Culture Wars: Santorum

Culture Wars: Santorum

A Left-Right Alliance?

With Obama seemingly selling out to the neoconservatives with appointments like Clinton and Emanuel as his foreign policy team, and with Catholics abandoning the war mongering of the Repulican party in the 2008 election, perhaps it is time for two isolated people on the dance floor to consider an alliance: the radical left and the isolationist right. Here would be the terms of the deal, the radical left could give up its militancy with respect to abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research. The right could give up its anti-environmentalism, libertarian economic tendencies and hostility to immigration. Each side will compromise and the two could "unite" as a powerful de facto opposition alliance to the current center-right political compromise.

With the economy falling, this might all take care of itself.

Sticking Together

In the recent campaign, Obama has come under attack for being a follower of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky's radical thoughts aside, he seemed to have a very reasonable understanding of how to organize a political group and stick together in order to achieve reasonable political objectives. In particular, he was good at helping those without an identity establish one. He did this with stockyard workers in Chicago, and then African Americans on the South Side.

At least on this point, we could learn from Saul Alinsky. We could learn how to organize a group, recover our identity, and then to stick together with those who share our objectives.

This would be much better than the current situation where we fail to have a coherent identity, and, therefore, fail to stick together when it comes to important issues. In fact, rather than stick together, we often tear each other apart by adhering to ideologies on both sides of the political spectrum that destroy us. preventing

The Revolutionary Personality

Am reading a biography, "The Godwins and the Shellys" by St. Clair. It helps us to understand the mind and origin of the English Revolutionary Personality.

Many revolutionaries or proto revolutionaries, I am discovering, are children or grand-children of, for example, strict Calvinists or strict Jansenists. Historians, applying the theories of Freud, claim that they adopt unitarianism, liberation, and other revolutionary ideals as a way of unleashing the repressed.

What then, would be their penchant for revolutionary acivity? It would be another form of unleashing of the repressed. They tend to arrive at a point when they deny the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, original sin, and other fundamental doctrines. They only accept what is "rational" from the Bible, assuming that whatever is Catholic cannot be rational.

In effec, they become like the revolutionaries of early Christianity. The Arians come to mind. What do they repress? In the interest of pursuing their passions, they repress God, Redemption, authority, and sacrifice. So, when they advocate revolution, they are advocating temporal redemption, human authority (that becomes totalitarian), and instead of sacrificing themselves, they sacrifice the blood of others.

Reflection on The Little Prince

In The Little Prince we meet a pilot who is alienated from the society of adults. The adults represent the culmination of a society built up on the principles to be found in the school of modern rationalism. The school of modern rationalism offers a consistent set of teachings about human nature, God, and the government of the universe. There can be disagreements within this school, but, when seen in contrast with other schools of philosophy, their disagreements are minor. The rationalists tend to accept a divide between the material and immaterial aspects of reality. They tend to give predominance to evidence that reveals to us something about the material aspects of the human person. They tend to claim ignorance of, be suspicious of, or express hostility towards the school of philosophy that sees the human person as composed of body and soul.

How do rationalists approach ethics? In order to characterize how they approach ethics, ask yourself how the adults approach life in the LP. To offer a summary of this approach, a rationalist takes the human person to be a material being alone, or at least, the material aspect is all he can claim to know. The philosopher then tries to identify what is the fundamental fact or starting point from which we can derive our ethical knowledge about the person. This fundamental fact is self-interest. All human beings pursue their self-interest.

The next step in ethics is to derive rules from the first principle. And this is where the disagreement among the rationalists start. The utilitarians, capitalists, socialists, and social contract ethicists will derive rules for personal behavior and social life that conform with perceived self-interest. The goal is to create a society which best represents self-interest or pleasure. For the utilitarian, the rule by which all other rules are to be judged is the rule that we should always do what provides for the most pleasure for the most number of people. The basic disagreements between communists, socialists, capitalists and libertarians has to do with what is the most efficient way to reach the utilitarian goal.

The Kantians, however, diverge at the start. They argue that we should not be pleasure seekers. They agree with the utilitarians that we cannot base morality on more than a materialistic understanding of the person. At the same time, morality should transcend personal self-interest. And so, the Kantian tries to come up with a formula that provides us with the rules for governing our life that conform to a logic prior to experience. This formula, in its most basic element is that each individual should act in such a way that her or his actions can be universalized, everybody should act that way in that situation. This approach to ethics is called deontology. Its goal is to derive the rules of ethics before any experience of reality or without appealing to pleasure.

