“He hates the flag and does not want our child to say the pledge of allegiance.” What began as my wife talking to some friends about my reluctance to decorate our yard had quickly turned into a Cold War era indictment. My dumbfounded response was something along the lines of “I don’t hate a flag, and the guy who wrote the pledge was a socialist.” This was not the finest intellectual retort, but at least it was based on factual information.
Francis Bellamy was a Christian Socialist, who published the original pledge of allegiance on September 8, 1892. He strongly advocated the separation of church and state and did not write the words “under God” into the original pledge (that line was added in 1954). Citing his religious beliefs as the foundation for his political stance, Francis was one of many left leaning Christians during the American Progressive Era, a belief system that seems to have undergone a resurgence over the past few decades.
The internal clash between religion and politics goes back fairly early in my childhood as I recall arguing with an eighth grade teacher about abortion and homosexuality. I also recall not having a lot of friends that I could relate to in eighth grade. Anyway, leftist politics seemed to permeate just about every aspect of my catholic education. As an adult I became so tired of the constant struggle between my conservative outlook and my faith that I considered leaving the church altogether. While deliberating on this decision I came across some material that made a drastic impact on my worldview.
The shift in my beliefs has led to frustration and bewilderment for my wife. When we began dating, our politics were a source of compatibility, having both been from conservative republican backgrounds. I was in law school with the intent of some day attaining an elected office, and my two previous career paths consisted of a short stint in law enforcement and a brief attempt in joining the military. As an avid listener to conservative talk radio, government, police, and the military seemed to be the most altruistic of career choices.
I attended college at a Jesuit University where I was a sociology student, aspiring to be a conservative intellectual. The opinions of most professors were the antithesis of my own, and many of them received my rebuttals as incoherent ramblings. I had several meaningful exchanges with one, self-proclaimed, “extremely left-wing” professor, but none of these incidents had much of an impact on my overall outlook. It wasn’t until toward the end of my time as an undergrad that the seeds of doubt were planted in my head. While in the locker room preparing for a workout, I overheard two professors talking about a book that one of them called a “must read.” I was familiar with the title from the radio, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. This was the first time I had heard a professor mention anything that I heard on the radio so I went over and asked one of them why it was so rare to hear conservative thought on campus. “I prefer to be called a free thinker” was his rather astute response. I thought little of his rejection of political labeling, thinking that he was simply afraid to identify as a conservative in such a hostile environment.
The case against government regulation in Atlas Shrugged is devastating. Never before had I been exposed to the difficult truth about government authority, that every decision imposed on the people is “at the end of a gun.” Ironically, several months after completing the book I was hired to be the man holding that gun. I failed to realize the incompatibility of these ideas and the current state of American law enforcement. This contributed to the various misfortunes I endured as a cop, in military training and law school which are definitely numerous and amusing enough for several posts of their own. After failing at all 3 of my republican dream jobs, there was ample time to read the rest of Rand’s novels and look into her Objectivist philosophy.
The distance between myself and the church seemed to be increasing as I learned of the overwhelming amount of benefits to society that capitalism provides. Objectivism was beginning to look like a more attractive and consistent outlook than Christian conservatism. Rand’s philosophy made the quest for God a lot less intellectually taxing, as it simply requires looking in a mirror. I was on a rather long hiatus from attending mass, but atheism was still quite a leap of faith. Some research was in order before making my final decision to leave the church.
Contained in the search results of my extensive research (a google search for ‘Capitalist Catholics’) was a speech by historian, Tom Woods, about a book he had written entitled The Church and the Market. In the speech and his book Woods convincingly defends the free market within the confines of Catholicism and diffuses a lot of the counter arguments made by people within the faith. This book was also my first encounter with the school of Austrian economics, which instead of all the overly complicated math equations presented in college economics, simply states human action as a fundamental principle. I then read How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, another fascinating book in which Woods demonstrates the fundamental role of the church in western civilization, as it was the creator of universities, agricultural and mechanic innovation and free market principles centuries prior to the writings of Adam Smith.
The third book I read by Woods was entitled Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion. This book is basically a collection of hard truths that extend well beyond the narrow conservative vs. liberal narrative in mainstream media and education. Further eroding my past principles was the Tom Woods Show podcast, from which I branched out into reading and listening to other Libertarians and Austrian economists. Initially I attempted to refute a lot of the concepts that used scary words like “anti-war” and “anarchy”, but these arguments all used a level of reason that absolutely annihilated mainstream political thought. I finally understood what the professor in the locker room had meant by “free-thinker.” He wasn’t a conservative in hiding, he was rejecting the idea that society is limited to two sides of generic political talking points.
In a short essay called The Anatomy of the State, Murray Rothbard, who is credited by many as the founder of the present day Liberty Movement, logically takes apart the generic definition of self-government and shows its true damaging nature. Finding a lot of his arguments frustratingly hard to refute I became angry with all of the misinformation that I had been taught in school and by the conservatives who claimed to be providing a counterbalance. After a lot of negative and unproductive ranting, I realized just how meaningless a lot of the political information I had gathered through my life was. No matter who the president or senator or whatever else anyone decides to march around calling themselves, I am responsible for putting the food on my family’s table.
I now consider myself a free-thinker because as a recovering political junkie, it would be detrimental to my health to declare any allegiance to a party. The amount of misinformation spread in the education system and the media is simply appalling. I’ve decided to set a lot of the meaningless aspects of politics aside and focus on more productive issues in philosophy, science, economics, and theology.
Although, I don’t agree with his worldview or the allegiance he demanded, Francis Bellamy was right in his support for the separation of church and state. If you are a Christian, hopefully you realize that in the end your political view or what flag you find yourself under does not matter. What matters is that we are all human beings that deserve to be treated with dignity and that our freedom comes from God.