Out of Town

I'm taking off for a week to get out of town so my blogging will have to be in hiatus until then.

Eastwood's Straw Men

Having just watched Gran Torino, I was surprised to find Eastwood taking another shot at the Catholic Church. The last one was Million Dollar Baby, which drew a lot of controversy over its message over euthanasia. In both films Eastwood plays a cantankerous old man who bullies a young, inexperienced priest. He always gets the better of the conversation, leaving the Priest slack-jawed.

If he means it as simply a ribbing, then the films would not have anti-Catholic animus I am suggesting. But in both movies he engages the priests in a serious conversation and at a crucial moment in the story. And both times Catholicism is depicted negatively.

In Million Dollar Baby Eastwood’s character, Frankie Dunn, has to decide whether he will euthanize a loved one (Hilary Swank’s character). He goes to the priest, Fr. Horvak, for advice. At this point the viewer might think the previous conversations were not to be taken seriously since Frankie sought Fr. Horvak and not the other way around. Moreover, he would expect Fr. Horvak, as a representative for Catholicism, to explain the Church’s teaching on euthanasia. Instead, he says, “Forget about God or heaven and hell. If you do this thing, you'll be lost. Somewhere so deep you'll never find yourself again.” A professed agnostic couldn’t have said it better himself. The implied standard is the autonomous individual and being “true to yourself.”

In light of this scene, I can see why Michael Medved argued that the film’s story is just a cover for a pro-euthanasia tract. The Catholic Church is the most visible and vocal opponent of euthanasia so putting a priest in such a conversation and then distorting the Church’s teaching is one way to get people to come around on the issue; A dishonest way, but a way nevertheless.

Gran Torino, Eastwood’s most recent film, deals with gang violence. He plays Walt Kowalski, an old man in a crime infested neighborhood who decides to do something about the violence. Having made fun of the priest, Father Janovich, the entire film, Walt wants to go to confession with him before he faces the local gang. Again, the viewer might think the earlier conversations between the two did not really reflect Walt’s intentions since he is willing to confess to Fr. Janovich now. But his confession turns out to be a big joke as his list of sins is so insignificant that Fr. Janovich becomes disgusted with him. During the entire film, Janovich has suspected Walt has been hiding something and he is right about that. Walt killed an unarmed man in the Korean War and received a medal for it. The guilt has plagued him ever since. Unfortunately, he confesses that to Thao, the boy he is mentoring, not Fr. Janovich. And the reason for that is obvious: he doesn’t take the “Padre” and his Church seriously. To add insult to injury, Eastwood puts these words in Fr. Janovich’s mouth at the end of the film: “Walt definitely had no problem calling it like he saw it. But he was right. I knew really nothing about life or death, until I got to know Walt... and boy, did I learn.” The young priest is taught how the world really works by the seasoned stoic. Humility is a virtue, but at the very least Eastwood could have depicted the Padre with some self-respect.

The Opium Wars & Drug Legalization

MercatorNet has an excellent article outlining the history of the Chinese Opium Wars. What I want to focus on here is the last stage of the history. Due to the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, China was forced to legalize the importation of opium which eventually led to the domestic production of the drug. Here is the result:

The prevalence of opium consumption in China skyrocketed in the 19th century,
from about 3 million opium smokers in the 1830s, to 15 million opium addicts by
1890, or about 3 percent of the population at the time. According to the Chinese
delegation to the International Opium Commission of Shanghai (1909), this
increased to about 21.5 million by 1906. Others put the number close to 40
million people in 1890, or about 10 percent of the population, growing to
unknown levels from there. According to official Chinese figures, opium
consumption affected 23.3 percent of the male adult population and 3.5 percent
of the female adult population of China in 1906. Other estimates ranged from 13
percent to 27 percent for the male adult population of the country. By any
estimate, China was consuming between 85 percent and 95 percent of global opium
supply at the beginning of the 20th century. Never before or since has the world
known a drug problem of this scale and intensity.

Drug Legalization led to a proliferation in its use. This seems to be a rather obvious fact and a reader might wonder why the author chose to belabor the point with so many statistics. It might be because this obvious fact is not so obvious to many today. I have come across several people who deny this claim, though it seems self-evident to me.

