1. Race error? Heh.
2. A taster?
3. Very pretty.
4. Misunderstanding markets (and perhaps the role of government).
5. Not candy coating works too.
6. Links and a hope that our President will get some needed education.
7. Pimping your parish … or not.
8. Lebanon.
9. Considering end of life.
10. Kids. They’re just so darn immature.
11. And keep them away from operating heavy machinery (in some cases).
12. A book noted.
13. Isn’t “chronically homeless” a euphimism for the mentally ill?
14. A Saint.

Politics often disgusts me. President Obama gave a pretty speech at Ohama beach recently. In it we find these remarks:

We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true. It’s a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government. In such a world, it’s all too rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity.

The Second World War did that. No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good. But all know that this war was essential. For what we faced in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity. Nazi ideology sought to subjugate and humiliate and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale, fueled by a hatred of those who were deemed different and therefore inferior. It was evil.

We don’t celebrate VE day, and rightfully so. We didn’t win the war in Europe. If the Soviet regime had not been a totalitarian state, but instead another liberal democracy … D-Day may never have come about. D-Day is an achievement. It is a moment to remember for the American and the West, the struggle and the sacrifice. We fought hard on D-Day and at Guadalcanal and in the Pacific. But, for myself, I wonder if we would have the will to persevere at a Stalingrad (where nearly 2 million died in a six month long battle). Our country (at least the left) balked today at 3,000 military deaths over more than a four year period.

And yes Nazi Germany was one of the glaring unlearned lessons from the 20th century, Soviet Russia which bore most of the burden of defeating that Nazi threat was the other. And alas, the misconceptions underpinning the reasons which brought those things he notes as “It was evil” into the light of day are shared and still maintained in the hopes and dreams of the left. Hope. Change. The utopian dream than man and society can be perfected coupled with a rejection of the dignity of man was lie at the core of all three visions. That same is the dream on which Nazi Germany was founded as well. It was evil in outcome then … it will likely be so again. Mr Obama’s administration began with the motto “never let a good crises go to waste.” And if you don’t have the means to effect that change … just find a new crises. And if no crises can be found? Hmmm. Three choices. Give up, make a crises, or manufacture an enemy.

(This in part is the thesis that I’ve been exploring in Chantal Delsol’s essay … which oddly enough has passed unremarked.)

1. Mr Tiller, a Lutheran, had been excommunicated by the LCMS and was attending an ELCA church. So … how may articles about him attempted to explain the different Lutheran denominations? Is that relevant as a background to the story?
2. More on Mr Tiller’s killing here.
3. Outing as a conservative/liberal issue, in which a particular liberal forgets “outing” is a standard tactic against gay GOP members, which brings one to the logical conclusion that painting this as a left/right matter is a partisan fiction.
4. Some philosophers consider the matter.
5. And the point is made that pseudonymity requires increased not decreased politeness.
6. An inconsistency on the left, noted.
7. A educators prayer.
8. Or … there might be other reasons.
9. On the health care debate, a discussion here and here.
10. We are all democrats now.
11. Not to die in vain.
12. A comparison Mr Alito and Ms Sotomayor.
13. Grist for the legalize prostitution libertarian mill.
14. A Baptist preacher goes to an Orthodox service and finds much to like.

1. Ten men a half century ago.
2. Some reading suggestions in the fantasy genre.
3. Another take on Mr Obama’s speech and memory of another Cairo speech.
4. Continued fractions.
5. Some econometrics look good.
6. Do as I say, not alas as I do is a recurring trope.
7. So … in picking the date for the speech, was Tienanmen or Midway to be connected in any way.
8. In which a load of old bull figures prominently.
9. Some Sotomayor background.
10. So Long. Farewell. An esteemed blogger bows out.
11. A wedding.
12. Why don’t they just have a run off election?
13. Race, resentment as replacements for normal freshman fears.
14. On natural law.

Some remarks on the President’s address.

