Excellent article and well written. Although, when it comes to this sort of work, I think it is somewhat unfair to expect from Vance, who is intelligent, but otherwise seems to be a regular guy, to be dealing with apologetics and sophisticated philosophical reasoning. Simply put, very few people, even amongst intellectual elites, reason in this way and beliefs are more related to experience and their coherence with this experience than anything else.
"Like many right-wing Catholics, Vance struggles to reconcile his understanding of the Church as the guardian of an enduring moral order with its political pronouncements, which seems indistinguishable from human rights universalism."
Excellently done. I find it especially odd that the VP’s “return to Ithaca” brought him across the Tiber rather than to any other denomination. It’s not as though biblical literalism is the norm outside of the RCC. Roman Catholicism is also the most “elite” modern denomination of Nicene Christianity, and it’s interesting that he doesn’t seem to address the tensions between that and his broader populism / fixation on his American heritage. Or his attempt to distance himself from the status-chasing that once plagued him, for that matter.
It still feels like he’s trying not to offend anybody, avoiding picking any fights. He isn’t forward about fighting to be vice president or senator (or president), he flattens theological differences, and minimizes his disagreement with CST regarding immigration. He focuses on subjective and identity-based reasons for his faith, too, instead of more objective arguments.
I wish he’d put forward a more forceful and ambitious vision of faith and for America. This feels soft.
- The classic type A personality is driven by an unfulfilled pursuit of parental love, which matches the described ambition. So the observed striver ambition is entirely compatible with him being a decent guy with normal moral and psychological instincts.
- Common mystical-adjacent experiences could explain the conspicuously specious description of his rise to power. Could. It's common for people who try very hard to get something (e.g. women), then give up on it, to find it suddenly falling into their laps effortlessly. There's a large class of phenomena where this happens regularly, including most of the really important stuff in life, but I wouldn't say we understand it or could intentionally reproduce the effect. But many of us have similar experiences.
NB: I'm not a Vance guy and consider him pretty shallow, generally. I also don't expect him to be an important political figure in the future because the foreign policy Jews don't trust him with Iran-Israel.
Thank you for reading this so that I didn't have to. Far be it from me vicariously to judge, but It seems from your review that Vance places high value on both social status/hierarchy and intellectual belief/dogmatic conviction, which would both tend to explain the appeal of Catholicism.
Fair assessment, but the whole "Reversion to childhood" critique doesn't sit well with me. You can bring up the general statement, "everyone is a sum of their experiences", yet this says particularly nothing about the world.
All of us are attracted to certain ideas in the same manner— they resonate with us on a spiritual level. We as nationalists understand this, and in fact, this is the essence of our conservatism. Vance's "return to Mamaw" can be fractally mirrored as the turn towards one's national roots.
We belong to a particular people's and our way of being discloses the world around us in a manner dictated by the national body we belong to. This belonging stretches beyond our lifetime and is always brining us towards a certain telos. Thus, conservatism is the innate feeling associated with this fact, which assigns us with our moral guidance.
Taking the above into account, Vance's seeming turn towards the past isn't something to look down upon. It is one level of the higher idea which connects us to the world around us—even if Vance is not really cognizant of it. I would even say that he's naivety is a good sign of his authenticity; it would be better if he was cognizant of it though, since this uncovers the entry point of a sincere expression of ethno-nationalism
Finally in regards to the absence of clear a confession about Vance's historical belief in the resurrection of Jesus and other Biblical events, I would say this is the least important in a Christian's faith. Faith is not as much dictated by a collection of facts about a past which is long dead to us— viewed only through a lens of "pure history"— but a living proclaiment of Christ's life and (again) it's resonance towards our lives in the manner explained above.
Excellent article and well written. Although, when it comes to this sort of work, I think it is somewhat unfair to expect from Vance, who is intelligent, but otherwise seems to be a regular guy, to be dealing with apologetics and sophisticated philosophical reasoning. Simply put, very few people, even amongst intellectual elites, reason in this way and beliefs are more related to experience and their coherence with this experience than anything else.
"Like many right-wing Catholics, Vance struggles to reconcile his understanding of the Church as the guardian of an enduring moral order with its political pronouncements, which seems indistinguishable from human rights universalism."
Ain't that the truth, buddy.
Excellently done. I find it especially odd that the VP’s “return to Ithaca” brought him across the Tiber rather than to any other denomination. It’s not as though biblical literalism is the norm outside of the RCC. Roman Catholicism is also the most “elite” modern denomination of Nicene Christianity, and it’s interesting that he doesn’t seem to address the tensions between that and his broader populism / fixation on his American heritage. Or his attempt to distance himself from the status-chasing that once plagued him, for that matter.
It still feels like he’s trying not to offend anybody, avoiding picking any fights. He isn’t forward about fighting to be vice president or senator (or president), he flattens theological differences, and minimizes his disagreement with CST regarding immigration. He focuses on subjective and identity-based reasons for his faith, too, instead of more objective arguments.
I wish he’d put forward a more forceful and ambitious vision of faith and for America. This feels soft.
Or how he manages to maintain an intimate relationship with a pagan, allowing his children to be indoctrinated by pagan beliefs.
He's changed his name twice, his politics regularly and his religion. What's there not to trust?
A couple of notes:
- The classic type A personality is driven by an unfulfilled pursuit of parental love, which matches the described ambition. So the observed striver ambition is entirely compatible with him being a decent guy with normal moral and psychological instincts.
- Common mystical-adjacent experiences could explain the conspicuously specious description of his rise to power. Could. It's common for people who try very hard to get something (e.g. women), then give up on it, to find it suddenly falling into their laps effortlessly. There's a large class of phenomena where this happens regularly, including most of the really important stuff in life, but I wouldn't say we understand it or could intentionally reproduce the effect. But many of us have similar experiences.
NB: I'm not a Vance guy and consider him pretty shallow, generally. I also don't expect him to be an important political figure in the future because the foreign policy Jews don't trust him with Iran-Israel.
Thank you for reading this so that I didn't have to. Far be it from me vicariously to judge, but It seems from your review that Vance places high value on both social status/hierarchy and intellectual belief/dogmatic conviction, which would both tend to explain the appeal of Catholicism.
Fair assessment, but the whole "Reversion to childhood" critique doesn't sit well with me. You can bring up the general statement, "everyone is a sum of their experiences", yet this says particularly nothing about the world.
All of us are attracted to certain ideas in the same manner— they resonate with us on a spiritual level. We as nationalists understand this, and in fact, this is the essence of our conservatism. Vance's "return to Mamaw" can be fractally mirrored as the turn towards one's national roots.
We belong to a particular people's and our way of being discloses the world around us in a manner dictated by the national body we belong to. This belonging stretches beyond our lifetime and is always brining us towards a certain telos. Thus, conservatism is the innate feeling associated with this fact, which assigns us with our moral guidance.
Taking the above into account, Vance's seeming turn towards the past isn't something to look down upon. It is one level of the higher idea which connects us to the world around us—even if Vance is not really cognizant of it. I would even say that he's naivety is a good sign of his authenticity; it would be better if he was cognizant of it though, since this uncovers the entry point of a sincere expression of ethno-nationalism
Finally in regards to the absence of clear a confession about Vance's historical belief in the resurrection of Jesus and other Biblical events, I would say this is the least important in a Christian's faith. Faith is not as much dictated by a collection of facts about a past which is long dead to us— viewed only through a lens of "pure history"— but a living proclaiment of Christ's life and (again) it's resonance towards our lives in the manner explained above.
'He also describes hearing the same psalm performed in two different languages on the same day, which he took as a possible sign from God.'
That would be due to something called a lectionary!