John Zmirak

Remembering Bastille Day

Published Wednesday, July 14, 2010 A.D. | By Black Adder

Today is Bastille Day, typically associated with the start of the French Revolution. In honor of that blessed event, I offer up this classic piece by John Zmirak:

Remember when the L.A. riots spun out of control, and engulfed the whole United States? The key moment was no doubt when police and Army commanders took fright and changed sides, throwing their support to the Committee for Public Safety led by Tom Hayden, along with Noam Chomsky, Barbara Boxer, Michael Moore, and Edward Said. After Hayden’s fall and execution, his successor, Marion Barry, insisted that President Bush and his wife Barbara be tried for treason. Their executions shocked the world but sparked wild celebrations in the capital, as the First Couple’s severed heads danced on poles in daylong parades. A crack whore was duly enshrined in the National Cathedral as the Goddess of Reason.

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Pragmatic Libertarianism: When Two Wrongs Make a Right

Published Friday, January 22, 2010 A.D. | By The TAC Editors

Introduction

Brace yourselves, everyone. I am about to announce one of those major shifts in thinking that causes everyone I know to recoil in shock and horror, or, if they’ve been paying attention to what I say and write, simply shrug because they saw it coming. Most people do not change their thinking as drastically in a lifetime as many times as I do in a decade. I am hoping that I will eventually reach an equilibrium. I can’t help it that new facts require a reexamination of old logic.

For the last few years, I have been a pretty consistent advocate for a particular interpretation of Catholic social teaching. The central argument was that, contra all forms of libertarianism, the state had a right and a duty to intervene in the economy in particular, and social life in general, short of establishing a command economy, in order to promote the common good.

Before continuing, I should make clear that I still believe this ought to be the case in principle. Should the right conditions arise, I would be the first in line to support everything that follows from this political and moral premise. But I have come to understand that the conditions for this project do not exist. For the premise that a just socio-economic order will arise from the intervention of the state presupposes that the people who are in charge of the state are themselves just.

This presupposition, in the United States of America, in 2010 Anno Domini, is entirely false.

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The Immigration Debate

Published Monday, April 13, 2009 A.D. | By The TAC Editors

Recently I engaged in a debate with John Zmirak on Inside Catholic regarding the status of Catholicism in modern America. Those who want to try and sort out the back and forth can go here to follow the exchange.

Particularly we disagree on the issue of immigration, but it seems there is a more fundamental disagreement as well. John was originally going to indirectly reply to some of my comments with another article on IC, but instead published his thoughts in Taki’s Magazine. Although he doesn’t mention me by name, he did say that our exchanged inspired him to write what he did.

The charges he levels against me, or at least those he assumes think like me, are amusing in their wild inaccuracy. The reader can examine for him or herself their specifics; the primary purpose of the second half of this polemic is to portray us as those who would sacrifice our children’s future out of a desire to extend mercy and charity to the undocumented workers that have come to our country seeking to support their own families.

My hope is that his final screed against the “modern American liberal” was intended for the faithless, a group distinct from those such as myself who are openly devout Catholics who simply disagree with his hierarchy of values.

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