1 As to the “dialogue” so warmly recommended by the Second Vatican Council, one has to distinguish between dialogues which might really enrich both sides and help to bring the partners nearer to each other in mind and heart, and dialogues which have merely an explorative character and serve “research.” The genuine dialogue is possible only on the basis of a common denominator. A dialogue between an atheistic nihilist and a theist can produce valuable psychological insights, not a rapprochement. Or could they finally agree that there exists only “half a God”? (Nobody has yet proposed a fruitful dialogue between Nazi extermination camp commanders and members of the World Council of Churches.)
2 The only monument to democracy I have ever seen I found in Bangkok. This, however, does not mean that Thailand is Exhibit “A” of formal democracy. On the other hand, this is also a piece of lip-service in stone to the ideological American export drive to the “imperialism” inherent in American political thinking. Cf. David C. Williams, “The New American Revolution,” The Twentieth Century, August 1951, pp. 119-127. The force of this drive lies in the expectation that the material living standards of the United States might be the natural reward for accepting American political ideals. This superstition is quite common.
3 The régime of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, leaning heavily on Voodoo, engaged in the most delirious atrocities. Fort Dimanche (near Port-au-Prince) was its Auschwitz and the Tontons-Macoutes its SS. This government based on superstition and terror had been established (with some U.S. aid because Papa Doc is after all an American-trained physician) in the Western Hemisphere’s second nation to achieve independence and to throw off its “colonial yoke.” Involuntarily we have to ask ourselves whether Haiti is not perhaps a prefiguration of African rule 150 years hence. Certainly the naked body of a murdered political antagonist, tied to a chair in the main square of Port-au-Prince and falling apart under the tropical sun, is not a reassuring symbol for “progress in freedom.”
4 This “permissiveness” in sensual matters is not uniformly strong everywhere in the leftist world. In the Soviet orbit it plays the role of a (limited) “outlet.” The Old Left is by and large puritanical, the New Left hedonistic. The free use of drugs is a postulate of the New Left. The Nazis persecuted homosexuals, but they busily undermined the stability of marriage and instituted brothels not only for the armed forces but even for many concentration camps.
5 In the vast majority of historical works published in the United States he figures as General Erich von Ludendorff, probably because it seems inconceivable that a commoner had such a high rank in the old Prussian Army. (Contrary to general belief the high aristocracy played a minor role in the various German Armies after 1900 and an even lesser one in the Austro-Hungarian Army.)
6 Cf. Die Gottlosen, p. 303.
7 In Spanish: Toda ciencia es locura, si bueno seso no la cura.
8 The great Prussian patriot and conservative thinker Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, who became a severe critic of Bismarck, always carefully distinguished between the positive and negative traditions and historic achievements of his country. Thus he always refused to call Frederick II of Prussia “Frederick the Great.” Cf. Hans Joachim Schoeps, Das andere Preussen (Stuttgart: Friedrich Vorwerk, 1952), p. 36. This book—The Other Prussia—should serve foreign as well as German readers as a healthy corrective for the cliché concept of Prussia.
9 There are, needless to say, situations where common sense demands a break with tradition, particularly if they are destructive to basic moral and spiritual principles which have a primacy. Constitutions, for instance, are here merely to serve a higher purpose. They are not ends in themselves. They can always be perverted, particularly by literal applications of their articles, laws, and by-laws ignoring their spirit. To an intelligent conservative only the sacred should be sacred, quite in keeping with the dictum: Nihil nihi sacrum nisi sacrum. It is perfectly legitimate for any good American (conservative or otherwise) to visualize the future of his country with a radically different Constitution. Not even the most patriotic American, while of sound mind, can conceive that his country will have the same Constitution in 2970 as in 1970. And even today there is hardly a thinking person in the United States who does not desire to change this or that aspect of the Constitution by adding something new or eliminating something old. There are relatively few monarchies in this world which have not been republics; there are even fewer republics that have not been monarchies. Reinhold Niebuhr says that “the final test of a free culture is its ability to re-examine its own presuppositions.” (Cf. “The Unity and Depth of Our Culture, Sewanee Review, vol. 52, Spring 1944, p. 198.) Yet even without considering the reflective qualities of the human mind one has to maintain: Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis, the Cross stands while the Earth rotates.