Millennials on Marriage: "Not Yet"

James Poulos has pointed out an interesting debate between Ben Domenech and Conor Friedersdorf over why Millenials are waiting to get married later than earlier generations.

Here is Ben:

But I say the simplest answer is true: American men today delay the act of

reproduction and union because they devalue it. Because technology and culture
(today, technology is culture) unite to encourage them to devalue it — to favor
distraction over maturity, personal growth over familial growth, and self over
society.

Conor offers a different set of motives: 1) Today’s women are focused on their careers. 2) Parents want to offer their children every material advantage, just like their own parents did. 3) They want to avoid a divorce, which was pervasive in the previous generation.

Ben’s response to the first point is that more and more women today are leaving the workforce. My response to the second point is that Boomers spoiled us when they did that, hence the term 'Trophy Kids'. And the third point I am willing to grant. But I would develop Ben’s argument about the “self over society.” Tocqueville describes it terms of love of material well being (we call it consumerism):

To build enormous palaces, to conquer or to mimic nature, to ransack the world
in order to gratify the passions of a man, is not thought of, but to add a few
yards of land to your field, to plant an orchard, to enlarge a dwelling, to be
always making life more comfortable and convenient, to avoid trouble, and to
satisfy the smallest wants without effort and almost without cost. These are
small objects, but the soul clings to them; it dwells upon them closely and day
by day, till they at last shut out the rest of the world and sometimes intervene
between itself and heaven.

The ubiquity of McMansions and dozens of creature comforts is another reason why Millennials delay marriage and children. Families weigh us down as we try to climb the economic ladder. Tocqueville decried this comfort-seeking mentality and believed it would make us soft. Borrowing an argument from Peter Lawler, I would point out the inevitability of death and how it forces us to reevaluate our priorities. Lying in your deathbed has a way of changing your outlook on things, especially when it comes to how you lived your life. Better to take that perspective now than later.

'Benign' Dictator trumps Democracy-for now

Dambisa Moyo was recently on Uncommon Knowledge to discuss her new book titled Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa. Her thesis is foreign aid creates dependency on an international level just like welfare programs do on a national level. If that wasn’t controversial enough, she also argues in the book that it might take a ‘benign dictator’ to create real reforms in Africa. This isn’t to say she is anti-democratic; only that democracy would have to wait until some there is a basic level of security and prosperity there. Peter Robinson discusses these types of questions in another show: "Is democracy—that is, free elections—to be desired at all times for all nations? Or are nations more successful when they establish the rule of law, property rights, and other constitutional liberties first?

In an article in Newsweek today, Fareed Zakaria says Moyo’s argument is being tested in Rwanda. President Paul Kagame was elected, but rules like an authoritarian. Yet, Zakaria says,

It is now stable, well ordered, and being rebuilt every month. Average
incomes have increased by 30 percent. The country has a na-tional health-care
system, burgeoning countrywide education, and much less corruption than is usual
in Africa. It is becoming increasingly attractive to corporations and tourists.
In 2007, Fortune published an article titled "Why CEOs Love Rwanda." The heads
of Starbucks, Google, and Costco are among the country's supporters.

Moyo’s aid argument is also being implemented. Kagame stresses ‘self-reliance’ and he has cut down the aid Rwanda receives from 85 to 50% of the government’s budget.
This isn’t to say Kagame’s reign has been perfect. Zakaria says he ignores international advice, which is a big no-no in our post-Dubya world. That aside, Kagame’s rule raises the question of whether democracy is a must under all circumstances.

Is it crowded in here?

The popular rationale for birth control and abortion is they empower women. But the more insidious argument is they are means for population control. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, justified these things on the grounds of eugenics: weeding out undesirables. Unfortunately, this is either unknown by the general populace or believed to be irrelevant to the contemporary debate on these issues. The thought process is that regardless of what Planned Parenthood’s origins might be, it is about women’s empowerment now.

However, in the last six months two high profile figures, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have resorted to population control arguments.

Here is Speaker Pelosi on birth control:

The family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in
terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health,
education, and some of those elements are to help the states meet their
financial needs. One of those — one of the initiatives you mentioned, the
contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

And Justice Ginsburg on abortion:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about
population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to
have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding
for abortion.

