Monthly Archives: December 2021

The Dying Citizen – A Review

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In his book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America, Victor Davis Hanson has summed up how Americans are losing their citizenship. We are becoming a nation of peasants, residents, and tribes. Citizenship is being attacked by the post-modern academic, bureaucratic, and political elites.

Hanson defines citizenship as,

Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. What keeps a republic on its legs is good citizenship… Citizenship, after all, is not an entitlement; it requires work. Yet too many citizens of republics, ancient and modern, come to believe that they deserve rights without assuming responsibilities—and they don’t worry how or why or from whom they inherited their privileges…

A free, legally equal, and politically independent citizenry, when translated to the modern American experience, means that citizens of the United States should not follow any laws other than those authorized by their own elected representatives… No one American deserves greater deference under the law than any other… American citizens, bearing natural and inalienable rights bestowed by a supreme deity, are accountable only to themselves…

For citizenship to work, the vast majority of residents must be citizens. But to become citizens, residents must be invited in on the condition of giving up their own past loyalties for those of their new hosts… In return for our rights to pick our own leaders and make our own laws, we are asked to obey America’s statutes. We must honor the traditions and customs of our country. As Americans we cherish the memory of those who bequeathed to us such an exceptional nation, and we contribute… our time, money, and, if need be, safety and lives on our country’s behalf.

(Excerpted from pages 1 – 4)

He maintains that our Republic is on shaky ground and describes from what we came and to which we may return,

Republics are so often lost not over centuries but within a single decade… History is not static…citizenship can wax and wane…and abruptly vanish… A sign of democratic sclerosis is a loss of confidence in the integrity of voting—to the point that it becomes seen as a futile exercise rather than a bulwark of citizenship.

In most regimes of the past, there was one set of laws for the rich, priests, autocrats, and aristocrats and quite another for those without money, high religious or political office, or noble birth and lineage. Or those who gained power by election often sabotaged subsequent elections on the theory of “one election, one time.”

(Excerpted from pages 4 – 6)

Hanson summarizes democracy’s genesis and benefits,

Citizenship… explains the Greek achievement of drawing on the talents and energy of a much-empowered resident and middle-class population… Once protected by laws, rather than by the transitory goodwill and patronage of aristocrats and autocrats, in a practical sense the citizen has far more legal and economic latitude to paint, write, build, farm, create, discover, or litigate… If not worried about being arbitrarily jailed, killed, deprived of his property and inheritance, or told where and how to live, a citizen is more likely to exploit his own talents—and often create wealth for his commonwealth.

(Excerpted from page 9)

From these origins, the idea and practice of citizenship increased in fits and starts; however, it is always in danger of disappearing,

The subsequent postclassical idea of Western constitutional citizenship ebbed and flowed through periods of retrenchment, oppression, and authoritarianism. Nevertheless, it slowly evolved through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment toward an ever-greater array of rights and forevermore inclusion of the formerly dispossessed…

By the twenty-first century, the Western idea of citizenship, after twenty-five hundred years of evolution, neared its logical fruition with the full emancipation of the poor, women, and minority populations after the long-ago abolition of serfdom, indentured peasantry, and chattel slavery…

In a practical sense the privileges of Western citizenship are, in fact, diluting… Just as there was no constitutional government before 700 BC, so there is no rule that there must be democracies and republics in the twenty-first century… Affluence and leisure often prove more dangerous to citizenship than poverty and drudgery.

(Excerpted from pages 10 – 11)

The body of Hanson’s argument explores the tension pulling our Republic apart,

Citizenship in the United States is now being pulled in two different and often antithetical directions, from below and above, spontaneously and yet by design, through both ignorance of and intimacy with the Constitution.

Many Americans do not know or worry much about the consequences of radical demographic, cultural, or political influences for the status of citizenship. They are indifferent to millions of immigrants of uncertain status, veritable resident strangers in their midst… When nearly four in ten Americans have no notion of their rights under the First Amendment, it is easy to curb them.

On the other hand, some elites believe that they know the Constitution all too well and therefore believe it in dire need of radical deletions and alterations to fit the times. They envision an always improving, changing, and evolving Constitution that should serve as a global model for a vast, ecumenical brotherhood, requiring a global administrative state to monitor and enforce its ambitious idealism.

