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Asia Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Asia Times
Michael Ledeen, a Reagan revolutionary, passes at 83
Michael Ledeen passed away on May 17 at the age of 83 after a long illness. His death deprives the United States of one of the last Americans who approached intelligence with a deep understanding of history and culture. He was one of the last of a generation that could not have been educated at today's universities. His personal contribution to America's victory in the Cold War is far greater than the public record shows. Dr. Ledeen combined the intellectual depth of a historian, a deep understanding of culture, and the instincts of a man of action. He was one of the last of the generation that gave America a monopoly of global power that subsequent misgovernance frittered away. As a friend and mentor, he was as generous as he was sagacious. In 1983, the United States proposed to station the Pershing II intermediate-range missile in Western Europe to counter similar Soviet deployments. Germany's then-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who quipped that the definition of a tactical nuclear weapon was a nuclear weapon that went off in Germany, balked at the deployment unless another European country did so. The Reagan White House dispatched Ledeen, whose major publications addressed Italian history, to meet Italy's Prime Minister Bettino Craxi. Ledeen persuaded Craxi to deploy the Pershings. This, to my knowledge, has never been reported. The incident reflects the high trust that Ledeen commanded in the Reagan administration and the strategic role that he played. Press accounts of Ledeen's activity in the Reagan administration focused on his minor involvement in the Iran-Contra affair, which Ledeen reported in his book 'Perilous Statecraft .' Ledeen, who knew Iranian politics in depth, helped contact the Tehran regime. Unlike other Reagan officials, Ledeen never was charged with wrongdoing. Michael Ledeen reached out to me in 2008 after I wrote that Barack Obama was a Third World anthropologist profiling Americans. Ledeen had an anthropologist's appreciation of politics. He was writing a history of Naples, with vivid documentation of the quasi-magical beliefs of its inhabitants, who believed that dead relatives could communicate with the living and give them tips about winning lottery numbers. Ledeen peered deeply into the irrational side of the Italians and produced a profile that should still be required reading for diplomats and intelligence officers concerned with that country. I had just joined the masthead of the religious monthly First Things and arranged for publication of a chapter. It's said of America's southern cooking, 'More important than what it is, is what it was' (look up 'Brunswick Stew'). The adage applies emphatically to politics in every part of the world except the United States, which was born (figuratively) yesterday. The past is a living presence in European politics, and Ledeen's lighthearted but profound account of Neapolitan folk beliefs explains his effectiveness as an intelligence officer as much as his highly respected books on Italian fascism. In style and substance, it recalls Heinrich Heine's marvelous writings on German folklore. After his service in the Reagan administration, Ledeen held the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute for twenty years, before moving to the Foundation for Defense of Democracy. Sometimes labeled a 'neoconservative,' Ledeen had little in common with the Leo Strauss kindergarten that hijacked the Bush administration in a crusade to propagate democracy, although he was personally close to some of the neoconservatives, including Richard Perle. He had a closer affinity to Angelo Codevilla, the scourge of neoconservative nation-building (we both contributed to Claremont Review of Books' memorial symposium for Codevilla after he died in 2021). Ledeen was a political conservative, but neither a neoconservative nor a traditional (or 'paleo') conservative. On the contrary, he was a revolutionary conservative. This encapsulation of his outlook drew the ire of a critic in the 'paleo' journal American Conservative back in 2003: 'Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.' Ledeen's revolutionary conservatism was profoundly American, and in another sense, deeply Jewish in character. His understanding of America as a transformational principle rather than a static entity. But there was nothing narrow or chauvinistic in his appreciation of the United States. He saw in the chaos and craziness of Naples a creative impulse, writing in 2011, 'Naples is the last creative city in Europe. No other place has the constant high energy, the magnificent fashions, the marvelous food, the legendary music, the remarkable literary renaissance, the charm and wit of the population and the sheer physical beauty of Naples.' He is survived by his wife Barbara Ledeen, long a prominent staff member for several Senators and Senate committees; his daughter Simone, who served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Trump administration; and his sons Gabriel and Daniel, both of whom served as officers in the US Marine Corps. The Ledeen household was warm and hospitable, teeming with children and guests and pets. Follow David P Goldman on X at @davidpgoldman
