Ordo amoris and ethno-nationalism
“If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” - 1 Timothy 5
After I read that JD Vance used a concept from Thomistic ethics, the ordo amoris (order of loves), to defend a policy, I decided to interrupt my series on Christianity’s difficulties in modernity to comment on this trending topic. On Fox News recently, Vance defended his anti-migration stance with the following statement:
As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens … it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—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.
It’s a political conception of the ordo amoris, which Dr Clements of Word on Fire conceptualises “as a series of concentric circles radiating outward from ourselves,” to our families, gradually further outward until the whole world is loved as far as we are capable.1 Vance defended the statement against online scorn:
Just google ‘ordo amoris.’ Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does [my critic] really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?
The answer, of course, is no. A father who found his son and a stranger dying on the road, and couldn’t decide which to save, is no father. Ignoring the order of loves would also freeze us into an egalitarian paralysis every time we saw a homeless man on the streets. Can we continue to work to feed our families, or do we owe this man the first rights of care? The controversy surrounds not the existence of an order but rather its scope. Particularly, where do political communities lie within it?
I contend that the expansion of our political communities has severed them from the natural order of loves. This has birthed dissatisfaction and hatred. The antidote is subsidiarity—devolving power to the smallest possible units, and reducing the size of our political communities to realign with the ordo amoris.
We have expanded our polities
Over the course of the last century, political communities have expanded drastically in size and scope. This trend has largely been effected by the centralisation of power to supranational bodies like the WTO, the EU, or even the US (which was originally conceived of as a pragmatic alliance between independent state governments). Even where constituencies have nominally shrunk, power has been centralised, which stretches the effective size of the polity. The British Empire at its zenith never fused London and Madras into one healthcare service—even London and Sussex stayed separate until the National Health Service’s consolidation of 1948. Only in the post-WW2 liberal consensus did national and global governments finally overtake the local as the relevant forum for most of our political decisions.
This hypertrophy severs political life from the ordo amoris. Instead of gradually expanding rings with an appropriate level of responsibility at each level, we face a stark polarity between [self, family, and friends] and [all of humanity]. The neighbour on the other side of town becomes as distant as the stranger on the other side of the continent, their claims to our love blurred by our shared membership in one political body—the distended nation.
Here we fail, for placing our focus on distant political circles neglects those close to us who are struggling. If our duty to poor residents of Africa is the same as that to our poor co-citizens, we would have to cancel every non-life-saving expense over $3000. After all, only $3000 can save a child’s life in Africa.2 This is impossible, so we end up falling for the contradiction that Dostoevsky notes: “The more I love mankind in general, the less I love man in particular.” Nationalist, internationalist, and globalist orders stretch political circles beyond their breaking points, and lead us to neglect the needy nearer to home.
The most important trend in politics today is protest against this neglect. The rise of the regions, the revenge of the fly-over states, “levelling up.” The WTO’s principles are ignored, as free trade agreements are replaced by trade wars; NATO and capitalist peace have lost out, as Russia invades the Ukraine and Israel goes to war; and the UN, EU, and the democratic principles of the liberal world order are being abandoned, in favour of a “multi-polarity” of local authoritarian regimes. The trend of political expansion looks to have ended, as overstretched polities snap under their own weight.
“I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences” - Henry Kissinger
Heterogeneous polities lead to hatred
Modernity compounded this crisis by rapidly increasing the heterogeneity of our political communities. Historically, Western nations were broadly homogenous in race, religion, and culture. Exceptions proved the rule, with outsiders’ minority statuses seen as a quirk in those who were otherwise native—think of people like Handel, who became English in all ways except for being German; like Newman, who, after his conversion, set up Oratories to imitate his beloved Oxford colleges in the Catholic Church. This homogeneity makes it easier to expand the beloved circles—one can more easily love an entire nation when the entire nation seems like family.
Three factors upended this: (1) cultural divergence, (2) economic disparity, and (3) migration.
