'New Right' academics argue for biblical lawmaking at Steubenville conference | National Catholic Reporter

Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio is on a mission: to restore to the ascendancy traditional Catholicism as they understand it.  Their recent conference  featured a who's who of the American Catholic right wing, including GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance.

One bright light is Adrian Vermeule.  He presented a paper defending the administrative sate erected in the first instance by Franklin D. Roosevelt.  In conversation with  Patrick J. Smith of the Catholic integralist online journal  The Josias  Vermeule struck a note uncommon on the American right: a defense of the "alphabet agencies" of the Roosevelt New Deal   This is not a surprise, as Vermeule co-authored Law and Leviathan.  With  Cass Sunstein, a key figure in the Obama and Biden administration's regulatory strategies, Vermeule mounted an ethical defense of the regulatory state.  He extended that view in his recent book Common Good Constitutionalism.

Vermeule continued that defense in Steubenville.  According to NCR reporter Brian Fraga :

Harvard Law Professor Adrian Vermeule, who has advocated for the kind of "common-good constitutionalism" that would empower the state to legislate public morality, also spoke at the conference. He focused his remarks on defending the authority of the federal bureaucracy, also called the "administrative state," to uphold the common good.

"There is no alternative to the administrative state. There is no dismantling of it. To dismantle it would be to dismantle the American constitutional order," said Vermeule, who also defended the prerogatives of federal agencies in a panel entitled, "The Wisdom of the New Deal Tradition."

 "The New Deal was a spectacular success," Vermeule said. P. J. Smith during the panel said that reexamining the New Deal in a favorable light had been "an unbroken thread" in the conference.

When Catholic conservatives speak of liberalism they have in mind John Stuart Mill who preached a philosophy of self-realization. Modern liberalism in their view is grounded in the cultivation of the individual, rather than a life of service, an ancient  vision. Theirs is an embrace of German-American political philosopher Leo Strauss who argued, according to Edmund Waldstein, O. Cist in The Josias "The premodern natural law doctrines taught the duties of man; if they paid any attention at all to his rights, they conceived of them as essentially derivative from his duties. "

Vermeule writes: "courts should defer to public determinations [of the public interest] so long as the public authority acts rationally and with a view to the legitimate public purposes of peace, justice, and abundance."

Vermeule's  critiques are directed at classical liberalism - particularly at  John Stuart Mill'  who posits "happiness" as a goal.  Mill wrote that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."  Taken to its logical conclusion, Vermeule says, this is a "grotesque parody of the common good of the community". 

It is hard to know just where a common good-oriented conservatism would lead - aside from, presumably, a narrow, traditional sexuality.  They abjure divorce, contraception, abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality.  Yet they embrace integralism - the Catholic social ethic that society and the state should be ordered to the common good rather than to protect the right of the individual.  Their philosophy - implanted on the political right now - could accommodate monarchy and full blown state socialism, it appears to me.

- GWC   October 17, 2022

'New Right' academics argue for biblical lawmaking at Steubenville 

conference | National Catholic Reporter

STEUBENVILLE, OHIO — Franciscan University of Steubenville, the conservative Catholic university in eastern Ohio, hosted a two-day conference in October where leading "New Right" nationalists, "post-liberal" conservatives and Catholic integralists declared that America's "liberal consensus" has come to an end.

Several speakers articulated a vision of the United States where domestic manufacturing is not only revived and globalization reigned in, but where traditional Christian morality is restored to a central place in society and mainstream culture, and where leaders in government are comfortable using political power to enforce those religious values and punish "woke" progressives.

"Overt biblically grounded lawmaking, a concomitant biblically informed constitutional jurisprudence, and an approach to God in the public square that we might think of as an ecumenical integralism, represents our only hope for recovery at this late hour in our ailing, decadent republic," Josh Hammer, a Newsweek opinion editor, said during one panel discussion.

The conference, entitled "Restoring a Nation: The Common Good in the American Tradition" and held Oct 7-8, featured a who's who lineup of influential speakers in the national conservative movement, where grassroots momentum has been building on the right since former President Donald Trump in 2016 shook up the Republican establishment with his nationalistic rhetoric, hardline partisanship and bare-knuckled style of political combat against his liberal critics.

Disaffected by secularization, social media censorship, the legal recognition of same-sex marriage and the widening societal acceptance of LGBTQ rights, the conference speakers described an America in crisis, where tyrannical forces in "Big Tech," media, academia, government and industry are cracking down on and isolating social conservatives and religious traditionalists in the United States.

"Look around you. … Does the world look free?" said Sohrab Ahmari, a former New York Post op-ed editor and current fellow at Franciscan University's Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life, who helped organize the conference. Ahmari spoke about "privatized coercion" in the market economy that he said subjugates American consumers and workers.

"If China treated workers the way Amazon does, American elites would be outraged," Ahmari said.

Rachel Bovard, senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute think tank, attacked the "woke industrial complex," which she described as the "axis of Big Tech, Chinese and corporate totalitarianism." She characterized the Pentagon — which in 2021 announced new guidelines to allow transgender people to enlist and serve openly — as "woke."

"If the last 30 years has taught us anything, it's that the left's fascist orgy is not somehow going to abate," Bovard said. "No one knows what lunacy is coming next, but we all know what's eventually coming: normalized pederasty, forced euthanasia, postnatal abortion, persecuting dissident faiths, disqualifying religious traditionalists and political conservatives from banking, property rights and public benefits."

To prevent that dystopian future, several conference speakers called for a restoration of Christian values, where abortion and gender reassignment surgeries are outlawed, traditional marriage and large families are supported by generous state subsidies and paid parental leave, where prayer is readmitted to public schools and commerce is banned on Sundays.