(Excerpted from pages 13 – 14)

He divides his exposition according to these two tensions which he terms “precitizenry” and “postcitizenry.” Hanson summarizes his “precitizenry” argument this way,

The notion of precitizenry reflects ancient economic, political, and ethnic ideas and customs that were once thought antithetical to the modern democratic state. Yet, in organic fashion, they are reappearing and threaten to overwhelm the American commonwealth. (Page 14)

His argument against precitizenry is further divided into chapters titled Peasants, Residents, and Tribes. He writes,

Peasants [reviews] the ancient argument that to be self-governing, citizens must be economically autonomous… Without a middle class, society becomes bifurcated. It splinters into one of modern masters and peasants. In that situation, the function of government is not to ensure liberty but to subsidize the poor to avoid revolution and to exempt the… wealthy, who reciprocate by enriching and empowering the governing classes.

Residents argues that [sovereign] states must privilege citizens over mere residents… Citizens live within delineated and established borders. They share a common history. Their sacred physical space allows them to pursue their constitutional rights without interference from abroad. Living on common and exclusive ground encourages shared values, assimilation, and integration and defines national character… Yet we now live…in an age [where] …an accident of birth should not deprive any of the planet’s eight billion people from entering and living in the United States. Citizenship, however, is not indestructible.

Tribes reminds us why all citizens should give up their own ethnic, racial, and tribal primary identities… Only through such a brutal bargain of assimilation can they sustain a common culture in a century in which superficial racial and tribal differences, the fuel for many of history’s wars, are becoming no longer incidental but recalibrated as essential to the American character… Once a man owes…more loyalty to his first cousin than to a fellow citizen, a constitutional republic cannot exist.

(Excerpted from pages 14 – 16)

The second half of the book, describing postcitizenry, “[focuses] on the even greater dangers to citizenship posed by a relatively small American elite.” This part is divided into chapters titled Unelected, Evolutionaries, and Globalists. Hanson writes,

Unelected chronicles how an unelected federal bureaucracy has absorbed much of the power of the US Congress, yearly creating more laws and regulations than the House and Senate together could debate, pass, and send to the president for signing… Even the office of the presidency…often lacks sufficient knowledge to control the permanent legions deeply embedded within the state… The bureaucratic elite believes that it can and should preempt any elected official who deems it…dangerous. If the citizen cannot elect officials to audit, control, or remove the unelected, then he has lost his sovereign power.

Evolutionaries …are the unapologetic grand architects of dismantling constitutional citizenship, inordinately represented by political activists, media grandees, the legal profession, and academics… As progressives, …they accuse the Founders of lacking our modern wisdom, today’s enlightened education, and the benefits of a constantly improving, innate human nature… The evolutionaries are, by all means [necessary], …in a trajectory toward a 51 percent, majority-vote-rules nation, without sufficient constitutional and long-accustomed guardrails.

Globalists …explains the current fad that Americans are transitioning into citizens of the world. An ancient but unworkable idea of cosmopolitanism has reemerged, now driven by privileged utopians empowered by twenty-first-century global travel, finance, and communications.

On the one hand, they are cynical critics of American exceptionalism and nationalism. On the other, they wish to extend American-style democracy and liberal tolerance across the globe—but without much thought about where such singular ideas arose or why so much of the world has always resisted them.

Globalism’s chief characteristic, however, is more mundane. Its architects focus on the distant and anonymous abroad, less so on concrete Americans nearby …In the end, globalization may not westernize the planet so much as internationalize America.

(Excerpted from pages 16 – 18)

In summation, he writes,

…Everything that we once thought was so strong, so familiar, and so reassuring about America has been dissipating for some time. The year 2020, in the manner of other revolutionary years, such as 1848, 1917, and 1968, has peeled away that veneer of complacency and self-satisfaction. Contemporary events have reminded Americans that their citizenship is fragile and teetering on the abyss—and yet the calamities can also teach, indeed energize, them to rebuild and recover what they have lost. (Page 18)

Despite massive immigration of the last half century, with immigrants traditionally more prone to have large families, the national median family size has shrunk dramatically. The 1960s average of 2.3 children per family has declined to a current 1.9. That figure is well below the 2.1 percent rate necessary to maintain current population size. When we speak of a “dying citizen,” we can take that phrasing quite literally: Americans are not reproducing themselves and are starting to follow European models of slow-motion demographic suicide. (Page 35)

Hanson suggests Americans must exercise their citizenship more vigorously, at county, state, and federal levels, in order to recover our Republic.

