Law & Liberty was kind enough to invite me to participate in their September forum on America’s construction shortage, led off by Michael C. Munger, of Duke University.

You can read my contribution today at L&L. Here are some excerpts to whet your whistle, but, obviously, this is a case where I suggest you read the whole thing:

“Hearts, Minds and Dollar Signs” by James J. Heaney:

Much hinges on the liberty to build. A man who can’t build a factory loses his liberty to run a manufacturing business. A man who can’t find a house in his hometown (because they’ve outlawed building houses) loses his liberty to live, work, and raise his family there. Law and liberty come to a head at the local planning commission.

Nevertheless, every time I write about land use, my family1 asks me, “Why do you always write about boring things?”

I was therefore delighted by Michael Munger’s vivid inaugural essay for this month’s Law & Liberty forum, which cleanly explains our system, its incentives, and their consequences. The stakes, he shows, are high indeed!

Our system requires almost anyone who wants to build almost anything to come before their local planning commission, as supplicants, in a public hearing.

Construction means change: more traffic, fewer trees, lower property values (or, in gentrification, higher values), a marred landscape, and different people. Indeed, in a contented neighborhood, nearly any change poses a threat to someone’s contentment. To a suburb at peace, every new apartment looks like the harbinger of a future slum. Over the past century, enough tony American neighborhoods collapsed into slums that this fear cannot be deemed entirely irrational. Residents’ incentives, then, are to oppose change, so they show up to planning meetings and demand the city use its veto.

City officials, torn between the city’s incentive to grow and their own incentive not to alienate their neighbors/constituents, often compromise by answering, “Yes, but.” The city makes builders jump through hoops, like traffic studies. Individually, these burdens seem light, but, together, they are heavy enough to suffocate many projects, downsize many more, and drive costs for others so high that builders must cater to the wealthy to recoup their investments. Cities that don’t do this expect to become the dumping ground for every other city’s worst projects, so no one can unilaterally disarm.

[…] Most local construction decisions are not controlled by “law” in the usual sense of that word. City officials have planted their zoning codes thick with rules so dense and so minute that it is impossible for most large projects to follow them all. This is the “law”; it is unworkable, everyone knows it, and its unworkability is by design.

Having tied the hands of builders with “law,” city officials make them an offer they can hardly refuse: if you ask real nice, we might grant you an exception to the “law” so you can build. In city government jargon, these exceptions are variously called variances, conditional use permits, and other labels, but they are simply unprincipled exceptions city officials hand out to favored clients. If the local pet store wants to expand, terrific! Variance granted! If the local pro-life center or data center wants to do likewise, God help them, because the city council will not.

Again, you can read the whole thing at Law & Liberty. It’s free, and I appreciate the click-through, because it makes me look good when people read my articles.

I hope you like it! I’m quite pleased, myself—and I will certainly be reading the rest of the forum as it comes out over the course of September, including Munger’s response (if any) in a few weeks’ time. Thanks for reading!

DE CIV NEXT VOYAGE: I’ve had a prolific month here—over 30,000 words, including the L&L essay. Plus, “The Alien Entity,” while short, was extremely difficult to write and took significantly longer than the rest… so I plan to be off next week and possibly the following week, using the time to catch up on my fiction writing.

When I return, I hope to do an installment of Some Constitutional Amendments, in order to answer a question many of you have been asking: “Why propose constitutional amendments at all, since we live at a time when it is impossible to pass a constitutional amendment?” It’s that or St. Alphonsus Liguori’s judgments of oral sex. You just never know what you’re getting with me!

Most De Civ subscribers do not live in West Saint Paul, and many of you are not even privileged to live in its vicinity. Should you read this anyway? I think having a general understanding of how to compare property taxes is valuable. Anyone can apply the principles in this article to their own town. However, it’s up to you!

West Saint Paul offers its residents a good value proposition: we are an old-growth, first-ring suburb. We’re “close to it all,” an ideal commuter town, but without the poor city services and routine dysfunction of actually living in Regular Saint Paul. Our property values… well, it’s hard to call anyone’s property values “reasonable” these days, with the housing market the way it is, but our property values are more reasonable than some of our neighboring cities. That makes us an attractive destination for young families.

In fact, that’s why I moved here ten years ago. I wanted to continue living in my hometown, Regular Saint Paul, but I couldn’t afford a house for my growing family there. In West Saint Paul, I could, while keeping an easy commute. After ten years, though, West Saint Paul has become my adopted hometown. I never want to leave. We have amazing plowing, good neighborhoods, increasing walkability (as a parent whose kids often walk home from school, I love the new sidewalk on Bidwell), a couple of great parishes, terrific parks, good rec programs, exactly two excellent chicken joints,1 and a splash pad + municipal pool that are everything neighborhood water areas should be.2

We also have a responsive city government. You really can write to the mayor, your city council members, or the city manager, and they will reply to you, usually very quickly! This is possible in a city of 20,000. It is not possible in a city of 300,000. As the famous song goes, “Get your permit at city hall / and build a new retaining wall / in West Saint Paul / in West Saint Paul”:

Living here, under a government of regular humans who weren’t raised from birth to run for office, has reshaped my whole perspective on American government. I don’t have many complaints about West Saint Paul.

However, West Saint Paul city property taxes have gone up, and up… and up.

The usual suspects3 always say, “Oh, stop complaining, it’s only another $100 per year, you can afford it, that’s cheaper than one streaming service.” But my property tax bill for West Saint Paul has already gone up $930 since the pandemic. That’s just the line item for West Saint Paul, not the rest of the property tax bill!4

The usual suspects say, “James, that’s just inflation!” No, it’s not. After adjusting for inflation, my WSP property tax bill is up $408. Meanwhile, after adjusting for inflation, my salary has gone down since the pandemic. WSP is asking me to pay significantly more at a time when everything costs more and I’m trying to make do with less. It’s currently on course to do the same thing next year. I already cut nearly all my streaming services to make ends meet. I don’t eat out or buy coffee during the workweek, either, for the same reason. I already cancelled all my newspapers,5 for the same reason. The belt is tight. Tax hikes hurt.

Even so, I was indeed able to absorb the first few hikes. Now, though, they’re starting to pinch. The usual suspects always say, “You’re just paying more because your home value has gone up.” That’s not true, either. The way property taxes work, your personal tax should only go up from valuation increase if your valuation increase is greater than the city average.6 That’s not my situation. Our taxes—all our taxes—really have gone up. You can see it for yourself on page 8 of this report.

When I moved to West Saint Paul, the argument for our high taxation was that the city was settling its debts after a (somewhat extravagant, albeit largely successful) reconstruction of Robert Street, and that the annual levy increases would soon stop. Then the argument became that inflation was eating up the city budget. Now the argument is that cities and counties are being forced to shoulder more costs because of unfunded mandates from the GOP trifecta in Washington and the DFL trifecta in St. Paul. To be fair, all these arguments have merit! It is not easy to keep costs down when inflation and the federal government are determined to drive costs up. I do not envy our city council nor our redoubtable city staff.

However, inflation and the unfunded mandates have affected every city in our area, not just West Saint Paul. Are our peers handling it better?

Bluntly: yes. By almost any measure, West Saint Paul in 2026 has the highest taxes in Dakota County, and our city taxes are higher than Regular Saint Paul’s.7 It’s not even a particularly close call.

Let’s compare our city to other nearby cities, to see how well they are handling the increased costs compared to WSP. I decided to compare WSP to each city it borders, plus each city in Dakota County with state-certified property tax levies for 2026. Here are those cities, their basic demographics, and their 2026 property tax levies:

As our city manager (the dashing Nate Burkett) often reminds the city council, property taxes in Minnesota are complicated. Nevertheless, there are several good ways to compare property tax levels between Minnesota communities.

One obvious way is to ask how many dollars the city takes in property tax per resident. By this measure, West Saint Paul is only the second-highest-taxed city in the area:

However, Mendota Heights, Sunfish Lake, and Inver Grove Heights are all substantially wealthier than West Saint Paul. It makes sense that the city taxes them more. Once you adjust for West Saint Paul’s income level, we stick out like a sore thumb:

Mendota Heights, Sunfish Lake, and the gang also have much higher home values, so adjusting for home valuations yields the same conclusion:

A canny city manager might look at this and go, “Ah, but this comparison is too blunt of an instrument! You’re not taking into account the fact that the property tax levy is apportioned across a variety of different property types!” This is true. In West Saint Paul, homeowners pay different property tax rates than apartment landlords, who pay a different rate than home-rental landlords.8 Cub Foods’ landlord pays a different (much higher) property tax rate than all of them. In Eagan, that may all be arranged quite differently. In theory, it is possible that, even though West Saint Paul’s levy is quite high, the city apportions most of the levy away from residential homeowners, and, as a result, our homeowners don’t pay particularly high taxes compared to other nearby cities. In theory.

In practice, there is only one way I know of to prove or disprove this theory: one could go through every town in Dakota County, look up property tax records for two or three arbitrary residential addresses9 in each of those towns, and reverse-engineer the actual tax rate paid by homeowners in all those towns.

Guess what I spent three hours doing tonight?10

You’re not imagining it. It’s not a quirk of the complexity of Minnesota’s property taxes. West Saint Paul’s taxes are genuinely very high. This hits residents hard in their pocketbooks, and makes it more difficult to absorb other local taxes. Our local school district, ISD 197, reportedly has taxes below the local average. They hope to pass a levy this year to close a budget gap—but the voters must approve it. If the ISD 197 levy goes down to defeat, West Saint Paul’s very high residential tax rate will share in the blame.

In my opinion, West Saint Paul should aim to grow its budget slower than the rate of inflation over the next several years, at least until our neighbors catch up to us.

I expect that would be very difficult. I listed a lot of wonderful things about WSP at the start of this article. They all cost money, and lots of it. Our city councilors are not sitting on thrones of cash waiting for lobbyists to stuff their pockets. They’re currently underpaid, relative to both the number of hours the job takes and to other local cities. Recently, our city council voted down a pay raise recommended by the city Charter Commission out of solidarity with the homeowning ratepayers. There are no villains here.

Nevertheless, as Jimmy McMillan famously put it, “The [tax rate] is too damn high.” Burnsville, which is demographically similar to us, is getting by on about 80% as much property tax per resident as WSP. Unlike us, Burnsville does not supplement its property tax levy with a sales tax. Yet Burnsville is not exactly a hellhole. I’m curious to know what they’re doing differently.

I have always said that nobody should demand a policy change without suggesting how it might be possible to actually achieve that policy. In that spirit, I offer these few suggestions for planned spending we should consider foregoing for the next several years, until our property tax rates are back in line with the rest of the area’s. These things would all be great to have, and I would be sad if we didn’t get them… but we don’t need them, and I’ll be even sadder if my property tax bill goes up faster than inflation again.

• The Albert Park expansion + memorial to Officer Patrick

  • As I understood the 2025 budget discussion, cancelling this would save the city $500,000, or about $80 for the median household—or at least would have at the time. Whatever money we may have spent on this during 2026 is gone now, but I think we already delayed most of it. The expansion looks beautiful, and I’d love to have it if the city came into a lot of free money.

• Raise fees at the ice arena

  • The WSP ice arena offers no skate rental and has open skate only at bizarre times which mostly overlap with school and parents’ working hours. It is therefore not really much of an amenity for many WSP residents. The ice arena is mostly used by hockey teams, many of them from out of town, specifically Mendota Heights. I am under the impression that they pay well below the “market price” for these rentals.

  • Raising those fees 50% could net $400,000 or so per year, as I understand it from last year’s budget presentation, permanently lowering the levy by about $64 for the median household.

  • People always talk about closing the pool to save money (which I oppose), but nobody ever looks at the ice arena. But the pool costs less to operate than the ice arena, and a fee hike on the ice would allow the city to save money without closing either amenity.

• There may be other opportunities to raise fees, particularly fees paid by out-of-towners.

• We budgeted $75,000 last year for park signage replacement, and another $75,000 for the “placemaking art fund,” a fund to create murals, fun benches, and the like on city property. I am all for these things in principle. I assume Carolyn Swiszcz would do a bunch of the placemaking art, and I am 100% in favor of putting money in Swiszcz’s pocket to do more cool things for West Saint Paul. But cutting both these things would have lowered the levy by $24 for the median household.

• Love the city magazine. I read every issue. My seven-year-old’s picture showed up in it this month (in the Explore WSP Days collage), and she was so thrilled! She cut out the page from the magazine and taped it to her bedroom wall. However, I get the sense that most residents recycle it unread, and that those of us who read it would be equally well-served by an email newsletter. I don’t know how much it costs to physically produce What’s Happening in West St. Paul a few times a year, but I suspect it’s more than chump change.

• I do not wish to hurt anyone’s feelings by saying this, but, whatever we have spent on the new city mascots, the WiSPs… I will say only that I do not think we should spend any more money on them.

• I understand that this year’s proposed 7% levy increase is being driven largely (not exclusively) by wage increases. Our city workers do a great job and it would be very good to pay them more money. Again, though: the last time my own co-workers saw an annual wage increase above 2% was pre-pandemic. In this environment, increasing the total compensation pool more than 4% or so would be unreasonable.11

• Sunfish Lake borrows our police department, right? Have you seen their dirt-cheap property taxes? (Bet you hadn’t before today!) Can we make them pay more for our police? I don’t know how this works, so the answer might be “no,” but I know Sunfish Lake is weird. It reminds me of the suburb in the opening scene of Get Out. The last time I was in there, to visit a (rich) friend who lived there, I came upon what was clearly a speed bump, but the road sign labeled it a “road hump,” like something out of The Backrooms.

Again, I offer these few (and admittedly inadequate12) suggestions not as demands, but simply so that I’m not out here demanding cuts without doing at least a little bit of the work to find some plausible places to cut.

West Saint Paul is a great city. It’s just getting harder to live here. We’re spending a lot, and Minnesota’s property tax system is so opaque that I suspect many of our city leaders don’t even realize that it’s gotten so expensive. I hope this post starts a conversation about how to adjust that.

NOTICE: I’m going to make the same commitment I usually make when I write about local affairs: in the unlikely event that any member of city government, elected or otherwise, writes a response to this article and asks me to print it, I will do so. I will share it even—or, rather, especially!—if they call me an innumerate dunce and proceed to show that I made a series of horrible mistakes here. If a given response is brief, I will post it in this space. If long, I will post it as a separate article and link to it from this space.

I would not be doing a very good job starting a conversation if I didn’t give people the space to respond! Besides, as I hope I’ve made clear, I really like our city government.

Today’s Worthy Reads soundtrack is Laurie Anderson’s “From the Air”:

“How Sad Do You Feel Right Now?” by Leah Libresco Sargeant (reviewing Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy):

The dangers of over-attentiveness aren’t unique to therapy. Whenever screening for an ailment becomes common, there’s the possibility of what are called “iatrogenic effects” — medical problems caused by exposure to doctors and their interventions. For example, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has been revising and re-revising mammogram guidelines, telling women to come in starting at forty years old, no, make that fifty, no, never mind, back to forty. Breast cancer advocacy groups push for broader, earlier, more urgently recommended screenings, focusing on the women saved by early detection. But the more low-likelihood women you invite to get screened, the more false positives you get. For some women, that means the anxiety of a follow-up mammogram, an unnecessary biopsy, or further treatment.

Similarly, asking children to turn inward and examine how they feel may filter some kids into more intensive counseling than they need. But Shrier is worried about another kind of danger that goes beyond false positives and unnecessary treatment. Some iatrogenic effects are more containable than others. A mammogram requires a visit to the doctor, but an “emotional check-in” is something teens can practice themselves, at any time. If there are downsides to self-managed therapy, they can be experienced much more frequently and intensely than something that requires a professional’s participation.

This book review is where I learned the word “iatrogenic,” and, my goodness, it’s come in handy more often than I expected.

Walker Percy’s best and strangest book, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, questioned the root of what has become “therapy culture”: the notion that there is a “self” that can be discovered or understood through observation at all. “Why is it possible,” Percy asks on the title page (this is technically one of the book’s subtitles) (it is a strange book), “to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with yourself all your life”?

I have just opened to a random page and discovered one of many answers Percy offers:

Because the self in the twentieth century is a voracious nought which expands like the feeding vacuole of an amoeba seeking to nourish and inform its own nothingness by ingesting new objects in the world but, like a vacuole, only succeeds in emptying them out.1

We can sum up people we hardly know in a sentence or two, but, when we open the horoscope, we can read almost any entry and find within it a description of ourselves—even though they contradict. This is because the human self is not simply another object of knowledge. One interesting consequence is that the human heart is, changed by observation, like Heisenberg’s quantum particles. Introspection doesn’t just discover; it defines. It is iatrogenic.

To name something about yourself, and believe it, then, is a powerful act. In fact, it is dangerous. The person who believes himself a “brave” man may find himself performing brave acts, not because he is unafraid, but simply because his actions are consistent with his self-identity. He cannot conceive of acting otherwise. On the other hand, the person who labels himself “autistic” may reinforce and deepen traits that were before latent, or even imaginary. We tend to become the labels we give ourselves.

It is remarkable, then, how promiscuous we are about labeling ourselves! We should be much more cautious about this.

This is not to say that one should simply refuse introspection, deny all negative labels, and try to ride to health and virtue by the power of positive thinking. I recall once when someone I cared about a great deal was acting erratically. His overwhelming emotions bled, intermittently, into violently irrational actions. It scared him. It scared those around him. It lasted a while. Trying to fix it didn’t help. Not naming it (because we had no name for it) certainly didn’t make it go away. In fact, it made the thing scarier. When he finally sought out help, Mental Health Professionals™ (eventually, cautiously) gave him a name for his problem. His problem had its own section in the DSM-IV. It came with a list of research-backed treatments, starting with certain therapies, culminating in various pharmaceuticals.

Naming it changed nothing. His emotions were still the same when he came home that day. The behaviors were the same, too. On the other hand, naming it changed everything. It was no longer an invisible beast that leapt from the shadows to hurt him and those around him. We had its name, we knew its habits, and we had plans of attack. My friend recovered. This is a case where naming something was liberating.

However, our current therapy culture enjoys those moments of naming so much that it foolishly goes hunting for them! Too many people fail to understand that the single surest way to create monsters of the id is to start looking for monsters of the id!

Nowhere is this more dangerous than among teenage girls. This demographic was already so insecure and introspective that they invented the magazine personality quiz. Their predispositions were sharpened to the point of disaster by the rise of smartphones. So, naturally, we have surrounded teenage girls with amateurs who understand their job as encouraging them to go hunting for psychological monsters! We give them just enough therapeutic language to cause permanent harm to themselves and others, and—under the guise of confidentiality and privacy laws—we cut them off from the sane safe harbor of their homes and parents! (Therapy culture’s default setting is to assume that the family home is a threatening web of misery and—what else?—unexamined trauma until proved innocent.)2

A few years ago, my daughter, then age 8, was having some routine problems in her friend group. One of her friends was (I will be frank) a gossipy drama queen who lived to make trouble,3 and, since my daughter’s friends were all 8, they kept falling prey to her nonsense, despite parental advice. (8-year-old girls love drama, even as they profess to hate it. This is a common failing of the species. Percy talks about it!) I figured they’d have to learn the hard way, by fighting until either the friend group fell apart or they started listening to their parents and thereby learned to isolate the problem child’s drama.

One day, my daughter startled me by asking permission to see the school counselor about her friend group’s problems. Apparently, one of the other friends had gotten sufficiently caught up in the drama to have had the idea to appeal to the counsellor for a “facilitated conversation.” I thought it was a terrible idea, and said so, repeatedly, but my daughter insisted, and most of the rest of the group was going ahead even without her. I decided to allow it, with some conditions (like detailed reports after each session), and with the comfort that she attended a (good) Catholic school that would not allow things to get out of hand. Better, I thought, for her to get a little taste of this world now, when she was young enough that it wouldn’t be able to do any real damage. If I denied her, she might resent it as a teen and hurl herself into that world more enthusiastically. If I allowed it, she might instead build up a few antibodies against the idea that cheap psychiatry is a panacea.

On the one hand, I was right that my daughter suffered no personal ill effects. The school counselor did fine. On the other hand, the friend group shattered. The dramatic escalation from dumb playground fighting to meeting as a group with the school counselor made everything heavier and more raw. The whole thing spooked one of the kids’ parents, who separated him from the friend group. The children didn’t learn in counseling anything they didn’t already know. It took years for them to patch everything up and be friends again. That was not the outcome they had been hoping for. Counterfactuals are a dime a dozen, but I don’t think that’s how it would have ended if they’d stuck to the playground and stayed out of their own heads.

The Free Press published a whole chapter from Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy (the book which, you may recall, is what this item was originally about), which tends to show just how much some school environments are focusing on mental health in damaging ways that actually make things worse for kids. It’s worth a read, too.

Meanwhile, roughly the last quarter of Lost in the Cosmos is an examination of a future in which the people from that chapter of Bad Therapy are (almost) the last humans.

“Social Security Reformer,” by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

Social Security provides vital income security to millions of beneficiaries, but it is on a road toward insolvency. The Social Security Trustees estimate the Social Security retirement program will run out of reserves in 2032, or in 2034 if theoretically combined with the disability program. Upon insolvency of the theoretically combined trust funds, all beneficiaries regardless of age and income will face an immediate 17 percent benefit cut, growing to 35 percent in 2100. “The Reformer” allows users to build their own plan to restore solvency. See how your choices stack up!

About once every four years or so, somebody puts out a good online “game” where players try to tweak revenues and expenses to balance the federal budget. I always enjoy playing around with those. However, it’s been a long time since the Simpson-Bowles Commission. (Look it up, kids!) For a few years there, it seemed like I was the only person who actually cared about the national debt (as opposed to exploiting it for short-term, dishonest political leverage). However, with Social Security’s X-date now less than a decade away, op-ed writers are finally starting to wake up. Places like the (studiously centrist) Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget are starting to get phone calls again. A few months ago, the CRFB put out a new online widget that covers only Social Security.

The election of 2028 will be about the usual crap. However, the election of 2032 will be about Social Security and Medicare. SS and Medicare are driving off a cliff, running such vast deficits that cutting the entire military budget, all the way to zero, couldn’t fix them. Most American voters aren’t willing to admit that. They think you can fix everything just by taxing the rich,4 or by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Medicare is actually the harder problem to solve, but Social Security makes a nice apéritif. Why don’t we look through the dials the CRFB makes available to us? They don’t cover every single option imaginable, since there are infinite ways to skin a cat, but they offer a good overview of the most common Social Security reforms recommended by wonks and populists alike.

Before we start, a couple words of caution:

First, the projections in this tool depend on consensus projections of future American fertility, which are almost certainly too optimistic. Social Security is in even worse shape than it looks.

Second, the projections in this tool assume that you institute these Social Security reforms today, while the Trust Fund still has nearly a decade of breathing room left in it. That isn’t going to happen. The very earliest that Congress will even consider implementing serious Social Security is probably 2031 or so, just 1-4 years before the Trust Fund is exhausted. There are some reforms (like “removing the cap,” discussed below) that could delay X-Day for almost two decades if implemented today. However, by the time they are actually implemented in the early 2030s, the Trust Fund will be so close to zero that they will stave off X-Day for only 1-3 years.

Now, on to the dials!

The last time Reddit had a discussion about Social Security, the response was nearly unanimous: we should “fix” Social Security by “removing the cap.” Today, payroll taxes are only paid on the first $184,500 in wages. If you remove that cap, the argument goes, you bring in so much fresh income for Social Security that it solves your problem, bing bang bong.

It does not, in fact, solve your problem:

One problem is that, although Social Security is actually a welfare program and always has been, FDR deliberately designed it to look like an investment account. By law, when you pay more into the system, you get more out when you retire. Today, since the payroll tax is “capped” at $184,500, rich people’s benefits are also “capped.” If you give rich people an unlimited payroll tax today, by law, you also give them unlimited Social Security benefits tomorrow.

Of course, we could change this law! When we remove the payroll tax cap, we could just pass a second law that says, “…but rich people’s benefits stay capped right where they are.” Social Security’s proponents have always opposed doing this, though, since it would shatter the illusion that Social Security is an investment account. It would clearly become a welfare program, with rich people shouldering the rest of us.

On balance, I think that’s a good thing. I hate the lie that Social Security is an investment that retirees have somehow “earned.” This change would put a nice clean bullet hole in that lie, making it easier to adjust Social Security in the future. However, we should not overlook the fact that introducing a sharp phase-out in Social Security benefits would also create substantial disincentives to earn income. (Capping SS benefits are a form of means-testing, and De Civitate discussed the problems with means-testing at length in my 2024 article co-written with Daniel Pareja, “Give the Rich More Money!”)

Another problem with the “remove the cap” proposal is that it represents a monumental tax increase on high earners. Now, like most Americans, I believe that taxes on the rich are currently too low. It seems to me pretty clear that we are on the left side of the Laffer curve, and that raising taxes on wealthier Americans would yield significant new revenue, which they are well-equipped to bear. So I do want to raise taxes on the rich. (Note: this will hurt the economy, albeit not fatally.) However, when we raise taxes on the rich, I want to spend the money on exciting things like space exploration, baby boxes, expanded child tax credits, and (alas) paying down the national debt! I do not want to take that entire windfall and slam it directly into life support for an existing welfare program!

“Well, then, we’ll just raise taxes on the rich a second time to pay for all that other stuff, James!” You can’t! Removing the payroll tax cap is a very large tax increase for rich people. It would put many of their marginal tax rates over 60% (higher, in some high-tax states). That’s firmly on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. Once you raise taxes that high, wealthy people have such strong incentives to avoid earning more money (to avoid the taxes) that they largely stop doing so, or even reduce their earnings, with the result that the new taxes result in either very little revenue or negative revenue. So, yes, we can remove the cap, and, yes, that will help pay for Social Security… but that’s it. The effective tax capacity of rich people will be tapped out. Raising their taxes to pay for other stuff will no longer be an option.

Let’s look at our other options.

The first thing I want to say about our other options is that cutting the benefits of current Social Security seniors needs to stay on the table. In fact, as a matter of justice, it is important that seniors on the Social Security dole face broad-based cuts, rather than hiking taxes on young people or raising the retirement age for young people. This funding crisis is, collectively, their fault.

It has been known for over forty years that Social Security was in deficit. It has been known for almost as long that it would run out of money in the early 2030s, specifically. Congress succeeded in passing a patch-up job in the 1980s, but everyone knew that the patch wouldn’t last forever. All along, the voters were told, over and over again, that failing to deal with Social Security would lead to sharp benefit cuts when the money finally ran out. They had many chances to fix it. Ross Perot made balancing the national budget, including Social Security, the centerpiece of his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. George W. Bush proposed a plan to save Social Security in 2005, which would have partially privatized the system. (Had it passed, the Social Security system would be safe and future retirees would have had considerable wealth to look forward to.) In 2011 and 2012, Paul Ryan and (later) Mitt Romney worked hard to raise awareness, cut spending, and balance the entitlements budget. Nothing is happening today that couldn’t have been prevented by listening to President Obama’s bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission in 2010!

Yet, at every turn, voters collectively said “Nah! The 2030s are way far in the future. We’ll figure it out then. Let’s keep this ship on autopilot. Let’s crash this ship into the sun.” They laughed at Perot. They crucified Bush, until he yanked himself away from Social Security reform like he’d burned his hands. They stuck their fingers in their ears to Simpson-Bowles. They accused Paul Ryan of trying to kill grandma.

That’s on them. Nearly half of Americans alive today weren’t even old enough to vote when older voters turned up their noses at the idea of saving Social Security.

My very first national election was 2008, so my age group is partially responsible for our predicament. I consistently voted to balance the budget, but my age group didn’t, and I recognize I must bear some of the consequences for our collective misdeeds. My younger peers, however, are not responsible at all, though, and my pre-teen children certainly didn’t cause this in any way. Yet many senior citizens, who did in fact ride this rocket straight into the sun, now want to escape the consequences by keeping their benefits, soaking the rich, and fobbing off the rest of the cost on their grandchildren. This makes me angry. We should not allow it. The Baby Boomers and GenX collectively refused to spend responsibly; now they must collectively pay the piper.

The default solution to Social Security’s deficit, both in law and in justice, is reducing grandma’s government paycheck. Not hiking the working man’s payroll tax, not raising his retirement age. Benefit cuts, from current beneficiaries. Every dollar of Social Security revenue that doesn’t come from benefit cuts, then, is a gift given to senior citizens from the generosity and compassion of younger generations.

Still, I don’t want my parents to eat cat food,5 so let’s consider some ways we can be generous.

All means-testing has downsides, but there’s a compromise between fully eliminating the payroll tax cap (a sharp, huge tax increase on working rich people) and doing nothing at all: means-test Social Security benefits.

We currently send huge Social Security checks to old retired rich people. (They paid a lot in, so they get a lot back out.) About a million retirees receive more than $50,000/year from Social Security alone. That doesn’t count their spouse or spousal survival benefits! It also doesn’t include their (typically large) nest eggs, pensions, and so forth. We are shoveling the equivalent of an entire American median household income into the pockets of people who don’t need it merely to maintain the pretense that Social Security isn’t a welfare program. All that money comes directly from the pockets of working families.

So cut the benefit. The widget tells me that cutting benefits in half for couples that make more than $360,000/year overall (with a phase-in starting at $120,000/year) would do a lot to close the gap all by itself. The Reformer widget assumes this means-testing is only applied to new retirees, and says that doing this closes 17% of the funding gap. I would apply it to all retirees, which would close a little more of the funding gap and (per some back-of-the-clanker math) stave off X-Day by perhaps one to three years by itself, by cutting more spending upfront. Better yet: means-testing Social Security is very popular.

By the same token, Social Security benefits are currently taxed less than ordinary income. We could adjust this so that, for individuals making over $100,000/year ($200,000/year for couples), Social Security benefits are taxed like any other income. This adjustment has a modest long-term benefit. (Insanely, many people—including the RINO who purports to be President—want to eliminate taxes on Social Security, completely. That would make all these problems much worse, and should be absolutely opposed.)

Another interesting fact about Social Security is that its annual cost-of-living adjustment is currently skewed. In 1973, when Social Security addressed cost-of-living adjustments, there was only one measure of inflation available (“CPI-W”) which covers inflation for a surprisingly narrow segment of working stiffs. The more universal and accurate “CPI-U” debuted in 1978, and the yet-more-accurate “chained CPI” came out in 2002… but Social Security never switched over to using either one. It still uses CPI-W. This has allowed Social Security benefits to grow significantly faster than inflation over the past 50 years. Today’s seniors thus have more generous benefits than their parents did, and much more generous than their grandparents did.6 We can’t undo all that without benefit cuts, but we can put the genie back in the bottle by fixing the cost-of-living formula now, preventing any further growth above inflation. (This technically cuts benefits for my generation, too, of course, but we didn’t earn over-inflated Social Security payouts, either.)

Unfortunately, doing all this doesn’t come particularly close to closing the gap:

This leaves the reformer with various bad choices. Raising taxes on the rich (by doubling the payroll tax cap, without eliminating it) is probably the least politically and fiscally painful move at this point, even though you’ve hit the rich twice already (with means-testing and different tax treatment). Since you’re not eliminating the tax cap entirely, that probably still leaves a little capacity to raise taxes on rich people to pay for other programs in the future. And it’s undeniable that it really helps stabilize things:

Under these policies, seniors still absorb a 6% automatic benefit cut in the mid-2030s. That’s compared to a 17% automatic cut if we do nothing, so our generosity has already done great things to protect current retirees. I think a 6% across-the-board cut to current beneficiaries is a reasonable and just outcome. We can perhaps distribute this cut to shield the very poorest seniors from terrible consequences, but I think it’s a fine cut. Let’s keep it.

The remaining thing that worries me, at this point, is that we haven’t stabilized Social Security long-term. Because my generation is having so few children, Social Security will still tumble into the abyss after the Boomers and Xers are dead. We owe it to our grandchildren to fix that, exactly as the Boomers didn’t. This would presumably be best done by instituting a Bush-style partial privatization scheme. Alas, that wasn’t one of the options in this particular tool, so I ended up closing the rest of the long-term gap by:

• Making the 6% benefit cut permanent (-6% to “initial benefits”)

• Taxing more Social Security benefits like ordinary income, not just benefits over $100,000 (“Tax Benefits Like Private Pensions”)

• A wonkish change to the benefit formula, applying it to annual earnings before averaging all annual earnings together. This tends to reduce final benefits for higher-income people while raising it for people who spend more years paying in (regardless of how much they earn).

• Slowing benefit growth for the top 20% of earners, by making the benefit formula replace only 5% of their last chunk of income (instead of 15% like today).

• An additional 5% benefit cut for future retirees, for a total of 11% in benefit cuts. (It’s either that, or increasing the payroll tax from 12.4% to 13.1%—which would hit working families hard—or raising the retirement age to 68, and I think we work long enough already.)

Again, though, partial privatization seems like a better alternative to this cocktail of cuts.

You may have your own preferences for how to deal with this, and, as you can see, making the sweaty choices is no easy task. Just remember two things:

1. It’s actually going to be worse than this, so whatever changes you make are going to have to be intensified later on as the fiscal outlook darkens, and

2. Fixing Social Security is the easy one. Medicare’s going to be much harder to save.

GL;HF!

“The Fall and Rise of Screwworm,” by Brian Potter:

Since at least the early 19th century, and likely much earlier, screwworm was a miserable fact of life for raising livestock in the Southwestern US. The screwworm fly would find and lay her eggs on even the smallest open wound, and animals had to be inspected for worms constantly. One author notes that “[p]eople would not leave home for more than a day for fear of finding their animals had been eaten alive while they were away. Anyone who didn’t check their animals at least every two days — or have someone do it for them — knew that they would pay a heavy toll in damaged or dead animals.” When worms were inevitably found, they had to be dealt with, typically by applying various insect-killing chemicals, though occasionally by manually removing the worms, a task described as “disgusting and sickening.” Often animals couldn’t be saved — an infection in a horse, for instance, was described in the late 19th century as “typically fatal.” The amount of time and effort required was such that ranchers employed ranchhands whose entire jobs were inspecting animals for screwworm.

I knew basically nothing about screwworm going into this article. I had vaguely heard of it since 2023, but I didn’t even know whether it was a bacteria or an insect until 2026, when the first modern case appeared in Texas.

My first instinct, I admit, was to blame Mr. Trump’s White House for it. Elon Musk’s ill-advised DOGE delayed and slashed anti-screwworm funding in early 2025. Less than a year later, screwworm is in our cows. However, as this fascinating little article explains, we were already screwed (har har) well before the 2024 election. The massive flows of immigrants through Central America, many of them attracted to America by President Biden’s lax border policies, seem to have played a larger role. So did other, larger factors independent of politics, like the pandemic. I don’t doubt that cutting screwworm money during that final year prior to landfall in Texas hurt us, blinded us to some extent, and slowed our eventual response. DOGE played its part in making this crisis! However, the principal parts go back much further.

For all that, though, the most interesting part of the article, to me, is not the blame game about who screwed up (har har) the screwworm more badly. It’s the earlier section, where Mr. Potter explains how we defeated screwworm in the first place—and kept it defeated for decades. It was the result of an insane-sounding government program and 1960s American “you can just do things” optimism. That sort of optimism often backfired and killed a lot of people, but not this time. America did something hitherto unheard of in world history—eradicating a an entire species from a region through simple selective breeding—and then quietly kept doing it, year in and year out, until the 2020s. Turns out the anti-screwworm program was a rare Big Government W! Let’s hope Washington can get its screwworm production facilities (yes, that’s a real thing) back online before the outbreak gets too far out of hand. Last thing America needs is food prices going up again, now because of parasitic insects.

“no data centers in my backyard,” by Jasmine Sun:

If any data center project should have gone down easy, it should’ve been Mount Pleasant’s. The infrastructure and associated debt was all already there. Microsoft is on track to pay $19.7 million in taxes in 2026. A major new development was the only way to maintain “public services like policing, road paving, and emergency medical services,” said Sean Ryan, a village representative. “Data centers can accomplish that on an unprecedented scale.”

But even more than the GM closure in Janesville, Foxconn taught many residents to never believe a tech company’s—or their local government’s—sweet-talking ever again. Yes, they might pledge jobs or infrastructure or taxes. Their PR teams know what words to say. But they can write carve-outs into the contract; they’ll go unpunished if they leave. And in that world, if it goes away, then it’s your land, your community, and your already-strained municipal government that gets left holding the bag.

I estimate about a third of my audience will be rolling their eyes because who hasn’t read this article yet, everyone’s talking about it!

Meanwhile, two-thirds of my audience will never have even heard of this article at all. It’s a very widely read article in a very narrow community (a community that overlaps quite a bit with De Civitate’s readership).

Basically, a female techbro (she used to work for Substack) went to Wisconsin to try to understand what everyone in San Francisco is having a really hard time understanding: why do people say they’d rather have a nuclear power plant in their backyard than an AI data center?

Part of the answer, of course, is that people aren’t actually mad at data centers. They’re mad at AI.

Data centers are pretty excellent “gets” for most towns. Their water use is modest compared to a factory, they can be required to generate some of their own power to offset any (tiny) increase in electric prices, and their other issues, like sound levels, have been wildly exaggerated, and are addressable through the usual zoning tools like decibel limits. While they’re being built, they generate a lot of jobs. Once they are built, the jobs go away, but they generate something even better: lucrative property taxes. Quincy, Washington now has 30 data centers paying over half of the city’s overall property tax burden. They’re not the only ones!

Yet my county (where property taxes have been going up and up) recently went insane over a modest 5 MW data center in Inver Grove Heights. People from multiple cities in the surrounding area were rallying to oppose the data center, because “it will affect you, too!” It won’t. They were even arguing that we’d be disturbed by the noise in West St. Paul, miles away! Dawg, you won’t be able to hear it at all past 2,000 feet or so, even if you’re trying!

I understand residents of homes within that boundary will want to push for more acoustic shielding, and that makes good sense, but now the city has been forced, by sheer revolt of its residents across multiple city council meetings, to impose a moratorium that (IMO) illegally blocks the data center from going up. They’re being sued for tens of millions of dollars in damages, way past the city’s insurance liability limit, in a town that I happen to know (thanks to another article I’m working on) only collects $36 million in property taxes every year!

This is a moral panic. Social media is good at generating those. There is palpable hysteria in these discussions. It has no proportion to the facts. The social media ecosystem encourages the worst offenders to become even more hyperbolic. The results are grim and irrational. I admit, at times, people have gotten so weird about data centers that I’ve thought, “This must be a psy-op organized by Chinese Communist Intelligence to make America fall behind in the AI arms race.”

On the other hand, moral panics don’t come from nowhere.

AI is transforming our society in ways we don’t understand and can’t predict. It is already very clear that its impact will be at least as significant as the rollout of the World Wide Web, probably bigger. It’s coming much faster, in a society shorn of its techno-optimism… thanks, in part, to the rollout of World Wide Web! Not only could AI take all our jobs, Silicon Valley admits that AI might take all our jobs, and adds that AI might go on to kill all humans! And it might!

Nate Silver put it nicely in a follow-up interview with Ms. Sun:

[Silicon Valley are] like, oh, we’re going to take this 90-10 gamble, where 10 percent of the time we destroy all value in the universe, but 90 percent of the time we have this utopia where no one has to work again. And I don’t want that f**king utopia! You know what I mean? I like it now, where it can be two in the morning and our model does something weird and I can feed the log into ChatGPT and it figures it out. That’s nice. I get to bed sooner. But I don’t know if I want that utopia.

Silicon Valley didn’t ask us if we actually wanted this. It just did it,7 and now our whole economy is forced to adopt or die. People feel powerless against this, and are lashing out at the only targets available: AI data centers getting built in their own backyards that require zoning variances from their own local zoning boards. They’ll fight to the last man to prevent those variances from being granted, no matter how well-founded, because this isn’t about the variances.

This is a popular explanation for data-center opposition, and I like it a lot more than the NIMBY arguments opponents actually make. I like it partly because I think it’s correct and partly because I think the citizens’ underlying antipathy toward AI is meritorious (even though I don’t fully share it). However, Jasmine Sun’s investigation uncovers one more important layer in the puzzle:

Trust.

