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Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Crazy unnatural thoughts . . .
When rational arguments fail, you can always denounce the opposition as sick. (Bloggers suffer from an "addiction" to the Internet, of course.) Might as well invoke "Natural" Law. Staring into a computer screen for hours on end is almost as unnatural as using your peepee for unauthorized entertainment. Me, I think getting up when it's still dark and having to scrub frost off the glass windshield of a metal box so you can go and sit in an agitated state in the middle of a crowd of other metal boxes is profoundly unnatural! But then, no one put non-nocturnal me in charge of the Natural Law. If they did, then by the gods, I'd declare blogging one of its profoundest violations! And I'd still do it, because I think it's part of human nature to be unnatural. (Another reason it's natural to hate all humans!) posted by Eric at 11:12 PM
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Global Warming is cold!
I've been in New Jersey all day, and now I return and see that science has officially confirmed that Bush's Global Warming has ushered in an ICE AGE: The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age.Like I say, that's cold! Does the evil axis of the Bushitler McHalliburton Rechimplicans leave no spin unturned? I have to say, it's very clever of them to disguise global warming as an Ice Age. (Intelligent design indeed.) Fortunately, they can't fool science! posted by Eric at 06:17 PM | Comments (8)
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Eggs, Babs! Eggs!
Via Wired News... Recently, the Family Research Council, a powerful conservative Christian organization, was invited by Leon Kass, the former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, to submit suggestions for new IVF rules. What a thoughtful thing to do. Anything to further the national dialogue, eh? The Christian group demanded that "the practice of creating more embryos than can be safely implanted and brought to birth, the practice of freezing spare embryos and the practice of 'selective reduction' or selective abortion of 'defective' fetuses or of fetuses in excess of those that can be safely delivered, should all be condemned." Did they really demand? Or did they ask nicely? Further: "All biotechnologies which aid in the treatment of infertility should be restricted to use by married couples." Huh. Maybe they did demand. I hope they didn't use up all their wish juice, wishing for this stuff. Cause frankly, I don't think they've got a snowball's chance. In effect, the Family Research Council was advocating something like a law that took effect in Italy last year. There, all embryos created during fertility treatments must be implanted, not stored (even when there's a good chance one of them carries a fatal genetic disease); IVF is limited to heterosexual couples in "stable relationships;" and donor eggs and sperm are outlawed. As a result, success rates have declined, women have had to undergo more procedures because they cannot skip steps and use their own stored embryos, and many patients have gone to other countries. Because we desperately need one. Because if you don't watch those science guys like hawks, they'll try and clone somebody. Because the world...needs...order... The council's model seems to have been the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority of the United Kingdom, which strictly regulates the industry, tracks embryos and issues research licenses. You can read the whole thing here. posted by Justin at 05:40 PM | Comments (1)
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Multi Culture War?
I haven't been keeping up with San Francisco Bay area news as I should, but my attention was drawn to an interesting multicultural war story in Oakland, in which local Black Muslims vandalized a store owned by immigrants from the Mideast for selling alcohol to American blacks: About a dozen men wearing dark suits and bow ties did tens of thousands of dollars' worth of damage to San Pablo Market and Liquor on San Pablo Avenue and New York Market on Market Street after demanding the stores stop selling liquor to African Americans. The stores are owned by people of Middle Eastern descent.That was a few days ago. Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam quickly disavowed the group, maintaining that they are not part of the Nation of Islam. Minister Keith Muhammad, a mosque leader and representative of Farrakhan, released a statement Friday about Wednesday's violence.Wow. Not one, but two investigations! The grocers (apparently Yemenis) have vowed to defend themselves, and I don't blame them: OAKLAND — The president of the Yemini American Grocery Association said Saturday that grocers have the right to defend themselves if their stores are invaded like two West Oakland markets were hit Wednesday night.Sounds like these poor folks haven't managed to escape the Culture War they thought they'd left behind in the Mideast. The latest news is that Bey -- leader of the "investigation" for the Black Muslim Bakery -- has himself been arrested as one of the perps! OAKLAND — Yusef Bey IV, 19, the self-proclaimed heir to the Your Black Muslim Bakery franchise founded by his late father, Yusef Bey, surrendered to Oakland police Tuesday in connection with the vandalism of two West Oakland liquor stores a week ago.I don't know how or why this clerk allowed himself to be disarmed in this way, but it's shocking to see attempted enforcement of "Islamic Law" in the United States. The San Fransico Chronicle has more, including a report of arson at another store, and the abduction of the owner later found locked in a car trunk. "This is crazy. This is America," Hernen [the store manager] said. "They got hate in their heart." Yes, but will any brave prosecutor dare charge it as a "hate crime"? I doubt it. That's because multicultural hatred is not hatred. Sigh. What's being left out of the media reports is that the founder of the Black Muslim Bakery (and father of the accused), the late Dr. Yusef Bey (no idea what the doctorate was awarded for) was a major powerbroker in Oakland for many years. This summary of the life of Yusef Bey just drips with Multi Culti possibilities: As we regain African consciousness, it is inevitable that our lifestyle is going to revert to traditional customs and values, that will of course be at variance with American social values. So what? Gays and lesbians are out of the closet, why should the Afrocentric lifestyle of men like Dr. Bey and the women and children who love him, remain in the closet?A 2003 LA Times piece assessed Bey's life, noting that his empire began to unravel after charges of concubinage involving girls as young as 13: Many of his supporters say the charges are nonsense, and others say it makes no difference even if they are true. “He was a born leader in the sense of an African chief or a Muslim caliph,” says 62-year-old supporter Maleek Al Maleek “What is prohibited here is not prohibited in East India, where there are child marriages. I can show you chiefs in Africa who have 30 wives . . . . The ways of the high priests are not shared by the commoner.”Separate but not equal rules are needed, obviously.
