Losing Our Minds

Most years, writing a column that is due on October 15 for an issue cover-dated December, which will go to press six days before a general election but appear in subscribers’ mailboxes and on newsstands about two weeks after, would be a recipe for frustration.

This year, it strikes me as an opportunity.

I have never had a dog in this presidential election.  That has been true for a long time; the first time I voted in a presidential election was in 1988, and that was the last time I voted for a major-party candidate.  By the time President George H.W. Bush had proved himself “worse than unimaginative—merely silly, often” (as Russell Kirk wrote in his memoir, The Sword of Imagination), I had come to regret my folly.

In 1992, if I could have been bothered to go through the hassle of registering to vote in Washington, D.C. (where I was pursuing my graduate studies), I would have cast my ballot for Ross Perot (though if Perot, the only presidential candidate in recent memory who could make John McCain look stable, had had any chance of winning, I probably would have abstained).

In 1996, 2000, and 2004, I voted for third-party candidates: Ralph Nader in the first and last; Pat Buchanan in between.  And (as I write) with 20 days left before November 4, I still have not decided which third-party candidate to waste my vote on.  (Since, in his current run, Ralph Nader has explicitly endorsed both abortion and homosexual “marriage,” I will not be able to mark the ballot for him even as a protest vote.)

Thus, with each election cycle for the past 20 years, I have come closer, one might say, to practicing the supposedly dispassionate political science that I studied as an undergraduate.  And I have come to view the behavior of most voters—at least, most avowedly partisan voters—as something akin to mental illness.

This is not exactly an original thought, though most who have entertained it speak of “cognitive dissonance” or compare voter loyalty to people’s irrational (used in a nonpejorative sense) attachment to a sports team, or even to their families.

But as I look at the increasingly irrational (used pejoratively now) behavior of many partisan voters, I think that a more pointed label, such as mental illness (or perhaps schizophrenia or merely insanity), is called for.

It is not simply that, say, McCain voters so easily accept the claim that Barack Obama wanted to abandon U.S. soldiers in Iraq when he voted against continued funding of the war, provided that the bill was not tied to a timeline for withdrawal, yet seem unable to process the fact that John McCain (as Joe Biden rightly pointed out in the vice-presidential debate) also voted against continued funding, when it was tied to a timeline.

In other words, the disagreement between the two candidates was over setting a timeline for withdrawal, not over continued funding of the war.  Yet many McCain voters seemed unable to see it—just as many Obama voters who oppose the war have taken Obama’s vote as evidence that he will end the war tout de suite upon taking the presidential oath of office.  (And yes, he will do it in French, and correct French too, dammit, because that’s just the kind of cosmopolitehomme he is!)

No, the inability to discern the real issue at stake in such disagreements between the candidates is not the sign of mental illness.  It is the willingness—or, perhaps more accurately, the determination or even eagerness—of otherwise decent people to let such disagreements (and mistaken disagreements at that) tear apart families and friends.

Up through my teen years, my father’s family (those who still lived in West Michigan) would gather almost every Sunday at my grandparents’ house for dinner.  Before the mashed potatoes had made a complete circuit of the massive dining-room table, the political arguments would begin.  And, especially in an election year, they would become quite heated, to the point where a look of fear or panic might even begin to creep into the eyes of the women and young children.

My grandfather and his second-eldest son were devout Democrats; my father was a Republican; my youngest uncle was a conservative turned increasingly libertarian.  (At holidays or during the summer when relatives came to visit from Indiana, other political shades were thrown into the mix, new alliances were formed, and the political tides would turn in different directions.)  The debates would rage throughout dinner, pausing only for my grandfather to complain that “that woman” (my grandmother, seated at the other end of the table) had once again given him the only slice of cherry pie with a pit in it.

At some point, long after dinner concluded and the men and boys had retired to the living room to play euchre while the women and girls cleared the table and washed the dishes, the argument would finally draw to a close.  Depending on the topic being debated at that point, my grandfather might pull out this splendid non sequitur that he wielded as if it were the right bower: “The only Republican I ever voted for was Richard Nixon, and look what they did to him!”