• “For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt’s advancement.” Hmmm. That seems a stretch.
• “I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” This is indeed a persistent fallacy. In the last five or ten years, I think the maxim that “Every commonly held belief about historical events and motivations is exactly wrong” is a turning out to be a fine rule. From WWI trench warfare to this one, all these notions … all wrong. That “light of learning” was carried by Byzantium and a lot of it came west at the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders and the carting off of the libraries, marble, gold and so on to Venice. If you think that’s wrong, ask yourself where, when, and how the intellectual exchange of documents and teaching between the crusaders and the West occurred? (hint: it didn’t in any meaningful way … and what little did was came via Byzantium)
• “And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” How about to highlighting the negative realities?

If we compare the responses of this speech from two esteemed bloggers from both sides of political spectrum there is, on offer, an interesting comparison (besides the nearly identical title). The pseudonymous “hilzoy” offers that this “broke the mold” and offered praise and criticism to both “sides” and that each side might take away from the lesson learned from the criticism. Richard Fernandez on the other hand, similarly comments that there is in fact praise and criticism that both sides might note … but that the effect will be the reverse. That each “side” will key on the criticism of the other and like Eris with her golden apple this will only serve to inflame each other, with each ignoring the faint mentions of their own and inflame their own image of the other’s flaws? Given human nature … which will be the more likely response. I’d offer that the ‘hilzoy’, in part because of the shared assumptions, might closely match the intention of the President and his speechwriters … but that the effect will be the more pessimistic realistic appraisal of Mr Fernandez.

But … like his remarks on the hijab a similar response might be made about the tepidity of his allusion. In a similar vein, examine this response.  Reflect for a moment on the discord vs self-examination as posed our two bloggers and examine those remarks in that light. Would you characterize these responses as self-critical or the reverse? Bringing together or apart?

Solzhenitsyn coming to the West gave four significant of addresses and spoke from a position of utter political weakness, he was after all no President and weilded no power. His words were rejected but were right in many ways and pulled no punches. Mr Obama on the other hand came to Cairo and told honeyed lies filled with calculated misdirection all intended to move people closer. His words, being fiction, have a better chance of not being rejected outright … but their effect it seems has a not unlikely chance of moving people in the direction he did not intend.

1. A quote from Habermas on Christianity.
2. Pentecostal petal drop.
3. The quick pitch.
4. Dresden and Tienanmen.
5. A letter from Beirut for the President.
6. The transcript of the Cairo speech.
7. Indiana muscles in on the Administrations illegal car company moves.
8. Well, it’s because its not the Christian response … and not a cognitive dissonance problem.
9. Ford tech.
10. Good signs.
11. Hmmm.
12. Net savvy administration indeed.
13. Devilish book.

1. Reading suggestions for leaders. What would you suggest?
2. Tears of a geographer, noted here too. Or is this just more evidence of innumeracy?
3. Nuts noted. Nuts who don’t know the two words which are Mr Obama’s best insurance, i.e., Biden and Pelosi.
4. That’s why it took so long to catch Mr Madoff (he was being groomed).
5. Slavery.
6. Of human evils.
7. The socialism notion.
8. Still trying to spin. Remind us why (coincendentally white) non-Russian immigrants from the former Soviet Union are unable to comprehend discrimination?
9. A related (and counter) point made here.
10. St. Brenden.
11. Mr Kass in science.
12. An interesting discussion on A Secular Age.
13. In the context of advise and consent … recalling Mr Obama on Mr Roberts.
14. Covering for judges.
15. Summarizing the McArdle/ObWings abortion discussion.
16. Marriage and Tolstoy.

The claim that the current Administration and their supporters trend to ‘socialism’. My co-blogger at Stones Cry Out wonders if this is an appropriate phrase and as well if the term is being abused to the point of being meaningless. Freydrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom might be read as a clarion call not specifically warning against socialism itself but a more general tendency highlighted in Chapter 2 of Chantal Delsol’s  The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century essay which I’m in the process of blogging my way through. Many of the tendencies and hopes (for change?) that the movement which propelled Mr Obama to the White House are in fact identified by Ms Delsol in her essay (and Ms Delsol being first of all a French national, a philosopher, and writing an essay that pre-dates Mr Obama’s run to the Presidency should be noted). Utopian dreams and the totalitarian consequences is the real danger. It should also be noted that many themes in this chapter resonate well this week as the abortion ethical question returns to the surface propelled by the killing of Mr Tiller.