The problem is that the guy who runs the site appears to be an unreliable promoter of pseudoscientific racist nonsense, so I am not sure that I can rely on him even to quote the LA Times accurately. (My intention, of course, was not to quote him; only the LA Times.) posted by Eric at 07:03 AM | Comments (5)
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When fingers fly, traffic spikes
Ian Schwartz has been linked on Drudge ("FINGERS FLY ON CNN..." -- with a picture, no less), and his server seems unable to handle what is obviously a huge spike in traffic. I can't open it, so this post will serve as congratulations to Ian (and a reminder to me to try the link later). UPDATE: I finally saw the video, which is another example of a small group of people (there were a hundred or so demonstrators) achieving enormous political leverage they do not deserve. They know that few people agree with them, so they concentrate their resources on carefully selected targets -- in this case a media bus -- in the hope that their hapless marks will confuse intimidation with "democracy." It often works. posted by Eric at 07:29 PM | Comments (2)
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Enjoying the heat
When the Philadelphia Inquirer is good, it is very, very good. And because I find myself criticizing the paper so often, I think I have a responsibility to speak up when I have something good to say about it. So it is with "Packing heat - and political punch" -- the title of Beth Gillin's review of Tammy Bruce's The New American Revolution: Tammy Bruce calls herself "a new radical individual," which conjures up a masked anarchist with a baseball bat running through the streets shouting "Death to the state!"Now that's good! And it's right on the front page of today's "Magazine" section along with a sexy (if I may say so) picture of Ms. Bruce. The Inquirer is simply letting Tammy Bruce speak her mind, and the readers who like what she says can go buy her book, while those who don't can go pound sand. Or go buy her book and then go pound sand! While I try not to brag much, I'm proud that I've linked Tammy Bruce's site from the very beginning of this blog, because I've always admired her, and I'm delighted to see that she's done as brilliant a job as a blogger as she has as an author and activist. I think it's a testament to her combination of irrefutable logic and irresistible charm that the Inquirer's treatment of her is so wonderfully fair. Yes there's more, and it's almost all very refreshing stuff. "I spent years compromising, and at times saying things I didn't totally agree with, in order to belong to the left," Bruce says, and she didn't become a true individual until she learned to reject group-think. "It was part of my growing up."Much the same thing happened to me. Group think and identity politics are a sickness that destroys the self. For me, blogging is a counterweight which helps the constant struggle for individualism against group-think and identity politics. Tammy Bruce's answer to the charge that America is locked in a war between competing camps? Despite all the media hoopla, most Americans abhor idiotarianism: But how can she presume to describe most Americans when everyone knows the country is polarized, split, and shouting insults across a red-blue divide?I think that the new American middle consists of this unacknowledged, much-feared libertarianism. It is, of course a direct threat to the phony power games which would force us to choose between, say, Jesse Jackson and Jerry Falwell. Despite the radicalism inherent in such talk of a libertarian middle, the Inquirer's conclusion is shockingly favorable to Tammy Bruce: "The power no longer resides with the elites. The power belongs to whoever wants to take it," says Tammy Bruce with utmost confidence, sounding for all the world like a Sixties lefty at the barricades and signifying that in the fractured and shifting terrain of American political culture, labels have lost all meaning.How very true. Labels have lost all meaning, because so many of them were bogus to begin with. At this rate, the Inquirer itself will defy all attempts to label it. I couldn't be more pleased. posted by Eric at 05:56 PM | Comments (2)
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Being against violence is way cooler than violence!