Residents assume that tech companies and city officials are either lying, gullible, or pollyannas. The tech company says that the data center isn’t going to drive up their electricity bills, and residents roll their eyes with a, “Yeah, right.” The city says it’s going to lower everyone’s property taxes and residents say, “Not fast enough to pay off the subsidies you’re giving them before the bubble bursts!” And if the bubble does burst before the town turns a handsome profit, what then? Town’s left holding the bag, in worse shape than ever.

Neither tech companies nor (in Sun’s telling) individual cities have done a good job managing this. Many data center deals were made under cover of non-disclosure agreements, which made it look like the city council was colluding with tech to put one over on the residents. Some of the towns Ms. Sun investigates have been deceived by large companies before, and have been left holding some very expensive bags. The tech companies have no roots in the area.

Worse, they seem to have no interest in putting down any. As Josh Shapiro argues in another good piece discussing Ms. Sun’s article:

A tech company will spend $10 billion building a data center outside of a Wisconsin town but they won’t sponsor a little league team. They won’t support the local Girl Scouts. They won’t build a park. They want the land and space and they want to escape the burdensome regulations and insane anti-growth politics of California, but that doesn’t mean they actually like any of the people who live near their data centers. They don’t care if these outsiders find growth and success, they want them to get out of the way. And if paying enough taxes to reduce the overall tax burden of the local bumpkins is what placates them, fine. Whatever gets them to shut the hell up, leave us to our more important business, and accept their rightful place as the underlings of this particular arrangement. They don’t really have any place in our vision of the future.

(Between Ms. Sun’s original worthy article plus the two worthy articles discussing Ms. Sun’s original, this Worthy Reads item has turned into a three-for-one deal!)

I still think the tech companies could make a great deal of headway by literally sending each household in the city a $50 check, and a $1,000 check to each household within a fifteen hundred feet. One of the things residents desperately want is tangible benefits, and the companies are only giving them promises. Promises require faith, and why would anyone have faith in tech right now? If residents have no faith in your promises, it doesn’t matter how many future benefits you promise them. They will always assume that costs will eternally outweigh benefits, assume everything you say to the contrary is a lie or wishful thinking, and fight you to the last man.

Shapiro offers keen insight into Silicon Valley’s culture of contempt for normies, which sharpens the issue, but these residents don’t trust their own elected small-town officials, either, so the issue is bigger than Silicon Valley.

Thus, I learn, as I reach the end of this item, that this goes back to a problem Worthy Reads has examined again and again: we are transitioning from a high-trust society to a low-trust society. We don’t fully understand why this is happening, but the constant lying definitely has something to do with it. We have earned the assumption that everyone will lie (or, at least, massage the truth) to get what they want. Under that assumption, citizens’ rabid opposition to data centers is rational. Indeed, too many of us use that assumption as an excuse for our own lies, which perpetuates the cycle. Trust is a very expensive good, but it’s worth it, because trust makes everything else in a society much less expensive.

Which is why a low-trust society can’t have nice things. Neither data centers nor tech-sponsored little league fields. For that matter: neither full Social Security benefits nor a balanced budget. The trust deficit is everywhere, and it’s starting to put on the squeeze.

This is the paywall! In the rest of this installment, subscribers will be reading a defense of prisons, some ‘80s seminarian humor, a biting analysis of Somali immigrant communities, and a great essay on sports gambling since it was legalized. All this plus the three8 videos of the month! Not bad for $4.17 a month!

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That new flag replaced this one:

That flag, adopted in 1983, was the latest in a series of minor flag variants that dated back to the state’s original flag, the 1893 flag:

The DFL (Minnesota’s version of the Democrats) held a trifecta in Minnesota government from 2022-2024. Passing the new flag was perhaps the least consequential thing they did.

Yes, This Is Silly, But I Do Have To Tell You The Background

The DFL has long viewed the old Minnesota flag as racist, because it depicts a noble Minnesotan Indian on horseback peacefully sharing a moment with a White farmer/settler-colonialist while riding in front of a sunset.1 When I encountered the state flag for the first time, in fourth grade, I thought this was a picturesque historic scene emphasizing our Native legacy. I wouldn’t have used this language in 1998, but I understood our flag as a subtle land acknowledgment. I was not a foolish child for thinking this, either! State statute said that the meaning of the Indian was exactly what 9-year-old James thought it was:

The sun, visible on the western horizon, signifies summer in the northern hemisphere. The horizon's visibility signifies the flat plains covering much of Minnesota. The Indian on horseback… represents the great Indian heritage of Minnesota. The Indian’s horse and spear and the Pioneer’s ax, rifle, and plow represent tools that were used for hunting and labor.

The DFL’s view, however, was that it was a whitewashing—nay, a celebration!—of the 1863 expulsion of the Dakota following the short, initially justified, but savage war the Dakota launched against American Minnesotans in 1862.2 They called the flag “white supremacist”3 and even “genocidal”! Because most of the DFL thought the flag was racist, they introduced bills to change it at least once per election cycle, and had done so for most of my life. These went nowhere.

During the 2010s, however, these racism concerns began to be laundered through a weird third-party group: vexillologists, people who study flags for a living (or for fun). In 2006, the North American Vexillological Associatiation (politely) declared war on traditional American state and municipal flag design in their pamphlet, Good Flag, Bad Flag. Flags, according to NAVA, must be simple, use only two or three colors, and—this was really their central point—must never, ever include words or a state seal. Otherwise, the flag will not be identifiable at a distance, or while flopping. (They also said flags should be “distinctive,” but undercut this principle at every turn.) Too-online vexillologists started using “seal on a bedsheet” as a term of derision. The often-interesting CGP Grey became downright annoying about it, producing a whole series of flag videos, in which his affect can only be described as “the smarmiest commissar”:

Spoilers: he graded Minnesota’s flag the very worst in the entire Union.

This vexillology stuff is, of course, silly. First, lettering is very clearly identifiable at a great distance. NAVA just thought it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing (which is fine, de gustibus, I even tend to agree) and tried to make their taste an “objective” principle of flag design by pretending nobody can read.

Second, there is only one context in which a state flag actually needs to be identifiable at a distance: during a civil war, warring states need good flag design so soldiers know how to identify their units. If you’re not fighting a civil war, who cares? “The flag flying underneath the American flag” at your local library or car dealership is basically always the state flag, and state residents basically always know their state flag well enough to easily tell it apart from other local flags. In fact, you know how Minnesotans can easily tell their flag apart from Wisconsin’s?

The word “WISCONSIN” is a tip-off!

Ironically, during the actual American Civil War, regiments routinely designed their flags by… printing the regimental insignia on solid blue background. “Seal on a bedsheet” design came to American state flags in the late 19th century directly from the single conflict in American history when state flags actually needed to do the things modern vexillologists insist they should always do! Vexillologists might just be full of crap!

The problem is that vexillology is not an academic field. It’s a bunch of mild autists with a shared special interest, who got together in 1962 and wrote enough letters to each other about what they liked that they declared themselves experts. That’s fine, God knows I have my little special interest communities, but then the vexillologists decided that their expert judgment should supersede popular sentiment. Bandying them about as “experts” works on the class of voters who believe that experts are always right, but, to other voters, vexillologists’ hate-on for traditional flags is only another failure of expertise, further eroding trust in experts (trust that is needed more urgently now than usual!).

The Minnesota flag had avoided redesign for decades because it required the DFL to openly pick a culture-war fight they had no need to start, and voters didn’t want that. However, the rise of the vexillologists changed that. “Vexillological concerns” over the “terribly designed” Minnesota flag gave DFL legislators from moderate districts cover to vote for a flag redesign while pretending it wasn’t a culture-war thing. (Plus, they had a trifecta! And it didn’t hurt that we were still at Peak Woke.)

Thus, in 2023, the DFL trifecta passed a bill establishing a 13-member flag selection committee, the State Emblems Redesign Commission, which would receive submissions from around the state and then select their favorite. Their favorite would then automatically become the law of the state, unless blocked by subsequent legislation. The members of the commission were:

• Secretary of State Steve Simon (DFL), last seen in De Civitate’s pages villainously usurping the power of the Minnesota House (I was soon vindicated)

• Three people appointed by Gov. Tim Walz (DFL)

• Two Indians appointed by the Indian Affairs Council

• Inexplicably, three representatives from other racial interest groups (the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage, the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans, and the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs)

• The director of the Minnesota Historical Society, a left-wing, state-funded, semi-governmental non-profit organization

• Three directors and chairs from other semi-governmental non-profit organizations

You know how, when a room’s full of men, it’s called a “sausage party”? What’s the word for when, instead of men, the room’s full of Democrats? A klanbake?

To be sure, the DFL was consciously imitating the (very loose) process which led to the creation of the original 1893 flag: six volunteer women working for a state-established non-profit (the Women’s Auxiliary Board, preparing for the World’s Fair) held a statewide contest, reviewed submissions, and selected a winner.

However—and this is crucial—the WAB was not a partisan operation, and its flag did not automatically become law. It didn’t even have official sanction outside Minnesota’s World’s Fair booth! It was only after the women selected the 1893 flag that the legislature voted on it, unanimously adopting the women’s flag as the official flag of Minnesota in a bipartisan triumph. By contrast, the 2023 State Emblems Redesign Commission was established on a party-line vote, over unanimous Republican opposition, it was composed solely of Democrats, and the flag those Democrats decreed became law without any further vote of the legislature or the voters.

In Which Your Correspondent Dislikes the New Flag

I did not give a crap about any of this at the time. If someone asked me directly what I thought of the flag redesign project, I would tell them I didn’t think much of the legislature’s reasons for launching it, but that I looked forward to seeing what they came up with. I wrote nothing about it in public, even on my private Facebook page. There were much bigger fish to fry during the 2023 Minnesota legislative session. It’s a flag, for chrissakes.

Moreover, the truth is that, as much as I liked the old flag (and I really did), I was aware that the flag made some Minnesotans feel sad or angry. This was a small minority, and their reasons were, I thought, bad reasons, but, nevertheless, this minority largely refused to fly the state flag or show it respect. A symbol of state unity, an expression of our shared republic, was instead a source of division. Forget the “white supremacy” labels, forget the “vexillology” nonsense, but this was a problem. A state’s flag should not be divisive among people who live in that state. Granted, there will always be a fraction who will hate any flag, whether because they’re oikophobes or just obstreperous, but our old flag was undeniably more controversial than it needed to be. I wouldn’t have voted to change it, but I wasn’t mad that somebody else had. I assumed the new flag would be centered around the loon (Minnesota’s ubiquitous symbol) and I thought that would be nice.

This was a nice option, IMHO:

This one would have given vexillologists a coronary, and maybe needs a second pass to tidy up the lines, but I love it:

Alas!

When this design was announced in late December 2023, I posted a quotation from National Review that summed up my feelings:

I added one comment of my own to NR’s: “De gustibus, there’s more important things in the world to fight about than flags, but I liked our old flag better.”

Well, okay, two comments:

I have a demi-estranged family member who left Catholicism for progressivism. She was so delighted with the new flag that she texted the family group chat to crow about it. I said I was glad she and others were happy with it, even though I personally didn’t care for it and didn’t want to hate on the old flag. I acknowledged that the majority of Minnesotans seemed pleased and that it’s good for the majority to like its own flag. When she tried to pick a fight about the old flag, I calmly disengaged. I wrote nothing else about the flag for more than two years. I sought solace in Laser Loon:

…but, again: it’s a flag, for crissakes. I didn’t expect to be writing about the state flag in 2026 because, after December 2023, I didn’t expect to be thinking about it, ever again!

Things Get Weird

As you probably remember, I resigned my very minor post in the Minnesota Republican Party in 2016 after the U.S. Republican Party nominated Mr. Trump for President. For a decade, I did not participate in any partisan political activities, on either side.

However, in 2026, I learned that there was going to be a big brawl in the Minnesota GOP about whether it would remain a pro-life party. If there isn’t a pro-life party in Minnesota for me to come back to when our current troubles are over, there is no point in politics at all.4 So, like a dog to its vomit, I returned to the GOP caucuses this spring, with one goal: protect the unborn.

I ended up getting elected as a delegate to the local district convention, which meant I saw a lot of candidates give a lot of speeches. When candidates in a contested primary courts voters at a convention, he pulls out the reddest of red meat for us delegates. I heard things that pleased me, such as several commitments to the protection of the unborn and attacks on the pro-choice candidates. I also heard things that displeased me, like moron candidates blamed Sen. Mitch McConnell (God’s single greatest gift to the GOP over the past twenty years) for blocking voter ID in Congress.

I also heard one thing that shocked me: over and over again, candidate after candidate featured the state flag as a Top 3 issue. Several give it number one top billing. Candidate websites often featured a Minnesota flag… and it was never the new Minnesota flag. Some even implied that the new Minnesota flag was based on the Somali flag, which is… a hot-button take in Minnesota right now.

Soon after, I started looking around my town. Immediately after the adoption of the new flag, of course, the old flag stayed hanging at lots of houses, but you expect that. It takes time for people to buy the new flag. But now, two years later, it seems hard to deny: a clear majority of flag-wavers are flying the old flag!

Now, I mentioned this at a local Republican meeting, and the organizer seized on it to say that there’s clearly a silent majority of Minnesotans who are angry at the direction the state’s been heading under Gov. Walz and the DFL, ready to vote them out if the GOP can just get out the vote. I tend to think that the explanation is less exciting: Republicans are prouder of their homeland, much more patriotic, and more likely to fly a flag in the first place. Thus, flags are disproportionately flown by Republicans, and Republicans seem much more likely to hate the new flag, so, among the small, skewed sample of flag-wavers, the old flag wins out. I do not believe there is a conservative silent majority in my precinct.5 Nevertheless, it is intriguing that the state symbol, whose sole purpose is to signal state patriotism, unity, and warm fellow-feeling among Minnesotans, appears to have been rejected by the majority of people who would ordinarily fly it.

Then, in April, I was shocked again. The town next door to mine, Inver Grove Heights, had a divided city council (3 to 2) vote to remove the new flag from city property and resume flying the old flag. IGH was Harris+14 in the 2024 election.

This led me to look around a little bit, and I discovered that there are 17 municipalities in Minnesota, plus 2 counties, that refuse to fly the new flag. I had heard a word or two about this on social media, but I had assumed it was limited to one or two backwoods deep-red thorps I’d never heard of. To be fair—with apologies to the doubtless noble stock of Zumbrota, MN—this was mostly true. However, one of them was Pequot Lakes (Trump+34), a town I know well from spending a week every summer relaxing on the beautiful Lower Cullen Lake. Another was Champlin (Harris+9), a metro-area town I know from their Quiz Bowl team.

Meanwhile, a progressive acquaintance of mine left this public comment for one of her county legislators:

Her comment represented well the general tenor of Camp New Flag: it’s not just an aesthetic issue anymore. It’s a race issue. It’s a personal safety issue. Thus, the legislator who called the old flag “genocidal,” Rep. Mike Frieberg, proposed sharp funding cuts to any cities that dared to fly the old flag. This proposal did not succeed in the current legislature, but could pass next year if the DFL rebuilds its trifecta this November. (The DFL is very likely to rebuild its trifecta this November.)

So the flag has become an Issue that legislators at all levels now have to Navigate. Random city councilmembers are getting called on the carpet for supporting (or opposing) the flag—which, again, is supposed to be a symbol of state unity.

I think this raises three interesting questions:

1. Why did the new flag design become polarized?

2. Is this a legitimacy crisis?

3. Faced with this, what should legislators actually do?

Why Did the New Flag Get Polarized?

Before we ask why the new flag got polarized, we should verify that it actually is.

Going into this article, my assumption was that this was an 80/20 issue favoring the Democrats. My assumption was that Republicans were flying kamikaze into yet another issue where they feel very passionately, but where independent voters squarely oppose them. My assumption was that Democrats overwhelmingly supported the new flag. My assumption was that independent voters didn’t give a crap about some dumb culture war fight when the state is drowning in fraud, inflation, property tax hikes, and ICE raids. (It’s a flag, for chrissakes.)

My assumptions were wrong.

A Star Tribune/KARE 11 poll in June6 found that only 30% of Minnesotans approved of the new flag. 50% disapproved. The new flag is 20 points underwater! The (left-wing) Star Tribune’s headline? “The new Minnesota state flag is deeply unpopular.”

However, the results are, indeed, sharply polarized. The new flag really is popular with Democrats, who favored it 55-16 (+39). However, Republicans oppose it 90-2 (-88), which is an impressive level of agreement, even within a political party. Moreover, to my considerable surprise, Independents also oppose it, 52-26 (-26). No age group supports it. The only counties to support the new flag are the urban cores of Hennepin and Ramsey, which back the new flag fairly narrowly, 45-30 (+15). The rest of the state, including the metro suburbs, opposes the new flag.

We shouldn’t read too much into this poll. The poll did not ask Minnesotans whether they preferred the old flag to the new flag. It only asked whether Minnesotans approved of the new one. There are undoubtedly some Minnesotans who dislike the new flag, but hated the old one, and so disapprove of the new flag while still preferring it over the old flag. This poll can’t tell us how large this camp is. However, a 2024 poll by the Center for the American Experiment found that, given a choice between keeping the old flag, using the new flag, or going back to the drawing board, a majority supported the old flag. That means this camp is probably fairly small. (I suspect some of them answered “not sure” to the Star Tribune poll.)

At one level, it seems obvious how we ended up here. The DFL picked a culture-war fight and won. The flag they rammed through became a symbol of the unhealthy power dynamic in our state right now, which is, basically, “the Metro doesn't care, doesn't need to care, and doesn't want to care what Outstate thinks. You will take what we give you and you'll like it!” That’s how our state was governed during the DFL trifecta. It is very likely it’s how the state will be governed again in 2027-29. Republicans have not held the governor’s mansion in twenty years (and will not win it again this fall), which makes the ruby-red Greater Minnesota feel disempowered and resentful. The new flag distills that feeling down to a colored rectangle and calls everyone who feels it a racist. This is a recipe for resentment.

This is true enough, but boring. I also don’t think it adequately explains the depth and breadth of opposition to the new flag. After all, if most opponents thought the new flag was pretty, would they really fight it? I don’t think they would. Likewise, I don’t think its supporters would have selected it if they hadn’t genuinely liked it. (They had plenty of options!) I offer a supplemental theory.

When my family member texted the family group chat with excitement about the new flag, I thought she was not deliberately picking a fight. Rather, she thought she had finally found a relatively non-political political issue we would all agree on. The text was an attempt at finding common ground, which has been in short supply of late. My theory is that her reason for liking the new flag wasn’t because it was a culture-war victory for her side. (If she had just wanted to gloat, there were plenty of other, far more consequential, opportunities for her to gloat that term.) My theory is that she liked the new flag because she thought it was pretty, and she expected everyone to agree with her that it was pretty. Unfortunately, the more right-leaning members of the group chat thought it was ugly.

I don’t think this is a coincidence. I think there has been a genuine aesthetic divergence between the Blue and Red tribes in this country. Blue tribers honestly, no posing, think flat, streamlined design is pretty. Red tribers honestly, no posing, want their baroque lines and ornament. This plays out all over the place. The famous McMansion Hell blog is literally just a smug, left-wing Johns Hopkins grad with a master’s degree dunking on what she views as uppity (right-wing) peasants with no taste, largely because they don’t want to live in trendy minimalist cubes. The tribes now watch different movies. They enjoy different TV shows.7

I think some of this happens because the tribes have different views on experts. Red-pilled people imagine that they are maintaining independent judgment in the face of expert consensus, whether the expert consensus is about vaccines, flags, or television. In reality, red-pilled people often resent and distrust experts so deeply that they will reflexively reach for whatever experts don’t recommend, and end up managing covid with only ivermectin while watching Animal Control on FOX. Meanwhile, the blue-pilled imagine they are simply giving moderate weight to expert opinion on vaccines, flags, or television, but, in reality, they robotically fall in step with whatever recognized experts have opined, and feel vaguely uneasy whenever they find themselves outside the expert consensus. They are so invested in defending expert opinion that they become its slaves, and ended up wearing masks into 2022 while loudly insisting that Star Trek Discovery was great, had lots of fans, and that they personally loved it.

However, some of it is probably just tribal sorting. The Blues have, over time, gradually pulled in everyone who thinks High Modernism is a pretty good aesthetic, and the Reds eventually acquired everyone else. The political camps are thus bound to have genuine aesthetic disagreements. These will have nothing to do with anyone’s political principles, yet will play out through polarized political trench warfare. Each tribe will suspect the other tribe of lying about their aesthetic judgments for political reasons (“because who could possibly think something that ugly looks good?”), and both tribes will be wrong to think that.8

My recommendation is to assume that your opponents on the flag question aren’t lying to you. They haven’t been brainwashed into their position—or, at least, no more than you have. They really do think the flag you hate looks better. De gustibus non est disputandum, though, so you simply have to accept their opinion. If you’re going to argue with them, you should argue about the best democratic process for choosing new flags, since you might actually make some headway there.

Is This A Legitimacy Crisis?

I’m obsessed with legitimacy crisis, so of course this was the first question I asked myself.

I have written:

[A legitimacy crisis is] a situation in which different citizens sincerely disagree, at a very basic level, about what the law is and which persons have the authority to make or enforce it. A legitimacy crisis is not a law review paper suggesting that paper money is unconstitutional; a legitimacy crisis is half the country thinking one guy is the de facto and de jure President while the other half of the country sincerely believes some other person is the President. This happens when unforeseen circumstances arise with no clear legal resolution and both sides choose to play hardball.

No, this is not a legitimacy crisis.

The law, in this case, is absolutely positively clear: there is only one flag of Minnesota, and it is the new flag selected by the DFL commission in 2023. No one seriously disputes that this is the law. The reasoning may have been dumb, the commission poorly designed, but the DFL followed the process laid out in the Minnesota Constitution for making a new law, and they had the votes to do it.

However, municipalities are not strictly required to fly the state flag, and may fly other flags if they choose, including old state flags the legislature doesn’t like. No one seriously disputes that this is the law, either. Both sides seek to make changes to the status quo through the law, according to the mutually accepted legal process. That makes this a hot-button issue, but it is the furthest thing from a legitimacy crisis.

At the same time, it is the sort of thing you would expect to see happen in a polity that is ripe for legitimacy crisis. People are taking down the lawful flag of the Capitol and flying a different flag that embodies an aesthetic (and a version of history) that the Capitol expressly rejects! When you ask them why they won’t fly the single, lawful, plainly legitimate new flag, they come up with the most strained process justifications, like, “This flag is illegitimate because there wasn’t a statewide referendum.” Dawg, no Minnesota flag has ever been put to a statewide referendum. If you wanted that to be a rule, you should have put it in the Constitution, but we have a republic, not a democracy.

Meanwhile, ask a new-flag-liker why flag-haters should wave the flag, and they rarely say, “Because we had the votes.” They say something like what my progressive acquaintance said: it was chosen “by the people, for the people,” which… simply isn’t what happened. Many supporters will even insist that the redesign commission was bipartisan. (It wasn’t!9)

If we are like this on an issue where the law and the facts are absolutely clear, and the stakes so low, imagine how quickly motivated reasoning could persuade us to angrily take up a cause in a case where the law and the facts are ambiguous, and where the stakes actually mattered.

For something like this to get so far out of hand, for citizens to rebel so fiercely against a symbol of state unity, and for the Capitol to shove it down their throats so brusquely in the first place, bespeaks a level of freestanding, unquestioned partisan hatred that was foreign to our parents’ generation. As I wrote in 2024:

Think of intensifying partisan hatred as a barrel of gasoline that has sprung a slow, slow leak in a very large room. Every time we thwart a Norm, or throw a hardball, we’re tossing a lit match into that room. Most of them will do nothing. The odds of any single one of them igniting the room are very low.

But when one of them explodes, we would be very silly if we thought there was something special about that particular match. Whatever kicks off our next war will seem unlikely, even absurd… until the moment it becomes inevitable.

The flag “crisis” adds more gasoline to the room. It encourages more match-throwing. However, it is not, itself, a match.

Knock on wood!

What Should Legislators Do?

By turning this into a salient, polarized culture-war issue, the DFL caucus at the state legislature has put themselves and future legislatures in a bind. There’s no “undo” button for this. Before this kerfuffle, the state was reasonably united around the old flag, and voters steadfastly poured water on attempts to spark a culture-war wildfire over it. However, that fire is burning merrily now, and you can’t put it out by returning to the status quo. At this point, the old flag is a symbol of the Red Tribe, just as the new flag is a symbol of the Blue Tribe, so reverting to the old flag wouldn’t reunite the tribes. It would only turn the current winners into losers and the current losers into winners. Neither the old flag nor the new flag is a viable option.

Nor is there a bipartisan third option riding to the rescue like Gandalf at Helm’s Deep. It’s possible that, before all this happened, the DFL could have included Republicans in the redesign process, made design compromises, secured GOP buy-in, and passed some other, less hideous, flag into law, like the laser loon:

That, or something like it, might have won broad popular support, especially with endorsement from party leaders on both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, that moment of possibility has passed. There are far too many voters now who will not accept anything but the old flag. What’s a state legislator to do?

I suggest nothing. It’s a flag, for chrissakes, and the legislature has more important business to attend to. The smart play for Democrats is to officially stand by the new flag, while, in practice, avoiding it whenever possible, both because it is unpopular and because they ought to be embarrassed about how they bungled this into a culture-war issue. Republicans, for their part, should use the flag controversy subtly and sparingly to intimate their narrative: that the DFL are as incompetent as they are tasteless, and as deaf to the voters as they are toadies to woke H.R. ladies. However, even swing voters who dislike the new flag aren’t ranking the flag as one of their actual issues, so that’s all the flag can be for the GOP: an occasional rhetorical tool, not The Issue.

Eventually, passions over the flag will cool, people will get used to the new flag, and, perhaps in a decade or two, the new flag will finally be accepted. Alternatively, the Republicans may blunderingly try to turn the flag into The Issue, and independents will go, “Oh, come on, Minnesota has more important things to work on. It’s a flag, for chrissakes,” and side with the Democrats out of exasperation. One of those is, by far, the most likely way this drama ends.

However, it is possible that the political volume on this issue will get so high in the next couple of years that legislators feel compelled to do something. Yet we’ve just seen that they can’t do anything. They’re stuck!

I hate popular referenda. Popular referenda reduce complex issues to sound bites and fundraising marketed to the lowest-common-denominator voter, and result in states adopting terrible, short-sighted, divisive policies, like California’s property-tax restrictions (which have helped lock young Californians out of the housing market), or Ohio’s abortion-to-birth amendment. We have a republic, not a democracy, precisely because our elected representatives are better able to hone complex policy, considering long-term trade-offs and making appropriate compromises to win broad support. Voters are okay at picking candidates;10 they are terrible at deciding policy. If I could revise every state constitution, I would eliminate citizen-initiated referenda of all kinds, and I would require a supermajority to approve any state constitutional amendment.

However… if you really need an issue to go away, and there’s no complexity to it, and you don’t care how it’s resolved, a referendum might be just the ticket. You could have a “flag primary” featuring the old flag, the new flag, and any other design that gets two thousand signatures in support. Top two advance to the general election. The people decide. It’s still likely to end in a divisive, culture-war victory for one side or the other, but at least it’ll be a culture-war victory with a popular imprimatur on it. Then everyone can agree “the people have spoken” and move on. This isn’t perfect, but all the perfect solutions are long gone.

In the meantime, municipal and county legislators are in more of a bind. They are currently stuck with a choice between flying a flag that signals contempt to the rural half of the state, or a flag that signals contempt to the urban core of the state.11 They can’t request a statewide referendum, but they may have the option of holding a local referendum.

That said, if the purpose of a flag is to emphasize what we hold in common, to celebrate our shared republic (emphasis on shared), local governments might consider simply flying both. Having the old flag and the new flag on the same pole says, “We don’t care which tribe you’re from. In the eyes of this city, we’re all Minnesotans, and we serve you.”

That, it seems to me, is what flags are for.

“Letters to My Daughters” is a series of letters I will send my children, when they are teenagers, about our (Catholic) religion. They are, of necessity, opinionated, and, in light of their audience, paint certain things as I truly see them, but without some of the nuances I would explore if aiming at the general public. Of course, your feedback and advice are welcome, or I wouldn’t be posting it in public.

My dear daughter,

We have discovered that there is (at least) one Unchanged Changer.

Now, you may be inclined to think of it (or, more properly, It) as the God of Abraham and Isaac, your loving father. For today, I encourage you to put that idea out of your head. Your whole life, you have heard stories about God and how much He loves you and how you are made in His image. Inevitably, those stories humanize your understanding of the Unchanged Changer, illuminating some parts of It—but obscuring other parts. That the stories you’ve heard are all true makes not a whit of difference. They still obscure the Changer’s profoundly alien nature.

When we go stargazing at the cabin, we have to turn off our flashlights to see the stars, right? The light from our flashlights is perfectly good light, but it’s not what we’re trying to see. We want to glimpse something stranger, more distant, and harder to see.

So turn off all the stories you know about God and consider, for a little while, the strangeness of the Thing we have discovered. Try to see It directly, with your own eyes, not with the stories you have heard about It.

There is (or at least was) Something (or, perhaps, more than one Something) out there, as old as the universe or older, which simply has no further explanation. They (or It) caused all changes we observe. It was not created, did not develop, did not learn, did not move, did not change, yet is the origin of all change in the universe. It does not act because something acted upon it. It does not even act because something within Itself chose to act (like humans act), or triggered its power to act (like a bomb when its timer hits zero). The Unchanged Changer simply acted!

And this is not a small act! The results of Its act include, at minimum, all change in the universe—from the billions of subatomic particles that your body shapes into fingernails, to billions of suns exploding in billions of galaxies billions of light-years away. The universe is so immense and complicated that, if I didn’t live in it, I wouldn’t believe in it. What could cause all that?

This is utterly beyond our experience.

As you know, when I was a little kid, I could only watch Star Trek when it aired on TV (mostly after bedtime). That is… unless I had an episode on tape! We owned a tape player, so, if I had an episode on tape, I could watch it whenever I wanted!

I rented Star Trek tapes at every video store my family visited. To this day, I can tell you which episodes were at Mr. Movies and which at Shamrock Video. Whenever I had $10 (not often), I went to the next level: I bought my own tapes at Best Buy. Eventually, I owned three whole episodes! Naturally, I watched those three episodes about 470 times. One of them was called, “The Immunity Syndrome.”

In that episode, the Enterprise crew is pursuing a mysterious “zone of darkness” in space. All scans fail. Captain Kirk asks Spock for an explanation:

KIRK: Spock, give me an update on the dark area ahead.

SPOCK: No analysis due to insufficient information.

KIRK: No speculation, no information, nothing. I've asked you three times for information on that, and you've been unable to supply it. Insufficient data is not sufficient, Mister Spock! You're the science officer. You're supposed to have sufficient data all the time!

SPOCK: I am well aware of that, Captain, but the computers contain nothing on this phenomenon. It is beyond our experience, and the new information is not yet significant.

KIRK: I don't know about you, but I'm tired. (pause) If you can't tell me what it is, let's use reverse logic. Perhaps it'll help if you tell me what it isn't.

SPOCK: It is not liquid, gaseous, or solid, despite the fact we cannot see through it.

KIRK: So far, that's not much help.

Captain Kirk was being cleverer than he realized. This “reverse logic” is a time-tested method for learning more about entities beyond our ken. St. Thomas Aquinas called it the via remotionis (“the way of removal”). According to Aquinas, this “way of removal” is the only way we can gather knowledge about Unchanged Changers.

For example, we saw in our last letter that, if Unchanged Changers had a beginning, that would mean something changed them. Therefore, Unchanged Changers have no beginning. By removing their beginning, we see that Unchanged Changers are eternal.1

We can take this further.

(For this letter, I have chosen a path I think is relatively easy. I will skip several strong arguments, just because they require too much work to understand. If you pursue The Quest yourself, you will find twistier paths to grander citadels. Even after my attempts to smooth the road, though, I think this may be the hardest letter in the whole book. Gird yourself!)

We already saw that, if time has a beginning, then time has changed, which can only be explained by an Unchanged Changer beyond time. Aristotle defined time as “the measure of change.” (If there is change, there is time, and vice versa.2) Now, change requires a “before” and an “after”, which can only exist within time. Therefore, if time has a beginning, any Unchanged Changer, existing outside of time, cannot change, and therefore cannot perish.

On the other hand, suppose time and change have no beginning. For example, perhaps the Big Bang was only the latest in an infinite series of Big Bangs, each of them explained by at least one eternal Unchanged Changer. If that were the case, then it would mean that the Unchanged Changer(s) have been setting universes in motion for all eternity. If it were possible for these Unchanged Changers to perish, it is logically necessary that they would already have done so, an infinite amount of time before now. (This is the strange but rigid logic of infinity.) Without eternal Unchanged Changers to maintain eternal change, the changes they set in motion would have eventually ceased, too, infinitely long ago. But we see that some things still do change, so this has not happened. Therefore, even if time has no beginning, Unchanged Changers still cannot perish.

Either way, all the Unchanged Changers that set the cosmos in motion are still with us today, and ever shall be.

Some have suggested that Unchanged Changers have parts. For example, one could suppose, almost coherently, that Zeus has (and has had eternally) a head, two eyes, a spleen, a mind of his own, and an innate eternal act that causes changes (in other parts of Zeus or in the external world), without itself being changed. (The Greeks themselves did not suppose this, but the Greek pagans were a lot smarter about ontology than many moderns.) A being composed of parts is called a composite. For a composite to exist, its parts must either develop (like a tree growing a branch), be joined together (like a seed fertilizing an egg, or atoms forming a bond), or in some other way be caused to unite. All of these are changes. But Unchanged Changers are not changed before their act, so they cannot be composed. By removing the possibility of composition, we see that Unchanged Changers are absolutely simple, without parts.

When Unchanged Changers set the causal chains in motion, we know that (unlike everything in our ordinary experience) they are not converting an unrealized possibility within themselves into action. They, and they alone, act without any unrealized possibility. When they act, it is pure act. Since Unchanged Changers have no parts, there is no other aspect of them that could include unrealized possibilities. Therefore, Unchanged Changers have no unrealized possibilities. By removing unrealized possibilities, we learn that Unchanged Changers are absolutely changeless, even after they kick off causation. (We already could have guessed that. As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, if Unchanged Changers are outside time, then they already can’t change. Aristotle believed that they are eternally inside of time, but also believes they can’t change, and offers his own separate proof why.)

If Unchanged Changers were made of matter, they would have parts. They would also be changeable. (Matter can always, at the very minimum, be moved a few inches to the left, which is a kind of change.) We know that Unchanged Changers have neither parts nor change, so they must not have any matter. This means that Unchanged Changers are immaterial.

Aristotle made it this far on his own. He suggested that, since one (simple, eternal, immutable, immaterial) Unchanged Changer was enough to explain the universe, we ought to assume there really is only one, because of Occam’s Razor.3 A couple thousand years later, Thomas Aquinas went a step further:

For there to be more than one Unchanged Changer, they would have to be distinguished from one another in some way. Here in the material world, many things are distinguished by being made of different matter. For example, two #2 Ticonderoga pencils might be exactly the same in every respect, except one of them is made of these atoms and the other is made of those atoms, and so they occupy different physical space, and so they are different pencils. Other things are distinguished by having different definitions altogether. For example, dogs and chickens are different not just because each dog is made of different matter than each chicken, but also because dogs have four legs, fur, and a good sense of play, while chickens are just… kinda blah?

Unchanged Changers, however, are immaterial. Since they have no matter, the only way to distinguish them is for them to have different definitions. However, since every Unchanged Changer is necessarily a simple, immutable, eternal pure act, there’s no useful distinction to be drawn between “different” Unchanged Changers. Each attempt to describe a second Unchanged Changer collapses into another description of the first. (I am omitting the argument that the existence of an Unchanged Changer is its essence, which seals the deal here.) Therefore, there cannot be a second Unchanged Changer. Removing that possibility, we find that there is exactly one Unchanged Changer, one Pure Act, one Eternal Creator.

I’m not sure we can ever be absolutely certain of anything. It’s always possible for humans to make mistakes, even really obvious ones. However, some things are pretty close to certain, things like the Pythagorean Theorem in math, or the theory in astronomy that the Earth goes around the Sun. This Unchanged Changer we’ve discovered seems to be as certain as math. We have started from obvious empirical observations: some things change. We have followed simple, careful logic. We have drawn clear conclusions.

If we had come into this with a strong prior conviction that immaterial things are absolutely impossible, we might have gone to great lengths to resist the conclusion that an eternal, immaterial being exists. Indeed, some of our Mechanical Materialist friends, who are (like us) trying to explain why there’s something rather than nothing, would rather give up entirely than admit the existence of immaterial things!

However, we had no such prejudice against the immaterial, so we can see the argument as clearly as Aristotle did. It is not an argument that depends on complicated math and putting faith in astronomers (like the claim that Earth orbits the sun). Nor does the argument depend on complicated or surprising logic, nor on exotic metaphysical claims. If you asked me to rank some of the most certain things in my life, it would be something like:

MOST CERTAIN

1. 2+2=4

2. The Unchanged Changer exists and is one, immaterial, eternal, and so on.

3. The square of the two side lengths of a triangle equals the length of its hypotenuse.

4. You love me.

5. Earth orbits the sun.

LESS CERTAIN (BUT STILL PRETTY CERTAIN)

What would it be like to actually encounter this Thing, though? What would it even mean to “encounter” such an Alien? Does It even have its own experiences? If It does, how different must those experiences be from our own? It seems unlikely the Alien could ever, for example, converse with us. If It has the capacity to relate to us in any way, it would be more alien than any first-contact story in Star Trek.

By now, we have ruled out many of the candidates for Unchanged Changer that we mentioned in the last letter. Is the Unchanged Changer…

• The universe itself (as Bertrand Russell argued)? No, because the universe itself is composite, material, and probably not eternal.

• A small piece of fairy cake (as Trin Tragula might have speculated)? Or the Sun (as some pagan religions have believed)? Or the Big Bang itself? No, for similar reasons.

• The entire Greek pantheon (Zeus, Hera, Athena, and so on)? No, since there is only one simple Unchanged Changer, not a pantheon of them.

• Zeus? From the legends I’ve read, Zeus was a pretty fickle dude, and he was born from Cronus and Rhea, so he seems neither eternal nor unchangeable, and he often seems to have a material body with parts, so that’s three strikes.

Aristotle and Aquinas go on about the attributes of the Unchanged Changer for hundreds more pages (as have their successors). There is a great deal more to be said about this bizarre entity! (Its existence is Its essence! It belongs to no genus!)

However, I wish to call your attention to just two more observations about our Alien, the Unchanged Changer.

The first is about Its knowledge.

Remember those patterns we talked about a couple of letters ago? Patterns that don’t exist in themselves, but which exist in other things? Patterns like perfect triangles and the number four? We called those patterns forms. Aquinas and Aristotle sometimes also called them ideas.4 Ideas seem to be real features of the world (no matter what the Mechanical Materialists say), but they also have no matter. When we encounter a new pattern—for example, the first time we see the color green—we come to know that pattern. We do this by acquiring the pattern itself. Our eyes do not turn green. You cannot go inside your head and find green patches sprouting up. Yet we can now call up the immaterial experience of greenness whenever we like. It need not be connected to our original experience of green, either! Once we learn green from, say, grass, we can imagine green in other places, like cars or clouds. This shows that we have acquired the immaterial pattern of green in our intellect. Our intellect must be, to some extent, immaterial. We saw this a couple of letters ago.

Now we have just discovered an alien being that is not only purely immaterial, but also a pure act. What is that act?

Aristotle says: thinking! An entirely immaterial being has even greater access to the immaterial forms than we do. If an immaterial being has any activity at all, it must be either thinking or something built on thinking (willing, desiring, and so on).

This is not too surprising, since we have pretty good reason to suspect the Unchanged Changer is the origin of forms/ideas/patterns.

Here’s what I mean by that. Plato believed that ideas simply exist, immaterially, almost as though they were in a separate dimension or “realm of ideas,” and that only immaterial intellects (like ours) are able to access that dimension. Aristotle thought that the “realm of ideas” raised more questions than it answered, though, so Aristotle argued that beings directly participate in the ideas (by being green, or whatever). But Aquinas pointed out that Aristotle’s approach had problems, too. If “horseness” only exists within actual horses, is the immaterial form destroyed when horses go extinct? How did the first horse acquire it? Aquinas solved these problems by arguing that ideas did eternally exist—not in their own realm, but as ideas in the intellect of the Unchanged Changer.

