My frustration with Politics

Politics is an art, not a science. Sciences study the way things are in nature. Arts are meant to artificially recreate things in nature for the sake of the common good. Humans have made, through artifice, most of the structures of society in this world. The one exception being the family—which is both natural and fundamental to humanity. The family is the first society, the first government, the building block of society, and in fact it is the model for all other artificially created forms of governments. This is, of course, not to say, as Rousseau did, that governance is un-natural, no it is quite natural even if the structure it takes on are artificial.

Naturally speaking people are from the beginning in societies with hierarchical governing systems. A child is born and is immediately subject to its father and mother. The “government” which this child is subject to is responsible for providing for the good of the child: his sustenance, his education, etc. In the ideal family the father plays the role of “king” of the family, not tyrant, providing for, raising, and correcting his children. Fathers serve as the face of the family, as the primary bread winner for a family with small children, as the chief disciplinarian for the family, etc. However they are most unique from their wives in their primary purpose, defense. They are charged with the defense of their wives and children much in the same way that a mid-evil warlord or king might be charged with the defense of the realm.

A mother, though in some ways subject to the “king” (her husband), especially while nursing and raising the small children, is in reality her husband's partner, consort, and chief adviser who aids in raising, nurturing, and governing the “populi,” the children. In this way a wife is like an aristocrat. Ideally wives serve the role of the aristocracy, providing counsel to the government and yet accepting decisions that are contrary to her counsel so long as they are not intrinsically immoral or evil. In the ageless tradition of true aristocracy, as opposed to oligarchy, a wife and mother provides the voice of morality for the family when the monarch, i.e. the father, falters, as we all occasionally do. Of course in this model the children are like the people, often driven by passions, often impulsive, and often in need of guidance and assistance. Children are born a tabula rasa, a blank slate, which must be educated and nurtured into a mature adult. Of course it is less the case that children are like the people, wives live the aristocracy, and husbands like monarchs than that “the people” are like children, aristocrats are like wives, and kings are like fathers, since the family is prior to the state.

This view of the family and politics is not my own, but rather, is described in detail by Aristotle and Aquinas. Moreover the ideal family is described in the epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians where he admonishes wives to be submissive to their husbands (Ep 5:23-24). However this charge cannot be understood without the verse that follows immediately on its heals, “husbands love your wives.” Husbands are the head of the family as Christ is the head of the Church, and therefor authority and leadership requires service and self sacrifice. Love is the key to this description of the ideal family, because without love this becomes the description of what some people claim it is, a chauvinistic tyranny. However with love authority is not abused, or lorded over others, but rather it is used for the benefit of the individual and the whole. This of course has obvious implications for how just governments should be ordered whether monarchies, aristocracies, or polities. Furthermore St. Paul admonishes children to obey their parents (Ep 6:1-2), invoking the fourth commandment of Moses, “honor your mother and father.” This of course means that in the case of a just government the people ought to honor their government and obey it.

The ideal government, the building block of all societies, the family, is thusly ordered toward creating life through children, promoting goodness through discipline, promoting truth through leaning, and promoting beauty through love. In this way the family participates in the transcendentals—in the familial relationship of the triune God-head. This participation is most perfectly seen in the Holy family of Nazareth. This is also how larger societies ought to be ordered, and here is the purpose of politics to help create these larger societies modeled after God's perfect model.

My frustration with modern day politics is thus twofold. First so-called “political science,” forgets that politics is an art, choosing to observe politics as it is rather than teach how it ought to be. For it is the duty of the masters of an art to teach his students how to do the art well, not how to observe the art being done haphazardly. More fundamental however is the fact that, as a result of politics, the art, forgetting itself politics has cast off any pretense of following the natural model. It has disconnected itself from the transcendentals and thus has disconnected itself from God. Modern politics is not longer about truth, but about propaganda, no longer about goodness but about power, no longer about beauty but about efficiency, and most disturbingly it is no longer about bringing things into existence, but rather about maintaining the tired old things that are already in existence. This is most obviously seen in the undermining of the family that has gone on over the past decade and a half.

This problem is not unique to right or left, liberal or conservative, but seems to be almost universal in society and until it is corrected I fear for the existence of our nation. For if we turn away our face from God we are blind, if he turns away his face from us we are as nothing.