…(and his post has the quotes to show that many Lefty bloggers do), then Collin Brendemuehl wants to know if the Left is going to blame itself for what one of its "peace activists" did; killing a military recruiter. 

The question is simple: Where is the contrition? Where is the self-deprecating admission that maybe, just maybe, the mainstream Left might be entirely wrong? They vandalize our nation and kill people and pretend that they have nothing to do with any of it. They protect the radicals and act like nothing is wrong.

(Ok, this is what I anticipate some them to say about this crime: The murderer was a convert to Islam and did this because he hated what Bush started. Bush made him do it. Right. And Nixon made Armstrong blow up the math building at UW.)

May they pretend to set an example by acknowledging that they might actually be doing what they contrive for us.

As of right now, big blogs from the left — Think Progress, TalkLeft, Talking Points Memo (can’t link to a search result) and Daily Kos — have absolutely nothing mentioning "William Long", the man who died in this killing. 

And yet blogs on the Right are all over themselves denouncing the violence done, ironically, in the name of the pro-life movement.  I’ll state for the record here that I find the killing of Dr. George Tiller absolutely wrong, just as wrong as the millions of abortions done each year, and just as wrong as killing a military recruiter who is posing no threat to you. 

Will the big voices of Left do the same?  Or is their outrage so very selective?

Eric Scheie posting at "Classical Values" asks how do we have a legitimate conversation about socialism — do we have it, do we want it — without sounding like some conspiracy theorist.

Unfortunately (as I have pointed out in several posts), the "s" word is so fraught with problems that it might be too contaminated to use. I worry that "socialist" within five words of "Barack Obama" has become code language for belief in various popular far-right conspiracy theories. The "Obama is a secret Muslim sleeper agent born in Kenya" stuff. After all, who but a secret Muslim sleeper agent born in Kenya would want to impose socialism on the United States?

In theory, "socialism" is still a perfectly legitimate word, but I worry that it is becoming delegitimized. As it is, the responsible critics of Barack Obama’s economic programs are very, very careful not to use the word "socialist," and if they do, it is only to distance themselves from those who call Barack Obama a socialist.

An old adage is "you’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you."  Use of a particular word ought to be acceptable if it describes things accurately.  I’ve been using the word "socialism" here for a couple months, but only after describing a recent event that, in my mind, continues to push our country in that direction.  Eric has this feeling, however, that anytime someone uses the S-word, they get labeled a kook and ignored. 

Marginalizing a word is an easy way to avoid debate.  I hope this isn’t happening.

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.

From Larry Wright:

(Click for a larger image.)  All this promise of rescuing GM and Chrysler, and yet, as of this morning, both are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

"The General Motors board of directors authorized the filing of a Chapter 11 case with regret that this path proved necessary despite the best efforts of so many," GM Chairman Kent Kresa said in a written statement. "Today marks a new beginning for General Motors. … The board is confident that this New GM can operate successfully in the intensely competitive U.S. market and around the world."

Please note 2 things:  First, a government handout failed to both avoid bankruptcy and produce an automaker that could compete.  Second, if this is what bankruptcy will do for GM, this should have been the first option.

A bankruptcy that comes post-bailout, however, creates a GM that looks something like this:

(Click for a larger image.)  As you’ll notice, the government is in the driver’s seat.

The plan is for the federal government to take a 60 percent ownership stake in the new GM. The Canadian government would take 12.5 percent, with the United Auto Workers getting a 17.5 percent share and unsecured bondholders receiving 10 percent. Existing GM shareholders are expected to be wiped out.

Emphasis mine.  There’s a word for when the government owns a controlling interest in (what was) a private company, but it’s not coming to me at the moment. 

Late last week, the news was that a Bible study in San Diego county was trying to be shut down by county officials; holding a religious assembly without a permit. 

Apparently after some notoriety, the county backed down.

Sweeping issues of religious freedom and governmental regulation are swirling around Pastor David Jones’ house in rural Bonita, attracting attention from as far away as China and New Zealand.

He says it all started with $220 in car damage.

Jones and his wife, Mary, hold a weekly Bible study at their home that sometimes attracts more than 20 people, with occasional parking issues. Once, a car belonging to a neighbor’s visitor got dinged.

David Jones paid for the damage, but he thinks the incident spurred a complaint to the county.

A code enforcement officer warned the couple in April for holding a “religious assembly” without a permit. The action became an international incident when it was reported last week on the Web site worldnetdaily.com.

The Joneses assert that the county’s action violates their rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. Their story was picked up by conservative Web sites for days, then made it to CNN yesterday.

Barraged by hundreds of complaints, San Diego County officials backed down yesterday from their enforcement.

The whole story about this originally being just an issue with traffic control seems at odds with the initial treatment the pastor got when visited by the county.  Sounds more like a cover story to paper over a little overzealousness.

Dean Broyles, president of the Western Center for Law & Policy, a nonprofit organization in Escondido that supports religious liberty, is representing the Joneses. He said traffic issues were not raised when the code enforcement officer first visited the Joneses in response to the complaint. The warning itself does not mention traffic or parking problems.

“Even though the county is saying it’s about traffic and parking, it’s a fake issue. It’s a fabricated issue,” Broyles said.

According to Broyles, the code enforcement officer asked a series of pointed questions during her visit with the Joneses – questions such as, “Do you sing?” “Do you say ‘amen?’ ” “Do you say ‘praise the Lord?’ ”

Wallar said the county is investigating what questions were asked and in what context. She said a code enforcement officer does have to ask questions about how a place is being used to determine what land-use codes are applicable.

