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

7QT at the PP

They are up again, after a hiatus.

As always, they are edifying and entertaining.

Where are the numbers from this time, though?

Remember, you can participate in the project, which is hosted by Conversion Diary.

Conspiracy Theories

Mark Shea and I are having an exchange regarding what constitutes a conspiracy.

The occasion for the exchange was a post over at his place, with the gist of which I agree, regarding conspiracy theories, and the conspiracy theorists who espouse them.

Our exchange is in the com-box.

As of publication, Mark has yet to reply to my response to his reply to my original comment.

I honestly cannot imagine what could possibly be more important to him, than responding to me.

LD

Let's call it "a letter on tolerance"

Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta. The wisdom of this Latin saying, for which apologies that are not asked for are equivalent to self accusation, holds me from giving in to the temptation of forwarding with an apology the theme I am going to tackle.

I restrain myself and take a start.

Newsweek of July 27, had the cover article denouncing "The myth of Eurabia", i.e. "the false fears of a Muslim take over".

It seems according to it that the far right in Europe suffers of a paranoid fear of a Muslim take over.

I am not sure whether I qualify as far right, but I am convinced that some reasons of preoccupation do exist. And if it is so, how does the article's author qualify: far left?

Nonsense.

An apology therefore is in order. Such an article touches me in my honor of philosopher-theologian and cultural anthropologist.

I'll quote to this end the famous French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss – I hope the Newsweek journalist knows whom I am talking about, otherwise all my apology is in vain.

Or perhaps not.

Back in the fifties of last century, in a beautiful book of his entitled Tristes Tropiques Lévi-Strauss made himself known as defender of little tribal societies of South America. Now he is too old to be still speaking about anything, but in his latest public statements he rather came to the defense of European civilization, because, he said, he sees it at risk of extinction.

May be he has turned far right.

How about saying that he is just an intelligent and wise author, who knows where the problems lie?

A little more down to earth: several years ago, it must have been in the middle Nineties, a friend of mine, teacher of Latin and Greek in high school and a good catholic, reported an experience that alerted her on a threat.

She had been, together with other fellow teachers, at a seminar organized by the Roman church school office on the theme of multiculturalism. As the well meaning teachers that they were, they all felt obliged to express a generic approval of the importance of keeping open to other cultures. But there was also a guest speaker, a Muslim engineer I don't remember from where, who had been living in Italy for some twenty years. When it came his turn, he left them all flabbergasted. "For you, tolerance is a value", he said, "for us it isn't. You don't make children, we do. Draw the consequences by yourself."

The Newsweek article deftly dismisses the second, demographic point made by that engineer in still non suspect years: long it takes before Muslim become a majority in Europe. Besides, they are not so unanimous in their views: many, perhaps the majority of them want to integrate.

Does this mean that even the first point is voided? And that there is no threat? I wouldn't say so. Many incidents, even horrid ones, seem rather to point to the contrary.

How grave is it? Well, that's something that requires discussion.

My answer is: the gravity of the threat depends on its being or not being perceived. In other words: I see the threat coming not so much from Muslims, as from insipient Europeans who don't understand the nature of the problem.

Or, for that matter, insipient Americans.

It is not a question of right or left, but of knowledge of human affairs. And here an anthropologist like Lévi-Strauss can come handy, teaching us that human nature does not change.

Nobody, anywhere, ever likes to be tolerated.

At least since John Locke's famous letter, in our society we keep on extolling tolerance. That's because we never stop and think of converting the noun into the verb.

Now, try to say to somebody: I tolerate you. And imagine his or her reaction.

In our society we wanted for some reason to be, on principle, tolerant; so we made space to people, many of whom found our tolerance unpleasing... and reacted with their intolerance.

The reason is that we don't even know what we are called to tolerate. Having we rejected or at least put aside our knowledge of the alternative in Christianity, which inspired the universal recognition of the equal dignity of any man (and of course woman) we rightly hold as natural, we don't have anything left to offer for it except lurid tolerance.

Am I preaching intolerance? Certainly not! I am just saying that tolerance, if it can work on the legal level, doesn't work as a civic virtue apt to promote good will in social relations.

I don't care how many of the Muslim immigrants are against us, what matters is that they are the most vociferous in a Europe that is highly deculturalized.

Trust

LD always overtakes me with new posts.

I was still meditating on an answer to give to his question about what it is that makes us capable of trusting each other, that it came his comment about POTUS' remarks about what to expect from the war in Afghanistan.

I meant to say that the one he asked was the classical million dollar question.

Better, it is a question of no quantifiable prize, because it rests in the very infinity of God.

