Rhetoric and prudence

I can't let the Nobel prize for peace to Obama pass without a comment. Because I haven't seen any particular change on the world scene except Obama's own declarations of good will, I'll do it in the form of a general reflection on rhetoric and prudence.

What is rhetoric and what has to do with prudence? you could ask; or vice versa. Well, everything.

Rhetoric, in the old, full sense of the word, is the art of persuasion: i.e. the art of talking and acting effectively, obtaining the assent of one's interlocutor or audience to what he says or to the course of action he wants. Plato, in his negative moods, found it quite appalling, and styled it as the art of seduction, by which a lover makes the beloved grants him or her her or his favors. However, we like it or not, it is of the essence of democracy as a political regime based on consensus. No one could be elected if he weren't well versed in it.

Obama showed last year to be a master at it.

Prudence, on the contrary, never suffered a bad press with ancient philosophers, but it was quite forgotten with modern ones. It is the art of assessing a situation, so to know what to do (and say) and what not to do (and say). To stay with the example of the seducer, he should know when he can give it a try and when not; but in this case it is just an example, carrying no negative connotations. We need prudence in all circumstances of life, so much the more when we have to take a decision on the spot. Therefore prudence was classified among the four cardinal virtues (besides it, fortitude, temperance and justice).

On this regard Obama… well, I'll let the judgment to my readers.

The reason why we need to be well versed in rhetoric is the same for which we need to be prudent men.

The situations we can find ourselves in are made of a myriad of more or less perceptible or imperceptible signs, by which we can be easily led astray. Again the example of seduction: a woman acts graciously towards me, which might mean…; well, it just "might", but if I am mistaken I'll be bitterly disappointed. Prudence means then to be able to recognize according to circumstances which signs are really pertinent for assessing the kind of situation I am in. Hence, situations aren't like natural species that we can classify in a univocal way, so that, given certain signs, we can be sure of what they are. Neither I can't state my case with an interlocutor or an audience in such an univocal way, made of clear cut definitions and classifications. I need to be able to give them something more significant, that makes them able to assess the situation as I do.

Good rhetoric partakes then of the habit of prudence. Not all audiences are the same: what works with some, doesn't work with others.

What works with Americans, with Europeans, or the Swedish Academy, doesn't necessarily works with the sworn enemies of what we are.

Si pacem vis para bellum (if you want peace, prepare yourself to war), recites an old Latin saying. Here again it is question of prudence. In certain cases it might lead to a destructive armaments race. In others might be the thing to do, and to do otherwise would be taken as a sign of weakness.

Again, how things stand with Obama concerning his prudential rhetoric, I'll leave it to the judgement of readers.

HP

Politics and faith

Contrasts in Italian politics among the power of the State that is too long to explain, prompted me these general considerations.

It is funny that there are so many people, much more in Europe than in the States but even here an increasing number, think that religion should be left totally out of the public space, because, they say, it is a matter of faith, and faith is a strictly individual affair.

It's more than funny, it's very funny.

I tell you why: politics rests entirely on faith.

Thus said, it is a little blunt, so I should try to explain myself.

We rarely stop and think of the meaning of the words we use. Too bad, because we could be surprised. So it is for the word faith, which carries a rich set of connotations.

For those who want to exclude it from the public space, it means essentially belief: where to believe something is opposed to knowing it. In other words, belief is equated with opinion, and according to the law everybody should be entitled to his own opinions. Here things become immediately funny, if we just bring to mind how general is the use of an expression like "I believe in...": both for things I can believe or not believe, which makes them opinions, and for things I can't but believe, which makes them science. Troubles starts when it comes to saying which is which: vary shaky business.

One could say, "I believe in the theory of evolution", or, "I believe in the theory of relativity", thinking to be affirming two things equally scientific. Someone else (like yours truly) might think, instead, that this is true for the second but not for the first, and say so. "Why, aren't both of them proved?" could ask the first, politely or with a tone of challenge (of course if he cares to be polite or challenging, and not simply ignore such an ignorant moron, who dares to doubt of evolution). "Depends on what you mean by proving", could answer a little ironic the second, "don't you know that even philosophers of science are not quite in agreement on it? Besides, how could you or I know? We didn't prove it." "You must be kidding, scientists…" "There I wanted you!"

Belief, then, is not just opinion. It simply means to be persuaded of the truth of something, for more or less good reasons. And one good reason can also be trust. Actually, the arguments for or against the theory of evolution might not be so hard to assess. But the theory of relativity… For us average mortals it is like talking about God's existence. We can only trust those who proved it.

Funny business, proving: adverting, testing, knowing…But what has to do with politics? A moment of patience, I am coming to it.

Belief, joined with trust, gives the meaning of faith. Not the full meaning yet, but enough of it to clarify the assertion I made above. I trust somebody, and I believe in what he says; I don't trust him, and I don't believe it. This happens even among scientists, between people and scientists, and, most blatantly, in politics and in religion.

Let's say, for example, the President of the United States tells us that things at the moment are tough, but we are strong and can make it. Well, we confide in him, and do our best.

Congress makes laws. We confide in it, and think that they are conceived for the common good. Courts administer justice. We confide in them, and willingly subject ourselves to their sentences and orders.

Is it clear? All politics rests on faith. Religion cannot be really separated from politics. The Founding Fathers of the United States knew it, but believed that it could be left open to civil discussion, confiding in the reciprocal good faith of people.

What happens, then, if people are divided by utterly different religions (including the religion of non-religion)? And while the government takes one side, the courts take another? A more or less latent or open war of all against all, is Thomas Hobbes' inexorable answer, to be kept in check by a tyrant State.

There is however an other answer I am more prone to: to recognize that our reasoning is prompted by faith, and to look here for proofs of what is said in the public square.

HP

New Pro-Life Initiative in Connecticut: a Connecticut Catholic defends the weakest and most vulnerable

The name of the organization is CCCF, which stands for Concerned Catholics for Connecticut, & Friends.

The founder is an old family friend, the paterfamilias of a family, which lived around the corner from us when I was growing up.

One of his daughters is Maria, a grade school classmate of mine with a terrifying loveliness about her that I have since learned is typical of Irish daughters, and the peculiar birthright of the youngest of these.

But I digress.

Below is an explanation of the initiative, in the founder's own words:

This is my blog site on Late-Term D&E Abortion of Viable Babies:

www.cccf.wordpress.com

The first or second “post” (which means article) lists the headings of the articles I have posted in the past few months.

