What women want…to not be women?

Last Saturday was the memorial of Roe v. Wade and a part of Peter Lawler’s recent post touched upon it and its predecessor, Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized birth control:
We need to get over the modern error that the best way to get ourselves happy is to free ourselves from our natures.

Women’s Lib is about liberation from…being WOMEN. Birth control and abortion enable women to divorce themselves from their baby-making equipment. Having unshackled themselves from their feminine natures, they become free-floating individuals. Lawler continues, “We too often, in the name of autonomy, reject as authoritative the guidance nature—our social natures– gives us…But much of what we think we can reject or discard remains real or real enough.”

You can see this premium on Autonomy in Justice Kennedy’s decision in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court Case which revisited Roe:

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”

It can also be found in this exchange between Peter Robinson and Stacey Karp, President of the San Francisco Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW)

Stacy Karp: …Women are not here to be married, to have children, those are not their sole responsibilities and purpose for being.
Peter Robinson: You're pretty interested in metaphysics, too. What are women here for?
Stacy Karp: Whatever they want to be here for.

Of course, if every individual is free to decide what it means to be woman, then that just means the word doesn't really mean anything at all.

Here is Lawler’s take on Kennedy and Karp’s view: “There’s little that’s more hellish than my being stuck with the perception of “pure possibility,” the perception that every door is open to me with no guidance at all concerning which one to choose.”

Tocqueville argued that the power vacuum created by the absence of authority will just be filled by something or someone else because most people will not be able to live unaided. In the 1830’s, the authority was the MAJORITY. Today’s authority can be detected in statements like “Studies show…” or “Experts say…”

The dubious promise of these technological devices is women can be happy without having to be virtuous (chaste, temperate). My hunch is if it liberates anybody, it will be predatorial men. Here is Peter Robinson on the matter: “..the beginning of the period, the 1960's society, if a man got a women pregnant he was expected to marry her and provide for her and the child. Society imposed sanctions of responsibility on the man. Now if a man gets a woman pregnant it's her fault. She should have been on the pill. And she's forced to either have an abortion or to raise the child alone. She falls into poverty. We know that single mothers raising children tend to be in poverty at much higher rates than other sectors of the population."

Looks like women, and men for that matter, will be ‘stuck with virtue’ for the near future.

Let’s get personal

David Ignatius is disturbed by all the metaphysical musings which have been generated by the recent tragedy in Haiti. He says the important thing is to think, not act. Tocqueville would say this is the typical American attitude towards philosophy.

In one sense, I am sympathetic to Ignatius’ position. It seems that any attempt to formulate an answer to the problem of evil (Why would an all-good, all-powerful God permit human suffering?) rings hollow because it gives an impersonal answer to a personal question.

On the other hand, taking a pass on the question seems like a dodge. It reminds me of a scene from Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood:

“If she had to be blind she would rather be dead. It occurred to her suddenly that when she was dead she would be blind too. She stared in front of her intensely, facing this for the first time. She recalled the phrase, “eternal death,” that preachers used, but she cleared it out of her mind immediately, with more change of expression than the cat. She was not religious or morbid, for which every day she thanked her stars.”

Two secular worldviews which one might turn to for an answer are Atheism and Pantheism. Atheism, by rejecting an absolute point of reference in God, resolves the problem of evil by denying its very possibility. Ultimately, reality is at its foundation nothing more than chaos and meaningless in which case we must move ‘beyond good and evil’ as Nietzsche once said. But this just leads us back to the problem I mentioned earlier: reducing the personal to the impersonal. What occurred in Haiti cannot be tragic or evil in a world devoid of meaning.

Pantheism, as exemplified in the current environmental movement, is premised upon the thesis of the benevolence of Nature. The earthquake, in contrast, reveals Mother Nature’s malevolence. James Cameron and the Na’vi are selective, at best, about what aspects of her merit our worship. Moreover, terms like ‘Mother’ and ‘her’ are misleading for they signify a personality which is not there. Unlike Atheism, Pantheism does not reduce persons to things; instead, it inverts the traditional order by asking people to submit to an Impersonal Nature.

Turning to Christian Theology, the traditional answer has been that God created and sustains a world of free beings in order to be in a relationship with them. Love presupposes freedom, but an unfortunate corollary is freedom can be abused. Since our first parents, we live in world with both good and evil (Whatever natural disasters occurred before mankind’s arrival wasn’t really evil. Christian theology makes a distinction between natural and moral evil, the latter being the type discussed at the moment.)