Hopefully, quotes like these will increase awareness about how Margaret Sanger’s policies are alive and well in the 21st century.

A Meeting over Life and Death

Pope Benedict reflects upon the Culture of Life, while Michelle dresses up for the Culture of Death.

Caritas in Veritate's Intro

On hearing the Pope has written another ‘Love’ encyclical, one is attempted to dismiss it out of hand. The term ‘Love’ is thrown around so much nowadays, by Catholics AND non-Catholics, the first thought which comes to mind is the encyclical could not have anything original to say. The Pope, aware you might be thinking this, addresses the matter head on: “…charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted…” Yes, he says, everyone uses the term, but the term has been abused.

Now this IS interesting. How can such a popular term, one which everyone claims to understand, be abused? A brief look at the Culture Wars in the United States should answer that question. Abortion, Marriage, Stem Cell Research are all divisive issues and both sides in the debate articulate their views in terms of Love or Charity. Since both sides claim Love as their mantle, they must be providing different meanings to it. Being all things to all people, Love now means anything to anyone.

The emptiness of the term, the Pope argues, is the result of “a social and cultural context which relativizes truth…” We see here a reference to Relativism, a philosophical view which denies the absolute validity of any truth claim. Calling attention to the pervasiveness of this doctrine has been a reoccurring theme of the Benedict’s pontificate. Truth be told, it was a theme of his even before he became the Pontiff. Before he entered the Conclave which would elect him as Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger famously said, “We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires.”

Why should any of us care about such an abstract idea? Because ideas have consequences and in this case the consequences are dire. The Pope tells us that without truth “there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation, especially in a globalized society at difficult times like the present.” If Truth is a fiction, then might makes right. In light of these excerpts, one is given a prism to view current economic crisis. In a world where Relativism has run amok, do not be suprised to find speculators gambling, loan officers looking the other way, and borrowers lying on their applications. This Philosopher-Pope, far from having his head in the clouds, is addressing issues close to home.

“Without truth,” the Pope argues, “charity degenerates into sentimentality.” The Encyclical is titled Love IN TRUTH (Caritas in Veritate). Again, we can see the practicality of his point here. Love, without roots in objective truth, is reduced to mere feelings (what the Pope calls 'emotionalism'). And feelings can be fickle. Reliability is not the first thing which comes to mind when someone says he has “strong feelings” on the matter. When Caritas is simply a matter of the passions, then today’s “I love you” is tomorrow’s “I want a divorce.” Dealing with a person who is feeding off his emotions is like opening up Forrest Gump's box of chocolates-you never know what you’re gonna get.

Benedict XVI-not a GOP member

Pope Benedict’s new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, came out this week and has caused quite a stir. Positive references to wealth redistribution, world political authority, and aid to Third World countries come across as leftist, in the economic sense, to many readers. E.J. Dionne, who is Catholic and a prominent supporter of the Democratic Party, is relishing the controversy it is has generated and has even suggested the Pope is to the left of President Obama. Dionne admits there are still the life issues, but he feels this at least eliminates the notion that being Catholic and Republican go hand in hand.

Dionne is certainly right about that, but he is wrong in his implicit suggestion that the life and economic issues have equal weight in Catholic social thought. The idea the two sets of issues have equal weight were popularized by views like a “Consistent Ethic of Life” or the “seamless garment” argument, but those views were never incorporated into Magisterial teaching.

On the other end of the spectrum, George Weigel, JPII’s biographer and a friend of the GOP, has called the encyclical ‘incoherent.’ Upset over the leftist passages in the text, Weigel argues they must have been forced upon Bendedict by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Weigel thinks it is inconceivable the Pope could hold such views.

Francis Beckwith has collected several responses to Wegel’s article. The reoccurring argument is maybe the Pope ACTUALLY believes this stuff. This makes sense to me since he spoke approvingly of leftist economics in First Things a few years ago: “In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of social consciousness.”

Federalists and Anti-Federalists on Sarah Palin

All the hullabaloo over Sarah Palin’s resignation reminded me of an interesting debate between David Brooks and Stephen Hayward on her ability to rule. Their debate is really a debate that goes back to terms of the Federalist/Anti-Federalist discussion: What is a representative’s role in a republic?