In this question politics and theology intermingle, because faith in God and trust in men cannot be severed.

Benedict showed us where, in the third chapter on gift of his Caritas in veritate.

I trust a men if I perceive him concerned not just for himself, as wanting something from me, but also concerned for the good of being in relation with me.

This is gift: I don't speak just of giving things, but attentions, little gestures of regard, all that shows the capability of caring.

We call it good manners: which is not just good education, but a consistent way of being. Not all the rules of etiquette might be observed, actually one might even be a little uncouth, but still there are little signs by which, if we know how to look, we can discern gentleness.

It depends on the overall story that is represented.

So it goes in all things, when we have to assess a fact read on the newspaper, or the speeches and the acts of the President of the United States (by the way, always known through some media, the press or TV).

There are all kind of nuances, different ways of looking at things and to bear witness of them, always presented to us as to a kind of jury: our capability of judging depends on the magnitude of the gifts we have received.

There squabbles and wars, and there is no way to end them except by victory: that is really such only if it isn't our victory, but victory of the good, the common good of being able to trust each other and live in peace.

That's the way one encourages his men at war.

Choosing Life

Crusty old men (not all of them white, mind you), used to say: [ens et] verum et bonum et pulchrum convertuntur, and also, bonum est diffusivum sui:

As her condition grew worse, Mayra’s family prepared for the end of her earthly life. Aida described the beauty that shone through the pain of her sister’s last days on earth. "At the end, I saw her like Christ, with so many wounds and bruises on her arms and her side," she said.

Go read the rest here.

Hat-tip to Fr. Zuhlsdorf.

LD

A Lesson in Rhetoric for the POTUS

Much hay is being made in conservative corners of the blogosphere this morning regarding the following statement from President Obama:

I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.

Taken out of context, the remark is outrageous.

In context, however, it is merely unhappy.

The President goes on to say:

We're not dealing with nation states at this point. We're concerned with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Al Qaeda's allies," he said. "So when you have a non-state actor, a shadowy operation like Al Qaeda, our goal is to make sure they can't attack the United States.

In context, the POTUS is simply reminding us that we cannot expect there to be a single moment, a particular action on the part of the erstwhile belligerents, reestablishing peace, with all the attendant consequences.

Fine.

I will go so far as to say I agree with the President's limited view of our war objectives: while we are not at war with the people of Afghanistan, neither do we owe them in justice what we owe the people of Iraq, i.e. a real chance at securing for themselves ordered liberty in civil society under good government. That the best angels of our nature do inspire us to work for the betterment of the Afghani people's lot even as we continue to prosecute the war against our enemies operating on their soil, is a sign of the magnanimity of the American people, and laudable as such. We do not owe it to them.

I will even allow the President's lapse in historical memory to go uncriticized - after all, the Japanese Foreign Minister was acting as the Emperor's attorney on the deck of the USS Missouri.

I will, however, allow myself to offer an alternative to the President's infelicitous incipit.

If I were the POTUS, I would have said:

"Of course, our goal in Afghanistan is victory. We do not employ American military might with any other goal in sight; we do not spend our war treasure for any other end; to no other purpose, but that of absolute and total victory, do we put our sons and daughters in harm's way. We cannot, however, expect the moment of victory to come upon us as it has in the past - with a formal surrender and a conclusion of peace. Our enemy is not the Reich, or the Empire of Japan. Our enemy is creeping and lawless; he hides in the shadows, he slithers in and out of caves in the darkest and most desolate regions of the world, preying on those unfortunates, who with great invention make those places their home; he lurks, and he cowers, ever vigilant, for he would not lose a single opportunity to destroy innocent life, to steal another's legitimate property and bend it to sinister purpose, to reduce to servitude the one who would only be his neighbor. As long as such as these are able in Afghanistan to harm our people and our interests, and to impede those people on whom they prey for daily subsistence, as those people seek to better themselves and secure a brighter future for their children, so long shall American arms be employed in Afghanistan."

There are those who say I was born in the wrong century.

Perhaps they are right.

I hope they are wrong.

Between Credulity and Incredulity, Naiveté and Jadedness, Simplicity and Sophistication

There is something to be found.

In English we call it, "trust".

The Romans called it fides.

I am mentioning this because the public exchange with my teacher, the Humbly Presumptuous one, has raised some legitimate questions about journalistic trust, and how we receive messages, hear stories, and take news generally.

The general concerns are there, and though they might have been occasioned by the Gates story, my concern was to avoid using the Gates story as a springboard for discussion of general problems that are amply illustrable by other means, without giving it the treatment it clearly deserves on its own merits.

