Biden as an “Authoritative Type”, by Hadley Arkes

By Hadley Arkes, The Catholic Thing, Jan. 26, 2021

Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus at Amherst College and the Founder/Director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights & the American Founding. …

Aristotle recognized that the political man, raised to high office, becomes an “authoritative type.”  His attributes, his manner, draw a closer attention, for, after all, his elevation carries this sense of things:  that these are the features of a man so admirable that we have lifted him to high authority over us;  his style and character are so commendable that he offers us a model to be emulated.   President Kennedy favored a rocking chair for his back and went to concerts of Haydn, and suddenly more people were buying rocking chairs and seeking out the music of Haydn.

I offer all of this as a note of sobering warning to some of our friends who have been altogether too beamish in hoping for the true Catholic to come flowering in Joe Biden now that he may have less reason to conceal it. Biden has offered over the years the visible public example of a man in high office who can regard himself as serious Catholic and yet support, as a good thing, a right to kill 860,000 to a million innocent human lives each year in abortions. …