Freedom and Sanctity

Tony Soprano: You know we’re the only country in the world where the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed in writing? You believe that? Bunch of $%@! spoiled brats. Where’s my happiness then?

Dr. Melfi: It’s the pursuit that’s guaranteed.

Tony Soprano: Yeah… always a $%@! loophole, right?

A dear friend asked me once; “Jeff, do you think the socialism in Europe has been a success?” His question was, and is, typical of the stuff we discuss, from political institutions to quantum weirdness to the so-called “New Atheists” (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, et al) to metaphysics to M. Python – an over-seasoned brainpan gumbo. Broadly speaking, these rambling discussions have been a feature of my immediate tribe since the ‘70s. Picture a ramshackle group of teens sitting in a loose circle – in both the middle of a neighborhood intersection (46^th and Exeter) and the middle of the night, lazily throwing oranges at the streetlamp by whose weak circle of light these stick figures parse the known universe. Those nights were fragrant with the perfume of orange blossoms, and very approximately as hot as an air fryer. Yes; Phoenix, Arizona in the summer at ~2 in the morning.

Full disclosure: in my h.s. and early college years I was what is known – sometimes disparagingly – as a Born-Again Christian^®. Yuh huh. There were bible studies, Young Life meetings, and Saturday night Hand-in-Hand concerts, where we would sprawl on the expansive carpeted floor – barefoot and in cutoffs – beneath the vaulted, beamed ceiling of our relaxed non-denominational church; Open Door Fellowship. Between sets by bands with names like Glory Road, New Beginning, and (yes) Sonrise, the lights would come up and the teen guys and girls would stand and stretch and hesitantly flirt, all parties wearing feathered back hair and puka shell chokers. This teen would shuffle bare feet and try desperately – in a cauldron of low-grade terror – not to glancingly lock eyes with… anyone. Those were formative, piercing, heart-opening times, and I still can’t believe I had the amazing fortune to have passed through the Valley of the Shadow of geeky, confessional love.

Unsightly Pragmatism

My pal’s question about the “success” of the socialist model in Western Europe is a great one. My reply lives in the context of a human life’s brevity, and the legislatively affirmed definition in the U.S. of an individual human life as Sacred. In the context of an individual’s sanctity in God’s eyes, and in the 18 eyes of our Supreme Court, mortality belittles earthly institutions on the one hand and amplifies their utility on another. The fact that a sanctified human life is finite – that its mortal form begins and ends – produces a rough value framework against which we can better evaluate a society’s efficacy in wholly embracing and exalting the avowed sanctity of that individual life. Is European socialism “good?” That depends. That depends?! Yeah.

If the primary systemic goal for the sacred human animal is contentment, nourishment, shelter, security, and the love of friends and family – preservation of life, that is – socialism is, at the individual level, a successful system. 

If the primary systemic goal for the mortal human animal is a minimally constrained climb to the summit of individual excellence – aspiration to a personal zenith where the self-propelled primacy of the individual is both means and end – the capitalist model makes more sense. Squaring this “ascent of the individual” with New Testament Christianity can be an awkward exercise. 

Legally Sacred 

It is worth mentioning here that the U.S. of A. is a self-identifying Christian Nation, our leader at this historical moment a self-professed Christian. This means our president-elect has, by definition, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and is motivated in his daily actions by Christ’s tenets as they are explicitly stated in the New Testament. Again, for their part, Christian Nationalists believe in – and roundly celebrated the legislative recognition of – the sanctity of human life. Sanctity is an awesome concept that makes an individual’s spiritual value in God’s eyes inviolable. What you don’t want is malleable sanctity that provides spiritual armor to a zygote and leaves a second-grade classroom vulnerable to gunfire. It goes to Freedom. 

The primacy of the individual is enshrined in both the Declaration of Independence and capitalism as we know it, as is the notion of self-interest. Capitalism’s credo is that self-interest is a benevolent force that fuels the common good. 

As early troublemaker Adam Smith serenely put it: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” The pursuit of self-interest and private ownership are thus capitalist moral imperatives. They improve the common good. 

Socialism is typified by pointedly complex government systems designed to caretake the citizenry. Government exists to help provide the basic elements of individual contentment and security. Taxes are higher and the collected funds spent by the government on the citizenry. This is anathema to the Capitalist, whose veneration of individual effort overwrites an altruistic focus on the now legally
sanctified individual. 

Capitalism sees the virtue in small government – an easy case to make if, like me, you see our “legislators” on Capitol Hill as unskilled dimwit workfare cheats, blabbermouths, and corner cutters: children who’ve been given booze and handed matches. 

The goal of smaller government in the U.S., though, is often realized at the expense of our least fortunate. In our Christian nation there are perennial efforts afoot to dismantle systems that help the less fortunate – a group the Bible refers to as The Poor (Mark 10:21-22). Attempted cuts to nutrition assistance and Medicaid and the dissolution of the Affordable Care Act are familiar examples. The sanctity of a human life is politically variable, to no one’s great surprise. 

A Laying on of Hands

Our recently elected leader reportedly underwent a laying on of hands by a circle of Evangelicals who prayed for the success of his candidacy. It worked. And I don’t mean to be a brittle jackass or to ineptly waggle an accusing finger. I fell away from my own faith in the course of a family tragedy many years ago and – by some interpretations – am hesitantly seeking a way back to some spiritual baseline. Is this essay’s invocation of Christ a cheap, facile ploy in the current climate? I dunno. 

What I do know is this: those in our culture who most loudly venerate freedom and individualism tend to self-identify as Christians. These have succeeded in their long struggle to legally define a human life as a Sacred thing – the immeasurably precious and sanctified vessel in which God inheres. Second Amendment and drone strikes notwithstanding. Today, an avowed Christian is our country’s Chief Executive. How will his faith manifest in his legislative agenda? Let us pray.