David Brooks took the Federalist view. Representatives should be grounded in “classical education, hard-earned knowledge, experience and prudence.” Prudence is acquired by “experience. The prudent leader possesses a repertoire of events, through personal involvement or the study of history, and can apply those models to current circumstances to judge what is important and what is not, who can be persuaded and who can’t, what has worked and what hasn’t.” Brooks tells us the word “experience” is in the Federalist Papers 91 times.

In the justly praised Federalist No. 10, James Madison argues that representatives should be ‘enlightened statesmen’ who will provide a check on the people by filtering their views. While the people are not a mob, they can be. This is not argument for aristocracy because the people will elect their leaders and can remove them from office. Madison’s idea of a filtering effect signifies the idea that the representatives should lead, not be led by, the people.

In opposition to the Brooks’ Federalist position, Stephen Hayward puts forward the Anti-Federalist position. He says Brooks and others are “affronted by the idea that an ordinary hockey mom--a mere citizen--might be just as capable of running the country as a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations.”

The Anti-Federalists espoused what I like to call the ‘sameness’ principle. Representatives should reflect the views of the people themselves. When I vote for a candidate, it is based on the belief that he or she will vote the way I would have if I had been in Washington. Representatives are the people’s proxies.

The debate between Brooks and Hayward occurred nearly a year ago, but it is still underlying the hostility over Palin today. Ross Douthat reiterated Hayward's argument in a recent column: “…Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.”

Reading to the end

Last weekend’s activities gave me another opportunity to ruminate about our country’s founding. I came across an interview with Lawler on the topic. Here is one way of reading our Declaration:

One way of looking at it is [as] a Lockean document, an
Enlightenment document, and a document of individualism, and the Declaration is
kind of a time bomb which over the decades transforms all of American life. And
so the history of America is a kind of creeping and a sort of creepy
individualism which is reflected in the Supreme Court opinions Planned
Parenthood v. Casey and Lawrence v. Texas and all that, which say that the
Constitution demands that every feature of life be reformed with the idea of the
contract between two individuals in mind. So Lawrence v. Texas implies that same-sex marriage is a Constitutional requirement,
because anything two individuals decide to do has dignity and comes from
autonomy and all that.

It is this reading, put forward by Louis Hartz, which is popular today. Russell Kirk, horrified by the implications of this view, downplayed the role of the Declaration in our American Political Tradition (one wonders how he spent his 4th of July). But there is another reading of the Declaration which could salvage it:

But the other view of the Declaration would be the Declaration was a legislative
compromise. The view of Jefferson was changed by the view of Congress. Nature’s
God, the God of Locke, was moderated with the addition of the Providential and
judgment God at the end of the Declaration. So if you take the Protestant
Christianity of some of the Founders and compromise it with the kind of Lockean
Deism, covert atheism, of some of the Founders, the compromise between the two
kind of accidentally produces Thomism. So there’s not one Thomist American
Founder, it goes without saying. They’re either a Deist or a Calvinist. But the
compromise between the two produces something that looks a lot like Thomism.

The Declaration’s opening, written by Jefferson, contains Deist language like “nature’s God.” The Creator, in this understanding, might endow us with “inalienable rights” but he leaves us to fend for ourselves, uninterested in how things will turn out. The famous analogy is a Clockmaker who winds up the clock and then lets it go.

The Declaration’s closing, which was added by Congress, clearly counteracts this Deist tendency. The Founders appeal to the “Supreme Judge” for the rectitude of their intentions and on “Divine Providence” for support of their cause. God is more than an Unmoved Mover here. He is personally involved in human history. My only revision of Lawler’s view is what we should mean by Thomism. What Lawler means by Thomism is the recognition that there is objective truth which we can know through unaided reason. What I would mean by the Declaration reflecting Thomism is it is open to Aquinas’s ‘thick’ conception of natural law as opposed to Locke’s ‘thin’ conception. Aquinas believes the natural law is a participation in the eternal law, which is God’s providence or plan for the universe. Human government is just a subset of divine government. Locke’s account of natural law drops any discussion of eternal law which is why his understanding of God is Deist. The Declaration’s closing paragraph is compatible with Aquinas’s account, but not Locke's.

