Here’s What Benedict Really Said in Africa

This from a column by George Weigel in National Review on Line today:

And here is Sacred Heart Major Seminary professor Janet Smith's illustration of the technical point the pope was actually making, which touches on the question of what philosophers and theologians call subjective intention:

If someone was going to rob a bank and was determined to use a gun, it would be better for that person to use a gun that had no bullets in it [for that] would reduce the likelihood of fatal injuries. But it is not the task of the Church to instruct potential bank robbers how to rob banks more safely and certainly not the task of the Church to support programs of providing potential bank robbers with guns that could not use bullets. Nonetheless, the intent of a bank robber to rob a bank in a way that is safer for employees and customers of the bank may indicate an element of moral responsibility that could be a step towards eventual understanding of the immorality of bank robbing.

The Danger of a Single Despot

"When the Constitution was thus perfected and established, a new form of government was created, but it was neither speculative nor experimental as to the principles on which it was based. If they were true principles, as they were, the government founded upon them was destined to a life and an influence that would continue while the liberties it was intended to preserve should be valued by the human family. Those liberties had been wrung from reluctant monarchs in many contests, in many countries, and were grouped into creeds and established in ordinances sealed with blood, in many great struggles of the people. They were not new to the people. They were consecrated theories, but no government had been previously established for the great purpose of their preservation and enforcement. That which was experimental in our plan of government was the question whether democratic rule could be so organized and conducted that it would not degenerate into license and result in the tyranny of absolutism, without saving to the people the power so often found necessary of repressing or destroying their enemy, when he was found in the person of a single despot."

Our president recently referred to people who value the ideals on which our government was founded as his "enemies."  I wonder if we might see in him the single despot so feared by the Founders?  Fortunately, they left us the saving power to prevent such things, if only we will be wise enough to use it.

UPDATE

The above quote is from an introduction to Democracy in America, by John T. Morgan in the Kindle edition of the book.  However, readers should be warned that this introduction is a product of, I believe, a 19th century historian, and some of his views on race are unfortunate, at best, at worst, racist.  Still, the truth of some points he makes about deToqueville's understanding of America are still valid.