What is interesting is that Alexis de Tocqueville made corresponding observations at the beginning of the Republic in the 1830s in volume 1 and volume 2 of his book Democracy in America. He contended that American liberty could deteriorate into anarchy at one extreme or despotism at the other. Anarchy results when individuals refuse to subject their freedom to the Republic’s laws and customs. Despotism results when individuals relinquish liberty, either under coercion or by free will, for dependence and servitude to an elite class. He went further by saying that democracy, viewed as equality of outcomes, would atomize and level society and lull each individual into mass conformity administered by a central bureaucracy.

De Tocqueville presaged the fall of the Republic that Hanson now warns us against. This is the precipice upon which we stand. It makes you wonder at Augustine’s thoughts as he shepherded his flock in the midst of Rome’s fall. John Adams, of course, said,

…We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

As pastor Wang Yi wrote in 2018, prior to his incarceration for preaching the gospel,

I hope God uses me, by means of first losing my personal freedom, to tell those who have deprived me of my personal freedom that there is an authority higher than their authority, and that there is a freedom that they cannot restrain, a freedom that fills the church of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

May we who are destined for captivity have the endurance and faith to do so.

Victor Davis Hanson Diagnoses the Dying Citizen, November 3, 2021, YouTube, Hoover Institute

His Eyes Were Blind and His Ears Were Deaf

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In this advent commemoration season, my reading led me to these verses,

Hear, you deaf,

    and look, you blind, that you may see!

Who is blind but my servant,

    or deaf as my messenger whom I send?

Who is blind as my dedicated one,

    or blind as the servant of the Lord?

He sees many things, but does not observe them;

    his ears are open, but he does not hear.

The Lord was pleased, for his righteousness’ sake,

    to magnify his law and make it glorious.

Isaiah 42:18-21 (English Standard Version)

Many say Isaiah was referring to a mere man; some say this one and some that. Yet, it is clear from the context that Isaiah refers to the Lord Jesus Christ, beyond the immediate circumstances that he was addressing in his own time. How else could it be if God Almighty were to walk among men? His eyes must have been “blind,” and His ears must have been “deaf” to the sins committed by those around Him.

Earlier, Isaiah described what it would be like for God to walk among men and what is required of them in His presence,

Hear, you who are far off, what I have done;

    and you who are near, acknowledge my might.

The sinners in Zion are afraid;

    trembling has seized the godless:

“Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire?

    Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?”

He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly,

    who despises the gain of oppressions,

who shakes his hands, lest they hold a bribe,

    who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed

 and shuts his eyes from looking on evil,

Isaiah 33:13-15 (ESV)

Truly, He is God Almighty; It is He who will tread the winepress of His fierce wrath against the nations.

And yet, Isaiah said this of the Lord’s advent,

And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

    or decide disputes by what his ears hear,

but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,

    and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,

    and with the breath of his lips, he shall kill the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist,

    and faithfulness the belt of his loins.

Isaiah 11:3-5 (ESV)

And so, He did. The words from His mouth do strike the earth and slay the wicked. And He does decide for the meek of the earth. We must take this to heart.

However, you might say, “Did He not deal harshly with the disobedient while He was on earth?” Yes, He overthrew the moneychangers’ tables. But He dealt tenderly with those who were weary and heavy laden.

So, summing up, He emptied Himself for our sake,

Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Philippians 2:5-7 (ESV)

He laid down His right as God to execute fiery wrath and judgement at His first advent so many would be saved though Him.

Therefore, hear Him in His own words,

“Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” Luke 7:21-23 (ESV)

And,

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew 4:17 (ESV)

And, finally, contemplate this,

Just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. Hebrews 9:27-28 (ESV)

And this,

If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Hebrews 10:26-27 (ESV)

May the Lord Jesus Christ dawn in your heart.

O come, O come, Emmanuel – (Piano/Cello) – The Piano Guys, YouTube, December 4, 2012, The Piano Guys

Nuclear War – The Moral Dimension – A Review

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The book, Nuclear War – The Moral Dimension, by James W. Child, argues that a strong conventional defense, an invulnerable second strike, counterforce capability, and stateman-like prudence deters nuclear war for all sides, even if exercised by only one party. He advocates mutual arms control as circumstances permit. Published in 1986, this work confronts the US–Russia conflict. However, it is still applicable in the multipolar world we live in now.

In the book’s conclusion, Child lays out principles to abide by (quoted and paraphrased below),

1. We have an overwhelming moral duty to avoid nuclear war – Except at the cost of totalitarian slavery or utter annihilation, any cost to avoid it must be borne. Such war, especially a first strike, serves no policy objectives.

