Reductio ad absurdum

There is a kind of argument, admitted of old, that is called reductio ad absurdum: to bring a position to the ultimate, patently absurd consequences.

The difficulty, though, is to make the interlocutor to see that his positions lead to those consequences.

The New York State legislator passed a law that I don’t quite know how to define. It is commonly described as legalization of “gay marriage”. But I am not sure what that could mean.

Simple, I could be answered: that in the face of the law the union of a man with a man or a woman with a woman is the same thing as that of a man with a woman. No, I didn’t say it right: what is meant is that for the law the sexual union of a man with a man or a woman with a woman is no different from that of a man with a woman.

Really? The law (trough the legislator who makes it) can do that: turn different things into the same?

Again you don’t understand: the law doesn’t turn different things into the same. See how gross you are: we are not dealing with raw sexual matters, but with the love bond that can tie a man with a man or a woman with a woman as well as a man with a woman into an enduring unity.

I could still play dumb, and say: now I understand, I too have many male friends whom I really love and feel enduringly tied to – let’s say the LD. No, I know what my opponents mean: a love relationship implying sexual intercourse. But then, aren’t we back to the first case: that of the law making different things the same?

You just don’t want to understand. It isn’t the law making them the same, because love relationships are the same.

Well, I’d have my qualms with that, because I really have a hard time understanding what it means. I know what sexually involving love between a man and a woman is, and perhaps, with some effort of the imagination (working on the fact that homo sum, nihil humanum a me alienum puto), I could have a notion even of that between two men or two women. But I simply don’t understand what could a sexual love relationship be, making abstraction so to speak from sex. What else could in fact mean a sexual relationship in which sexes (always male and female) are made irrelevant.

Oh come on…

At this point my interlocutor would probably hesitate. His answer could become tautological, in whatever way claiming that I know it, that love is… well, love. and whoever has the right to pursue it in the way it makes him happy.

Did I claim otherwise? I just don’t see what the law has to do with it.

Well, you know… No, I don’t know.

Hmm, the law should guarantee everybody’s right to realize his desires in love matters.

Should it? Imagine I am a mature man, having a daughter of age of whom I am taken: say, I love her. I should then have the right to pursue my happiness with her, and if I want to marry her.

Oh, you always exaggerate. Incest is forbidden and repels.

Of course it is. But up to some time ago even homosexuality was so forbidden, and now…

At this point my reduxio ad absurdum is completed. But I am afraid that the only answer it would find is the one I said: to negate, always to negate the logical consequence it draws, by an appeal to the evidence of feelings that for the “gay marriage” has been excluded.

I could pursue the reduction ad absurdum also on other sides of the matter. But this perhaps another time.

HP

A killing and a beatification, with electoral considerations

I often mentioned the fact of there being a creeping civil war going on in the West. But the USA are in a somewhat better shape than Europe. It is that A that follows the US: an idea of America, that still makes for a civil religion of Christian matrix. So, it doesn't matter whether the POTUS is liberal or conservative, in certain junctures he can deliver a speech that is simply presidential, as Obama did when he announced Osama bin Laden's execution.

Too bad that it is the only time since Obama won the elections, on the promise to be a post partisan president, that he really spoke post partisan.

I'd like to enclose a little e-mail exchange I had with an American friend of mine. I change the name with our pseudonyms. I wrote:

"They killed the bastard", was the comment of my young friend the LD. And I must recognize that for once Obama gave a presidential speech. But I hope this will not take away the dissatisfaction with his leadership. Obama is and remains a fraud. He hasn't been able to stimulate American economy, that means Americans, in the least. But I couldn't understand, from the conservative sites I follow, whether there is a strong republican candidate emerging, and who he, or she, is.