(Except where violence is way cooler!) As the last post reminded me, a number of people on the left (presumably including the Green Party) believe that there is no difference between Israelis defending themselves and the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians by Palestinian terrorists. And to some of these people, "peace activism" means opposing Israeli self defense while supporting Palestinian terrorism. While murderous leftists have long intrigued me (and I've known some), I think there's an antisocial aspect to this -- as several posts by Dr. Helen (aka the InstaWife) have reminded me (to the point where I'm feeling a bout of morbid nostalgia coming on). The contradiction posed by such a species as "violent peace activists" is so self-apparent that most peace activists are forced to sublimate their natural hostility lest they look hypocritical -- or even ridiculous. Support for murderous radicalism therefore must be couched in terms of support for peace, opposition to war, advocacy of the downtrodden, belief in a better world based on "social justice," and above all an abiding belief that the violent people being championed are victims. (Usually, they are considered "victims" of the the activists' own country or close allies.) Dr. Helen's touches on what I think is a similar mechanism in her post about vegetarianism: I had a tremendous amount of free-floating hostility within me as well as downright aggression--I thought being a pacifist (which included being a vegetarian) could control my inner feelings of rage. But it only sublimated those feelings for a while. I sat quietly while peers at school made fun of me. But I learned the truth about what worked when one of my siblings brought down a boy who taunted me about my wild kinky hair on the school bus with threats of violence. My pacifism did not work.While I am not saying that her pacifism was ever the equivalent of leftist support for violent people or causes, contrast it to her realism today: I now look skeptically at people who preach vegetarianism to others as a type of religion--they are often the same ones who tout peace and brotherhood while trying to mask their feelings of aggression. My husband once said that he did not worry about violence from peace activists but frankly, I would rather hang out with a crowd of hard core gun addicts. I find them more capable of understanding and controlling their own aggression. People who preach peace in the face of appalling violence deny their aggression and target it at others who are not deserving of it or who are trying to protect them. I cannot justify that.This is someone who gets it, IMHO. I think that many pacifists and "peace activists" have the same violent urges that we all have, but because they deny them and suppress them, they tend to come out in indirect ways, such as the "peaceful" position that there is no moral difference between terrorism and a country's self defense against it. Ditto for the gun control pacifists who seem unable to distinguish between armed criminals and law abiding citizens armed for self defense. The guns and are equally evil. Without them, the world would be a better place. Frankly, it terrifies me that there exist people whom I have never threatened in any way who would use force to disarm me and leave me unable to defend myself against violent criminals. And make no mistake about it; that's precisely what gun control is all about. I believe that sublimated rage is a major factor, as is pure hatred of people who would defend themselves. Doubtless they would claim that I am hateful for owning a gun and that my being armed to defend myself is also a form of sublimated rage. Even if we grant them this argument, the fact is that I am not bothering anyone. I am not an aggressor in any way; I am only in a state of preparedness to defend myself. I am not making anyone do anything, nor am I asking anyone to do anything except leave me alone. It's plain to me that those who will not leave me alone, who would either invade my house as criminals, or cause the government to invade it to take away my guns, these are the aggressors. If anything, I am the true pacifist. Yet the people who'd use violence to disarm me and leave me without my defenses are the ones claiming to be pacifists. Such a contradiction is what results when deeply antisocial feelings are allowed to masquerade as precisely the opposite of what they are. Dr. Helen also touches on this mindset in her discussion of leftist celebrities who rally behind violent criminals: I have very strong feelings about celebrities who rally to get murderers sentences reduced or released. The legal system should deal with this, not a group of actors. It just makes me think of the Norman Mailer fiasco.While Mailer and many leftists claimed at the time to have been horrified by Jack Abbott's crimes, I think "crocodile tears" more accurately describes their mindset. Similarly, I think the people who want Mumia freed because they claim he's innocent really know he did it. And (I believe) many of them secretly approve! (Ditto the Tookie Williams supporters.) They keep that a dirty little secret, because, like the people they claim to detest as "violent" and "evil," they too are violent and evil. Except they can barely control it. Like the unacknowledged mob they are, they thirst for blood. But they can't admit it, so it's all sublimated under the rubric of "saving" a murderer claimed to be "innocent." No such nonsense for Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn: Dorhn incited the assembled radicals to join the war against "Amerikkka" and create chaos and destruction in the "belly of the beast." Her voice rising to a fevered pitch, Dohrn raised three fingers in a "fork salute" to mass murderer Charles Manson, whom she proposed as a symbol to her troops. Referring to the helpless victims of the Manson Family as the "Tate Eight" (the pregnant actress Sharon Tate had been stabbed in her womb with a fork), Dohrn shouted: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!"While they're much more slick, today's activists are more lame. Instead of actually supporting the crimes of someone like Manson, they meekly nominate murderer Tookie Williams for the Nobel Prize. Why? Because nominating murderers for the Nobel Prize is cool, that's why! All this leaves me with only one question to ask. What the hell is wrong with nominating Charles Manson for the Nobel Prize? Charlie never killed anyone, plus he loves the earth. Read the Truth. We need to support the earth and get past this violence thing, folks!
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UPDATE (12/02/05): Baldilocks calls the celebrities on their B.S. by applying something I love -- basic logic: If Misters Foxx and Dogg really believe everything that Mr. Williams says about his case, let them be brave enough to ask Arnold to pardon the “innocent man.”(Via Pajamas Media.) If Tookie is innocent, his sentence shouldn't be commuted to life imprisonment; he should be FREED. He may or may not have reformed his life, but even if he has, that's still not innocence. They can't have it both ways. UPDATE (12/03/05): Hube, at La Shawn Barber's blog has a real shocker about Oakland, California students being "educated" about Tookie by scolding activists claiming Tookie was innocent because the jury was "all white." (A claim Joanne Jacobs debunks as a lie.) posted by Eric at 03:16 PM | Comments (2)
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I just hope tolerance doesn't beget intolerance . . .