You say you were incredulous, HP?

I think that is a sign of your moral sanity: I am reminded of some observations C.S. Lewis makes in Mere Christianity (if memory serves), to the effect that something has gone terribly wrong with us when we want to believe bad things we hear, even when we hear them about our worst enemies.

So let me reply to your reply to my reply with another question: what is it that makes us capable of trusting each other at all?

Fondly,

LD

An answer to the answer

I have no reading of the matter.

Mine was just a question.

I understand what is involved: racial prejudice (which lives in contemporary reality as well as the personal and collective memory of American society and its members, notwithstanding great strides forward).

I can understand this, though I have little to help me appreciate the rawness of America's experience of racism.

Until recently, racism, strictly speaking, was rather unknown in Italy, for the simple reason that there were virtually no people of non-European descent living in the country, and very few visitors.

Regional prejudices were strong, however, with people from the North looking down on people from the South.

When, back in the Fifties, many southern Italians moved to the city of Turin, for example, it was not unusual to find places with the notice, "for rent, save to Southerners".

The problem is becoming more strictily racist nowdays that Italy is favored destination of emigrants from North Africa and elsewhere.

Our experience of the phenomenon is very much different from that of African Americans, and of American society generally, though: people come to Italy of their own accord, not on slave ships.

The sensibilities are therefore different, and I recognize that.

As things stand, there was enough to my ears to raise the question, out of simple incredulity: I found it hard - and still find it extremely unpleasant - to believe that policemen might enter a man's house, and gratuitously manhandle him.

If you tell me that this can happen, I cannot but acknowledge the existence of a sad, though simple state of affairs.

An Answer to Humbly's Question

Dear Humbly Presumptuous,

The short answer is: no.

Prof. Gates' reaction to the behavior of the policemen is not only understandable: it is in a certain sense precisely the reaction of a sane man, whose rights have been violated.

This was not an exchange at a conference that became heated: this was the power of the state being used to drag a man from his own home and haul him to prison.

It is outrageous.

That Prof. Gates' reaction is more than simply understandable, is visible from another aspect as well: let me illustrate by analogy with pacifists.

The mistake pacifists make is that they assume to erect a personal Christian response to the call to charity, into a principle of justice.

As we are fond of saying: martyrdom may not be by proxy.

Prof. Gates was not simply a private citizen encountering a police officer having a bad day.

He was manhandled because of the color of his skin - and therefore a representative (in the Voegelinian sense of the truth of existence) of all African-Americans, who continue to suffer the indignity of being considered suspects only because of their pigmentation - and even of all Americans, for whom the home is still the ultimissimum refugium, to be defended at all costs, against any power whatsoever.

I strongly disagree with your reading of the matter.

Fondly,

LD

Shouldn't a wise man be capable of forbearance

A question to LD:

Isn't it possible that Prof. Gates is a bit paranoic?

I mean:

given his age, he belongs to a generation that has known a much more racist America;

given what he teaches, he is one who has made a job out of keeping memory of that America.

Yes, police officers can be very arrogant, enough to make even angels loose their temper.

But, isn't it precisely this what we are taught to do since we were babies: to keep under control our fits of anger?

A mature man, and, on the top of it, a doctor and professor, shouldn't be wise enough to exercise forbearance?

Readiness to take offence can make me suspect to be in the presence of a biased personality.

Yes, if police officers can make even angels loose their temper, how much more non-angels: like human beings tending to paranoia?

All the above is just a question from someone who used to take fire like nothing.

What, you mean you can't just smile your way into peace with your sworn enemies and domestic socialist paradise?

Found this Politico piece being featured on Yahoo!

No, Mr. President, the bad folks hate us because of who we are, not because of who our President used to be.

No, Mr. President, not even Congress is going to let you let them spend all of this and the next three generations' money.

I'm with Prof. Gates on this one...

I'd be pretty damned indignant, too.

As my friend said, this is not the Onion...

Link to story here.

The problem here, though, does not seem to me to be one of 'racial profiling'.

The problem here seems to me to be Prof. Gates' racist neighbor, who made the complaint, and the racist police officers who responded to the call at Prof. Gates' house.

LD

All men: who are they?

We are convinced that abortion is an awful thing.

Being so convinced, however, we must be able to say why; in the absence of reasons, there is no way that "we" might be convinced of the awfulness of abortion - at most, "I" could assert its awfulness.

Many people, even among Catholics, seem to think that this is the case, that we either do not or cannot go beyond the "I" of the speaker in his assertion of a certain confessional concomitant, that doesn't involve all men. In other words, that it is just a question of opinion concerning the beginning of life, when we can say a human person has taken shape.