Here is the answer:

Dear HP--yes, justice has been served--and although the Book of Proverbs tells not to rejoice in the fall of our enemies--we may be forgiven for a sense of satisfaction seeing justice served--and although Obama deserves some credit--more and more people are talking about the fact that it wasBush's policies (like waterboarding, Guantanamo etc.) which Obama opposed, ultimately proved successful in bringing the bastard to justice--now of course Obama and his minions in the press are waxing overmuch about how the "great one'' led us to this victory--this euphoria will be short lived-since Americans have such short attention spans--and the economy is in such disrepair--as one analyst put it: "Americans have not been disappointed in Obama's handling of the Bin Laden situation"--it's the economy that will bring him down along with his foolish so-called foreign policy of letting others lead--if gas prices and food prices continue to rise--along with high unemployment Obama will be defeated in 2012--as for Republican candidates--there are two midwestern governors (Pawlenty of Minnesota and Daniels of Indiana) who are popular successful Republican politicians and while they might not be so charismatic as Obama is supposed to be--I think Americans are longing for competence and substance instead of superficial glitz which is what Obama is all about--there are also two very interesting potential black Republicans who may run--Herman Cain is a very successful businessman (millionaire) who is very articulate and dedicated to conservative principles (check him out on the internet)--the other is a recently elected member of the House from Florida--a retired colonel--Alan West--who is also very articulate and very conservative--kind of the anti-Obama (except he is black)--these two are very interesting and appealing--if the economy continues in the desperate straits as now--Obama can be defeated by a competent alternative--it should be interesting--besides, it will be interesting to see how Obama's media toadies react to these two black men--it will be difficult to accuse them of racism--the usual response to any criticism of Obama--I am delighted with the beatification of John Paul II--a truly saintly person--my love to your lovely.

Just as a curiosity, meaningful for what is America: my friend is a Jew.

HP

The Tea Party (alleged) Jacobins

Mark Lilla presented us with his reflections on the political phenomenon of the day, which he styles as the Tea Party Jacobins.

Now, I have been away from the States since a few years, and to be more sure of what I say I should come for some fieldwork, to go around a speak with people. But, even basing myself on my recollections complemented by my studies, he doesn't convince me.

Lilla rightly remarks that the main trait of the Tea Party movement is diffidence toward the "educated elite" that wants to control their life; but, alas, his analysis of this diffidence shows that he belongs to this same elite, incapable to understand the people it pretends to guide.

A first question I could address to him, for which there is no answer in the article, is why he calls the Tea Party goers "Jacobins". But I leave it at that.

My main objection is to the uncritical way in which he stresses the alleged individualism of the movement. See all the intellectual conceit of these words:

The new Jacobins have two classic American traits that have grown much more pronounced in recent decades: blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing—and unwarranted—confidence in the self. They are apocalyptic pessimists about public life and childlike optimists swaddled in self-esteem when it comes to their own powers.

Which Americans is he here talking about? Liberals or conservatives (or, if you want me to be verbally exhaustive, add to them moderates)?

The trouble I found in talking about American political things is that on either side they make appeal to the "individual". But they don't' mean exactly the same thing.

Read again these other lines:

Americans are and have always been credulous skeptics. They question the authority of priests, then talk to the dead; they second-guess their cardiologists, then seek out quacks in the jungle. Like people in every society, they do this in moments of crisis when things seem hopeless. They also, unlike people in other societies, do it on the general principle that expertise and authority are inherently suspect.

Lilla doesn't seem to notice that "expertise" and "authority" are not quite the same thing. What appears "suspect" to the Tea Party folks, I'd say, is the first, claimed by an elite really "swaddled in self-esteem". Authority is another thing, what particularly the self-referential individuals of the elite refute.

In the American conservative lingo the individual is something else. It is the common man, endowed, as such, of common sense. How much it is involved in this "common sense" that conservatives oppose to the education of the elite: the whole education that they have inherited from the centuries past, which the elite appears to have dropped.

In America, like in Europe, the elite doesn't understand any more people like those alleged individualists in America, whose distrust toward (invading and corrupting) institutions doesn't come from "confidence in the self".

Probably they would rather say (in whatever confused way): in God we trust.

The one and the other party of the creeping civil war

Democracy was newly born in the West a couple of centuries ago, from the understanding of the equal dignity of each person brought about by Christianity. But the freedom it grants to everybody to express and promote his way of thinking and living, allowed an anti-Christian understanding of the equality of all men largely to affirm itself as the true basis of democracy.

So democracy was turned into a creeping civil war, that, I fear, will endanger its survival.