(1) Cultural divergence is part of a broad societal trend towards individualisation, driven by what Charles Taylor referred to as “the nova effect” (the modern explosion of new religions and views). A single polity must now include fundamentalist farmers, third-wave feminists, and WASP professors. When did they agree to share the same social contract? They can perhaps work together on foreign policy, but surely cannot share the regulation of cultural artefacts like education. Combined with the political centralisation that forces them to try, this divergence has started “culture wars” from which it is hard to see a return.
(2) Economic disparity, which has a very long history indeed, has increasingly played a role in political problems. This is not necessarily because of increased inequality, although the disparity between London bankers and Yorkshire farmers is, by some measures, sharper than ever. The cause of the problems is trying to force everyone to share one economic system. The economic life and taxation of a farmer in the country ought not to consider the lawyer in the city. He doesn’t want to pay for the lawyer’s fancy universities and city crime problems, and the lawyer doesn’t want to pay for his agricultural subsidies and long-distance highways. It is hardly surprising that coastal elites and fly-over states resent one another.
(3) Migration has always existed, but has accelerated due to travel, communication, and liberal policies. This has led to our communities expanding too rapidly to be able to integrate the newcomers. A polity that regulates sexual harassment cannot include both modern Westerners to whom it is acceptable for women to go about in crop tops and running shorts, and Muslims scandalised by uncovered female hair. It is not easy to expand our circle of “local strangers” (who are due polite interactions) to include people with vastly different backgrounds (who are only due a sort of distant curiosity). The predictable fruits of this expansion are anti-migrant sentiment and ethno-nationalism.
Together, these factors erode love. God’s ordo amoris only works with gradual expansion. When we place people at the appropriate distance, we are able to show them the appropriate love. When we place people too close, our ability to love them disappears. Including radically different people into a single polity will only lend credence to the adage that “familiarity breeds contempt.” A single polity cannot include Christian farmers, big-city bankers, and Syrian migrants. Heterogeneous polities lead to hatred, and the culture wars, class divides, and ethno-nationalism of the modern world are proof that the ordo amoris has been stretched beyond its breaking point.
The solution is subsidiarity
As is often the case, the Catholic Church foresaw this problem long ago. I here quote from Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno:
Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.
Our polities are too vast and too varied. Subsidiarity—devolving power to the smallest possible community—re-aligns political life to the ordo amoris. This would allow our communities to once again be powered by neighbourly love.
Tasks requiring broad co-operation (defence, emissions) may require national governance, but most governance—healthcare, education, taxation—belongs close to home. Just as our love should be strongest for God, then our families, then our communities, filtering out in ever-expanding rings, so too our political involvement must necessarily shrink as we move outwards from our towns, to our counties, to states, nations, and the world.
Implementing subsidiarity requires significant decentralisation. Hospitals and schools devolved to local councils, trade and transit devolved to regions, and national governments limited strictly to defence and basic rights. The vast majority of taxes and political involvement would stay local.
Critics will rightfully point out difficulties. Resource inequity means that some areas would likely have worse services. However, this problem has persisted despite centralisation—levelling down doesn’t seem to have fixed inequality. Local control, ordered to our love, would also inspire greater involvement that would perhaps improve services. Wouldn’t your town invest more into a local school run by local teachers, rather than one that merely implements a national curriculum?
Love’s proper order
The ordo amoris is the Christian call to love: God first, then self, then family, then neighbours, then strangers. Our political order should be based on love, and should therefore flow likewise: first the local, then the regional, then national, then global. The modern error of flattening this hierarchy by loving mankind in the abstract has stretched our political circles to the breaking point. It aimed at efficiency, but it ended up engendering hatred instead of love.
Subsidiarity offers the answer. By shrinking our political circles to match the ordo amoris present in our hearts, we will ground our polities in love, rather than in rationalised efficiency. Love’s order is not arbitrary but divine. Let us heed it in our politics.
“Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do but how much love we put in that action.” - Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Source: First, Love Locally: JD Vance and ‘Ordo Amoris’, for Word on Fire, by Dr Richard Clements. This article, well worth reading, is also my source for the Vance quotes. For more on the ordo amoris, please read the Summa II-II, Q. 26.
How Much Does It Cost To Save a Life?, from GiveWell. They end up at ~$3000 per life. Other estimates are lower