One more approach: every change involves a transition from one form to another, so, when the immaterial Unchanged Changer acts to set everything into motion, it must act through an immaterial pattern that it already, in some way, possesses. It cannot possess that pattern through matter (like a leaf might possess, to some extent, the pattern of green), since the Unchanged Changer has no matter, and it must possess the whole pattern, not just some fragment of it imprinted in something that doesn’t even exist prior to the Unchanged Changer’s pure act. Thus, the immaterial Unchanged Changer has access to immaterial patterns… which is simply to say that (like us), It has Ideas. It knows something. It is then, in some sense, intelligent… although Its intelligence is likely very alien to ours.

(If you are not wholly convinced by these arguments for the Alien’s intelligence, that is okay. I have compressed many arguments in this letter to within an inch of their lives, but this particular argument was so complicated, and involved so much philosophical overhead you aren’t yet old enough to follow, that I went past compression into actual corner-cutting. If you find weaknesses in the above, you are not imagining them, but I think it is, at least, good evidence.)

One final point about the Alien for today. I want to discuss Its goodness—if It is indeed good.

Many people will tell you that we can know, with the same logical certainty as all the other attributes we’ve just discussed, that God is Good—and, in fact, perfectly good!

When someone tells you this, ask them to define “good” before they give you the argument. You will often find that, while, yes, the Unchanged Changer is provably “good,” by your friends specific definition, that definition is rather different from the commonplace definition of “good.” Aquinas, for example, tends to define good as Being (and evil as incomplete Being), which is not the ordinary definition.

One difficulty is that, when you get right down to it, there is no commonplace, ordinary, objective definition of “good.” We treat goodness, in practice, as “I know it when I see it.” However, when dealing with an Alien this different from us, that won’t do! We can’t simply vibe our way to understanding how this Alien will react to, say, an orphan child starving to death in a war zone. Many people who object to the Alien’s existence because evil exists have not even bothered to offer an objective definition of evil, much less checked to see whether that form of evil is incompatible with what we know of the Alien.

Now, some reassurance: on closer inspection, Aquinas’s definition of good turns out to be pretty solid. There are ways to reason from that definition to something that at least closely resembles conventional Divine Omnibenevolence. We end up with very good reason to believe that, although God is not good by the ordinary definition of good, he is nevertheless something very like good, indeed better than good. However, the argument is not easy, and I cannot include it here, even cutting corners.

Even if I did, you remember the piggies in Speaker for the Dead, right? (From planet Lusitania?) The piggies were good, but what was good for them was so different from what was good for us that they took the heroic humans who studied them, tortured them to death… and thought they were doing the humans a big favor. Our situation with the Alien is not quite the same, since the piggies and humans simply didn’t understand one another, and we can be confident that the Unchanged Changer understands us. However, we do not understand It. In Its fathomless infinity, we never will. We can prove a lot about the Alien through pure logic, but to really learn about Its character, we are probably going to need to have some sort of direct contact.

In my next letter, we will begin our search for signs of contact.

DE CIV NEXT VOYAGE: I have already written an article on the Minnesota flag, uh, situation. That will post next week. I am also working on a Worthy Reads to button up the month.

I am a Certified Nuke Worrier. We have weapons capable of rendering mankind extinct. Because we have them, someone will eventually use them. I don’t have a bunker in my backyard, but I do follow the Ready.gov nuclear war preparedness advice (you should, too!), and I keep a 5TB backup hard disk (unplugged) in a sturdy Faraday cage, so I don’t lose my family photos in the event of a high-altitude EMP nuclear attack. Of course, this only helps me in a limited nuclear war. In all-out nuclear war, I’m dead, and there’s nothing I can do about that.

Oh, yes, we have plenty of nuclear doctrines that are supposed to forestall global thermonuclear war, like Mutually Assured Destruction, but these doctrines rely on the decisions being made by well-informed, deliberative, sane men. Alas, information is not always clear, nuclear time pressure prevents deliberation, and not all world leaders are sane. For example, the current U.S. president might be ungenerously described as “a living game of Russian Roulette,” the previous president as “a drooling vegetable.” That puts America’s leaders solidly in the middle of the pack. Nothing prevents us from nuking the world except rational self-interest, which is very bad news for anyone who has ever met human beings.

Moreover, nuclear technology can only proliferate over time, and the speed of proliferation can only increase. Once a country goes nuclear, it almost never stops.1 The U.S. recently fought a war with Iran to discourage its nuclear program, and lost decisively.2 This clears the way for the mad mullahs to go nuclear—which, in turn, would set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, not exactly the cradle of statesmen. Speaking of statesmen, Kim Jong Un has had nuclear weapons for decades, and now likely has the capability to launch an ICBM at any target on Earth. The inexorable march of technology promises to make the tools for nuke-building ever-cheaper. (I wonder how many decades are left until the first nuclear-armed for-profit corporation.) Since the Global War on Terror ended, nobody has really cared, either! The New START Treaty, our last great disarmament effort, expired this year with nary a whisper in the press.

When the next nuclear crisis comes, cooler heads might prevail. In fact, they probably will. Think JFK withdrawing launchers from Turkey in 1962, or Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov breaking protocol to flag the 1983 American “attack” a false alarm, thereby saving the world. However, the law of averages tells us that, eventually, cooler heads will not prevail. Someone with the power to fire a humanity-ending number of weapons will give the order, the nukes will launch, and we will die. Until humanity develops strong anti-nuclear defenses or creates self-sustaining settlements on other planets, we are on a clock. Even after the Cold War, even in the age of AI and pandemics, I still believe that, if humanity goes extinct this century, it will most likely be in mushroom clouds. I also believe we don’t worry about this enough.

Annie Jacobsen wants you to be as scared about nukes as I am. Her taut 2024 bestseller, Nuclear War: A Scenario, follows a simple outline: after a brief overview of nuclear history (with a particular focus on U.S. nuclear weapons policy) she walks readers through each stage of an imagined nuclear exchange. Her scenario begins in Earth orbit, when America’s SBIRS satellite system detects a launch in North Korea. Her scenario lasts just 72 minutes. At the end of her scenario, everyone—everyone—is dead or dying.

Jacobsen’s research is wide-ranging and impressive. She draws a comprehensive, layman-accessible picture of the entire U.S. and Russian nuclear command-and-control programs. From the Aerospace Data Facility in Colorado to the Clear Space Force Station in Alaska to STRATCOM Headquarters in Nebraska, Jacobsen races around the globe, pointing out many pieces of our nuclear system that you’ve never heard of. (At least, I hadn’t.) She fought for on-the-record quotes from dozens of remarkably well-placed sources. She even managed to get a few things declassified specifically so she could publish them in this book! She then weaves just enough technical detail together with juicy supporting quotes from her sources to create a gripping narrative marinated in dread.

Have you seen Netflix’s A House of Dynamite? If so, you’ve already read about half this book. As far as I can tell, no one involved in Dynamite has admitted to cribbing Jacobsen’s book, probably because that would mean they’d have to pay her. However, it seems obvious to me that they relied on Jacobsen’s book a great deal (and used many of the same tricks to get the same effect). Their scenario is basically Jacobsen’s with the serial numbers filed off, and they gravitate to the same quotes as Jacobsen (“hitting a bullet with a bullet”).

Nevertheless, Jacobsen does it better. Because it is a movie, Dynamite had to rely on its characters to set the mood. We spend a lot of time looking at Rebecca Ferguson’s face as she tries not to tear up. Jacobsen, writing a book, can dispense with characters altogether, and instead explains the details Ferguson’s character was seeing on her inscrutable display screens. We don’t have to get our horror second-hand. Jacobsen feeds it to us pure. It is terrifying.

Unfortunately, she cheats.

Writing the 2020 civil war scenario for De Civ taught me something: a scenario is exactly as plausible as its second-least-plausible event. You’re allowed one plausible-but-very-improbable event, because the world is full of those, and world-shattering crises are almost always put in motion by one of ‘em. However, once you’ve had your one black swan event, you have to rigidly follow the logic of the scenario.

Of course, when writing a scenario, one will naturally come to crossroads where several things could happen, none of them overwhelmingly likely, and then the author must make a choice about how to proceed. The author will generally choose the most interesting option, even if it is not absolutely the most likely. That’s one thing. It’s quite another thing if your scenario needs a second black swan event. If it does, your scenario isn’t very plausible, and your readers are justified in setting it aside as fantasy.

Here are the key decision points in Jacobsen’s scenario:

1. Out of the blue, North Korea launches three nukes at the United States, flattening Washington, D.C. and irradiating a large portion of California.

2. The U.S. swiftly responds with an 82-missile salvo against North Korea.

3. The Russians misinterpret the U.S. launch as a nuclear attack on Russia.

4. Russia launches a full nuclear counter-attack against the United Sates.

5. The U.S. and allies retaliate in turn against Russia with a full nuclear counter-attack.

Then the world ends.

The initial attack makes no sense, but that is okay.

In Jacobsen’s scenario, North Korea fires a nuke at Washington and another at California. Later, too late to matter, they detonate a high-altitude EMP. Jacobsen never gives us any insight as to what plausible reason North Korea has for doing this. That’s because there isn’t one. Hitting the U.S. with three nukes would gain the Hermit Kingdom no discernible advantage, but it would gain a considerable disadvantage: the U.S.’s guaranteed retaliation would annihilate Pyongyang’s industry and government (not to mention Pyongyang itself!). Why would they do this? Jacobsen does not even attempt to explain.

Moreover, the nuclear weapon North Korea uses against Washington in this scenario has a 1-megaton yield.3 Jacobsen does not answer, or even acknowledge, another really important question: in her scenario, where did North Korea get megaton weapons?

The largest North Korean nuclear weapons test, in 2017, yielded an explosion that was, at most, 340 kilotons, probably closer to 250 kilotons—about a third to a quarter as powerful as the nuke in Jacobsen’s scenario.4 You might say, “James, it’s still a nuke! Who cares? Nobody survives a nuke!” But that’s just not true! Tonnage matters a ton!5 In a 1-megaton airburst attack on the Pentagon, the Washington Monument falls down, the White House and Capitol are destroyed (or at least severely damaged), and people standing on the street as far out as Fall’s Church, seven miles away, get third-degree flash burns. GWU hospital is destroyed and many other downtown D.C. hospitals are severely damaged. The President’s escape helicopter is very possibly downed by the electromagnetic pulse, and U.S. nuclear command-and-control comes under extreme strain.

In a 250-kiloton explosion, none of that happens. Downtown Alexandria (which is even closer to the detonation than Fall’s Church) sees every window facing the explosion shatter, but its hospitals continue functioning. The President makes a clean escape, and is able to return to the still-standing White House when the crisis is over. Casualties are much lower, both because there are fewer than half as many injuries, and because much more of the infrastructure of Washington is still functioning. The animals in the National Zoo are not all lit on fire by flash burns and then killed by radioactive fallout while no one comes to save them (as Jacobsen colorfully depicts on pages 212-213).

Jacobsen presumably wants to write about a one-megaton explosion over Washington because we spent much of the Cold War imagining megaton and multi-megaton explosions over American cities. The phenomenon is therefore well-studied in both military documents and popular cinema, which makes it easier to write about. Plus, megaton detonations are scarier! However, the Cold War is over. To our knowledge, North Korea does not currently have the capability to inflict a nightmare of that magnitude on the American homeland. A lesser nightmare, yes.)

Neglecting the tonnage distinction does the reader a particular disservice, since the major difference between a megaton-scale nuclear bomb and a kiloton-scale nuclear bomb is that you can probably survive a kiloton-scale nuclear bomb. People always make fun of “duck and cover,” like, “ha ha, what good is a flimsy desk gonna do in a nuclear fireball? we’re all gonna die anyway,” but, if you’re in the (very large) ring where a bomb does moderate-to-severe structural damage but you’re still outside the fireball, duck and cover will unironically save your life.

Still, fair is fair, and everyone gets one plausibility-straining inciting event per scenario. “Kim Jong Un builds a bigger nuke, U.S. intelligence misses it, and then he does something insane and self-defeating with it” is a black swan, but it’s not exactly unbelievable, either. Jacobsen's decision to omit any possible explanation is frustrating, but may be the best way to mask the fact that she does not have one and, according to the Laws of Scenario-Writing, does not need one.

The next hundred and fifty pages of the narrative proceed beautifully. It really is shocking how quickly one ICBM can turn a beautiful day into Hell on Earth, and Jacobsen tells that story very well.

Jacobsen also changed my mind. The first North Korean nuke strikes the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California. This unleashes its own sort of hell, creating radioactive fallout that poisons the surrounding ocean, kills untold thousands of people on land for hundreds of miles around, and renders an area the size of “two New Jerseys” uninhabitable “forever.” Imagine the worst-case scenario at Chernobyl, then multiply it, then try to imagine managing it during a nuclear war. I’m very pro-nuclear power. It produces abundant energy at low cost with no carbon emissions and no environmental damage, with safeguards upon safeguards that prevent disaster as long as they are administered by an even moderately effective government. However, Jacobsen points out that there’s nothing to prevent someone from overwhelming all those safeguards in a few instants with a single nuclear device.

Much of the disaster that Jacobsen details results from the fact that, in addition to the reactors themselves, the Diablo Canyon facility also contains over 2,500 cooling pools and dry cask storage units, which contain over 2,500 highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel assemblies. All these cooling pools and casks are instantly vaporized by the North Korean nuke, sending vast quantities of radioactive fuel into the atmosphere. This occurs largely because the U.S. has abjectly failed to develop a long-term nuclear storage solution. Spent nuclear fuel is supposed to be shipped to a long-term facility (under a mountain or suchlike, which is safe because it’s where uranium came from in the first place), with cooling pools and dry-cask storage used only as a “temporary” measure. However, U.S. policy makers have, for decades, allowed local interests and “environmental activists”6 to prevent the opening of the U.S. long-term nuclear storage facility at Yucca Mountain. Jacobsen persuades me that this opposition should be crushed, by whatever means Congress and the White House have to hand.7 Every freestanding dry cask unit in the country puts us in danger.

Beyond that, Jacobsen persuades me that nuclear plant safety standards should take into account the possibility of nearby nuclear detonation, whether from a missile or a suitcase nuke. For example, upon detection of an ICBM launch projected to land within 2,000 miles of a nuclear power plant, the plant should immediately scram its reactors. Since even a scram shutdown takes hours, not minutes, relevant cooling systems should be capable of surviving nuclear attack. If they cannot, then land-based nuclear power plants may not be such a good idea after all. A technology that is utopian on most days but apocalyptic on a bad one probably does not pass a long-term cost/benefit analysis.

I admit that I find Jacobsen’s prose style irritating, at times. She has an inordinate love of sentence fragments that makes her professional work read, at times, like an action-adventure novel for pre-teen boys. Example:

But this was a small complaint against a compelling read. After all, even I sometimes succumb to the temptation to dramatically start paragraphs with a conjunction.

However, on pages 218-226, the book suddenly falls to pieces.

It is 43 minutes since the North Koreans launched their missile. Twenty minutes ago, a nuclear weapon rendered much of Southern California uninhabitable. Ten minutes ago, Washington, D.C. was obliterated. Russia knows that North Korea launched the attack. More importantly, Russia knows that the U.S. knows North Korea launched the attack. The 82-missile retaliatory salvo, aimed at North Korea, has just blinked on to Russian radar.

Here, Jacobsen commits the cardinal sin of scenario-writing: a second, independent black swan event.

Here is the paywall. Worthy Reads and Short Reviews are the only paywalled categories at De Civ. I love every reader, but paylisters are the people who keep me writing, and they’ve earned their treats. If you’d like to read on, you can do so by subscribing here:

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Bottom line? I confirmed the aphorism: “Stare decisis is an old Latin phrase that means ‘Let the wrong decisions of the Warren Court stand.’” The Warren Court turned out to be the era of the Court with the least respect for stare decisis, with subsequent eras treating precedent with much more respect (which has given the Warren Court outsized influence on American law). This is, perhaps, unsurprising, but, along the way, I explained stare decisis, explored various ways of measuring adherence to it, and put each era of the Court to the test. It was good! Here is the full article:

However, the original article ended on an uncertain note. Because the conservative Barrett Court was only two terms old at the time, I couldn’t draw any firm conclusions about this newest era of the Court:

What seems clear from the charts is that, based on the very limited data we have about the Barrett Court so far, the current conservative Court has not abandoned, or even weakened, stare decisis. Indeed, we have some very limited reason to suspect that it might be somewhat more respectful of stare decisis than some of its progressive predecessors. Of course, this could change (in either direction) as we collect more data about the Barrett Court in coming terms.

The Barrett Court now has six terms under its belt (OT ‘20 through OT ‘25), which makes this a good time to update the charts and draw firmer conclusions.

As in the last article, I have used the official Library of Congress “Table of Supreme Court Decisions Overruled by Subsequent Decisions” as my data source. According to this chart, the Barrett Court has overturned precedent twice:

• Roe v. Wade (1973) (and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)), overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) (already tallied on the original charts)

• Chevron v. NRDC (1984), overturned by Loper Bright (2024)

The list has clearly not been updated for OT 2025 yet, so I have taken the liberty of adding two more in my data sheet:

• Humphrey’s Executor (1935), overturned by Trump v. Slaughter (2026)

• Colorado II (2001), overturned by NRSC v. FEC (2026)

As we saw last time, the Supreme Court sometimes discards or vitiates old precedents without admitting that it has done so. For example, Lochner v. New York is clearly no longer the law of the land, but it was never formally overturned, and so does not appear on this list.

The Barrett Court has continued this ancient practice. In fact, I complained at some length that Students for Fair Admission vs. Harvard was very carefully written to avoid overturning The Regents v. Bakke, even though Bakke was a very bad, fractured, mess of a decision; even though following it forced the Court to address a constitutional question that it had no business questioning; and even though Bakke was left bleeding out on the floor anyway, because Bakke has always been unmanageable.1 This sort of artful dodge is not recorded on the Library of Congress’s list, as they frankly acknowledge in their methodology.

However, every modern era of the Court has done this, and we have no reason to believe the Barrett Court has done it more than the others, so it all comes out in the wash (or, at least, that’s the Library of Congress’s assumption).2

Anything else that needs explaining was already explained in “The Most Dangerous Time To Be A Supreme Court Precedent,” so let’s go directly to the charts, then I’ll draw some conclusions, and then we’re done.

Stare Decisis Charts, Updated for 2026

I find it difficult to draw any conclusion other than this: statistically speaking, the Barrett Court remains the most restrained of the modern era, its decisions more respectful of precedent than that of any other court in the living memory of anyone under the age of about 85.

If someone under the age of 85 tells you that today’s Supreme Court is distinctly disrespectful of stare decisis, then, there are several possibilities:

• They are ill-informed. There is a great deal of propaganda and disinformation in the world today. Both sides can see it clearly on the other side, but tend to fall for it when it comes from their own side. It’s a real plank-in-your-own-eye situation.3 One of the conscious current political goals of the American Left is to destroy the legitimacy of the Supreme Court so that they may justify (to themselves) extraordinary measures, such as court-packing, to “retake” it. There is therefore a constant drumbeat in left-leaning news sources about “lawlessness” and “disrespect for precedent” on the current Supreme Court, alongside various other lines of attack. The empirical observation that the current Supreme Court appears to be more respectful of stare decisis than all other recent iterations does not fit this narrative, so it is ignored. Mostly-innocent audiences thereby acquire false beliefs.

• They are partisan hacks doing it on purpose. Hey, the Court isn’t going to delegitimize itself! Somebody’s gotta come up with the slogans for the newspapers, while quietly Occam’s Brooming less-convenient facts under the rug.

• They are engaged in some sort of special pleading. An example of this approach might be to argue that, while the Barrett Court has (by any measure) overturned far fewer precedents than the beloved Burger Court, the precedents the Barrett Court overturned were much more important, or the Barrett Court has done a sloppier job applying four-factor stare decisis tests, or the Barrett Court’s overturnings were simply wrongly decided while the Burger Court’s were rightly decided, or that the Barrett Court has fallen short in some other (usually more subjective) way that proves their disrespect for precedent despite our data showing the opposite. It is possible that these people are correct! Special pleading does sometimes uncover more accurate ways to measure stuff!4 However, this should be treated with appropriate skepticism, because this sort of argument usually just boils down to a double standard.

• They’re suffering from wishful thinking. Conservatives took control of the Supreme Court by sticking to a fifty-year intellectual and political project that built new institutions from scratch, transformed the judiciary and legal academy as a whole, and won many millions of convert voters across America. This was very hard. There were many instances of one-step-forward, two-steps-back. Conservatives lost a lot of cases in the interim. And, quite frankly, it took some very good luck for them to finally consummate their victory and install a durable 5-1-3 conservative majority on the Court in October 2020. To take back the Court, progressives would have to engage in a similar project of similar difficulty over a similar span of decades. Many progressives living today would not live to see that project completed. Many of them therefore want the Supreme Court to be illegitimate so that they can (in their minds) justify skipping all that hard work and just seizing control of the Court. They want the Barrett Court to be a historical outlier, and wanting is halfway to believing.

  • (You should take that one with a large grain of salt, because I’m psychologizing about my opponents, which is often wrong and always dangerous.)

• They are humans, who suffer from recency bias, which is so cripplingly severe that it’s astounding that our race has ever learned a single thing from our shared past—and, indeed, arguably, we haven’t. For these people, the Barrett Court’s overturning of precedent is disproportionately important because it just happened, and who even remembers Swift v. Tyson, anyway?

• They are psychics, who are able to tap directly into the conscious minds of people who lived in the 1860s, and are thereby able to remember the early Republic, when the Court really was much more deferential to Congress than it has been post-Reconstruction.

• They genuinely (if unconsciously) believe the old aphorism that stare decisis means “Let the decisions of the Warren Court stand”—or, perhaps, that stare decisis applies to progressive decisions but not conservative ones. For these people, overturning Bowers v. Hardwick was a great feather in the Supreme Court’s hat, but overturning Humphrey’s Executor was practically an usurpation.

There may be other possibilities which I have not considered. I would now say something like, “Let me know what you think in the comments!” if that didn’t make me sound like a desperate YouTuber.

Postscript.

By coincidence, I find that I am posting this on the Fourth of July. Two hundred and fifty years! It’s nothing to sneeze at. The Roman Republic lasted around five hundred years, so, by historical standards, we’re only at America’s halfway point. I want to believe that very badly.

If I may make one request of you today, it is this: please find a way today to love America for what it is.

Loving America for what it was does not count. Loving America for what it will be (or could be) does not. The first is the conservative sin against patriotism. The second is the progressive sin.

Loving only, or primarily, the parts of America that correspond to your tribe does not count. If you are a red-triber, you must love the whole thing, including the blue-haired Mamdani-pilled transgenders who are trying to ruin sports and capitalism. If you are a blue-triber, you must love the whole thing, including the unvaxxed red-hat chuds who only love corruption when Mr. Trump does it.5 Find a way to think of us, for one day, as one people. The day we can no longer imagine ourselves as one people is the day we stop being one nation.

Love America as she is, now, in 2026. Do it where your friends can hear you. Do it where your kids can hear you.

Here is Bing Cosby singing on the Fourth of July early in World War II, while the future of the Free World remained in doubt:6

These claims are false, although there is a kernel of truth in them.

To be fair, most pro-choicers have internalized that this line of argument is both ineffective and stupid, so you don’t see this argument very often anymore. (It was much more common in the 1960s and 1970s.) Moreover, none of this inside-baseball Catholic history actually matters to the abortion debate. As I’ve written before:

When pro-lifers are discussing abortion with others, I think we should all play atheists. Abortion is not wrong because God said so; abortion is wrong because it’s murder. We didn’t learn that life begins at conception from the Bible. We learned it from modern embryology, barely a hundred fifty years ago. There is even a credible argument that the Bible points away from fetal rights. If that argument is correct, then the Bible is wrong, simple as that.

The question of ensoulment matters to Catholics, but it has little bearing on the central facts of the abortion debate: the human right to live and the fetus’s humanity.

However, this particular claim has been made often enough to irritate me. I care about obscure Catholic doctrinal history even when it isn’t relevant to the abortion debate, so I finally looked up Pope Innocent’s decision (sometimes known by its incipit, Sicut ex). Here it is:

Latin text (hand-typed, apologies if typos):

Sicut ex literarum vestrarum tenore accepimus quum quidam presbyter vestri ordinis, qui prius fuerat niger monachus, quandam mulierem praegnantem, cum qua contraxerat consuetudinem inhonestam, et quae asserebat, se concepisse ex eo, per zonam arripuerit, quasi ludens, ipsa mulier postmodum per hoc sic se asseruit esse laesam, quod occasione huiusmodi abortivit; propter quod idem prebyter, proborum virorum usus consilio, se ipsum duxit ab altaris ministerio sequestrandum. Quare nobis humiliter supplicastis, ut cum eo agere misericorditer dignaremur. Nos vero devotioni vestrae insinuationed praesentium respondemus, quod, si nondum era vivificatus conceptus, ministrare poterit; alioquin debet ab altaris officio abstinere.

English translation (GPT, manually spot-checked2):

You will notice, I trust, that this text bears little resemblance to what the pro-choicers “quoted” above. The word “irregular” does not even appear. There is no discussion of sex differences. There is no date fixed for ensoulment. There is no permission granted for abortion. I don’t know when, or why, or whether it was an accident, but the pro-choicers fabricated their quotations. We needn’t understand any further context to see that the pro-choicers here are making things up.

Nevertheless, for those not versed in medieval monks and canon law, an examination of the context might still be useful.

The Carthusian monks here have a brother who got a girl pregnant. He later grabbed her by the belt (allegedly “in jest”) and she asserted this caused her to miscarry. Thus, the Carthusian in question (allegedly) caused an accidental abortion.3 The Carthusians immediately took him out of priestly ministry, but the prior of the monastery sought a decision of the pope, asking for mercy.

The reason the prior is asking for mercy is because there was a traditional rule in canon law (stated by, inter alia, Pope John VIII) that a priest who is guilty of murder cannot ever return to priestly ministry, not even after doing penance, not even if given a special dispensation by the pope.

There was no question that abortion was a serious crime. All contemporary canonists agreed on this: Gratian, Rufinius, Bernard of Pavia, Bandinelli, John Teutonicus, plus anyone else you might come up with. It’s taken as read, both by the Carthusians and by Pope Innocent, that the monk in question will be doing penance, even for a merely accidental abortion (according to some canonists, a severe penance).

The Carthusian petition instead raises two specific questions, both of which were unsettled in canon law of the early 1200s:

1. Can a priest who is guilty of accidental homicide remain in ministry (after doing appropriate penance)?

   1. If so, does it require a dispensation?

2. Is very early abortion, strictly speaking, homicide?

Many people are surprised to learn that there was, in fact, a range of views among Catholic canonists at the time about the severity of very early abortion. On the strict end were those who held that very early abortion was, very simply, murder. On the lax end where those who held that intentional very early abortion was not quite murder. These laxists treated very early abortion as a severe crime that ought to be punished “as for murder” (canon Si aliquis), but argued that, technically, it wasn’t actually murder, and so didn’t need to punished identically to murder. In 1942, scholar John Huser described the “lax” position:

The Decretists, notably Rufinus and Bernard of Pavia, indicated that abortion of a non-formed fetus was considered quasi-homicide, that is, the penalties were similar to but not so severe as those for true homicide.

It would never even have occurred to any of these writers that some future hostile reader would attempt to interpret their words in that way as permitting very early abortion. Every one of these men taught that a single act of deliberate masturbation condemned a man to Hell unless the sin was repented.4 The very laxest view available in the 12th century was that very early abortion was a serious crime that wasn’t quite as bad as full-on murder… but it would still definitely send you to Hell!

This debate, limited as it is, often surprises people, because the Catholic Church’s well-established position today is that, yes, abortion (even very early abortion) really is murder. Yet, while abortion was always harshly condemned as at least a quasi-homicide, the question was still open in 1211.

The reason it was still open in 1211 is because nobody knew how conception worked yet. As I explained a couple months ago:

[Medieval Europeans] believed that, after copulation, the semen encountered menstrual blood. Rather than fusing together, the semen enveloped the menstrual blood and began to reorganize its matter, similar to the way a cucumber in brine becomes pickled or (as Aristotle put it) the way milk in rennet becomes curdled. (The whole body of the eventual infant is composed of reorganized menstrual blood, with no material contribution from the man.) At the first stage of development, the semen (exercising the generative power of the father’s soul, albeit remotely) organizes the blood into a sort of an organless, nutritive paste. Then the semen destroys this paste by building enough organs to replace it with a primitive animal. At this point, the semen “is dissolved” and its active principle “ceases to exist,” as the animal-entity takes over development… at least until God kills the animal and infuses its corpse with a rational soul instead [which was withheld, to this point, because the organism was not yet biologically human, and therefore could not carry the human soul].

(A convenient overview with extensive quotations is given by Stephen Heaney (some relation) in, “Aquinas and the Presence of the Human Rational Soul in the Early Embryo”, which I have paraphrased quite liberally.)

You may wonder how Aquinas thought children ended up with traits different from their parents, since he had no concept of genetic inheritance. Astrology, of course! While taking a dim view of divination or blaming free choices on the stars, Aquinas earnestly defended the view that a child’s sex and other traits may be influenced by the constellation under which he was born (Summa Theologiae I.115.3, obj. 3 and reply), since the locomotion and heat of the celestial spheres stirred up and affected all other changes under heaven (insofar as inferior matter was disposed to receive it). These heavenly changes could affect what I will dub the “embryonic brining process,” the same way hot weather could affect a cheese-curdling process.

…I emphasize that this bizarre-sounding embryology was entirely reasonable, given scientific knowledge of the time! It was, however, wrong.

Everyone agreed, in principle, that a biological human organism received a human soul immediately upon becoming biologically human, but, as you can see, there was a lot of confusion about how and when the human body actually formed, biologically speaking.

This was a scientific question, not a theological one, so there was no way to definitively answer it until the 19th Century. Without a modern understanding of how human gestation works, there was a colorable argument that no biologically human body formed until later in pregnancy, a hypothetical milestone typically referred to as “animation.”5 As a result, the Church tried to manage the uncertainty prudently, and different canonists and popes made different prudential calculations.

Pope Innocent, for his part, issued a ruling in the case without a fully-reasoned opinion, so we can’t be certain of his precise thinking, but he seems to hold:

1. A priest guilty of merely accidental homicide cannot be readmitted to ministry, but

2. Very early, pre-“animation” abortion (though a grave crime, as held by all the canons) is not, strictly speaking, homicide, so

3. A priest guilty of merely accidental early abortion can be readmitted to ministry (though he must, as held by all the canons, complete appropriate penance).

This is a far cry from saying that abortion is permissible, as claimed by the pro-choicers I quoted. Consider how contorted the pro-choice interpretation is:

Suppose the Carthusian had not accidentally aborted his mistress, but rather accidentally blinded her during a robbery at knife-point. So the Carthusian’s prior writes to Rome and asks whether, after showing true contrition and performing the proper (lengthy!) penance, the priest can ever be reinstated. Under medieval canon law, a murderer was barred forever from priestly ministry, but most other criminals were not. The Pope would reply: “yes, he he may (eventually) return to ministry.” By the logic of the pro-choicers, this would prove that the Church considered robbery permissible!

Poppycock.

It is one thing to say that many very important Catholic thinkers, throughout history, have taught that “animation”6 was an important dividing line with respect to abortion. This is true!

It is also true to point out that the debate over the importance of animation was not settled until the 1860s, when modern scientific evidence proved that a new biologically human organism is formed at conception, rather than at animation. This new scientific evidence led Pope Pius IX to repeal the narrow canonical distinction between pre-animation and post-animation abortion. Indeed, even that was a merely legislative act. The full humanity of the human being from conception was well-established by science more than a century ago, but it was not infallibly established as a matter of Catholic doctrine until Pope John Paul II issued Evangelium Vitae in 1995!7 This happened within my lifetime! (Of course, I didn’t need the Pope to invoke infallibility for me to know that unborn children are babies and that it’s wrong to kill babies. I knew that already. It’s still interesting that the Church’s final decision was so recent.)

So, yes, the Catholic view of abortion has changed over the past thousand years! Not only were there legitimate doubts that early abortion was, strictly speaking, homicide, but the opinion considered common and probable was that early abortion was not homicide! Only with the advent of embryology was the matter settled, and settled in favor of the less common and less probable opinion. I grant all interlocutors this motte!

But then they try to seize the bailey. They say ludicrous things like “the Vatican was pro-choice” and “Innocent III would have been fine with mifepristone,” and then they get mad at you when you point out that they’re making stuff up. I do not know why they do this. As I said, most have developed the good sense not to. If you asked for my best speculation, I’d say that a fake history of abortion is both psychologically and legally important to abortion-rights supporters.

If abortion was a common thing that was allowed for centuries before “those ridiculous sex-hating Victorians” cracked down on it out of nowhere in the late nineteenth century, then it’s much easier to claim that abortion was a right recognized at the Founding (thus protected by the Constitution). It’s also easier to numb yourself to the killing of human beings if you can convince yourself that your culture has always been “okay” with it. Abortion advocate Cyril Means spent much of the 1960s constructing a pseudohistory along just these lines. Nobody would remember Cyril Means today if not for the fact that his fake history of abortion formed much of the basis of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Roe v. Wade. It took Dobbs to correct those errors, and, even then, many people were so wedded to Means’ fake history that they accused Dobbs of pseudo-history instead!

Whatever the reason, it is manifestly the case that certain pro-choicers do continue to defend the silly version of history where Pope Innocent III was “fine” with the abortion pill. That makes corrective posts like this one an unfortunate necessity.

If you want to read more about the treatment of abortion in canon law throughout Church history, and you have access to a good theological library (or university database), Fr. John J. Huser’s 1942 dissertation, “The Crime of Abortion in Canon Law,” gives a tidy, clear overview (in its first six chapters), with plenty of sources to drill into if you hanker for more detail.

Bonus: Effraenatam & Sedes Apostolica

…oh, what the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound.

A related claim is sometimes made about Pope Gregory XIV.

Recap: the Church spent the Middle Ages uncertain whether the early conceptus was human or not, so it was genuinely uncertain whether very early abortion was actually homicide, or merely a serious crime that was kissing cousins to homicide. It tried to prudently manage that uncertainty, and different canonists and popes made different prudential calculations.

In 1588, Pope Sixtus V issued a new law, Effraenatam, which erred on the side of caution. Evidently alarmed by a rise in prostitution and other sins connected to sex (including abortion), Pope Sixtus imposed the penalties of murder on each person:

• who performed or facilitated an abortion, at any stage of pregnancy, even early abortions; or

• who administered, took, or even advised about “potions and poisons of sterility” (abortifacient or contraceptive drugs, which were not easily separable in the biology of the time); or

• who furnished “impediments” that prevented women from conceiving (lambskin condoms, etc.)

Pope Sixtus is obviously not making a ruling about the nature of murder itself, since anyone can tell you—even a medieval Catholic—that using a condom is not actually homicide. However, Sixtus believed that early abortion and contraception were becoming too common in Christendom, and so he ordered that early abortionists and even condom-vendors should now be treated just like murderers in both Church courts and civil courts. (Abortion after animation was, of course, already recognized as murder, so Sixtus’s decree merely restated existing law in that respect.)

In addition to extending these already-harsh penalties to early abortions and contraception, Sixtus’s decree imposed an additional, reserved excommunication on all these people, meaning they could not receive the sacraments (including confession) unless they made the journey to Rome and repented to the pope. This had never been done before, not even for post-animation abortionists. Heck, not even ordinary workaday serial killers faced this penalty! The reserved excommunication was a sweeping new punishment.

Unsurprisingly, Effraenatam caused some… disruption. Sixtus had imposed the penalties for murder on a crime he wasn’t sure was murder (early abortion) and a crime he was sure wasn’t murder (contraception)—and then he’d added a bonus excommunication on top of those already-severe penalties, a penalty that even regular murderers didn’t face. Imposing a disproportionate punishment on a crime often creates more problems than it solves, and so too here. The excommunications alone were an enormous burden for those who had sinned and repented, but who were too poor to travel to Rome to plead their cases.

Three years later, Sixtus’s successor, Pope Gregory XIV,8 found that Sixtus’s approach had failed:

…[E]xperience afterwards has shown that from such a remedy there has not resulted the utility and fruit that had been hoped for, but rather that many, induced by the malice of Satan to commit sin, having found the way to repentance rendered more difficult because the faculty of absolution had been reserved to the Apostolic See alone, have not only not been drawn back from perpetrating such wicked offenses, but have even been given occasion for very many sacrileges and most grave sins and crimes;

Gregory therefore erred in the opposite direction. He “reset” the law on contraception and early abortion to what it had been before: a serious crime, but not a crime that is legally equivalent to homicide. He relaxed the remaining excommunications by allowing any bishop (and some priests) to lift them, instead of reserving them to the papacy alone. Notably, Gregory implies that early abortion probably is a homicide, but doesn’t think it prudent to impose such heavy penalties:

…judging it more useful, where neither homicide nor an animated fetus is involved, not to impose penalties more severe than those inflicted by the sacred canons and the civil laws… [w]e have judged that the aforesaid constitution should be moderated…

The cases “where homicide is not involved” refers, of course, to Pope Sixtus’s ban on contraceptives. The cases “where… an animated fetus is not involved” refers to early abortions. The deliberate contrast drawn here strongly suggests Pope Gregory does view early abortion as a form of homicide, albeit probably a lesser one. (If he were confident that killing a non-animate fetus wasn’t homicide, he could have just written, “where homicide is not involved.”)

Once again, this shows a real tension in Catholic medieval thought on abortion! This is interesting! Sixtus and Gregory were both making prudential judgments, but it’s fair to guess that Sixtus probably thought early abortions really were true homicides, and equally fair to guess that Gregory probably had some doubts, and that their opposing views were partly responsible for the conflicting laws they passed!

In the end, Sixtus’s view was borne out scientifically. The Church now knows, along with everyone else who can read a biology textbook, that every procured abortion is a homicide. However, Gregory’s view has been borne out pastorally! The Church has indeed gradually eliminated special extra penalties for specific crimes (including murder). While an automatic excommunication for abortion remains on the books, every priest now has faculties to lift the excommunication in the confessional, (in Gregory’s words) “making easier for them the path to repentance… open[ing] to them [the Church’s] maternal bosom.”

This is true! The tensions were real!

However, the pro-choicers just have to take that baton and run it into a spike trap:

Say it with me: poppycock!

There’s just one more thing to say about Pope Gregory’s 1591 decree before I give you the full translation. There is a fake quotation floating around the internet, allegedly from this decree. One version of the quote runs:

On May 31, 1591, new regulations regarding abortions were published in the apostolic constitution Sedes Apostolica, which stated, “those who abort an inanimatus [soulless fetus] will not be guilty of homicide because they have not killed a human being in actuality.”

Needless to say, the quotation is fabricated. Neither this sentence, nor anything like this sentence, appears in Sedes Apostolica.9 Pope Gregory loosened legal protections for early fetuses, but said nothing about their humanity. I am generously assuming this fake quote arose from someone mistaking a paraphrase for a quotation and posting it somewhere, but it is cited often enough to be specifically called out and debunked.

Now, the translations:

Effraenatam, Pope Sixtus V, 1588

English (by GPT, spot-checked and compared to another translation I didn’t like as much):

Against Those Procuring Abortion in Any Manner Whatever, or Giving or Taking Potions of Sterility, and Those Affording Them Assistance, Counsel, or Favor

Sixtus, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, for a perpetual memorial of the matter.

Observing the unbridled audacity and license of the most depraved of men in sinning against the commandment of the divine law, “Thou shalt not kill,” an audacity repeatedly restrained by most holy laws and various constitutions, We also are compelled, placed as We are by the Lord upon the supreme throne of justice, with the strongest reason urging Us, partly by renewing and partly by enlarging the ancient laws, to restrain by the imposition of an equal penalty the savagery of those who do not fear most cruelly to kill immature fetuses still hidden within their mothers’ wombs. For who would not detest so execrable a crime, by which there follows a certain destruction not merely of bodies, but, what is more grave, even of souls?