I keep adding as research progresses, and have to add some more news as soon as I have time.
cccf stands for “concerned Catholics for Connecticut, & Friends”...I include in the “friends” unconcerned Catholics, and all others who are non-Catholics but could be concerned about this infanticide.

My purpose is to try and get someone in Connecticut (or more than one) elected to high office in Washington who would be pro-life for a change: And secondly, to get a movement started to ban Late-Term D&E Abortion of babies post 21-weeks gestation, on the precedent of the Federal Ban Act on Partial Birth Abortion (D&X).

I hope you send this blog site to all your friends.

I hope you readers spread the word about this initiative, and also about the peculiar barbarity of D&E and D&X procedures.

I am firmly convinced that both procedures would be absolutely and without exception illegal, if only more people knew what they are: cutting a fetus into little bits while it is still inside the womb and then vacuuming out the parts (D&E); inducing dilation of the cervix and then deliberately maneuvering the fetus into a footling breech, and then, when everything but the head is out of the uterus, plunging a scissors into its neck, severing the spinal cord, inserting a vacuum into the inside of the head, sucking out the brain and collapsing the skull (D&X).

When Stenberg v. Carhart (opinions at FindLaw) (Wikipedia article) was decided, I remember being appalled by the way in which the five justices of the majority so carefully avoided looking at the basic issue: a state's competence to police the medical profession. "You cannot understand what D&X is," I recall saying out loud, "and then decide that a state legislature is not competent to ban the procedure. If you decide that a state legislature is not competent to ban that procedure, it can only be because there is no police power as such in the state."

Said simply: if a state legislature cannot ban partial birth abortion, it cannot ban anything.

The Federal ban on D&X survived (5-4) a challenge before the SCOTUS (Gonzales v. Carhart) I ought to have pointed this out, myself.

Please, add the cccf blog to your rolls, and maybe even drop the folks there a line showing your support.

Best,
LD

Between past and future

Let me put it this way.

The Church before the Vatican II could, and largely was perceived as castled in a staunch repudiation of the modern world. Still today, as a matter of fact, its moral teaching is perceived as a series of no: interdiction of this, interdiction of that… especially with regard to sex (as if she were concerned about sex as such, and not about people to whom is given to be, among other things, also male and female).

The inspiration of Vatican II, eminently in Gaudium and spes, was to come out of such a castle, stop condemning the modern world, and come toward it in understanding.

The right and just thing to do. But it could be equivocated, as unfortunately it has been, as advocating an adjourning of the Church, and us in her, to keep up with the modern world in all its changes.

Benedict now is telling us, in all his teaching and preaching that goes under the label of hermeneutics of continuity, that the modern world doesn't exist, so to speak.

I mean, all the changes of which Gaudium and spes talked about, and more, are real. But, please, let's not conceptualize them as we are used to do, as "modern". It is the negation of thinking, which requires a capability of taking distance from ourselves, rather than putting ourselves, in our fleeting now between past and future, at the center. Torn, as the case might be, between nostalgia for the vanishing past, and expectation for whatever change the future is bringing.

"Modernity" is a false category, that leaves us without capability of drawing from the past criteria of judgment for the future, what it should and what it shouldn't bring about, and to act accordingly: to achieve the first and to avoid the latter.

Right is Gaudium and spes there, where it reminds us that at the center is only Christ, in his eucharistic being always, now, between was and will be.

HP

Gaudium et spes and the Work of the Holy Spirit: a reply to the HP

Dear HP,

Well you know of my love for the Catholic tradition, and well you know of my wariness of modernity - indeed, I learned much of it at your foot.

Having said that, I must now wonder whether your treatment of Gaudium et spes might be incomplete.

GS is a document of the Council, and as such we must regard it as inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Only then can we (and I think that, in the case of GS, we really must) go on to criticize it.

Indeed, one of its harshest and most effective critics is the present Pontiff, who struggled to find a Christocentric key in the text.

Eventually he did, following JPII's frequent citation of the line to the effect that Jesus CHrist is not only God's self-revelation to Man, but God's revelation of the truth about human nature nature to Mankind.

That said, the document was written by committee, and as such is an abject failure from a literary point of view.

With regard to the document's discussion of transformation, I would recall the opening lines:

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.

Now, I may be using too sharp a knife, but it has always strucke me that the lack of a qualifier following the naming of the "followers of Christ" is conspicuous, and telling. The joys and hopes of the present age are the joys and hopes etc. of Christians, sic et simpliciter, which is to say, the joys and hopes etc. of Christians in every age. The opening statement of the document, on this reading, would contain a constant, precisely the constant the Council Fathers go on to ignore for the rest of the document.

Best,

LD

Announcement: The Lazy Disciple is Changing...

Sometime during this coming week, this blog, which has been known as The Lazy Disciple almost since its inception, will be changing its name to Chronicles from the Front: by Lazy Disciple and Humbly Presumptuous.

The change is meant to reflect two things: the desire to make the blog a tool of spiritual warfare; the essential role the HP has come to play in the life of the blog.

We will also be playing with the blog theme and color schemes, so please, do not be frightened. Also, please pass the word around.

Best,

LD

Support Catholic Speakers: Fr. William Casey, CPM (an LD contribution to a Fallible Blogma initiative)

Matt Warner of Fallible Blogma is running a project with enormous potential: Support a Catholic Speaker Month

The Lazy Disciple is happy to participate in the initiative, and elects Fr. William Casey, CPM.

I have always admired soldiers, and greatly admired soldiers turned priests. To understand why, one need look no further than St. Ignatius Loyola, or Fr. Norman Weslin in our own day. There is something archetypically fulfilling in the journey from warrior to priest (the archetype of the warrior-priest is one, for magnificent exemplars of which the Church and the whole world have great need, especially now).

The radio man in me would like to hear more of Fr. Casey, whose simplicity and directness carry through, and carry home by way of his powerful and disciplined voice.

