Interesting and Perceptive Letter from a Reader

Last updated on: December 28, 2014 at 11:19 pm by Mark Shea

Interesting and Perceptive Letter from a Reader 2014-12-28T23:19:59-07:00 Mark Shea

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He writes:

I’ve read two of your books (By What Authority? and Making Senses out of Scripture). I’m also a regular reader of your blog.

I know that one of the common themes in your blog is the way it’s not about the “Right vs. Left” but the “Ruling Class vs. Rest of Us”. I’d like to alert you to the following article by Crispin Sartwell, which I must say, has been one of the best criticisms of contemporary politics in anything I’ve seen on the so-called “mainstream media” (and even among Christian media):

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/the-left-right-political-spectrum-is-bogus/373139/

It’s a long but great read. Chesterton has been banging on about this since the early 20th century. Interestingly, that is the era that Mr. Sartwell identifies as being when the “left-right” way of looking at politics evolved to its modern iteration. Shows how prophetic (or observant) Chesterton was about Big Government and Big Business.

That said, I think the weakest part of the article the author’s conclusion and prescription:

“There are alternatives, and the one I would suggest is this: We should arrange political positions according to whether they propose to increase hierarchy or to dismantle it. “

As Mr. Sartwell points out a major blind spot in modern political discourse, he reveals another: the obsession with how to “dismantle” the hierarchy. Unfortunately, you can’t. The entire universe is arranged like this; everything from computer memory (artificial) to planetary orbits (natural). As an engineer, I find elegance and efficiency in such arrangements, and as a Catholic, a sacramental reflection of our relationship to God. Hierarchical arrangements naturally come out in any complex system, as any 5-year-old will attest to when observing a tree.

There’s no easy fix. “Fixing” politics is more of examining one’s own behavior and individually, consciously choosing the right thing than it is about rearranging the furniture, so to speak. Given original sin, that’s not exactly what we want to be doing, is it?

Keep up the great work!

I agree that the allergy to hierarchy is a peculiarly modern mania. It is a reaction, of course, to fallen expressions hierarchy as old as the curse in Genesis 3. But in Christ hierarchy, like all things, is meant for our blessing and destroying it is, as you note, anti-human. The basic principle is that the chosen are chosen for the sake of the unchosen. So Christ is the chosen king who offers himself for the unchosen who murder him. The husband is chosen for the good of the wife and the wife for the good of the husband. Parents are chosen for the sake of their children. The members of the body are chosen to receive various gifts for the good of those who do not have those gifts. Get rid of that mutuality and hierarchy and we don’t get liberation: we get slavery and the suppression of our natural gifts on the theory that if everyone does not have every gift, they are oppressed. Such a culture of envy is a million miles from the civilization of love.

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