10 One of the oddest scenes in modern history—and certainly a symbol of the decline of our Western civilization—was that acrimonious verbal exchange between Mr. Richard Nixon, Vice President of the United States, and Comrade Nikita Khrushchev, at the American Exhibition in Moscow. They were leaning over washing machines and were wildly debating household gadgets in the light of mutually hostile ideologies.
11 Dmitri Ivanovitch Mendeleyev, the world-famous chemical theorist, was not only violently opposed to socialism but also had no use for the introduction of parliamentarism. Cf. Th. G. Masaryk, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 394n. The question whether democracy is able to cope with the emergencies of modern life is rarely posed. A leading German sociologist and political scientist, Eberhard Welty O.P., considers this problem “which goes to the nerve of our existence” as not yet solved. Cf. his “Freiheit und Ordnung in Staat und Gesellschaft,” Die neue Ordnung, vol. 9, no. 6 (1955), p. 326. On incompatibility between science, technology and democracy Cf. Hans Freyer (editor) in Technik im technischen Zeitalter (Düsseldorf: Schilling, 1965), p. 211. (Essay by Ernst Forsthoff). A slight sensation was caused in Germany when Der Spiegel (May 22, 1972), pp. 128-129, published an article by Emilio Daddario (“Demokratie und Fortschritt”) in the same negative vein. The crisis no longer is a secret.
12 There is a pertinent analysis of this problem in St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, book I, ch. 4.
13 Walt Whitman felt outraged when Americans were not jubilant about the fall of the monarchy in Brazil. Certainly in this case the popular reactions were saner than those of the “divine literatus.” Whitman obviously did not foresee the still continuing political agony of the Brazilian republic built on the principles of Auguste Comte. On the character of the old Brazilian monarchy cf. Joā Camillo de Oliveira Tôrres, A Democracia Coroada, Teoria Politica do Império do Brasil (Petrópolis: Editora Vozes Limitada, 1964).
14 The possible evil was clearly seen by Louis Veuillot in a prophetic passage written in 1859 where he talked about a German “popular emperor,” elected by the people and not anointed by Christ, who would cause untold misery. Cf. his “Parfum de Rome” in Oeuvres complètes (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1926), vol. 9. p. 357. Jacques Bainville, another French conservative, was no less perspicacious. Vide his article in Action Française, September 29, 1914, and his Les conséquences politiques de la paix (Paris: Nouvelie Librairie Nationale, 1920). But poor old Masaryk had typical nineteenth-century illusions. “By the war,” he wrote, “Germany had actually gained. She has become a republic, she is racially homogeneous and is consequently able to pursue pacific, democratic aims.” Cf. his Making of a State, H. Wickham Steed, ed. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1927), p. 376. The word “consequently” makes us really shake our heads. One has to take German extremism into account, i.e., the potentiality for either good or evil already signaled by Wilhelm von Schütze in op. cit., pp. 302-303. A hundred years later D. H. Lawrence saw it. Cf. his “A Letter from Germany,” written February 19, 1924, and reprinted in Selected Essays (London: Penguin Books, 1950), pp. 178-179. All the more dangerous is the present German vacuum. The Allied occupants have destroyed the few chances democracy had in Germany—obviously against their own intentions and without the majority of the Germans realizing it. Yet the vacuum is right there. Cf. H. C. Wallich, “The German Miracle,” The Yale Review, vol. 44, no. 4, (Summer 1955), especially pp. 518-519.