A recurring theme of Ms Delsol’s is that the crux of the unlearned lessons lie in the continued acceptence of the fatal flawed that lie as the basis of the 20th century utopian totalitarian projects which were so very costly in human life and dignity. While we reject specifics of those projects we accept very many of their premises and therefore lie likely (easy?) prey for finding new ways to explore life in a totalitarian dystopia.

Ms Delsol begins chapter two, which is entitled The insularity of the human species.

Totalitarianism, of whatever persuasion, emerges when we get caught up in the belief that “everything is possible.” It might be worth recalling just how difficult it was to have this idea accepted, or, for instance, to remember how reluctantly the thought of Hannah Arendt was received in France. To deny that “everything is possible,” to make the postulate of unlimited possibility the cornerstone of the errors of the twentieth century, was, it was said, to equate terror and utopia, or to liken the perversities of man’s annihilation to ideals about reshaping human nature. To do this was unthinkable as long as ideological dreams were still persuasive.

Several decades of perseverant reflection, however, finally made it possible to state openly that the idea of that “everything is possible” represents the birth of the twentieth century. This little phrase, which was to reveal itself to be so terrible, essentially means two things. “Everything is possible” is a way of determining who is human: one can then arbitrarily set a boundary here or there between humans and “subhumans” and declare a particular category to be nonhuman, which is what Nazism did. “Everything is possible” is also a way of determining what it is to be human: one can then arbitrarily decree that humans can or should live without authority, without personal secrets, without family, or without gods, which is what communism did. In fact, communism ended up adding the first consequence of “everything is possible” to the second and denied the humanity of those who made no effort to become other than they were.

The essential defense against “everything is possible” is the axiomatic ontological insistence on the irreducible dignity of the human being, which must be and remain a foundational certainty. Human dignity in this context implies two important things. First that man may not be treated as a thing. This contitutes a ontological distinction between man and the rest of nature. Second, that there is therefore an essential bond between all men.

The modern secular (and many liberal deist) thought continues the project of defining man by his attributes and denying his essential axiomatic dignity. Discoveries (and the rise of scientism … see the quote excerpted Sunday), have blurred the biological and neurological differences between man and the animal world. Medical and biological capabilities have expanded our understanding of man’s development and our ability to affect this.

The Kantian was hoped would deflect the necessity of ontological axiomatic dignity. Kant argued persuasively that man deserves respect by virtue of being endowed with moral autonomy. This results however in the tempting substitution replacing “It is not man who has dignity, but man insofar as he is autonomous. [emphasis mine]” One characteristic is not sufficient to defend man. Thus the newborn, the dying, the handicapped become less than human. As our abilities at genetic screening expand, the fine tuning of our exclusion from the ‘truly human’ can narrow.

At the beginning of the twentieth century it was felt that the rise of reason and our understanding of the physical world would do away with the need for religion. But, especially inasmuch as religion provides a framework in which to base the necessary axiomatic irreducible dignity of man the reverse is true. The necessity and place for religion, instead of being done away with, is ever more needed and required as a bastion holding a multitude of totalitarian dystopias at bay.

A final note which may connect to the currently vogue resurgence of the abortion question in the light of current events.

Prudential wisdom consists precisely in acting within shadowy areas, where bearings have a tendency to disappear. but prudence is not a form of pragmatism; it is a virtue. It may dispense with overly strict principles on the condition that its eyes remain fixed upon points of reference that lie above those principles: there is an immense difference between allowing someone to die and decreeing that all the dying who have reached a certain point are no longer persons.

Dying and fetus I’d offer might be exchanged in the above.

1. Acronyms and the merry band of robbers in the beltway.
2. Eugenics OK in Sweden.
3. A back and forth on abortion and Mr Tiller (follow the links for the whole thing). For what it’s worth, I think that Ms McArdles rejoinder, “My argument is that abortion, like slavery, is becoming in this country
   an issue upon which people have no reasonable political recourse. ” is correct but that the Christian response to “having no recourse” is not violence.
4. Mr Murtha’s bridge to nowhere.
5. Intelligence and the big universe.
6. Poop and a map.
7. Some movement of some of the conservative Christian blogs.
8. Against divorce.
9. Ill omens and Mr Obama’s Cairo address.
10. Conservative praise for Twilight? And of course, Pixar.
11. Wind power generation, which begs the question, will Mr Obama’s administration get serious about nuclear energy? Because if they don’t this whole “global warming” carbon thing is just a stinking crock of hooey.
12. Hmm.
13. Income discrepancy.
14. The clarion call for Asian representation on the court.

