When you see this event and these quotes from last week....
http://slavieboy.blogspot.com/2012/09/50-years-of-prayer-stopped-after-school.html
"The principal of Haralson County High School, Topher Byrnes, had similar sentiments as Frank.
"From a personal standpoint, I understand the importance of prayer," Byrnes said."From a professional standpoint, I understand the importance of keeping church and state separate."
and then this event and these quotes this week...
High school lineman in South Carolina collapses after tackle, dies - ESPNHS:
"The mayor, who ordered flags be flown at half-mast, urged residents "to take a moment and ask God to be with this family, to help them find peace in this chaos, and to help this team deal with the grief and shock of losing a brother."
'via Blog this'
....you have to wonder what it will take to open the eyes of those who promote a Hobbesian vision of the naked public square versus those who promote a more Burkeian vision of society and how we are to live with each other.
The mayor in the second instance had better hope that the God of the Universe he worships won't stop to ask how come the folks couldn't ask for his presence and help before the game and yet they don't hesitate to come to Him only after tragedy strikes. We wouldn't think too highly of a friend if they treated us in that manner. But I guess we feel like God will forgive us for treating Him like that. We better hope he does, right?
The Naked Public Square can be a real SOB. Be careful what you wish for.
http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/a-strange-new-regime-the-naked-public-square
Thus does the Court reinforce the Hobbesian idea that we are a society of strangers, perhaps of enemies, and it is the chief business of the state to prevent others from interfering with or obliging the Sovereign Self. The result is the atomistic and potentially totalitarian doctrine that society is composed of only two actors, the state and the solitary individual. This is a "civic" religion in the sense of being sponsored by the state, but it is hardly civic in character and consequence.
It is in fact the undoing of the civitas, of the "civil society" of myriad persons, associations, and communities of moral tradition interacting within the bond of civility and mutual respect. The description of the self, of community, and of ultimate meaning that is espoused by the Court is incompatible with Christian and Jewish teaching and, I am confident, with the belief and experience of most Americans. It is, in effect although not in name, another religion. It is in fact the Supreme Court's definition of the "concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." It is, according to the Court, the national creed established by the Constitution.
But if that is the choice people are making, let them understand the ramifications and see the consequences of
the choices, a look into the future so to speak.
Because this is a real slippery slope we traversing, and once we travel down the slope -- slippery slopes being what they are -- it will be very difficult, if not impossible to get back to where we once were.
Campaign 2012: Burke vs. Hobbes?
September 5, 2012
George Weigel
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/09/campaign-2012-burke-vs-hobbes
You likely think, gentle reader, that the 2012 presidential race is a contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. That, of course, is true, insofar as the names on our Nov. 6 ballots go. But the 2012 race for the White House is something more, something more profound—something with deeper historical roots in modernity’s wrestling with political power and how that power contributes to the common good.
This is a contest, to take symbolic reference points, between Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Edmund Burke (1729-1797).
Both were British subjects. Both had a profound impact on modern political theory. Both knew that religion and politics—Church and state—had been thickly interwoven into the history of the West, although here the deep differences between these two paradigmatic figures begin to sharpen: Hobbes tried to drive religious conviction out of the modern public square, while Burke fashioned a vision of political modernity that drew in part on the rich social pluralism of the Catholic Middle Ages.
In a Hobbesian world, the only actors of consequence are the state and the individual. In a Burkean world, the institutions of civil society—family, religious congregation, voluntary association, business, trade union and so forth—“mediate” between the individual and the state, and the just state takes care to provide an appropriate legal framework in which those civil-society institutions can flourish.
In a Hobbesian world, the state—“Leviathan,” in the title of Hobbes’s most famous and influential work—monopolizes power for the sake of protecting individuals from the vicissitudes of a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” In a Burkean world, civil society provides a thick layer of mediation—protection, if you will—that cushions the interactions between individuals and life’s challenges.
A Hobbesian world is a world of contracts and legal relationships, period. A Burkean world is a world in which there are both contracts—the rule of law—and covenants: those more subtly textured human associations (beginning with marriage) by which men and women form bonds of affection, allegiance, and mutual responsibility.
Catholic political theorists have always had major difficulties with Hobbes, and not simply for his promotion of what we would call, today, the “naked public square”: a public space shorn of religious conviction. Hobbes’s vision of the state is far too cold for the social sensibilities of Catholics, who habitually think of society as organic, not artificial or contrived.
By contrast, Burke’s defense of society’s “small platoons” has numerous affinities with Catholic social doctrine, from Leo XIII through Benedict XVI. John Paul II, for example, was particularly forceful in his defense of the mediating institutions of civil society, describing them in the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus as schools of freedom: those natural human associations, beginning with the family, where beautiful, willful little tyrants (which is a precise description of every 2-year-old ever born) are transformed into the kind of civil, tolerant adult citizens who can participate in public life through their minds, not just their muscles.
No American presidential candidate is going to run on an explicitly Hobbesian platform. And the complexities of life in a post-modern world are such that a purely Burkean republic is unlikely anytime soon. The issue here is one of tendencies, orientations, visions of possibility. And at that level, 2012 really is shaping up as a contest between “Hobbes” and “Burke.”
Be careful what you wish for. And choose wisely. Sometimes you just cannot un-ring the bell.