A reaction has probably already set in. That of the New Left with its terrorists (a German edition of the Weathermen, the Baader-Meinhof-Gang) has received much publicity. Yet there also seems to be a rightist grounds well in the youngest generation. Cf. Der Spiegel, May 24, 1971, p. 177 and National Review, July 13, 1971, p. 758.
15 Cf. Romano Guardini, Das Ende der Neuzeit (Würzburg: Werkbund, 1950), p. 99, and Josef Pieper, Tradition als Herausforderung (Munich: Kösel, 1963), pp. 332-333.
16 The same thought has been expressed by John Lukacs, Historical Consciousness and the Remembered Past (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 304-315.
17 Leon Samson in The American Mind (New York: J. Cape and H. Smith, 1932), p. 77 spoke some time ago about the intellectual estrangement from political theory in America.
18 “The lesson we are to draw from a whole is that where a majority are united by a common sentiment and have an opportunity, the rights of the minority become insecure.” Cf. Documents Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the American States (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1927), p. 163.
19 Cf. Helmut Kuhn, op. cit., p. 428, and E. v. Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Timeless Christian, pp. 72-82.
20 Cf. Paul Tillich, “Die gegenwärtige Weltsituation” in Gesammelte Werke, R. Albrecht, ed. (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1959), vol. 10, p. 124.
21 We never get around the problem of Plato’s Philosopher-King. Pius XII in his Christmas Allocution on Democracy (1944) made it clear that parliaments have to consist of an elite (una eletta) of “high moral character, practical experience and intellectual capacity.” This, he insisted, is in a democracy a “question of life or death.” Cf. Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 27 (1945), pp. 15-16.
As to the end of democracy due to the increasing ignorance of the voters, cf. Denis de Rougemont, op. cit., p. 249sq. Also my Luftschlösser, Lügen und Legenden (Vienna: Herold 1972), pp. 69-86.
22 The German trade unions, once very enthusiastic about the Mitbestimmungsrecht (Codetermination), now would like to see a radical reform with delegates of the national trade unions, i.e., with complete outsiders, participating in board meetings. This, of course, is inadmissible in a free market economy because competition demands secrecy in internal planning. Codetermination in Germany has helped to make the labor management-conscious and has reduced the atmosphere of egotistic collective irresponsibility so characteristic of the labor movement in many a country.
23 The asesores of General Ongania, whom the dictator of Argentina called “my little parliament,” consisted of ten young men between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. They not only acted as an advisory body but also as channels of public opinion leading to the top of the government. From such admittedly modest beginnings new constitutional forms could be developed in time. A pity that the fall of Ongania terminated this experiment. None of the military men has ever succeeded in rousing mass emotions as had Perón, who with his first wife Evita provided a true monarchical father-mother image.
24 I wish that there were an English language edition of Rodrigo Fernandez-Carvajal, La Constitución Española (Madrid: Editoria Nacional, 1969), a very clear, critical, and by no means servile book of a Murcia University professor.
25 Cf. Peter F. Drucker, op. cit., pp. 241-242.
26 Cf. Herbert Marcuse, Psychoanalyse und Politik, p. 47.
27 Cf. Alexander Mitscherlich, op. cit., pp. 447-448.
28 Typical for these publications is a German women’s magazine Frau im Spiegel, appealing to a lowbrow readership. The no. 9 of vol. 24 (March 1, 1969) features stories and informations on twenty members of royalty, two belonging to the aristocracy and one untitled couple. I had the privilege to watch the funeral of President J. F. Kennedy on television. This was psychologically and phenomenologically a “monarchical” event. Before their misfortunes, the Kennedys had probably come nearer than any other family to becoming an analogy to the Medicis, drugstore people whom it took 200 years to become Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Originally they also were the leaders of the populist, antiaristocratic, “democratic” party. (This is equally true of Caesar who was the nephew of Marius.)
29 To be more precise 63.7 percent of the men and 67.6 percent of the women. The poll was taken by “Doxa.” Cf. Rheinische Merkur, April 17, 1970, p. 6.
