3) Against the Bill of Rights
Against the Bill of Rights & American Freedom
Mr. Kendall, you begin your essay with a lengthy technical discussion of the circumstances in which the Bill of Rights came to be amended to the Constitution. This is something of a marker for Conservative thought. It seems to me that you and your comrades are always very dialectic, as I said to your co-author Mr. Kirk (see Against Mr. Russell Kirk) and technical, and I suppose this makes it seem intelligent or arguable. It is not that it is not intelligent either, for obviously your position, the conservative position, requires more intelligence and maturity than the liberal position (of course, those are not the only two options, and this is the crux of everything). This is actually its purpose for existence: it gives to the moral elements of society (because sin clouds reason) a comfortable place to gather that does not impede the goals of tyrants or immoral men.
Debate and Competition as a Foundation in Conservative Philosophy
(The below section has been expounded above in Against Mr. Russell Kirk. This can be considered another instance.)
Regardless, eventually it becomes clear that you, Mr. Kendall, are out to show the intention of those who gave us the Bill of Rights. You seem to operate from that principle in law where this is done whenever the law is unclear because the law is not held above the lawgiver, a human soul of authority, whose will the law merely represents. It is very useful that you do this, because you show clearly that the Bill, by far the most radical of American idolized documents, is in fact nothing more than a result of vain, worldly debate, the wrangling of a single man, Mr. James Madison, who actually is known most famously for opposing the whole idea of a Bill of Rights in the Federalist Papers, as you mention.
This worldliness and vanity which centers in political debate, is the theme of American history. All of the history of America is vulgar argument and competition with arbitrary victories by which men are enslaved. The Conservative idea is that out of all this sinful conflict, good things are produced, which is a philosophy that differs truly from evolution only in that it goes from meaninglessness to meaning with no intervening justification, as in theistic evolution. Atheistic evolution (called true evolution) acknowledges that meaningless things produce no meaning. But Conservatives like yourself act as if chaos spontaneously produces order. I encourage my readers to seek out the origin of that concept to its depth: Solve et coagula.
This is why there has always been two and only two parties in American politics. We are an empire possessed of hundreds of nations and millions of square miles in every continent, and we have only two parties.
The First Amendment: Freedom of the Press
To continue against you, Mr. Kendall, the first amendment is really your focus, as it is for everyone, and the others simply adorn it. In that amendment, there is freedom of the press. What does this mean? That anybody can publish whatever they wish? Certainly not. For no one thinks it means to publish another’s work against their will, or else they except slander or profanity or blasphemy or pornography or scandals to children or bigotry or something. Nobody removes all exceptions. There really is no absolute freedom of the press and so, if we look at the intention here, we can see that it comes from an opposition to a tradition in England against publishing liberal religion. The Catholic Church draws the line at falsehood, which makes it opposed to all religious publication outside itself, and this is usually in view as regards the press. This is what this freedom opposes, that oppression of falsehood by the Church. For it is a reference to a specific invention and its cultural impact, which was the rapid spread of heresy in the sixteenth century.
How ludicrous is it to talk about freedom of the press as a natural right? It might as well be said that one has freedom to purchase a car. Well, there are cars here and cars there, but I cannot afford any car, and no one had one three hundred years ago. So, too, I can acquire a printing press and plan to, but no one cares what I publish, whereas horrible people control all the media and use it to oppress the poor, and these are the only ones whose activities are protected by this amendment. If I publish something against their desires and gain their attention, they will destroy my supposed natural right, while the appropriate authority to stop their tyranny is the government, which cannot without running afoul of this amendment.
Freedom of Speech
If we look at freedom of speech rather than of press, the same objections by the Catholic morality seem not to stand, except that they do. What is speech if you remove the vehicles of publication? It is the act, truly, of going out and shouting at people. And if this primal vehicle be considered, then there are many things which are prohibited by government and more directly by neighbors, and these always have been, and none but the most lunatic makes no exception. You can imagine the topics off limits in various settings, say, a schoolyard. (Although, it bears mentioning that in our current society, it would be legal for someone to come up to me and quietly inform me that they desire to seduce an adult daughter of mine, and illegal or frowned upon for me to retaliate or prevent it).