The pilot finds both utilitarianism and deontology to be what has given us the world of adults or serious people. The biggest flaw of these approaches to life is that they have great difficulty leading people to become friends. Instead, individuals end up pursuing pleasure, money, power, knowledge, or any other form of rule or self-interest independently of the good of the others. Also, friendship is not strictly speaking material. It involves establishing immaterial or invisible ties between two people. These ties cannot be measured by material instruments. An ethical approach that downplays the importance of the invisible or immaterial elements within the human person or that exist between people will never be able to offer coherent advice about how to live. And so, people who follow that approach, as the pilot did for some time in his life, and still are willing to reflect on life, as he also did, will end up feeling alienated.

We have to ask what is the cause of alienation? Is it because there are not good rules? Is it because society is stifling? Is morality learning how to organize society properly so that I can live a pleasant life, or is something else involved. Originally, the pilot thinks that society is not structured right. That is why he is alienated. Originally, the little prince also thinks his planet is not structured properly. That is why he is sad. He sits looking at the sunset, longing for some pleasure he wants but is not getting. He has learned how to serve his flower out of Kantian duty, overcoming his internal desire for utilitarian pleasure, but this approach leaves him alienated. And so, he thinks, as the pilot does, that by leaving where he is, he will be happy.

This is a common thought among people who feel alienated, if they simply move to a new place or get a new job, they will be happy. But this approach does not work for the little prince, and it does not work for the pilot. In fact, as the little prince continues on his journey, he gets more alienated. He eventually sees a field of roses, and he despairs, thinking his rose is unlike all the other roses out there.

His problem is that he is looking at reality from a materialistic point of view. This prevents him from looking into himself to see the cause of his alienation. It also prevents him from understanding what guidelines he should follow, or what he should do, to overcome his alienation. And this is where the fox comes into play. The fox enrolls the little prince in a different school than the rule bound school of the adults. In this school, the person has to overcome his selfishness in order to make himself capable of being a friend of the others. And so, the person has to develop rites or habits of self-giving. The prince has to show up every day at three to meet with the fox. Through developing these habits, the prince and the fox will establish the invisible yet very real tie of friendship between them.

This points to a further reality about the little prince. His real source of alienation is not the adults, it is the disorder that exists within himself. He has to overcome that in order to make himself capable of serving the fox and eventually his rose. There is an ethical school called the school of classical realism which states that the source of alienation, whether it is in an individual or in a society is to be found with the disordered passions and interior dispositions of the person. A big part of ethics, according to this school, is for each person to train her or his soul, or to put order into it, much like a coach would in coaching an athlete, in order to make her or himself capable of being a friend with others and with society as a whole. This is the school that the pilot longed to enter but never did.

The Little Prince also introduces us to the problem of this school. If one cannot accept this problem, one will likely become an adult, a serious person, or a nihilist. Nihilism is represented by the school of Nietzsche. It arises especially as we consider the ending of this book. In the school of classical realism, philosophy begins with the wonder that a child has towards things. Then, like the way the pilot learned from the little prince, the person listens, asks questions, and follows hints and clues, (again, as the pilot learned about the little prince) in order to discover the mystery of the human person, God, and the universe. But mysteries are tricky things. A mystery is something that we wonder at. We can come to know it in part, but we can not fully know the mystery. Our knowledge of mysteries is obscure, but even a little bit of knowledge of a mystery is better than a lot of knowledge about something that is easy to know. That is why the way we know mysteries is not satisfactory to rationalists and nihilists. They are too suspicious, doubtful, scornful, or pessimistic about how such knowledge comes about.

And so, it is a big question whether in the end, the LP is about the meaninglessness of existence or not. For the pilot, the condition of the prince is a mystery. We cannot be sure one way or the other. But, we are going to hopefully await the evidence, keep our eyes open, keep our ears open, to see if there are any hints or clues that could reveal to us the truth of this situation. As the pilot reminds us, it is like a treasure hunt. There is a treasure chest, and clues, and we if we find the chest we will come upon a treasure. But, we do not have the treasure. Rationalist rules will not lead us there. Rules and plans tend to break down on treasure hunts and adventures. Guidelines and clues are more helpful. The rest is up to our ingenuity. Ethics, seen in this way, is the preparation that we have to undergo to make ourselves capable of discovering the mysteries and then living according to the truth that we find, so that we can complete the adventure.

A question

John Adams, Robespierre, Burke, Richard Price, and Pius VI all agreed there was something wrong with the public atheism of the philosophes that were behind the French Revolution. Adams and Richard Price were friends. Richard Price was the leader of the radical dissenters in England, who were very supportive of the French Revolution. Burke was a Whig, who eventually became known as a leading "Conservative." Pius VI was the Pope, of course, who eventually was imprisoned by the revolutionaries themselves, and he died in exile.

