I Am Too Reasonable to Read What My Opponents Are Saying

The other day I posted a reply to a thread discussing secession at the blog of Catholic writer Mark Shea. I noted that the reflexive assumptions made by people in the comments, and perhaps by Shea himself, sounded more like an unthinking regurgitation of mainstream political thought — the kind of thing conservative Catholics presumably ought to hold in suspicion, not thoughtlessly repeat — than a serious engagement of the issue from a Catholic point of view. I strongly suggest reading it, whether you’re Catholic or not.

Shea considers the discussion of secession to be crazy talk, and smears everyone discussing it as a “violent fantasist.” Thus we are not even permitted to discuss whether the U.S. might be too big — this is crazy talk, you understand; the U.S. is just the right size — or whether life might be more livable if the political order were more decentralized. Presumably these are not altogether unreasonable questions, and merely posing them, instead of cowering in the little corner of approved ideas that established opinion permits us to have, might be a useful exercise.

Someone in the comment thread said this to Shea:

Mr Shea, I kindly encourage you to read a response to this article by fellow Catholic Tom Woods Jr;
http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/3×5-card-of-approved-opinion-strikes-catholic-blog/

Shea’s response:

No.

He then goes on to ban the person making the request. But the entirety of his response to my post, which asks why Catholic bloggers instinctively side with Hobbes over the political order of Christendom, is that he won’t even look at it. “No,” is his full answer.

Now this is not because he might not be able to answer me, you understand. He is refusing to read my post entirely out of concern for civilization and decency.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_TWZ5VI6RBBG25F3G43TIAUWOWU RealTalk

Dr. Woods,

It’s ironic that a prominent Catholic writer would object to the concept of Secession so strongly. Would I be correct or incorrect in saying that the founding of the Vatican City was an act of Secession, via the Lateran Treaty of 1929? [Prior to the Treaty, the area that is now the sovereign city-state of Vatican City was apart of the Italian state and the city of Rome].
Anonymous

What a pathetic person, this Shea guy. I bet he read it anyway, he won’t admit it.
SM

Dr. Woods,

What whould you recommend for further reading on “the political order of Christendom?”
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

I would start with Robert Nisbet’s book The Quest for Community.
Mike

This is why my post at this thing’s blog (which I’m sure was deleted) was just a plain insult. He can’t be reasoned with so might as well ridicule his pathetic little behind.
http://rosarynovice.stblogs.com/ Augustine

Conversely, should PP Pius IX have gone after its nut-job people in the Papal States who chose in a referendum to join Italy some 60 years before, ending the pope’s temporal reign?
http://rosarynovice.stblogs.com/ Augustine

Shea doesn’t even sound like himself in his comments. I wonder if he was attacked by Bob “Zombie” Murphy and joined the legion of zombies…
SM

Thanks for the information.
vox

I too, was banned from Shea’s blog today. Haha. It was worth it. I put out very sensible and reasonable Catholic arguments of peace and secession, while lamenting the hypocritical stance of those who have presented no opposition to our violent foreign policy. Despite their failures, I do assume they are concerned with violence everywhere, hence Shea’s characterization of secessionists as “nutjobs with violent fantasies.” I went so far as to play devil’s advocate, saying that perhaps we do not deserve to be armed, to engage in secession or to nullify bad laws, because we have not been capable of stopping our violent foreign policy.

I do believe we have all these rights. I just attempted to hit it home for these strange people who call themselves Catholic. I think Shea was inundated and overwhelmed. When “refuting” support of secessionists, he claimed he could “do this all day.” That was not the case, as he widened the scope of blocking people he didn’t want to hear from. He could block people all day, but he couldn’t provide sensible argumentation without name calling. It’s so amusing to me that he called me a Protestant.

I’d like to show the following exchange. Wholly unreasonable on Shea’s part, even though it’s his blog and his right:

Ireneist says: As it happens, I think the Revolutionary War was most likely unjust. Hard to see killing so many people just to speed us along a road that Canada traveled much more peacefully not that long afterward. The recourse to violence was too quick.

Reply from Another Mike in KC: You mean the Canadians accomplished a sort of secession without violence? How could that possibly be when we are told that any and all who discuss either the possiblity or reasons for secession must be gun nuts with violent fantasies?

Mark Shea in response to Another Mike: Annd you’re gone. Anybody else wanna spout double talk about how we all need guns in order to fight the war of Secession while pretending you aren’t violent fantasists? I can do this all day.

I’ll bet Mark Shea is a really great guy overall. Just don’t talk to him about secession. For him, it’s worse than a root canal.
vox

I should have explained that I am not Ireneist or Mike in KC. I just thought that was a brief and very telling series of post/responses that do a simple, yet great job of discrediting Shea.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=147500531 Charles Pearson

I like many of Shea’s writings on theological matters. It’s disappointing to see that he is this close-minded in regards to secession.
Don Wills

Here’s my 2 cents. Stop being reasonable to irrational keyboard pundits. Believing that reason will change the opinion of those who support tyranny is a fools errand. Do not waste your valuable time arguing with folks like Shea. You need to focus on getting your message out to the vast majority who are ignorant of your arguments, and who think secessionists are primarily southern slave-owner heirs who still hold a grudge.

What happened to your radio show? I listen to Alex Jones more and more now for the simple reason that he has a great iPhone app that works perfectly through the Bluetooth interface in my car with just one click on my iPhone (on the AJ app) and one button push on my car radio. You need to figure out the same distribution technology, commit to doing a daily show, and reach millions instead of hundreds.
Dave

In Mark’s mind, secession (from the USA) = violent fantasy. Actually, he may be right…and I wish he would think upon why it is that he can’t even imagine a peaceful secession from the USA.
http://www.facebook.com/oakshield Diego Augusto

Unfortunately these are the kinds of battles you have to fight…
http://www.facebook.com/rob.a.holmes Rob Holmes

I’ve been working through your recommended reading list from last June and have read almost all of them–except Nisbet. I keep bogging down in it. Should I really stick it out?
Adam L

The only reply Shea has been able to come up, that I can see, to the overwhelming evidence that peaceful secession is possible is, aside from name-calling, is basically to assert that Americans are uniquely evil. Because you see the gun culture in this country is crazy, and it is “the epicenter of secessionism”. Therefore any talk of secession from the United States is inherently violent. QED.

See his latest post this morning:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2013/01/fairy-tales-vs-hard-head-realism.html

I find it funny how, in spite of his continued assertion that any and all talk of secession is inherently dangerous and will lead to some nutjob blowing things up, he continues to bring it up (while at the same time banning all dissenting opinion on the issue). From his own reasoning, shouldn’t he simply not mention it at all, especially given the size of the response he has received?
http://www.TomWoods.com Tom Woods

It might not be for everyone, but it really helped shape my thinking.
http://rosarynovice.stblogs.com/ Augustine

I’d actually suspect that his “violent” reaction banning secessionist out of “existence” in his blog demonstrates very well from which side the violence would come from. Of course, nothing that a brief perusal of history wouldn’t quickly demonstrate to be the likely case.
Adam L

In a previous post of his, in which he was basically characterizing libertarianism as a fixation on atomistic individualism, I corrected him and told him that it was actually about a consistent application of the non-aggression principle. To which he replied that made me an ideologue. So I am apparently myopically focused on non-aggression AND at the same time recklessly fomenting violent revolution. Go figure.