I shudder to think how many years these weekly increases in blood pressure stripped off of the back ends of the lives of people I loved.  My grandfather, who died in February 1992, might still be alive today had dinner-table conversation never strayed from the weather.

And yet, every week, we assembled at the same table again.  The conversation might pick up where it had left off (“Speaking of Richard Nixon . . . ”), but at least it continued.

Two decades later, I know of dozens of families where the conversation has stopped.  I have had people tell me during this election cycle that they are glad that they have moved away from their families and no longer have to see them, because they cannot put up with the things that their fathers say about Barack Obama, or the e-mails that their sisters-in-law forward them making fun of Sarah Palin.

Maybe, when it all comes to an end, these families will sit down together for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, bow their heads in prayer, and recognize, even for just one brief moment, that being a part of a family is far more important than being just one of 120 million votes cast for John McCain or Barack Obama.

Maybe, but I doubt it.  I know people who are still not talking because “You Republicans stole the election from Al Gore” or “You Democrats wanted to pull out of Iraq and surrender to the terrorists.”  The unreality of national politics, including the distortions and outright lies that candidates tell about each other, have somehow become more real to them than their own flesh and blood.

What is grasping at phantasms while rebelling against reality if not mental illness?

As if on cue, I have just received an e-mail from my colleague Chris Check with a link to a FOX News story from October 14 headlined “Father Secretly Names Newborn Sarah McCain Palin.”  The five short paragraphs read like something out of The Onion: Mark Ciptak “said he named his third child after John McCain and Sarah Palin  ‘to get the word out’ about the campaign.”  That makes perfect sense: After all, how would the Republican presidential ticket receive enough publicity in these final weeks of the campaign unless a father named his daughter after the candidates rather than, say, after his mother or grandmothers?

“‘I took one for the cause,’ he said.”  (No, in fact, his newborn daughter did, and she had no choice in the matter.)  “‘I can’t give a lot of financial support for the (McCain/Palin) campaign.  I do have a sign up in my yard, but I can do very little.’”

Even more astounding, however, is Mr. Ciptak’s revelation that he took this action against the wishes of his wife, who wanted to name the girl Ava Grace.  “I don’t think she believes me yet . . . It’s going to take some more convincing.”

FOX News, of course, shows no interest whatsoever in what might happen to the Ciptaks’ marriage and their three children if he fails to convince his wife that the deception was worth it.  But why should they?  Were the Cip­taks to wind up in divorce court, the result might be two households in which FOX News is on the TV 24/7, rather than just one.

Politics today is big business—not just for the politicians, but for the news media.  For all the talk about the “need to unite” and “to come together as a nation,” politicians and the media profit from division—not simply at the national level every four or two years, but every day, among families and neighborhoods and churches.

At this point, you might expect me to say that it doesn’t have to be this way, that a more civilized discourse is possible, that as a nation we can return to the heated debates around my grandparents’ dining-room table.  But I don’t think we can.  This destruction of everything that matters in life is the logical end of modern democratic politics, which is built on removing all that stands between the “individual” and the state.

Despite our political differences, my family continued to gather around my grandparents’ table because we were a family, and that is what has changed.  Modern politics has accelerated the destruction of families, but the destruction of families has also helped make modern politics into a form of mental illness.

One sunny but cool day in early fall, during the first year or two of the George H.W. Bush administration, I drove out to visit my grandparents before heading off to graduate school.  As my grandfather and I sat in the front yard, our conversation trailed off.  Then, unexpectedly, Grandpa told me that he thought that the President was doing a pretty good job so far.

“That’s the problem,” I said.  “People like you are happy with what he’s doing.”

I simply meant that I could understand why a lifelong Democrat was more pleased with the Bush administration than a budding paleoconservative was.  Young and full of myself, I couldn’t hear how those words must have sounded to his ears.  He simply looked at me, a small, sad smile on his face, and didn’t say a word.

Looking back, I don’t know whether he even believed what he had said about President Bush; but I realize now that it was something that he thought I would like to hear.  His silence afterward, in such marked contrast to years of heated debates, was his way of letting me know that some things are more important than politics.

I wish I had learned that lesson a little earlier.  Between that day, when I suffered my bout of temporary insanity, and my grandfather’s death not all that long after, I don’t remember discussing politics with him ever again.