Who would not condemn with the severest punishments the impiety of one who has excluded from the blessed vision of God a soul marked with the image of God, for whose redemption Christ our Lord shed His precious blood, capable of eternal blessedness and destined for the fellowship of the angels; who, so far as in him lay, has impeded the restoration of the heavenly ranks and has deprived God of the service of His creature? Who has deprived children of life before they could receive from nature their own light, or before they could protect themselves, under the shelter of their mother’s body, from savage cruelty? Who would not abhor the lustful cruelty or cruel lust of impious men, which has advanced so far as to procure poisons for extinguishing and expelling conceived fetuses within the womb, wickedly striving that their own offspring should perish before they live, or, if already living, should be killed before being born? Finally, who would not condemn with the severest punishments the crimes of those who, by poisons, potions, and sorceries, induce sterility in women, or by magical remedies prevent them from conceiving or bearing children?

“The sorcerers,” says the Lord to Moses, “you shall not suffer to live.” For they oppose themselves with excessive shamelessness to the will of God, who—as St. Jerome says—while nature receives the seed, cherishes what has been received, and distinguishes into members that which has been cherished and embodied, [1] while amid the confines of the womb the hand of God is ever at work, and He Himself is the creator both of body and soul, impiously despise the goodness of the potter, that is, of God, who formed man and made him as He willed. For indeed, as St. Ambrose testifies, it is no small gift of God to grant children as propagators of the race. Fruitfulness in childbearing is a divine gift, and at the same time by this dreadful offense parents who had begotten children are deprived of offspring, children who have been begotten are deprived of life, mothers of the rewards of marriage, the earth of those by whom it would be cultivated, the world of those by whom it would be known, and the Church of those by whose addition to the number of the faithful people she would rejoice.

Hence it was not without reason decreed by the Sixth Synod of Constantinople that persons who administer drugs causing abortion and those who take poisons that destroy fetuses should be subjected to the penalties of homicide. Likewise, the ancient Council of Lleida provided that those who endeavor to destroy fetuses conceived in adultery, or who by certain potions crush them in their mothers’ wombs, if they afterwards repent and return to the mercy of the Church, should devote the whole course of their lives to tears and humility; and if they are clerics, they should not be permitted to recover the office of ministry. Moreover, all ecclesiastical and civil laws punish with severe penalties those who wickedly contrive either that offspring be destroyed in the mother’s womb, or that women not conceive, or that conceived fetuses be expelled.

§1

Therefore We, having already repressed the rashness of those who presume to violate the rights of marriage and, so far as lies in them, dissolve the indissoluble bond thereof, or who are not ashamed to defile themselves with certain most shameful incestuous acts, and wishing also to eradicate this evil in our own times, insofar as We are able with the powers entrusted to Us by the Lord:

all and every person, whether man or woman, of whatever status, rank, order, or condition, including clerics, whether secular or regular of any order, however distinguished by ecclesiastical or worldly dignity and preeminence, who henceforth either personally or through intermediaries shall procure the expulsion of an abortion or immature fetus, whether animated or even inanimate, formed or unformed, by blows, poisons, medicines, potions, burdens and labors imposed upon a pregnant woman, or by any other methods, even unknown or most ingenious, provided that an abortion in fact follows therefrom; and likewise pregnant women themselves who knowingly commit the aforesaid acts—

We decree and ordain by this constitution, which shall remain perpetually in force, that they incur ipso facto all penalties established and imposed, both by divine and human law, and both by canonical sanctions and apostolic constitutions and by civil laws, against true murderers who have committed voluntary homicide actually and in fact (actu et re ipsa), the texts of all such penalties being considered by these letters as though expressly and word for word inserted herein; and We extend those penalties, laws, and constitutions to the aforesaid cases.

§2

Those who are clerics We furthermore deprive, by the fact itself, of every clerical privilege, office, dignity, and ecclesiastical benefice, which, thus becoming vacant, We perpetually reserve to Our own disposition and that of the Apostolic See; and We declare them henceforth incapable of receiving such things, so that those who have committed this offense, no differently from those who have voluntarily committed homicide according to the decrees of the Council of Trent, even if the crime has neither been proved in judicial proceedings nor become public in any other manner but remains occult, may in no way be promoted to sacred orders or minister in orders already received. Nor may any ecclesiastical benefices be conferred upon them, even if such benefices do not involve the care of souls; rather, they shall forever be deprived of every order, benefice, and office.

§3

Likewise, those who are not clerics and who commit such acts We decree and declare not only to incur the aforesaid penalties but also to be incapable of receiving orders and the other things mentioned above.

§4

We further will that those who, being subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction as aforesaid, are found to have committed such offenses, after being deposed and degraded by an ecclesiastical judge, shall be handed over to the secular court and authority, which shall inflict upon them the punishment prescribed by divine laws and civil law against laymen who are truly murderers.

§5

Furthermore, We absolutely decree that the same penalties shall bind those who administer potions and poisons of sterility to women, who furnish impediments preventing them from conceiving a fetus, who arrange for such things to be done and carried out, or who in any way advise in such matters; and likewise the women themselves who willingly and knowingly take such potions.

§6

Accordingly, We command all and singular ordinary and delegated judges, both ecclesiastical and secular, to whom jurisdiction against criminal offenders lawfully belongs, whether by law itself or by reason of the offense or the persons involved, with due regard for rights of prior jurisdiction among them, that in these offenses, which are for the most part committed in secret, they proceed against offenders not only by accusation and denunciation, but also by inquest and simple denunciation; and that for proving such crimes they admit, at their own discretion and having regard to the persons, causes, qualities, and all circumstances involved, witnesses who would otherwise be legally incompetent; and that they finally proceed against those found guilty as We have prescribed.

§7

Moreover, in order that provision may be made for the gravity of this most monstrous offense not only by temporal but also by spiritual penalties, all and every person, of whatever status, rank, order, or condition, whether lay or clerical, secular or regular of any order, as well as secular women or women professed in any religious order, who, whether as principals or as accomplices aware of the matter, knowingly provide assistance, counsel, favor, potions, or medicines of any kind for the commission of such a crime, or who aid or advise by writing private letters or receipts (apochas), or in any other way by words or signs, We excommunicate ipso facto, now as then, in addition to the aforesaid penalties, and We declare them excommunicated.

§8

We further decree and declare that by any jubilees or indulgences granted or to be granted by Us and Our successors, whether in a jubilee year or at any other time, under the title of the Holy Crusade, the Jubilee, or any other title whatsoever; nor by any apostolic letters granted or to be granted by Us and Our successors to any princes or at their request; nor by virtue of privileges known as the Mare Magnum or by any other designation whatsoever, granted or to be granted to any congregations of religious, or to bishops by virtue of the Council of Trent or otherwise by Us or Our predecessors; persons who have thus offended and incurred excommunication as aforesaid may be absolved, except at the point of death.

Nor may dispensation from the irregularity incurred by reason of the aforesaid offenses be granted to clerics who have committed such crimes, even if their offense remains occult, either by local ordinaries or by any others exercising authority, but only by Ourselves and Our successors the Roman Pontiffs, and then only for the most urgent causes.

And We reserve exclusively to Ourselves and Our successors the faculty both of absolving and of dispensing in such cases, even in the forum of conscience.

§9

We decree that all the foregoing matters are to be judged and determined by all judges, ordinary and delegated, including the auditors of the Apostolic Palace and the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, with any authority or faculty of judging or interpreting otherwise being removed from them and from each of them; and We declare null and void whatever may be attempted contrary hereto by anyone, knowingly or unknowingly, under any authority whatsoever.

§10

Notwithstanding apostolic constitutions and ordinances, or other laws perhaps providing otherwise concerning the foregoing matters or making distinctions in the aforesaid cases, and notwithstanding any other things whatsoever to the contrary.

§11

Moreover, We will that copies of these letters, etc.

§12

Therefore let no one at all presume to violate this page of Our constitution, statutes, ordinance, extension, decrees, etc. If anyone should presume to attempt this, etc.

Given at Rome on the Quirinal Hill, in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1588, on the fourth day before the Kalends of November, in the fourth year of Our pontificate.

Given on the 29th day of October, 1588, in the fourth year of the pontificate.

---

[1] The printed text reads: “dum natura recipit semen, receptum confovet, confotum corporatum in membra distinguit.” The syntax is somewhat compressed. A very literal rendering would be: “while nature receives the seed, cherishes what has been received, and distinguishes into members that which has been cherished and embodied.” The accompanying note (Cherub. addit corporat) suggests a textual variant in the source tradition.

Latin (from Bullarum Romanum, 1865 edition, Tomus IX, pp39-42):

Contra abortum quovis modo procurantes, aut sterilitatis potiones dantes vel sumentes, eisque auxilium, consilium sive favorem praestantes

Sixtus episcopus, servus servorum Dei, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.

Effraenatam perditissimorum hominum contra divinae legis praeceptum de non occidendo peccandi audaciam atque licentiam, sanctissimis legibus variisque constitutionibus saepius repressam animadvertentes; cogimur nos quoque, in supremo iustitiae throno a Domino constituti, iustissima ratione suadente, vetera iura partim innovando, partim ampliando, eorum etiam immanitatem, pari poena proposita, coercere, qui immaturos foetus intra materna viscera adhuc latentes crudelissime necare non verentur. Quis enim non detestetur tam execrandum facinus, per quod nedum corporum, sed, quod gravius est, etiam animarum certa iactura sequitur?

Quis non gravissimis suppliciis damnet illius impietatem, qui animam Dei imagine insignitam, pro qua redimenda Christus Dominus noster preciosum sanguinem fudit, aeternae capacem beatitudinis, et ad consortium angelorum destinatam, a beata Dei visione exclusit, reparationem caelestium sedium quantum in ipso fuit impedivit, Deo servitium suae creaturae ademit? Qui liberos prius vita privavit, quam illi a natura propriam lucem accipere, aut se materni custodia corporis ab efferata saevitia tegere potuerint? Quis non abhorreat libidinosam impiorum hominum crudelitatem vel crudelem libidinem, quae eo usque processit ut etiam venena procuret ad conceptos foetus intra viscera extinguendos et fundendos, etiam suam prolem prius interire quam vivere, aut si iam vivebat, occidi antequam nasci nefario scelere moliendo? Quis denique non damnet gravissimis suppliciis illorum scelera, qui venenis, potionibus ac maleficiis mulieribus sterilitatem inducunt, aut ne concipiant, nec pariant maleficis medicamentis impediunt?

Maleficos, inquit Dominus ad Moysen, non patieris vivere. Nimis enim impudenter contra Dei voluntatem se opponunt qui, ut S. Hieronymus ait, dum natura recipit semen, receptum confovet, confotum [Footnote1] corporatum in membra distinguit, dum inter ventris angustias Dei manus semper operatur, idemque corporis creator et animae est, impie despicit bonitatem figuli, id est Dei, qui hominem plasmavit, fecit ut voluit; siquidem, ut sanctus testatur Ambrosius, non mediocre munus est Dei dare liberos propagatores generis. Divinum donum est foecunditas parientis, eodemque tempore diro hoc flagitio privantur liberis parentes qui generaverant, vita filii qui generati sunt, matres coniugii praemiis, terra quae ab his coleretur, mundus qui ab eisdem cognosceretur, Ecclesia quae devotae numero plebis aucta gauderet.

Unde non immerito sexta synodo Constantinopolitana sancitum est, ut personae quae dant abortionem cientia medicamenta, et quae foetus necantia venena accipiunt, homicidae poenis subiiciantur; sed et veteri Concilio Ilerdensi cautum est ut qui conceptos ex adulterio foetus necare studuerint, vel in ventribus matrum potionibus aliquibus colliserint, si postea poenitentes ad Ecclesiae mansuetudinem recurrant, omni tempore vitae suae fletibus et humilitati insistant; si vero clerici fuerint, officium ministrandi eis recuperare non liceat; omnesque tam ecclesiasticae quam profanae leges gravibus poenis afficiunt eos qui in utero matris puerperium interimi, aut ne mulieres concipiant, sive ut conceptos foetus eiiciant, nefarie machinantur.

§ 1

Nos igitur, post repressam eorum temeritatem qui matrimonii iura violare, et quantum in ipsis est vinculum indissolubile dissolvere praesumunt, quive turpioribus quibusdam incestis se inquinare non erubescunt, hoc quoque malum, quantum viribus nobis a Domino traditis contendere possumus, nostris potissimum temporibus exterminare volentes; omnes et quoscumque, tam viros quam mulieres, cuiuscumque status, gradus, ordinis ac conditionis, etiam clericos, saeculares vel cuiusvis Ordinis regulares, quavis dignitate et praeeminentia ecclesiastica vel mundana fulgentes, qui de cetero per se aut interpositas personas abortus seu foetus immaturi, tam animati quam etiam inanimati, formati vel informis, eiectionem procuraverint percussionibus, venenis, medicamentis, potionibus, oneribus laboribusque mulieri praegnanti impositis, ac aliis etiam incognitis vel maxime exquisitis rationibus, ita ut re ipsa abortus inde secutus fuerit, ac etiam praegnantes ipsas mulieres, quae scienter praemissa fecerint, poenas, tam divino quam humano iure, ac tam per canonicas sanctiones et apostolicas constitutiones, quam civilia iura adversus veros homicidas, qui homicidium voluntarium actu et re ipsa patraverint, propositas et inflictas (quorum omnium tenores his nostris litteris pro expressis et ad verbum insertis habemus) eo ipso incurrere, hac nostra perpetuo valitura constitutione statuimus et ordinamus, ipsasque poenas, leges et constitutiones ad casus praefatos extendimus.

§ 2

Eos vero qui clerici fuerint, omni privilegio clericali, officiis, dignitatibus et beneficiis ecclesiasticis, quae sic vacatura nostrae et Sedis Apostolicae dispositioni perpetuo reservamus, ipso facto privamus, et in futurum inhabiles ad ea suscipienda decernimus, adeo ut illi qui hoc delictum commiserint, non secus atque ii qui sua voluntate homicidium perpetraverint iuxta concilii Tridentini decreta, etiamsi crimen id nec ordine iudiciario probatum, nec alia ratione publicum, sed occultum fuerit, ad sacros ordines promoveri, aut in susceptis ordinibus ministrare nullo modo possint, nec illis aliqua ecclesiastica beneficia, etiamsi curam non habeant animarum, conferri liceat, sed omni ordine ac beneficio et officio perpetuo careant.

§ 3

Necnon et illos qui clerici non fuerint et talia perpetraverint, non solum poenas incurrere supranarratas, sed etiam inhabiles ad ordines et alia praedicta decernimus et declaramus.

§ 4

Volentes quod hi qui foro ecclesiastico subiecti, ut praefertur, deliquisse comperti fuerint, per iudicem ecclesiasticum depositi et degradati, curiae et potestati saeculari tradantur, quae de eis illud capiat supplicium, quod contra laicos vere homicidas per divinas leges ac civilia iura est dispositum.

§ 5

Praeterea eisdem poenis teneri omnino statuimus eos qui sterilitatis potiones ac venena mulieribus propinaverint, et quo minus foetum concipiant impedimentum praestiterint, ac ea facienda et exequenda curaverint, sive quocumque modo in his consuluerint, ac mulieres ipsas quae eadem pocula sponte ac scienter sumpserint.

§ 6

Quocirca mandamus universis et singulis iudicibus ordinariis et delegatis, tam ecclesiasticis quam saecularibus, quibus contra criminum reos, etiam quoad causas huiusmodi, de iure vel ratione delicti aut personarum legitime competet iurisdictio, ita tamen ut inter eos praeventioni locus est, ut in his delictis, quae ut plurimum in occulto perpetrantur, contra quoscumque, non solum per accusationem et denuntiationem, verum etiam per inquisitionem ac simplicem denuntiationem procedant, ac ad illa probanda testes alias de iure inhabiles, eorumdem tamen iudicum arbitrio, habita ratione personarum, causarum et qualitatum illarum ac circumstantiarum quarumcumque, admittant, ac in eos qui culpabiles fuerint, prout per nos sancitum est, demum animadvertant.

§ 7

Insuper, ut immanissimi huius delicti gravitati non solum temporalibus, verum etiam spiritualibus poenis prospiciamus ac provideamus, omnes et singulos, cuiuscumque status, gradus, ordinis vel conditionis existentes, tam laicos quam clericos, saeculares et cuiuscumque Ordinis regulares, necnon mulieres saeculares vel quemcumque Ordinem professas, qui vel quae, vel uti principales vel ut sociae consciaeve ad tale facinus committendum opem, consilium, favorem, potionem vel alia cuiuscumque generis medicamenta scienter dederint, ac etiam scribendo litteras privatas vel apochas, vel alias verbis aut signis iuverint aut consuluerint, ultra supradictas poenas, ipso facto ex nunc prout ex tunc excommunicamus et pro excommunicatis declaramus.

§ 8

Decernentes ac declarantes quod per quaecumque iubilaea et indulgentias, per nos et successores nostros, etiam anno iubilaei aut alio quovis tempore, etiam cruciatae sanctae, iubilaei vel quovis alio titulo concessas et concedendas, necnon per quascumque litteras apostolicas quibusvis principibus seu ad eorum instantiam per nos et successores nostros pariter concessas et concedendas, ac etiam vigore privilegiorum Mare Magnum vel alias quomodolibet nuncupatorum, quibusvis congregationibus regularium aut episcopis vigore concilii Tridentini vel alias per nos et praedecessores nostros quomodocumque concessorum vel in futurum concedendorum, nec personae sic, ut praefertur, delinquentes et excommunicatae, praeterquam in mortis articulo, absolvi valeant; nec cum iis clericis, qui huiusmodi delicta perpetraverint, etiamsi eorum crimen occultum fuerit, super irregularitate praemissorum occasione contracta, nec per locorum ordinarios nec per alios, quavis auctoritate fungentes, quam per nos et Romanos Pontifices nostros successores, et tunc non nisi urgentissimis de causis, dispensari possit. Ac tam absolvendi quam dispensandi facultatem huiusmodi etiam quoad forum conscientiae in casibus superius expressis, nobis et successoribus nostris dumtaxat reservamus.

§ 9

Statuentes sic in praemissis universis et singulis per quoscumque iudices, ordinarios et delegatos, etiam causarum Palatii Apostolici auditores, ac sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae cardinales, sublata eis et eorum cuilibet quavis aliter iudicandi et interpretandi facultate et auctoritate, in quavis causa et instantia iudicari et definiri debere; irritumque et inane quicquid secus super his a quoquam, quavis auctoritate, scienter vel ignoranter, contigerit attentari.

§ 10

Non obstantibus constitutionibus et ordinationibus apostolicis aut aliis legibus aliter forsan circa praemissa disponentibus, aut in casibus praefatis distinguentibus, ceterisque contrariis quibuscumque.

§ 11

Volumus autem ut praesentium litterarum exemplis, etc.

§ 12

Nulli ergo omnino hominum liceat hanc paginam nostrae constitutionis, statutorum, ordinationis, extensionis, decretorum, etc. Si quis autem hoc attentare praesumpserit, etc.

Datum Romae in Monte Quirinali, anno Incarnationis dominicae millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo octavo, quarto Kalendas Novembris, pontificatus nostri anno IV.

Dat. die 29 Octobris 1588, pontif. anno IV.

FN 1 Cherub. addit corporat (R. 1.).

Sedes Apostolica, Pope Gregory XIV, 1591

English (GPT, spot-checked by me):

Moderation of the Constitution Issued by Sixtus V Against Those Procuring Abortion in Any Manner and Their Accomplices

Gregory, Bishop, Servant of the Servants of God, for a perpetual memorial of the matter.

The Apostolic See, a loving mother, continually mindful of the burden incumbent upon it in procuring the salvation of souls redeemed by the precious blood of Christ the Lord, and becoming day by day ever more concerned, as is fitting, with the gravity and importance of a matter of such consequence, while always keeping this same excellent end before its eyes, never leaves unattempted anything that it judges pertains to directing the souls of the faithful into the way of salvation. Therefore, no one ought to find it surprising if at times it restrains the audacity of obstinate members of the faithful by the severity of punishments. Yet, if they should wish to return to their senses and humbly seek pardon for their sin, it opens to them its maternal bosom, makes easier for them the path to repentance, and tempers severity with suitable gentleness, insofar as it perceives in the Lord that this is expedient for their salvation.

§1

Some time ago, Sixtus V, Pope of happy memory, our predecessor, inflamed with zeal for justice, issued a constitution against those who procure the abortion of a fetus, whether animated or inanimate, and against the participants in and abettors of that most grave crime, as well as against those who hinder the fertility of women and provide potions or poisons causing sterility. This constitution was issued under the date of the fourth day before the Kalends of November, in the third year of his pontificate. By it, in addition to various spiritual and temporal penalties, he also, among other things, promulgated a sentence of excommunication against such persons and reserved solely to himself and his successors the faculty of absolving them, as is more fully contained in that same constitution.

§2

Since, however, experience afterwards has shown that from such a remedy there has not resulted the utility and fruit that had been hoped for, but rather that many, induced by the malice of Satan to commit sin, having found the way to repentance rendered more difficult because the faculty of absolution had been reserved to the Apostolic See alone, have not only not been drawn back from perpetrating such wicked offenses, but have even been given occasion for very many sacrileges and most grave sins and crimes; therefore We, observing that the sword of ecclesiastical discipline, especially with regard to censures and spiritual penalties, ought to be exercised in such a way as to tend toward healing and not toward the destruction of souls; and wishing, insofar as We are able with the assistance of His divine grace, to imitate the Eternal Shepherd whose place on earth We hold, who came to save the souls of men, not to destroy them, and who has never barred the way of salvation to anyone, however gravely and enormously he may have sinned, but rather has provided abundant remedies for attaining it and has left them to us; and likewise judging it more useful, where neither homicide nor an animated fetus is involved, not to impose penalties more severe than those inflicted by the sacred canons and the civil laws; having, after mature deliberation, consulted our venerable brethren, the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church deputed for the affairs and consultations of bishops; by their counsel We have judged that the aforesaid constitution should be moderated in such a way that, with respect to the sin and excommunication therein imposed upon the persons specified, whether those who have hitherto offended or those who shall offend in the same cases after our present constitution, any priest, whether secular or of any religious order, who is authorized to hear the confessions of the faithful and who has been specifically delegated for these cases by the local Ordinary, shall have full and free faculty to absolve them in the forum of conscience only, precisely with the same authority that the said predecessor Sixtus reserved to himself and his successors.

§3

As regards the penalties contained in the aforesaid constitution against those who procure the abortion of an inanimate fetus, or who administer to women, or themselves take, poisons causing sterility, or who in any way give them assistance or counsel, We, by apostolic authority and by the tenor of these presents, reduce the aforesaid constitution in that part in which it deals with such matters, both with regard to the past and to the future, perpetually to the limits of the common law and to the provisions of the sacred canons and of the Council of Trent, just as if that constitution had never been issued in this respect.

§4

Notwithstanding the constitution of our aforesaid predecessor, which, with respect to all other matters except those contained in this our constitution, We wish to remain entirely in force, and notwithstanding any other things to the contrary whatsoever.

§5

Moreover, We will that to copies of these presents, subscribed by the hand of a public notary and sealed with the seal of an ecclesiastical prelate, there shall be accorded exactly the same faith, both in and out of court, as would be accorded to the original documents themselves if they were produced or exhibited.

§6

Therefore, let no person whatsoever be permitted to violate this page of Our moderation, reduction, and determinations, or rashly to act contrary to it. But if anyone should presume to attempt this, let him know that he shall incur the indignation of Almighty God and of His blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.

Given at Rome on the Quirinal Hill, in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1591, on the day before the Kalends of June, in the first year of Our pontificate.

Given on the 31st day of May, 1591, in the first year of the pontificate.

Latin (from Bullarum Romanum, 1865 edition, Tomus IX, pp430-432):

Moderatio constitutionis a Sixto V editae contra abortum quovis modo procurantes et eorum complices

Gregorius episcopus, servus servorum Dei, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.

Sedes Apostolica, pia mater, assidue sentiens ponderis sibi incumbentis in procuranda salute animarum, pretioso Christi Domini sanguine redemptarum, gravitatem et magnitudinem, in re tanti momenti, ut par est, magis in dies sollicita, eumdemque optimum finem semper ante oculos propositum habens, nihil unquam intentatum praetermittit eorum quae ad fidelium animas in viam salutis dirigendas indicat pertinere. Quare nemini mirum videri debet, si interdum quidem contumacium fidelium audaciam poenarum severitate deterret; rursus eisdem, si ad cor redire velint et peccati veniam humiliter exposcere, maternum aperit sinum viamque ad poenitentiam eis sternit faciliorem, ac mansuetudine congrua rigorem temperat, prout in Domino conspicit salubriter expedire.

§ 1. Dudum siquidem felicis recordationis Sixtus Papa V, praedecessor noster, iustitiae zelo accensus, contra procurantes abortum foetus, tam animati quam inanimis, eiusque gravissimi sceleris participes et adiutores, necnon contra eos qui mulierum fecunditatem impedirent et sterilitatis potiones seu venena praeberent, constitutionem edidit, sub data IV Kalendas Novembris, pontificatus sui anno tertio, per quam, ultra diversas spirituales et temporales poenas, etiam inter alia excommunicationis sententiam contra eos promulgavit sibique et successoribus suis tantum absolvendi facultatem reservavit, prout in eadem constitutione plenius continetur.

§ 2. Cum igitur postmodum experientia docuerit ex remedio huiusmodi non eam quae sperabatur utilitatem et fructum provenisse, verum potius multis Satanae malitia ad peccandum inductis, difficiliori, ob soli Sedi Apostolicae reservatam absolvendi facultatem, reddito ad poenitentiam aditu, eos a nefariis huiusmodi flagitiis perpetrandis non solum non retraxisse, sed etiam plurimorum sacrilegiorum gravissimorumque peccatorum et scelerum occasionem dedisse; nos propterea, animadvertentes gladium ecclesiasticae disciplinae, praesertim quoad censuras et poenas spirituales, ita exercendum esse ut ad medicinam tendat, non ad perniciem animarum; aeternumque Pastorem, Cuius vices in terris gerimus, quantum divina eius gratia adiutrice possumus, imitari volentes, Qui venit animas hominum salvare, non perdere, neminique, quantumcumque graviter et enormiter deliquerit, viam salutis praeclusit, quin potius ad eam assequendam copiosa remedia adhibuit ac nobis reliquit; et simul utilius censentes, ubi nec de homicidio nec de animato foetu agitur, poenas non imponere duriores iis quae per sacros canones et leges profanas sunt inflictae; habita super hoc cum venerabilibus fratribus nostris S. R. E. cardinalibus, super negociis et consultationibus episcoporum deputatis, matura deliberatione, de eorum consilio, constitutionem praedictam sic duximus moderandam, ut a peccato et excommunicatione contra personas ibi expressas lata, tam quoad eos qui hactenus deliquerunt quam quoad illos qui post nostram constitutionem in eisdem casibus deliquerint, quilibet presbyter, tam saecularis quam cuiusvis Ordinis regularis, ad christifidelium confessiones audiendas et ad hos casus specialiter per loci Ordinarium deputatus, plenam et liberam in foro conscientiae tantum absolvendi habeat facultatem, eamdem prorsus quam idem Sixtus praedecessor sibi ac suis successoribus reservavit.

§ 3. Quo vero ad poenas procurantium abortum foetus inanimis, aut exhibentium mulieribus vel sumentium venena sterilitatis, aut quocumque modo auxilium vel consilium eis dantium, in praedicta constitutione contentas, constitutionem praefatam, in ea parte ubi de his agit, ad terminos iuris communis ac sacrorum canonum et Concilii Tridentini dispositionem, auctoritate apostolica, tenore praesentium, tam quoad praeterita quam quoad futura, perpetuo reducimus, perinde ac si eadem constitutio in huiusmodi parte numquam emanasset.

§ 4. Non obstantibus eadem praedecessoris nostri constitutione, quam quoad reliqua omnia, praeter contenta in hac nostra constitutione, in suo robore omnino permanere volumus, ceterisque contrariis quibuscumque.

§ 5. Volumus autem ut praesentium transumptis, notarii publici manu subscriptis et sigillo praelati ecclesiastici munitis, eadem prorsus fides habeatur in iudicio et extra illud quae eisdem originalibus haberetur, si forent exhibita vel ostensis.

§ 6. Nulli ergo omnino hominum liceat hanc paginam nostrarum moderationis, reductionis et voluntatum infringere vel ei ausu temerario contraire. Si quis autem hoc attentare praesumpserit, indignationem omnipotentis Dei ac Beatorum Petri et Pauli apostolorum Eius se noverit incursurum.

Datum Romae in Monte Quirinali, anno Incarnationis Dominicae MDXCI, pridie Kalendas Iunii, pontificatus nostri anno I.

Dat. die 31 Maii 1591, pontif. an. 1.

For the rest of this series, see here:

UPDATE 18 June 2026 11:22 AM: Typos. Among others: corrected a stray reference to Gregory IV to Gregory XIV, another stray reference to the year 1891 to 1591, and inserted the word “remaining” into a sentence about Sedes Apostolica’s excommunication policy because I realized the sentence was unclear.

UPDATE 20 June 2026: In the comments, Tarb caught me in an error. In footnote 5, I attributed two quotations to the third book of St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Theologia Moralis. Tarb noticed that the work I was citing was not an edition of Theologia Moralis, as I believed, but a Latin-language summary and commentary on Theologia Moralis, written by one Joseph Aertnys in 1886 (not the 1750s), entitled “Theologia moralis juxta doctrinam S. Alphonsi Mariae de Ligorio.” (You can see where I got confused there, but that’s no excuse.) I’ve revised Footnote 5 accordingly, and, for the sake of disclosure, I’ve reprinted the original Footnote 5 right here,10 at Footnote 10. Fortunately, nothing I said about Liguori was load-bearing, so none of my conclusions have to be adjusted. I suppose this is God’s way of telling me not to judge (misquotations) too harshly, lest I, too, be judged.

1

He soon descended to calling us “pathologically dishonest” for pointing out that this was a complete misunderstanding of what happened, and that he was using fabricated quotes.

I like Dilan, but he abandoned Substack for Twitter some time ago, and has been carefully calibrating his tweets to maximize engagement. Unfortunately, he has figured out how to use Cunningham’s Law to his advantage, and so his takes have gradually moved across the fenceline from “confidently contrarian” to “confidently ignorant.” I am confident that he realizes this, because he does it in both directions. It’s a shame, but he’s still an interesting tweeter if you take a Straussian reading, and I hope he is raking in the big bucks for his trouble.

Of course, I’ve now written a 3,000-word article debunking Mr. Esper, playing right into his hands. In the words of Ben Kenobi, who is the bigger fool? The fool, or the fool who takes his engagement bait?

I.

I don’t remember much of junior-year U.S. History, but I remember learning about the Know-Nothing Party.

The Know-Nothings only rated about two paragraphs in our textbook (Alan Brinkley’s American History: A Survey), but those paragraphs stood out. The Know-Nothing Party first arose as a loose federation of anti-immigrant secret societies, mostly in the late 1840s. In 1850, they united to form the Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, which (among other things) required its members to deny all knowledge of party activities. (They would instead say, “I know nothing,” hence the nickname.)

They entered national politics around the same time, dubbing their political wing the “American Party.” This brand-new party had a huge impact on the 1852 and 1854 elections. Know-Nothings swept into power in Massachusetts and won House seats sprinkled throughout North and South. In 1856, they won 20% of the presidential vote running Millard Fillmore, an ex-president. This would be something like Hillary Clinton running against Obama in 2008 on the Green Party ticket.

Then, practically overnight, the Know-Nothings collapsed over the Slavery Question.1

The Know-Nothings hated immigrants, Catholics, and the Irish, and they had no other views whatsoever. Even after their party collapsed, nativism (which had arisen out of nowhere in the 1840s and 1850s) remained a potent force in American politics for the next 70 years or so.2 It was not until the 1920s that the children of the Know-Nothings finally started to fade into irrelevance.

I thought they were insane.

These guys had built their whole identities around hating immigrants. How was this possible? I was a rule-of-law conservative, so I had serious concerns about illegal immigration. But the immigration that got the Know-Nothings out of bed in the morning was perfectly legal! I marveled. How could one even complain about legal immigrants? Why would anyone work so hard to keep new volunteer Americans out of our great country? Weren't the Know-Nothings children of immigrants themselves? Weren't we all?

It was 2005. I could not imagine what was coming.

II.

Virtually everyone agrees that there should be some maximum on immigration.

Do you doubt this?

Imagine that you woke up tomorrow to find that the entire population of Afghanistan (pop. 50 million) had immigrated to your state overnight, and that, as a result:

• Your city, town, or neighborhood now has a population 100x larger than it did yesterday, and (therefore)

• 99% of the people now living in your city/town/neighborhood are Afghans who did not live there yesterday.

This would cause very serious problems.

Physically, where are all these new arrivals going to live? Do they crowd into existing units? Do you suddenly have to build a whole lot more units? Do the immigrants, out of desperation, start building new housing units without a permit? Is there even enough food in town to support all these new residents?

Economically, how are they all going to get jobs? How will your city extend its existing infrastructure to provide them with standard city services, like schools and water (and possibly welfare), without a crippling budget crisis? How are you going to keep the job you already have in the economic disruption that follows this vast overnight arrival?

People tend to fixate on these challenging questions, because the answers have numbers in them, so they don’t seem too racist. However, the really hard questions don’t have numbers in them:

Socially, you are now a tiny 1% minority among a people who believes all women must wear the hijab. They mostly don’t understand, much less agree with, the American notion of pluralism. They do not even speak your language, and the majority consider your religion (be it Christian or No Religion) a second-class abomination. How do you fit into the social fabric of this new local majority?

Meanwhile, the new arrivals have imported a number of inter-tribal conflicts from their homeland (our homelands all had them, too!), which they begin to enact on your streets, Gangs of New York-style. If they didn’t have inter-tribal conflicts before, don’t worry: the upheaval of migration will cause conflicts and violence. How does that violence change the way you live? Heck, how does it change your property value?

More fundamentally, these Afghan immigrants are simply from a very different culture from yours. Even after they learn English, it is still difficult to understand their body language, their idioms, their expectations of you in daily interactions. You soon learn that the Afghan residents have never been socialized to return the shopping cart to the cart corral (they don’t have big-box marts back home), they don’t understand why they would need to, and they point-blank refuse the tiny native minority that encourages them to return the shopping cart anyway. Unfortunately, our society is founded on People Who Return The Shopping Cart. Theirs isn’t. That doesn’t make them bad members of their societies, but it will be a source of friction in ours—alongside a thousand other points of friction.

In 2001, Robert Putnam discovered that, contrary to popular corporate belief, more diverse communities tend to have lower social trust than more homogenous one. These points of friction are a likely culprit.

Local institutions that might otherwise ease these frictions and facilitate cross-cultural bonding, like churches, bowling leagues, and local non-profits, are either destroyed in the face of the upheaval, or far too small to be relevant. How do you sustain the institutions that defined your community in the wake of a tsunami? Besides, as a self-sustaining insular majority, the recent immigrants have no incentive to assimilate to your culture, and are inclined to wonder why you aren’t trying to assimilate to their culture instead.

Electorally, these new residents haven’t naturalized as American citizens yet, but they will someday, probably as soon as they can. At that point, you and everyone in your town will be outnumbered 99-to-1 by the Afghan vote. Your entire city council will certainly be replaced by Afghans. They will legislate according to Afghan values, hoping to appeal to their overwhelming Afghan constituents. When they vote to impose the hijab on all women in town, you’re going to lose that vote. Maybe a federal court will eventually step into overturn the law, maybe not, but you’re still going to lose the vote. How many of your peers will simply accept the hijab so as not to make a fuss? How many of them fear they, their families, or their homes might face retaliation if they join that lawsuit?

The priorities of your police will change, too. So will the way they enforce the law. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Afghan attitudes toward the rape of “loose women” is quite different from ours. How does that shift change local policing? How does it change your life?

I’m not making any claim here that American culture is better than Afghan culture.3 The culture that arises from massive Afghan migration to your city won’t necessarily be bad. However, it will no longer be your culture. In a hundred-fold immigration event, the culture of your neighborhood will be destroyed instantly and replaced by an entirely different culture—a new culture where you and your neighbors (now an extreme minority) will become alien, often uncomfortable, and perhaps even persecuted.

We see, then, that every community has a finite capacity to assimilate immigrants. If a community exceeds its capacity, it will strain community institutions, and natives will face genuine struggles. If a community greatly exceeds its capacity, its indigenous culture will be destroyed.

For instance, there is no community that could absorb the overwhelming wave of migration I described in Section II. Most communities would collapse at far lower immigration levels. All would feel significant strain.

That’s not because immigrants are bad people or because natives are racist xenophobes or anything. Even if every single person involved, on both sides, is a perfectly virtuous saint striving to act generously toward their guests/hosts, it’s simply impossible for the native culture to remain intact if it overshoots its assimilation capacity.

Even supporters of completely free and open borders recognize that each community has a finite capacity to absorb immigrants. They simply believe it will never arrive, since, in fact, the entire population of Afghanistan will not immigrate to your state overnight. Which is true!

III.

However, you don’t need the entire population of Afghanistan to immigrate for your community to feel the strain. Consider England. National Review’s Abigail Anthony, who lived there for two years, gave this report last December, of which I will quote only a few choice excerpts:

When I was walking through Oxford around midnight after an evening event that offered unsatisfying hors d’oeuvres, I stopped at a kebab food truck because it was the only place open en route to my apartment (and at that hour, there was no line). But I was not served: The man working there told me to come back and order once I was wearing a hijab. The remark was so unexpected that I couldn’t think of anything to say other than “okay,” and I walked home hungry and stunned. The encounter could have been grounds for a sex- or religious-discrimination case, but it was a he-said-she-said scenario, so it became only another painful anecdote about Britain’s degeneration.

…the growing resentment arises from the observation that non-European immigrants often fail to comply with basic norms, let alone thoroughly assimilate. An alarming example is that more than half — 55 percent — of British Pakistanis have married a first cousin (which has long been legal in the U.K., but formerly rare). The resulting harms can hardly be overstated: The Wellcome Trust found in 2003 that infant mortality and childhood morbidity rates were higher in British Pakistanis than in other ethnic groups, and a 2005 BBC investigation concluded that Pakistanis represent 30 percent of all British children with recessive disorders. Despite the harms that result from inbreeding, an arm of the National Health Service England suggested in 2025 that first-cousin marriage has “benefits,” and further warned against criticizing such arrangements because doing so “stigmatises certain communities…”

…Through freedom-of-information requests and subsequent analysis, the Centre for Migration Control showed that foreign nationals are arrested at twice the rate of British natives, and foreign nationals are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sexual offenses.

…A Kosovan cocaine dealer was not deported after the court ruled it would be “unduly harsh” on his one-year-old daughter because she is too young to participate in video calls, while a Pakistani man who was sentenced to 18 months in jail for preying on “barely pubescent girls” was allowed to remain because the judge concluded that it would be “unduly harsh for [his] children to be without their father.”

…Even the Office for Budget Responsibility has acknowledged that the average British-born worker contributes a net cumulative £280,000 to public finances by age 66, whereas each low-paid migrant (classified as earning half the average wage) costs taxpayers £151,000 by the same age.

In Oxford, where the hijab incident happened, people born outside the U.K. are only 35% of the population, not 99%.4

(Foreign-born people do, however, account for 62% of births in Oxford, so that number will change fast.)

For my part, I’ll tell just one little story:

I was at our local Six Flags park, Valleyfair, on closing night last season. I was on a date with my wife. It was our first night out without the kids in weeks. Mostly, we had a lovely time. In line for Undertakers (a haunted house), we found ourselves behind a group of Somali5 teen girls who must have never experienced a haunted house before, or possibly even heard of the concept, because they found every single thing terrifying. They screamed at the tops of their lungs, jumped about a foot in the air at every surprise, and then giggled their way to the next room while they recovered. My wife and I have done countless haunted houses and grown largely impervious to them, so their youthful innocence, their pure horror/joy, was a balm. We surreptitiously followed the Somali girls to Berserkers (another haunted house), just to see how they reacted.