Fr. Casey's bio from the Mercy Fathers' website:

Father Bill Casey is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a 1979 graduate of Temple University. After graduating from college, he served as an officer in the U.S. Army. Upon leaving the Army, he entered the Congregation of the Fathers of Mercy. He studied Philosophy at Christendom College and Theology at Holy Apostles Seminary and was ordained to the priesthood in 1991. In 1997, Fr. Casey was elected the Superior General of the Congregation. Father attributes his call to the priesthood to the Mercy of God, his love for the study of Sacred Scripture, and his strong devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Embarassment

I feel a strong embarassment in reading Gaudium et spes. It is true that it is classified as a "pastoral constitution", not "dogmatic", and this frees me of any concern about being in line with Church teaching.

And though, simply for its being a Council's document it should carry a certain authority for me. But what it says actually doesn't.

Nothing to object to the specifically theological side of it. Too bad that it is purporting to provide a description of the state of the world it is addressing with an appeal to dialogue. And here I find it weak.

To the point of perceiving in it a certain demise of intellectual authority.

Just one short example. It speaks, almost at the outset, of the weight granted in our world to the mathematical, physical and human sciences. Over again it returns to the latter, up to the point of speaking of the great progresses made in psychology, sociology and philosophy. And here I am astounded.

OK, physical sciences are well enough established to allow to speak for them as "science" without much ado, in spite of the fact that what is scientific in them was then, and still is today, open to question. I cannot pretend that it enters into such epistemological disputes.

However, what about human sciences? Did psychology and sociology, let alone philosophy, exist then, or do they exist today, as unitary disciplines, save for University departments that go under their name?

The answer is no! There are as many psychologies and sociologies, let alone philosophies, as there are schools. And they say everything and its opposite. So, what is Gaudium and spes talking about? Some schools are rationally true, and in accord with Christian teaching, some are rationally false, and enemy to it.

Nothing of all this in our Council's document.

HP

Great Transofrmations

I was reading an article on the G20 – but for what I have to say it could have been about almost anything – when I was hit by a reference to the "great transformations of the Nineties". Mind me, nothing conspicuous about it, it was just that it stirred in me an unfavorable recollection.

To speak about the accelerated transformation of present day society is a common place of our times.

Hard to die. Nobody noticing that we have been saying that since I don't know when, so marking our society with an unchanging character.

I must say, as student of cultural anthropology, that I didn't draw from it a lesson of relativism. I did learn from it to relativise myself as man of my time; but this was rather a stimulus to look for constants in human affairs, and discover how, in spite of all seeming evidence to the contrary, men have not changed in their nature. Save of course for the change brought by divine grace through Jesus Christ: a change, though, that non tollit sed perficit naturam.

The unfavorable stir in my memory provoked by that article, brought back to the surface the "wind of the Sixties", of which I spoke some time ago. We were really convinced that a new era was dawning. Unfortunately we find traces of the cultural mood of that time also in the Second Vatican Council: in what now appears to me its soft spot, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in today's world Gaudium and spes.

There I read: "Humanity lives today a new period of her history, characterized by profound and quick changes that are progressively extended to the whole universe" (GS n° 4).

Did they, the Council fathers, really believe that?

HP

When the Pope Gets Back...

I'll be posting a lengthy recap of the Pope's speeches, homilies, etc.

Until then, bear with me.

Things have been slow, I know, but they will pick up.

HP, thanks for holding the fort!

LD

Are conservatism and liberalism opposite ideologies?

I say

I like the word, adjective and noun, conservative. It implies that there was good in our past and that it needs preserving.

I also like, though, the adjective and noun liberal. It evokes liberty and liberality, the generosity of a free man.

I dislike them both when they become labels for set political positions, well defined ideologies, opposing models of what social life is all about.

Actually, I should say that also the word ideology didn't always have a bad ring. This was given to it by Karl Marx, when he used it to brand his philosophical and political adversaries, and was later on taken up by these to retort the same blame on him: in an ongoing "you are an ideologist", calling for "ideologist are you".

Ideology, literally taken, is analyzable into the classical -logy of many words designating a science (e.g. geology, biology, anthropology, psychology, sociology) and ideas. It's a good word then: it would be nothing less than the science of ideas.

How could become then the name par excellence of the wrong way of thinking, anti-science?

The trouble is that ideas alone don't make knowledge: this requires also the impact of reality. As for a physicist, who to formulate a theory needs two things irreducible the one to the other: mathematical equations and experiments, so to account with the first for the latter.

The temptation, on the contrary, is to want to transfer our ideas onto reality (or also to make them emerge from reality, which is just the reverse). Giving in to this temptation gave to "ideology" its bad reputation.

Another thing is to be able, instead, to perceive ideas in reality, as what makes reality intelligible. Need I to add that this is the way of science, be it physical or political?

HP

Neo-cons, cons and liberals

Irving Kristol died Friday night, aged 89. He was godfather, so to speak, of neoconservatism.

The label of "neoconservative" was disparagingly given to him in 1973 by a political adversary, but he liked it and made it his own.

Here there is a subtle terminological question. The prefix "neo" was supposed to distinguish him from those who defined themselves "conservative" by a staunch ideological defense of the free market as capable of self regulation, in opposition to "liberals" who thought necessary a more or less strong State intervention to regulate it.

I'd like to advert the American reader of a peculiar difference between the Italian and the English use of the word liberal: "liberali" were in fact called in Italy those who in the States are called "conservative" in the ideological sense I just signaled. Keeping this in mind, that between conservatives and liberals there is a dispute internal to liberalism, that ideologically doesn't go beyond the temporal range of the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century.

Both appear to grant, as a matter of fact, the primacy of the economy.

Not so Kristol: more than the economy, he stressed the importance of culture and tradition. He was in this a true conservative, in the meaning of the word that I like, i.e. of one who wants to keep what is worth keeping. But he was also a true liberal, if we give to the word the meaning that it has when we speak of a "liberal (i.e. non servile) education".

In any case, neoconservatism culturally permeated American politics, so that even its adversaries took from it. Such is the case of President Obama. We can well say that if he hadn't adopted some neocon themes, he would have never been elected.

HP

Two key words

I want to be outrageous:

To tell the difference between Islam and Christianity in a nutshell. In two words, literally: the two key words that name them.

Islam, Christ.

What do they mean?

Islam means submission: the image it evokes is that of a sovereign, under whom stand all people as his subjects.

Christ means anointed: the image it evokes requires a few words more of explanation.

In the Old Testament the kings of Israel were anointed with perfumed oil, which made them brilliant and smelling of good. Anointment, chrisma, was then the sign of election by the only sovereign to represent him among the people.

To call Jesus Christos was to proclaim him king.