In Confessions of an Original Sinner, John Lukacs writes that, in the 1950’s, his diocesan newspaper regularly reminded readers that “The family that prays together stays together.”  But, he asks, “isn’t the converse of that even more true?”

Now, when one of my friends or relatives starts rattling off the latest FOX News talking point, I find myself keeping quiet, a small (but not sad) smile on my face.  McCain, Obama, Biden, Palin, Democrats, Republicans—none of it is more important than the years I spent around my grandparents’ table, or the time my children will spend around theirs.  A big bowl of mashed potatoes does wonders to ward off mental illness. 

First published in the December 2008 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

I've Got a Secret

Back in November and December, while Republicans across the country were writing letters, calling in to talk radio, and even taking to the streets to protest Al Gore's attempt to steal the election in Florida, their fellow party members in Rockford remained strangely silent. They must have found it disquieting when the Bush campaign kept insisting that machines are more accurate than humans. After all, it's been a staple of local Republican belief for almost 20 years that Rockford Democrats have manipulated computerized counting machines to steal at least three of the last five mayoral elections.

In theory, at least, it's possible. As James J. Condit argued in Chronicles four years ago ("A House Without Doors," Views, November 1996), the same technology that simplifies the process of counting votes also makes it much easier to steal an election. Since computerized counting is conducted at central locations, ballots must be moved, which means there's an opportunity to substitute pre-punched ballots for the ones voters actually used. If that fails, the counting machines' computers can be programmed to return the desired result.

While I have been a poll-watcher during one local election and have observed the vote counting after another, I've seen no evidence that local Democrats have actually tampered with either ballots or counting machines. But I am convinced of the truth of a related conspiracy theory: Most politicians in Rockford are heavily influenced by a small group of public contractors and real-estate developers. Their own campaign-finance disclosure statements on the Illinois Board of Elections website (www.elections.state.il.us) provide plenty of evidence.

But if everyone here in Rockford has heard that the last two mayors have simply been pawns of monied interests (and everyone has), then why have the Democrats won the last five mayoral elections in a city routinely described as Republican? The simple answer could be that local voters just don't care.

There may, however, be more at work here. When most people—in Rockford or elsewhere—hear the word "conspiracy," they think of a cabal aimed at overturning the will of the people. That's certainly the way popular literature, movies, and TV shows portray conspiracies. But if you were trying to gain power (or wealth) in the modern world, why would you set yourself against the people? It's much easier to present yourself as their champion. Give them what they want, and they will return the favor.

Both Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor and the Cigarette-Smoking Man on The X-Files understood this. So, too, did the interests that backed Rockford Democratic mayoral candidate John McNamara in 1981. A blue-collar town heavily dependent on the aerospace industry, Rockford had been hit hard by the recession of the late 70's and early 80's. Unemployment was over 20 percent; factories were closing; new businesses weren't taking up the slack. Rockford was on its way to becoming a ghost town.

Helped along by the Reagan military buildup (which revitalized Rockford's industries), John McNamara gave the people what they wanted—economic recovery—while enriching his benefactors through a series of public-works projects (knocking down Rockford's historic buildings and erecting Soviet-style ones), tax breaks, and zoning changes that encouraged private development. By the time McNamara left office in 1989, Rockford's economy had not only rebounded but added a service sector (read: strip malls and chain restaurants). The public-works contractors and real-estate developers who had supported him were firmly entrenched, and he was able to handpick his successor: our current mayor. Democrat Charles Box. Box has nurtured the city's relationship with McNamara's benefactors, and McNamara himself became president of the parent company of the chief public-works contractor, Rockford Blacktop.

Because many of us don't like the intimate connection between Rockford Blacktop and our city government, we often forget that most people in Winnebago County don't mind as long as the roads that Blacktop builds make it easier for them to drive from the vinyl-sided ranch houses they bought from Gambino Realtors to the strip malls that Sunil Puri's First Rockford Group built. In other words, those who supported John McNamara in 1981 have triumphed—not by working against the people, but by recognizing what they wanted and using that knowledge to gain power and wealth. (If government weren't involved, libertarians would undoubtedly proclaim this a stunning example of the virtues of the free market.)