From the standpoint of philosophical worldview, Adams, Robespierre, Price, and Burke all shared common assumptions about human nature and religion. Why, then, would they end up being percieved as "opposites" in modern politics?

A question

John Adams, Robespierre, Burke, Richard Price, and Pius VI all agreed there was something wrong with the public atheism of the philosophes that were behind the French Revolution. Adams and Richard Price were friends. Richard Price was the leader of the radical dissenters in England, who were very supportive of the French Revolution. Burke was a Whig, who eventually became known as a leading "Conservative." Pius VI was the Pope, of course, who eventually was imprisoned by the revolutionaries themselves, and he died in exile.

From the standpoint of philosophical worldview, Adams, Robespierre, Price, and Burke all shared common assumptions about human nature and religion. Why, then, would they end up being percieved as "opposites" in modern politics?

Yeltsin's Death

The Death of Boris Yeltsin is a reminder to us all of the conditions that lead to revolution. When the Soviet Union fell, Yeltsin stepped in. Under the guise of promoting democracy, a number of oligarchs were able to buy up the privatizing Russian Industries. These oligarchs were on the verge of promoting a revolution in Russia when Putin took power. Putin expelled them or put them in jail, with the idea of stabilizing Russia and its economy, in the hopes of building up, over time, a stable society that could support republican institutions. The oligarchs, from their perch in exile, have been doing all they can to promote "democracy" or even now revolution, as a way of getting back their piece of the pie.

What happened under Yeltsin, oligarchs using the guise of democracy to seize power, is a typical movement in the direction of revolution.

Jesus of Nazareth

Benedict XVI's book on Jesus Christ just came out in Italian. It is coming out in one month in English. It behooves us to read it and to perhaps challenge all those who read the DaVinci code to read it as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Nazareth-Pope-Benedict-XVI/dp/0385523416

On Vacation

Joe will be in Rome until April 10th.

Trotsky Versus Stalin in America

Below is a letter to the editor to the Washington Post and a few links to some articles on neo-conservatism.

Based on these letters and links, our country is entering into a bizarre stage in which we might see ourselves watching ideological conflicts similar to those that went in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, we have the Troskyite neo-cons, who want to spread democratic revolution throughout the world. On the other hand, within the US itself, we have the anti-war movement being led by Stalinists, who do not want a world revolution right away, but they want to use the war and the protest against it to plunge the United States into a communist republic. Then, there are also signs of fascism emerging among the conservative materialists. In short, we have the three political ideologies that develop from materialisms, leading to an inner fight among themselves. Ironically, stalinism, trotskyism, and fascism, in the end, are all ideologies of the left!

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10734

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/national_socialism_and_national_greatness

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:

Dear Editor:

Your paper's coverage of the so-called "anti-Iraq protest movement"
seriously failed to identify both the groups involved in leading the
demonstration on March 17th, but also failed to identify its leaders
whose names either appeared in the WP or on their press releases and
websites.

Brian Becker, identified as "national coordinator for the Answer
Coalition" is not identified as a longtime member and leader of the
Stalinist "Workers World Party", perhaps the top communist party in the
US today. The same goes for other ANSWER spokespersons (over time)
including Richard Becker, Steve Hackwell, Leslie Feinberg, Monica
Moorehead, Sara Flounders, John Catalinotto, etc. Many of these
individuals were identified as members of the WWP as far back at April
1974 in the report "The Workers World Party and Its Front
Organizations", House Internal Security Committee (HISC) and in an
earlier hearing, "Revolutionary Activities Directed Toward the
Administration of Penal or Correctional Systems, Part 1", March/May,
1973. Thus WP writer Brigid Schulte's writing in "Veterans, Others
Denounce Marchers", March 18th, got the chant "Workers World traitors
must hang!" wrong. It was not "a reference to the Communist newspaper",
i.e. "Workers World." It was a reference to the WWP as the sponsoring
organization of the demonstration, along with a mixed Communist/Maoist
coalition.known as United for Peace & Justice, led by an old Communist
Party USA-connect activist, Leslie Cagan, and Revolutionary Communist
Party leader, the aging Carl Davidson.

Democrats and War

I have been saying for some time now that the Democrats, while they might be critical of the way Bush has carried out the war in Iraq, are not against going to war or bombing Iran, even if this turns out to be unjust and reckless.

Here is an article that says the same thing:

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/nyt3_27_7.htm

We should not think that the efforts of Democrats to oppose Bush in Iraq actually has any substance. It is an effort to appease and trick their antiwar constituency.