2. We must take all reasonable steps which can now be taken to avoid nuclear war. – He says this means, at a minimum, two things. First, strategic nuclear forces must be strong enough to deter and secure enough to survive a nuclear attack. Second, that conventional forces are effective enough to deter conventional aggression. Though the first is mostly met, as we’ve seen in the recent past, the second is not and we foolishly open ourselves to no alternative but nuclear escalation. Establishment of a “hotline” with China is essential to avoid an “inadvertent war,” a war no one wants but no one can avoid, such as happened with World War I. We must also pursue arms control, both nonproliferation and arms reductions, in an effort to lower the chance of nuclear war that benefits all parties.

3. We have a moral right to fight a nuclear war if we are attacked by nuclear weapons. – We have a moral right and duty of self-defense which entitles us to destroy our adversary’s ability to make war (military and industrial targets) or to command making war (governmental, party, and internal security apparatuses.) This “counterforce” retaliation would save millions of American citizens and allies.

4. We have a duty to take great pains to minimize noncombatant casualties. – The unrestrained slaughter of millions of civilians is never justified. Defensive targeting must deliberately reduce collateral civilian deaths. This duty also requires improving weapons accuracy which enables lowered nuclear yields to achieve the same counterforce effects. With this care, we have the moral right to put the adversary’s population at risk if we are to deter aggression and save our own citizens and those of our allies. Citizens have the duty to restrain their governments from aggression and if they fail to do so, they relinquish their absolute immunity as noncombatants. Each side’s citizenry has this responsibility and risk.

5. Within the bounds set above, we have the moral right to use nuclear weapons in our own defense in order to extinguish the war-making capacity of any nuclear aggressor. – It is not a “necessary evil.” It is morally justifiable. Once something safer comes along, such as workable, multilateral disarmament, we would be irrational and immoral not to avail ourselves of this preferable alternative. But until such time, we need not be made to feel guilty by those long on moral indignation but short on genuine alternatives.

Child concludes with these remarks,

We must develop strong, unfrightened, affirmative attitudes toward the risk of nuclear war. Only then can we disenthrall ourselves from myths and perhaps lessen the danger. We must see the threat of nuclear war as it is: of large but still human dimensions; a very difficult but ultimately tractable problem. But like all really important problems of human existence, the solution will come in bits and pieces to be slowly and patiently assembled: a more secure deterrent force replacing a vulnerable one here; a mutually adopted measure against accidental war there. In this painstaking process, we must dare to bear the risk of nuclear war if we are ever to make that risk go away.

This brief summary doesn’t do Child’s thesis justice but will have to suffice. His book is a thought provoking read. Child died in 2005 at the age of sixty-four. He left a legacy of mentoring, moral thought, adventure, and uplifting comradery.

For different reasons, a historicist or futurist might cite the following scripture to say that, ultimately, deterrence must fail,

But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. 2 Peter 3:7 (English Standard Version)

Here, I must adopt a historical/idealist perspective and say the End will be comprehensive, overwhelming, and supernatural. We may well suffer limited or total nuclear war, but the End will not come until the good news of the kingdom is proclaimed throughout the world.

Fail Safe 1964 Ending, 7 minutes, YouTube, posted Nov. 12, 2020, Bill Lange

Western Way of War

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I am reading Victor Davis Hanson’s book, Carnage and Culture. His main thesis is that the remarkable success of the western way of warfare is not due merely to technological superiority, and not to biology nor geography, but to cultural strength and resilience. As I read certain passages, it struck me that he’s describing the terrifying and terrible fourth beast of Daniel 7. Mind you, not the horns or kings, but the mechanical beast itself. Here’s Daniel’s depiction:

After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns…

“Then I desired to know the truth about the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces and stamped what was left with its feet…

“Thus, he said: ‘As for the fourth beast,

there shall be a fourth kingdom on earth,

    which shall be different from all the kingdoms,

and it shall devour the whole earth,

    and trample it down and break it to pieces.”

Daniel 7: 7, 19, 23  (English Standard Version)

This fourth beast is terrifying, dreadful, and exceedingly strong; unlike any prior kingdom in its inorganic nature. Its implements of destruction are made of iron and bronze. It devours the whole earth, tramples it down, and breaks it into pieces; an apt description of the warfare this kingdom executes. It sounds like Western warfare from Alexander the Great through General Colin Powell and beyond.

To be fair, Hanson caveats his thesis with the statement:

While I grant that critics would disagree on a variety of fronts over the reasons for European military dynamism and the nature of Western civilization itself, I have no interest in entering such contemporary cultural debates, since my interests are in the military power, not the morality, of the West. (Preface)

This is as it should be. Great power can be used for good or for ill. There are just and unjust wars.