1. Pentecost and the holy mountain. More on Pentacost from the Fathers here.
2. Marriage and crime.
3. A point to be made regarding the rhetoric of the wacky pro-abortion contingent in the wake of Mr Tiller’s murder. Which I heard of first here, and I might add is a pretty typical response from the Christian right blogs.
4. The term economy and its theological meaning.
5. Contra the “other.”
6. Terrorism and policy and what we do “just to feel better” about ourselves, but which is materially morally worse.
7. Sober thoughts on the nomination of Ms Sotomayor.
8. Missing the point in grand style. The point isn’t that this is some sort of faked sympathy for other groups, the point is that the “mend it, don’t end it” project is clearly impossible.
9. To look out for (eagerly), Judge Dee.
10. Against using the eye of the heart in judicial matters.
11. Math and music.
12. Heh.
13. In case you’re grumpy on this Monday morning.
14. Narrative and man.
15. The churcn and the Nazi regime.
16. On Meyendorff about Palamas.
17. Wanna bet Mr Obama won’t mention Coptic Christians during his Cairo address? Some reasons why he should.
18. A little song.
19. The GM boondoggle.
20. The fall of unfaith.

A scatter shot of thought offered from an early Sunday eve.

1. Ms Althouse offers that Ms Sotomayor’s remarks are not out of the pale, but are fit as a “feel good version” into a larger and widespread racial talk in the legal academy. She offers that this, among perhaps the non-bottom feeders, might be a good opportunity for discussion racially sensitive or color blind jurisprudence. Given that race is, in my opinion, a ontological travesty. Race is a fictional entity invented for (perhaps) political reasons and enforced by stereotype. It is, on examination largely meaningless. Black, White, Hispanic are meaningless tags. There is no such thing as any of those things. There are certainly ethnic affiliations which have meaning, culturally and in forming people’s outlook. It is obvious that an urban white metrosexual yuppie far far has more in common by any cultural metric you might choose with a black gang-banger than with a recent rural Serbian immigrant, even though the first and the last are “racially” both “White.”
2. From Chantal Delsol’s second chapter of The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century: An Essay On Late Modernity, to which I will return later in the week, “… However, today’s scientism, compared with that of the nineteenth century, has become both hypocritical and worth of disavowal. In the nineteenth century, scientism rested upon the naive yet understandable belief — since it had not yet clashed with actual experience, that once the religious mentality had been swept aside, science would be able to explain everything and to alone bring happiness to humanity. The twentieth century sufficed to show that this was hardly the case. Thus, the scientism of today is founded on the mere hatred of religion and makes use of its own resentment against good faith. […] Today’s scientism, when it claims a monopoly on truth and is used to blur the boundaries of the human species, has become virtually criminal.” I’m guessing that there will be some objections to this quote. One would wonder who and why would defend scientism, for it is likely a more pressing threat to the real practice of science than any religious attack.
3. Apparently an late-abortion practitioner has been murdered. At least one on the left thinks this means, that an assault on the freedom of speech is the answer. For myself, I’m confused as to the motivation behind the murder. If, as I think it is, the pro-life position is one anchored in the axiomatic ontological necessity of the necessity of a belief that all men share dignity. How that then leads to justifying murder cannot be rational or reasonable. Keep that assault on free speech (and the right to assemble) in mind when I return to Ms Delsol’s essay.
4. In part the piece linked above connects that murder to the “empathy” argument used by the President. I wonder if “empathy” would be replaced by nous, in that particular liberal (?) legal methodology (see the Eastern Orthodox entry following the nous Wiki entry). While it might be just a little change of pace to find terminology like that flowing from progressive lips when arguing that a particular justice was qualified. As an side, it seems to me that the judicial philosophy entailed in the “empathy” argument is one which assumes and supports continuing irrelevance and immaturity on the part of the Legislature. The point is, the Judiciary is not there to fix “bad” law written by the Legislature but merely ones which are contrary to the Constitution. Depending on the judiciary to fix bad laws is a bad idea, because it enables lesser legislators to pen laws which are politically expedient and “counting” on the judiciary to overturn those laws … which they are more free to do being not as dependent on the electorate. But I digress, if you want to kill the whole “empathy” in the judiciary argument, one might frequently replace “empathy” with “eye of the soul” or “mind of the heart” or similar phrases. We might be continue with a trinitarian judicial philosophy, claiming our judges should equally weigh nous (heart), logos (reason),and spirit. That will go over swimmingly in the secular liberal world. If the right takes up that as a just judicial spirit, I’d bet the left will be clamoring for textualism or originalism post haste. See how the epomynous publius quote reads now, “Anyway, this violent act also bears quite directly on the whole “eye of the heart” debate.  What’s interesting about Obama’s comments is that the eye of the soul argument doubles as both a populist argument and a high-level theoretical assault on conservative jurisprudence.” I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to cast Mr Obama’s argument in as a trinitarian one.