That was where we lost them, unfortunately, because one of the girls was so scared by one of the actors that she either fell over or briefly passed out, and we were waved along to the next room while people in vests intervened. I don’t want to wax poetic about what amounts to my wife and I creeping on some kids having a good time without ever actually talking to them, but those girls were terrific. They encountered our culture with open hearts, and everyone gained from the exchange. It was an Immigration Yes! moment.

On the other hand, when we left Berserkers, we were told we couldn’t enter the Blood on the Boundary Waters scare zone—which was a bummer, because Blood on the Boundary Waters is pretty new, and it’s some of Valleyfair’s best scare work. Apparently, there had been an incident of some kind elsewhere at the fair, and Boundary Waters staff had to be pulled away to respond to it. We walked around to the other side of the park, where we saw very large groups of young Somali men, who did not seem to be on friendly terms with one another, and more staff pulled from other scare zones, moving quickly to unknown destinations.

I think we got one more spookhouse finished and were in line for the Renegade roller coaster when the lights came up and an announcement started. Valleyfair, abruptly closed, two hours early, ruining the rest of our date and getting us stuck in the sudden crush of parking lot traffic for over an hour. (Parking lot traffic was not improved by the large number of police that were suddenly swarming the main entrance.) It was a sad end to a good season, especially (I assume) for the hard-working scare cast.

Our institutions did the usual thing, of course. Valleyfair released a maximally bland statement explaining that “two altercations” had led to the closure. (Pretty big altercations, to require so much staff to run across the park to address it!) Police gave a statement that contained no information. Local journalists, to a man, reported the closure, printed the press releases, sought out no witnesses, asked no questions, and did no follow-up. The suspects were never publicly identified nor described. The reports were designed to anesthetize, not inform.

This silence was absolutely necessary, because, of course, the suspects were all Somalis. This was exactly the same playbook the institutions had run in 2018, when exactly the same thing happened , which came a year after almost the same thing happened. The 2017/18 incidents6 had led Valleyfair to dramatically tighten security, turning the experience of entering an amusement park into something like the TSA line at the airport, with metal detectors, strict chaperone rules, bag searches, the works. The bad behavior came from very few people, but impacted everyone… and, apparently, it still wasn’t enough.

Somali immigrant violence has also been linked to major disruptions or closures at the Mall of America, the Minnesota State Fair, and the University of Minnesota.7

These are not signs that Somalis are bad people or “scum” or whatever else angry people on the Internet say about them. Somalis are just like any other large group of people: mostly decent folk trying to make a good life for themselves and their children.

However, these are signs that parts of Minnesota’s social and economic infrastructure for assimilating immigrants may be stressed beyond capacity. As a result, things are getting worse here, for everyone. Not a lot worse, we’re not sliding into the abyss, but twenty-five years ago, Valleyfair had no curfew, no visible security… and no gang fights closing the park. The Mall of America’s curfew rules have grown a lot over the decades, and always in one direction: more secure, because the crowd in the Mall has gotten more dangerous. Those of us old enough to remember before 2005 aren’t blind. Major venue closures like this were unheard of.

The foreign-born population of the Twin Cities seven-county metro area is not even close to 99%, like in our Afghanistan hypothetical. It’s not even 35%, like in Oxford. It’s just 12%. The fact that we are experiencing some strains doesn’t mean we’ve reached our limit, but it does mean we shouldn’t just assume that we still have vast unused capacity.

IV.

Given that every community has a finite capacity for assimilating immigrants, you might expect immigration debates to be about the very specific question I’ve raised: what is our community’s capacity for assimilating immigrants, and have we reached it?

If the answer to the second question is, “No, we haven’t reached our capacity yet,” then it seems obvious, under most popular moral codes, that we ought to welcome honest, hard-working immigrants to our communities. By default, people all over the world should be free to settle where they think best for themselves and their families. The very nature of land is that it pre-exists all of us and was earned by none of us, the common patrimony of the entire human race. If we are to exclude some people from land we say is “ours,” we’d better have a very good reason for it, or we’re no better than robbers. This is doubly true in America, the great melting pot, the only nation where everyone has immigrant roots.8 It’s trebly true when people are fleeing war, chaos, or desperate poverty, and America is their best chance at survival! We owe it to the poor and suffering to do our best to help!

On the other hand, if the answer is, “Yes, we’ve hit our capacity for now,” then it seems equally obvious, under most popular moral codes,9 that the community has a right to protect its native residents from undue strain, and that the community can take action to protect its indigenous culture from erosion. This probably means restricting new immigration, if only for a little while—with the entire enforcement apparatus such restrictions depend on.

So you would expect immigration debates to mostly be dry arguments about capacity. Each disputant would come to the debate with a specific number in mind, and then the debate would be about whose number is correct. Once you know the community’s assimilation capacity, and compare that capacity to the number of immigrants the community is already assimilating, identifying appropriate immigration policies is almost trivial. If the community is well below capacity? More immigrants! Near capacity? Fewer immigrants! At capacity? No more immigrants for now!

This would not be an easy debate. Obviously, the capacity to assimilate immigrants varies from community to community. Some are more culturally open to immigration than others. Some have stronger social infrastructure, which can handle an influx. Some immigrant communities have stronger social infrastructure, too, which can make assimilation easier or harder. Native communities have an easier time assimilating immigrants from a similar culture than from a very different culture. (For example, the average Canadian has an easier time assimilating to life in America than the average Greek.) Moreover, there isn’t a single binary point where immigration flips from “no problem at all” to “big problem.” It happens gradually, and different citizens will have different tolerances for different levels of strain in different areas of life. And so on.

It isn’t necessarily simple to measure your unassimilated immigrant communities, either. Obviously, everyone who comes from a foreign country to America as an adult is an unassimilated immigrant at first. But what about someone who immigrates as a baby and never knows life anywhere but America? Is that person an immigrant, in the relevant sense, or is she culturally and economically just an American? (What about an eight-year-old? A sixteen-year-old?) What about children born in America, but they’re born into strongly self-segregated immigrant enclaves, and so are not integrated into American society? Should they count toward a community’s capacity for assimilation? Don’t they still need to be assimilated? How can you even count heads for the vague category of “unassimilated natives”?10 In this article so far, I’ve used “foreign-born share of population” as my measure, but this simple measurement misses many nuances.

The debate, then, is not just a debate about what our immigration capacity is, but about who even counts as an “immigrant” for the purposes of immigration capacity. This is a complex debate, with many defensible answers.

Nevertheless, the fact remains: every community always has a finite capacity for immigrants, so immigration debates should center on identifying our capacity and how close we are to hitting it.

That… is not quite how immigration debates work in the United States.11 Instead, the pro-immigrant camp talks about the desperate needs of immigrants and all the (genuine) benefits they bring, but never get around to arguing what their position requires: that the U.S. has a great deal of unused capacity for assimilating immigrants. The anti-immigrant camp talks about all the costs of mass immigration, but they rarely get around to arguing that the costs outweigh the benefits. When they say things like, “America’s full,” they rarely propose a level of immigration where American isn’t full.

In other words, the two camps talk right past each other.

We can do better.

First, we can admit that the question of immigration capacity exists—and that it is, in fact, one of the central questions of immigration policy.

Second, we can admit that this question has a bounded range of reasonably objective answers, which we can likely identify through study and discussion.

Third, we can do our level best to try to find at least one such answer. I’ll give you my best shot.

Let’s take it to the map!

V.

Let’s consider our peer nations: the other members of the G7. Every country is different, but the wealthy, free nations of the G7 are more like the United States than most anywhere else.

“Foreign-born residents” is still, statistically speaking, a blunt instrument, but it gives us a ballpark idea of how many immigrants each nation is assimilating, and—this is crucial—it is a statistic that every nation in the G7 actually reports. Here are the reports from our G7 peers:

• Canada: 21% of residents are foreign-born

• Germany: 20%

• The U.K.: 16%

• Italy: 12%

• France: 11%

• Japan: 3%

There are various reasonable ways of adjusting these figures,12 but, for simplicity, I’ll use them as-is.

Germany, the U.K., and France are all in moderate-but-prolonged political crisis over their immigration levels. In each country, anti-immigration sentiment has become so strong that the most likely outcome of the next election is a far-right, anti-immigrant party becoming the largest party and/or winning the presidency.

Italy is not currently experiencing such a crisis… because they already elected far-right13 immigration hawk Giorgia Miloni in 2022. Despite intense global antipathy for incumbents, Miloni is on track to win re-election quite comfortably, unlike her counterparts in Northern Europe.

Even Japan, with its tiny foreign-born population of 3%, is experiencing immigration-related anxiety right now. I think this is evidence of how different cultures have different capacities to assimilate immigrants. It seems to me, with my limited window into daily Japanese life, that Japanese culture depends on high trust, etiquette, and conformity to social norms, much more than American or British society. This has enormous benefits. (To name one: a self-policing society doesn’t need the kind of huge police force and prison system that ours does.) However, when your society depends on deeply ingrained social norms, foreigners who don’t have that ingrained etiquette can become a problem much faster than they would in America.

The one country on this list that isn’t embroiled in some kind of immigration-related political crisis is the one at the top: Canada. High immigration levels have certainly caused political tensions up north, but, at least from my vantage point, the system has been able to handle those tensions without serious disruption. Nothing’s boiling over. The current left-wing Liberal Party government is in no serious danger, and the right-populist People’s Party of Canada stands no chance of taking power in the next election. This capacity to receive comparatively large numbers of immigrants is, frankly, impressive, and I do wonder what factors are making it work for them. This underlines what I’ve already said: there are lot of variables, and every community is different.

Excluding the outliers of Canada and Japan, though, this list suggests that nations likely start to hit capacity when immigrants make up around 10% or 20% of their national population. This seems to line up, broadly, with the experiences of many other countries.14

This is a ballpark figure and likely varies a lot between cultures (again, look at Japan and Canada!), but it gives us a starting point as we turn our eye back toward America.

VI.

I was still puzzling over the Know-Nothings in college, when I saw a version of this chart:

Seeing this chart didn’t make me agree with the Know-Nothings, but it helped me understand them.

The Know-Nothings’ heyday was 1854-1856, but they rose steadily during the late 1840s. Unfortunately, our data for the 1840s and earlier is pretty weak, but, even so, just take a gander at how steep that upward line is between 1840 and 1850! It’s reasonable to assume that the foreign-born population of the United States doubled in the span of about five years, far outpacing the social infrastructure for assimilating those immigrants into American culture.

Imagine living through that! You wouldn’t know the exact stats like we do (modern demography was not widely practiced in the 1850s) but you’d have a pretty clear idea that your country was transforming around you, and any strains on your institutions would be obvious.15 This would be especially clear in immigrant-heavy communities, where the strain on institutions would have been strongest, like Boston. Is it still surprising that the Know-Nothings won about 70% of the Boston vote in the 1854 House election, ousting incumbents throughout the state?

In 2010, when I saw this chart, I was still puzzling over the defeat of President Bush’s 2007 immigration plan. Bush’s plan provided tougher border enforcement in exchange for a “pathway to citizenship.” Illegal immigrants already in the United States who had a job could pay a nominal fine ($1,000-$2,000) for their lawbreaking, wait a number of years, and become citizens. I supported this approach, but Republican critics called it an “amnesty,” Bush couldn’t win them over, and the bill sank beneath the waves. The tougher “Gang of Eight” bill died the very same death in 2013.16

This did not make sense to me. Obviously, we had millions of illegal immigrants in our country, and that was bad, but illegal immigration wasn’t, like, murder or anything, and we were never going to deport them all,17 so there would have to be some kind of deal made. These deals seemed like pretty good ones! So why were my fellow Republicans getting so incandescently furious about them? Why did polls keep showing that Americans broadly supported impossible, traumatic, sometimes unjust mass deportations?

The chart gave me an inkling: maybe Americans outside my cozy existence at a small liberal arts university in Minnesota, far far away from the southern border, were seeing disruptions I wasn’t, feeling strains I hadn’t felt.

VII.

The next few years seemed to bear that out:

As I’ve said repeatedly, I think it’s really hard to find a definitive answer to America’s immigration capacity. There are too many variables to pin down. The definitions are vague. Our best measuring tools are coarse. America has never even seriously debated the question, preferring instead to talk past one another in slogans. We can look at Europe and say, “Okay, ballpark, our capacity is probably in the 10-20% range,” but getting to a firm number, much less a national consensus about that number, strikes me as a really, really hard job.

When I look at this chart, though, it appears that the American people have had the last laugh! Not only do the American people appear to have a number, not only is that number measurable by the incredibly blunt “foreign-born share of population” statistic, but the American people appear to have had the same number, more or less, for the past 150 years!

The number is 10%.

Whenever the foreign-born population goes above 10% (or so), a critical mass of Americans starts to vote passionately against immigrants and immigration. We might call this the “warning” zone, where politics-as-usual goes on, but a large fraction of voters starts making border control a priority.

However, when the foreign-born share of population hits 13-14%, that’s the “danger” zone. At this point, the American people get desperate and start doing crazy stuff to reduce immigration.

In the 1870s, Americans responded to a 14% foreign-born population by banning Asia. They renewed this commitment, regularly, for the next fifty years, whenever the foreign-born population threatened to tick above 14%. That’s crazy!

However, in the 2010s, when the immigrant population again reached 14%, they did something even crazier: they elected Donald Trump leader of the free world.

By the end of President Biden’s term, the foreign-born population had reached an all-time high, nearly 16%. At these heretofore unseen levels of immigration, Americans became so rabid about enforcing the nation’s long-flouted immigration laws that they voted again for ex-President Trump, even though his presidency had been unpopular, he’d lost re-election, he’d left office in disgrace, and he was under a justified indictment for stealing classified documents! Trump was now openly promising something akin to a military occupation of multiple American cities to get the job done—and the American people (by a narrow but clear margin) said, “Yes! That sounds good! Do that!”18 Dubya-tee-eff, mate!

Now that the White House has backed down on the most aggressive immigration enforcement campaign in American history, I think many people are beginning to forget that it was popular for about the first six months. Heck, it remained well within the margin of error right up until the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti:

Even now—after Minneapolis, after two American citizens died for no very good reason, after the mainstream media ran every immigration sob story they could find (and then made up a few19 for good measure)—immigration is still Mr. Trump’s most popular issue!

If Trump's immigration police have been slightly better trained; if his spokesmen had been a little more professional; if Mr. Trump himself had been a little less performatively cruel about deportations; and, above all, if Alex Pretti and Renee Good had not been killed… Trump's mass deportation policy would likely remain popular today.

Contrast this rather aggressive anti-immigrant attitude with how things felt in the 1990s. (Kids who don’t remember the 1990s: trust me on this.)

Immigration was a calm subject back then! Lots of people took it seriously, but the same way people take the budget deficit seriously: nerds cranked out reports, randos occasionally shouted angrily about it, elected officials frowned about it for the cameras, but nobody considered it existential, one way or the other.

I know there’s a risk that I’m looking back on the years of my childhood with rose-tinted glasses, but I don’t think I am. Things really seem to have changed.

In the ‘90s, immigration hardliners were cranks. Pat Buchanan was considered a radical in the 1990s, because he supported a border fence, a temporary moratorium on immigration, and ending birthright citizenship by constitutional amendment. This placed Buchanan well to the left of 2026 Donald Trump and today’s Republican mainstream. Yet Americans were so unmoved by his immigration rhetoric that he never broke 3% support.20 Buchanan’s final presidential run came in the year 2000, just as our foreign-born population hit the “warning zone.” In that race, Buchanan lost the California Reform Party primary to… a guy named Donald Trump.

However, the immigrant population is now double what it was in the early 1990s. It’s not surprising that its voters are (in the aggregate) feeling strained, nor that they are demanding stronger border protections and a much more aggressive deportation stance. It must be added: it’s also not racist for them to feel that way. (However, their resentment can develop into racism if the only people who respect their feelings are racists.)

Agree or disagree with the voters, like it or not, the American people have apparently made a collective judgment that it’s fine for 1-in-20 of our neighbors to be foreign-born, but that 1-in-7 justifies drastic measures against them.

It may be merely coincidence that this number has held so steady across so many decades. There are, once again, lots of variables, a blunt measuring tool, and changing circumstances. America’s learned capacity for immigrants could still grow (or shrink) and that could happen even in the next decade.

Still, I think it would be foolish not to take this as at least a starting point: to a first approximation, the American people collectively believe that America is capable of assimilating about 10% of its population at any given moment, and would prefer to keep it at about that level. 15% immigrants? Forget it. At that point, it seems, “America’s full.”

I wouldn’t have voted for this consensus myself, but I respect it.

Immigration touches different social classes in different regions very differently. Some, no doubt, are not negatively affected by immigration at all. Others suffer greatly from immigration. As an upper-middle-class white university graduate, the effect of immigration on me has been quite small, and much of it has been positive. Most immigrants I know graduated from American colleges. (I know more rich Saudis than poor Somalis.) Immigration is a strong part of my family history. This makes me think that America has a good bit of capacity to spare. Left to my own devices, I would speculate that America’s immigration capacity is closer to 20% than to 10%.

However, the beauty of voting is that it takes independent judgments from hundreds of millions of people, weights them appropriately, and averages them together. When we do that, it seems America collectively believes we already have a capacity problem, and have had one for nearly 20 years. Interestingly, this consensus seems to match up pretty well with the rest of the G7, where every country (except Canada) with an immigrant population over 10% finds itself stumbling drunkenly toward the nativist right.

I want to go back to the immigration politics and immigrant-welcoming atmosphere of the 1990s. I want happy, successful immigrants living free of fear in a country that considers them an asset, not a burden. I want to take the air out of the tires of America’s nativist agitators, including a certain odious individual who styles himself President of the United States.

I therefore want to lower the foreign-born population of the United States from 15% to 10%.

VII.

I am hesitant to continue, since brilliant diagnosticians often give horrendous prescriptions. The essay is certainly more than long enough, and Heaven knows I have poured enough hours and weeks into this difficult article to earn my De Civitate stipend. However, I have just said that the U.S. should “lower the foreign-born population,” and I’m worried someone who wants to open death camps will take what I’ve written as a justification for doing so. I therefore want to sketch what I think we should do—and, more importantly, what we shouldn’t do.

There are two ways to lower a country’s foreign-born population. First, the quick way: you can send people who are already here back home. (This could be by deportation, financial incentive, or other inducement.)

Second, the slow way: you can stop more people from getting in. (If you do, those who are already here will eventually die of old age, and your foreign-born population will fall.)

However, there are a number of legal and moral limits on these methods.

The Quick Way: Removal

Legal Immigrants

For starters, the United States has no moral right to remove people who are already here, permanently, if they came at our invitation. It would be a great sin to try to “denaturalize” and deport naturalized citizens, or even green-card holders, for no other reason than that we don’t want them here. (It would also violate our laws, and those laws have no chance of changing.)

If someone committed fraud on the citizenship application, fine, that’s different—but it’s also rare. Likewise, about 1% of the U.S. population are legal nonimmigrants here on temporary visas, such as the H1-B Specialty Worker visa or Temporary Protected Status. As soon as our temporary commitment to those residents has been fulfilled, we should thank them for their partnership and politely send nearly all of them home.21 However, our naturalized citizens are part of us now.

This very basic rule severely limits the pool of immigrants the U.S. can remove from the country. The foreign-born population of the United States is 15%, but a bit less than three-quarters of them are here legally, most as citizens and green-card holders.

Illegal Immigrants, In General

Of course, that means more than a quarter of the U.S.’s foreign-born population is not here at our invitation. They are illegal immigrants. This is unique among our G7 peers. For most countries in the G7, illegal immigrants make up only a single-digit share of the foreign-born population.22 The United States has a much larger illegal immigrant problem. If we sent every single one of them back to their nation of citizenship, that, by itself, would get our foreign-born population back down to about 11%. (10% if we also suspended our temporary nonimmigrant programs.)

In general, it is perfectly moral and legal to send an illegal immigrant home, for the same reason that it is perfectly moral and legal to evict a squatter who snuck into your house and has been living secretly in your attic. Even if the squatter is extremely polite (once caught) and offers to pay rent, you are under no moral or ethical obligation to accept his offer. (Doing so may be praiseworthy, if it does not impede your other obligations, but supererogatory.) By the same token, removing an illegal immigrant from the country is a perfectly rational and ethical policy response to someone who “jumped the line” and stole into our country.

This is also vital if we are to have immigration laws at all. If we pass a law saying, “No more than 10% immigrants,” but then we don’t remove people who break that law, the law is a nullity (and America will find itself exploring hitherto unknown levels of assimilation strain and nativist tensions). You cannot have speed limits without police officers. You cannot have insider trading laws without the Securities & Exchange Commission (or something like it). And you cannot have immigration laws without a lot of men with guns patrolling the border, investigating the interior, and sticking violators in detention while their cases are heard.23

I don’t care whether you call this force “ICE” or not. If we want to change the name (and even many of the personnel) because of the bad vibes that have developed over the past year, that’s fine.24 However, if you don’t believe there should be any police force to identify and remove immigration scofflaws, you don’t believe in immigration limits at all.

Indeed, given the immense size and scope of our illegal immigration problem (a scope unmatched in the OECD), I think it was entirely appropriate for the White House to ask Congress to dramatically expand ICE in 2025, and I support Big ICE until the illegal immigration problem is firmly under control.

That said, there are some exceptions to the general rule that you can send illegal immigrants home.

Innocent Illegal Immigrants

Consider a young person who was born in Madagascar and illegally immigrated to the United States as a baby. She has grown up here. She knows only our language and our culture. She has never taken French classes, much less Malagasy classes. She never consented to the crime of illegal entry, and her parents, ashamed, never even told her about her immigration status. She is now 33 years old, working as a nurse under a Social Security number she believes to be genuine, and is married to an American, with two American kids.

There can be no serious argument that, for all intents and purposes, this young woman’s homeland is the United States of America. Unfortunately, our law fails to reflect that, and instead prescribes that she should be shipped back to Madagascar when apprehended. This would be a serious injustice against her. The Catholic Church treats it as a sin to forcibly remove people from their homelands. We Americans, too, have a great love of individual ownership over our own lands and our own destinies. Banishment was once recognized as one of the law’s harshest penalties, reserved for some of the worst crimes; American law has never contemplated it. In a case like this, then, deportation would cause extreme harm to an individual who is innocent of any wrongdoing.25 Even if she were somehow guilty, it would still be disproportionate to inflict such serious harm over a misdemeanor offense. It would be an evil act.

There are, unfortunately, many such cases in the U.S. illegal immigrant population. Most are not quite as clear-cut as the hypothetical I’ve just given you, but it is clear enough that there are hundreds of thousands of people in this situation or something like it. They make up perhaps 1-2% of the overall U.S. population. Some have already been legally, but unjustly, deported.

The DREAM Act is intended to (eventually) give people in this situation citizenship, so people in this category are broadly referred to as DREAMers. The DREAM Act may be too broad in some respects, and thus may include some illegal immigrants who aren’t truly innocent, but that isn’t the reason the DREAM Act has failed to pass.

The DREAM Act has failed, again and again, because the nativist right refuses to pass legislation increasing the legal, foreign-born population—not even to prevent obvious injustices!—until it trusts that the overall foreign-born population is falling anyway.26 Since I would like to pass the DREAM Act, or something quite like it, I would like to lower the foreign-born population to 10% or so, since I believe that would enable the Act to finally pass Congress.

Illegal Immigrants of Absolute Necessity

By the same token, there are some illegal immigrants who came to the United States because they would have starved to death or been murdered or blown up by an ongoing civil war in their home countries.

I do not mean that they merely lived in much poorer conditions than one generally finds in the United States. I do not mean that they lived in proximity to violence which might have posed some danger to them, eventually. You don’t get to break another country’s law because you’d like to own a washing machine. I mean that they faced imminent threats to their life, liberty, or basic well-being.

Such immigrants should, in general, enter the U.S. through the legal asylum process (and can be held accountable for declining to do so). However, because the asylum system focuses on political persecution, immigrants facing other deadly threats did not always have access to the asylum process. They had no choice but to illegally immigrate somewhere.

Well, they had a choice: illegally immigrate, or die.

I believe strongly in our right to a border, but that doesn’t exceed anyone’s right to life. You might as well sentence a starving man to five years’ hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread, and we know how that ends. We should not deport such people.

Unlike the innocent illegal immigrants I described above, though, I do not think these cases are common. Indeed, one of the most pervasive and disappointing distortions on the pro-immigrant side of the “debate” (such as it is) is this common motte-and-bailey move: first, they claim (as I just did) that some people face threats so dire that their right to migrate cannot be justly hindered by any human power. (That’s the motte.) Second, the bailey: once you’ve agreed to this, they act as if every illegal immigrant who claims an economic motive for migration falls into this category, and can never be removed because they have a right to share in our wealth.

They don’t. The United States should have some law allowing these sorts of claims to be heard through the asylum process. For example, I am sympathetic to the view that the U.S. should hear out asylum claims from battered wives who believe the only way to escape their husband is to flee the country altogether.27 However, these cases are uncommon. The absolute poverty rate in the Western Hemisphere is quite low. The prevalence of gang violence, while unacceptably high, is not generally such that the mere presence of it justifies flight. We do not, as a matter of justice, owe American citizenship to every resident of Ecuador. Serious, justified claims are, I believe, uncommon.

Of course, if making claims about fear of persecution starts to look like a good way to get into the United States, many immigrants will claim a fear of persecution. Many claimants will be lying, and few will have the receipts to back it up. We must remember this at every stage of the asylum process.

Illegal Immigrants of Long Tenure

If the last category was narrow, this category is anything but.

I have said that it is evil to banish someone from their homeland—unless, perhaps, they have been convicted of one of the few crimes so serious that, in ancient times, it justified banishment. There is nothing wrong, of course, with using deportation to send someone back to their homeland.

But what if the land of their birth is no longer their homeland?

One’s homeland is not simply a few words on one’s birth certificate. We are tied down to the place we live in by family, community, culture, work, property, religion, and a thousand other thick ropes.

My father “immigrated” to Minnesota from Philadelphia. When he did so, he lost some ties immediately. Others began to weaken. He forged new bonds here. Bought a house, got a job, raised a family, cheered for the local sports teams, lost his accent, volunteered in the community, read the newspapers, did some potlucks, helped his neighbors, paid his taxes. I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but, at a certain point—perhaps ten or twenty years into his sojourn from Philly—my father’s homeland ceased to be over there. Now it’s here. For better or for worse, he is bound to the Twin Cities twenty times more powerfully than he was ever bound to Philadelphia. Of course, he still loves visiting his childhood neighborhood, but, when he goes home, he goes home here, to Minnesota. We have a concept in our law of “common-law marriage,” where two unrelated people become married, in the eyes of the law, simply by living together for a long time. My father is a common-law Minnesotan.

I find myself persuaded by Stephen Greydanus’s argument that the same is true of immigrants to our country… even illegal immigrants. Even illegal immigrants who knowingly violated our law in coming here, and who have been dodging deportation ever since. After they have been here for a long time, forging ties to our country, this becomes their homeland in fact, even if not in law—and it is wrong to deport someone from his homeland for any but the most serious crimes.

Greydanus mentions the case of Oscar Campos, a New Jerseyan who stole into our country illegally 40 years ago. Here, he met and married Humberta Campos (also an illegal immigrant). They ran a small business together, were active members of their parish, had three American children (ages 24, 22, and 15), owned a house, and had all the other attachments that come from living for many decades in the same place. They were apprehended and deported in December 2017, long before the current immigration enforcement surge. It seems to me that this was unjust. Yes, Oscar Campos knowingly violated our laws. Yes, he tried to evade the consequences. But he had assimilated into our society as a common-law American. Thus, deporting him was effectively a banishment. Even though he was guilty of a crime, it was still disproportionate to inflict such a harsh penalty for a misdemeanor offense.

I still think Campos (and those like him) ought to be punished, of course. First, they violated our laws. Second, they evaded punishment for decades. Third, in the zero-sum world of the national capacity for immigrants, they stole some legal immigrant’s place in the United States. Fourth, punishment is necessary not merely to redress the harm done by the illegal immigrant, but to deter future illegal immigration. If we allow illegal immigrants of long tenure to remain here (as, it seems to me, we must), then we are putting a neon sign on the border saying, “Come to America illegally! As long as you can get away with your crime for long enough, you’ll get to stay!” Only stern penalties, efficiently administered, can deter this.

Illegal entry carries a six-month prison sentence. Let Mr. Campos serve it. Garnish his wages, too, for a very long time, in repayment for the spot he took from a legal immigrant. Deny him full citizenship forever, because granting American citizenship to illegal immigrants would be the best possible way to encourage another wave of illegal immigration. Indeed, to deter future violations, the penalty faced by Campos and others like him may need to be harsher than the crime itself might suggest.

For all that, though, I believe it was morally wrong to rip Mr. Campos away from his adopted homeland and the life and family he had built here.

I think that principle extends to any illegal immigrant who remains here for at least (let’s say) twenty years. (Not just the model illegal immigrants, either.)

That’s quite a sizable number of illegal immigrants we can never remove.

Removal Without Deportation

I am, of course, a big fan of measures that do not forcibly banish people from the United States, but which simply make it less attractive for people to stay here illegally.

The federal government has a system called E-VERIFY that does a reasonably good job confirming the work authorization of new employees. We’ve had it for thirty years. However, we’ve never required employers to use it. E-VERIFY is optional! Naturally, the employers who are hiring (and exploiting!) large numbers of illegal immigrants aren’t about to voluntarily submit to a system specifically designed to prevent them from hiring (and exploiting!) those immigrants. We should make E-VERIFY mandatory. If illegal immigrants could not get jobs here, some of them would leave, and others would decide not to come here in the first place. E-VERIFY is not a panacea, but it would help, so we should implement it nationwide. I think the biggest tell that, for some people (I believe very few), this is all about being mean to brown people is that they never talk about E-VERIFY, nor about the Big Business interests that have prevented it from taking hold even amidst mass deportations.

In my view, birthright citizenship is clearly the law of the land. The 14th Amendment is pretty clear that anyone born here, living under our jurisdiction, is an American citizen. Tourists’ babies probably aren’t, but the 14th Amendment was pretty sweeping on this point. (Why shouldn’t it be? We had practically open borders in 1868!) Donald Trump’s claim to have repealed birthright citizenship by mere executive order was an offense to the Constitution, and I hope the Supreme Court crams it back down his throat later this month. However, I don’t think birthright citizenship is a actually very wise policy, and I would support efforts to amend the Constitution to prevent the children of illegal immigrants from automatically receiving U.S. citizenship. (Eventually, maybe, but not before their first birthday.) Birthright citizenship is a powerful attractor, because it means an illegal immigrant can give his children the life he wants for them, even if he is later caught and deported. Then it creates horrific messes when the parents are caught and deported, but their babies have U.S. citizenship. Let’s not do it anymore. Lots of other countries don’t have birthright citizenship.

These are just a couple of ways the U.S. could gently encourage illegal immigrants to leave without arresting them, putting them in shackles, and dragging them onto a plane. There are others.

It seems we have exhausted the supply of foreign-born persons in the United States whom we can’t deport. That still leaves lots of deportable people! However, even if we miraculously managed to deport all of them, we’d still have a foreign-born population well in excess of 10%.

That means we must also start refusing to allow more immigrants in.

The Slow Way: Not Letting People In

This is simple: when people ask to come to the United States, tell them, “Not yet. We’re full up right now.”

This is not particularly popular. Nor is it particularly fair. The process was already slow and convoluted for the people legally waiting their turn in line, and suspending the line for perhaps a decade or two would make it worse:

Nevertheless, if we are committed to bringing the U.S. immigrant population down to fit our apparent capacity to assimilate them, without doing serious injustices to those illegal immigrants already here, we don’t have a choice. The spots that would have been taken be legal immigrants have already been taken by illegal immigrants we can’t morally remove. They have been robbed, in a sense, of their chance to come to America, but not by the United States government. (This is another reason why penalties for illegal immigrants should be stern.)

In fact, this has already been happening. The amount of legal immigration to the United States has already shrunk (as a share of population) over the past quarter-century. Congress has a very hard time raising the legal visa caps when we’re flooded with illegals. The green-card lottery is already in such heavy demand that you can expect to wait approximately 70 years before winning it, aka never:

That means there isn’t a ton of slack available to cut in the legal immigration system. If it is correct that we don’t have the capacity to assimilate them all, then we have to reduce the total anyway, but it’s going to be difficult. We will be barring decent, sympathetic, hard-working people from coming to America, probably for a number of years. In many cases, we will be giving their spots to illegal immigrants who jumped the line.

Here’s a quick overview of the approximately 1.4 million people who legally immigrate to the United States each year, under normal28 circumstances:

To bring America’s foreign-born population down to 10% within the next 10-20 years, this total needs to fall by something close to half, in addition to the aggressive enforcement recommended above. That’s not going to be easy.

Refugees/Asylees

I’ll start with the obvious: we cannot turn aside refugees and those seeking political asylum. Some people on the Right look at people fleeing war zones and seem to ask, “Pah, am I my brother’s keeper?”

Well, yes, you are. Our obligation to love of neighbor does not end at the border, and it does not end if we have real problems of our own. The right to migrate is at its apex for people fleeing lethal danger. The Trump Administration’s decision to effectively terminate the U.S. refugee program is, therefore, gravely immoral:

This is not to say that asylum/refugee processing is easy. It’s a mess. No interview, no matter how thorough, can cure the fact that your birth certificate and criminal records about you blew up when your war-torn nation’s Ministry of Records was bombed to rubble by the rebels. Many legitimate refugees and asylum-seekers will never be able to show hard proof that they absolutely require refuge. Fraudsters and terrorists realize this, and so they present themselves at the border claiming that they need refuge… “But, alas,” they say! Their birth certificates and criminal records blew up when their war-torn nation’s Ministry of Records was bombed to rubble by the rebels! Our system has many layers built into it to prevent the fakers from getting away with it, but there’s simply no level of “vetting” that can perfectly discern between the genuine needy and the liars taking advantage of our charity.

Indeed, it has become quite clear that, under the Obama/Biden Administration’s (very lax) standards for paroling asylum-seekers into the United States with a work permit and a far-future court date, it became the norm for economic migrants to just make up crap so they could get in on an asylum ticket, at least for a few decades until their cases were heard. Refugees are vetted through the United Nations before they even get to our system, but they have the same problems we have, plus some more.

Now, granting that we cannot turn asylum-seekers back to their home countries (because many of them really do need asylum), one obvious reform is that we should not immediately grant every person seeking asylum a pass into the U.S. mainland with a work permit. They should be detained while their case is processed and heard. If they are truly in need of asylum, three square meals a day in confinement beats the alternative. If they’re fraudsters, mandatory detention makes the option a lot less attractive. We should hire enough investigators and judges to ensure that asylum cases are completed in 3 to 6 months, so people fleeing catastrophe aren’t held in limbo indefinitely, but everyone should expect to spend some time in border detention when coming into America this way. This is actually the law already, but Presidents Obama and Biden did some shenanigans to short-circuit it, leaving President Trump in an awkward position (and leading Trump to come up with the Remain In Mexico program).

There also may be opportunities, in some cases, to redirect asylum-seekers and refugees to other countries. We owe them humanitarian aid and human decency. We do not owe them specifically American citizenship.

Nevertheless, on the whole, this category of legal immigration seems pretty close to intractable. We have to let ~200,000 refugees/asylees per year, and perhaps even more than that, if we want God’s continued blessings on these United States.

Iraqi/Afghan Allies

These immigrant visas are for Iraqis and Afghans who worked for the U.S. during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families, and who are now in danger of retaliation. They risked their lives for our troops, and now their lives are in danger. We owe them, period. I don’t know anyone who even questions this. I rather hope I never do! We can’t reduce these visas, although they will gradually fade away as the Iraq and Afghan wars fade into the past.

Employment-Based Immigration

These are immigrants who come over because of special talent and/or employer demand. In many respects, they are our “highest-value” immigrants, since they bring strong human capital and immediately contribute to growing our economy. However, they are also the immigrants who need to come here the least. We could axe this entire category without doing anyone an injustice.

Businesses would howl, but businesses notoriously abuse these categories to fluff their bottom lines and undercut American workers, so I wouldn’t pay much attention to them. In my field, computer science, you’re required to try to “hire American” before applying for lower-paid foreign talent, so there’s a whole cottage industry devoted to running deliberately failed job searches in America, by doing things like only posting the job in a small number of print newspapers and making the application process a mess. I am therefore unsympathetic.

We could certainly keep some employment-based migration, where the benefit is strongest, but you can reduce visas in this category with a clean conscience.

The Green-Card Lottery

Now called the “Diversity Lottery,” the purpose of the modern green-card lottery is to ensure greater diversity among our legal immigrants. Entry is restricted to countries that have sent low numbers of legal immigrants to the U.S. in the preceding five years.

Even if diversity ought to be an end in itself, no one would suffer an injustice from losing access to this lottery. I repeat: it takes the average entrant something like 70 years to win this lottery. Nobody’s counting on it. We could eliminate it without grave evil.

In fact, the current White House has done so! However, it did so illegally, without authorization from Congress, on the pretext of performing a “security review” after the suspect in the Brown University and MIT school shootings turned out to be a green-card lottery winner.29 The lottery will presumably return when the Democrats retake the White House in 2028 or 2032.

Family Migration

The largest category of legal immigration by far is family visas. As we saw above, in 2024, nearly two-thirds of all immigrants to the United States came in on a family connection.

This is good and praiseworthy. The family is the fundamental unit of society. In many ways, government only exists to support families. Families bring great benefits with them, too: they are a cohesive social network that can rely on one another in a strange country. They can help one another assimilate. They can support one another with child-rearing and build up the “little platoons” in a way that atomized individuals just can’t. We definitely want people in the U.S.A. to have their families with them!

However, we need to reduce legal immigration by half, and family migration is more than half of legal immigration. It is mathematically impossible to reach our goal without trimming family visas. So let’s take a look at them:

Kids need to be with their parents, and parents need to be with the kids who depend on them. Nobody needs anyone, just about, as much as children need their parents. We cannot morally keep U.S. citizens or permanent residents from reunification with their needy children.

It is not quite so critical for spouses to be together, but they are one another’s principal helpmate and (if things go as they should) eventual co-parent. To keep them apart forever would effectively divorce them. Therefore, reuniting spouses is, rightly, a high immigration priority, and this is a matter of justice. However, reunification need not be as swift as child reunification.

On the other hand, the remaining family-based immigration categories are very good, but they aren’t essential. We do not, in justice, owe it to new Americans to bring their entire families to America as well. My own immigrant great-great-grandmother sailed from Ireland and never saw any member of her family again. This was the norm at the time. It was a choice she and her family made.30 Parents are great, of course. My parents are among my best friends, and my greatest helps in life (outside my wife and kids). Yet their lives wouldn’t be ruined if we were separated the way my kids’ lives would be. It would not be a sin to cap parental visas, delaying family reunifications for a number of extra years.

Likewise the other categories, only moreso.

Summing Up

If we eliminated all legal immigration except these “essentials”—dependent children, spouses, refugees, asylees, and Iraqi/Afghani allies—legal immigration would fall to about 55% of current levels, right about where it needs to be to make our goal in the next 10-20 years or so. There are other approaches we could take to reach our target, but each increase in one category would need to be met by a decrease in another category, or we would have to accept a longer wait before reaching stability.

I would like to reach stability as soon as possible. After all, once our immigrant population stabilizes at the target (10% of the U.S. population), we would be able to open up the doors again to more people (as long as we kept our illegal immigration under control at the same time). These people want to become American, and that’s a terrific decision! I want to let them, ASAP!

VIII.

Perhaps you are saying, “Doing this sounds very hard. What if, instead, we just didn’t do any of these things? How about we return to the status quo ante Trump instead?” As far as I am able to tell, this is indeed the unofficial preferred policy of Pope Leo and the U.S. Catholic bishops. It is also, of course, the official policy of the Democratic Party, more or less. It allows us to be nice to everyone, and to feel good about ourselves doing it.

Unfortunately, history will not allow us to do that. If we return to the laws and policies that prevailed before Trump, the foreign-born population will resume its long rise, just as it did in the years leading up to Trump, and just as it did (sharply) during the Biden interregnum. The number is already at 15%, the highest level in American history. With every additional click of that winch, America’s assimilation capacity will come under greater strain. Ethnic and racial tensions will rise. More American communities will transform. More American natives will feel besieged in their homeland by foreign cultures and foreign norms. More Americans will blame immigrants for their job losses; some non-trivial number of them will be correct.

