There is no Perfect, only Best

A Commentary on the Duggar Scandal

It has simply been too long since I took to the written word. I saw an opportunity to write, so I took it.

I was scrolling down Ye Olde Facebook Feed when I saw that apparently Josh Duggar, the eldest son of Clan Duggar, apparently many years ago was charged with the sexual molestation of an unknown number of young girls as a teenager. Some sources claim they were his own younger sisters, while others simply say they were girls in his own community. A police report was filed and apparently some kind of legal action took place. I don't know much else about it. Quite frankly, I don't care to know much else about it. Be Josh Duggar guilty or not, I have no interest in defending the man's person or character over the subject. Why should I - or anyone for that matter beyond the parties involved - care about this? Did the Duggar family hold some form of political, economic, or military power in these United States? No, they were "celebrities." The new nobility of our globalized world, who I become more and more sick of with every passing day, and who's fanatical mob I will never cease to reprove.

King Levon IV doing justice by Sarkis Pitzak, 1331.

All that being said, let me be perfectly clear. Justice is the cornerstone of good governance, and as I would be in any judicial case I am desirous of retribution. But this is a matter for the courts and those involved, not us. If indeed Josh Duggar is guilty and a case can be made, I would see it followed through to the end - whatever that end might be. But do tell me, you Imperials who would defend this man regardless of his guilt: why should you? He is not one of our own. Why would you put your head on the block for a Protestant Republican who probably thinks nothing good of our religion and who definitely would oppose us? All I want out of this is for justice to be done - whatever it might be - and for the media to for once make the people of the United States more intelligent and well-informed, not record and commentate on lynchings for ratings.  

So if I don't care, why am I writing at all on this occasion? I've always been the kind of person to look into the long term. I've always been confident in the Divine Assistance, so I've been ever willing to play the long game when no short-term solution can avail. It's worked thus far.

We all know what is about to happen here. In the minds of many Americans, the Duggars represent "Traditional family values." They represent Christian family ethics. They are a fossil and a relic treasured by one half of the country and despised by another (of course there's another third who just don't give a damn about them, myself proudly amongst them). This should in no way, shape, or form reflect the resolution of this matter. This all happened 12 years ago. For all we know it already has. But my point still stands: partisanship dies at the Judge's Bench, or should. Guilty? Hang him. Not guilty? Send him home. Willingly falsely implicated as part of a conspiracy? Hang them. Whatever must be done to set right the scales. 

Contemporary woodcut of the executions of Protestants at Amboise.

Now that I've established my impartiality, may I kindly get to my original commentary and establish why I do, in a round-about way, care?

On the Traditional Family 

As I said - for good or for ill - most of America views (or viewed) the Duggars as the archetypal perfect, Christian, Traditional family. Stay at home mother, hard-working father, lots of good kids, pious and moral to a "t." Absolutely perfect. For decades now in American culture this familial archetype has been under attack in media of all sorts. This archetype is generally Protestant, and the image isn't totally off. I am initially suspicious of devout Protestant families, because certain trends tend to persist. Some of these "nightmare families" are rooted in the reality of the break-down of the American family not just in the 60s as a result of a rebellious generation but its breakdown going back into the 40s and 50s.

The fact is no family-friendly culture can emerge in the society we've set up. Rampant individualism is our predominant philosophy. We glorify rebels without causes. The idealization of the excessive abuse of economic largesse is everywhere. Americans can be so eager to rush forward to the future that they leave critical components of themselves behind in the past. Distrust for any kind of authority is a stereotype of Americans 'round the globe, especially when embodied in any kind of religious institution. American academia has embraced self-criticism beyond any conceivably healthy level when applied to one's own nation to the point it has become self-loathing. The only religion that all Americans can truly ascribe to is pluralism and indifferentism. Those "conservative" among us retreat into a siege state of living, perpetually at war with the world in which they have been placed in with no goal other than the preservation of their own cozy Hobbit-holes. Just like anyone walled up and surrounded by the enemy, they slowly start to break down. I'm sure you can think of many examples of this.

