Conservative Cabal

Although it should be something about Blago and the terrible fiasco that is Illinois’ systemic corruption… Well, perhaps this applies.

No man may pass beyond

the nets of good and evil

For joy’s in deepest hell

and in high heaven,

About the very ports

are subtle devils.

- Ezra Pound from Redondillas, or Something of That Sort.

Whether they knew or not,

Goldsmith and Burke, Swift and the Bishop of Cloyne

All hated Whiggery; but what is Whiggery?

A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind

That never looked out of the eye of a saint

Or out of a drunkard’s eye.

- from Yeats’ The Seven Sages

Quote of the Day:

It is not young people who degenerate; they are ruined only when grown men have already been corrupted.

-Montesquieu

Discuss.

Where else can you get timely topical commentary one month late?

Where else but here? No where. It’s because we care.
Anyway, there were a couple of things from Obama’s acceptance speech that I wanted to touch on.

First, let us compare and contrast the Constitution and something from TheOne:

First from the Constitution (sing along, you know the words):

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And now Obama:

We can perfect this Union.

Obama’s statement makes a nice sound bite and calls to mind the Constitution’s phrasing, which it was obviously intended to do.  But the meaning is almost entirely opposed to what the Framers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution.

The Framers chose the phrase “more perfect Union” advisedly.  They understood that human things are necessarily imperfect.  There are conflicting goods in every human life and every human society, there is no such thing as perfect justice.  Tragedy is inevitable and inherent in the human condition.

Obama’s phrasing ignores this reality, dumbs down the content of the Constitution and in doing so perverts it’s meaning.  Either he doesn’t understand that, or he doesn’t care because he doesn’t agree with the Framers and the Constitution on this point.

The Framer’s understanding, the one shared by most conservatives, helps to engender humility in government.  If you understand that no matter what you do, the end result will just be better, maybe good, but certainly not “perfect”, you are less willing to pile up the sacrifices and the bodies to achieve your necessarily limited aims.

But, when perfection is the goal, the all-enduring Utopia the aim, no sacrifice is too great, no pile of corpses too high.  Witness France, Russia, China, Cambodia; all places where no atrocity was too horrible, because perfection was on the line.

Obama is either dagerously unaware of this history or too flip with his phrasing.  Either way, I don’t like it.

And another thing.

Yes We Can!

Is not an American Creed.  It is a socialist worker’s party’s rallying cry.  That manipulative piece of verbiage really pissed me off.