30 Cf. Romano Guardini, op. cit., p. 96.
31 Der Vater Staat is a current German expression. The implication, however, is not patriarchal—it denotes the provider.
32 It is the thesis of Karl Bednarik’s Die Krise des Mannes that there is a constantly decreasing scope for male aggressiveness while woman has been (biologically) emancipated by the Pill. At the same time the number of self-employed is constantly decreasing. Real decisions are made only on the political top, in sports and in tourism. And “heroes,” we would like to add, are most exclusively imported from the Third World. Still, Karl Bednarik (op. cit., p. 218) believes that much of the usual hate against the father (who, today, is powerless) is now directed against the state.
33 Cf. Adrien Dansette, Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine (Paris: Flammarion, 1951), vol. 2, p. 643 on Ferry and Viviani, vol. 1, p. 475, and 473 on Ferry and Clemenceau; on Jaurés cf. Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique (Paris: Beauchesne, 1911), vol. 2, col. 1781-2. The speech of Jaurés was held in the Chambre des Deputes on February 11,1895.
34 The expression un christianisme du chien battu comes from Cardinal Jean Daniélou in his Tests (Paris: Beauchesne, 1968), p. 7. “The greatest danger for the future of the faith does not come today from outside attacks,” he writes, “but from inside resignation.” (p. 5.) This attitude is aided by a Christian masochism exaggerating the faults of the past. Yet the crimes of Christianity have been deviations and aberrations from its basic tenets; they did not belong to the program as in the case of the Jacobins, Nazis, and Communists.
35 Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Spiritus Creator (Einsiedeln: Johannes-Verlag, 1967), p. 262.
36 Cf. Louis Bouyner, La décomposition du catholicisme (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1968), p. 26: “To serve the world signifies nothing else, but to flatter it, as one flattered yesterday the vicar in his parish, the bishop in his diocese or as one idolized the pope on the throne of Saint Peter.”
37 Max Horkheimer said flatly: “The modern liberalization of religion, in my opinion, will lead to its end.” Interview to Der Spiegel, p. 81. The same thing could be said about the notion of a “democratization” of the Church. Dr. Heinrich Drimmel, former Minister of Instruction in Austria pointed out the fatal error of such a plan, an error all the more so because democracy is in a grave crisis, so grave that it has to be protected with taboos. Cf. “Proteste, Revolten, Reformen” in Die Furche, February 8, 1969, p. 11.
38 The danger of reducing Christianity to the level of the mere “social” (or the “collective”) has clearly been seen by Simone Weil, Cf. her L’Attente de Dieu (Paris: Vieux Colombier, 1950), p. 197 and Cahiers (Paris: Plon 1953), vol. 2, p. 239 as well as La connaissance surnaturel (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), p. 272. She considered such evolution as practically “satanic.” And surely Simone Weil was anything but “antisocial.” Here we would like to remind pious Catholics who exclaim: “But what do you do then with the Social Teaching of the Church?” that a thing called the Social Teaching does not exist. Cf. P. Bartolomeo Sorge S.J. “E superato il concetto tradizionale di dottrina sociale della Chiesa?” in Civiltâ Cattolica, 119 year, vol. 1, pp. 423-436. (March 1968). This author insists rightly (p. 436) that we merely should talk about “models of society with a Christian inspiration.”
39 According to the notes of an attentive listener. Such views, implying that God is nearer to Katyn and Vorkuta than to Wall Street and Detroit, were uttered by a man who had more than just a hand in writing social encyclicals. They betray the influence of leftist thought right in one of the centers of Christendom. In this connection it is worth remembering that Dr. Boris Talantov, a Russian religious leader who died (January 1971) in Kirov Jail, said in his famous manifesto that economic socialism is intrinsically bad and inferior to free enterprise. This needs emphasizing at a time when so many Christian ecclesiastics in the free world cast longing glances in the direction of socialism if not communism. Cf. Cornelia I. Gerstemmaier, Die Stimme der Stummen (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1971), pp. 347-348.