Joining the likes of such groups as Aztlan.net, the Green Party is calling for a boycott of Israel: 1. The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) publicly calls for divestment from and boycott of the State of Israel until such time as the full individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people are realized.Via Little Green Footballs. The anti-Israel movement appears to have been spearheaded by the Wisconsin Green Party and by Madison activists affiliated with this University of Wisconsin site, which also champions Rachel Corrie and is organizing against Caterpillar (subject of an earlier post, and an example of bad art here.) What is it that keeps the activists in Madison stoked with such endless moral fervor, anyway? I lived in Berkeley for years, and while Madison was always one of our chief competitors, I never quite understood the dynamics of the latter. Why Madison? Perhaps I should relax. According to Forbes Magazine, Madison's openness and tolerance for all things (including radical ideas) may have sewn the seeds of its own destruction -- by capitalist forces! This hotbed of radicalism has grown into a seedbed of biocapitalism, propelling the region to the number one slot on our list of Best Places for Business and Careers. Scientists are developing artificial skin (at a company called Stratatech), vitamin D therapies for patients with chronic kidney disease (Bone Care International) and proteins that inhibit cancer-cell development (Quintessence Biosciences). Such biotech ventures cluster around the university and nearby Milwaukee, home of the Medical College of Wisconsin and a unit of GE Healthcare (2003 revenues: $10 billion), which acquired Lunar, a Madison maker of bone densitometers and ultrasound equipment, in 2000. Some 120 technology companies employing 8,000 people have sprung up in Madison during the past decade. Average annual salary: $60,000.There's a lot more. Perhaps some of the more bitter Madisonians are feeling left out of the fun, and are doing what bitter people have so often done in history. (Blaming the Jews.) All things considered, I still think this Green Party is funnier. posted by Eric at 01:00 PM
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Same dog, different result?
This news report about the sicko accused of burying a puppy alive is horrifying: ST. CLOUD, Fla. -- An anonymous tip led animal control officers to a shocking case of animal cruelty. A puppy was found buried alive in a yard near New York Avenue and 192 in St. Cloud. Osceola County Animal Control said they had never seen anything like this.Something not mentioned in the story became immediately apparent to me when I saw the picture of the poor puppy: ![]() Unfortunately, the puppy appears to be a pit bull. Sigh. And, of course, no one would blame it for the conduct of its abusive master. Nor would they blame pit bulls and demand that they be banned. Not this time! But if that same tortured puppy had reached maturity and mauled a child as a result of the demented state which often results from such abuse, the outcry would have been very different. Scum like the guy who buried his dog should be punished to the extent the law allows. Unfortunately, most of them aren't caught. While I can't help wishing that the guy's dog had survived to maturity and mauled his owner to death, the problem with that is that in the media story which would result, the thug would be the victim, and his dog the villain. And all "pit bulls" -- like my dog Coco -- would be blamed as "the problem." Which means that our communitarian society might pass laws making me into a criminal. Because of someone else's crime! posted by Eric at 11:53 AM | Comments (5)
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Why I Am Not A Burkean Conservative
Get comfortable. This is going to be a long one. All of the variations in typeface were added after the fact by yours truly. Likewise, all of the links. C.S. Lewis on Moral Education
By practicing such cavalier reductionism, a map of the human Tao is created that seems to me to be too compact and tidy, even if we opt for the deluxe 3D multi-axial projection. We might display it as a vaguely liver shaped mass (all those lobes, you know), with smoothly extending, yet still decorously restrained pseudopodia. Add back all the excised behaviors and it more closely resembles a sea urchin, the central mass of squishy consensus customs surrounded by unpredictably bizarre extreme behaviors. I just don't think it's fair to wish away the spines. And yet, Lewis himself would find my objections irrelevant. In his own words... The following illustrations of the Natural Law are collected from such sources as come readily to the hand of one who is not a professional historian. The list makes no pretence of completeness...But (1) I am not trying to prove its validity by the argument from common consent. Its validity cannot be deduced. For those who do not perceive its rationality, even universal consent could not prove it. (2) The idea of collecting independent testimonies presupposes that 'civilizations' have arisen in the world independently of one another...It is by no means certain that there has ever (in the sense required) been more than one civilization in all history... Fair enough. Even though he's doing a nose count of different traditions, locating and tagging the moral commonalities, such samplings are ultimately a mere illustrative convenience, and not binding. Back to Meilaender... Lewis provides an illustration of the Tao in That Hideous Strength, the third and last volume in his space fantasy series. He himself subtitled the book “A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups,” and