Now, his followers are called Christians, but they are actually themselves christoi: at baptism, in fact, and again at confirmation, they receive the chrisma.

The image then is not of people commanded to submit themselves to the sovereign, but called by him to share of his sovereign kingship.

HP

Why women?

I realize that the other day I left something out. In facing the question of Islam and apostasy, I didn't deal with the fact that the news concerned women.

The numbers are frightful. Der Spiegel reports that in Germany at least fifty women have been killed because of the relations they entertained (friendship or love) with non Muslims. I also read that for London the number is of a least twelve a year. Not to mention are the cases of girls who are for the same reason pushed to suicide by the family. On the whole, in Europe are counted thousands of Muslim girls who disappear, having allegedly left for a journey abroad, never to be seen again. And so on, with a sequel of horror stories.

The question then is: why women?

To give an exact answer from the Muslim point of view, one should be an expert of sharia, the Islamic law (fixed in its main schools around the year 1200) that defines for them the religious meaning of Islam.

I am not such an expert. I am, though, quite knowledgeable in comparative anthropology, and I'll try to give an answer on the basis of this.

We are used to think of men and women simply as male and female specimens of the human species. At least, this is the official doctrine of our egalitarian society. As matter of fact, things go rather differently. We always recognize the where from of the people we meet, by their somatic characteristics and still more by the way they speak, dress, behave: so, they are always men and women of a certain country and class, or tribe, clan and family.

We discern differences among people, marked by borders that separate those we are more or less familiar with, from those we are more or less at odds with. And we all know how tense things can become when we cross those borders.

No matter how loose our family ties have become, marriage still requires, for the taboo of incest, the crossing of a threshold. In theory, this simply requires in our system of kinship that we abstain from having sexual intercourse with our most close relatives, essentially, today, father or mother, brother or sister; every other man or woman would be allowed. In practice, however, we have always known that it is not a good idea to go too far to find a mate, otherwise we could run into trouble.

Actually we run into trouble today also with those who are apparently close enough! This may well owe itself to the fact that we want culturally to ignore the dangers inherent to the crossing of thresholds, reducing all Christian precepts in sexual matters to morality, while not seeing that they indicate precisely the way to avoid tensions and hence troubles.

At the opposite pole of the spectrum from the indifference commanded by today's lassitude in sexual mores, stand Muslims, who, even when living in the Western world, are very jealous of their women.

The eminent anthropologist Mary Douglas suggested, in some books of hers published more than thirty-five years ago – Purity and danger and Natural symbols – a possible way for understanding why. She showed, on the basis of a large comparative evidence, that the tension between people separated by a certain border represent a fear of defilement, i.e. to be polluted.

The position of women in this regard is peculiar: they are in fact the ones through whom new life enters into the society of men, defined by visible or invisible borders. For the same reason, if they have sexual intercourse with people across the border, they can be seen as vehicle of defilement for the society to which they belong.

Something of the kind can be certainly said of the strictly endogamic southern society d'antan, where the border was marked by race. The difference with Muslims is that in this case, if a negro was suspected of having looked at a white woman, he risked to be lynched. With Muslims it's true the reverse: if their women are suspected of getting close to non Muslim men, it's they who risk being killed.

The great divide is here between inside and outside the umma, the community of those who have accepted submission (Islam, literally) to Allah.

But this is a religious reason, it could be objected, not to be confused with a racial one.

In the face of such an objection, I would answer: perhaps; do not then, however, come to tell me anymore that religion is a system of beliefs, that can change while leaving everything else untouched

HP

Great Discussion...

About Catholic universities and the right way to conduct the debate over Catholic identity, over at Matthew Warner's Fallible Blogma.

Matt's place is one at which one will often find opposing views being discussed with great civility.

LD

Apostates

I just read of a Ohio girl of 17 running away from her Muslim family for fear of being killed because of her conversion to Christianity.

It might be a coincidence, but today I also heard on the news that here in Italy a girl of 18 was killed by her father because she was dating a catholic Italian boy.

It's not the first time that a thing of this kind happened here. Like the case of an year ago of the two sisters killed by their Egyptian father in Texas for the same motive.

Are these just cases of fanatic deviance, or have something to do with the very nature of Islam, so that it is rather the opposite case of tolerance to be against the rule?

Apostasy is the worst crime for Muslims, I hear, and these facts seem to confirm it.

I wondered why it is so, so that Islam can conceive only of a one way conversion, i.e. to itself, and never from itself.

I answered myself that probably it has to do with the idea that all people are Islamic by nature, they know it or not. Converting to Islam, then, would be like coming to know one's true nature. Hence turning away from it should mean becoming nothing.

Not just that: apostates are a scandalous nothing, that needs to be suppressed.

Isn't it time that we start rethinking our superficial way of looking at religion as belief with no real import in life?

I Know the Joy of a Madman!

When MoDo smelled racism in the Hon. Joe Wilson's pitiable display, I simply shrugged and said to myself, "Sure, Mo, that's about right from you, isn't it?" even as I wondered how many it took for her to get there, and how early she started that day (I'm not judging mind you - not this blogger, and certainly not about that). Hers was truly an envelope-pushing experiment in cross-breeding: what do you get when you combine unutterable brazenness with the most abject and irrecuperable paranoia?

Then President Carter upped the ante.

A blissfully ignorant Charles Gibson blithely suggested the ACORN scandal might be "one for the cables" on the day the Senate of the United States voted 83-7 to defund the organization.

Indeed, the sanest statement I've heard all week came from President Obama, himself, and it was made OTR, regarding an obnoxious postar.

Well-said, Mr. President. Well said, indeed.

Sheesh!

LD

Regalo

There is an Italian word that should alert on who is a king.

But, before telling it, I must remind the reader of one of the main contributions of cultural anthropology to social thinking: the rediscovery of the importance of gift giving as a socio-cultural constant, to be found among all people.

We give and receive gifts, and any accepted gift obliges to reciprocate, so to give thanks for the good things we were given. We don't need to give back to the same people from whom we received, but we can pass on the good received to others, who in turn will pass it on, with the hope that eventually what we have given will return to us.

So, the good we receive can be seen as a return for the good we gave, and vice versa, the good we give as a return for that we received.

Now, in Italian the most used word for gift is regalo: from the same root of rex, it makes of any gift something royal.