In the world of ideas, thrown there to conquer consensus with the electoral body, the war is an open one. Both parties – let's call them, for what is worth, "liberal" and "conservative" – accuse the other of being the real threat to democracy. It doesn't matter how much we might hate being partisan, we are forced to take sides. The only thing we can do, not to be simply fan of one or the other side, is to try to understand the point of contention.

Of course I already know that only one is helpful in this regard: the one that states the other's point of view correctly.

They diverge, I'd say, in the understanding of justice. And I am not making offence to the party I am against, but just relate what they themselves say, if I maintain that for them justice coincides with equality.

The trouble is that people are different: men and women, children and grown ups of all ages, look and size, not to speak of social origin and tradition. And all this cannot be merely denied and considered indifferent, without risking of being unjust. Everybody expects in fact to be treated according to his worth. Classical ethics and politics offers a sound conceptualization of what makes for just intercourse among people, by questioning what makes the real worth of people, to specify the meaning of its definition of justice, still well summarized as "giving to everybody his due". To this Christianity added that his due also includes recognition of his dignity as human being made "in the image and similitude of God", with all that this requires.

Take away the classical tradition of ethics and politics kept up and enriched by Christianity, and equality becomes enforced uniformity.

Unfortunately things are not black and white. So it happens that even the Church, that best represents and defends the side on which I stand, is affected by the confusion concerning equality coming from the other side. And this becomes occasion of scandal, that makes her enemies hopefully to decry her in a moral wreckage.

Or is it their own wreckage they show?

HP

To account for knowledge

You are always asking questions, and rarely give answers. It's right, how could I if there were no questions raised? After which anybody could see that at the heart of all political debates is the understanding of religion and science: what science is, and, correlatively, religion.

Let me give an answer: science is
a knowledge capable of accounting for itself.

Everyman, to whatever society he belongs, is convinced to have knowledge of the world he lives in, and accounts for it to the other members of his society. Are we able to do the same and to account for the knowledge of world in a society become planetary?

Well – so runs the average reply in liberal society – we have to distinguish: yes, for science, no, for culture and religion.

The trouble is that such an answer contains a petitio principii: it presupposes that there is a knowledge for which it is already reserved the name of science, while it is precisely the use of such a name that is in question.

We saw a couple of years ago, in occasion of the sentence of a tribunal in Harrisburg Pennsylvania, where this leads to: the demise of any rational discourse, by which knowledge could account for herself. As the sole justification for his sentence, stating that only the most accredited theory of evolution by chance is scientific, while any talk of intelligent design is a matter of religious faith, the judge gave the fact that such is the current use of the two words, science and religion.

It was like saying, on his part: I am competent to judge of a similar question because after all even the experts have no reasons to give, one way or the other.

Because there are no reasons to be given, not just for culture and religion but even for science, so called, all knowledge remains unaccounted for.

If the definition given above is correct, as I think it is, present day Western society appears, in spite of all the boasting for scientific achievements, very poor of real science.

To close, just a hint to further answers: only by turning to the Word made flesh, as the key to a comparative study of culture that includes together science and religion, so called, we can achieve a knowledge capable of accounting for itself.

HP

I love America

I live in Europe… and I love America.

What do you love in America? Europe, of course.

Then you love Europe, where you live. No way, I detest it.

And what do you detest in it? America, of course.

You are teasing us. Well, yes and no: I wanted to signal the ambiguity of the names by way of which we advance our claims.

The fact is that there are two Europes in America fighting each other:

an older one – made of Protestant Catholic and Jews – that found the way of flourishing in America, by an ongoing struggle to make her worth weigh more than her defects;

a newer one, that sprung from the older one with the claim to correct her defects once and for all, by exchanging reliance on faith with that on the rule of law: church with the state.

Over here, one of them Europes hates America; but was ready to love her again when Obama was elected, and showed her love by an unwarranted peace prize, declaring in this way: now you are like us.

Which is like which? One feeds on the other.

So, this America beloved by this Europe hates in herself the other Europe, hated in turn by this Europe as America, i.e. the other America.

It might be useful at this point to speak of Europe1 and Europe2, and in the same way of America1 and America2. This would clarify things. But things have to be kept muddy, because it is in the unspecified name of Europe and of America that claims are made to represent the overall thing.