in the short preface he wrote for the book, he says: “This is a ‘tall story’ about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man.” We can follow his hint and illustrate the Tao by remembering the scene in That Hideous Strength in which the sinister Frost begins to give young professor Mark Studdock a systematic training in what Frost calls “objectivity.” This is a training designed to kill in Mark all natural human preferences. Hmmm. The moral inheritance of mankind is not susceptible to rational analysis. It merely is. Rather than opening a discussion on morality, Meilaender seems more intent on closing and locking it. The Need for Moral Education Which no doubt explains creatures like myself. Now, where did my trousers get to? Why not? Because—although Lewis does not put it this way in Abolition of Man, a decidedly non-theological piece of writing—human reason and desire are disordered by sin. What Iris Murdoch once called the “fat relentless ego” constantly blinds us, so that the mere fact of opening our eyes does not guarantee that we will see truly. Indeed, if Lewis really held that the precepts of the Tao are “obvious,” the central theme of Abolition of Man could make little sense; for it is a book about our need for moral education. Who then were the first educators? How did they discover the truth? We may be very bright and very rational, but we will be what Lewis calls “trousered apes.” Lacking proper moral education, our freedom to make moral choices will be a freedom to be inhuman in any number of ways. The paradox of moral education is that all genuine human freedom—a freedom that does not turn out to be destructive—requires that we be disciplined and shaped by the principles of the Tao. Our appetites and desires may readily tempt us to set aside what moral reason requires. Hence, from childhood our emotions must be trained and habituated, so that we learn to love the good (not just what seems good for us). And only as our character is thus shaped do we become men and women who are able to “see” the truths of moral reason. Again, I'm puzzled. From where do the shapers derive their correct truths? How can our teachers discern good from evil on our behalf? Moral insight, therefore, is not a matter for reason alone; it requires trained emotions. It requires moral habits of behavior inculcated even before we reach an age of reason. “The head rules the belly through the chest,” as Lewis puts it. Reason disciplines appetite only with the aid of trained emotions. Seeing this, we will understand that moral education does more than simply enable us to “see” what virtue requires. It also enables us, at least to some extent, to be virtuous. For the very training of the emotions that makes insight possible has also produced in us traits of character that will incline us to love the good and do it. To call this a circular argument is to understate with extreme prejudice. Moral education, then, can never be a private matter, and Lewis follows Aristotle in holding that “only those who have been well brought up can usefully study ethics.” Hence, the process of moral education, if it is to succeed, requires support from the larger society. Ethics is, in that sense, a branch of politics. This argument is spherical. In particular, it reminds me of a Magdeburg sphere. Perhaps you've seen one. It consists of two metal hemispheres joined together to form a full sphere. As air is pumped out, the two parts are pushed together by atmospheric pressure. Hermetically sealed, the sphere contains absolutely nothing, yet that nothing ensures that the sphere cannot be opened, not even by two teams of horses pulling in opposite directions. The sphere becomes a sealed vacuous hollow, unbreachable. Thus, for instance, to take an example that Lewis could not precisely have anticipated, consider the problem of protecting children from internet pornography (which the U.S. Congress attempted in what was known as the “Child Online Protection Act,” but which the Supreme Court ruled, in Ashcroft v. ACLU, was in probable violation of the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees). True as it may be that this protection should be the primary responsibility of parents, they face daunting obstacles and almost inevitable failure without a supportive moral ecology in the surrounding society. Moral education, if it is to be serious, requires commitment to moral principles that go well beyond the language of freedom—principles that are more than choice and consent alone. Moral education should go well beyond choice and consent. I like it. It's catchy. We should not think of this moral education as indoctrination, but as initiation. Why not? It is initiation into the human moral inheritance: “men transmitting manhood to men.” We initiate rather than indoctrinate precisely because it is not we but the Tao that binds those whom we teach. We have not decided what morality requires; we have discovered it. We transmit not our own views or desires but moral truth—by which we consider ourselves also to be bound. It's kind of like watching a car crash, isn't it? Let's recap. First, there is an objective morality in the universe. But it's really hard to figure out. You can't use logic or reason. Induction can't get the job done. The best thing you can do is just "see" it. Even that usually doesn't work. A firm guiding inflence is called for. Training, and lots of it. From an early age. Without it you're not even qualified to discuss these matters. Here, have a banana. Don't get any on your trousers. So far, so good. But now it gets tricky. Who should train you? Wise elders. Tradition. Wholesome tradition, wholesomely