We were warned in 2007 that a backlash was building, and did nothing. In 2016, we saw the first form of that backlash, which was harsher than anyone in 2007 could have imagined. The backlash didn’t care so much about propriety as long as its problems were addressed. In 2025, as pressure continued to build, we saw the backlash evolve into a new and more brutal form, which was harsher than most people in 2016 imagined. The backlash now casually commits serious injustices against hundreds or thousands of people (alongside legitimate immigration enforcement), and seems to revel in the suffering it causes.

Do you even care to speculate what form the backlash takes if the American foreign-born population reaches 20%? 25%? 30%? If the wheels start to come off like they did in Oxford, or, indeed, in Rotherham? I don’t want to see that backlask, but you know who really doesn’t to see it? Immigrants!

People who want justice for immigrants have to get serious about showing how their proposals can square with a stable immigrant population, one that America’s existing institutions can assimilate. Pleading that nearly every would-be immigrant should be allowed to stay (“because what harm are they doing? they’re good people!”) and that every ICE arrest is a “kidnapping,” without addressing those foundational questions, only deepens the problem. We are still in a position where it is probably possible to bring America’s immigrant population down to historical levels without doing grave injustice to anyone. In a few more years, we won’t be! Do you think voters, by that point, are going to believe we have the “luxury” of sorting out right from wrong before adopting sweeping anti-immigrant policies?

I am deeply impressed by the moral conscience many of my friends have shown in the wake of serious injustices over the past twelve months. They have forced me to look squarely at cases I would have preferred not to see. They have made me always remember the human beings behind all these numbers. Their collective resistance to deportations, at least some of which were unjust, eventually forced the White House to back down on deportations, especially the unjust deportations. However, I am deeply unimpressed by their incuriosity about the bigger picture, by their unwillingness to articulate what a permanent solution might look like, and by their eagerness to fall for every lie perpetrated by a rage-bait radical. That won’t help immigrants, and it won’t help America. It will fuel the next, even worse, Trump.

I have, therefore, in a critical but sympathetic spirit, attempted to sketch one version of a permanent solution: aggressive but just deportation campaigns, combined with sharp cuts to legal immigration, until our immigrant population once again stabilizes at a level that the American people have, historically, considered acceptable. (I would give similar advice to European leaders, who face many of the same problems with much of the same popular backlash.)

If you have another idea for bringing America’s immigration capacity into line with America’s immigration burden, add it to the public conversation. Perhaps you have a brilliant idea for raising America’s capacity for assimilating immigrants to something more like Canada’s, and you know how to sell it to skeptical voters! Fantastic!

That is the conversation we should be having, instead of the slogans we’ve been slinging for the last twenty years.

We can do it.

DE CIV NEXT VOYAGE: This took much longer to write than I planned or hoped. It was supposed to be out by May 19, but I kept realizing that moves I thought were obvious actually needed to be explained. So I am behind on my publishing, and I apologize for that, but I hope this was worth the wait. I stuck with it specifically because I promised a break from my recent Catholicposting.

Next up will be some Catholicposting, as I post some translations in order to finish an elaborate dunk on the hapless Dilan Esper. Then, we’ll see, but I am well overdue for a Worthy Reads post and have about 30 articles collected that I think you should read. (I’ll curate that down to 5-8 as usual.)

2

The about-to-become-dominant Republican Party managed to contain America’s nativist element during the 1860s, since the Union relied on immigrant conscripts to win the Civil War, but, after the end of Reconstruction, nativists didn’t just return, but won a long string of major legislative victories:

• The Page Act of 1875 banned Asian prostitutes from immigrating, and was enforced, effectively, as a ban on Asian women.

• That same year, President Grant gave a major speech against allowing public money to flow to “sectarian” (a dog whistle for “Catholic”) schools, leading to a close-fought battle over an amendment to the Constitution to that effect. The federal effort failed, but most states passed “Blaine Amendments,” which were finally struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2020 as violating the First Amendment.

• The Immigration Act of 1882 federalized immigration restrictions (which had previously been handled at the state level; h/t Tarb) and imposed taxes and exclusion powers to discourage immigration.

• That same year, the Chinese Exclusion Act effectively banned all Chinese. (They already were barred from citizenship.)

• The Scott Act of 1888 forbade Chinese who left the U.S. from returning, stranding thousands of Chinese laborers who were overseas at the time the law went into force.

• The Immigration Act of 1891 strengthened the executive branch’s power to exclude and deport inadmissible immigrants without judicial review (a situation that persists today) and led to the opening of Ellis Island as an inspection and holding area for incoming immigrants under the Act’s more stringent inspection procedures.

• The Geary Act of 1892 required legal Chinese residents to apply for, and carry at all times, immigration papers, on pain of deportation.

• Formal bans on Japanese immigration were headed off in 1907 only because the Japanese Empire struck an informal agreement with President Teddy Roosevelt to… ban Japanese immigration.

• In addition to deepening the bans on Asian immigration, the Immigration Act of 1917 imposed literacy tests on incoming immigrants.

• The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 imposed hard numerical limits on the number of immigrants the United States would accept, with quotas for each nation of origin.

This only describes the nativists’ legislative victories. Their cultural effect was much broader. Consider, for example, the work of the anti-Catholic American Protective Association, a secret society which became a serious political force in the early 1890s:

Which still seems mild compared to the nasty stuff people at this time published about the Chinese:

Nativists were also behind a number of riots and massacres. The Second Ku Klux Klan was keen on hating Blacks, but kept up a brisk side business in hating Catholics, Asians, and foreigners generally speaking.

As a child of the 1990s, all of this was perfectly unimaginable to me in 2005.

I am a strong believer in the rule that you should never translate a document into English without sharing your translation online. If everyone did this, then everything would already be translated.

Here are all my translations (plus the one that isn’t a translation).1

• #1: “Onanism in Marriage” — Some recent (1853 & 1916) rulings of the Holy Office in Rome (11 January 2015)

• #2: “1975 Nullity Case Involving a “Transsexual”” — Not actually a translation, just a document I had a hard time finding, but I didn’t know what this series was about yet (18 June 2019)

• #3: “Theologiae Moralis III: De Usu Conjugii” — Bishop Kenrick explains pre-Conciliar sexual teaching. (15 August 2022)

• #4: “Saepe Sanctam Ecclesiam (1296)” — Boniface VIII condemns a sect that may have even existed (11 September 2023)

• #5: “Pope Vigilius’s Constitution on the Three Chapters” — Come for the dull-as-dust translation, stay for the tale of a wild ecumenical council (25 March 2025)

• #6: “The End of the Council of Constance and Moyses Vir Dei” — The companion article is nuts, though (2 October 2025)

• #7: “The Vatican Was Pro-Choice? I Checked the Footnotes.” — Innocent III’s letter to the Carthusians on abortion, Sixtus V’s law heavily penalizing early abortion and contraception, and Gregory XIV’s law repealing some key parts of Sixtus’s law (June 2026)

Libresco’s premise was simple:

1. Find out how many conversions and deconversions each religion has.

2. Find out how many babies each religion has.

3. Simulate the next hundred generations (~3000 years) of American religion based on just those two numbers.2

4. Report the results:

The first thing that jumps out at me are the Mormons. We hear a lot about Muslims growing more influential in America through high fertility, but take a gander at them Latter-Day Saints! Libresco paints a possible future (again, a far future, which assumes nothing really changes for centuries) where (thanks to fertility effects) the Mormons outnumber the Catholics and Mainline Protestants combined, becoming America’s second-largest religious group, after Evangelicals.

Can you imagine what the country would look like if there were as many Mormons as there are Catholics or Evangelicals today? If one-quarter of Americans were members of this highly socialized, highly disciplined denomination?

I can’t! Mormons are pretty foreign to me. I know a few ex-Mormons and that’s about it. My impression is that Mormon Ascendancy would be good in some ways and bad in others.

However, it’s interesting how unsurprising this (pretty dramatic!) finding was, at least to me. We all know that Mormons are a tight-knit religious community and that they have a lot of babies. Carry that forward a few generations, especially in a world of sub-replacement fertility, and of course their share of the pie is gonna grow a whole lot!

The second thing I notice about this chart is what everybody else reading this chart in 2015 noticed: look at that Catholic collapse! This was 2015, when there was very little widespread recognition that the Catholic Church in America is headed for something resembling an extinction-level event. After a decade of parish closures and mergers, people on the ground seem to have more of a sense that things are going to get worse—but this chart contemplates a Catholic Church that has shrunk by nearly two-thirds in the far future. I still think Catholics who are dimly aware that Something Bad Is Happening are, for the most part, missing just How Bad things will get if we stay on our current course.

A third notable thing about the chart is that the Nones (Atheist/Agnostic/Nothing In Particular/Unaffiliated) get swole through conversion, but their fertility rates are so bad that they actually net out to losing ground rather than gaining it over the very long term.

Now, obviously, this isn’t what’s actually going to happen, because, obviously, conversion and fertility rates are not going to remain exactly the same for the next three thousand years. Nevertheless, I found it fascinating, because this is the direction we are currently heading. We are certain to deviate from this course, but this outcome is the baseline.

Or, at least, it was the baseline in 2015.

New Data, New Article

Libresco based her data on the 2014 Pew Religious Landscape Study, a gold-standard survey of nearly 37,000 U.S. adults.

A couple years ago, Pew released an update, the 2024 Pew Religious Landscape Study.

I’ve been looking for a chance to try my hand at a large data set for months. Its been way too long,3 and I figured (correctly) that the major barrier to entry (reading the manual) could be obviated with LLMs (which have read every manual). Replicating and building on one of my favorite articles seemed an ideal place to cut my teeth.

You see where this is going.

Running Back the Data

However, before I could update to 2024 data, I had to make sure I understood Libresco’s original project well enough to replicate it perfectly. That was step one.

When Libresco did this project, she only reported her final result: the reality 100 generations into her simulated future. Now that I’ve replicated her results, I can show you how it plays out over time!

A responsible editor would not let me do this, because the “generations” used in this algorithm are a simplification and do not truly onto actual human calendar years. Real human generations are blurry, and overlap, and run different lengths. To just arbitrarily declare that “1 generation = 28 years” would be to oversimplify a key component in an already oversimplified model.

Fortunately, I have slain my editors.4

That’s the full, reconstructed line graph, using Libresco’s exact methods and data from 2014.

Here’s a zoomed-in look at the 21st century alone:

Here it is as a pie chart, since I’m also trying to learn Datawrapper:

So we see that, even over just the next century or so, Libresco’s method shows Catholicism collapsing, although not completely. Mormonism also grows dramatically in size… but not to the point where most people really notice. They are still a small religion at the end of my daughters’ natural lifespan. Evangelicals grow over the short term, which is interesting, because the long-term equilibrium has them shrinking. Islam grows a lot, but is starting from such a low floor it hardly matters.

Again, this is all using Libresco’s data, running Libresco’s code, none of my own. All I did was irresponsibly slap year labels on everything and show you some line graphs.

Onward to 2024!

Now you know why I spent all that time trying to figure out fertility by religion last week!

When we take the Pew Religious Landscape 2024 figures for religious conversion and combine it with my updated fertility stats, we get this view of the American religious future:

In this newly-revised visions of the future, Evangelicals still go up… but, unlike in the 2013 survey, they don’t really go back down. They overtake the Nones in about a century, hit a plateau as America’s largest religious group, and stay there forever. What accounts for the difference?

Well, probably they are being buoyed a bit by Historically Black Protestants. Libresco separated HBPs, but the 2024 dataset made it much harder to filter them out, so I just had to sort Black Protestants into the two standard groups (Evangelical and Mainline). Since members of Historically Black Protestant denominations have higher fertility and higher retention than both White Evangelicals and the White Mainline, this boosted both categories. (You can therefore expect the influence of White Evangelicals to diminish and Black Evangelicals to grow, even within Evangelicalism, although I have not quantified how large this effect might be.)

It also helped Evangelicals that, according to Pew, Evangelical retention improved substantially in the past ten years, from ~65% to 72%. As with all compound interest problems, small changes in the rate lead to big changes far down the line. Moreover, I found that Evangelical fertility is relatively higher than Libresco found in 2014.5 In this vision of the future, then, America, ever Protestant, becomes a predominantly Evangelical nation—although there are more and more Black Evangelicals.

Catholicism still collapses, according to the 2024 data. The Mainline finally stops bleeding (again boosted by Black Protestant fertility) well before the Catholic Church does. Indeed, the collapse of Catholicism is the preeminent religious fact of the 21st century, if we hold our current course:

Catholic implosion is no surprise. Catholics have mediocre fertility (1.67 children per woman), mediocre retention (only 57% of those raised Catholic still identify Catholic as adults), and pretty poor conversion rates. For example, even though Catholicism and Evangelicalism are (today) similar-sized denominations, Muslims convert to Evangelicalism at eight times the rate Muslims convert to Catholicism!6

[HOW TO READ THIS CHART: Start with the left column to pick a childhood religion. Then read that row right-to-left to see where children in that religion ended up as adults. For example, 0.5% of children raised Catholic end up Buddhist. 57.7% of Catholic kids remain Catholics as adults. 8.9% of those raised Catholic have since converted to Evangelicalism. And so forth. Looking at the Muslim row, you will notice that only 0.5% of Muslim children end up Catholic, but 3.8% of them become Evangelicals, which is about eight times as many.]

On the other hand, in this 2024 projection, the Latter-Day Saints never achieve takeoff, despite having the highest fertility in the nation! Libresco had them reaching equilibrium at nearly 25% of America, but I have them here at only 5%! This shocked me. Given the insanely high fertility I found for Mormons (3 children per woman!), I expected this chart to show even bigger and quicker Mormon Dominance. What happened to knock them so far off course since Libresco-Sergeant ran these numbers in 2014?

It’s the opposite of what happened to the Evangelicals. Pew 2024 found that Mormon retention had declined substantially, from 64% to only 54%. Insult to injury: the Mormon conversion rate (people becoming Mormon as adults) fell, too. The miracle of compound interest works in both directions, and these two trends decapitated Mormon growth expectations in America.

However, this chart, like Libresco’s original chart, doesn’t quite get at what really interests me. These are all self-identified members of each religious tradition, but many of these people are, in practice, barely attached culturally and not at all attached doctrinally. A future America where passionate, alive-for-Christ Evangelicals dominate the religious landscape is quite different from a future America dominated by a bunch of people who vaguely identify as Evangelical but have never read the Gospel—as Douthat’s most prescient tweet eternally reminds!

The Religious Landscape, Minus “Indifferents”

So I did the same thing here that I did in the fertility stats: I factored out people who don’t attend weekly services.7 I have dubbed this group “indifferent,” so that I don’t have to type out “those-attending-in-person-less-than-weekly” every time.8

It seemed likely to me (obvious, even) that, sure, the children of indifferent believers are bound to get peeled off, because (generalizing) they aren’t being taught to take it seriously in the first place. But those parents who are hauling their kids to church every Sunday, the true believers? Those parents are putting a lot of energy into passing on their faith, and therefore will have higher retention rates. When we separate the “indifferent” from the true believers, then, what we should see, over several generations, is indifferentism imploding but devoutness expanding, or at least holding its own.

When I first ran my figures, even I was astonished by how right I was. According to my calculations, 92% of Evangelical children who attended weekly services remained active, weekly+ attendees in adulthood! For Catholics, 80% did the same! And… not a single Evangelical or Catholic left religion? Out of all the thousands polled?

At this point, I realized I had made a coding error. I corrected it, reran the figures, and…

Oh, dear.

Oh, dear, dear, dear.

This is a big chart with lots to look at. For those of you who don’t want to scan through all 361 cells, I think the tale of the table can be told in one illuminating factoid:

If a child is raised Catholic, faithfully attending Mass at least once a week while growing up, he has just a 21% chance of remaining a weekly Catholic as an adult. He is exactly as likely to become an atheist/agnostic as he is to remain a devout Catholic. (Remember, this is a religion that teaches non-attendance is a mortal sin!) But the child is about twice as likely to end up in the twilight zone: still identifying as Catholic, but not attending Mass more than once or twice a month.

The Evangelicals are doing a much better job retaining their children than the Catholics, who in turn are doing a much better job than the Mainline, but this is only a relative success. The chart as a whole is a disaster for all theist religioms. The only religion that is keeping even half of its children practicing the faith on a weekly basis is Islam—and then only just! Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of children raised in No Religion remain Nones as adults.

Maybe I’ve drawn the line in the wrong place? Maybe I’m holding the kids to too strict a standard, and the fact that they’re only coming to church once or twice a month doesn’t make them “indifferent.” Do Mainline denominations really care if you’re in the pew every week? So I tried a second test where I changed the line from “attends weekly” to “attends monthly.” It made no significant difference.9

This catastrophically bad conversion matrix produces the following cursed projection:

Here’s a zoomed-in version looking at the bottom 5% only:

This largely confirms the story we were already telling. The collapse of the Catholic Church as a wide-reaching American entity is set to be the preeminent story of 21st century religious demography. In this projection, devout Muslims outnumber devout Catholics by the 24th century. Even the devout members of the Protestant Mainline—a laughing-stock of the past generation—surpasses Catholicism in the early 22nd century. Devout Mormons do it even faster, outnumbering Catholics in the pews every Sunday by the end of this century.

You might have thought that the Nones and the Indifferents, with their terrible fertility rates, would eventually be overcome, in the very long run, by the other religions, simply by being outbred. I did! However, Nones and Indifferents win converts at the highest rate by far, and, out of all religions compared, children raised None have the lowest chance of converting to another religion by adulthood. As long as they can keep that up, they don’t need babies. They can sustain themselves as the dominant American religions with converts alone.

So, in the very long run, is devout American religion just… over?

Always In Motion, the Future Is

There are a few reasons to expect that this projection of the future is wrong.

The first is the obvious: extrapolations of the far future from current trendlines are basically always totally wrong. As G.K. Chesterton says:

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called “Keep Tomorrow Dark,” and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) “Cheat the Prophet.” The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

(You know how rarely I advise you to read the whole thing, but read the whole thing. A first-rate first chapter to a first-rate book.)

Even the most sober, calculated predictions of the far future, then, must be given with the tongue slightly in cheek.

Besides, the data I have just shown you isn’t really from the past couple years. It’s more like the past thirty. Think about it: Pew asked adults in 2023 and 2024 what religion they were as children and what they became today. That is very recent data, so all the conversion rates in this article are based on adults’ answers to those questions. But suppose Pew asked a 55-year-old the question, and the 55-year-old left his devout Evangelical faith for indifferent Mainline practice right after he graduated from college. The data may have been collected recently, but what we are really seeing in his case is a conversion that happened in 1991! This will be endemic throughout the dataset, because the average age of the representative respondent will be in his late 40s. What I have been showing you today, then, isn’t a window on present conversion rates, but a window on past conversion rates, spanning approximately the past 10-40 years. (We won’t know present conversion rates for a long while.)

This was not a particularly good 10-40 years for U.S. religions! At the start of it, the Catholic Church remained locked in vocation and doctrinal crisis, while the Evangelical world was rended by the televangelist scandals. In the middle of this period, the New Atheism arose (remember how intense that was?), and the Catholic Church was consumed by sex abuse scandals. Toward the end of the period, the sex abuse scandals spread to non-Catholic churches and Donald Trump’s alliance with religion made religion notably gender-polarized.

There is some evidence that organized religion’s Very Long Lent (1990-???), is finally slowing, or even reversing. It would take a long, sustained movement to make up even half the ground religion has lost since its 1960s peak, but my projections today might represent, not the future, but the last gasp of an irreligious recent past.

On the other hand, as Nate Silver often reminds us, the numbers always change, but they can change in either direction, at any time. This new springtime for conversions could just as easily turn out to be a dead cat bounce for organized religion.

Finally, my projections could quite easily overlook a tiny cohort within a religion that has unusually strong fertility and retention. Suppose, for example, that there is a tiny bloc of Ultra-Orthodox Jews in the United States (say, 1:10,000 Americans). This hypothetical sect has an average of 4.0 children per woman (quite high, but still lower than current Amish fertility) and keeps 73% of them in the fold as adults (same retention as Nones). My measurements couldn’t even detect this sect today, because they’d be so tiny. I’d simply interpret them as part of the already-tiny bloc of Jews with high attendance at religious services, and they would not be large enough to visibly boost that bloc’s fertility. Nevertheless, if they managed to stay on track for a few hundred years, they’d become the overwhelming majority in America:

It is not difficult to imagine this of Orthodox Jews, since Israel’s political landscape has already been substantially altered by Ultra-Orthodox fertility.10 However, it is also easy to imagine such ultra-devout movements emerging from the Latter-Day Saints, the Amish,11 or even the fraction of Catholics who reject birth control. One (or more) of them having and sustaining high fertility plus high retention would rewrite America’s future entirely.

I have seen replacement of this general sort with my own eyes in Catholic parishes around me. Twenty years ago, only weirdos wore chapel veils or knelt to pray after Mass. But those weirdos had a lot of kids, and today it is common. If trends hold, we are maybe ten years from “kneeling after Mass” being common enough that the rest of us start doing it out of sheer peer pressure.12

On the other hand, even the most devout Catholic families are still losing huge shares of their children to other faiths:

It’s easy to become dominant when the whole pie is shrinking. All you have to do is shrink more slowly. Devout Catholics seem to be doing that within their parishes, but that won’t be enough to bend the curve in the wider culture unless they can get their retention numbers up.

What Does the Future Hold?

All we can say with confidence right now is the course major American organized religions have been on for the past few decades. Projecting that course forward paints quite a bad picture for American religion as a whole, albeit with some good news for Evangelicals and Latter-Day Saints, and especially bad news for Catholics.13

We can also say with confidence that I know a whole lot more about exploring large data sets than I did three weeks ago, so, mission accomplished!

NEXT VOYAGE: I don’t know what exactly I will write next, but I know there are many De Civ readers who aren’t here for “the Catholic stuff,” and it has been a lonnnng six weeks for those readers. Some change of pace is in order. We will see what. I may run an repost article from the archives next week while I work on it.

I’ve shared the code behind this post on my GitHub.

12

Similarly, this will be all of us in a few years:

Every two years, the Cooperative Election Survey asks 60,000 Americans a bunch of questions. Over the past four surveys (~240,000 validated Americans), here is how many babies women had in each of several major religions:1

Many Bothans died shrinking those error bars to a reasonable size.2

I could have pulled a similar chart from any number of existing sources. Many people have already asked the question, “How many babies do women in each religion have?” and they have posted their answers right here on the Internet.

Unfortunately, I think all their answers are wrong, because they aren’t asking quite the right question.

You know the saying, “All models are wrong, but some are useful”? I think the basic model we have for surveying religion in the United States is not the most useful way of looking at American religion.

Indifference is Not Religion

The typical American religious pie chart looks like this:

(Note to email readers: over on the webpage, you can interact with this pie chart! Turns out the Datawrapper plugin is open to every Substacker, not just Nate Silver!)

However, the majority of self-identified Catholics in surveys are not “Catholic” in any useful sense. Most “Catholics” in surveys are only Catholics in a cultural sense. It is part of their background, their family story, but makes little actual difference to what they believe or how they live. They pray sometimes, perhaps. Some even consider religion important to them! However, they live primarily as Americans, not as Catholics, practicing the standard Doesn’t-Matterism of 21st century America.

As I wrote just after the 2024 election:

Because cultural Catholics are basically just ordinary Americans who might say the Hail Mary once in a while, and because there are so many of them, when you poll “Catholics” without filtering for specifically religious Catholics, you’re basically just getting a random sample of ordinary Americans. Their polling responses are basically always pretty much exactly the same as polling results for normal Americans, unless you ask them about St. Patrick’s Day or tacos.

(That’s the other thing about Catholics: churchgoing or not, we are disproportionately White—specifically Irish—and Hispanic.)

Whenever someone shows you a chart about Catholics, with no filtering, you’re usually better off cutting out the middleman and just looking up a chart about Hispanics and Scots-Irish instead.

I don’t know whether this is as pronounced in other religions as it is in Catholicism, but every religion has people who identify as part of it without living like it. The great Ryan Burge has single-handedly changed how we think about Evangelicals simply by pointing out how many cultural Evangelicals there are—and how much they (increasingly) differ from devout Evangelicals.

When I see graphs about religion, then, I always want to factor out the people who aren’t actually all that interested in their self-reported religion.

Definitional Problems

Unfortunately, it’s not a simple matter to identify these “Doesn’t-Matterists” or “Indifferentists.”

First, in reality, indifferentism lives on a spectrum, so any line we draw between “indifferent” and “devout” will be arbitrary. No matter what we do, we’re going to count some people as “indifferent” who should count as “devout” and vice versa.

Second, definitions of what makes one “devout” will vary from religion to religion. For example, as a Catholic, I considered defining an “indifferentist” as “someone who believes it is morally acceptable to use artificial birth control,” which is a key fault line between devout Catholics and cultural Catholics. However, that definition would hardly work for Protestantism, where even the devout accepted contraceptives wholesale between 1930 and 1970. Maybe I should define an “indifferent Protestant” as someone who rejects Biblical inerrancy? But then how would I define indifferent Jews? Or, for that matter, how would I then define indifferent Mainline Protestants, since most of the Mainline rejects Biblical inerrancy? And so on. Even if this didn’t thrust me into the doctrinal minefields of a dozen religions I don’t even belong to, defining indifference as a matter of heterodoxy is simply unworkable.

Third, indifference is not quite the same thing as heterodoxy. Lots of Catholics who contracept are very invested in their religion, show up to Mass every week, and are very upset about the Church’s teaching. You could call them heretics, you could call them sinners, but you can’t call them indifferent!

America’s Common Hour

One striking commonality among major American religions is the requirement to go to church every week.

In Catholicism, failure to attend Sunday services without a serious reason is (ordinarily) a mortal sin. Protestantism inherited this rule from Catholicism. While their various denominations have transformed the rule in many different directions, there remains a strong expectation in most of Protestantism that the faithful will attend Sunday services weekly. Jehovah’s Witnesses have no “official” attendance requirement, but anyone not in the pew weekly will get hounded by their elders. Muslims have rigid weekly attendance requirements at mosque. And so on.3 Certainly there is a strong correlation between non-attendance and indifference to doctrine, indifference to prayer, indifference to religious disciplines, and so on.

That, then, is where I have drawn the line. People who attend religious services “once or twice a month” or less are the group I consider “indifferent.”4 Once you account for this, the religious pie chart from before shifts a lot:

Religion Minus Indifferents

Of course, I could make a pie chart showing allllll the different types of religiously indifferent Americans: the indifferent Catholics versus the indifferent Evangelicals versus the indifferent Jews, and so on. In fact, just for you, I’ll do that in this footnote.5

However, in my experience, all else being equal,6 the religiously indifferent from have more in common with one another (religiously speaking) than they do with their self-identified co-religionists. (Their actual religious beliefs tend to all boil down to Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.) So I have opted, on this chart, to put the indifferent from all faiths into their own giant pie slice.

I think this is, for most purposes, a more accurate representation of the true religious currents in the United States. America is mostly divided between the Nones and the Moralistic Therapeutic Deists. (I have not checked their political alignments, but suffice to say I have some suspicions.) There is no moral majority. There is a rather meagre minority, often divided against itself on important questions. No wonder it often feels besieged.

The share of devout Catholics in the U.S. is not one-fifth to one-quarter, as is often reported, but about one-twentieth. Catholicism is a rump religion. Its numbers are inflated by its powerful cultural influence, which lingers, sometimes for generations, after its former adherents have, for all intents and purposes, abandoned Rome. What cultural Catholics do and think does not necessarily indicate what practicing Catholics do and think.

The Protestant Mainline, once the dominant religious and cultural force in America, has for all practical purposes ceased to exist.

Even the Born-Agains don’t look too hot by these numbers, although they are (clearly, by far) the largest and most influential religious group in America, more than double the size of the Catholics.

So this chart—the truer chart, in my opinion—presents a lot of food for thought.

However, today, I only care about fertility by religion.

Fertility by Religion, James-Style

In conclusion, here is the fertility chart from the start of the article, but now with Indifferents factored out:

This… isn’t that different from the original chart, is it? What do you call it when you finally ask the right question, but get the same answer?

It’s worth examining this in a little more detail:

There are two interesting patterns here:

First, religious involvement is associated with fertility. This is well-documented and not a surprise, but it is still satisfying to see the effect holding consistent across religions. Churchgoing Catholics are more fertile than Indifferent Catholics, Born-Agains than Indifferent Born-Agains, and so on. This relationship gets muddy in a few places on the chart, but I think we can chalk that up to small sample sizes causing large margins of error.

Second, religious involvement’s association with fertility, while real, isn’t that strong. When I rendered this chart, I expected to see a chart where all the “devout” religious cohorts were at the top, in order, followed by all the “indifferent” cohorts at the bottom. For example, I expected Indifferent Mormons to be more fertile than Indifferent Catholics, but I expected Churchgoing Catholics to be substantially more fertile than both.

The reality is close to the opposite! Over and over again on this chart, the Churchgoing and Indifferent bands for a religion are found right next to one another. Churchgoing Mormons are more fertile than Indifferent Mormons… but Indifferent Mormons are still more fertile than everyone else. This suggests three theories:

1. Fertility is driven much more strongly by demographics (race, income) and culture (what your neighbors are doing, the messages you receive) than by religious practice or belief.

2. The people I’ve labeled “indifferent” aren’t as indifferent as I thought, and many continue to be believe and practice in limited ways even after abandoning the standard practice of weekly attendance.7

3. The people I’ve labeled “indifferent” really are indifferent—but they didn’t used to be. They were raised devout, had some or all of their babies while devout, and then became indifferent, when it was too late to have an impact on their fertility.

As always, the true reason for this result is probably a mix of those theories, plus several others I haven’t thought of.

That’s all! Mormons have lots of babies, Buddhists don’t, news at 11. This post was merely a stepping stone to another post still in the works.

I’ve shared the code behind this post on my GitHub.8

2

(This long footnote is all just talking about data and process. Pretty boring. Lots of pictures, but I put all my best and truest pictures in the main article.)

I started out by just looking at women in the 2024 Cooperative Election Survey, which got me this chart:

Some of these error bars are fine! There are 1,617 religiously unaffiliated women represented in the Nones bar on this chart, which is plenty to give us a good reliable estimate of how many children non-religious women had, on average.

However, in the entire 60,000 person sample, there were only 22 Muslim women aged 44-55. That makes sense, demographically! Muslims are less than 1% of the population. But the result was a 95% confidence interval that ranged from 1.11 child per Muslim woman all the way up to 3.84 children per Muslim woman. In other words, because this sample was so small, Muslims could quite plausibly be anywhere from the least fertile religion to the most fertile religion. Jehovah’s Witnesses (Observations in sample: just 12) are even worse. Holy error bars, Batman!

I first tried to correct this by widening the sample, counting men and expanding the age range:

The benefit of this approach is that it really does give us a lot more data. There are 38,943 people in this sample, versus just 4,530 in the previous sample. That shrinks the error bars a lot!

The problem is that it sweeps in much, much older data. A 100-year-old Catholic woman who had her last baby in 1961 will now be included in this sample—but Catholic fertility was considerably higher in 1961 compared to today, which means this paints a less accurate picture of religious fertility today.

The expanded sample also sweeps in some younger women who may not have completed childbearing yet, artificially lowering the stats for religions where women tend to have their kids later in life (like the Nones).

The other thing I just don’t like very much here is including men. Men don’t have the babies, they can have babies at all ages, and it’s apparently well-known that they systematically underreport their number of kids to researchers.

A few years back, Ryan Burge, the gold standard in graphs about religion, asked a similar question (with the CES 2020 rather than the CES 2024), but he took a slightly different approach: he looked at 35-45 year-old adults who had children in the household (ignoring adults who had no children, which obviously raised his averages!):

He had some really tight error bars on that, so I looked into it for a while in hopes of replicating his work, and then building off of it.

I did manage to replicate his findings, but not his error bars:

You may be wondering why Burge’s error bars are so much smaller than mine, even without pooling.

I’m wondering that, too! Clearly, I’m not as clever as I thought (yet).

In this particular slice of the CES 2020 (35-45 y.o. adults of either sex), there’s only 45 observations of Muslims (whose weights sum to just 39.9), so there must be some math I don’t know about allowing Burge to be more confident in his averages than I am. Alas, I stopped after Statistics 101 because the intro course was all my major required!

I then tried using the Cumulative CES 2006-2024, even though it would have dragged in a lot of extra data from earlier times that I didn’t really want. However, the Cumulative CES doesn’t even include the fertility variable, so it was useless to me!

Eventually, I discovered that, as long as the underlying data are extremely similar, you can use math (something called inverse-variance weighting) to pool multiple surveys together. At first, this was very cool. However, it had some drawbacks. The main thing inverse-variance weighting does is give extra weight to “stable,” unvarying samples. In one wave, though, there was only one (1!) Orthodox woman in the age range and who attended services regularly. She had three kids. Since there was only 1 woman in that sample, the math said this sample was infinitely stable (because every woman in the sample had 3 children!). So the weighting equation discarded all the other data from other Orthodox women in other waves, gave 100% of the weight to this one woman, and confidently informed me that the average Orthodox woman has exactly three children, with zero need for a confidence interval.

You can see this chart is doing something similar to the Jews. Not quite as bad, but similar problem: one wave randomly got just a few Jews with no kids, which was technically a low-variance sample and therefore ended up with 78% of the weight.

Finally, I learned that you can pool a survey reasonably well by combining their results and rescaling their weights. This isn’t perfect, either, but it appears to avoid the inverse-variance weighting problem. Hopefully I did it right! (You can check it out in the GitHub code at the bottom of the article.)

This article was a crash course in stats, much more than I expected at the outset.

7

I did test for this a little, by trying out a narrower definition of “indifference.” In this chart, you count as churchgoing if you attend at least “a few times a year”. You only count as “indifferent” if you attend “seldom” or “never”:

As you can see, the pattern (mostly) holds. Churchgoing members of a religion clump together in bands with their Indifferent brethren, even when we redefine “indifferent” to count only those fully severed from the regular practice of their faiths. Fertility-wise, Indifferent Catholics are much closer to other Catholics than they are to Indifferent Jews. This continues to surprise me.

Another theory: maybe my definition of indifference was too narrow. Maybe a ton of the weekly pewsitters aren’t really involved in the religion, but are just going for something to do! (Not a very likely theory, but I was exploring the data.) So I tried redefining “indifferent” one more time. This time, anyone who attends weekly or less is considered “indifferent.” Only the extremely devoted people who go to services more than once a week count as Churchgoing here:

The error bars have gone crazy here, because the samples are so so tiny, but the pattern holds! Even the few extremely devoted Catholic women who go to Mass twice a week or more (they’re more devout than I am, that’s for sure!) still have fertility that hovers around the national average. It seems religious practice just doesn’t seem to make that big of a difference in how many babies you have! Demographic and cultural factors dominate!

“Letters to My Daughters” is a series of letters I will send my children, when they are teenagers, about our (Catholic) religion. They are, of necessity, opinionated, and, in light of their audience, paint certain things as I truly see them, but without some of the nuances I would explore if aiming at the general public. Of course, your feedback and advice are welcome, or I wouldn’t be posting it in public.

My dear daughter,

There we are! Now that we’ve escaped the swamps of Mechanical Materialism, I can finally show you some of the Quest, free and clear!

But… where do we start? When I set out on my own Quest, I spent about ten years wandering around, confused. There are so many possible starting points!

• Descartes: “I think; therefore, I am.”

• Thales: “Everything is made of something, except the thing everything is made of.”

• Kiri-kin-tha: “Nothing unreal exists.”

• Hume: “All ideas are derived from impressions.”

• Marx: “I’m bored at work.”

If you choose to undertake the Quest yourself, this period of wandering around is inevitable. It’s also indispensable. Many of these starting points lead to dead ends, and several of them are flat-out wrong, but you learn a great deal from the encounters anyway. (Usually. The only thing I learned from reading Karl Marx is that Karl Marx was an angry baby.) There is no single, exclusively “correct” starting point, either. One true starting point might lead you to truth about ontology, while another might lead you to the truths of ethics. This is the joy of the Quest, should you choose it for yourself.

However, since I am trying to give you a short, directed tour here, I will suggest the starting point I’ve found most useful. It was given to me by your grandparents, and now I pass it on to you. This particular starting point comes from Plato’s greatest student, a Greek scientist-philosopher named Aristotle.

As a scientist, Aristotle loved studying the world around him, so many Aristotelian starting points are observations about the world. That includes our starting point for today:

• Aristotle: “Some things change.”

This seems hard to deny. Lots of things do change! A rock in a river becomes smooth. Once a year, without fail, my face becomes sunburned. (These are both changes of quality.) Every day, you grow a little, and, every time I make hamburgers, they shrink in the frying pan. (Changes of size.) When we start a bonfire in the backyard with newspapers as kindling, we create fire and ash but destroy the paper. (These are changes of substance.) When I toss Sophie or Spider Pillow across the bedroom to you because you’ve forgotten them in some god-forsaken part of the house at first tucks, they are changing velocity (and, consequently, changing position as well).

Aristotle doesn’t assume that everything changes. He never says anything like that. He simply observes that some things change.

Aristotle noticed two things about these sorts of changes. These things are obvious, but Aristotle was the first to put them into words. That made Aristotle kind of a big deal!

(DAD’S PRO TIP: If you want to make bank in philosophy, just be the first person in history to write down something really obvious! You’ll die poor, because it's impossible to make bank in philosophy, but people might name things after you when you’re dead!)

The first thing Aristotle noticed about change was that, in each change, something that possibly could be becomes something that actually is. For example, before the change, my hamburger could be smaller, then it changes, then it actually is smaller. This process of actualization takes time.1 The amount of time varies. If you drop a rough rock in a river, it will take years for the river to make it really smooth. My annual sunburn happens in hours. When I toss your guys across the room, it takes only seconds for them to cross the floor—and only milliseconds for them to stop moving (a second change!) when they hit the bed. Nevertheless, in every change, the world starts with something possible and, after some amount of time, ends with something actual.

The second thing to notice is that each change requires a changer. I have pale Irish skin and poor discipline about reapplying, so I always have the possibility of sunburn, but my (possible) sunburn can’t cause itself. How could it? It doesn’t exist yet! A mere possibility cannot affect the world! Only actual things can affect the world. My possible sunburn is made actual (every single year) by actual ultraviolet radiation, emitted from the actual sun. (This is followed by Sabina telling me I should have put more sunscreen on at the safety break.)

This is true for all our examples. The rock we dropped in the river is made smooth by the (actual) river. The bonfire is lit by an (actual) burning match. Your guys are thrown by the transferred motion of my (actual) arm. The hamburgers are shrunk by (actual) heat, which causes (actual) moisture in the patty to boil off. You got tall enough to ride the roller coasters at Valleyfair because your (actual) bones got longer, because your (actual) bone cells reproduced.

In Book VIII of his Physics, Aristotle works through several logical proofs to make sure that, yes, every single change requires at least one changer. These proofs are good fun, but also… duh!

This leads us to the question where things start to get interesting: since there are all these actual changers going around causing changes, what made the changers actual in the first place?

Logically, there are only two inescapable possibilities. Either a changer became actual because some other changer made it actual… or the changer never became actual, because it was always actual. There is no third option.

It seems like, usually, changers are made actual by some other changer. For example, you got taller because your bone cells started making more bone cells. What made that process actual? Growth hormones, which communicated with the cells to tell them to start making more cells. What made the hormones actual? The (actual) pituitary gland made them, because your (actual) nutritious diet included enough proteins to fuel production, using food grown by the (actual) sun and rain, and so on.2 For all of these changers, they were made actual by another changer. None of these changers was always actual.

However, this chain of changers cannot go backward forever.

Of course, there are some things that can go backward forever, like the list of all negative numbers, or the length of a line that you cut in half over and over again, or you guys when I tell you it’s time to get ready for bed every night.

However, a chain of changers, where each changer depends on the changer before it, isn’t one of those things that can go backward forever. If a chain of changers went backward forever, then there would be nothing to get the whole series started in the first place. It would be like a train with an infinite number of boxcars but no engine. If you saw such a train moving and asked, “What’s pulling the boxcars?” and Sir Topham Hatt said, “Each boxcar pulls the boxcar that’s behind it,” you would correctly reply, “Yes, but what’s pulling the first boxcar?”3 You know full well that there must be a first boxcar, and there must be something pulling it, because otherwise the train wouldn’t be moving at all.

