Links Round-Up
things worth reading
Have you ever heard of integralism? Bless you, if you haven’t, but perhaps it’s time you get acquainted. In a short essay for the London Review of Books, Jan-Werner Muller unpacks recent work by the influential Harvard legal scholar, Adrian Vermeule, and his so-called theory of “common-good constitutionalism.” (I have long been a fan of Muller. Check out his book on populism, if you aren’t familiar. A while back he also gave a series of talks on democratic space and architecture that were quite good.) Vermeule, long known as an advocate for a strong executive branch, has become something of a mouthpiece for a type of Roman Catholic conservatism that seeks to place all social life under the authority of the Church. Vermeule has rebranded his authoritarian approach to the federal government as “common good constitutionalism.” The premise is that the two major approaches to constitutionalism, originalism and the living constitution theory, are no longer viable. Instead, we need a new framework for interpreting the constitution that is based on natural right and a construal of the law that, as Aquinas put it in the Summa Theologia, “an ordinance of reason made for the common good by him who has charge of the community, and promulgated” (I.II., q. 90, a.4, resp., for the nerds who need to know). So far, so good, as far as definitions of the law go, but where Vermuele really takes flight is with “him who has charge of the community.” For Vermeule, there is only one legitimate construal of the common good, rival versions not permitted to be discussed, and the job of the executive is to ensure that the right one is enforced in society, top to bottom. The elite must be Catholic; the goals of civil society must be Catholic, whether or not society likes it. The society that emerges from this theory of constitutional jurisprudence is one that is administered from above by a technocratic Catholic elite who, by nudging the public towards a very narrow construal of its best interests, enforce political and social conformity. Think Victor Orban or, closer to home, JD Vance.
What of dissidents, of gay and trans people, or immigrants? American integralists with any significant public profile sometimes go silent when you ask such questions, but it’s not hard to see that these are precisely the types of people they want to get rid of. Modern liberalism and the cascade of protections that have been extended to individuals: these are the enemy that a strong executive must bring to heel or eliminate. Muller argues quite plausibly that this virulent form of post-liberal thought can be traced to the writings of Carl Schmitt, the Nazi jurist who once claimed that the Catholic Church was the only institutional force capable of fighting the socially corrosive effects of modern individualism.
It’s worth bearing in mind that common good constitutionalism, and the movement of integralism on which it is based, is a grotesque distortion of Catholic social teaching. Gaudium et spes, a papal encyclical from 1965, sums up the Roman Catholic Church’s longstanding position on these matters. The Church, Paul VI wrote, “by reason of her role and competence, is not identified in any way with the political community nor bound to any political system. She is at once a sign and a safeguard of the transcendent character of the human person.” Moreover, it “does not place her trust in the privileges offered by civil authority. She will even give up the exercise of certain rights which have been legitimately acquired, if it becomes clear that their use will cast doubt on the sincerity of her witness or that new ways of life demand new methods.”
Other things I’m following: COP30 climate talks ended very poorly. Predictably, the US was a complete no-show. Meanwhile, China’s CO2 emissions have peaked or at least plateaued for the last eighteen months. They wildly outpace the rest of the world in new green energy investment. Some researchers think it could provide the conditions for a global about-face. The US is lagging behind–hiariously behind. US LNG (liquid natural gas) currently accounts for 25% of all natural gas exports globally. Meanwhile, the world burns more natural gas than ever has before.
A happy note: Brian Goldstone, author of There Is No Place For Us, continues to reel in the accolades. His book received the “New York Times Notable” designation a few weeks ago, and this week, it was names by the same rag as one of the ten best books of the year. Two weeks ago, a segment featuring the individuals he wrote about aired on CBS. Check out this clip of Brian driving Ted Koppel (of all people) around in a minivan. I am glad I got to review his book, and I’m grateful to call him a friend!
I read two new novels last week: Death and the Gardener, by former Booker Prize-winner Bulgarian novelist, Georgi Gospodinov, and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai. I was reminded of what a brooding, expansive writer Desai can be. I first encountered The Inheritance of Loss as an undergrad and loved it. The new one, her first in nearly twenty years, is also excellent. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize but lost to David Szalay’s Flesh, which I haven’t read yet.