That doesn't change the fact that a small elite dominates the government of Rockford and Winnebago County for its own enrichment, but it changes the political dynamic. Those of us who recognize what's wrong here in Rockford can't count on setting it right by winning elections—particularly since politicians in both parties realize which side their bread is buttered on. Our next mayoral election (in April) will pit a Democratic state representative with strong ties to the McNamara/Box machine against a Republican businessman who shares a campaign- finance chairman—and several key supporters—with the current Democratic mayor. What's the point of having two parties?

At its root, the degeneration of modern democracy is a cultural problem, not a political one. Once political power is vested in the people, all that stands between oligarchy and freedom is the virtue of the masses. In the 18th and 19th centuries, "popular" revolutions failed because the revolutionaries didn't realize the extent to which the people were still attached to throne and altar. But now, the throne is occupied by the likes of Bill Clinton and the altar is attended by Jesse Jackson, and Americans don't mind. They may say they do; they may even think they do; but their actions speak louder than their words. Bill Clinton could have awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the Prince of Lies, and he would still have left office with a 70-percent approval rating. (Come to think of it, he did award the medal to the Reverend Jackson.)

So why do local Republicans continue to believe that the only way Mayors McNamara and Box could have won power was by stealing elections? The trouble is not that they can't see the forest for the trees, but that they mistake one tiny leaf for the whole of human existence. Yes, many who desire power are corrupt; yes, sometimes they break the law to achieve their ends; but often, they don't have to. Why overthrow governments, stuff ballot boxes, or manipulate counting machines when you can achieve your ends simply by saying what the people think they want to hear, while doing what the people actually want done?

At the end of George W. Bush's four or eight years as President, Roe v. Wade will still be the law of the land, more states will have recognized homosexual "marriages," more American businesses will have moved overseas, more women and homosexuals will have joined the military, more Americans will have died while killing innocent civilians in countries we have no business attacking, multiculturalism and bilingualism will have increased their hold on American education (remember, Pater's Department of Education first dreamed up Goals 2000), and immigration—both illegal and legal—will have increased. And here in Rockford, no matter which party wins the next mayoral election, Rockford Blacktop will still pave our streets, Sunil Puri will still level farmland and forests to put up strip malls and vinyl-sided ranches, and "Dr." Richard Ragsdale will still murder babies. Because, in the end, that's what the people want.

History is indeed made by men in a room somewhere; but in the modern era, those men have found that it's easier to control the course of events by adding on to the room and letting more folks inside. Soon—perhaps already—those of us on the outside will be in the minority.

***

Psst. Hey, you—the guy at the keyboard. Your conclusions may he right, hut your theory's all wrong. Wanna know the truth about the presidential election? It was all rigged from the beginning—has been, in fact, since at least 1988. That's why George Senior was so smug in those early primaries, and Bob Dole was so frustrated. He knew he couldn't win; wasn't supposed to. And 1992? Give me a break. No sitting president could run such a bad campaign unless he were trying to throw the election. 

You see, it was all a setup. The Skull and Bones know that the American people are a bunch of suckers who can't get past the appearance of a two-party system. What better way to hide the fact that they're pulling the strings than to remove the pachyderm puppet from the stage once in a while, and replace him with a jackass marionette? Clinton's not a Bonesman, but he is Yale Law, so he knows the score. This year, however, it was time to bring the presidency back home. So they crowned Dubya almost a year before the first primary and forced the only man who represented a threat out of the GOP and into a dead-end third party. The stage was set: They knew Al Gore would play along—after all, he'd picked a graduate of Yale and Yale Law as his running mate. (Surely you didn't think Bill Buckley took such a shine to Joe Lieberman because of his religious values?) 

But then the Boners made a mistake: They thought it would be fun to have a real horse race, but they cut it too close in Florida. Tired of playing second fiddle to his father, to Clinton, to Tipper, to Joe, and now to some smug son of a Bonesman—Al grabbed the bow and started calling the dance. But he forgot one thing: Clarence Thomas. Yale Law. (You didn't think George Senior nominated him just because of his race, did you?) The poor sap didn't have a chance. 