Or, again, it would be like a line of dominoes extending backwards into unknown mists far in the distance. If you see the dominoes tumbling toward and past you, you know right away that, somewhere in that long chain of dominoes—even if the line is infinitely long—something caused one of the dominoes (maybe the first domino, if there is one, or maybe some other domino in the line) to fall over, strike the next domino, and begin the chain reaction. If nothing had made one of the dominoes fall over, then no dominoes would be falling, and you would not have seen the domino chain reaction fall past you.

It’s the same with all the other changes we’ve seen. Every change requires another changer, and, so far, every changer we’ve seen is only explained by yet another changer. Eventually, there has to have been something that started the whole chain going, or the domino line of changes we see in the world around us couldn’t be happening.

We are forced, then, to face the other possible explanation for a changer. As I said, logically, there are only two possibilities: if a changer didn’t become actual because of some other changer making it actual… then it must be the case that the changer never became actual, because it was always actual. There is still no third option. Aristotle realized that every single change we see in the world today can only be explained by something that has always been actual. When we see any change, either it is directly caused by something that has always been actual, or it is caused by some other changer. If it was caused by some other changer, then that changer must either be caused by something that has always been actual, too, and so on until—inevitably, inescapably—we arrive at some changer that has always been actual, an Unchanged Changer. Aristotle proved that at least one Unchanged Changer must have always been actual, as a bedrock logical certainty.

“Always” is a big word. We don’t know whether time had a beginning. Some physicists think yes, others no. If time has no beginning, then any Unchanged Changer must have been actual from all eternity. If time does have a beginning, then time itself has changed, and any Unchanged Changer must have been always actual before (and therefore beyond) time itself. Science and philosophy also cannot say whether the universe has always existed, or whether it has always been changing. (Aristotle thought yes.) We have no information prior to the final 10^-32 seconds of the cosmic inflation period, and it may be in principle impossible to ever find out. All we can say at this point is that, if the cosmos has always existed, any Unchanged Changer was part of it.

Now, you might be thinking, “Oh, that sounds like God. Is that God?” You might even be rolling your eyes—I can perfectly imagine your face from here, years in advance—and saying, “Yes, Dad, I know it’s God, they taught me this in sixth grade ugh you can stop trying to be so sneaky about it.”

True enough. We pay the big bucks for Catholic school so that you are exposed to these ideas early and often. Mrs. Quillan did a great job covering this in sixth-grade theology.4 However, that was the sixth-grade version. When you learned this argument, it ended here, with “…and the Unchanged Changer is God.” You simply have to take shortcuts when teaching sixth-graders philosophy. However, you’re older now, and I’m preparing you for the rest of your life, so we can’t take that shortcut today.

When I was in a ninth grade study hall period in the St. Thomas Academy library, I came across a book of collected readings in philosophy. In that book, I read a lecture by the mathematician Bertrand Russell called, “Why I Am Not A Christian.” Now, you mainly know Bertrand Russell as the inventor of Numberwang, but he was a brilliant and amiable mathematician. He was also an atheist. In his lecture, he talks about the proof I have just given you:

It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God. […But!] If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, ‘How about the tortoise?’ the Indian said, ‘Suppose we change the subject.’ The argument is really no better than that.

When I was fourteen and read the whole lecture, these two points hit me hard:

• “If everything has a cause, God must have a cause.” (Thanks in part to this lecture, this objection is broadly known all over the world today as “turtles all the way down.”)

• “If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God.”

These points troubled me, and led me to abandon Aristotle’s unchanged-changer argument for several years. (I took refuge in St. Anselm, Pascal, and Descartes, who were also in that book—although I’m a bit embarrassed about it today—and in C.S. Lewis.) It was not until college that I started taking Aristotle seriously again, and it still took me months of reading to slowly become convinced he was right after all.

I hope, though, that you have already spotted the obvious hole in Russell’s first objection: Russell says that Aristotle’s argument claims that everything has a cause. That’s false! As I pointed out earlier, Aristotle’s argument simply observes that some things change, and those changes have a cause. He never assumes that everything has a cause. For Aristotle, things that don’t change don’t need causes. Russell has completely misstated this argument, to his loss! Unfortunately, I had been careless in studying this argument, so I missed Russell’s error completely. I spent years thinking a valid rebuttal to the Unchanged Changer was, “Oh, yeah? Well, who made the Unchanged Changer? It’s turtles all the way down!” If I’ve spared you that mistake, these letters are worth it for that alone.

The second objection, however, has more force. In fact, against the sixth-grade version, Russell is clearly correct. We have done absolutely nothing to show that the Unchanged Changer is God.

Indeed, Aristotle himself had no idea that the Unchanged Changer was God! Aristotle was a Greek pagan who lived 350 years before Christ. He probably never even heard of our God.5 That’s one of the things I admire so much about Aristotle: he tracked down the truth even without the benefit of revelation, with a mind unbiased by a monotheist upbringing.

Here are some of the many other things the Unchanged Changer could be:

• The universe itself

• Some random chunk of matter—say, one small piece of fairy cake (as used in the Total Perspective Vortex, before Zaphod Beeblebrox ate it)

• The Big Bang itself

• Zeus

• The entire Greek pantheon (Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, the whole gang)

• The Sun, worshipped as the prime creator power by several religions

• A whole host of immaterial nameless omnipotent Gods outside the universe

• Every single human mind could be its own Unchanged Changer. (Aristotle points out that his predecessor Anaxagoras taught exactly this.)

In the sixth-grade version, you don’t rule out any of these things. We must.

Continuing to follow Aristotle (and his medieval heir, St. Thomas Aquinas) we will continue this adventure in the next letter.

Unchangingly,
Dad

UPDATE 5 August 2026: A reference to Anaximander should have said Anaxagoras. I regret the error.

Here are all installments so far in the Letters to My Daughters / Letters to a Growing Catholic1 series:

• Letter #1: “The Truth and Nothing but the Truth, So Help Me God” — Against doesn’t-matterism. The truth matters a lot. (27 August 2022)

• Letter #2: “Faith is, Firstly, Reasonable” — Faith flows from reason, not in opposition to it. (2 March 2023)

• Letter #3: “The Leap of Faith is Not to Jump” — Faith holds you to reason, even when you don’t want to be held. (22 March 2023)

• Letter #4: “The Quest (and the Rest)” — Not all are called to a lifelong Quest for the Truth, and I will equip you for either calling. (14 June 2024)

• Letter #5: “Who Aren’t I? Why Aren’t I Here?” — We must free our minds from the assumption of mechanical materialism. (9 August 2024)

• Letter #6: “The One Thing It Ain’t Is Turtles All The Way Down” — an argument from motion (April 2026)

• Letter #7: “The Alien Entity” — (June 2026)

However, this year when we spoke, Frakes suggested an interesting theory. Perhaps, he suggested, the cameras were being shorted out by the charisma differential between us.

You see, cameras are perfectly fine filming me, and perfectly fine filming Frakes. However, when his electric charisma is contrasted with my “face for radio,” it sends the cameras on the fritz. (This struck me as logical.) The solution: rather than a traditional interview, which involve long soliloquies that risk building up a high “charge” in the charisma differential, this time we would sit down together and have more free-ranging conversation. That would keep the charisma differentials low and the cameras online.

Like a fool, I agreed.

As I soon learned, Two-Takes Frakes is a lunatic. He cannot hold a discussion thread together for more than a few seconds. His idea of “conversation” is to emit a koan and then stare at me uncomfortably for several seconds waiting for my reaction, before leaping to a new, wholly unrelated, koan, as if I’d never replied at all. During our entire interview, he blinked exactly twice, which was somehow much worse than never blinking at all.

Worse still, the rapid-fire camera movement between him and I seemed only to build up the fatal charisma differentials even faster. Not only am I, once again, invisible on this tape, but the quality of what’s left is visibly degraded!

Oh, well, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me thrice, you fool me, it can’t get fooled again.

I here attempt to reconstruct some of what I said to Frakes to keep our bizarre “conversation” afloat, and I must say I’ll be actively looking for a better way to spend my April 1 next year. My best to Jonathan on his budding career, but I’m afraid I can’t keep helping him out like this.

On to the interview:

Our hatred for this reptile goes all the way back to the dawn of civilization.

Wait WHAT?! That’s a huge snake! Where did that snake come from? Where were you keeping it when you came in and sat down and I offered you a soda?! Wait, is that a rattlesnake? No, you— no. Out. Get it out. Yes, I’ll hold your Mr. Pibb, it’s fine, just—

Chess is more than a microcosm of war.

The more I play games, the less I think of chess as a microcosm of anything. Chess is, in its own way, quite a beautiful game. From a single, fair, simple, consistent starting position, the application of just a handful of rules (which you can fit on a single page of paper) blossoms into a staggering array of possible, yet delightfully finite, outcomes. However, your opponent has the same access to those possibilities as you do, so the only sure way to outmaneuver him and carry the day is to outthink him. This is a lot of fun.

However, everything that makes chess beautiful also makes it alien to any actual human experience. Take war, for example. War is never fought from a fair position. The sides are never perfectly matched. Even in an even fight, each side will have advantages and disadvantages, which create an asymmetry in every conflict. The rules, such as they are, are often discovered in-flight, are constantly evolving, and (between combat, logistics, strategy, politics, finance, morale, technology, and a thousand other considerations) would fill all the books in the Library of Alexandria while barely scratching the surface. The possibility space of war is not actually infinite, but it’s close enough.

I find myself gravitating today more towards games that open up more possibilities. I don’t doubt that, someday, the LLMs will be just as good at the Star Trek card game as the world’s best players, but there is so much more rich variability in a game like that compared to chess that I suspect Trek’s AlphaGo moment is still a ways off. I am particularly attracted to games (like Trek) that involve building a custom deck beforehand, because so much of the outcome is then determined by choices made long before the first turn begins… much like in a real war!

Cakes are more than just a delicious way to end a meal.

No, cake sucks.

I love sweets. When playing Santa Claus / the Easter Bunny and filling stockings / baskets, I deal myself in for an even share of the loot. When my wife goes in to Regina’s Fine Candies to buy me my birthday present, the woman behind the counter invariably asks if it’s her “usual order.” (My wife does not eat candy.) I bake two Sweet Martha’s Gourmet Chocolate Chunk cookies to eat hot out of the oven almost every night right before bed, a tradition I’ve had now for nearly twenty years.

Cake, however, is a very dull dessert. It’s so fluffy that much of it is just air. It’s less a delectable sugar explosion and more like mildly sweet bread. I like bread a lot, but it’s no dessert. Frosting can help break up the monotony of a slice of cake, but usually it’s heavily concentrated at the top, with perhaps a thin layer in the middle, so you’re either getting a boring mouthful of sweetish bread or you’re getting an intense mouthful of frosting that crowds out everything but the sugar taste. You want a dessert to spread its tastes through every bite, like a well-mixed Cold Stone ice cream or a DQ Blizzard. In that sense, cake just isn’t fit for purpose, even if its tastes were really exciting, which they mostly aren’t.

I have a rather daring theory about this:

I think cake is beloved because of cultural heritage. People long ago had no great desserts (many of our ancestors had the misfortune to be British), so they hit on this pretty mid dessert, lost their minds for it, and passed on that excitement to their kids, who are inculturated into loving cake before they have the critical faculties to realize that cake is pretty boring. Of course, we all like cake and I don’t deny that some of us legitimately love it, but I tend to opt out.

Flourless dessert tortes often solve many of these problems simply by increasing density, so I will go for a torte, but what I actually have as a “birthday cake” at my birthday party every year is a bowl of raw cookie dough dumped on a plate with candles stuck in.

I highly recommend it.

Books can be viewed as food for the mind.

True enough!

Fiction is the queen here. Non-fiction is good and much of it is formative in important ways. Where would I be without Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals or Elie Wiesel’s Night in the back of my head? How does anyone make sense of a classic Call of Duty WWII campaign without having read Stephen Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers? Nonetheless, fiction can’t give you the full picture of humanity the way a good tale can. On the other hand, reading is in such free-fall at the moment that I’m not really in a position to have that argument. Reading’s not even losing to other storytelling mediums, like television, film, or single-player video games. It’s getting replaced by short-form video and Steal a Brainrot multiplayer slop. I really don’t know what our civilization will look like if those become our common texts instead of Pride & Prejudice and The Lord of the Rings. But whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent, so let’s move on.

In the age of communication, we can always be reached.

In 2026, this is becoming less true every day.

As a culture, we are becoming paranoid to the point of hysteria about our “private” information. As individuals, we are becoming too fragmented to find one another.

I’ll give you a for-instance. A few weeks ago, I found a CD wedged underneath a drawer, where it must have fallen years prior. It clearly belonged to the last person who lived in my house. I knew her name because the CD was lodged next to some eight-year-old medical bills. The CD appeared to have sentimental value to the owner, so I resolved to give it back to her. In the 1990s, this would have been straightforward: knowing her first and last name, I would have looked her up in the White Pages. (She had a rather distinctive name.) The White Pages would have listed her phone number. I would then have called that phone number, told her about the CD, asked her if she wanted it back, and, if so, arranged a pickup.

In 2026, this was impossible. I spent two days trying to track down her contact information through the Internet, looking for mutual friends on various social media networks. Once upon a time, everyone was on Facebook, but Facebook is dying. Lots of people are elsewhere, and lots of people are nowhere. The death of landline telephones has made tracking phone numbers nigh-impossible, even if the White Pages still existed. I wasn’t willing to pay $20 for some online “public records lookup” to send me a list of suspected phone numbers that may or may not prove out. In the end, I got lucky and found a local address linked to one of those “public records lookup” companies, and her niece was a year ahead of my wife in high school, so I was able to do a little Facebook stalking through the niece to confirm the match. The address was an assisted living facility, so my only way to return the CD was to sneak into the building (the doorbell went unanswered), find her room, and hand it to her personally. She was first annoyed that someone was knocking at her door, then surprised, then quite pleased when she realized what I’d done. But boy I would have loved to just phone her and save myself all the trouble!

Even among friends and well-known contacts, I used to just have to track their phone numbers. Now, I have some friends who have landlines and can’t receive texts (although not many), some who have cell phones and only accept texts, some who mostly answer email, some who ignore email and only answer Facebook Messenger, some on Discord, and one exclusively on WhatsApp. If I ever lose his number from WhatsApp, I will probably never speak to him again. I’ve had to start taking notes on my friends, not to remind myself of their numbers and/or screennames, but only to remind myself which messaging service to use to contact them!

Another example: universities used to all have public directories. These directories listed basic information about contacting current students: their names, ages, class years, phone numbers, email addresses, and mailbox numbers. This was such a normal and indeed important part of life that FERPA, the giant federal privacy law governing higher education, has a giant exemption carved into the heart of it allowing “directory information” to be shared with the general public. However, in the last fifteen years or so, not only have universities all but eliminated these directories, but the very idea of allowing people to know that an individual student so much as attends the school has become an affront. (“What if they’re dealing with a stalker?” Well, we can always just take those specific students out of the directory!) Publishing actual student contact information? Beyond the pale. People who had all this info published about themselves a couple decades ago and never gave it a second thought now think you’re inviting murder and mayhem if you confirm a given student’s dorm number without a form signed in triplicate.

I don’t know exactly whom to blame for this. School shooters? Online scammers? Our suffocating culture of safetyism and/or liability avoidance? Perhaps it’s just the 15-minutes-of-fame phenomenon, pushing anonymity shields created for celebrities into the mainstream because any one of us could suddenly find ourselves facing down an Internet cancel mob of thousands.

Whatever the cause, though, in this age of communication, we are actually getting quite weird about anyone daring to actually communicate with us. I don’t think we talk about this enough.

A game of cards reflects life itself.

I… I know. I already said that, didn’t I? When we were talking about chess?

An organized workspace is a must.

This is true. My wife touts her ability to look around a messy counter and just find stuff on it, and she is quite good at it. It took me years to realize, though, that she had no magic powers in this department. If a cabinet got sufficiently crowded or messy, she would lose track of what was in it and put things on the grocery list that we already had, no matter how good her eyes were at picking things out. Eventually, “heap management” as a form of organization always fails!

Don’t listen to people who call it “OCD” or “autistic” if you need to organize a space before you start working in it! This is received wisdom hundreds of generations old, practiced in every professional shop I can think of, and just obviously true. It’s harder to get work done if you don’t organize first. One can go over the top with this (which can become pathological), but this is another area where our culture has gotten weird and prickly about normal human operating parameters.

A dream about driving might be a statement of independence.

But it probably isn’t. Dreams mostly have no meaning and reveal nothing. Freud is mostly bunk, and prophetic dreams are rare.

A true archaeological find is like winning the lottery.

What does this mean?

Does it mean that you can make a lot of money off finding an important primitive humanoid skull in your back yard? I suppose you can, but it requires a certain amount of savvy, a really good find, clear legal rights in your favor (rarer than you might think), and is frowned on by both professionals and Indiana Jones.

Does it mean that a good find significantly increases the sum total of human knowledge and prosperity? Perhaps it does, but lotteries don’t. Each lottery has one huge beneficiary, but that’s paid for out of the prosperity of hundreds or thousands of others. None of them are better off for it. Some of them are addicts, losing their lives to gambling. The state extracts some pittance of the lottery to inefficiently spend on birds or something, but, net-net, lotteries are bad for mankind.

Does it mean, then, that finding a big archeological discovery is going to lead to a ton of paperwork, and probably lawyers? That, I admit, does seem probable.

If someone takes their picture, they steal your soul.

Bad news for Hollywood actors, Frakes!

…but also explains a good deal about Hollywood in general, now that you mention it.

The better you look, the better you feel.

You know, there is something to this. That may be surprising, coming from me, given the intense apathy I expressed toward clothing last year. Yet there does come a point in the day when you’ve been in sweats and a bathrobe for too long. Even though clothes don’t matter to you, a self-image forms, and I don’t like it. The image usually includes stink lines, often unjustly. Then I put on real clothes and do, in fact, feel better. If I put on a suit, better still.

My suit is tailored,1 and that counts for something, too. It fits really nice, better than any other clothing I own. That just feels smart, physically. It may also project a message to everyone else in the area, but the clothing’s physical feel, I think, is doing a lot of the work here.

Hospital rooms can be drab, depressing places.

Can’t argue the point, but putting up one crucifix helps a lot.

The crucifix is a particularly good symbol to bring into a place of suffering. It reminds simultaneously that one is accompanied in that suffering, and that the suffering leads to something better. Losing sight of that leads to despair, I think.

Annnnnnd that’s all I got! I know that’s only half of my conversation with Frakes, but the rest of the tape recording I have appears unsalvageable.

Perhaps I’ll be able to repair it, but I estimate it would take a team of technicians working on it for (at a very rough estimate) somewhere between 364 and 366 days. I know that’s a huge range, but repairs are very tricky to predict.

For now, thanks again to Jonathan Frakes… I guess… for sitting down with me… again. I am being told that we do have a clip Jonathan wants to share tonight from one of his directorial projects, so I’ll leave you with that:

As for me, it’s time to bake a couple cookies!

DE CIV NEXT VOYAGE: I apologize for my three-week silence. I had a very productive February followed by a much quieter March, and I have been feeling guilty about it.

Aside from this annual April Fool’s treat, I have been working hard on the next installment of Letters to My Daughters, which has proved fiendishly difficult. If I do my job well, the final product will look easy-breezy—even shallow—but let me assure you I’ve been rewriting paragraphs over and over again! Speaking about metaphysics precisely, clearly, and concisely, all while staying age-accessible is no easy task!

One way or another, though, I won’t let this drought continue. You readers are too important. Happy April and see you soon.

I talk to a lot of people on the internet, so the law of averages dictates that many of them are idiots.1 This is not their fault and I have spent decades practicing the habits of good conversation, even with idiots: listen closely, argue clearly, claim firmly, question gently, and pursue common ground aggressively.

For example, in the Catholicism forum on Reddit, I recently took the position that, if you have sex with your wife and penetration alone is insufficient to get her off, it is morally praiseworthy to use your mouth to finish her, and I cited 19th-century sources supporting the general principle to argue that it’s a long-established teaching. My view was generally well-received, but it also provoked one specific guy to message me several times a day every day since to inform me that he is praying for God to reprimand me for my blasphemy against the Virgin Mary. I am trying to be firm but kind,2 because that is how you persuade. It’s also how you learn. And it’s how you discuss important disagreements without going to Hell. After all, Christ warns us: “…whosoever shall say, Thou fool!, shall be in danger of hell fire.” (Mt 5:22)

Recently, despite all this, I lost my temper. A guy said something so stupid that I opened with an insult, doubled down by belittling him, got sarcastic, rejected any possibility of common ground, and generally tried to make him feel every inch of how stupid he was being. I knew it was bad and I did it anyway. I, who am understanding toward QAnon and gentle toward people who tell me they would take my kids away from me if they came out as trans, lost my crap.

So what unspeakable obscenity did this guy propose? Was he defending Jeffrey Epstein? Did he propose genocide of humanity for environmental reasons?

No. This man started by arguing that Donald Trump had done a good job preparing the American people for his war with Iran. Foolish, but I stayed my hand. He argued that Donald Trump had done a better job preparing the American people for a war than other recent presidents.3 Madness, but I told myself to be the bigger man.

Then this degenerate implied that the “recent presidents” Trump had outdone included George W. Bush.

And then I went at him.4

How to Start a Legal War

In January 2002, President George W. Bush gave the “axis of evil” State of the Union speech, which briefly enumerated the sins of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government:

Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens—leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections—then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.

With this, the Bush White House kicked off its campaign to win public, constitutional, and international support for a policy it had decided was vital to the interests of the United States: war with Iraq.

Over the next year, the White House made Iraq the center of an astonishingly long news cycle. Saddam Hussein was the TIME Magazine cover story on May 13… and again on September 16… and again on March 10. It was a constant feature in the news. Newsweek identified it as the top story of 2002, above even that year’s midterm elections. Heck, the midterms were, in large part, a referendum on the proposed Iraq War anyway!

On the international front, top administration officials made the pilgrimage to the United Nations to make the case, forcefully and repeatedly, that Saddam Hussein had violated multiple U.N. resolutions, including the ceasefire agreement that had suspended the Persian Gulf War. The U.S. sought new rounds of weapon inspections, acknowledgments that the agreements suspending the Gulf War were in breach, and a new U.N. Security Council resolution, Resolution 1441, which promised “serious consequences” if Iraq failed to avail itself of this “final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations.” In the U.S.’s view, the broken ceasefire, combined with a new Security Council resolution, would satisfy our obligations to peace under the United Nations Charter Treaty.5

Through a heroic amount of persuading, presenting, and (of course) lobbying, the Bush White House was able to win all three of its wishes. Res. 1441 passed in November 2002, eleven months after the Bush Administration began earnestly making the case for war. A few months later, Sec. of Defense Colin Powell’s presentation to the U.N. on supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were riveting television the world over.

Meanwhile, domestically, the Bush team labored even harder to crack an tougher nut: the U.S. Congress. The House was under narrow but adequate Republican control, but the Democrats held the Senate, 51-49, and the progressive faction was already in the streets protesting the war. The White House launched a well-coordinated media campaign in September, hoping to convince voters and elected officials of the threat posed by Iraq. This outreach campaign was successful to an extent hardly imaginable today. The war resolution passed the Senate 77-23 (even Hillary Clinton voted for it!), and it got 296 votes in the House (the GOP only had 221 seats, 6 of whom voted nay). The Iraq War Resolution became law October 16, 2002, the product of months of hard political lifting.

The Iraq War Resolution was styled as an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) Against Iraq. Since the War Powers Resolution, the AUMF has evolved into Congress’s modern way of exercising its constitutional power to “declare war.” Congress can use an AUMF to declare war directly, by authorizing immediate military force against specified enemies, or Congress can, through an AUMF, make a special, ticket-good-for-this-ride-only delegation of war powers to the President, authorizing him to use military force if certain conditions are met. Either approach satisfies the requirements of the War Powers Resolution, and either constitutes “declaring war” for purposes of Congress’s exclusive war-declaring powers under Article I, Section 8.6

Congress took the first, immediate path just after 9/11, when it declared war on al-Qaeda and all its affiliates in perpetuity. For Iraq, though, Congress made the AUMF take the form of an ultimatum: they did not allow the President to launch a war unless the President could certify to Congress that peaceful means had failed and that the war on al-Qaeda would continue full-force. They hoped this ultimatum, backed by Congressional war authorization, would convince Iraq to comply without war. However, if the President certified the conditions were met, the AUMF allowed him to initiate hostilities without further action from Congress.

The Bush White House recognized that both the U.N. and Congress had given one last chance for Iraq to comply with its ceasefire obligations, and the White House honored that insistence. The AUMF passed in October, the U.N. resolution in November. The U.S. then spent four months pressuring Iraq to comply, repeating its clear message on Iraq throughout that time, both for Iraq’s benefit and the American People’s. President Bush finally issued Saddam Hussein a globally broadcast ultimatum on March 17: leave within 48 hours, or we will attack. He did not. We launched a limited first strike 49.5 hours later,7 with the true opening attack (the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad’s military and leadership targets) arriving 45 minutes after that. By the time the bombs fell, Bush had already secretly transmitted to Congress his certification that peaceful means had failed, and his public notice under the War Powers Resolution was on their desks the next day.

We don’t like to remember this because of how the war went later, but, just before and just after the first bombs fell, the Iraq War was extremely popular:

Would you favor or oppose invading Iraq with U.S. ground troops in an attempt to remove Saddam Hussein from power?

• Favor: 64%

• Oppose: 33%

• No Opinion: 3%

-Gallup, March 14-15, 2003

***

Do you think the United States action in Iraq is morally justified, or not?

• Yes, is: 73%

• No, is not: 24%

• No opinion: 3%

-Gallup, March 29-30, 2003

This popularity had been built up over the course of a long, difficult year of presenting the case for war to a wide range of audiences, using the whole of the White House. The reason the Iraq War Resolution passed Congress was because elected officials had been, first, convinced by the arguments and, second, buoyed by the war’s popularity.

Now, the Iraq War was a mistake.

To be sure, great good came from it: Iraq has enjoyed more than 20 years of freedom. Although the cost in blood and treasure (for all concerned) was far higher than we expected, the government we built for them remains intact, and continues to govern. It has federalism, a parliament, and separation of powers. It has regular competitive elections. It has problems up the wazoo, but it no longer has Uday and Qusay Hussein’s rape-torture chambers for pretty women who catch the dictator’s eye. Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of many thousands of innocents, and that regime has been replaced by a better one. (Not a great one. Don’t move to Iraq. But better.)

Nevertheless, the war was a mistake. The U.S. went in to topple the dictator, yes. Even in 2002, I considered that sufficient reason to attack. He’d gassed his own people! However, for most Americans, nation-building was a side project. Our main reason for invading was to dismantle Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. That was the centerpiece of our argument for the war. When we got there, though, we found very few WMD, and the ones we did find mostly predated the first Gulf War. It gradually became clear that Saddam Hussein had actually been forced to abandon his WMD program in the 1990s, but had kept up noncompliance with the U.N. as a bluff, because he wanted his enemies in Iran and Israel to think he did still have WMD.

Unfortunately for Saddam, his bluff worked.

As the war turned sour, many people turned to the theory that Bush had lied about the intelligence and manufactured a WMD threat out of whole cloth, but every country and every intelligence service at the time agreed that Iraq did have WMD.8 That’s what Resolution 1441 said! In 1998, years before Bush even came on the scene, President Clinton had bombed Iraq for exactly the same reason.9 As I recall it, the only person who seemed to really think Iraq might not have WMD was Hans Blix, and I never thought too much of Hans Blix:

Iraq goes to show that you can have a legal war, based on a reasonable assessment of the available facts, supported by a just cause, with large-scale public buy-in… and the war can still be a horrible mistake.

This should make us even more skeptical of illegal wars, especially the ones that are missing some of those key ingredients.

How to Start an Illegal War

I’m told that, “You can actually just do things.” Apparently, this means you can just start bombing a sovereign foreign country one day, out of nowhere,10 without talking to Congress, without talking to the U.N., without making a case for war to the voters. Indeed, you can start a war by yourself, even though you campaigned on not starting wars, including this exact war.

Surely I must tell the voters something, you might think. To satisfy this residuum of conscience, you might find yourself posting a quick address to the White House website after you start the war, then cold calling reporters at random for the next week to give them a quote here or there, as a treat.

Sorry, did I say the White House website? Here in reality, the post-attack video actually went up on Truth Social, an obscure social media network used only by the White House’s sycophants.11

The end. War launched.

The Overlooked Just War Criterion

I frequently turn to Catholic thought on moral questions, not just because I am Catholic, but because the Catholic Church has done an awful lot of thinking about most moral questions, and has therefore gotten pretty good at it.

However, in the matter of Just War Theory, the Catholic Church has been so generally persuasive that the Catholic view (whether advertised as such or not) is a very common starting point for everyone talking about whether a war is justified or not. One way or another, most of its core ideas have found their way into international law. (In particular, Christianity has globalized the once-radical idea that wars of aggression are not a legitimate tool of statecraft, but a crime against humanity.)

The Church lays out the just war criteria in its catechism at paragraph 2309:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

- there must be serious prospects of success;

- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are often summarized as: war must be necessary, a last resort, not futile, and proportionate.

However, evaluating these factors can be extremely difficult. Two good men may come to very different conclusions about one or more of them.

In Iraq, for example, many of us believed (as I did) that we would be greeted as liberators, that all human beings yearned for liberal democratic freedom, and that reconstruction would therefore be a quick and relatively painless affair. We were greeted as liberators, but not by everyone, and that minority made reconstruction painful indeed, and never entirely successful. Moreover, the Iraqi people did not, in fact, yearn for liberalism in the same way that we meant it.

Those who wisely foresaw a long, expensive reconstruction period in Iraq raised serious objections to the proportionality of the war, fearing that we might replace the great evil of Saddam Hussein with the even greater evils of endless, bloody civil wars. Those of us who had bet heavy on a quick, easy victory thought those people were being ridiculous; of course the Iraq War would do a lot more good than evil! I still think the war ultimately cashed out as doing more good than harm, but it’s a much closer call than I ever expected in 2002, and we must, at the very least, admit that the critics had some very good points.

Because the just war criteria are almost always disputable, the Church has one more criterion, which is often forgotten, because it appears at the very bottom of the paragraph, and not in a bullet-point list: competent authority.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

A wise and just nation creates power structures that make evaluating the just-war criteria a serious and difficult endeavor. A foolish nation places all that power in one set of hands, leaving the just war criteria to him alone. Either way, though, the power to evaluate the just war criteria belongs to the competent authority exclusively.

When someone without competent authority launches a war, then, the war is unjust, because the highly prudential calculus of just war has not been appropriately evaluated. For example, there have been several moments in our recent history where it was at least arguably justifiable for the U.S. to attack Syria.12 However, if the governor of Kansas had quietly activated his state national guard, sent them overseas, unilaterally declared war on Syria, and sent his troops in to fight Bashar al-Assad and al-Qaeda, yes, it would be a farce. But it would also be a crime against peace. Under international law, it is probably a war crime. Under Catholic doctrine, it is a mortal sin. The Kansas-Syria war might very well be necessary in the just-war sense (at least for the defense of innocent Syrian civilians), a last resort, successful, and proportionate. However, the governor of Kansas simply lacks authority to lead America, or even Kansas, into war. He has not been entrusted with that piece of the common good. He is not entitled to impose his judgment on the American people. He would not be a liberator, but an usurper.13

The Wise Federal Design

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they deliberately fragmented “responsibility for the common good” among several different branches of government. Each branch was responsible for its own pieces. Most responsibility was reserved “to the States respectively, or to the People.”

The conduct of war was assigned to the President, who was therefore declared “commander-in-chief of the armed forces” in Article II. The Founders did not believe war could be micromanaged by committee. Their own experience with the Continental Congress during the Revolution showed them that they needed a decisive leader to command U.S. military missions. Once war is declared, the President may be supervised by Congress,14 but it’s the President who eventually calls the shots.

On the other hand, the authority to decide about declaring war, the Founders gave exclusively15 to Congress:

The Congress shall have Power… To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.

—Article I, Section 8

This is the authority to “evaluate the conditions of moral legitimacy for war” spoken of by the Just War Theory. The President does not have it. Congress does.

The Founders did this in part simply to separate powers. The Founders separated powers because no one person or entity could be trusted with full power. During debate at the Constitutional Convention over this provision, Elbridge Gerry famously remarked that he “never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to make war.” As James Wilson argued at Pennsylvania’s ratifying convention:

Th[e] [Constitution’s] system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or a single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our national interest can draw us into a war.

In part, though, they separated this specific power from the Executive because the Executive is uniquely dangerous in this regard. As Madison wrote to Jefferson in 1798:

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislative.

He goes on in that letter to complain about the possibility that a president could, by hook and crook, abuse his power to drag Congress into a position where it has no politically viable choice but to acquiesce to the President’s war of choice, writing, “it is evident that the people [would be] cheated out of the best ingredients in their Government, the safeguards of peace which is the greatest of their blessings.”

A third benefit of the Founders’ assignment of the war-starting power to Congress is that it forced the nation into a discussion. President Bush very probably wanted to go to war with Iraq immediately by April 2002. He could not. He needed Congress on his side. He couldn’t just start a war on his own, then claim Congress was on his side when it inevitably failed to pass a War Powers Resolution ending the war. That would invert the Constitutional order, by allowing one man to start a war and a minority of Congress to continue it.16

That meant Bush had to talk to Congress. He had to talk to it a lot. It wasn’t enough to talk to Congress, either. Congress is a permanent prisoner of the election cycle, largely unable to do really unpopular things, so Bush had to talk to the voters, too.

As a result, America spent a full year talking, as a nation, about the just war criteria as applied to Iraq. We had raging national debates, including on the floor of Congress, about whether the cause was just, about its proportionality, about alternatives. Every point of the just war theory was litigated in endless detail at water coolers and dinner tables across the country. We spent months arguing whether a new war would be self-defensive enforcement of the terms of the Persian Gulf cease-fire (good), or a new preemptive war of aggression (bad). Bush was forced to pursue several alternatives that he probably didn’t really want to pursue, but political reality didn’t give him a choice. Only after those alternatives were exhausted could he launch the attack. When he did finally launch the attack, he had the great majority of the nation behind him.

That’s what happens when Congress has the power to declare war.

Now Donald Trump is showing us what happens when Congress, by negligence, loses that power. As Abe Lincoln wrote to his friend William Herndon in 1848:

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object– This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us[.]

Alas.17

The Constitution is Not Amended by Disuse

I say this kind of thing a lot, and one common response is a dejected sigh. “You’re right, James, of course this war is unconstitutional, on paper. But that paper is long dead. Presidents have been flagrantly usurping Congress’s war power for decades. Get real. Trump’s just the latest in a long line.”

First, I think this is much too cynical about the recent past. George W. Bush launched multiple wars, all of them legally, backed by authorizations from Congress that he had sought and received. George H.W. Bush, in launching the Persian Gulf War, sought and received an AUMF and the U.N.’s full blessing.

Even deviations from the war power have generally come cloaked in thick legal arguments, because even aggressive presidents mostly knew they had to have some fig leaf to justify an attack without Congress’s say-so. For example, I was just a baby when George Bush invaded Panama, so I’m not prepared to parse out the legal arguments, but Bush did try to justify his attack under both self-defense and extradition rules. (Panama declared war on the U.S. just five days before our invasion, and U.S. troops had been killed as a result.)

Since I started paying attention to politics in 2000, I don’t think I saw a President truly, obviously, flagrantly try to steal Congress’s war power until 2011. That was the year President Obama started a clearly unconstitutional war with Libya. (It was unconstitutional for all the same reasons18 as Trump’s Iran War. Many of the Iran War’s loudest critics on my wall get really uncomfortably quiet after I say that, and remind them that he should have been impeached, too.) Illegal wars are getting more common, but they aren’t super-common, they’ve usually been quite rare, and we should not simply shrug our shoulders and give up on a provision of the Constitution that was working fine just two decades ago.

Even if the critics were right, though, that wouldn’t change anything. You should be furious that Mr. Trump has stolen the war power. He has robbed you of your birthright as an American citizen: peace, until Congress says otherwise. Whether it’s the first time you’ve been robbed or the twelfth, it’s still robbery! Subsequent robberies should make you more resistant, not less. Even if your city declares it will no longer enforce anti-robbery laws (which sounds like a joke but was as far as I can tell the actual policy of San Francisco for several years), robbery is still against the law, robbing people is unjust, and you should oppose the robbers. The best time to start impeaching and convicting Presidents for starting illegal wars was when they started, but the second-best time is tomorrow.

The Constitution is the supreme law of our land. Its provisions cannot be repealed by desuetude. Nor can they be rewritten by imperial presidents. The text of the Constitution remains the text, no matter what others say.

If the President wants more war powers, fine. If you, as a voter, think the Constitution’s separation of war powers no longer makes sense in our modern, hyper-connected world, fine. There’s a simple way to change the current settlement, proposed by the Founders and used twenty-seven times since: just amend the Constitution.

However, since that, too, involves talking to the American people, it’s not something these “realists” are inclined to try. They are more likely to scoff at you for suggesting that the modes of a Republic ought to be respected.

This is good evidence you should never, ever grant them the power they seek.

Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran

I’m not using this whole “follow the Constitution” thing as a stalking-horse for secret pinko anti-war sympathies. I am exactly the kind of person whose support the Trump Administration would have counted on in the public debate, if they had bothered to have a public debate.

I am, at heart, one of the last unreconstructed neoconservatives. When foreign people suffer under evil oppressors, I think it's good for the United States to use its vast military power to liberate the people and topple the oppressor. War is horrifying beyond all reason. But so is a tyrannical police state that slaughters tens of thousands of its own citizens for protesting the government. War is sometimes the lesser evil, and it is praiseworthy to exercise that terrible power on behalf of the suffering victims of tyrants.

The Iraq War did not change my mind about this. The Iraq War merely humbled me. My vocal support for the Iraq War—and, worse, my curt dismissal of all the critics—was one of the three greatest mistakes of my political life. Iraq taught me (at great cost) that it is very hard and expensive to liberate a people, and that a liberation gone wrong could easily be worse than leaving the evil oppressor in place. I have become much more reluctant to intervene, much more skeptical of U.S. intelligence reports. I now realize that, even though some are sure to cheer and greet us as liberators, a few people cheering on the street is not a nationally representative opinion poll. Someone pointed out to me recently that, if the E.U. invaded the U.S. today to topple Mr. Trump, there would be celebrations in the street from about 20% of us… while the other 80% would be furious.

I recognize now that, in Iraq, we asked thousands of Americans, who had signed up to defend America, to die for a people not their own, which isn’t fair to them. (Nor was the cost in gold fair to the American taxpayer.) I also see now how the Iraq War, and the calamitous failure of the Bush Administration to deliver what it had sold, deformed America’s domestic politics, leading us straight into the collapse of social trust and high polarization of the Obama-Trump Era. The cost of Iraq was far higher than I ever imagined.

Nevertheless, at bottom, I want the world to be free, and I think military force can, sometimes, be the least bad means of achieving it.19

Aside from being a brutal dictatorship that slaughters its own civilians by the hundreds (perhaps the tens of thousands), Iran really has been trying to build WMD for decades. A nuclear Islamic Republic would first dominate the region, then become a threat to the whole world, the center of a perverted Ummah backed by nuclear fire and mullahs happy to flirt with an apocalypse for the sake of their God.

As a result, if you’d asked me at almost any point in the last twenty years, “Should the United States go to war with Iran?” my answer would be somewhere between a non-committal shrug and a reluctant, “Maybe we should just get it over with.” (This made me one of the most pro-war American voters, especially around 2008-2010.) I’ve little doubt the cause would be just; it’s just the other just war criteria that have always hamstrung me. Even now, though, I remain cautiously hopeful that the results of this war (though illegal, therefore evil) could lead to a great deal of good. Imagine a Middle East free of Hezbollah and Hamas, free of the regional tensions between Iran and Israel, with a whole new nation’s worth of men and (especially) women free from the oppression of sharia law. If all goes perfectly well, an Iran war could be the dawn of peace in the Middle East. Iraq humbled me far too much to expect that, but I still hope.