Wall Street Journal
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
A Conclave Without the Movie Ending
The dome of St. Peter's Basilica. Photo: Marco Lanni/Zuma Press The conclave to select the next pope begins next week. Author George Weigel writes from Rome for First Things: Flying ad urbem on Easter Monday night, it seemed that more than a few of my fellow passengers were watching Conclave as their in-flight entertainment. As I wrote some months ago, the film is brilliantly acted and visually compelling. But its ending is completely absurd, its celebration of religious 'doubt' as a desirable attribute in a pope is exactly wrong, and its depiction of the cardinals' quarters in the Domus Sanctae Marthae (St. Martha's House) is inaccurate. The suites in which the cardinals live during the conclave do not resemble those in the movie; they're not quite Motel 6, but neither is the Domus the Four Seasons Vatican. (One of the many media ironies of the past twelve years is that, when Pope Francis decided to live in the Domus rather than the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace, the Domus instantly changed on many journalistic keyboards from being 'the Vatican's 4-star hotel' to 'the humble Vatican guest house.') Conclave also suggests that the process of electing a pope is almost entirely politicized and shaped by ideological conflicts. Politics are a factor in any exercise of choosing an institution's leadership, and so are differences of philosophical and moral perspective. But there is also prayer and spiritual discernment during a papal interregnum and in a conclave. As I said on NBC the other day, when a man casts his ballot—facing Michelangelo's stunning fresco of Christ the Judge in the Sistine Chapel and swearing that he is conscientiously voting for the one who, before that Divine Judge, he thinks should be chosen—he is taking his soul in his hands. Only the dimmest spirits would not be conscious of that. In a recent piece for the Journal Mr. Weigel emphasized the difficulty in predicting the results of papal elections:
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What the Border-Hawk Catholics Get Wrong
In a letter to America's bishops, Pope Francis last month decried a 'major crisis' unfolding in the United States: 'the initiation of a program of mass deportations.' He called on 'all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.' Border-hawk Catholics were scandalized. R. R. Reno, the editor of the traditionalist religious magazine First Things, denounced the pope as 'an accelerationist' who believes that a 'borderless fraternity is a true utopia.' The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh characterized the letter as 'pure nonsense,' while the Heritage Foundation's head, Kevin Roberts, called it a 'veiled shot' at Catholic supporters of Donald Trump. Tom Homan, President Trump's border czar, addressed Francis directly: 'I got harsh words for the pope … He ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work, and leave border enforcement to us.' (Each of these critiques came before Francis's hospitalization last month.) Throughout Francis's papacy, some American Catholics have accused him of prioritizing a platitudinal liberalism over doctrinal orthodoxy. But on the issue of immigration, Francis's critics are the ones who appear to be sidestepping Catholic tradition—even while claiming to uphold it. Start with the incident that prompted the current intra-Catholic dispute over immigration: a back-and-forth between the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and America's highest-profile Catholic official. After the Trump administration authorized Immigration and Customs Enforcement to apprehend people in churches and other social-service ministries, the USCCB called the move 'contrary to the common good.' Vice President J. D. Vance came to the administration's defense. 'There's this old-school—and I think it's a very Christian concept, by the way,' Vance told Fox News's Sean Hannity in late January, 'that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.' Vance's rationale sparked intense debate in Catholic circles, especially online: His supporters cheered his use of religious rhetoric, while his detractors accused him of ignoring key parts of the Gospel. [Elizabeth Bruenig: 'A very Christian concept'] Christian theologians through the ages have indeed articulated versions of this principle—called ordo amoris, or 'the order of love'—including Church fathers such as Saint Augustine in the fourth century ('Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you') and Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th ('We ought to love more specially those who are united to us by ties of blood'). True Christian love, the principle suggests, is guided not by an impulse to maximize utility but by a compassionate preference toward the personal and proximate. Many of those same Catholic theologians, however, believed that this preference is conditional, not absolute. As Aquinas himself wrote in the Summa Theologiae: 'In certain cases one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need.' Rightly ordered love prioritizes close kinship—all things being equal. But it's not ignorant of context or necessity. Based on the outcry that followed Francis's letter, you'd be forgiven for thinking it marked a dramatic departure from the views of his predecessors. It didn't. 