Barak Obama, for instance, made some ambitious claims of wanting to rejuvenate America, in a way, he made it sound, to unify the two Europes in her.

The appearance, however, didn't last long.

Hey, with all this you haven't clearly come out in the open and declared which Europe or America you are for. And most of all you haven't told us yet why you started by saying that you love America.

It's clear, to make a claim. In Europe, for all the political squabbles, the fight is rather dormant. In America, it appears still quite lively. Here you have what I like in America, that makes America different from Europe. With this, if you don't see in favor of what or whom I am making the claim, there is nothing I can do about it.

HP

P.S. All this was prompted by the reading of Marc Steyn's article on which the LD called our attention. If you want, you can blame him.

Post-partisan politics?

As I said already, human things are funny, or, if you prefer, odd.

I think proper to keep on commenting on Obama. Why, you could ask, do you have a personal axe to grind with him? Of course not, but I want to know whether there is a political axe worthy grinding. He is the POTUS, and where else could I find better concrete incentives to think about politics in general?

I must confess that at last November elections, if I were an American citizen, I wouldn't have voted for him.

I thought that McCain was a true man, well proved in life and in politics, who with no doubt would have done the good of the United States.

On the other side, Obama was only proved as a good rhetorician. Mind me, I do not mean this as an insult.

You should know by now, if you have read me before, that for me rhetoric is of the essence of life, and therefore of that special life arena that are democratic politics. Rhetoric had to do with the way we present ourselves, in words and in deeds, either persuading people to have confidence in us, or, if the case be, to fear us.

Take away rhetoric, and there isn't anything left but row force, in bending people to do what we want.

But, I say, we are still waiting for Obama to prove himself, beyond his way with words, also in deeds. And, because I say so, you could take me, especially after what I confessed, as being partisan.

Here it is where things get odd.

Obama promised to go beyond partisan politics. I strived all my life to go beyond partisan political theory.

I read an interesting anti-Obama partisan article, reading his life and political career in the light of Saul Alinsky's Rules for a Radical. Beyond its partisanship, however, the article made a good point: that a unifying rhetoric can be divisive, and intended to be such. To show oneself in speech to be beyond partisanship, can be a way to brand one's adversary as partisan, and divide those otherwise prone to vote for him.

It can be the case, I say, and reserve judgment. Nobody could care less for my judgment, if I hadn't previously given my reasons for it. And these can only come from an observation anybody could share:

However strongly we strive to be non partisan, we inevitably take a stance, that risks making us look partisan.

To the observation, it follows a question: can the stance we take succeed in overcoming partisanship, to be non divisive but unifying? If not completely, which I think impossible, at least to a certain, to a good extent?

One first answer is that we should be rhetorically coherent, so that our deeds show the same that our words proclaim.

To enter into the implications of such an answer would take us on much tougher ground. To a general theory of social and political relations that would make understandable for us Jesus' demand to offer the other cheek. This avoids the destructive reciprocity of blow against blow, but not – as we might think – with a gesture of submission, as it would be that of raising our hand to protect ourselves; rather with a challenge. Offering the other cheek (in whatever metaphorical way) challenges the assumptions and expectations one can have in resorting to violence.

Poor Obama – to end with him who gave the lead to this meditation – shows no sign, in what he says and does, of being aware of such a social and political theory.

HP

America is different from Europe

Ammerica (with two or three "m") is different from Europe.

This comes to my mind viewing the heated discussion on the health care reform proposed in Congress.

Over here, in Europe, it has always been cause of a certain disconcert knowing that not everybody in the States is assured adequate health care. With us, health is almost numbered among "human rights", but, given that human beings have the strange tendency to fall ill, it is considered a right to have the State take care of it. Save the right of complaining, eventually, of the way it does it.

What does it mean then this opposition in the States to an extension of health care to everybody by way of public, federal insurance? Are may be Ammericans, or at least those many who oppose the proposed plan, so egoistic not to consider the need of people left without protection by the present system?

I wouldn't think so.

There are larger issues involved, which concern the global difference between Europe and America.