Funny thing is, it all worked out better for the Bonesmen this way. Al couldn't let the American people know just what he was fighting against—most of them would have thought he was nuts. And now, all those conspiracy theorists who used to think that Skull and Bones or the CFR or the Trilateral Commission or the Rockefellers or the Bilderbergers might be calling the shots have fallen right into line. After all, the Democrats tried to steal the election, and the Republicans would never do that, right? Next time, the Bonesmen may not even need to swap marionettes. 

Anyway, that's the real reason those Republicans in Rockford were so quiet during the Florida recount: THEY KNEW. 

Pass it on. 

First published in the March 2001 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Meet Rod Blago

As the former governor of Illinois crisscrossed the country on his farewell tour, I kept imagining him lying back in his seat, scalp being massaged by his personal hairstylist (it takes work to keep that Serbian gangster hairdo in pristine shape), while an old Mac Davis song played on an endless loop on his iPod:

O Lord, it’s hard to be humble

When you’re perfect in every way

I can’t wait to look in the mirror

’cause I get better looking each day

“Here, Bobby, hold that mirror up.  I gotta work on my smile.  Those gals on The View are gonna fall for my eyes.”

And fall they did.  Once Hot Rod’s hand was on her knee, Whoopi Goldberg could feel his pain.  A colored man just can’t get a break in the white man’s world.

In the end, though, it was Blagojevich who fell the hardest, but that wasn’t his fault, either.  Turns out that federal district attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is a regular Mr. Potter, trying to keep Milorad Bailey from helping the people of Illinois live a wonderful life.  On January 23, he explained it all to WLS’s Don Wade and Roma:

You know those old black and white movies from the 30’s and the 40’s with Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper? Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It Happened One Night and Meet John Doe and the other one is Mr. Deeds Goes to Town? How the good guy was up against the establishment, and yet they tried to make him look like he had violated rules, but he stood firm for the people because he was trying to help people in all of those movies. . . .

That’s what my story is.  It’s a Frank Capra movie.

In this 21st-century remake of It’s a Wonderful Life, the score, of course, is also by Mac Davis.

Some folks say that I’m egotistical.

Hell, I don’t even know what that means.

I guess it has something to do with the way that I

fill out my skin-tight blue jeans.

With his leather bomber jacket, those blue jeans were Governor Blagojevich’s business suit.  (Business casual was sweats and running shoes.)  Some might find that a bit down-market for the governor of the sixth-largest state in the Union, but those jeans are the uniform of the working man, and Rod Blagojevich is nothing if not true to his roots.

That’s why he voted for Ronald Reagan (twice!), he told Chicago’s morning commuters, but as a working-class Democrat

I like to see myself more as a Teddy Roosevelt kind of Republican than Richard Nixon. The guy who’s fightin’ for the average guy. And willing to, you know, be in the arena and have his face marred by dust and sweat and blood—strive valiantly and err and come short again and again. Because there is not effort without error and shortcoming, but who actually strives to do the deed.

With such a mastery of syntax, is it any wonder that, in conversations taped by federal investigators just days before his arrest and indictment, Governor Blagojevich still thought he might one day rise to the office then occupied by George W. Bush?

And who knows?  He might have, if not for the treacherous Potter—er, Patrick—Fitzgerald.  But once the arrest and the indictment came down, the Illinois House finally did the right thing and impeached the governor.  At that point, he had only two choices: Return to his ancestral homeland and get lost in the mountains of Montenegro, or go down fighting.

He chose to fight, but in his own special way.  Where a lesser man might actually have shown up for his impeachment trial and attempted to mount a credible defense, this son of an immigrant steel-mill worker went on every TV and radio talk show that would have him and defended himself against charges no one had leveled.

Democrats hated him because they wanted to raise taxes, and he wouldn’t let them; Republicans hated him because they wanted the Democrats to raise taxes so they could campaign on the issue.  Everybody hated him because he, like Mother Teresa, cared for the sick and the poor, especially children.  But they were all so corrupt that they would hate Mother Teresa, too, as he revealed on the Today Show: “You can conceivably bring in 15 angels and 20 saints led by Mother Teresa to come in to testify to my good character, to my integrity and all the rest.  It wouldn’t matter.”  (Why a Serb would want to be defended by an Albanian was a question that, sadly, nobody asked.)