But you will say to me, Mr. Kendall, that the society can be trusted for regulation while the government cannot be. That is all well and good until it is brought into practical circumstances (which conservatives avoid by and large) as, for instance, happened in the year of our Lord 2020, in which everybody was commanded to wear a particular piece of fashion that was popular, up until that time, only on the eastern coast of Asia. When this happens, many questions arise as to who exactly is my neighbor, and what do I owe him, and what is his jurisdiction, and what if he is employed by the government? For by and large, while the government provides exemption for all under any cause of health without any proof, the neighbor has his own power and tends to enforce the will of the government in an even more tyrannical manner. And the government itself often steps in as in the South where the use of particular verbiage might necessitate the intervention of members of the FBI (this verbiage includes the word “nigger”).
So what is really protected by freedom of speech? There are three things which are permitted under it that historically have been severely penalized. The latter two are related. The first is to criticize your rulers. Well and fine, this always has been a difficulty, and usually requires men willing to suffer greatly. Of course, it is still trouble today and has been throughout American history. If a man criticizes the Jews, for instance, who control so much of Congress and of all vehicles of power in this country both official and unofficial, then he is liable to suffer great persecution.
But regardless, why not protect that single freedom, rather than a general freedom of speech, if so many other things are still prohibited? It is only for the purpose of including the freedom of the latter two, which, unlike the first, are actually increased greatly under this clause: heresy and blasphemy.
Freedom of Assembly
The same can be said of the freedom of assembly. There are certain assemblies still prohibited; there are some technically allowed but only de jure, and there are religious assemblies that offend the well-formed conscience in a variety of ways, and these last are the true beneficiaries of this freedom.
Freedom of Religion
And so ultimately, the first amendment and the whole Bill of Rights with it, considering the testimony of history, and the actual results of its codification, is about one thing: freedom of religion. In this, I thank you, Mr. Kendall, because I have been shown that our founding documents are not only containing heresy (for freedom of conscience and religion is a tenet of Modernism), but actually center upon heresy.
Freedom of religion is the crux of American philosophy. I think all reasonable and intelligent people realize this with very little knowledge. This one thing at the heart of America, from its beginning to its end, the nation of fleeing and enterprising Englishmen, is so essential that if it can be shown to be an error or rotten, then the whole thing is rotten.
There is no coincidence that the Bill of Rights is ten. It is a foil and commentary on the Ten Commandments. But I neglect to develop this further in this essay, because there are many more to do.
This has been a copious essay. Let us conlude with what you have provided us.
In Conclusion
In your essay, Mr. Kendall, you have repeated reference to some current event: a court case, apparently, involving the Supreme Court under a Justice Black. I suppose I should discover the details of this thing.
But until I do, it seems sensible to take from this a reproof against myself. Because I wonder if Justice Black ever listened to you, which I doubt, or if your writing ever had any real impact on society. But that begs the question if I think that mine ever shall. And indeed, in all these old books where I bury myself at the impending advent of my next child, in a week that can only be described as arctic, with having lost heat and water at warmer times, with a fragile bride and little respect or support from my community (more than I deserve), do I just retreat to these for comfort? It is more pleasant to argue politics even while fasting than it is to discipline a little girl knowing how the mothers and fathers of my parish think me a failure.
I can say that the consolation I receive is a support. I can say also that it is a tradition of the Church for Her men to write and be ignored. This is easy to see in the books that teach me truths about, for instance, slavery or women, of which all the world and the most traditional Catholics choose to remain ignorant. But I gain from it. And my children, should we survive the week, shall too. More importantly, we worship God, remember the Last Day, and place our hopes in Heaven, where Saint Dismas resides, having said only a few pathetic words in favor of Jesus.
What else is there to say? I have indeed survived the week. It has been three or so since my son’s birth, in the piercing cold, on Saint Sebastian’s day. My community more than ever despises me, and it seems clear God shall have me leave it for a time. But troubles come, and they go, and men like me grow weary, but all that is ever written shall one day be read and judged, and so what else is there to do but please God and say a few more words in His favor? Conservatives do not believe in the true God. Their god lays aside the moral law in order to preserve the freedom of the damned.
There is no doubt in my mind that God would have this known by all that should follow Him in the ages to come. Hardly anyone yet does know it.