Unfortunately, both sides, Democrats and Republicans, are united in setting out to bomb Iran.

Perpetual War and American Foreign Policy

Apparently, President Bush had a luncheon on February 28th. A number of historians and political thinkers attended this luncheon who have held publically that life is perpetual war.

The same day I read this news, I picked up Plato's Laws. Much to my surprise, the Laws begins with a discussion the Island of Crete (the cradle of Greek culture) and the speaker representing Crete, Kleinias, praises Cretan society because it was organized for perpetual war. Life, he tells us, is perpetual stuggle of man against himself, man against man, neighborhood against neighborhood, city against city, and nationa against nation.

Socrates begins to critique this view by suggesting that, while a certain kind of struggle as well as war may be a part of life, we do not live life for the purpose of fighing perpetual wars. Ultimately, if we fight wars we fight them so that we can return to a peaceful life in which people can pursue happiness. He also indicates that the purpose of war should not be to pursue unlimited freedom, or to spread freedom everywhere. This, he suggests, is the formula for a bloodthirsty empire. While complete limitations on freedom are unsatisfactory, the just society harmonizes the concern for peace, the desire for freedom, and the limits necessary so that these desires do not lead the society to become unjust towards others and unjust towards itself.

Some things never change.

A Revoir to the Lords

Yesterday, in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/world/europe/08britain.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

England is considering subjecting the House of Lords to elections. From the standpoint of our research over the last month, this is the institution that Adams thought was essential to a balance of powers in the UK, along with the monarch. If England makes the House of Lords based on election, will it mean that the ideals of the French Revolution have overtaken England, in the end? Was the opposition of Adams for nothing?

Physics and History

From Sunday's New York Times Magazine (3/11/07): an article on developments in astronomy. It looks like our physicists are saying that in addition to black matter, there is something called black energy. It is not observable through any of the five senses, and yet we know it through its effects. It looks like physics is finally catching up with the principles of aether, as laid out by Plato,... to Aquinas. How Medieval! Maybe now we can celebrate things that are medieval rather than always decrying them. Physics, like history, can be a matter of using concepts to explain facts, sometimes knowing that the concepts, like gravity, might have many problems to their use.

Also, a book review by Tony Judt on the history of the 20th century. This particular book tried to incorporate the Church into history. In Judt's eyes, the particular historian comes off as snide, and perhaps hiding some of the facts. For example, Judt points out that some German Bishops might have been more complicit than others in Germany. Of course, Judt himself does not mention the Archbishop of Muenster, who spoke out openly and against the Nazis before, during, and after the war. My point, instead of hiding facts or being snide, we should attempt to state the facts as they were. So, at least as far as the spirit of the issue, Judt is right. If a Bishop capitulated with the Nazis or the Commies, it is a fact that we should establish or not. At the same time, one Bishop or group of Bishops acting one way or another is not necessarily an indictment on all religion.

A Thought on Politics

A student asked the question today, what is the best political system or the best party right now?

Here is my answer: In some ways, the Green Party gets it right, in ways that are similar to those who have been outcast from the Republic Party in the last 15 years. We should have a country that respects ecology. Ecology, though, includes human ecology or harmonizing society such that all humans benefit from all human advances, economic, science, cultural, educational, and technical. Society as a whole should think this through. We should oppose economic and military adventurism, that crushes the poorest and least fortunate, and that leads us to commit all kinds of injustices against our own citizens and others.

At the same time, the most stable kind of constitution over time is one that recognizes the executive, aristocratic, and democratic element in society, gives them a role in law-making and office sharing, and limits each of their roles. This is the value of the constitution of the United States.

However, the great danger is that the wealthy class take over. By insinuating itself into these institutions in an unjust way, the wealthy class tend to turn the society into an oligarchy, setting up the clash between oligarchy and democracy, the corruption of morals, and the destruction of the family. Once the family is destroyed, the children will look to comfortable lives (oligarchy), the military, or pleasure (democracy) as their options. This will lead to the overall degeneration of society, the rise of an Empire, or the rise of an authoritarian or totalitarian state.

In an odd way, the current favortie platforms of the Republicans and the democrats, and an unfortunate aspect of the Green Party, work well in the logic of Empire. The abortion and sexual revolutionary policies of the democrats tend to undermine the family. This makes the children less civilized and ultimately thirsting for military vengeance, a comfortable life, and some sort of order. The economic politics of the Republicans tend to weaken the family by forcing them to move around to keep the free market economy going. It also tends to rely on the military and foreign advernturism, which, over time, weakens the family under the false mask of promoting social order and security. Times of wars tend to introduce more sexual misbehavior and break up families. So, the sexual politics of the democrats and the Greens work "nicely" with the economic and foreign affairs of the neo-cons in the Republican Party for building an empire over time.

