The problem throughout this book, and I suspect most books about integralism suffer from the same problem, is that it is a sane analysis of madness. You make the same kind of marginal notes you do in other books — “strong argument,” “good point,” and “is this true?” — but then you put it down and wonder if you are still on planet Earth.
… The integralists … are unhinged.
The fact that they command a following is frightening …
It’s not really frightening, since jesus jackoffs are just, as the name has it, jacking off. They’re not doing anything.
But it’s certainly shocking that a masturbatory fantasist holds a responsible job at Harvard. Harvard even lets the guy loose in classrooms — though students are beginning to rebel against their lord and masturbator.
Gratified as UD is to see others finally pay attention to the Insane Integralists, and esp. their Harvard law prof spokesperson, Adrian Vermeule — cuz see UD’s been caterwauling about Vermeule for a number of years — she is less delighted to see looooong essays take serious historical, theological, and philosophical issue with him and his All Catholic All The Time movement.
Vermeule and his buds basically represent a Dungeons and Dragons circle jerk with Xian elements. To quote their rival World Takeover By Jesus sect, they are … SPOOKYTUS…….
Which sort of behavior among adults who hold respectable jobs is astonishing, and funny, and I write about it on this blog on that basis. Taking the lads with any real seriousness just makes them tug the slug more energetically.
But! I’ll go ahead and quote from a couple of recent articles anyway, in case you need reminding what this is all about.
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What the integralists call the social reign of Christ will be achieved by integrating the temporal power (the state) with the spiritual power (the Catholic Church). The military, the economy, the arts, and religious life will be directed toward human flourishing as defined by one severe reading of Catholic tradition. Which doesn’t mean bishops would command armies or set tax rates — civil authorities in an integralist regime would retain broad spheres of competence within which to forward the ends prescribed by the Catholic Church, but the Church would define those ends…
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[I]n the … words of an American integralist, “the state should recognize Catholicism as true and unite with the Church as body to her soul.”
[T]hey are another group in our society that judges governments and regimes and political orders by how good they are for them. This selfishness, which is a common feature of identity, is as tiresome in its religious versions as it is in its secular ones; it is a … form of contempt…
[The bizarre] Vermeule is talking about the American government. Who does he expect to persuade with this sectarian rapture?
… This is, well, nuts. Vermeule has no reason to fear the jackboot of Nancy Pelosi in the middle of the night. But his extreme view of his position in contemporary America enables him to cast himself grandiosely. He is the lonely knight of the faith who has taken up the Cross to do battle with the Jeffersonian infidels.
… When rationalists seem to be acting imperialistically, they can be challenged rationally, on their own grounds, and a rational argument for humility or restraint can be made; but no argument can be made with anybody who dissociates reason from truth, who repudiates “intrinsic grounds,” who demands of authority that it be “external.”
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And of course it’s valuable to visit and revisit the enemies of liberalism, the revilers of freedom. But taking AV and Co. with great seriousness is like taking the CEO of MyPillow seriously. UD doesn’t deny that people of this sort ought to be monitored occasionally; but leaving them alone to stroke themselves to sleepytime is by far the best move.
Whether common good constitutionalism supplants originalism remains to be seen. But the idea that it can impose the society it wants through its own interpretation of “the common good” is a sign of just how far the right has moved toward authoritarianism.
Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has formally launched his campaign to reclaim the presidency with a ferocious broadside against his rival, Jair Bolsonaro, who he claimed was “possessed by the devil”.
Catholic Integralist Vermeule has taken a leave of absence from Harvard to run Lula’s campaign. Should be interesting.
Vermeule (scroll down) is a standard-issue Trumpian who continues gassing on about election fraud. He is a theocrat – I mean, a real one, as in he wants the United States ruled by Jesus, and, if Jesus doesn’t want the job, by His designated ayatollahs. We can anticipate that these would include the much-laureled Josh Hawley, plus, well, Adrian Vermeule.
Vermeule’s one peculiar distinction is that he’s a Harvard law professor; and it turns out that more than a few of his students are now officially really really creeped out to be in the same room with the dude in various required classes. UD is all for these students complaining about him; indeed, intellectual self-respect rather demands that his students make a public statement of some sort about the odd fact of their being taught, at the nation’s greatest university, by an off-the-charts anti-democratic fanatic.
No punishment allowed, of course; Vermeule finds himself a tenured Harvard professor and fine. But squawking about the obscenity of having to endure the presence of a freak who wants to destroy your country – excellent.
[Sen. Josh] Hawley’s idea of freedom is the freedom to conform to what he and his preferred religious authorities know to be right. Mr. Hawley is not shy about making the point explicit. In a 2017 speech to the American Renewal Project, he declared — paraphrasing the Dutch Reformed theologian and onetime prime minister Abraham Kuyper — “There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.” Mr. Kuyper is perhaps best known for his claim that Christianity has sole legitimate authority over all aspects of human life.
“We are called to take that message into every sphere of life that we touch, including the political realm,” Mr. Hawley said. “That is our charge. To take the Lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm, and to seek the obedience of the nations. Of our nation!”
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Sing it.
Every night I hoped and prayed
My dream lover would come my way
A man to rule in Jesus’ name
To blacken freedom with his holy flame
Cuz I want
The state
That Christ
Will bring
And I found Josh Hawley
To crown our Savior’s earthly king
Someday, I don’t know how
I hope he’ll hear my plea
Someway, I don’t know how
He’ll rule both you and me
Dream lover, until then
I’ll pray to God and dream again
That’s the only thing to do
Til my Rule-by-Jesus dreams come true
Cuz I want (repeat chorus)
‘Vermeule is confident that his fellow Americans will eventually learn to love theocracy:
Subjects [writes Vermeule] will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.’
With each passing day it becomes ever more plausible that we should silence the law professoriate for the good of the nation. Yes I will accept my fate along with the rest. — Adrian Vermeule
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My Vermeule posts.
The logic of integralism is straightforward. There is no neutral ground on fundamental questions of God, good and evil, and the purpose of human life. Political conflict entails conflict about these ultimate things, integralists argue. Accordingly, they view public institutions, social structures and religion as an integral whole. Nothing is truly private. Everything affects the common good; there is no private life or private conscience. The resulting vision is of a hierarchical society with concentrated power, close coordination between church and state, and public regulation of religious orthodoxy… [In short,] the Catholic Church should strategically co-opt the American state. The result would be a return of state-sanctioned religion and a politics that is at once socially conservative, statist and economically populist… [The ultimate goal of all human life] is heaven, and the integralist means of getting us to that destination is to subordinate politics to the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church.
UD so wishes her hero Richard Rorty were still around to do a number on these lost souls.
(For background, search Vermeule and Deneen on UD‘s search engine.)
