Si Vis Pacem, Pare Bellum

Following the recent election, some comments.

George Weigel:

The most inane insta-pundit commentary had it that the 2012 election “hadn’t really changed anything,” what with President Obama still in the White House, the House still in Republican hands, and the Senate still controlled by Democrats. The truth of the matter, of course, is that a great deal changed...

...The American culture war has been markedly intensified, as those who booed God, celebrated an unfettered abortion license, canonized Sandra Fluke, and sacramentalized sodomy at the Democratic National Convention will have been emboldened to advance the cause of lifestyle libertinism through coercive state power, thus deepening the danger of what a noted Bavarian theologian calls the “dictatorship of relativism.”

Religious freedom and civil society are now in greater jeopardy than ever, as what was already the most secularist and statist administration in history will, unfettered by reelection concerns, accelerate its efforts to bring free voluntary associations to heel as de facto extensions of the state.
Nothing changed? In a pig’s eye.

We are always optimistic, in the sense that Americans will simply not accept the growing Statism espoused and practiced by this Administration, and that inevitably, the hubris of Obozo will lead to a mistake on his part--a mistake so odious that it will topple his regime.

On the other hand, would Romney have been a cure?  Was Bush?  McCain?

...Mitt Romney made himself a better candidate throughout 2012, and for one brief, electric moment at the first debate, he seemed like a leader with vision, passion, and wit. But a recovery of American greatness — cultural, political, economic, diplomatic, and military greatness — was not the driving theme of the Romney campaign. Not knowing Mitt Romney personally, I can’t say whether this obviously decent and successful man simply lacked the understanding necessary to make the case for true American renewal, as distinct from the faux hope-and-change mantra that had seduced so many in 2008. But whatever Romney’s personal inclinations, many Republican campaign managers and consultants always seemed afraid of scaring the horses. Obama would be beaten, they insisted, on grounds of competence...

Didn't work out all that well, did it?  We can ask, then, if ANY Republican would have been a cure.  (Observe the specter of John Boehner kissing the ring of Obozo, reinforcing Weigel's point.)

James Schall, S.J.:

...The notion that some things, especially the important ones, should not fall within the jurisdiction of the state is no longer to be taken for granted. The state, with its main duties, the taking care of everyone, defines what is important from now on. One might say that our people coldly looked the Leviathan in its eyes. They did not flinch as he brought them into his body. These are dramatic observations, no doubt. We now wait to see what happens next. We have established who is in power. We will not pass this way again.

...This election was not an elections between two candidates whose vision of reality is the same or even reconcilable. The election was about whether a “new” idea of the state would replace the basic principles of the Founding of the country. Most of the directions of this “new” state—its nature and roots—were already described by Plato and Aristotle, but they knew them as disorders. The moral and political tendencies were visible in the first term for everyone to see. Now there is little reason to think such policies will not be carried out.

...The state is not only in the business of distributing wealth but in the business of informing us what we must do or hold to receive this largess. Little discussion of producing wealth comes up because the new state realizes that its security depends not on production but on distribution. It is perfectly comfortable with shortages as they generate more power for the state.

That, of course, is the elegant description of the small-ball play of school-boards and local taxaholics:  "If you don't give us more tax money, we will cut the police and fire departments and your children will be un-educated because we'll have 65 kids in each classroom....."

 ...In the end, I must ask myself: “Will these things come to pass?” Many of them have already come to pass. What is left is the completion of the state as the sole provider of moral, economic, cultural, and even religious goods. We have just witnessed a watershed election. The earliest years of the 21^st century are rapidly seeing the logic of political and philosophical ideas that, in their origins, were deviations from the truth.

The bellum we face is, first of all, spiritual.  Only too late have we seriously prayed for our country--if at all.  Now is the time to begin, if you haven't already.