First, when we say "person", we mean someone endowed with rights, like the famous ones about which the Declaration of Independence speaks.

LD and I discussed of the possible import of the Declaration of Independence on the discussion.

How about its famous "We hold this truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal..."?

I wanted to play it by objecting to the self-evidence, but he retorted that this stems from the concrete experience that led to the Declaration. It is not therefore an abstract logical category to which one can object.

Another question is the meaning of 'equal': how does it square with all the differences physical and moral we can find in people, men and women? But also this, even though of the utmost importance, doesn't lead to what I want to say now.

The whole point is in that "all men". The Declaration could be signed in good faith by people who owned slaves, starting from the same Jefferson who wrote it.

In short: we can hold that it is self-evident that all men are created equal. But, how do we define man?

Hence, the argument I want to make is this.

Historical and ethnographic evidence shows us that there is no society in which it doesn't hold the maxim, "Thou shalt not murder," by which they proscribe the taking of innocent human life - but this begs the question, for human beings are distinguished from other animals by their belonging to a certain group. Those in the group are human - those outside it might resemble humans, though they are not, or not quite, human (the examples abound, from Aristotle's barbarians to the inuit, whose name means quite simply, "the men" to the black slaves on a Southern plantation).

So, there is nothing evident in the extension we give to our holding homicide, slavery, torture, etc., as forbidden.

This extension comes from our holding "all men created equal", which we first encounter in the chilling symmetry of, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." The natural similarity of all men was then established as equality.

We need to recall, at this point, that the natural extension of the definition of man in physical space, to embrace all men wherever they come from, went hand in hand with the extension in time: i.e. with the prohibition of infanticide and abortion.

Given the essential continuity from conception on in the growth of the baby, a continuity that is not broken by birth, the humanity of a child is socially established when the child is accepted, and this acceptance is symbolized by the giving of a name to the newborn. It is pertinent to note that, under Roman law, the term foetus was a legal category that applied to a child from the moment of conception to the moment its father embraced it, at which point it became infans. When we read in the Didache that Christiani non abiceunt foetus, we encounter a principled rejection of the practice of infanticide - and a fortiori, of abortion.

In plain words: one extension involves the other, and negating the rights of a person to the baby from the moment of conception leaves the rights of all born men without any rational ground in nature.

With no awareness whatsoever of the implications, contemporary abortion rights activists would have us return to the primitive pagan Roman understanding of things; chillingly, in the third generation of abortionism, more than a dim awareness of the direct implications for the rights of newborns is present to many abortion rights advocates, as illustrated by, e.g. the President of the United States' erstwhile nay vote in the Illinois Born Alive Act.

Perhaps we ought not be so surprised he did not, or could not quite bring himself to quote the Declaration of Independence in his inaugural.

No time (Pace Prufrock)

This week is turning out to be far more hectic than I had suspected - please ahve patience as I negotiate the rapids.

When I am back on a slow stretch of water, you all shall know.

Best,
LD

TODAY IS BASTILLE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Let's read what Benedict says

I have always felt somewhat ill at ease with economic theory. Probably because my training in social things comes, together with classical political philosophy, from sociology and social-cultural anthropology.

I mean a teaching that views people as essentially "social animals", zooi politikoi in Greek. Now the encyclical Caritas in veritate sounds to me in line with the way I have learned to think about and understand human being and human things, generally.

Following his main stress of continuity in the Catholic tradition, the encyclical takes its start from underlining what is enduring in the message of Paul VI' Populorum Progressio. It is like Pope Benedict wanted to say: now I tell you the truth about it.

Populorum Progressio seemed to suffer of an inconsistency common in anthropological thinking about "underdeveloped" peoples: on one hand calling for their vocation to become participant in world commerce, on the other laying all the responsibility for their state on rich countries, so viewing them as mainly passive subjects of events on which they have no control whatsoever. That's why the new encyclical brings development back to vocation and responsibility.

Actually, with that acceleration of communication that we call globalization, each people is called to find in itself the cultural and spiritual resources to face commerce with other peoples. And many are at pains in doing so: not only among poorer countries, often falling in the area of Islam, but also among the richer ones, e.g. in Europe, which seems no longer to know why it exists.

But this is another story, which the Pope addressed in his previous encyclical. Today Europe seems to have nothing to say to anybody - unless it be to squeak and squeal an apology every so often, as it wallows in sentiments of guilt over its past wrongs.