1. When one is a crook.
2. A look at the catholicism of two Obama appointees, one basically lapsed the other possibly linked to liberation theology.
3. A call for sanity.
4. Mr Obama as one of three detestable men.
5. Ms Sotomayor and Princeton.
6. Men in Chicago.
7. An important book on fighting small wars.
8. Heh.
9. Some thoughts on learning Greek.
10. On the “experience” question.
11. Japan and nuclear devices.
12. Ms Sotomayor’s compelling life story, which is compelling in a way that Mr Thomas’ and Mr Alito’s were not apparently. Just as Ms Rice was neither Black nor a woman. More here.
13. The haert and God.
14. Co-induction.

Bottom feeding is not an uncommon thing to see (unintentional?) hypocrisy on exhibit on the few (good) liberal blogs I’ve found or have been recommended. I’ve previously criticized Mr. De Long for his blatantly un-collegial (anti-collegial) attitude that he displays and which is repeated here. This horrific meme, which apparently he is fond of enought to repeat. Ed Brayton, blogging here, regularly trawls for what he finds offensive or ridiculous that is on offer from the “other side” and lampoons it. Yet this is exactly the same sort of thing just given a patina of respectibility. Bottom feeding the opposition and representing that as representative of the same is just as bigoted and offensive as the behaviour which they attempt to lampoon. I will give Mr. Brayton his due. He doesn’t represent his blog as anything but what it is: a sort of National Enquirer for the libertarian/atheist reader. Mr. De Long on the other hand, represents his blog as an academic and principled blog. Yet we find him regularly engaging in bottom feeding and maintaining the pretense of the high minded intellectual. If one were to dip to Mr. De Long’s level for a moment, this would mean that if the GOP is the “stupid *and* immoral” party perhaps the Democrats are the “supercilious and immoral” party.

Mr. Niven on occasion will do the same, but here, for example, he seeks out thoughtful discourse and discusses it. The point of this enterprise is that if you want to raise the level of discourse then the way to do that is not to lower yourself to the bottom denominator but to seek out, engage, and elevate the best arguments, individuals, and ideas of the other side. It may be easier to disparage the Moore’s, the Ms Sykes, or political cartoonists similar output. However, this isn’t helpful in the least.

On blogs, in periodicals, and in books good conservative political, economic, theological, and political thought can be found quite easily, unlike it seems thoughtful progressive blogs and thought which are (for me) much harder to locate. If you want to raise the level of discourse this is the course you need to take. If you think discussion and intercourse between the sides of the aisle and between the various divisions in our society is of value, the only way to do that is to find the best of the other side and engage that. As fun as it might be, the sarcasm, humor, belittling and lampooning only serves to widen the divide and lower the tenor of the debate. It is counterproductive.

1. The future and strategy and a question.
2. Seagulls and earthquake.
3. A complaint lodged against Mr Obama’s Memorial Day speech.
4. Hail.
5. Considering atheism.
6. Differences and Europe.
7. Christopsomos, or Christ Bread.
8. Democracy and Religion.
9. How long will the lying thing stay popular?
10. Alcohol and the reasonable parent.
11. The housing bubble, not done popping?
12. On energy.
13. Two saints who changed world history remembered.
14. Memory and a passing.
15. The eagle and the bear compared.
16. It was a brilliant attack, as they say.
17. Perceptions of Obama and their consequences.