From a reader:

Subject: What you will is what you love (a re-statement of St. Augustine) Dear editors: One can agree with Niebuhr that states’ actions have to be more limited than non-state actions. But that doesn’t mean that the state cannot do some things that are love. Beginning with the family, subsidiary collective groups can love by agreeing on actions and doing them (willing them), including setting up structures to bring that about. (At the bare level of the family, one could begin with rules about cleaning one’s room and enforcement thereof.) There is no reason national and even international love could not come about because of common agreement. And it’s also true that the state can effect justice, and justice can be considered the minimum amount of love that two or more people, subsidiary institutions, or governments should find necessary.

Me: I think this is interesting and will ponder more. But it seems to me there’s a category error here. I didn’t say that groups can’t love you. But the State is a unique institution (empirically and philosophically) and anthropomorphizing it leads to folly. Also, I think we have too many terminological problems here. Love is good but good isn’t necessarily love. It is good for the state to provide justice, but it seems to me that only God can deliver the sort of justice that can be called love. Anyway, I want to think about this more.