But they're not alone; wider society, plagued by all the aforementioned ills, also suffers from these things. Every single philosopher has warned against the evils of wealth gained through trade alone. Dinesh D'Souza - someone I became mildly familiar with when I had to shelve some of his books when I worked in a library - says that the fact America does not do this is what has made her stronger than everyone else. That may be so, but I will counter with this question: what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Nothing, but that's exactly what America has done. Rather than cut out the thing that has made us sin - unrestrained, amoral Capitalism - we have allowed it to continue to mutate into a monstrosity. It has tainted everything in our society and arguably fertilized the soil for Modern Liberalism; in its cancerous spread, nothing was spared. It killed our faith, our appreciation for beauty, our patriotism, and our families. Because what is the American Ideal, the American Dream? Economic independence. Wealth. A fully-furnished two-story house with a white picket fence, a loving spouse, 2.5 kids, two cars, and not a care in the world. The American Dream is not to spread civilization from sea to shining sea. The American Dream is not to liberate man from darkness and despair. The American Dream is not sovereignty from foreign influence. The American Dream is not a City on a Hill. The American Dream is Walmart and McDonalds within easy reach and the ability to do whatever we damn well please, bugger the consequences. America is the merchant who would not give away his wealth to maintain his soul, even at the command of Almighty God, and his destination is our reality and endgame at present.

Peace Through Strength in Columbia.

But I've labored enough on that; do you see the picture now? I think everyone from the most anti-traditional liberal to the most staunch conservative in America can now see how and why things are developing as they are. In hindsight the breakdown of the traditional American family in this country without a serious conversion was inevitable. There is still something that could be done about it, granted. An American Renaissance, wherein we rediscover ourselves.

But I want to make one thing perfectly clear.

Nothing can cure the human condition. If anything, the Duggar Scandal should prove that.

Liberals think that with enough progressive social reform they will create a utopia. They believe all problems can be solved if men simply become "Enlightened." Conservatives think that these changes are precisely what has made society this way, but their solution simply boils down to change nothing. You can ask the Ottoman Empire how well that went.

Traditionalists are not immune to this line of thinking. They believe that if we just bring back the Old Mass, if we just sort out the hierarchy, if we just restore Christendom, the whole world will be heaven on earth. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the world in its 4,000 years of recorded intelligent human civilization could have conjured up a solution so simple as that, it would have been implemented long ago. Utopia as a Latin phrase means, "nonexistent place."

Idols get made out of these ideas, these times, these places, these people. While I in no way disparage my ancestors and I do acknowledge some of their ideas were better than ours, I maintain they were simply that: better. Christendom was not a utopia. It had the same moral ills we face today, because it was made up of people. There was hardship from within and without, because nature is a cruel thing and it relentlessly and callously seeks to remove us in its quest for dominance. I am convinced that without some kind of Divine Providence human civilization of any kind could never have emerged from our early days of barely scrapping to survive.

The Garden of Eden from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry by the Limbourg Brothers, 1410s.

Humanity is a fallen species, destined to raise ourselves to the Heavens but cut short by our own iniquity. Our whole existence is, ultimately, a tale of equal parts glory and tragedy who's end has not yet come. We aspire to the highest chivalry but we dream of the deepest depravity. It is the great contradiction that is man. The only thing that can ever fix this is Salvation, attained at the end of our lives by the mercy of Jesus Christ. Then sometime unknown to any man at the day of Last Judgment (I have often theorized that the Day of Atonement will occur at precisely the exact moment when not a single human soul is expecting it) it will all be finally made right, independent of anything mankind does - in fact in spite of anything we do.

The Last Judgment

This is why God stresses forgiveness and pardon, because human beings are inherently sinful and do bad things, and forbearance is a necessity to get along with each other. This is also why God in the Law gave to the people of Israel the right of execution, because due to this sinful nature sometimes certain individuals are too dangerous to the common good of all.

The Chapter House at Parkminster has several paintings of the sufferings of the English Carthusian martyrs. This painting shows one monk hanging while another forgives the man who is about to execute him.

This is why the Scriptures instruct us to not become too attached to earthly things, for they are all passing. None of them is worth the loss of the soul through evil.

Antonio de Pereda (1611-1678), Allegory of Vanity (c.1634), oil on canvas, 174 x 139.5 cm. Collection of Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

This is why the Church stresses charity, because the Wheel of Fortune is merciless and cruel. Those who are rich may well be in rags the next day. Alms giving and kindness helps to make this world a bit more Heavenly by making the world a better place for some. Where charity abounds, so does contentment. The obligation to aid one's fellow man also combats the abuses that come with greedily amassed, ill-gotten wealth.