That's because the king is at the center of a generalized circulation of goods. Ideally, he doesn't retain anything for himself, but lets all goods flow from him; on the other side, all people honor him as king by bringing back to him their gifts in thanks for what they received. So the goods scattered from him are again recollected in him, and so on, again scattered and recollected in an unceasing cycle.

In gift exchange any man is like a king, at the center of the give and take that makes him a pole of attraction and distribution of good – and of life.

Which do you pick?

Pertinent for religion in the public place.

There are two ways of understanding America, as two different modes of the presence of Europe in America.

It's the same as saying that there are two wys of understanding democracy.

By democracy we can mean that there are no kings, or, instead, that everybody is called to be king.

Which do you pick?

The Truth is Out There: in plain sight, as a matter of fact

The title of this LD post is also the title of a post at the blog, On Pilgrimage, which has this entry dealing with the re-emergence of JP I conspiracy theories.

Hat tip to Clayton at The Weight of Glory.

LD

Go See Fr. Longenecker's...

For a terribly funny, "Out of the mouths of babes" take on, "The 'new' Nuns," click here...

The wind of the sixties

It is hard to understand what happened in the sixth decade of last century, inside and outside the Church.

It was undoubtedly a cultural revolution. But why?

We were all swept away by a wave of optimism, which soon turned into bitter disappointment.

Speaking of the Church: Vatican II, instead of the hoped for renewal of Spirit, uniting all Christians in charity, opened the door to the spirit of disunion of a house torn inside by strife.

Outside of the Church, the catchword of the time, "make love not war", came to mean a liberation of sexuality which turned love into a private war.

Of course I exaggerate. But one thing is sure. Publically, we are not able to say any more why a man should love a woman, and vice versa. Our democratic ideology has declared man and woman equal, so that anybody can love anybody, their respective sex making no difference.

By the way, also in San Paul we can find a statement of this tenor, where all differences disappear, and there is no man and woman. But it is only so because they are equal… in Christ: i.e., in the capability of overcoming their limits by the reciprocal gift of life. Which is fecund of new life, thanks to their difference.

That's it: a scientist friend of mine pointed out for me that only there is life in nature where there is difference. Whoever has some notion of physics knows this as the second law of thermodynamics. The beauty of it, is that in such a description of the order of things we can recognize a prescription of how to keep things in order… among ourselves. All bodily differences, of sex and age, become meaningful for our participation in life.

Here you have the sense of natural law, destroyed in the abstract affirmation of all people's equality, indifferent to the things of the body.

Eric Voegelin (mentioned with a long quotation by Lazy Disciple in a previous post) branded all the evil of our time "Gnosticism". I can follow his lead, and recall that one of the main marks of Gnosticism (a religious movement of the early Christian centuries antagonistic to orthodox Christianity) was precisely the demeaning of the body. To which it could be objected that it is right the opposite of what we do, because we don't demean the body, but rather exalt it. But are we sure that that is what we really do? No, I don't think so. The body we appreciate is that, so to speak, of fitness, of fashion and sports magazines. So that all that makes unfit can be a good reason to keep from birth or to accelerate death.

Usually our time is accused of materialism. I'd like to try a different qualification: it not so much materialism that plagues us, but superspiritualism, non identification with one's own body, as way of prticipating to the body politic. It just remains as a kind of biological property, one feels free of using as he pleases.

Superspiritualism was the wind that swept the Sixties.

To say so can help perhaps to understand how come Vatican II had such an unexpected aftermath.

Go Vote "No!" to this Silliness

Fr. Zuhlsdorf alerted me to this:

It seems the bishop of Cincinnati has dismissed a woman religious (described, it would seem, inaccurately, as a "nun" - a term for cloistered religious women, if I am not mistaken) from her teaching duties because she refused to renounce her position in favor of the ordination of women, a position that is directly repugnant to the ordinary magisterium of Holy Mother Church, as the Servant of God, John Paul II recently expressed in Ordinatio sacerdotalis.

The Church does not ordain women because the Church cannot ordain women - the Church has not power to do so, because the priesthood is conferred on males of the species, exclusively, by order of Divine positive law. She has not authority, no competence to change the Divine dispositions.

Go vote "no!"

A meditation on a funeral

There is an acritude in the comments occasioned by Senator Kennedy's death and funerals among good Catholics that requires a few words.

Edward Kennedy, Ted, was of Irish descent, and, as such, was catholic. We could ask: was he a good catholic? Hard to answer, for two sets of reasons.

First, because to answer such a question would mean to pass a judgment on a whole life story. In the case of Ted Kennedy, being he a senator, this life story is private and public. After the loss of his brothers, his life was marked by the nasty accident of 1968 at Chappaquiddick, when he was probably responsible for the death of a girl. He succeeded in getting legally out of it, but I hope, for his soul, that he confessed his guilt with a priest. Publicly, that thing tainted all his subsequent political career, keeping him away from the presidency.

But more than forty years have gone by since then, other forty years of public life as senator, which equally require a judgment that I am sure is not easy. I don't especially recognize myself in his political side, mainly because of the changes this has undergone in these forty years, that make today's issues quite different from those of the Sixties, which saw the beginning of Ted Kennedy career, fighting on the side of his brothers for civil rights that were really such.

The Sixties: they bring me to the other set of reasons that make difficult to answer the question whether he was a good catholic.

We all remember when Ted's brother John was elected, first catholic in the history of the United States, and how this thing aroused suspicions that he had to assuage. He was asked how he would choose, in case of a discrepancy between the demands of the Church and those of his office as President of the USA. His answer was quite simple: he would act always in the interest of the United States, meaning, because no such a discrepancy were possible.

How much has changed since then, alas, in the States as well as in the Catholic Church! We are no longer sure of what it means to be either a good American, or a good Catholic.

I leave aside what pertains to being a good American. I hinted to the divisions concerning this in a previous post (for a more detailed discussion of the idea of America, we'll have to wait for Lazy Disciple's book, to be published in a near future). So I'll stay with the question of the "good catholic".

Many good Catholics are angry at Ted Kennedy for supporting the pro-choice policy of his party. I can't blame them, because, whether he really supported it or not, he didn't take a public stand against it, as they demand.

Of course, the Church is definitely against abortion, and to support it is to put oneself out of it. However, with failure to take a stand against it, we enter into an area where since the Sixties ideas got all blurred: even among theologians and prelates, leave alone a poor politician.