imparted. Call it initiation, not indoctrination. Because why? Because your teachers went through what you're going through, back in the day. Tradition has its own reasons, that reason knows nothing of. Everything is a big mystery. Hence, moral education is not an exercise of power over future generations. To see what happens when it becomes an exercise of power by some over others, when we attempt to stand outside the Tao, we can look briefly at two ways in which Lewis’ discussion of morality in The Abolition of Man takes shape in That Hideous Strength, his “‘tall story’ of devilry.” That's really nice. Artistic even. But if he'd put in just a little more effort, he could have selected lines that formed a coherent narrative of his own. That would conform more closely to the activities he's denigrating. This train of thought was first suggested to me by one of the findings of the Human Genome Project, a finding that got quite a bit of attention in news articles announcing (in February, 2001) the completion of that project by two groups of researchers. We were told that the number of genes in the human genome had turned out to be surprisingly small—that human beings have, at most, perhaps twice as many genes as the humble roundworm (downsized even more with new findings in 2004, so that human beings and roundworms have about the same number of genes)—and that the degree of sequence divergence between human and chimpanzee genomes is quite small. Considering the complexity of human beings in relation to roundworms and even chimpanzees, it seemed surprising that, relatively speaking, much less complex organisms should not have far fewer genes than human beings. I would hope that some of the links I've chosen demonstrate just how badly we can treat each other, with no recourse to science at all. Indeed, we've been treating each other quite badly for several millenia now, with nary a test tube in sight. This is not to say that science can't be perverted and used for bad ends. But since we've already learned how to torture each other to death, wholesale and retail, it's not really all that enabling is it? A few Pathan women with nail clippers can do amazing things. The Abolition of Manhood? Simple nomadic horse barbarians were technically capable of raising pyramids of severed heads, over and over again. And while they did it, they were observing the moral niceties of their own sacred traditions, imparted, no doubt, at their daddy's knees. Where do we go when Taos collide? From this angle, developments in biotechnology are likely to affect most our attitudes toward birth and breeding. But there remains still the fact of death, and once we take free responsibility for shaping our destiny, we can hardly be content to accept without challenge even that ultimate limit. When Mark Studdock is asked to trample on a crucifix as the final stage in his training in “objectivity,” he is—even though he is not a Christian—reluctant to obey. For it seems to him that the cross is a picture of what the Crooked does to the Straight when they meet and collide. Mark has chosen the side of what he calls simply the Normal . He has, that is, begun to take his stand within the Tao. But then he finds himself wondering, for the first time, about the possibility that the side he has chosen might turn out to be, in a sense, the “losing” side. “Why not,” he asks himself, “go down with the ship?” I bet you could see it coming. There are things we might do to survive—or to help our species survive or advance or, even, just suffer less—which it would nonetheless be wrong or dishonorable to do. Duh. Yet another reason to abolish professional bioethicists would be their propensity for stating the obvious while imagining that they're somehow enlightening us. They sweat, and strain, and eventually they pass a stony, gnarled fewmet which we're supposed to oooh and ahhh over. Look, he made some wisdom for us. Indeed, we do not have to look very far around in our own world—no farther, for instance, than the controversies about embryonic stem cell research—to see how strongly we are tempted to regard as overriding the claims of posterity for a better and longer life. “We want,” Lewis’ Screwtape writes, “a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the Future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.” Here comes my favorite line in the whole address. Better to remember, as Roonwit the Centaur writes to King Tirian in The Last Battle—the seventh and final volume in Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia—that all worlds come to an end, and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy. Nor should we neglect the instructive Doom that Came to Sarnath. Go, go and ask the Numenoreans. Then go tell it on the mountain. This is at least something of what Lewis still has to teach us about the education we need to make and keep us human. In the modern world it is the task of moral education to set limits to what we will do in search of the rainbow’s end—to set limits, lest that desire should lead to the abolition of man. “For the wise men of old,” Lewis writes, “the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.” But when freedom becomes not initiation into our moral inheritance but the freedom to make and remake ourselves, the power of some men over others, it is imperative that we remind ourselves that moral education is not a matter of technique but, rather, of example, habituation and initiation. And, as Lewis says, quoting Plato, those who have been so educated from their earliest years, when they reach an age of reason, will hold out their hands in welcome of the good, recognizing the affinity they themselves bear to it.