Robert Kagan tried, sever years ago, to determine where the difference lies, with a characterization from Greek mythology: so that America would be Mars, Europe Venus.

If this meant that Europe has become the land of that whore of Venus, leaving aside those more honest women of Juno and Minerva, I might even agree.

Out of jokes. It doesn't convince me, because Europe and America don't mean the same thing for everybody.

If I think of Europe as it is today promoted by the European Union, I cringe with abhorrence. It would take a sophisticated historical analysis to substantiate the why, that I limit myself here to state: it is the soft version of the hard core totalitarianism of Twentieth Century. These latter thought that to control people was needed the police. Now days it has been understood that it is enough to keep control on schools and the media, to provide panem et circenses, in modern terms work and leisure time, and, why not, health care. Anything may be provided, exept the freedom that comes from looking beyond the confines of biological life.

And though, many Americans look up at this Europe.

There is on the other side that long standing European civilization in whose inheritance America can be viewed.

America has been indeed an European experiment in "nation building".

Some Europeans recall today, in opposition to the European Union trend, the principle on which that experiment was made: over here we call it "subsidiarity", in the States it is called "federalism".

This means that public authority should not come in where civil society can do by itself; that State authorities should not come in where towns and counties con do by themselves; that federal government should not come in where States can do by themselves.

Now, this is the principle that makes the discussion on the public extension of health care so heated. Is it really necessary, or it can provided otherwise?

Obama was elected because of his promise to be a pacifier between the two visions of Europe, so to speak, battling in America. Now his administration finds itself before a divisive issue. Instead of turning paranoid about it, shouldn't it rather take more care in assuaging the principled concern it raised?

A Few Brief Updates - Including Prayer for Sen. Kennedy

The pageantry was magnificent yesterday, and I was proud of my country.

I have already exressed my feelings on the matter of the new president's election.

I join with my fellow Americans and with Pope Benedict XVI, who said:

ON THE OCCASION OF YOUR INAUGURATION AS THE FORTY-FOURTH
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA I OFFER CORDIAL GOOD
WISHES, TOGETHER WITH THE ASSURANCE OF MY PRAYERS THAT ALMIGHTY
GOD WILL GRANT YOU UNFAILING WISDOM AND STRENGTH IN THE EXERCISE
OF YOUR HIGH RESPONSIBILITIES. UNDER YOUR LEADERSHIP MAY THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE CONTINUE TO FIND IN THEIR IMPRESSIVE RELIGIOUS AND
POLITICAL HERITAGE THE SPIRITUAL VALUES AND ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
NEEDED TO COOPERATE IN THE BUILDING OF A TRULY JUST AND FREE SOCIETY,
MARKED BY RESPECT FOR THE DIGNITY, EQUALITY AND RIGHTS OF EACH OF ITS
MEMBERS, ESPECIALLY THE POOR, THE OUTCAST AND THOSE WHO HAVE NO
VOICE. AT A TIME WHEN SO MANY OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERSTHROUGH
OUT THE WORLD YEARN FOR LIBERATION FROM THE SCOURGE OF POVERTY,
HUNGER AND VIOLENCE, I PRAY THAT YOU WILL BE CONFIRMED IN YOUR
RESOLVE TO PROMOTE UNDERSTANDING, COOPERATION AND PEACE AMONG
THE NATIONS, SO THAT ALL MAY SHARE IN THE BANQUET OF LIFE WHICH GOD
WILLS TO SET FOR THE WHOLE HUMAN FAMILY (cf. Isaiah 25:6-7). UPON YOU AND
YOUR FAMILY, AND UPON ALL THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, I WILLINGLY INVOKE
THE LORD’S BLESSINGS OF JOY AND PEACE

Also, I would ask that you readers pause and say a prayer for Senator Kennedy, who, as you know, has brain cancer, and apparently suffered a seizure during the inaugural luncheon: ask God to grant him healing and conversion.

the 91 year-old Senator Byrd also left the inaugural luncheon yesterday, though he seems to be fine.

I will have more fulsome thoughts on the speech later.

UPDATE:

Sen. Kennedy seems to be doing better.

Stay Tuned for Inauguration Commentary

I will be blogging the inauguration and will gloss the new president's address as soon as practicable.