Just in these days I have been reading a very interesting book on the Vatican II and its aftermath. I'll have eventually to return on this, and try some considerations on what the Sixties have been in general, in the Church and out of her. Now, keeping apart the Council from its aftermath, I must say that the latter has been literally diabolic: meaning, according to the etymology of the word, divisive.

Catholics split in (at least) two, mainly on the question of the relation of Church and State.

In traditional catholic doctrine it had been maintained, to mediate between the meta-political teaching of the Church, addressing all people to announce them their unity in the salvation brought by Christ, and the political reality of the particular States in which human societies organize themselves, the notion of natural law. By way of this, it was possible, not only to educate people to Christ, but also to enclose in the same polity people who don't believe in him. The same tradition of natural law was at the origin of the United States of America, clearly to be read in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution. But the Church as well as the State were swept by the wind of the Sixties. The Supreme Court wounded the tradition on which America was founded with the infamous Roe versus Wade, leaving as only basis of civil life consensus, always susceptible to change. But even the Church didn't appear any more as a unitary ground of stability.

Unanimity on the notion of natural law got lost, and, as far as the constitution of the polity is concerned, many Catholics thought that they could not bring their religious ideas to bear on a legislation destined not only to "believers", but also to "not believers".

Often in the name of a purer faith, less compromised with established politics, fideism became the thing of the day, and a large party in the Church demised its traditional reasoning ways.

Good Catholics have to follow the example of our beloved Benedict XVI, with his constant invitation to the use of reason, to which Christ himself, as Logos incarnate, has educated us. To use it, I say, first of all among us inside the same Church. And this cannot be done without mellowing the acritude that even our love of truth can bring about in the midst of dissenting positions. Because it would take us away from the very Christian truth we want to defend.

So let's have mercy, and pray for the soul of a poor politician.

Washington D.C., August 28th, 1963

My eyes well every time I hear this.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

In my PhD dissertation, I have a chapter-length excursus on the significance of Dr. King's rhetoric for the tradition of inquiry and nationhood called America. I will be able to share it with you all before the new semester is out.

Health Care, cont'd

One of the really disappointing, even truly disheartening things about the national discussion over the President's proposals for health care reform, is the acrimonious tone of its conduct.

Demonization of political adversaries has become a general practice.

This is more than simply unfortunate; it is dangerous for several reasons, among which are the following:

• It tends to erode the presumption of good faith, upon which the giving and taking of public counsels in free socity must necessarily be based;

• It encourages intellectual laziness: if I do not need to engage the merits of an opponent's position, then I will not engage them. I will, however, be more than content to dribble my critical energies through the gimlet holes of peanut gallery invention;

• It erodes awareness of and thereby destroys the ability to pursue the common good, to determine and pursue successfully, common purpose in society.

Many of the loudest contributors to the public discussion of the issue are more concerned in establishing the President of the United States as a monster, than they are in critically appraising his proposals for reform.

The President, himself, has been one of the worst offenders among the proponents and champions of his reforms, insofar as he has quickly and easily dismissed everyone who has any scruple about his proposals, either paining them as ideologically committed, or cabbalistically interested.

Absolutely none of this matters.

Suppose for a moment that the President is a monster

Now entertain for an instant the idea that the President's reform proposals are likely to reduce the cost of health insurance and improve the quality of health care, while placing both in reach of a significant number of people who, until now, have not been been able to have either.

Would the President's monstrosity be an argument against implementing his reform proposals then?

Suppose for a moment the President is possessed of a soul as stainless as starlight, and motives as pure as the driven snow

Now consider the possibility that the President's reform proposals appear to prudent judges as likely to lead to the creation of a massive federal health insurance bureaucracy that will swallow the whole industry, severely reduce the quality of care, and act as a massive drain on the economy, making it more difficult for the poor to lift themselves out of poverty and creating a permanent class of citizens who are essentially clients of the federal government.

Would the President's pristine purposes be an argument in favor of implementing his proposals, then?

I am reminded of the following:

Happy will it be if our choice should be directed by a judicious estimate of our true interests, unperplexed and unbiased by considerations not connected with the public good. But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. The plan offered to our deliberations affects too many particular interests, innovates upon too many local institutions, not to involve in its discussion a variety of objects foreign to its merits, and of views, passions and prejudices little favorable to the discovery of truth. - From The Federalist #1

As it stands, I would like for someone to explain to me how the "public option" is not going to destroy cometition, as employers abandon their private carriers in favor of it, before their current carriers develop packages to compete with the public one.

LD

Edward M. Kennedy, Feb. 22, 1932 - Aug. 25, 2009, RIP

US Senator Edward M. Kennedy has succumbed to cancer.

He represented the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States Senate for 47 years, making him the 3rd longest-serving Senator in US history.

He was 77 years old.

LD

Deal Breaker...

If the folks at FactCheck.org (a non-partisan research outfit affiliated with the Annenberg Public Policy Center) are right, then Catholics need to step up. Via the blog of Catholic radio host Al Kresta, I learn that the folks at FC have published their findings regarding the abortion question, here.

Remember what Michael Sean Winters said at the start of the season, and has been repeating regularly, most recently here?

Now, the NRLC fellow quoted in the FactCheck analysis probably overstates things when he says that the House leadership version mandates abortion coverage. The quoted language is not that of a mandate. Nevertheless, with the POTUS's views of the matter widely known, and Kathleen Sebelius in charge at HHS, it were imprudence approaching folly to think that the federal plan would not include abortion.

If the POTUS claims that, stricte sensu, the law neither mandates nor allows federal funding for abortions (the HHS regulations implementing the legislation would do that), he cannot claim that the federal subsidies for private plans would not.

Remember, the issue is not whether the proposed reform package would mandate federal funding for abortions. The issue is whether the proposal contains provisions for federal funding of abortions.

This blogger believes that the proposal, as it stands, does contain the practical equivalent of a mandate, though an explanation as to why will have to wait. It is nearly 5AM and I must be about business.

LD

Some Thoughts on "Health Care Reform"

I know I promised some enlargement upon the text I reproduced in these pages at the opening of this past week-end. That enlargement will come shortly.

At Present, my purpose it to try to organize my thoughts on the debate over Pres. Obama's proposed legislative and regulatrory reform of important parts of our health care system.