If we could adopt the constitutionalism, foreign and moral policies of the conservatives, with the "sense" of the common good of the democrats, and the "ecology" of the Greens, we would have perhaps, the formula for a "Catholic" party in the US.

Conservatism and Sexual Revolution

Previous comments from previous posts, which are very insightful, have led me to take a second look at an aspect of Adams's biography, his arrival to France for the first time as a diplomat.

The biographer, Shaw, explains that Adams was struck by how forthright a bourgeois French lady was about physical intimacy. He also described certain delights that took place in the theater.

What Shaw indicates, is that Adams was ambiguous about this situation. He describes in his letters how much he delighted in these situations. He never seemed to fully repent of them, though, he did not like what he saw in the libertine behavior of Franklin in Paris.

At the same time, he never seemed to speak of in his letters the moral decadence of France leading up to the Revolution. Voltaire and his associates were clearly engaged in a campaign to subvert French morals. The story of Adams on his arrival to France seems to indicate that Adams was ambiguous about France. He did not seem to identify this as part of the problem leading up to the French Revolution. He saw it more as one that involved a lack of knowledge about political institutions.

Is there a blindness here? In other letters, Adams seems aware of the need for a moral order to uphold any constitution. Though, he does not seem to be concerned about the ambiguous at best moral order in France on his arrival. In his critiques of the revolution, he tends to emphasize more the political failings, not the failings of the moral life of France.

Progressivism and the French Revolution

I have before me a book titled "The Progressive Revolution." I have not read it yet, but just the back cover tells us that the dichotomy that was set up during the french revolution persists in the US to this day. The book says that it want to examine the revolution known as progressivism. IT opposes itself to this revolution. The counterrevolution is a return to natural rights, limited government, separation of powers, and constitutionalism. The revolution is committed to progressivism, centralization, unlimited government, and direct democracy.

This mirrors the general positions leading up to and during the French Revolution. John Adams saw himself on the side of the Anglomanes, who advocated bicameralism and constitutional checks and balances. Jefferson saw himself more on the side of the Gallomanes, who advocated a national, unified, central legislature as the center of power.

These debates persist.

Rival Political Scientists: Adams and Condorcet

In 1787 and 1788, Condorcet and Adams would prove themselves to be rivals in attempting to influence the overall orientation of the coming revolution. One author has identified them as two Newtonian physicists arguing over the best way to turn government into a science. Condorcet used the method of strict mathematics. Adams employed weights and measures. Condorcet sought to replace history and philosophy with the science of enlightenment. Adams thought that history and philosophy led man to the science of enlightenment. Condorcet, along with Turgot, took one powerful national legislature to be the ideal form of government to replace a powerful king. Adams thought such a legislature would be given over too readily to the interests of the wealthy and the powerful. Better, he thought, to grant something like a senate or house of lords to the powerful and wealthy, so that their influence could be felt and then checked (Thompson, 368-375).

The Soul of Adams

A number of references in Peter Shaw, The Character of John Adams, give us insight into the soul of Adams. Many of these insights are taken from Adams's diary or letters, in which we can see a lot of introspection into his soul.

As a young man, he read an essay by Jonathan Mayhew that Adams's claimed, took possession of his soul. Adamas idolized certain elements of English culture. At the same time, he grew up in a period during whcih there was a “gradual erosion of parental authority.” “A universal drift away from seventeenth-century Puritanism” (11).

As a young man, he tended to Enlightenment religious ideas, God as a creator who has a plan of operation of the universe. He was struck by the Seven Years’ War. He freely discussed universal sufferage, Arianism, Deism, and Atheism (“that all Religion was a cheat, a cunning invention of Priests and Politicians”) (16).

“For the secularized Adams as for the religious Puritan the scrutiny of the self-examiner proved to be more severe than that of any putative future judge” (23).

“Passion remained the hallmark of his spirit. It led him to youthful revolt against his father, his tutors, his best friends’ advice that he become a minister, and the constrictions of a provincial society; later in life it led him to revolution…in the characteristic …of assuming rather than rejecting responsibilities.” (38-39). Throughout, Adams thought that he was called to suppress his passionate spirit (38).

The Puritans, in the mind of Adams, were the inheritors of the Ancient desire for freedom and thirst for knowledge. They had brought that desire with them in laying the foundation for the United States (56).