When he finally arrived in Springfield (a rare event in his two terms as governor) and deigned to make an appearance at his own impeachment trial, his long-winded defense could be summed up in two lines: “To know me is to love me. / I must be a hell of a man.”

Well, he was half right.  So long, Hot Rod, and thanks for the nine-billion-dollar deficit. 

First published in the April 2009 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Everything in Its Place

On December 9, 2008, as I read through the federal criminal complaint against the latest Illinois governor to be indicted for the merest portion of his crimes, I could not help but feel uneasy.  Sure, it was great fun to imagine Governor Hot Rod sweating it out in his holding cell, awaiting arraignment later in the day.  Even the most casual observer of Illinois politics knew that Milorad Blagojevich, our S.O.B., had to be corrupt.  After all, you don’t get elected governor of Illinois as a reformer if you actually are one.

The unease did not abate as Aaron Wolf and I watched a webcast later that morning of the press conference held by U.S. District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.  The assembled reporters danced around the obvious questions, and Fitzgerald followed their lead.  What is the actual federal crime of which Blagojevich is accused?  Is there one?  Aren’t Blagojevich’s transgressions, both those named in the criminal complaint and those for which he will probably never be indicted, state matters?  Isn’t this a bit like prosecuting Al Capone for income-tax evasion, the main difference being that income-tax evasion was a federal crime, and Capone was guilty of it?

If there were an actual federal crime involved, that might be one thing; but the two counts leveled against Blagojevich stretch federal law so far as to make it meaningless.  Or, rather, they stretch it so far as to make it absolute—any crime committed by an elected official of a state, and virtually any crime committed by a mere citizen, could be covered under their penumbra.

The first count alleges that Blagojevich and John Harris, his chief of staff, “did, [sic] conspire with each other and with others to devise and participate in a scheme to defraud the State of Illinois and the people of the State of Illinois, of the honest services” of Blagojevich and Harris.  It is easy to see how this could be a state matter, but it only becomes a federal crime through a subordinate clause: “in furtherance of which the mails and interstate wire communications would be used,” in violation of various sections of Title 18 of the United States Code.

The second count alleges that the governor and his chief of staff “corruptly solicited and demanded a thing of value, namely, the firing of certain Chicago Tribune editorial members responsible for widely-circulated editorials critical of” the governor, in exchange for which they allegedly intended to provide

millions of dollars in financial assistance by the State of Illinois, including through the Illinois Finance Authority, an agency of the State of Illinois, to the Tribune Company involving the Wrigley Field baseball stadium.

This is certainly worthy of state prosecution, but why should it be considered a federal crime?  Because Blagojevich and Harris are

agents of the State of Illinois, a State government which during a one-year period, beginning January 1, 2008 and continuing to the present, received federal benefits in excess of $10,000.

In a line sure to send a chill down the spines of evangelical dispensationalists and rad-trad Catholics, this second count notes that these actions violate “Title 18, United States Code, Sections 666(a)(1)(B) and 2.”

In the end, though, the Blagojevich arrest and indictment present a more mundane, yet perhaps more far-reaching, concern than the coming of the end times and the rise of the Antichrist.  As contributing editor Clyde Wilson noted on the Chronicles website, “the idea of the FBI arresting a governor is disturbing” and “a very bad precedent.”  The U.S. Constitution has long been a dead letter; federalism exists today in name only; yet it is hard not to sense that a broader principle even than the traditions of the American political system has been violated here.

In the Catholic tradition, we call that principle subsidiarity—the idea that a larger, higher, or more centralized authority should not usurp the rightful duties and responsibilities of a smaller, lower, or decentralized one.  The framers of both the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution did not use the term, but the systems of federalism established under both documents adhered to the principle, each in its own way.

Subsidiarity is poorly understood.  Many Catholics who claim to support the principle characterize it as the idea that higher authorities should never step in unless lower authorities fail to fulfill their responsibilities.  I once had a debate with a Catholic traditionalist who argued that, under subsidiarity, overturning Roe v. Wade was not good enough, because some states would fail to protect the unborn.  Therefore, nothing short of a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution was acceptable.  Similarly, leaving the regulation of marriage to the states was out of the question, now that some states have legalized “gay marriage.”  Their failure to exercise their responsibilities in accordance with Christian teaching on marriage meant that the federal government not only could step in, but must step in.