Gilbert Meilaender, the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Professor of Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University and a fellow of the Hastings Center , is a member of President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and has also taught at the University of Virginia and at Oberlin College . He has served on the board of directors of the Society of Christian Ethics, as an associate editor of Religious Studies Review, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Religious Ethics, where he currently is an associate editor. Dr. Meilaender has published numerous articles and books, including Friendship: A Study in Theological Ethics; Faith and Faithfulness: Basic Themes in Christian Ethics; and Body, Soul and Bioethics. The above is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on September 12, 2005, at a Center for Constructive Alternatives seminar on the topic, “C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Inklings.” Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu. The opinions expressed in Imprimis are not necessarily the views of Hillsdale College. posted by Justin at 10:50 AM | Comments (8)
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What Mayor Street's critics "don't read"
In another story that wants to be an editorial, the Philadelphia Inquirer's Marcia Gelbart is having trouble understanding why Mayor Street got booed at a U2 concert last summer, and contrasts Street's "velcro" with Ronald Reagan's "teflon": During a U2 concert here last month, lead singer Bono gave a shout-out to Mayor Street, thanking him for allowing the city to host Live 8 in July. The crowd booed.Well, some of them read the Inquirer. And while the paper's archives are only temporary, there's still plenty of information available on line about the huge scandal known as "pay to play." There are even web sites like this devoted to stopping it. And blogs like this. And this. On the inside pages, today's article mentions the pay-to-play scandal: Equally as significant, the pay-to-play probe tied Street to an unappetizing crew of defendants. Street's former city treasurer is in jail. A Muslim cleric who is a longtime supporter of the mayor's is appealing a seven-year sentence. Nine other people have been convicted.The pay-to-play scandal was much bigger than the Inquirer makes it appear now. How it works is explained here: As a political insider with the ear of the Mayor and officials throughout the Street administration, including City Auditor Corey Kemp, White is accused by the FBI of directing the distribution of these lucrative bond deals to various banks and lenders, notably Commerce Bank. In exchange for political contributions to his PACs, White provided inside information on other contractor’s competitive bids as well as, according to the FBI, directly ordering various members of the Street administration to deliver non-competitive contracts to those lenders and contractors that “played ball” with White and Kemp. Other financial rewards given to buy White’s influence include extraordinarily generous personal loans to among others Mayor Street, White himself, Kemp and White’s girlfriend, Renee Knight. Lavish meals, junkets to the Super Bowl, and lucrative “consulting” contracts were among the rewards White is accused of receiving in exchange for city contracts. White is also accused of landing exclusive airport food concessions, service contracts and government printing contracts for his wife, members of his family and Knight.(More here.) Despite the contention that Street supports ethics reforms, his anti-reform allies on the City Council -- a group known as "the Status Quo 5" have been able to defeat pay-to-play reform legislation. Not only is the name of Ron White left out of today's The indictment rests in part on conversations monitored by the government pursuant to judicial authorization for approximately nine months during 2003. During that time, according to the indictment, White and Kemp openly discussed their criminal scheme, in which Kemp permitted White to take over Kemp’s official decision-making in exchange for benefits from White and others. For example, on February 12, 2003, while discussing the selection of financial services firms favored by White, White stated, “well, we moving s---, ain't we Corey? . . . there ain’t nobody in it but me and you now.” Kemp replied, “That’s it, everybody else out the picture, huh?”It was fortunate for Mayor Street that his close friend Ron White died of fast moving pancreatic cancer before the trial. But the Inquirer and other local papers covered this scandal extensively. I read about it, and wrote about it extensively in this blog. And I'd be willing to bet that the nameless little people in the booing crowd had read about it too. Of course, these days it's gotten more and more difficult to read about it much less find the details -- what with all the disappearing links. (Occasionally, however a cached piece like this will still turn up. . . But the days in the life of a Google cache are numbered, and sooner or later the critics Street says "don't read" won't be able to.) I don't want to bore my readers, but here's just one example of a Street tidbit once available on on line at Philly.com, but which can now be found only at blogs like this: A HIGH-RANKING Commerce Bank official told his boss in 2002 that Mayor Street had approached him after a City Hall meeting and asked about refinancing the mayor's home mortgage.That's the sort of thing that might cause a local crowd to boo at a U2 event. (Even critics who "don't read" but still have a memory cache. . .) MORE: While the "Duke" Cunningham scandal also involves a form of "pay-to-play," it can at least be argued that there seems to be a higher standard at work in Washington. (Occasionally.) AND MORE: At the risk of being a bore, another example (in another disappeared news story saved here) shows how deep the corruption runs in this city: In spite of contract language saying that airport-concession opportunities should be spread "to as many different subtenants as possible," the city allowed the same politically juiced bar-owner, Eric J. Blatstein, a $36,000 contributor to Street, to control eight bars in airport terminals. Blatstein's partners in the bars included White's physician-wife, Aruby Odom-White, the wife and daughters of former state Sen. Frank Salvatore, the wife of late South Philadelphia political potentate Henry J. "Buddy" Cianfrani, and a woman identified by federal authorities as Ron White's paramour, Janice Renee Knight. Isdell has refused to answer questions about the situation.BTW, the "South Philadelphia political potentate Henry J. "Buddy" Cianfrani" went to prison for corruption in the 1970s. Few remember stuff like that. Even airport security is alleged to have been corrupted by the scandal: Robinson contends that she was denied promotion, transferred to a meaningless job, and shunned by her fellow workers and supervisors because she raised questions about the grate at Blatstein's property - a restaurant known as Cibo in the new international terminal.I know how boring this is, but one of my pet