“Our county simply does not tolerate our employee straying outside what the appropriate questions are,” Wallar said.

Including not asking questions about the actual issue at hand?  Indeed.

Anyway, just some good news to start your week.

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.

1. Considering North Korea.
2. Who is going to be sympathetic to stuff like this.
3. On Mr Chu’s white roof notion … has they guy ever noticed some places get cold?
4. Consequences of failing to hold the line and North Korea. Iran too.
5. Facebook and the bear.
6. Remember the abortion cricket race just a bit ago, gay marriage too is trending that way, “apparently”.
7. Yech.
8. Tax revenue and the future.

The Unlearned Lessons Of the Twentieth Century: An Essay On Late Modernity by Chantal Delsol, a french contemporary philosopher seems like a very interesting book. Ms Delsol self describes herself as a neo-liberal. This book came up in a search of book in the “Library of Modern Thinkers” series which summarizes the currents of thought of (mostly conservative and libertarian) important political, economic and philosophical figures. This book is very much different in that it is a (striking it seems) essay by one of these figures and not another author or expert summarizing and putting their works in perspective. Over the next few weeks (months?) I’m going to examine, hopefully chapter by chapter, the topics and ideas presented in this book.

In the introduction (chapter 1) Ms Delsol poses following, “Imagine and heir who has just been informed that his inheritance consists of a trunk full of serpents.” This is how she presents our present inheritance from the turbulent 20th century. The 20th century began with hope and a looking for great promise of the future and is ending with shame over totalitarian excesses. Ours is an age which is rejecting hope.

She also suggests why this age might be termed “late modernity” in particular to call to mind particular parallels with late antiquity. Like (Western) Rome of late antiquity, our society shows similar signs of aging in its arts. Late antiquity had “an affirmation of art without meaning, literature which was simultaneously pretentious and trivial, and a dwindling population.” Hmm. Sound familiar?

There is yet, one idea which had sprung forth in late antiquity which still remains, perhaps wounded and ailing today, that offers promise. The idea of the dignity of individual man remains. This idea had come under assault in the 20th century, notably in the totalitarian regimes but in other venues as well. Ms Delsol offers in what follows a clarion cry for the necessity of preserving this core principal.

From Chuck Asay:

What’s that definition of “insanity”, again?  Ah yes, doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.

1. Some thoughts on prayer from St. Isaac the Syrian via Macrina.
2. On being skinless.
3. Connecting Powerline and Chesterton. More Chesterton here.
4. On politics and conservatism.
5. Beldar on Sotomayor.
6. What price cap and trade?
7. Help in reading Žižek on-line (free).
8. Yes, the fairness doctrine has been killed, but the program of stifling the oppositions voice has not.
9. A coincidence? Perhaps not.
10. The despot and enlightenment.
11. Afghan.
12. Via Joshua Clayborn, data on Ms Sotomayor.
13. Libertarians seem to concur that Conservatives are better on issues of liberty.
14. The “really smart” Democrats apparently don’t think very hard, uhm, failing to imagine that one might support chastity for the unmarried.
15. Duh.
16. In my opinion that terrorist group needs a new name.
17. A Marxist skewers Dawkins.

Recently I had noted earlier, following my reading of Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge, that between the Galilean/Copernican period and Newton’s Principia no new scientific data (no facts) arose to distinguish between these two theories. Yet by the time of Newton’s writing of the Principia the dispute was settled. This was settled not by facts but by a process that has more in common with religious conversion than than the popular notions of what is comprised by scientific method.

Physics has seen three major revolutions. Following the development or conception of what we in this “late modernity” [aside: more on that later] period call Physics by the Greeks the overriding principles underpinning reality were driven by a belief that the world and cosmic bodies followed geometric and numeric patterns. Observation and insight were interpreted within this framework. During the period noted above, a conversion began to occur. A mechanical constraint arithmetic model replaced the old. This held until the latter part of the 19th to the early 20th century when it too was replaced. Currently the view of how to best understand the universe is one driven by mathematical invariances (symmetries). Data and experiment are not and have not been the driving force in moving persons and communities from one to another underlying model for how to perceive nature. Passion and persuasion and conversion are better descriptions of what occurred.

Yesterday I began to unwind what Polanyi was driving at with his attack on the mechanistic view of nature. He principally objected to the idea that that the all kinds of experience can be understood in terms of atomic data. This is more than just a rejection of reductionist methods of scientific advancement. And it is not something which today is abandoned with the discovery of quantum uncertainty, i.e., the free willed electron. Scientific metaphors have a way of becoming dominant metaphors applied outside of their realm of application. Consider how uncertainty, relativity, and evolution are examples of scientific ideas have been abused when used as metaphor in the social arenas. The scientific community using those ideas has given a strange credence to their application in other arenas. So too has the notion that man and his society is ultimately are just collections of clockwork apparatus. It is the dangers related to those, essentially abuses, of the conception of a comprehensible, mechanistic, deterministic universe applied to social studies (econ and politics) and life sciences that the chief dangers lie.

Consider the following abbreviated example, which I hope to elaborate on later. Man when viewed in a mechanistic way enables one to set aside models of human dignity in favor of man as a consumer. Hedonistic consumerism can replace a more, well, frankly human (and realistic) view of man in society.