Mark Shea on Victor Davis Hanson

Part of the reason I am so suspicious of the Creative Destruction theorists, the Grand Political Strategists and the secular messianic End to Evil visionaries is that they write things like:

Israel lost some of its precious capital of deterrence in the last war, but ultimately the real loser was a bankrupt Iran who lost far more materially than did a far wealthier Israel.

Daniel Larison points out the little blind spot that comes of this tendency to analyze things in terms of "people as means to ends".

[T]he "real loser" of the war in Lebanon last year was, um, Lebanon, which had its infrastructure severely damaged, 1,000 of its people killed, hundreds of thousands made into refugees and its political life thrown into ever greater convulsions.

Oh. Yeah. Them. The Lebanese. But they don't figure into the Grand Strategy of the Great Thinkers. They're just people who happened to be in the way of the Big Picture.

Source: Catholic & Enjoying It July 3, 2007.

Mark Shea on Michael Ledeen

My point--Machiavelli's point, actually--is that real decisions in real life are almost never easy, and those called upon to make those tough decisions have to be willing to "enter into evil." Sometimes by doing that--as briefly as possible, he implores us--means doing things we know to be morally wrong.... [A]s every grownup thoughtful person knows, that it is also possible to do the morally right thing, and by so doing, we unleash great evil. Life is tough. And the abstract moralists are not a very good guide for leaders, at least not all the time. - Michael Ledeen

May God grant eternal rest to the 100 million victims of those who were not afraid to ignore the abstract moralists, be "grown up thoughtful persons", enter into evil and do things they knew to be morally wrong.

Mark Shea on Neoconservatism

That secular messianic impulse is why I keep banging on about the sinister rhetoric of Creative Destruction that is animating the latest Big Thinkers in their Wilsonian/Machiavellian attempts to create heaven on earth (in this case, via democratic capitalism). Ideologies that attempt a short cut around human nature via violence (whether jihadi or Creative Destroyer) are menaces. The common rhetoric these ideologies share with the Commies is, as the Marxist loves to say, no accident. There are few things more dangerous than a couple of Christian virtues cut off from the Tradition and used as the basis of a militant movement unashamed to use violence in pursuit of the Millennium.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It June 12, 2007.

Mark Shea on Michael Ledeen, Neoconservatism

Iraqi Church enjoys the fruits of the doctrine of Creative Destruction. But hey! As the Great Theologian says, "the level of casualties (in Iraq) is secondary." It's not like salvation comes through the Church or something. Get real! Salvation comes through Leviathan by any means necessary.

Source: Catholic & Enjoying It June 11, 2007.