Elaborating on his thesis, starting with its Greek origins, Hanson writes:

…The Greeks fought much differently than their adversaries and that such unique Hellenic characteristics of battle

—a sense of personal freedom, superior discipline, matchless weapons, egalitarian camaraderie, individual initiative, constant tactical adaptation and flexibility, preference for shock battle of heavy infantry—

were themselves the murderous dividends of Hellenic culture at large. The peculiar way Greeks killed grew out of consensual government, equality among the middling classes, civilian audit of military affairs, and politics apart from religion, freedom and individualism, and rationalism. (Page 4)

Explaining the motivation of the Western nations, he says,

Western armies often fight with and for a sense of legal freedom. They are frequently products of civic militarism or constitutional governments and thus are overseen by those outside religion and the military itself. (Page 21)

Western warring is often an extension of the idea of state politics, rather than a mere effort to obtain territory, personal status, wealth, or revenge. (Page 22)

Westerners, in short, long ago saw war as a method of doing what politics cannot, and thus are willing to obliterate rather than check or humiliate any who stand in their way. (Page 22)

These sharp engagements quickly settled conflicts decisively. However, Hansen observes, there is a downside,

I leave the reader with the dilemma of the modern age: the Western manner of fighting bequeathed to us from the Greeks and enhanced by Alexander is so destructive and so lethal that we have essentially reached an impasse. Few non-Westerners wish to meet our armies in battle. (Page 98)

The only successful response to encountering a Western army seems to be to marshal another Western army. The state of technology and escalation is such that any intra-Western conflict would have the opposite result of its original Hellenic intent: abject slaughter on both sides would result, rather than quick resolution. (Page 98)

Whereas the polis Greeks discovered shock battle as a glorious method of saving lives and confining conflict to an hour’s worth of heroics between armored infantry, Alexander the Great and the Europeans who followed sought to unleash the entire power of their culture to destroy their enemies in a horrendous moment of shock battle. That moment is now what haunts us. (Page 98)

Interestingly, the West’s principle of military accountability to civilian rule has enabled it to recover from horrendous defeats. Among other examples, Hanson cites Rome’s defeat by Hannibal at Cannae,

Polybius ended his excursus about Rome’s remarkable constitutional and military system with a final thought on the aftermath of Cannae: For although the Romans had clearly been defeated in the field, and their reputation in arms ruined, yet because of the singularity of their constitution, and by wisdom of their deliberative counsel, they not only reclaimed the sovereignty of Italy, and went on to conquer the Carthaginians, but in just a few years themselves became rulers of the entire world. (3.118.7–9) (Page 132)

In conclusion, Hanson says that the western way of war may lead to a frightening future,

Thucydides, who claimed he wrote history as “a possession for all time,” reminds us that states fight for “fear, self-interest, and honor”—not always out of reason, economic need, or survival. Honor, even in this age of decadence, despite the gloomy predictions of Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Spengler, still exists and will, I think, still get people killed for some time to come. (Page 449)

The most obvious worry is the continual spread of Western notions of military discipline, technology, decisive battle, and capitalism without the accompanying womb of freedom, civic militarism, civilian audit, and dissent. (Page 451)

…Can the non-West import our weaponry and military organization and doctrine apart from the cargo of their birth (i.e., free citizens, individualism in command hierarchy, constant audit, and oversight of its strategy and tactics)? (Page 451, edited)

Even should our present adversaries adopt consensual government, free speech, and market economies, would they then really remain our adversaries? Would the embrace of Western culture gradually smother centuries of religious, ethnic, cultural, and racial hostility to the West itself? Perhaps, perhaps not. (Page 452)

States that become thoroughly Western are less likely to attack the traditional West, but not less likely enough to ensure that they will never attack the traditional West—and each other. (Page 452)

The more the world becomes thoroughly Western, it seems to me, the larger the Europeanized battlefield shall become. (Page 452)

The peril to come, however, is not just the spread of atomic weapons and F-16 fighter jets but much more so the dissemination of knowledge, rationalism, the creation of free universities, perhaps even the growth of democracy, capitalism, and individualism themselves throughout the world—the real ingredients, as we have seen in these case studies, of a most murderous brand of battle. (Page 453)

I have yet to finish the book, but the point is clear: Western military power, if not its liberties, will spread throughout the world and be its own worst enemy:

“Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” Rev. 13:4b (ESV)

War and History, Ancient and Modern, YouTube, Mar 17, 2010, Hoover Institution