Since vocal Catholic “defenders” of subsidiarity make such arguments, it is not surprising that another common misconception, especially among those who are skeptical of the influence of the Catholic Church on politics, is that (in the recent words of one European journalist) subsidiarity means “that the power rests at the top . . . but the power at the top will let some of it trickle down as it sees fit.”

Both sides are wrong.  The most cogent summary of the principle of subsidiarity is found in Pope Pius XI’s 1931 social encyclical, Quadragesimo anno.  Building on the work of his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, in Rerum novarum (1891), Pope Pius writes (paragraph 79):

As history abundantly proves, it is true that on account of changed conditions many things which were done by small associations in former times cannot be done now save by large associations. Still, that most weighty principle, which cannot be set aside or changed, remains fixed and unshaken in social philosophy: Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.

Phrases such as “fixed and unshaken,” “gravely wrong,” “injustice,” “grave evil,” and “disturbance of right order” do not allow for a whole lot of wiggle room.  Even more important, however, is the Holy Father’s choice of verb to describe the responsibilities of subsidiary organizations: He speaks of what they “can do,” without qualification.  He does not go on to say that if they deliberately fail to do that which they can do, it is no longer “a grave evil and disturbance of right order” for a larger, higher, or more centralized authority to usurp the power that rightly belongs to a smaller, lower, or decentralized one.

This isn’t sloppiness on Pius XI’s part, nor is it a deliberate attempt to hide some dark Catholic belief that power flows from the center and is held by families and local governments and other intermediary institutions only at the whim of the centralized state, which owes its power to the Supreme Pontiff.  Rather, it is a classic statement of the traditional Christian understanding of moral and social order: There is a place for everything, and everything in its place.

The proper authorities in the state of Illinois could have handled the Blagojevich problem, as the impeachment proceedings in the Illinois General Assembly prove.  They chose not to.  And the citizens of Illinois, who could have demanded that their elected officials fulfill their sworn responsibilities to uphold the Illinois constitution, chose to look the other way, too.  Neither failure represents an inability to carry out their responsibilities, and thus neither justifies the “grave evil and disturbance of right order” of a federal intervention.

Pius XI wrote Quadragesimo anno at a time of unprecedented centralization and destruction of Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” that are “the first principle . . . of public affections . . . the first link in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country and to mankind.”  Today, to quote the typically pithy assessment of Burke’s latter-day disciple Russell Kirk, the situation is “much worse.”  Subsidiarity, Pius XI saw, was the key to the return to right order, which would mean the limitation rather than the expansion of the centralized state:

When we speak of the reform of institutions, the State comes chiefly to mind, not as if universal well-being were to be expected from its activity, but because things have come to such a pass through the evil of what we have termed “individualism” that, following upon the overthrow and near extinction of that rich social life which was once highly developed through associations of various kinds, there remain virtually only individuals and the State. This is to the great harm of the State itself; for, with a structure of social governance lost, and with the taking over of all the burdens which the wrecked associations once bore, the State has been overwhelmed and crushed by almost infinite tasks and duties.

Should Governor Hot Rod be convicted on federal charges, I won’t shed a tear for him—he deserves far worse than a few years lounging around a federal country club, with a weekly “Get Out of Jail Free” card to meet his family and political cronies on Saturday morning at a local restaurant for breakfast.  But the successful prosecution of a governor who was indicted while still in office would set, as Dr. Wilson rightly stated, a very bad precedent.

While the American constitutional order may have all but crumbled into dust, subsidiarity, as a broader principle, still stands—for the moment.  Defending it, even in—or perhaps, especially in—distasteful situations such as the strange case of Milorad Blagojevich, is the first step toward restoring a sane political order in the United States.

And think of the delicious irony if a reinvigorated federal system were to spring forth from the Land of Lincoln. 

