things.

Read the whole thing. Nicholas Christakis stepped down as master of Silliman College in the wake of the controversy, and his wife Erika resigned her position at the university.

Here’s a 12-minute documentary on the event that reveals the kind of man Yale allowed bratty students to intimidate. What you reward, you’ll get more of:

In November 2015, I wrote in this space:

If the Yale administration gives a single inch to these people, they will have disgraced themselves. Mark my words, though: these young left-wing, anti-liberal tyrants will move into elite positions in the American establishment, because Yale is a gateway to that kind of privilege. And when they do, they will exercise that power against anybody who doesn’t bow down to their radicalism.

Now Yale has honored two of the leaders of the mob for … leading the mob. This is what Yale University, one of this country’s most elite and influential institutions of higher education, values. Please take note of it.

Posted in Decline and Fall, Education, Weimar America, Social Justice Warriors. Tagged free speech, Yale, Christakis.

Fr. Mark Hodges

NEWSGENDER, HOMOSEXUALITYFri May 26, 2017 – 1:41 pm EST

Mom loses lawsuit against school that secretly gave her son ‘transgender’ treatment

Anmarie Calgaro ,  Parental Notification ,  Parental Rights ,  Thomas More Society

1. PAUL, Minnesota, May 26, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — A mother’s lawsuit against a Minnesota school system for secretly helping her 15-year-old son “transition” to “female” was dismissed by a federal judge.

Anmarie Calgaro of Iron Junction discovered all too late last November that her son’s school was secretly giving him female hormone treatments with funding from the government. She sued the school district, the county health board, and a local health care entity for violating her rights as a parent.

But the school countered that the boy was “emancipated” from his mother because he had been living on his own, and was therefore legally able to make his own medical decisions.

The 15-year-old had previously moved in with his father — with the mother’s permission — to go to a better school (Calgaro is divorced from her husband). The boy then moved in with friends before eventually living on his own. The school interpreted the boy living on his own as “emancipation” from parental influence, determining that the minor teen could make his own elective medical decisions.

Unbeknown to the mother, the boy had also filled out an emancipation form and filed it with the help of a homosexual advocacy group.  {EMPHASIS BY ABYSSUM}

“If there had been a court order of emancipation, then Anmarie would have received notice and an opportunity to be heard,” Calgaro’s attorney Erick Kaardal of the Thomas More Society explained.

The mother says her son’s emancipation filing was filled with false information. For one thing, it claimed that the mother had surrendered her parental rights.

The boy’s emancipation filing also claimed that Calgaro failed to report him “as a runaway” and “made no attempt to bring him home,” concluding that she “no longer wishes to have contact with him.” But the mother denies these claims.

The mother’s defense team says the case is essentially about protecting parental rights.

“The U.S. Constitution says that parental rights are fundamental rights, that can’t be terminated without due process,” Kaardal told the local CBS affiliate.

Calgaro said she is suing not just for herself but “for the benefit of all parents and families who may be facing the same violation of their rights.”

Because of the assumption of emancipation, the school refused to give Calgaro her son’s medical or educational records, and the Department of Human Services refused to give Calgaro information about his “transition” treatments, including a “life-changing operation,” according to the Thomas Moore Society (TMS).

TMS even notes that ironically, the boy’s application for a name change was denied by the St. Louis County District Court because of the “lack of any adjudication relative to emancipation.”

This week District Judge Paul Magnuson dismissed Calgaro’s lawsuit. He admitted the boy was not legally emancipated, and so Calgaro’s parental right “remain intact.” Despite this, the judge nevertheless decreed that the school and health care facility “cannot be held liable … because they did not act under color of state law.”

In essence, the judge decided that the school and government agencies could only be held accountable if it acted against a law or a “policy or custom.”  Therefore, Calgaro had no legal claim, he argued.

The judge went so far in downplaying parental rights as to rule that a parent’s access to their child’s medical and education records is a question to be solved. He admitted in his ruling that he “explicitly left open the question ‘whether and to what extent the fundamental liberty interest in the custody, care, and management of one’s children mandates parental access to school records.’”

The mother’s defense team plans to appeal the ruling to the  U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

“Anmarie Calgaro is living a parent’s worst nightmare,” Kaardal of the Thomas More Society said. “Her minor child has been piloted by third parties through a life-changing, permanent body altering process by organizations that have no legal authority over him, and that have denied his own mother access.”

LGBTQ advocates supporting the boy’s “transition” outside parental knowledge say the boy’s mother proves her anti-trans prejudice by still referring to her biological son who now looks like a female as “he.”

David Edwards of the transgender group Transforming Families told NBC News that he took offense when Calgaro referred to her son in male pronouns. “Purposefully mis-gendering a transgender person is an act of violence,” Edwards claimed. “To continually do that to your child is not only insensitive but also really harmful,” he said.

{I would not recognize the odor of marijuana if I were exposed to it, never having  smoked it myself or even been in the presence of someone smoking it.  On the other hand,  I have no difficulty recognizing the odor of heresy having been exposed to it often in my 66 years monk, priest and bishop.  Reading this article about the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University in California I detect the strong odor of heresy. – Abyssum}