The Charity of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 1895.

This is why the Church took the Warrior Code of Europe and baptized it to create chivalry, that between honest Catholic nations wars might be less destructive, more edifying, and that the issues that began them might quickly be resolved.

The Austrian surrender of Archduke Maximilian at Byczyna.

These are only a few examples of how Catholicism checks the streak of immorality which runs through humanity. Followed to the letter - as many Church Fathers attested to the Roman people - you would make no finer society. Christendom would go on to prove this. The only Utopia in Catholicism is attainable by a life of pious struggle at the closing of our time in this mortal realm.

Though Chesterton and his colleagues now have a very great dispute, he makes a fine analogy in his work, The Ballad of the White Horse. The central theme of the book is mankind's struggle against evil, embodied by the barbarous Northmen whom Alfred and the English - meant to represent men of goodwill - fight and defeat for a time. There is no absolute victory, just as there was not one in history; the British Isles had to fight for centuries to be free of viking incursion. The other way in which this lesson is taught is through the White Horse of Uffington. The White Horse is a real thing in the British Isles; an image of a white horse in rock that has existed on a hillside near the town of Uffington for as long as anyone can recall. Every year the people take part in what is known as "the Weeding." During this festival they clean away the grass and undergrowth that otherwise would consume the White Horse. When the vikings overtake the region of Uffington, the weeds begin to obscure the White Horse. But when Alfred the Great is victorious he reinstates the Weeding and the Horse endures onward by the efforts of good men.

The White Horse of Uffington from the air.

This is the ultimate analogy for Christendom: an endless fight against injustice with the assistance of God. I can hear the critics now who will point out to me a multitude of ways in which Christendom has at times failed in that charge, to which my first response will be to correct those which are not factual. But I will admit episodes where members of Christendom deviated from the plan, such as the Bamberg Witch Trials or the Hundred Years' War or the execution of Joan of Arc and so-on. All societies and civilizations will be foiled by bad men, but what matters is to what degree a people's principles and ideals are designed to foil these things. What matters is their moral checks and balances. You may well criticize the Holy Roman Empire for its vices - to give a static example - and I will ask what you hold up as superior.

Emperor Maximilian I and his family.

My point is that to Protestantism's credit there is no religious code of conduct that would allow Josh Duggar to rape young girls as a teenager and get away with it. Even though I do not really see the Duggars as "traditional," others do, and just so there is nothing in the traditional Catholic family or even the traditional Protestant family that would allow a family to subvert the due justice to one of its parts simply because they were kin. Any and all attempt to use this incident to attack any traditional family ethos is a manifest fallacy and amounts to calumny. It is also an insult to good families who do not make the subversion of justice their business.

Painting by W. F. Yeames, shows a Royalist family who have been captured by the enemy. The boy is being questioned about the whereabouts of his father by a panel of Parliamentarians.

Am I making myself clear?

While I in no way defend the actions of Josh Duggar or his family on the matter of his sexual vices, I will not tolerate this being used as a billy club to brain traditional families or to be snapped about like a whip to bring otherwise healthy traditional families into line with the sick modern world. For every family that can be brought forth who uses the label of "traditional" to engage in esoteric practices to shutter away and abuse their children, I can find many who would do no such thing. Just like how for every Mohammedan that can be found who will endorse ISIS I will find you ten who do not and if called to fight against them would do so as eagerly as myself. The key therein lies in not alienating them. 

I hope I have made myself abundantly clear on this matter and that my commentary and meditations have been helpful to you. Please share them with others and let me know your own personal thoughts. The combox is always open, as is my personal inbox. Lord knows I wish someone had offered me the same at certain points in my life. To those who truly were fans of the Duggars and distress now over what has happened, I offer you my sincere condolences. It's rough to lose icons when you realize they are only men. But consider that any energy you might spend defending them might be better spent insuring all involved receive justice, and then after that I suggest using that energy to do something else utterly unrelated and productive. I'll leave it to you to figure out what.

Fan Made Greater Coat of Arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem by DeathPwnie.