I confess to having mixed feelings about the recent case in which the Court ruled that Oklahoma cannot deny charter status to a school just because it is Catholic.

On the one hand, the decision is clearly correct.  Certainly this sort of discrimination by the state on the basis of faith should not be allowed, provided that the faith accords with natural law.  (I would certainly discriminate against a religion of assassination.)

However, whether the Church is well-advised to take advantage of benefits such as those which charter schools receive is another question.  Since money always has strings attached -- and the strings get shorter and stronger over time -- other ways must be found to make Catholic education available to those who desire it.

Making it available is especially necessary in view of the degeneration of the public schools.  Please let’s not blather about religious “neutrality.”  So called secular education is not neutral, but reflects a bias against faith in favor of irreligion.

In fact, even that way of putting it is not precisely accurate.  It isn’t that public schools have no god; in fact they place many gods before God.  Superficial thinkers suppose that unconditional loyalties – whether of the “woke” or another variety -- don’t count as religion just because they don’t use the word “god” for their gods.  But the crux of the matter does not lie in the words they use.

Most people know the importance of carefully reading contracts before signing them and labels before using the product.  All sorts of poisons can be hidden in the fine print.  What most people don’t know is that fine print is also a means of advancing the international culture war.  (And yes, it is international.  Did you think globalization was only about markets?)

If you read the UNESCO documents on childhood sexuality education, for example, you will find pages and pages about protecting children from sexual abuse.  Sprinkled through them are much briefer passages which let the cat out of the bag -- but you have to look for them.  It’s true that the activists who run these agencies don’t want children to be raped.  But they do want to sexualize them, and they want it very much.

They explain that “comprehensive sexuality education” “equips” young people including children to develop sexual relationships.  Among its many goals are that five-to-eight year olds are to be taught that they can masturbate and it will give them pleasure; nine-to-twelve year olds, that abortion is safe; and twelve-to-fifteen year olds, that there are various and sundry “gender identities” which deserve equal respect.

Speaking of so called gender identities:  The UNESCO documents don’t list them, but did you know that activists now claim that some people are “xenogender”?  That’s a gender “that cannot be contained by human understandings of gender.”

I wonder:  If it can’t be contained by human understandings of gender, then how do the activists know that it is one?

By “natural ingredients,” people mean ingredients derived from nature.  But every ingredient is derived from nature.  Snake venom is derived from nature.  Arsenic is derived from nature.

It would be an exaggeration to say that you can derive anything from anything, but if you apply enough processing to ordinary proteins and carbohydrates, you can derive all sorts of noxious substances.  To get poisons, you don’t have to start with poisons.

The term “natural ingredients” would be meaningful and helpful only if it were used to mean ingredients which beings of our nature can consume safely.  If we don’t use it that way (and we don’t), then we might as well get rid of it.

So in case the title of this post confused you, I’m completely on board with natural ingredients.  I oppose only “natural ingredients.”

Like many people, I was taught in school that the early progressive movement, from which today's progressivism descends, was a movement of reform against political corruption.  Its proponents opposed urban political “machines” because they wanted to “take the politics out of government” and make it “clean.”  For example, instead of cronyism and patronage, they wanted a nonpartisan civil service.  The rule of experts would replace the rule of corrupt ward bosses – and the power of the government would be increased so that it could to do more good.

Although these words corresponded to the progressive self-description, they are misleading.  Progressivism wasn’t against class government, as you might think; it was all about class government.  The supporters of the machines were mostly recent immigrants and working-class folk, but the experts represented the views of the professional class, who have now morphed into technocrats.  They were highly political in their own way, but had different political ideas, and their supposedly neutral administrative state invented its own forms of cronyism, patronage, and corruption.  Under progressive rule, the power of the central government is wielded largely to do harm in the name of good.

Progressives want progress, but to measure progress one would need a fixed standard, and progressives reject fixed standards.  The dominant philosophy of the progressive movement was, and is, what is called pragmatism, the glittery philosophy that truth is “whatever works.”  Since the definition of “works” is up for grabs, this has come to mean that truth is “whatever I have to say to bring about what people like me want to happen – and to retain the power to go on making it happen.”  In courts, this approach is sometimes called “results-based jurisprudence,” which is not really jurisprudence at all.  It is not an attempt to follow the law, but a redefinition of law as whatever we want people to follow.  Instead of being an instrument of fairness and predictability, as it ought to be, due process becomes a continuation of political war by other means – a wax nose to be twisted in the shape of the outcome the progressive desires.

To progressives, such tactics don’t seem cynical, because in their view, the idea that law has a meaning independent of what one desires is a naïve mystification.  Since law can’t speak for itself, you see, jurists can’t be interpreters, and have to be ventriloquists instead.

Even knowing these things, some things about progressivism are surprising. For example, when progressive elites are caught making obviously terrible policies, as with open borders, they don’t change them – they dig in.  Why?

In the case of open borders, part of the reason is that the purpose never was to make good policy.  Open borders were supposed to bring in a trove of voters who were vulnerable enough to be manipulated.  That turns out to be another aspect of “what works” -- although in fact, it hasn’t worked even on its own terms.  First-generation citizens tend to be no fonder of open borders than their fellow citizens are.

But another reason is symbolic.  Every defeat on a major policy discredits the rule of experts, and threatens to bring the regime into question.

It is not a nice position to be in.  Even when wrong, one has to be right.

Related:

What Kind of Progress Does Progressivism Want?

Come on, Man!  The President as an Ethical Theorist

Men and women bear equal dignity as human beings.  But the men-in-women's-sports scandal is an elegant demonstration that the claim that men and women are just the same in doesn’t liberate women, but subjugates and abolishes them.

One could almost be grateful for the travesty of those men pretending to be women, because for those who have eyes to see, it makes the point clear.