peeves is that I hate to see information disappear. What I really ought to be posting about is the role of bloggers in breaking the corruption scandal which just caused the Canadian government to fall. If the Canadian government had had its way, few would have known about the scandal, and the no-confidence vote might not have occurred. (Now, if they'd just been able to get the UN to silence Captain Ed..... ) Mayor Street said he would sign all of the bills that passed yesterday, which included legislation to ban big donors from receiving city financial assistance worth more than $50,000. Only Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell opposed that measure.I don't know what accounts for the "dramatic change." As to the provision that failed, Street and his allies were against it, and Councilman Michael Nutter illuminates: Street had criticized the one measure that failed yesterday, an effort to restrict competitively bid contracts, arguing that bans on big donors could effectively eliminate low bidders from some projects and needlessly complicate the procurement process. Those doubts were shared in Council by the six members who traditionally vote with Street - Blackwell, Darrell L. Clarke, Blondell Reynolds Brown, Juan F. Ramos, Rick Mariano, and Donna Reed Miller - as well as two others, W. Wilson Goode Jr. and Marian Tasco.Having an "independent board" to oversee ethics sounds like a good idea. But then, who decides who gets to sit on the board? posted by Eric at 07:53 AM
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This Title Will Be Released On May 16, 2006
If you're as big a fan of Vernor Vinge as I am, this should interest you. His newest novel is only five and a half months away. Rainbows End (Zones of Thought) Thanks Amazon.com! Here's their bland summary... Four time Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge has taken readers to the depths of space and into the far future in his bestselling novels A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Now, he has written a science-fiction thriller set in a place and time as exciting and strange as any far-future world: San Diego, California, 2025. So he's explicitly labeling it as a "Zones of Thought" story. I wouldn't have expected that. Here's the cover art (Just so you'll know what to look for). Is that a bunny rabbit gazing pensively out over the City of the Future? He seems to be wearing clothing of some sort. For your listening pleasure, here's a keynote presentation Professor Vinge delivered in September at Accelerating Change 2005. And here's a story set in the same milieu as the upcoming novel, available as an eBook. A brief sample follows... Final exam week was always chaos at Fairmont Junior High. The school's motto was "Trying hard not to become obsolete"--and the kids figured that applied to the faculty more than anyone else. This semester they got through the first morning--Ms. Wilson's math exam--without a hitch, but already in the afternoon the staff was tweaking things around: Principal Alcalde scheduled a physical assembly during what should have been student prep time.
posted by Justin at 07:50 AM | Comments (1)
| TrackBacks (0) Monday, November 28, 2005
Ramsey Clark speaks truth!
According to Drudge, Saddam Hussein says he's still president: A defiant Saddam has refused to recognize the court and has declared himself president of Iraq.The BBC reports that Saddam is being represented by Ramsey Clark, has taken to carrying a Koran (despite his previous aversion to religion), and harangued the judge about occupiers: He was similarly argumentative on Monday, complaining about the fact that he had to climb four floors to the courtroom because the lift was broken.What I want to know is why Ramsey Clark seems to be so alone in honestly recognizing what logically flows from the antiwar position. Quite simply, if the war was wrong, and if the U.S. occupation is wrong, then it's wrong for Saddam Hussein to be on trial. By all logic his overthrow was illegitimate and he should still be president. Why are his supporters so silent? UPDATE: The forward thinking Lee Harris was thinking along similar lines way back in 2003: Bush misled the American people, arguing that Saddam Hussein should be removed from power because he possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. But it turns out that this was all a pack of self-serving lies. From which it follows that we should never have fought the Iraq war, and, furthermore, that Saddam Hussein should never have been removed from his position at the head of the Iraqi government.
Sheesh! (This makes Saddam look more like my dog Coco than Michael Moore. And poor Coco finds the word "bark" most offensive in this context!) posted by Eric at 01:35 PM | Comments (12)
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But what do you call it when you're sick of attrition?
at·tri·tion n. Bill Roggio says U.S. soldiers and Marines are frustrated with the media: These guys are extremely frustrated with the media and make no bones about their distaste for those who are undermining the war effort by calling for withdrawal.(Via Glenn Reynolds.) They must love the Philadelphia Inquirer. I share the frustration of the soldiers and Marines. It is as if there's a professional, well-financed effort to reach into every American home with constant calls for withdrawal from Iraq. While I can ignore it, it's becoming clear to me that many people can't. They believe what they read in the papers, and much as I hate to say this, public opinion appears to be fickle and too easily influenced. I guess it should renew my faith that there is still support for the war. People are certainly free to have the opinion that the war is wrong. But if those holding the antiwar mindset are charged with shaping public opinion, and they deliberately, constantly undermine support for the war effort, then it begs the question of whether the real war of attrition is in Iraq. posted by Eric at 07:57 AM
| TrackBacks (0) Sunday, November 27, 2005
High fashion model remains undiscovered!
While she may have missed out on Black Friday's shopping extravaganza, Coco wants to her fans to know that it wasn't because of any lack of interest in glamor, but because her master didn't take her anywhere. Sleek and svelte, Coco is very glamorous -- and rapidly coming into her prime!
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Imagine how she'd look in more sophisticated surroundings. . . MORE: In the background behind Coco and to the right, a tree has grown around some old metal which appears to have once been part of a rail switching apparatus or something: ![]() Sheesh. The things a girl has to put up with to be fashionable these days. posted by Eric at 05:03 PM
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Why disillusion heroes? In a (Sunday-after-Thanksgiving) front page headline, the Philadelphia Inquirer is claiming that Army Spec. John Kulick (who was killed last August) was "A war supporter disillusioned in Iraq." Expecting to find some evidence that Kulick had in fact been disillusioned, I read through this huge piece, only to discover that while he had expressed vari |