First published in the March 2009 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

Hot Rod Lincoln

He knew that he was destined for greatness.  The son of uneducated manual laborers, immigrants to Illinois, he was never much of a student, but he would become a successful lawyer.  From a young age, though, his sights were set on political power.  Through his political connections, he got himself elected to the Illinois House of Representatives and, later, to the U.S. Congress from Illinois.  Gregarious when he wanted to be, he was known to all by his monosyllabic three-letter nickname, not his trisyllabic given name.

He was well liked by some, but despised by others.  Very few people had a neutral opinion, and even some of those who liked him and supported him in his rise to power were disturbed by his odd, self-centered behavior.  He seemed unable to show much human emotion for those around him.

Whatever else anyone might have thought of him, he was a masterful politician, attacking corruption while engaging in inside deals that helped him both politically and personally.  Unhappy with the location of the Illinois capitol, he essentially moved it to where he was living.  But his ambitions extended beyond Illinois, and he needed money and backing to fulfill his dream of rising from his modest roots to the highest office in the land.  Washington beckoned, and nothing would stand in his way.

Or, at least, that is what Gov. Milorad “Rod” Blagojevich thought right up until the phone rang at 6 A.M. on December 9, 2008, waking him at his home on Chicago’s North Side, which he had transformed into the de facto capitol of the state of Illinois.  That same phone had been his undoing, and at a press conference later that morning, federal investigators outlined a 76-page indictment filed in U.S. district court, which detailed numerous calls made to and from that phone.

In selections from the transcripts of those calls, Governor Blagojevich repeatedly instructed aides to hold up $8 million in state funds for a children’s hospital until the head of the hospital coughed up a $50,000 donation to Friends of Blagojevich; discussed using $1.8 billion in state funds as a reward to a public contractor, a road builder, if only he would raise a half-million dollars for the governor’s war chest by the end of 2008, when new campaign-finance rules would go into effect; and tried to tie state assistance to the struggling Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs, to the firing of a writer for the Tribune who had penned editorials critical of Blagojevich’s conduct as governor.

The press conference was conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who had successfully prosecuted Blagojevich’s predecessor, Republican Gov. George Ryan, on 18 counts of racketeering and fraud.  Ryan had had the good sense to decline to run for reelection as the feds closed the net about him, and so he, like felonious former Democratic governors Dan Walker and Otto Kerner, avoided indictment while still in office.

Blagojevich not only ran for reelection in 2006 knowing that he was being investigated but as late as the day before his arrest declared to reporters that investigators were free to listen to his conversations because he had nothing to hide.  Still, the transcripts showed that he was looking for a way out of the governor’s office so that he could rehabilitate his reputation—for a run for the presidency in 2016.

Milorad was probably too busy getting his trademark Serbian gangster hairdo coiffed for court that afternoon, but if he had a chance to listen to Fitzgerald’s press conference, the man who had consciously modeled himself on Honest Abe was likely cut to the bone when Fitzgerald declared, “The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave.”  Of course, Rod shares more with Abe than the Brooklyn-born Fitzgerald would like to think.  The railmen who bankrolled Lincoln could teach today’s blacktop bosses of Illinois a thing or two.  And as President, Lincoln didn’t need to use financial persuasion to halt criticisms of his conduct; he could—and did—simply sign an executive order for the arrest and imprisonment of “the editors, proprietors, and publishers” of newspapers and prohibit “any further publication therefrom.”

No, if Lincoln was doing anything in his grave on December 9, 2008, he was probably thanking the God he didn’t believe in that Alexander Graham Bell hadn’t invented the telephone until 12 years after his last Good Friday.

Most of Governor Blagojevich’s transgressions were politics as usual here in the Land of Lincoln, but Fitzgerald was compelled to act when it became clear that Blago was attempting to sell Barack Obama’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder.  But what about our new President himself?  Time will tell, but some of us in Illinois could not help but chuckle when the President-elect—another politician who modeled himself on Honest Abe—announced that the centerpiece of his New New Deal would be the biggest load of asphalt since the construction of the Interstate Highway System.  One thing is certain: The appointment of outgoing Illinois congressman Ray LaHood (R-Blacktop) as transportation secretary had little to do with bipartisanship.

You can take the boy out of Illinois, but you can’t take Illinois out of the boy. 

First published in the February 2009 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.