40 H. U. von Balthasar has described the confrontation of a “progressive” Christian with a commissar in a brilliant and most hilarious sketch. Cf. his Cordula oder der Ernstfall (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1966), pp. 111-113.
41 Cf. Helmut Kuhn, op. cit., p. 392: “To endure in skepticism is not proper to [entire] nations, and the determination to believe in nothing can only produce new heresies.”
42 Here lies the deeper meaning of Schiller’s lines in “Wallenstein’s Camp”:
Und setzet ihr nicht das Leben ein,
Nie wird euch das Leben gewonnen sein.
43 Cf. Georges Bernanos, La liberté pour quoi faire? (Paris: Gallimard, 1953), p. 129.
44 Cf. Rousas John Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education (Nutley, N. J.: Craig Press, 1963), p. 339: “A realistic appraisal of our time requires recognition of this grim fact: chaos is the goal of contemporary human endeavor. Chaos is thus not a threat but an objective.”
1 Cf. Madame de Campan, Mémoires sur la vie privée de Marie Antoinette (Paris: Baudouin Frères, 1823), vol. 1, p. 234.
2 Tuffin de la Rouërie is occasionally mentioned in the writings of the Founding Fathers. He appears, for instance, as Rouverie in Jefferson’s letter to John Jay, dated August 3, 1788. Cf. Works, Washington Edition, vol. 2, p. 451.
3 The purpose of the Order of the Cincinnati to whom only Americans and Europeans who had actively fought in the War of Independence could belong was “an incessant attention to preserve inviolate those exalted rights and liberties of human nature for which they have fought and bled and without which the high rank of a nation is a curse instead of a blessing.” Among the European members were two princes, five dukes, two grandees of Spain, forty-one marquesses, eighty-two counts, twenty-three viscounts, fourteen barons. The Order became immediately suspect in the eyes of nascent American leftism. Cf. Philippe Sagnac, La formation de la société moderne franderne (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1946), vol. 2, p. 289.
4 Cf. Pierre Gaxotte, op. cit., 106-107: “There reigned in the aristocracy of these two provinces [Brittany and Vendée] a curious revolutionary spirit, a mixture of love for the new and an attachment to the old institutions, a local fanaticism and an exaltation of philosophy. In Brittany . . . the humiliation of the parlement was felt as a violation of the contract of Duchess Anne and an attack against the independence of the Breton nation.”
5 Other letters to Washington were dispatched on October 17, 1789, January 1, 1790, and March 22, 1791.
6 Pasteur asked why, as such a great scientist, he was so pious, replied: “Since I know as much as I know, I am as firm in my beliefs as a Breton peasant; would I know more, I would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman.”
7 Cf. Louis Blanc, Jacques Crétineau-Joly, op. cit., p. 20. According to this text de la Rouërie was an aristocratic forerunner of the Chouannerie. The peasants, however, really started it.
8 Chouan is the French word for screech-owl. The imitation of its cry was used by the counterrevolutionaries of the Vendée and of Brittany to make contact with each other at night. The resistance movement was therefore called La Chouannerie.
9 Armand Tuff in, Marquis de la Rouërie is also mentioned by Chateaubriand in his Mémoires d’outre-tombe, Maurice Levaillant, ed. (Paris: Flammarion, 1948), vol. 1, p. 242. The most exhaustive treatise on de la Rouërie is G. Lenôtre, Le Marquis de la Rouërie et la conjuration bretonne (Paris: Perrin, 1899 and 1905). Other works of value are A. Botrel, La conspiration de Tuffin de la Rouërie (St. Brieuc: F. Guyon, 1879): P. A. Delarue, Une famille bretonne du douzième au dix-neuvième siècle, Charles-Armand, marquis de la Rouërie, chef de la conjuration bretonne (Rennes: Pliton et Hervé, 1899).