I don't want to say that there were no such wrongs, mind you - and Africa has been the main victim of them. African nations' large and apparent inability to exploit their vast natural and human resources for their own advancement and the advancement of their peoples, is largely traceable to the circumstances and mode of European powers' abandonment of their colonial enterprises on the continent.

In their arrival, and again in their departure, Europeans destroyed African social structures, especially political ones (even as African Americans under the yoke of their three hundred years' servitude suffered not only the breakup of their families, but the near total disintegration of their family structures).

The nineteenth century division of Africa among European powers was the utmost of shame. It stopped the development of the African kingdoms toward political units capable of taking part in world commerce, scattering them into myriad little societies under a glass dome. And when the colonial dominion was no longer convenient, the same colonial powers washed their hands of it with decolonization, which left Africa cut into a series of States artificially defined by the old borders of colonial administration.

Caritas in veritate's view of this situation is anthropologically more accurate than that of Pope Paul's encyclical. The French sociologist Serge Latouche pointed out years ago that there is a solidarity still at work in Africa based on an economy of gift exchanges that allows people to survive, of which the official market economy doesn't take cognizance. This ethnographic reality is at the basis of the wish expressed in chapter III for an integration of the gift economy with the market economy. Framed, however, in the context of an embracing theory of gift that accounts also for market.

It is like saying: from society we can understand economics, from economics we cannot understand society. And because society makes sense only in the light of gift theory, that sense is eminently theological.

This should be kept in mind by Catholics prone to fall for the presidential rhetoric. With Obama they stay within the limits of homo oeconomicus, and of its inevitable counterpart, call it homo gubernativus, just slightly tempered by the slick theological charm of the President.

After all, to make abortion a matter of choice, is to make life a matter of economy under the aegis of government.

A little morning thought

A little moning thought: the sun shines, birds twitter, and the whole world calls for giving grace.

I am reading a book on a current in Buddhism, dedicated to the worship of the Buddha Amitabha, lord of a "paradise of the West", full of everything beautifull we can imagine, where all his devotees are reborn in flower of lotus, not to do anything but dance and play in the light he sheds, and listesn to his teaching.

There is only one funny thing: in rebirth, there are no women. Which sounds like: evryone is reborn male, in the sense, I imagine, of man turned into a sort of androginous.

No sex, a little like in our contemporary society, when they tell us that all is indifferent sex.

The sun shines, birds twitter, and my wife is at the telephone tolking with her doughter.

What would I have to give grace for, If she weren't there?

Person-Centeredness

Just a very brief observation, one that may be obvious to everyone, but one that needed making in a conversation I had today.

When Pope Benedict XVI talks about the need for an ethical framework to surround, or a healthy moral culture to undergird both the economy and our thinking about the economy, he is not talking about an externally-imposed superstructure or a kind of foundation from which economic activity might be separated.

Rather he is calling our attention to a fact: the economy is nothing other than the aggregate of energies directed to production and exchange of goods and services; those energies, however, are at their origin human energies - human beings engage in economic activities, and human beings are inherently, even essentially moral actors, so that human activity as such has a constitutive moral component.

LD

Gift: where did Pope Benedict take it from?

I found convincing indications on where theoretical imputs on chapter III of the encyclical came from.

I read in an interview to the german catholic philosopher Otto Kallscheuer (in the Italian opinion newspaper Il Foglio, of 7-9-09), that "the theme of gift and its gratuitousness is fruit of the teem work realized in the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences by Stefano Zamagni, speaker for the economy of brotherhood, by Alain Caillé, critic of the utilitarian paradigm and founder of the MAUSS (Mouvement anti utilitariste dans les sciences sociales), by the Nober prizes Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, even though the latter was not present".

It sounds convincing because Alain Caillé is author of a book on gift, Le tiers paradigme, in whic he declairs himself directly inspired by Marcell Mauss (to the point of makng anacrostic of his name).

However, in the pages Benedict signed there is an insight that goes beyond what I found in Caillé's book. Or at least that is what I read in it with the interpretation I gave of gratuitousness.

The ground inspiration might simply be the archetype of the good business man, as we can find in an old Hollywood movie. In Sabrina, Humphrey Bogart, businessman of great consequence, is organizing the marriage of his brother to launch a new enterprize. Asked why he does it, not for money nor for poweer, which he already has, he answers that he does it for its own sake, no other reason than the pleasure of building things and creating wealth. The answer, with its purely gratuitous motivations, sounds good to me, and it remains valid also after that he leaves behind everything for a more perfect gift, the gracious love of the girl Sabrina (a splendid Audrey Hepburn).

Who knows, Joseph Ratzinger might even have seen it.