Much as I would have preferred a negotiated settlement that actually disarmed Iran (and, ideally, freed its long-suffering people), that was never really on the table, because Iran had no interest in such a settlement. I laughed at Obama’s JCPOA agreement with Iran, along with the rest of the Right, because it could never achieve what it set out to do. It probably was, as the Obama Admin argued, the best deal possible, but the best deal possible wasn’t good enough. Much as we might try to delay it (and I was all for delaying it), I didn’t see an alternative, in the long run, to eventually attacking Iran.

This would mean children killed by U.S. bombs. No matter how careful we are about it, no matter how just our cause, moms and dads in the war are going to come out of the rubble of a strike and find the broken body of their dead three-year-old, skull shattered, brain splashed across the ground, where he was playing with his toys a few minutes ago. It will be an accident, but the kid is still dead.

I just believed that, at some point, we would find ourselves in a position where attacking Iran would save more children than it killed. (The mullahs kill lots of people in their own country, and they are the puppeteers behind Hamas, Hezbollah, and a whole bunch of other child-killers around the Middle East.) Sometimes dropping bombs, even knowing that some will hit civilians, is the lesser evil.

But we’d better make damn sure of that before we open the bomb-bay doors.

The U.S. has a constitutional process designed to help make sure that we do, in fact, make damn sure. We did not follow it. We are not following it. We are not going to follow it. This war is illegal, and therefore unjust. All those who believe the United States is ruled by its Constitution, not by a King, have both a moral and a practical duty to oppose the U.S. war on Iran.

19

Look, I made an omake for today’s article:

The new Lyceum Movement (which is now operating in Des Moines, Duluth, St. Paul, Kalamazoo, and Itasca County, MN) is an attempt to recapture some of the spirit of the nineteenth-century American lyceums. This old social movement brought together communities to hear great ideas from great figures like Mark Twain and Abe Lincoln—and then to discuss those ideas among themselves.

I’m no Mark Twain, but I have nevertheless been asked to participate in a panel discussion / conversation at the St. Paul Lyceum this Thursday (two days from now).1

More Info / Tickets

Our topic is Civility & Peace:

Recent episodes of political violence have left many wondering what kind of civic life we are entering. As distrust rises and Americans grow more distant from one another, what are the prospects for civility and peace? What holds a society together when disagreement deepens? And what happens when those bonds begin to fray?

I’m not sure when the Lyceum picked this topic, but, in the wake of local ICE operations and two killings, not to mention the assassination of House Speaker Melissa Hortman last year, these questions are very timely (perhaps even a little sensitive) here in the Twin Cities.

The Lyceum will meet at the Yoerg Brewing Company in Regular Saint Paul. I’ve been told to expect 15-30 people.

Doors open at 5:30 to get drinks and make friends, panel from 6:00-7:00, table discussion from 7:00-8:00. Tickets are $10, but, with every paid admission, you can bring one friend for free. (This is a not-so-subtle way of encouraging friendship and community.)

The discussion will be moderated by Evan Beacom, organizer of the St. Paul Lyceum (and—I learned as a result of this—a thorough reader of De Civ). I will be up alongside the estimable philosopher and writer Dr. Rachel Lu, associate editor at Law & Liberty. (She’s also appeared in Worthy Reads at least twice, and she is terrific.)

For more information and to purchase advance tickets, see the EventBrite page:

More Info / Tickets

I am excited about this. I am also pretty nervous! I have never been invited to do anything like this before. It’s an honor to be thought of as any kind of respectable thinker. At the same time, I’ve always considered myself a poor extemporaneous speaker, and I have what they used to call “a real face for blogging”:

So, if you come, there’s a real chance you’ll be paying $10 to watch me humiliate myself!2 However, Dr. Lu alone is worth the price of admission and will carry the night if I fall apart under the bright lights. I’m trying to find time tomorrow to re-read some things and put together a few notes on index cards, so I don’t just spend my whole time up there stammering.

If you, too, want to pregame, you might enjoy reading Lu’s excellent “The Terrible Smallness of Public Killers,” and my own “One Reason to Punch Nazis (and Two Reasons Not To).”

At some point, I’m very likely to find some excuse to pull out my old schtick about “the two causes of civil war are partisan hatred and legitimacy crisis,” a theme I explored at length in “Review of Ross Douthat’s Review(s) of Civil War” and, of course, that one time I wrote a novella that accidentally predicted January 6.

I hope one or two of you are able to make it! I will be staying for the post-panel conversations and perhaps even a few minutes beyond the end of the schedule, so it would be lovely to meet anyone out there in Readerland who’s in the area and able to make it into Saint Paul on a weeknight.

“Walking Duluth,” by Chris Arnade:

When I asked him his backstory (born and raised in Duluth, worked at the hospital) and if he thought of moving, he looked at me like I was a crazy person, asking a crazy question. Move? What do you mean? Why? The weather? You mean to someplace where I couldn’t go out on the ice and catch fish? Where I couldn’t go hunting in the afternoon? Where I couldn’t have dinner with my parents at night? Where I couldn’t hang with my buddies at Roscoe’s?

Place still matters to Americans, and few places place as hard as Duluth does.

For nearly ten years now, I’ve enjoyed Chris Arnade’s travelogues from far-flung places. He strikes me as having a talent for finding the soul of a place. Place is a vanishing thing in this hyperconnected world, but Arnade susses it out everywhere he goes. Of course, since I’ve never been to most of those places, I didn’t have any way to validate what he wrote.

But, this time, he came to my backyard to write about my people.1

I love this piece for lots of reasons, though, and only most of them are parochial.

I think a place matters a great deal. I’m not sure I can articulate why, except to refer you to my favorite work of G.K. Chesterton’s: his pre-conversion novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill. In this peculiar, remarkable book, Chesterton frankly admits that to care intensely about one particular patch of streets and dirt—to elevate one dreary London suburb above every other London suburb—just because it happens to be yours… is utterly absurd. Then he turns around and insists that it is sacred anyway:

“Only feeling, sire,” answered the Provost. “I was born, like other men, in a spot of the earth which I loved because I had played boys’ games there, and fallen in love, and talked with my friends through nights that were nights of the gods. And I feel the riddle. These little gardens where we told our loves. These streets where we brought out our dead. Why should they be commonplace? Why should they be absurd? Why should it be grotesque to say that a pillar-box is poetic when for a year I could not see a red pillar-box against the yellow evening in a certain street without being wracked with something of which God keeps the secret, but which is stronger than sorrow or joy? Why should any one be able to raise a laugh by saying ‘the Cause of Notting Hill’?—Notting Hill where thousands of immortal spirits blaze with alternate hope and fear.”

So long as the loons cry out over the frozen lakes, so long as men say “you bet” while shoveling their neighbors sidewalks, there is a part of me always ready to man the battlements at Fort Snelling, tho’ it be ringed about by all the armies of Wisconsin, and die for Minnesota. This seems good and healthy and normal to me.

It seems that many Minnesotans feel something like this, somewhere inside them. Contrary to popular belief, we are not a nation of movers, racing all over the country to find the best opportunities. That’s the impression we sometimes get from the media. It’s part of our national story, and it’s very typical of the rich and powerful. Nevertheless, according to the Census, two-thirds of Americans currently reside in the state where they were born. In Minnesota, that figure rises to just shy of three-quarters. An overwhelming majority of Americans live less than an hour from their mothers; a solid third of Americans live within 30 miles of all their adult children and parents. We are a rooted people! The human species puts down roots!

Of course, a lot of this is about wealth. The rich and powerful leave their homes, in part, because they have enough money or social capital to do so. For the rest of us, much of our wealth is in our homelands: the plumber who’s a friend of the family who will do you a favor if you promise to return it later on. The old friends who pitch in to help you move when you get out of the apartment. The parents willing to contribute enough free child care to make your two-income household actually make economic sense. This is all literal monetary GDP-style wealth. Many of us couldn’t financially afford to live apart from our roots, even if someone paid all the costs of moving across the country.

On the other hand, many of us don’t want to move anyway. Our places are thick with the intangibles that make life actually worth living. My evenings with my parents eating free food are economically rational, sure… but also something I look forward to every week, because my parents are delightful. I wouldn’t give up Thursday night burgers for a million bucks.2 Nor would I give up sledding days, or the autumn leaves, or the frantic rush to enjoy summer while it lasts, even if it meant I never had to rev up my snowblower again.

You feel all this in Arnade’s piece. It is a good piece. Go enjoy a few minutes in Duluth.

When you are finished, perhaps you may also enjoy Rep. Proctor Knott (D-KY)’s famous 1871 ode to Duluth. Knott was being sarcastic (see also: these background details), but Minnesotans, with the passive-aggressive cheerfulness for which we are justly famous, refused to recognize the sarcasm, and have celebrated the speech ever since:

Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft, sweet accents of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. Duluth! ‘Twas the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks.

Of course, given ICE activity in my actual neighborhood over the past few weeks, I can’t help reading all this back to myself and turning my thoughts to the immigrant. Given how much most normal people value their place, how much must it hurt to leave that place, especially for an entirely new country? My great-great-grandmother left one of the most beautiful counties in Ireland in 1873 for Ellis Island. She never saw Ireland again. She did that for us. It cost her dearly. This is why exile was once the worst penalty that a criminal could face, short of execution. We may reasonably assume, then, that, whatever their legality, most immigrants do not come to America lightly. For the same reason, deportation is an awful punishment—even though generally lawful and often necessary—which we should inflict only with great sobriety and sorrow, especially on those who have been here long enough to put down roots.

Similarly, our civil war is going to hurt. Indeed, it’s already hurting. I know people who have left their Minnesota homeland simply so they can live in a red state. I know people who have moved to Minnesota from that same red state simply so they could live in a blue state. We all know others like this. Given the tribes’ sharply divergent visions of the Good, I think political relocation is an entirely defensible choice. But the cost is sharp, the fact they are willing to pay it to be with their own tribe is alarming, and it’s only going to get worse as polarization deepens toward violence. My nightmare is finding myself at the final battle for Minnesota after all… but as part of the invading army.

A Recording of “Raissa” from Invisible Cities, by Lydia Laurenson:

Raissa

In Raissa, life is not happy. People wring their hands as they walk in the streets, curse the crying children, lean on the railings over the river and press their fists to their temples. In the morning you wake from one bad dream and another begins. At the workbenches where, every moment, you hit your finger with a hammer or prick it with a needle, or over the columns of figures all awry in the ledgers of merchants and bankers, or at the rows of empty glasses on the zinc counters of the wineshops, the bent heads at least conceal the general grim gaze. Inside the houses it is worse, and you do not have to enter to learn this: in the summer the windows resound with quarrels and broken dishes.

And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a shed to bite into a piece of polenta dropped by a stonemason who has shouted from the top of the scaffolding, “Darling, let me dip into it,” to a young serving-maid who holds up a dish of ragout under the pergola, happy to serve it to the umbrella-maker who is celebrating a successful transaction, a white lace parasol bought to display at the races by a great lady in love with an officer who has smiled at her taking the last jump, happy man, and still happier his horse, flying over the obstacles, seeing a francolin flying in the sky, happy bird freed from its cage by a painter happy at having painted it feather by feather, speckled with red and yellow in the illumination of that page in the volume where the philosopher says: “Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.”

It seems like every smart, cool person read Invisible Cities years before I ever even heard of it.3 I remain very grateful to the friend of mine who gave it to me as a Christmas present.

It’s a very strange book. It isn’t a story. It’s a series of short prose-poems, like the one above about Raissa (which I have reprinted in its entirety). Each prose-poem describes a different city. Every city described is completely imaginary, often outright fantastical. Yet every city has something special that is at once unique and universal.

I limited myself to reading one city per night, so as to enjoy them each to the full. The book is not long, only 55 cities in total, none longer than a few pages. Laurenson’s page has several of them, which gives you a nice taste of the book. (The recording itself is better on speakers than headphones.)

“A Partial Explanation of Zoomer Girl Derangement,” by Zinnia:

Girlhood ends when the world looks at you. One day, you wake up and you’re a sex object. This is terrifying. Men want you and they are bigger than you and stronger than you. They do not see you, they just like what they see. Hungry eyes: how do you keep rabid animals at bay? But if you are of a certain disposition, you may feel a certain kind of thrill, walking into a room and having all eyes on you. Men may be bigger and stronger, but you are smarter. If you bat your eyes at the man from across the bar, he’ll buy you a drink; if you cry when the police officer pulls you over, he’ll let you off easy.

As you come of age, you must confront a paradox: your greatest source of power, your desirability, is your greatest source of vulnerability. Girls react to this paradox in various ways: some girls retreat into themselves, despising the male gaze; others embrace it, perhaps out of insecurity, perhaps out of ambition. Whatever the case may be, as you come of age, you come to terms with it. You accept your desirability, but you do not let it define you; you pursue other things, hobbies, interests, passions. You do not resent the male gaze, but you do not hunger for it either. This is the healthiest way to come to terms with your newfound status as “sex-object.”

Unlike the author of this article, I have never been a Zoomer girl. I welcome Zoomers and/or girls to tell me if this article is right. As a Millennial boy, however, this one rings true. Girls start out as just a somewhat confounding species of people, and then, gradually, you find that a cute girl’s laugh makes you weak in the knees, and a well-endowed girl teaches you that hypnosis isn’t just something they made up for Saturday morning cartoons.

This is terrifying. For a man, adolescence begins when he finds himself carried away by a powerful beast, galloping faster than he previously imagined possible, completely out of control. It ends when he bridles that beast. (Some never do.) However, at least we’re riding the beast! Women are stuck standing in front of it! That must be terrifying!

I like this piece because it goes through several seemingly unconnected disorders common to modern women and, with admirable economy, suggests that they are all simply disordered responses to awareness of the male gaze. Of course, the truth is rarely so monocausal. Reality is much too complicated. However, there are a lot of weird things going on in male-female relations right now, and it would be a lot less weird if they were all at least connected by some common explanation.

Curiously, the author wrote this piece to launch her Substack almost two years ago. It went moderately viral, successful far beyond anything I’ve ever published… and then she never published anything again. Tweets a lot, though, so I guess she’s okay—or, at least, as okay as anyone who tweets a lot ever is.

“My Childhood Friend, Renee Good,” by Jane Clark Scharl:

Here’s what I remember about Renee: she was gentle and thoughtful, very much so. She was, even as a teenager, a remarkably careful listener. Even during high school – years when many of us turn inward and become self-obsessed – Renee persisted in looking out for others. She had beautiful light-blue eyes, and the rare ability to look directly into another’s eyes while they spoke.

She had a beautiful voice, too, both singing and speaking. Her speaking voice was a little husky, but when she sang, it was clear and sweet. I have a distinct memory of standing in our newly completed youth group room one Sunday evening – it must have been winter because it was dark outside – singing praise and worship songs. We were Presbyterian, so we weren’t particularly good at singing praise and worship, but I remember Renee’s voice coming through, confident and lovely, carrying the rest of us.

This article is a simple enough plea to remember the human. It breaks no new theoretical ground. It will not change your mind about Policy or Justice or any other capital-p Principles. But the world is not fundamentally about capital-p Principles, any more than the world is fundamentally about capital-p Physics. The world is about us. All the capital-I Intangibles exist for us.

I belong to the camp that tends to view4 Good’s killing as tragic, caused by stupid decisions on all sides, but (despite that) legally justified and morally acceptable. However, even for those of us who think there was no crime in her killing—perhaps especially for us—it is important to look at her life and remember that she was a person, infinitely loved and terribly, terribly necessary.

Here arrives the paywall. In the rest of this installment, subscribers get to read about “Luigism,” my surprising-to-me hesitation about free speech, some opposition to the word “priors,” the debt ceiling and the looming fiscal crises, and the squalidity (that’s a word, right?) of American cities. All this plus the three5 videos of the month! Not bad for $4.17 a month!

Read more

The information environment in the Twin Cities is completely cracked, and has been for weeks. You can’t trust anything the federal government says, you can’t trust anything the protesters say, and you can’t trust anything local officials say. They’re all lying, constantly, and it takes days to sort out the truth about anything.

My local Target has faced two sit-in protests over a racist incident at a different Target that never actually happened. The Department of Homeland Security officially published a verifiably false set of claims about a man the Border Patrol had just gunned down in the street, in a transparent attempt to libel him for political gain. A woman who took her kids to a declared riot (and thereby got them tear-gassed and hospitalized) spent a week pretending she’d been trapped in the riot by accident before Internet weirdos proved she was lying.1 (By then, she’d raked in a handsome take on GoFundMe.)

As I wrote a few weeks ago:

I keep talking about the possibility of some future civil war, but the truth is that civil war is a spectrum, and we are already on it. We’ve been in a low-grade civil war since at least 2020. The two rival tribes that occupy the United States are vast, rich, well-organized, and well-armed. Both of them are doing everything in their power to get you to pick a side—their side. When this war gets hot, they are going to need you to kill the people on the other side, and they are trying to prepare you for that. The tribes can’t let killings like Babbitt’s or Good’s be mere tragic exercises in stupidity; they must be made into martyrdoms or domestic terrorism. If the truth gets in the way of that, the truth will have to go. What looks like truth-telling becomes recruitment.

All three incidents I just described (and more besides) happened after I wrote those words. I can write about the lies for hours. Indeed, in correspondence with local friends and acquaintances, trying to sort out true from false, I’ve done just that.

However, lies are not the only way tribes spread propaganda. On the contrary, lies are one of the weaker tools in their toolbox. Of course, the tribes have many ways to keep their followers from learning the truth. Even if they learn the truth, tribesmen have a strong bias against accepting the truth, because it would create cognitive dissonance.2 If it were not so, the tribes could not use lies at all! However, on the rare occasion that a lie is exposed, it can do major damage to a tribesman’s faith in the tribe. Both tribes greatly prefer to use the truth, where available. It’s much easier to convince people you’re right when you are, in fact, right.

However, truth is often complicated. Tribal narratives can rarely afford complexity.

So here’s a question for you: Is ICE mostly arresting criminals?

(Prior to reading anything I have to say about it, what do you think is the correct answer to this question?)

While Americans are pretty divided on whether to deport all illegal immigrants, there is an overwhelming consensus that criminal illegal immigrants should be swiftly shown the door.3 Mr. Trump spent much of his campaign talking up the threat of specifically criminal aliens and promising to focus his attention, first and foremost, on the criminals. So this question matters a lot, politically: is ICE living up to that commitment to mostly arrest criminals?

One true answer to this question is No. The vast majority of illegal immigrants arrested in the last twelve months are not criminals. In fact, in Trump’s first year, only 36% of those arrested were criminals. This is perfectly true.

Another true answer is Yes. The vast majority of illegal immigrants arrested in the last twelve months are criminals. In fact, in Trump’s first year, fully 66% of those arrested were criminals. This is also perfectly true.

How can these contradictory claims both be true?

About a third of the people arrested in Trump’s first year had pending criminal charges, but had not yet been convicted. If you count them as criminals, then the 66% figure is correct and the vast majority of arrestees are criminals. If you don’t, then the 36% figure is correct and the vast majority aren’t.

One can imagine a series of quick retorts between the tribes about which statistic is more appropriate:

BLUE: People with pending charges aren’t criminals! They’re innocent until proven guilty!

RED: In federal criminal court, 91% of those charged are convicted, and many of the remainder are definitely criminals but get off on technicalities.

BLUE: And a lot of those who plead guilty are railroaded by our corrupt plea-bargaining system.

RED: Even if you just look at cases that went to trial—which are likely to include many of the best cases for defendants—the government still wins convictions 82% of the time.

BLUE: That’s federal. State conviction rates are lower.

RED: Probably, but probably not much lower, and good luck finding the data to back up an intuition. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of people with pending criminal charges are going to end up convicted, an even larger share of them are guilty, and you know it.

BLUE: I don’t know anything until due process is done, and neither do you.

RED: These are persons unlawfully present in the United States. The process due them, by law, is verification of their status followed by deportation. The end.

BLUE: So you don’t care that, by your own admission, your “66% criminal” stat is almost certainly an exaggeration?

RED: At most, a slight exaggeration—a lot less than the wild under-exaggeration you commit by treating every kiddie diddler arrested on clear evidence as a perfect innocent until the State spends God-knows-what convicting them. It’s absolutely true that a majority of those arrested are criminals!

BLUE: Hold on, what “clear evidence”? You hyperlinked a specific story there, the case of Daniel Alejandro Torrealba Mendez, and I happen to know there’s no public arrest record or evidentiary court filings in that case!

RED: …Yet.

BLUE: So when you said clear evidence, you were making it up?

RED: I’ll tell you what. I’ll bet you $1,000, right now, that, whenever the evidence in that case does come out, your own mother will agree he did it.

BLUE: I don’t gamble, especially not with the justice system.

RED: Sure. You’d rather gamble with public safety, which is why Gregori Arias is dead.

BLUE: This isn’t fair. You’ve had four hyperlinks and I’ve had none. The author’s stacking the deck.

JAMES: Please don’t drag me into this! I’m trying to find a good link for you on the plea-bargaining point, but I haven’t looked at plea-bargain abuse in years. Will my Official Authorial Endorsement make up for it?4 I’ll also let you take an extra turn, Blue.

BLUE: Fine. What most Americans are really interested in when they ask about “criminal illegal aliens” is serious crimes—violent crimes. You know, the “Worst of the Worst” (which ICE had to plump up with people Minnesota had already imprisoned), not graffiti and shoplifting. But only a small fraction of ICE arrests—7% over most of last year!—were of violent criminals!5 Moreover, that fraction is falling as ICE has to cast larger and larger nets to make its quotas! Your argument is already unjustified, but it could fall apart completely in six months!

RED: I’m not going to discuss future hypotheticals while you’re moving the goalposts here and now. We started out agreeing that criminal aliens were the category of interest, not some bespoke artisanal subset of criminal aliens that happens to interest you. The same report shows that the most common non-violent conviction was for DUI, which is a serious offense in my book! So’s “non-violent” identity theft. So’s “non-violent” distribution of child pornography. These are not good guys you’re defending!

BLUE: You cannot know that! You can point out this or that bad case but you cannot make systematic claims about all cases, especially in this degraded information environment, without independent jury review! In America, we don’t call people “criminals” until convicted by a jury of their peers!

RED: Our beloved author waited four days after George Floyd’s killing to start calling it a “murder.” He switched terminology on the basis of Hennepin County’s criminal charge—not a conviction, which took another year. Your Blue tribe criticized him for not calling it a murder quickly enough. English has the phrase “convicted criminal,” distinct from “criminal,” because we know there are criminals who haven’t been convicted.

BLUE: Maybe our beloved author called Floyd’s death a “murder” as soon as it was charged, but I don’t think he actually called Chauvin a “murderer” until conviction.

JAMES: Guys, please, stop bringing me into this. Blue could be right, but I honestly don’t remember. In fact, I think we’ve got about all we can from you two, so I’m going to call it there.

RED & BLUE: Spineless chicken!

What seems like a very simple yes-or-no question—Is ICE mostly deporting criminals?—turns out to be a fairly thorny one, with boundaries that can be reasonably contested to reach opposite conclusions. Both tribes accurately claim that the truth is on their side.

More importantly, both tribes truly believe the truth is on their side.6

Most dangerously, many tribesmen aren’t even aware of the argument from the other side, and believe that the other side is flagrantly lying. (Their fellow tribesmen aren’t inclined to correct that impression.)

As a result, we have two very different pictures of U.S. deportations: one version where most people getting swept up and kicked out are criminals who pose a threat to public safety, and another where most people getting swept up and kicked out are peaceable family men who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Neither is a lie. Both have considerable truth to them.

I’m supposed to have a conclusion here to help you apply these principles broadly in your life, but this is a “Quick Hit”7 and I’m on day three of a head cold, so, I guess, just try to remember that, even when you do perform the hard work of sifting through the avalanche of lies to acquire a few true facts, your lens isn’t necessarily unequivocally the only true lens through which to view them.

This is hard. I’m going to go lie down.8

6

Of course, they always believe that:

Every pro-lifer eventually hears an argument that goes something like this:

You say that fetuses are human beings with rights, but, like, half of them die before they’re born! If abortion is murder, then your God is history’s greatest murderer!

There are several good responses to this argument:

• “For virtually all of human history, something like half of people born died before puberty. Are you saying we should legalize abortion up to the thirty-ninth trimester… or do you think fourth-graders finally earned a right to life because we invented antibiotics?”

• “Just wait until you hear about the death rate for adults—100%!”

• “Why are you bringing up God? All I said was that it should be illegal to commit a premeditated killing of a baby. Keep your creepy religion out of politics, zealot!”

These are all perfectly cromulent replies. Most of them expose the non sequitur: there is no logical connection between a population’s natural death rate and its right not to be killed intentionally. This forces your interlocutor to admit that the miscarriage rate is not the real reason he opposes fetal rights. The focus shifts back where it always needs to be: the human right to live1 and the fetus’s humanity.2

And yet.

Remember, No Rosaries

The atheist pro-lifer will have no trouble with all this death. People die. Babies die. Lots of ‘em. So what? We humans are beacons of light in a cold, senseless universe. We are here to offer one another a little warmth and kindness while the dark closes in around us. We shouldn’t kill our babies for the same reason we shouldn’t kill any other human. “An ye harm none, do what ye will,” say the Wiccans. “No violence may be employed against a nonaggressor,” agree the libertarians. “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others,” add the utilitarians. To the atheist pro-lifer, the fact that death is always closing in on all of us is a scandal and a horror, not an excuse.

When pro-lifers are discussing abortion with others, I think we should all play atheists. Abortion is not wrong because God said so; abortion is wrong because it’s murder. We didn’t learn that life begins at conception from the Bible. We learned it from modern embryology, barely a hundred fifty years ago.3 There is even a credible argument that the Bible points away from fetal rights. If that argument is correct, then the Bible is wrong, simple as that.4

Pro-lifers in secular countries should never allow themselves to be sidetracked into religious discussion, because the existence of God is a superfluous hypothesis in the pro-life argument. The pro-choicers are the ones trying to make it a religious argument by talking about “personhood” (or, as it used to be called, “ensoulment”). We’re sticking to facts taught in ninth-grade biology texts.

And yet.

Free to Choose

For the pro-lifer who believes in God, the pro-choice argument from fetal death rate does reveal a problem. It’s just not a problem with the pro-life position. It’s a problem with God.

Let us suppose that the purpose of a human life is to know, love, and serve God. He asks us to believe in Him, hope in Him, even worship Him. In short, God puts us on Earth so we can choose Him.5

It is obvious that newborns, without exception, are absolutely incapable of free choice. The capacity develops over time, and it isn’t quick. Babies gradually figure out how to select their preference from a range of options (for example, by gobbling the carrot-flavored baby mush while hurling the peas-flavored baby mush across the room), which is a kind of choice, except not really. It’s the kind of choice animals can make: a simple reflexive response to positive or negative stimuli.

Deliberate choice, which seems to be unique to humans, can’t develop until babies learn to deliberate, which is a function of language. Most babies start to develop symbolic language at approximately age 1. Before that milestone, it seems fair to say that they are absolutely incapable of choosing God (or anything else). Before that milestone, it even seems fair to say that infants have not yet come fully into their humanity. They certainly can’t sin. Calling a baby an evildoer is like accusing a walrus of plagiarism.

Therein lies the problem.

Ranks Upon Choirs Upon Legions

For most of human history, infant mortality was very high. In the Roman Empire—one of the most advanced civilizations of the pre-modern world—more than one in three children died in the first year of their lives. Those children never got to know, love, or serve God. Sure, after Rome converted to Christianity, many of these infants were baptized. According to Christian beliefs, baptism creates a new and stronger relationship between the infant and his Creator. However, this relationship, if it exists, is neither consciously experienced nor chosen by the infant. If the purpose of human life is to choose God, or to freely enter some sort of relationship with Him, before God calls you home, then God seems to have pulled the ripcord too early on these kids.

This isn’t just a handful of outliers, either. Ancient infant mortality overall is impossible to compute, since we don’t have census records from the Pharaoh,6 but we are certain it was extraordinarily high7 compared to today. In many societies, something approaching half of all children were dead less than twelve months after their births.

That is only the beginning of our troubles.

Even without the violence of abortion, approximately 10-20% of known pregnancies end all by themselves, in death by miscarriage. That’s an underestimate of the death toll, because many pregnancies are never known. It takes time after implanting in the uterine wall for a baby to make himself known to a pregnancy test. One careful study of hCG and clinical pregnancies credibly estimated that, even excluding abortions, about one-third of children die between implantation and birth. This estimate implies that only about half of these miscarriages are known. Half the time, a child dies without mom and dad even realizing he was ever there.

But wait! There’s more!

Human life doesn’t start at implantation in the uterine wall. It starts at conception, when sperm and egg kamikaze into one another to create an entirely new organism out of their ruins. The days after conception but before implantation are extremely dangerous for the new child. They are also almost totally invisible to medical science, since we currently lack the ability to detect these very early pregnancies.

Estimates of the pre-implantation death rate have therefore been all over the place. One oft-cited note in The Lancet in 1971 did some back-of-the-envelope math and concluded that about half of all humans conceived die in the tube before implantation.8 That figure is probably a little high. That careful study I already mentioned? They re-examined The Lancet note and concluded that, in fact, pre-implantation deaths are probably closer to 10%-40%. So that’s alright, then! Instead of half of all humans dying before the reach the uterine lining, the true number is probably closer to a quarter of our species. Bully!

If we add this all together, we find an unsettling picture of human existence.

In the pre-modern world, about two-thirds of all human beings concieved died before they could say “love you dada.” In the modern world, we’ve accomplished the single greatest medical miracle in the history of the planet: we’ve cut that number down from two-thirds to about… half.

This is a staggering amount of infant death. Those of us who survived, who learned to talk and write and build and love and start the cycle over again, think of ourselves as the human norm. This is perfectly natural. After all, virtually everyone we’ve ever met also survived and learned to talk and write and build and love!

Statistically, though… we are not the norm. Most humans never made it past their first birthdays. If you die at Age 10, it’s considered a horrific tragedy, a life full of promise cut short before it could flower into fullness, and this is true… but it is also true that, if you’ve made it to Age 10, you’ve already experienced vastly more, known vastly more, loved vastly more, than the vast majority of human beings who ever existed. The moral choices of ten-year-olds may seem petty from your perspective,9 but they are orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the moral choices of the median human being, who died as a baby (or maybe a late-term fetus).

Thanks to modern demographics and embryology, we finally know what previous generations could not: we are surrounded by ghosts. They aren’t even the ghosts of our ancestors. We have a cultural framework for the ancestors. We can cope with them. We are instead surrounded by the ghosts of our siblings and our cousins and our nieces and our nephews. Of our own children, both known and unknown. And they outnumber us.

Again, none of this is a problem for our secular friend. For him, this simply confirms that Darwin is cruel. One of humanity’s gifts is to push back against nature’s cruelty, but the humanist recognizes that defeating death is a slow, nearly impossible task, with vast casualties expected along the way. Certainly nothing about the fetal death rate justifies denying their humanity.

But, since these children are human, the theist must ask… where is their God?

If it is true that God created us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve him in this world—if it is true that He gave us this time on Earth to choose Him—if it is true, as many Christians claim, that baptism by water is the ordinary means of salvation… how can we reconcile that with the fact that God created a world where most people never get the chance in this life to know or love or serve or choose at all?

How can we call baptism by water a salvific necessity when so few will ever be capable of receiving it? We could convert the entire world to Christianity and we still wouldn’t be able to baptize half the human race! The massa innocens dies in utero, beyond the reach of the baptismal font! Did Christ not come to give everyone a path to salvation?

Stories

Peter Van Inwagen is one of the most interesting philosophers around. For example, he is a Christian materialist, a combination I’ve never heard before or since. Van Inwagen once made an argument about evil that stuck with me:

You can’t actually philosophically show why evil exists—or, at least, doing so seems very, very hard. Even the Bible tells us very little. Job asks God why life is so much like hanging upside down with your head in a bucket of hyena offal, and God says (I’m paraphrasing), “You can’t understand until you can see outside the bucket.” All we can do, Van Inwagen argues, is tell stories about why God might allow evil to exist. These stories must be consistent with the existence of God and the sufferings of the world. They could be true “for all anyone knows,” but we have insufficient data to prove any specific answer correct in any specific case.10 All theodicy boils down, van Inwagen suggests, to a creative writing exercise.

In that spirit…

Getting a Sense of Perspective

As we’ve seen, humans who get to live “ordinary” human lives on Earth—who are born, grow up, and die—are the exception, not the rule. This casts the urgency of our vocations into sharp relief. We aren’t walking around working a day job and watching Netflix because that’s just how it happens. It usually doesn’t! We are here, on Earth, right now, because God Himself willed us, specifically, to be here, right now. We know our mission here in the Church Militant is special and essential because one-half to two-thirds of our brothers-in-arms weren’t even deployed. We are a skeleton crew who has been asked to run the world and keep humanity going at no better than half-strength.

So how dare we flag in our determination to accomplish that mission? Why do we worry so much about fame, wealth, or the fate of nations? Politics are of literally no consequence to most of the human race. Moreover, how dare we fail to be awed by the fractal frost on the window in the morning, or bowled over by the joy of a night in popping popcorn and watching a mid-tier action story like Revenge of the Sith with the fam? Most human beings never get the chance at popcorn, or frost, or stories.

Ordinary Isn’t Typical

The other half may not get popcorn, but I think we can be confident that whatever the massa innocens11 does get is pretty good. I do not think God would create a whole race of immortal beings, call them “very good,” and then condemn the majority of that race, though perfectly innocent of individual sin, to a bad destiny that they cannot possibly avoid. I suppose I can imagine such a God, but it is not the God we find in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. That guy can be harsh, but he is constantly throwing out lifelines.

Indeed, if it is the case that Christ came to offer salvation to all, then it simply cannot also be the case that visible membership in the Christian Church through baptism is the typical means of salvation. Given high fetal mortality, these claims are incompatible.

I agree with the common statement that baptism is the ordinary means of salvation, but “ordinary,” in this case, must be taken in the same sense as when we say that Congressional Budget Act of 1974 defines the ordinary means for federal appropriations: the CBA is the standard procedure, against which all exceptions are defined… but it hasn’t actually been followed in nearly thirty years.12 You have to know the CBA to understand the real process, but the real process is dominated by the exceptions and quite often bears little actual resemblance to the CBA.

Likewise, accepting (or rejecting) Christ’s invitation to baptism by water is the ordinary means of determining one’s eternal destiny. However, if Christ is not a liar,13 reality must be dominated by the exceptions. Exactly what those exceptions are and how they work is a matter of extensive speculation… but, given conflicting arguments and divine silence on this question, what this speculation amounts to is just more stories.14

Personally, I suspect that infants who die are gifted with the grace to overcome original sin and make a free choice, like we are. This grace comes through the “living water” that springs from the side of Christ at His death, just as it does for us. However, like the angels in the moment of their creation, I suspect the choice of the infant is instantaneous, is made with complete understanding of the options, and has eternal consequences. (Thus, it is wise to pray for them in that eternal moment.)

Of course, if half of all humans are being exiled from their home country by being hurled off a mile-high cliff, it is reassuring to learn that there is a safety net and a boat to a new land at the bottom of the cliff, but it does not answer the more urgent question: why are they being hurled off a cliff in the first place?

The Contemplative Pyramid, Inverted

We, the living, are necessary. Humans are an embodied, animal species. God Himself cannot change that without destroying what makes us human. Therefore, if none of us were in the world, there would be no more adults, no more massa innocens, no more humans at all.

Yet, here in the living world, we find that some of the best and happiest of us are among those who deliberately withdraw from the world, into celibacy or even into the contemplative life. People like Mother Teresa, St Francis of Assisi, and St. Benedict, did great good in the world (St. Benedict arguably saved Europe). However, they did that as an afterthought, because their hearts were fixed firmly on finding and resting in God.

In the Catholic tradition, at least, there is no doubt that (all else being equal) the contemplative life is simply superior to the active life. The most important person on Earth today—the one who has accomplished more good for more people than any other single human—is probably some anonymous Carmelite nun, living in complete silence, never to be known in the world, but moving mountains with her prayers.

Actives are necessary, of course, or there wouldn’t be babies, or civilization, or any food for the contemplatives to eat. However, the contemplative has found a pearl of greater price, and so pays out her life drawing closer to Him. The contemplatives are an example to us all. Their sufferings are great, because they sacrifice so much, but the joy they sometimes obtain is our clearest preview of Heaven.

The relationship between “contemplatives” and “actives” is sometimes visualized as a pyramid: a tiny pinnacle of pure contemplatives supported by a huge base of pure actives.15 For each individual Catholic living in a cloister devoted entirely to prayer, there’s something like ten thousand Catholics outside the cloister. I don’t know what the figures are in other Christian denominations, to say nothing of other religions, but I imagine the ratio is pretty steep everywhere.

However, what if we’ve got it backwards?

If God created the human race and made it very good, and if the contemplative life spent seeking God is the best life, then would it not make sense for God to call the majority of humanity to that high destiny? Furthermore, if one is called to contemplate the Lord, would it not be easier to do so if one were already with him in Heaven right away? An efficient way of to accomplish this would be killing the majority of humans before they learn to walk.

Of course, God would need some people to survive infancy and live out the active life, because otherwise the human race would cease to exist. He would also probably need to send a few contemplatives to Earth to teach us actives what life is all about. This would be very hard for those contemplatives. Life on Earth is hard and sad, and God is veiled from this world, so the contemplative who wants to see Him must work very hard at it. Perhaps God only inflicts this fate on those necessary to His plan, and keeps everyone else—the majority of humanity—close to His bosom, awaiting the Last Day and the renewal of all things.

Perhaps half the human race isn’t being hurled off a cliff after all. Perhaps half the human race is jumping for a chance to return to their true home country. Perhaps they are being called there for important work: supporting we few, the living, through prayer.

Perhaps it is not we actives carrying a handful of contemplatives on our back.

Perhaps a great invisible host of contemplatives is carrying us.

All just a story, of course—but a story consistent with what we know, true “for all anyone knows.”

The Road More Traveled

Of course, none of this would make abortion okay. Quite the contrary: if the relatively small number of humans sent into this suffering world were only sent here because each of them is somehow vital to the fate of humanity, then tearing some of those small humans limb from limb (or poisoning them, or suffocating them, or starving them) turns out to be not just barbaric, but self-destructive. We’re killing our own reinforcements!

Abortion is, by a wide margin, the leading cause of death in the United States, beating out heart disease and cancer by a healthy margin. If you combined every single mass shooting in the United States in the past sixty years, and added up all the casualties (adults and children combined), the total dead would be less than one day of U.S. abortion deaths. I know people who nominally oppose abortion (“I’m personally opposed, but it’s not the government’s place to decide for someone else”) who look at me like I’m an insane evildoer when I suggest that perhaps it’s a bad idea for the government to mandate car seats so much longer than it did thirty or forty years ago. (Car seat laws, estimating generously, save ~400 children per year. Abortion kills approximately two thousand times more children.) It is shocking to contemplate the magnitude of the crime we have inflicted upon ourselves. Most don’t. From observation, it seems to me that many can’t.

However, looked at from a wider perspective, abortion does not change the human reality all that much. In the U.S., we currently abort about one-fifth of all known pregnancies.16 This raises the mortality rate for human beings under the age of one from around half to around two-thirds—which is where it has been for most of human history anyway. (Of course, in the long run, the death rate remains 100% for us all.)

I take some comfort in the thought that, when a child is ripped violently from his mother’s womb, he does not journey to the afterlife alone. He finds himself on a road surrounded by friends, clapping and leaping and shouting hallelujahs, processing ahead in a host larger than the living human race.

Let it be far from the hearts of the faithful that all the little children, of whom so great a multitude die every day, should perish without the merciful God, who wishes no one to perish, having provided them also with some means of salvation.

—Pope Innocent III, late 120117

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NEXT VOYAGE: Today’s piece was planned for January 22, as my annual commemoration of Roe v. Wade, but it was delayed because I underestimated the complexity of my thesis. I still plan to publish a Worthy Reads post ASAP, but, obviously, with an article that took a week too long to write, I’m a bit backed up at the moment.