'To welcome' the undocumented migrant 'and to show him solidarity is a duty of hospitality and fidelity to Christian identity itself,' Pope John Paul II said in 1995. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, remarked that immigrants and native-born people alike 'have the same right to enjoy the goods of the earth whose destination is universal, as the social doctrine of the Church teaches.' In 2010, he selected 'one human family' as the theme for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. To be sure, none of the three most recent pontiffs argued that immigration is an unbounded good. Benedict XVI granted that nations are entitled to 'regulate migration flows,' while John Paul II thought that 'illegal immigration should be prevented.' Francis himself noted in his letter 'the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe' from violent criminals, and he stressed the need for 'policy that regulates orderly and legal migration.' Still, some of Francis's critics interpreted the letter as a declaration that countries should admit every migrant who doesn't have a criminal record. They typically cited this line: 'The rightly formed conscience' should not equate the 'illegal status of some migrants with criminality.' But Francis has previously acknowledged that stricter enforcement can be necessary. In a 60 Minutes interview last year, the pope said that a migrant should be received initially but, in certain situations, 'maybe you have to send him back.' Some might reasonably find all of this to be another instance of Francis's imprecision—as a Catholic myself, I understand their frustration—or think it imprudent for him to intervene in such a contested and complicated political matter. True enough, his letter wasn't primarily concerned with balancing competing interests; his goal, it seems, was to emphasize what he regards as the moral error that underlies much of the immigration debate in the United States. If in doing so the pope is guilty of eschewing some nuance, his critics seem altogether uninterested in the deficiency he was pointing out. They wouldn't have to look very far. The first Trump administration enforced a brutal policy that separated thousands of parents from their children, as my colleague Caitlin Dickerson reported. (In October, a journalist asked Homan whether there's a way to carry out mass deportations without separating families; he replied, 'Sure there is: Families can be deported together.') In many cases, restrictionist sentiment has given way to outright xenophobia, perhaps most memorably during Trump's 2024 campaign, when he scapegoated Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. (Matt Walsh contributed to the panic in a video titled 'Third World Immigrants Are Ruining Our Towns and Eating Our Pets.') And as the second Trump administration froze funds for initiatives such as the USCCB's refugee-resettlement program, the bishops' conference laid off 50 workers last month. (Responding to pushback from the USCCB over the administration's loosened ICE guidelines, Vance suggested that the bishops are more 'worried about their bottom line' than about caring for migrants.) While the White House posts deportation ASMR videos and ICE ramps up raids that sometimes mistakenly detain citizens, it's hard to read Francis's letter as gratuitous pining for a borderless utopia. Rather, the pope seems to be making a plea for rhetoric and policies that respect the dignity of every human life—a long-standing Catholic concern that U.S. immigration-policy debates so often ignore. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
What the Border-Hawk Catholics Get Wrong
In a letter to America's bishops, Pope Francis last month decried a 'major crisis' unfolding in the United States: 'the initiation of a program of mass deportations.' He called on 'all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.' Border-hawk Catholics were scandalized. R. R. Reno, the editor of the traditionalist religious magazine First Things, denounced the pope as 'an accelerationist' who believes that a 'borderless fraternity is a true utopia.' The Daily Wire 's Matt Walsh characterized the letter as 'pure nonsense,' while the Heritage Foundation's head, Kevin Roberts, called it a 'veiled shot' at Catholic supporters of Donald Trump. Tom Homan, President Trump's border czar, addressed Francis directly: 'I got harsh words for the pope … He ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work, and leave border enforcement to us.' (Each of these critiques came before Francis's hospitalization last month.) Throughout Francis's papacy, some American Catholics have accused him of prioritizing a platitudinal liberalism over doctrinal orthodoxy. But on the issue of immigration, Francis's critics are the ones who appear to be sidestepping Catholic tradition—even while claiming to uphold it. Start with the incident that prompted the current intra-Catholic dispute over immigration: a back-and-forth between the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and America's highest-profile Catholic official. After the Trump administration authorized Immigration and Customs Enforcement to apprehend people in churches and other social-service ministries, the USCCB called the move ' contrary to the common good.' Vice President J. D. Vance came to the administration's defense. 