The ‘legislative compromise’ reading of the Declaration holds great promise and hopefully it will become the more popular reading. If only more people would read to the end.

There's no place like home-maybe

James Matthew Wilson gave a thoughtful response to my previous post (I had placed it as a comment to Caleb Stegall’s Place as Gift, Freedom on Front Porch Republic).

His reply to my question whether D’Souza was better off leaving his traditional, localized community is interesing:

Rather than leaving India to escape the “awful fate” of the professions, D’Souza
would have been better served either to submit to that discipline or to
remaining in his native community to cultivate it so that it too might find a
place for the intellectual, contemplative, life. A hard fate, but a human one.

After reading Wilson’s comment, I recalled an essay by Front Porcher Patrick Deneen titled "Patriotic Vision: At Home in a World Made Strange." In that essay, Deneen looks at ancient city-states, which were rooted in memory and place, and how they functioned. It turns out they had an official office for the ‘Theorist’. Deneen writes:

[they]were charged with the task of visiting other cities, to “see” special
events such as religious or theatrical or athletic festivals, and to return to
their home city where they would then give an account of what they had seen. To
“theorize” was to take part in a sacred journey, an encounter with the “other”
in which the theorist would attempt to comprehend, assess, compare and then in
idiom of his own city, explain what had been seen to fellow citizens. This
encounter would inevitably raise questions about customs or practices of the
theorist’s own city – why do we do things this way? Might there be a better way
of organizing the regime? Might there be a best way of life?

The Theorist’s role places him in tension with his city. Deneen continues:

By this estimation, a theorist is in some respects defined by a kind of
“outsideness,” an alienation originally induced by the experience of
physically
moving from one place to another in order to assess the virtues
and vices of
one’s own particular cultural practices.

Deneen’s essay sheds light on the fact the cave cannot be closed because the images on the wall are not all there is. The very existence of the Theorist’s office reveals to the citizens that they should not hold on to the traditions of their place too strongly. But if they do that, then how is the FP vision going to come about? Wilson tells us the citizen must “submit to the discipline” of tradition and place. Is provisional submission sufficient? Or should the citizen be permanently loyal to traditions which are mutable?

One way out of this dilemma could be to remove the Theorist’s office. I have not read anything on the Front Porch which suggests the philosopher has to have a role in their city (Tolkien, who I think would have been a Front Porcher, had no philosophers in Middle Earth either). My only concern is whether D’Souza could “cultivate it [his native community] so that it too might find a place for the intellectual, contemplative, life.” My hunch is he couldn’t because questions like “What is the best regime?” and “Why do we do things this way?” come about through an encounter with foreign practices and customs.

None of this proves the POMO Con contention that we should affirm large chunks of the modern project; however, I am suggesting that values like memory and place should not be given top billing.

Stuck on the Porch

The debate between POMO Cons and Front Porchers has moved into Phase II, a discussion on the merits of localism. Reading the posts reminded me of Dinesh D’Souza’s views on the merits of Western modernity. He is a celebrant of contemporary America and links its success to three (modern) factors: democracy, science, and capitalism.

Now Front Porchers want a return to a pre-modern way of life, what Lawler derisively calls the “It takes a medieval village” outlook. D’Souza is very interested in the debate over pre-modern v. modern ways of life, but he takes a different perspective on the former. When D’Souza usually discusses pre-modern views, he is looking at Eastern (Middle East and India) and not Western practices.

Having grown up in India, D’Souza is well acquainted with Front Porch values like localism and tradition. But he is not sanguine about it:

If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my entire existence
within a one-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have
married a woman of my identical religious, socioeconomic, and cultural
background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, an
engineer, or software programmer….I would have a whole set of opinions that
could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from
what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny
would to a large degree have been given to me.
-What’s So Great About America
p. 80

It was only in Modern America that D’Souza could have discovered his interest in ideas. And even if Front Porchers disagree with his ideas, surely they can agree the world is a better off with D’Souza as a pundit rather than a programmer.

The downside about all pre-modern living, Eastern or Western, is how stifling they all are. Porches have their place, but they can become prisons.