Mark Shea on the National Review

Of course, it's easy to blame it on the lefty press. However, Austin Bramwell is not a member of the Lefty Press. Indeed, he used to be affiliated with NRO until they decided that conservatism no longer meant things like limited government, respect for the permanent things and opposition to the Nanny State and instead meant global democratic revolution, imposition of a Great Society on the Middle East, Salvation through Leviathan by Any Means Necessary, spending like a drunken sailor, a Permanent State of War Until there is Freedom and Democracy Everywhere, Creative Destruction, Strength Through Evil and various other crazy things that sound more like Trotsky than like anything an actual conservative before Bush might have advocated. . . .

SOURCE: Catholic and Enjoying It January 23, 2008

Mark Shea on Ron Paul, Republican Media Whores

"So, Congressman Paul ... you’re basically saying that we should take our marching orders from al Qaeda?" Fox host Chris Wallace asked.

"No! I'm saying we should take our marching orders from our constitution." Paul replied sharply.

That the agents and shills of the War Party and the End to Evil Crowd have to routinely stoop to this sort of filth in order to neutralize the growing threat of Ron Paul says far, far more about them than it does about him. The idea that a high regard for the Constitution is now routinely treated as crazy talk by the the Rubber Hose Right is a harbinger of the self-made doom they face in the 2008 elections. [...]

I differ from many Americans in not regarding the Constitution as holy writ. I think it is a work of staggering human genius which we disregard at our peril and particularly when the disregarding is being done by a fourth rate Chauncey Gardner with a mean streak like the current President. To sell our birthright for the mess of pottage the Administration has crammed down our throats for the past six years is spectacularly short-sighted. But I don't think the Constitution is inspired Scripture, so I'm not convinced that mere fidelity to the Constitution always guarantees Ron Paul won't be (as I think he sometimes is) a kook. But I do find myself thinking I much prefer this kook to the Best and Brightest whose schemes of Creative Destruction and Grand Strategies for the End to Evil have so royally screwed up America and the world in the past six years. And not the least of that damage is that a good man who reveres the Constitution has to sit there and take it while a Republican Media Whore says he is a traitor to his country for that reverence. Despicable!

Source: Catholic & Enjoying It September 7, 2007.

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 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.

Mark Shea on the GOP

Somehow, the GOP morphed into the Great Society with Guns, bribing people with entitlements at home and imagining that dreams of human perfectibility which gave us the The Projects 40 years ago would kindle the fires of the Goddess of Democracy through Michael Ledeen's Creative Destruction abroad. This is why I laugh at End to Evil types. It's the same messianic secularism. And it's working as well in Iraq as it worked for LBJ in Detroit and Watts.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It November 16, 2006.

Mark Shea on Hope and Despair

As the media begins to dally with apocalyptic despair, it becomes more urgent than ever to point out that despair (like the presumption that is its twin) is the enemy of hope. Secular presumption consists of the project of turning heaven into earth. It matters little who is making the promise. Whether it's the Lefty who is promising eternal health and youth via embryonic stem cell research or the Creative Destructionist Righty who promises an End to Evil and the triumph of the New American Century via murder of wounded combatants and torture, both are basically making secular messianic promises: heaven on earth and ultimate happiness achievable here, if only you will fudge some of that pesky crap about doing evil that good may come. We get drunk (for a time) on the hope that this time it will work.

The problem is that drunkeness leads to hangovers. So when the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agly because God is not mocked, the one who dreamt of heaven on earth yesterday can fall into despair and the false certitude of hell on earth today. This is why the prophets so often seem to be out of step with the times.

SOURCE Catholic & Enjoying It August 17, 2006.

Mark Shea on War Zealots, Master Planners and Machiavellian Schemers

For me, it's 2006 and I'm highly suspicious of all moral calculations that appeal to a clock for legitimacy. I plod along, looking at just war teaching, and find myself increasing puzzled as to how to unscramble the various eggs our Best and Brightest have scrambled for us in recent years. On the whole, though I disagree with the Pope's remarks as they stand (since I believe in Just War teaching), I find myself thinking that I'd rather live in a world of people who err as the Pope does than in a world of War Zealots and Master Planners with big ideas for a New American Century based on "creative destruction" and other Machiavellian schemes. In short, I don't have much in the way of solutions, but I have a clearer and clearer idea of who I trust as I try to think things through.