'There's this old-school—and I think it's a very Christian concept, by the way,' Vance told Fox News's Sean Hannity in late January, 'that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.' Vance's rationale sparked intense debate in Catholic circles, especially online: His supporters cheered his use of religious rhetoric, while his detractors accused him of ignoring key parts of the Gospel. Elizabeth Bruenig: 'A very Christian concept' Christian theologians through the ages have indeed articulated versions of this principle—called ordo amoris, or 'the order of love'—including Church fathers such as Saint Augustine in the fourth century ('Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you') and Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th ('We ought to love more specially those who are united to us by ties of blood'). True Christian love, the principle suggests, is guided not by an impulse to maximize utility but by a compassionate preference toward the personal and proximate. Many of those same Catholic theologians, however, believed that this preference is conditional, not absolute. As Aquinas himself wrote in the Summa Theologiae: 'In certain cases one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need.' Rightly ordered love prioritizes close kinship—all things being equal. But it's not ignorant of context or necessity. Based on the outcry that followed Francis's letter, you'd be forgiven for thinking it marked a dramatic departure from the views of his predecessors. It didn't. 'To welcome' the undocumented migrant 'and to show him solidarity is a duty of hospitality and fidelity to Christian identity itself,' Pope John Paul II said in 1995. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, remarked that immigrants and native-born people alike 'have the same right to enjoy the goods of the earth whose destination is universal, as the social doctrine of the Church teaches.' In 2010, he selected 'one human family' as the theme for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. To be sure, none of the three most recent pontiffs argued that immigration is an unbounded good. Benedict XVI granted that nations are entitled to 'regulate migration flows,' while John Paul II thought that 'illegal immigration should be prevented.' Francis himself noted in his letter 'the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe' from violent criminals, and he stressed the need for 'policy that regulates orderly and legal migration.' Still, some of Francis's critics interpreted the letter as a declaration that countries should admit every migrant who doesn't have a criminal record. They typically cited this line: 'The rightly formed conscience' should not equate the 'illegal status of some migrants with criminality.' But Francis has previously acknowledged that stricter enforcement can be necessary. In a 60 Minutes interview last year, the pope said that a migrant should be received initially but, in certain situations, 'maybe you have to send him back.' Some might reasonably find all of this to be another instance of Francis's imprecision —as a Catholic myself, I understand their frustration—or think it imprudent for him to intervene in such a contested and complicated political matter. True enough, his letter wasn't primarily concerned with balancing competing interests; his goal, it seems, was to emphasize what he regards as the moral error that underlies much of the immigration debate in the United States. If in doing so the pope is guilty of eschewing some nuance, his critics seem altogether uninterested in the deficiency he was pointing out. They wouldn't have to look very far. The first Trump administration enforced a brutal policy that separated thousands of parents from their children, as my colleague Caitlin Dickerson reported. (In October, a journalist asked Homan whether there's a way to carry out mass deportations without separating families; he replied, 'Sure there is: Families can be deported together.') In many cases, restrictionist sentiment has given way to outright xenophobia, perhaps most memorably during Trump's 2024 campaign, when he scapegoated Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. (Matt Walsh contributed to the panic in a video titled 'Third World Immigrants Are Ruining Our Towns and Eating Our Pets.') And as the second Trump administration froze funds for initiatives such as the USCCB's refugee-resettlement program, the bishops' conference laid off 50 workers last month. (Responding to pushback from the USCCB over the administration's loosened ICE guidelines, Vance suggested that the bishops are more 'worried about their bottom line' than about caring for migrants.) While the White House posts deportation ASMR videos and ICE ramps up raids that sometimes mistakenly detain citizens, it's hard to read Francis's letter as gratuitous pining for a borderless utopia. Rather, the pope seems to be making a plea for rhetoric and policies that respect the dignity of every human life—a long-standing Catholic concern that U.S. immigration-policy debates so often ignore.