The very first thing that needs to be clarified is what, "health care reform" means, and what it does not. What the term means in the mouth of a given interlocutor is never perfectly clear, and may be misleading. The following might be helpful:

• "Health Care" refers to at least two things: (1) insurance against the cost of obtaining medical goods and services - we generally call this "health insurance"; (2) medical goods and services themselves - we generally call this "medical care"; by way of example, Liberty Mutual, INA and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, inter alia, provide the former (1); doctors, nurses, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, inter alia, provide the latter (2).

• The President has discussed the possibility of a "government option" or a "public option" as part of his "health care" reform package. At present, the "government option" does not enjoy public confidence, in any form; there is a great deal of public diffidence regarding the more robust visions of what the "government option" might be.
  

Some of the representations of the "government option", which some opponents of the proposal have made, have either been crafted to allow people to believe, or have more or less directly suggested, that the "government option" would, in its most robust form, include direct provision of "health care" in the 2nd sense, i.e. would mean doctors in the employ of the federal government, providing care directly to citizens at government-owned and operated facilities using government-owned equipment and supplies, all at the texpayers' expense. This is a truly appalling vision. It is also inaccurate.The President's proposal, in its most robust form, seems to be a government-owned and operated insurance provider, i.e. a provider of "health care" in the 1st sense.

This proposal is extremely problematic on its own, and requires no distortion in order to inspire public ambivalence. It therefore seems to this blogger that many people are against a measure the President has never proposed, while many others (and many of those who oppose the phantom proposal) have been denied the chance to give the highly problematic real proposal fully informed critical attention.

Broad Public Consensus for Limited Reform

There is broad consensus regarding both the need for some reform, and the urgency of the need. There is broad bi-partisan support in Congress for some basic reform of health insurance law and regulation. The support in Congress accurately reflects popular sentiment regarding the following issues: the need to pass laws making health insurance plans portable; the need to eliminate or at least severely restrict the ability of health insurance providers to refuse (or drastically alter the terms and conditions of) coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

These two measures are almost universally recognized as urgently needed - they are the "no-brainers" of the debate. The President could push hard for these measures, simultaneously announce a period of consideration and reflection on other parts of his reform package, and see the reduced-scope reform package pass with broad bi-partisan support in Congress.

He could declare victory, and with reason.

Next time, I will discuss some of the difficulties with the "government option" and the real political importance of the President's refusal to give a straight answer to the question of abortion coverage.

LD

A Response to the Humbly Presumptuous...

By way of a lengthy quotation from the man who was arguably the greatest thinker of the 20th century:

The treatise on “Political Religions” was published for the first time in Vienna in April of 1938. Since the national-socialist provisional management of the publishing house did not promote its circulation, the treatise remained almost unknown. However, it did become well enough known to find as critical a response among knowledgeable readers as my earlier writings. These criticisms reproach me for presenting my case in such an overly objective manner that it actually seemed to support those conceptions of the world and movements, in particular National Socialism, which it was intended to oppose. It lacked the decisiveness of making a judgment and condemnation, which would put beyond all doubt my own outlook.

These critics touch on the basic questions surrounding the present world situation and the individual's attitude toward it. Today there is one type of politicizing intellectual—and the critics meant here usually belong to this circle—who proclaims his deep aversion to National Socialism through strong ethical judgments. He considers it his duty to battle it with any literary means. I can do the same: Anyone able to read will recognize my deep aversion against any kind of political collectivism on the basis of the verse by Dante that precedes the treatise, and my store of educated and less-educated expressions of condemnation is impressive. There are reasons for my not spreading this aversion before a large audience in the form of politicizing outbursts. In fact, although there are many reasons supporting this attitude, I can only touch upon one essential reason here.

Political collectivism is not only a political and moral phenomenon. To me its religious elements seem much more significant.

Choosing to take up the struggle with literary means in the form of ethical counter-propaganda is important, but such a struggle will become questionable when it hides the essential. Doubly questionable, as a matter of fact, since it diverts attention from the fact that a deeper and much more dangerous evil is hidden behind the ethically condemnable actions. And its own means will become ineffective and questionable when it finds no deeper reason than a moral code. Thus, although I do not mean to imply that the struggle against National Socialism should not also be an ethical one, it is, in my opinion, not conducted radically enough, because the radix, the root in religiousness, is missing.

When considering National Socialism from a religious standpoint, one should be able to proceed on the assumption that there is evil in the world and, moreover, that evil is not only a deficient mode of being, a negative element, but also a real substance and force that is effective in the world. Resistance against a satanical substance that is not only morally but also religiously evil can only be derived from an equally strong, religiously good force. One cannot fight a satanical force with morality and humanity alone.

Nonetheless, this difficulty cannot be remedied by resolve alone.

There is no distinguished philosopher or thinker in the Western world today who, firstly, is not aware—and has not also expressed this sentiment—that the world is experiencing a serious crisis, is undergoing a process of withering, which has its origins in the secularization of the soul and in the ensuing severance of a consequently purely secular soul from its roots in religiousness, and, secondly, does not know that recovery can only be achieved through religious renewal, be it within the framework of the historical churches, be it outside this framework. Such renewal, to a large extent, can only be initiated by great religious personalities, but everyone can be ready and willing to do his share in paving the way for resistance to rise up against the evil.

It is precisely in this respect that the politicizing intellectuals fail completely. It is dreadful to hear time and again that National Socialism is a return to barbarism, to the Dark Ages, to times before any new progress toward humanitarianism was made, without these speakers even suspecting that precisely the secularization of life that accompanied the doctrine of humanitarianism is the soil in which such an anti-Christian religious movement as National Socialism was able to prosper. For these secularized minds the religious question is a taboo, and they are suspicious of bringing it up seriously and radically—perhaps they would also consider this barbarism and a relapse into the Dark Ages.

Thus, I believe that discussing the basic religious issues of our times as well as describing the phenomenon of evil that is to be combated is more important than participating in that ethical defensive struggle. If my representation gives rise to the impression that it is too “objective” and “advertises” for National Socialism, then that to me seems to be a sign that my representation is good—for the Luciferian aspects are not simply morally negative or atrocious, but are a force and a very attractive force at that. Moreover, my representation would not be good if it gave rise to the impression that we are concerned with merely a morally inferior, dumb, barbaric, contemptible matter. That I don't consider the force of evil to be a force of good will be clearly evident to all readers of this treatise who are open to religious questions.

