Radical Turnabout

In the French Revolution the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was given over to pagan rites for years. But eventually French Catholics were able to re-sanctify the Cathedral — with unlikely help from Napoleon Bonaparte. I cite this restoration as a hopeful symbol that when decadence afflicts a nation, and the country is given over to despoilers, still there remains the possibility of a radical, fundamental turnabout.

During the era that followed the assassination of JFK, the postmodernist revolution proceeded stealthily, gradually and inexorably to dominate the United States. Postmodernism uses government, the media and public education to promote paganism and atheism. It relegates Christian faith and morality to the political/cultural ghetto, and as a consequence this revolution has devastated the nation’s manners, finances, and public mores.

Tr eatise on Twelve Lights is a plan for counterrevolution, i.e. for setting the USA free from the tyranny and immorality which the postmodernist regime has imposed.

By way of basic strategy, the book looks to the nation’s founding document: the Declaration of Independence . The Declaration sought to restore what its chief author, Thomas Jefferson, called the most valuable of all freedoms: the right of self-government. Today, however, consent of the governed, or rule by the people, is giving way to usurpation of power, a crime cited three times in the Declaration as among the casus belli leading to the radical break with Britain in 1776.

During the 2003 dispute over Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments monument, Ambassador Alan Keyes echoed Jefferson. Keyes warned that we were losing “the freedom to live in communities that are governed by laws that reflect our beliefs.” Instead, edicts issued by the politburo of nine (the unelected, life-tenured U.S. Supreme Court) form what Pat Buchanan calls “the battering ram of the cultural revolution.” We are plagued with numerous other usurpations of power, including Presidential wars undeclared by Congress and a bloated federal bureaucracy ruling us by “administrative law.”

Having lived longer than most of my fellow Americans, I have known an America vastly different than today’s. The restoration of “America the Beautiful” seems quite possible in light of my experience. My confidence derives from having lived in a country that was neither loathsome culturally nor odious politically– the USA until 1963. For some years I was “able to love my country and still love justice,” as Bobby Kennedy used to quote Albert Camus.

My optimism is based also on my longtime profession as a history teacher (now retired). Historical precedents reassure me that the despoiled condition of the country and of its Constitution is not irreversible. (On the fatalistic fallacy, “you can’t turn back the clock,” see 42 historical examples of documented counterrevolution).

Another reason citizens can be optimistic about restoring a country that has been sullied by postmodernism is that America’s illustrious legacy offers hope. The more glorious a country’s past, the more advantage accrues to reformers when they call their country back to its roots. In the 19th century the U.S. Navy made unsightly alterations to the glorious ship, USS Constitution, rendering “the eagle of the sea” unrecognizable. Yet patriotic inspiration overcame the claims of so called realism; and since the restoration of 1927-31, Old Ironsides looks like herself again.

What Treatise on Twelve Lights proposes to restore in America is the standing of the written Constitution. Reinstated in its former status of lex rex (king law), the Constitution would wield the scepter once again over a Republic of laws, rather than under an oligarchy governed by lawyers attired in black robes, or within a polity whose “public servants” are beholden to corporate plutocrats. To restore the country to a condition that engenders genuine patriotism and civic virtue, we will have to deprive government of power to mortgage our children and grandchildren to transnational corporations. Prayer, not pornography, must once again have free exercise under the First Amendment.

To overcome the corruption we see inside the D.C. beltway, and in the country at large; reforms will have to be at least as radical as our problems. Nothing less will suffice: a constitutional dry-dock, an overhaul of the engine. And Article V of the Constitution provides the means: a constitutional convention.

Such a convention would be a unicameral, temporary body, without homesteading incumbents ­­­– i.e. no politicians preoccupied with reelection. An Article V convention would lack obstructive procedures: no filibuster, no autonomous standing committees. The Constitution authorizes the people, the citizenry in convention assembled, to circumvent the postmodernist power structure, bypass federal officialdom, and address directly the fundamental problems in our polity, economy and culture.

Treatise on Twelve Lights includes extensive commentaries on the proposed agenda for a convention – i.e. a draft for one arch-amendment to the Constitution. The book’s last chapter sets forth this single overarching amendment in detail. The constellation amendment would consist of a series of interlocking reforms organized into twelve sections. Its political, economic and cultural reforms are set forth in outline form , and also in prototype text .

The twelvefold constellation amendment would serve as a standard under which “we the people” might rise up to undo the evils of the postmodernist revolution. Basically, the call is to restore America the Beautiful under God and the written Constitution.

By

writer, retired history teacher, practicing cradle Catholic, lecturer for Knights of Columbus, council 1379. Knight of the Month, October 2008, February 2009.

Subscribe to CE
(It's free)

Go to Catholic Exchange homepage

MENU