Cambridge, Mass. Christmas 1938

The quotation is the entirety of Eric Voegelin's prefatory remarks to his 1938 volume, The Political Religions.

For the moment, I propose the text to the learned readership for their consideration.

I will have commentary and enlargement this week-end.

LD

Safe and Sound...

The wife, the boy and I are back from a too short trip to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Blogging will continue to be slow through August, and probably into the first weeks of Sept., as another round of personal and professional commitment s will occupy me.

Best to all, and thanks for your forbearance.

LD

From the heat of Italy

It's very hot in Rome and all over Italy, also on the beach where I am staying at the moment for a little release from the city heat.

This makes it a bit hard to think, and, still more, to write.

But I feel obliged, for some things I wrote in my previous post against the present trend of European Union: just a short hint to a "soft" totalitarianism, which has taken the place of the "hard" one ended with World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And who could be better to help elucidate what I said than Pope Benedict?

In the Angelus of August 9 he said:

The Nazi concentration camps, like all extermination camps, can be considered extreme symbols of evil, of hell that opens on earth when man forgets God and supplants him, usurping his right to decide what is good and what is evil, to give life and death. However, this sad phenomenon is unfortunately not limited to concentration camps. Rather, they are the culmination of an extensive and widespread reality, often with shifting boundaries.

A onetime Italian political activist of the radical Marxist kind, later found guilty for having ordered one of the political killings of the Seventies (he always protested himself innocent, but it doesn't matter, I say, because he certainly inspired it), and now in a minimum security jail from where he is free to send out his writings to newspapers, having since long abandoned his earlier position for a moderate humanitarian atheism, denounced an intellectual mistake in this statement of Pope Benedict: that of jamming together phenomena that are actually different.

But are they?

Condemning and rejecting Nazism goes as a matter of course. We are all against Nazism, are we not? it was the apex of horror, how could we do otherwise.

Thus repulsion of Nazism is operated in a sort of vacuum, without the need to spend many words to give reasons for it.

This exempts from any real attempt to understand what brought to it. Or to understand what brought to communism on the other side. And see what they share, in spite of their opposition.

It blinds before the same factors that brought to them still present in our time, be it in a "soft" way.

 

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?

Fear of internet?

I don't know what to think.

It looks like the Obama administration is afraid of internet: it asks people to signal any information circulating about the health care plan, via e-mail or casual conversation (?), that might sound fishy.

Strange, it seemed that in the election campaign they knew how to use it effectively. Or perhaps it is precisely because of this.

It is an old story: the newest communication technology has always been looked at with suspicion.

We read in Plato's Fedrus that Socrates warned against writing. In the book, he said, the word is left alone and cannot defend itself. And though, handwritten books spread and gave a literary tint to culture. Actually to high culture, because popular culture staid oral, until printed books spread literacy, making accessible to everybody. Then it was created books censorship. And so on, up to our times, with telephone, radio and TV. Phones can be controlled; radio and TV require a rather complex technology, their operators and what they say or suggest are publicly known.

And now cellular phones and internet.

Utterly anarchic.

It is like when people used simply to talk to each other. But no longer in a small circle, where everybody knows everybody else, so that each one feels scrutinized and controlled in what he says.

The administration seems to feel out of control on the information circulating on its plans, and resorts to asking people to help them know.

Do they realize what are they doing, by so asking?

In the face of the newest technology, feeling impotent, they resort to "informing": an old totalitarian strategy, to keep people from talking for fear of being spied upon.

An Open Letter to President Obama

Here is the text of the open letter.

Anyone interested in signing may please do so in the com-box, and I will add the names as they come in. Please indicate a US state, in addition to your first and last name.

Bloggers please feel free to copy the text and provide a link to the blog page.

A final note:

The White House has legitimate concerns about disinformation being spread.

By disinformation, I do not mean, unfortunately, mere inaccuracies or infelicities of formulation or expression.

Sadly, some of those, who oppose the President, have used methods that are irresponsible at best, and at worst, in bad faith.

Spreading deliberate falsehood is unacceptable.

Passing conjecture, however well-founded, for fact, is dishonest.

Conjecturing wildly is irresponsible.

That said, there are proper ways for the administration to address this behavior.

The present flagging initiative is not one of them.

One important way to discourage such behavior in one's fellows, is by being frank and forthright oneself.

So, I would also ask the President to give a frank, forthright answer to this one question: do you intend that your health reform legislation include provisions for taxpayer-funded abortion?

LD

Now, for the letter:

**********************************

Christopher R. Altieri
340 Beach Rd.
Fairfield, Ct. 06824

President Barack H. Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

August 6, 2009

Re: "facts are stubborn things" WH blog post of 4 Aug, 2009

Dear Mr. President:

I write to urge you to put an immediate end to the “flagging” initiative you announced through the whitehouse.gov blog this past August 4th.

The government has a right and even a duty to advocate its policies and legislative agenda; it follows from this right and duty that government has a legitimate interest in debunking inaccuracies in public statements regarding its policies and legislative agenda.

I hope the White House is actively seeking to collect, on its own, criticisms that have been made publicly and are, therefore, available for critique – indeed, I would applaud the use of modern communications tools to this end. The flagging initiative, however, is based on the idea that there are rumors that have escaped the attention of the White House, and that citizens ought to report these to the White House when they hear them.

Quite apart from any question of intent, the effect of the plan will inevitably be to curb speech at a time when it is very greatly needed. Ask yourself, Mr. President: are people more likely to share their opinion of the government's plans, if they know the government wants citizens to report what they hear their fellows saying about the government's plans?

The initiative will make people nervous about writing, posting, in sum, sharing their thoughts: good and bad ones; fair and unfair ones; well and poorly informed ones; artfully and artlessly articulated ones, as always there shall be in our national discourse.

The initiative tends to undermine the trust and presumption of good faith, upon which rests our American tradition of absolutely free public exchange of ideas, utterly unfettered by government oversight or interference.

As a result, the program cannot but run counter to the real interests of our country in the short and long term. I therefore urge you to shut this program down today.

Sincerely,

Christoper R. Altieri

Big Brother Is Asking Us to Watch One Another

First, some context: facts are indeed stubborn things. Try this one: if the President's "health reform" legislation does not contain explicit and general prohibition of federal funding for abortion, then it will require taxpayers to pay for abortions. Of course concerned readers are invited to follow this advice:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

I am drafting an open letter.

LD