That answer, while personal since it accounts for love, presents God as too passive for many people. This concern is addressed by the Incarnation, in which God himself becomes a human actor. Surprisingly, his reason for doing so does not seem to be about eliminating human suffering since we are still stuck with it today. And it is at this point when the attempt to answer the question philosophically must end. Yet this does not mean the Christian is shrugging his shoulders. The invocation of ‘Mystery’ is not agnosticism, but an invitation to reflect upon, and even participate in, the Cross. Elusive, yes; Impersonal, no.

The Rules of Engagement

Michael Gerson and Ross Douthat have some interesting things to say over Brit Hume’s comment that Tiger Woods, a Buddhist, should consider turning towards the Christian Faith. I’m on board with what they’re saying, but I would just take the whole episode as an opportunity to make a more general comment about the relationship between Democracy and Religion.

At first glance, the flare-up which resulted seemed to be a good thing for religious believers because Hume’s critics wanted to protect a particular religion, in this case Buddhism, from being maligned. But on closer examination, this protection for religion is premised on the idea of nonjudgmentalism which is itself based upon relativism: since no religion can be objectively true, criticism of all religious claims is off limits. Instead, religion should simply be seen as a lifestyle choice. This is a Faustian bargain and religious believers shouldn’t sign on.

The long term consequence of this bargain will be the further marginalization or privatization of religion as any mention of it in the public square will be condemned (Fr. Neuhaus called this the Naked Public Square.) Admittedly, the bargain’s tradeoff is the Privatization will not eliminate religion entirely since that would violate the freedom of autonomous individuals. And it is this inability to deliver a knockout punch which makes the Faustian bargain deceptively attractive to the religious believer. Communism, in contrast, was a more obvious foe because it is in principle against Religion and so it used overt coercion in its assault. The danger posed by Liberal Democracy is more subtle which is why so many people are oblivious to it.

The only way out might be to play the game with our fellow citizens in order to change its rules: Liberal Democracy should be replaced with an updated, 2.0 version, what JPII called Personalist Democracy.

Dreams from my Theologian

David Brooks and President Obama both claim to be fans of the great Protestant Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Their proclamation has caused renewed interest in his work and so the New Republic has posted several of his old articles.

In “Liberalism: Illusions and Realities” Niebuhr reviews Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. Being a fan of Kirk’s work myself, it is fun watching Niebuhr examine his own liberal views in light of the book.

Niebuhr gives a short summary of the history of liberalism:

Thus in every modern industrial nation the word "liberalism" achieved two contradictory definitions. It was on the one hand the philosophy which insisted that economic life was to be free of any restraint. In this form it was identical with the only conservatism which nations, such as our own, who had no feudal past, could understand. It was the philosophy of the more successful middle classes who possessed enough personal skill, property or power to be able to prefer liberty to security. On the other hand the word was also used to describe the political strategy of those classes which preferred security to absolute liberty and which sought to bring economic enterprise under political control for the sake of establishing minimal standards of security and welfare. It has been rather confusing that both of these strategies go by the name of "liberalism."

Niebuhr is unabashedly a liberal in its second stage of development. The Welfare State provides a safety net for the contingencies of a Modern Technical Society. President Obama’s Health Care Reform reveals a similar logic.

Niebuhr moves on to discuss another strand of Liberalism, the French Enlightenment:

The French Enlightenment was "liberal" …..But it also had a total philosophy of life based on confidence in the perfectability of man and on the idea of historical progress. These two ideas were basic to all the political miscalculations of the Enlightenment and were the source of its errors. "Liberalism" acquired a special connotation as a philosophy of life which did not take the factors of interest and power seriously, which expected all parochial loyalties to be dissolved in more universal loyalties; and which was indifferent to organically or historically established loyalties and rights under the illusion that it would be simple for rational man to devise more ideal communities and rights.

Here he agrees with Kirk’s diagnosis of the French school of thought: “The liberalism of the French Enlightenment was thus based upon illusions as to the nature of man and of history.” Niebuhr ends the review by arguing that one can hold the liberal positition in regards to the Welfare State, but still disavow the utopian visions of the French Enlightenment. This is what he calls a “realistic liberal.”

Again, one can find Niebuhr’s position underlying President Obama’s thought, specifically his Nobel Peace Prize Speech. To the consternation of those who subscribe to the French Enlightenment, President Obama said the world being what it is, force is sometimes necessary. Moreover, his open endorsement of Just War Theory and its assumptions about a flawed human nature fly in the face of the thesis of the perfectiblity of man and a world of perpetual peace.

But just don’t take my word for it. Check out links on this topic here, and here.

Eat your spinach!

David Brooks handed out his Sydney Awards for great essays last week and Mary Eberstadt’s essay “Is Food the New Sex?” made the list:

In her Policy Review essay, ''Is Food the New Sex?,'' Mary Eberstadt notes that people in modern societies are freer to consume more food and sex than their ancestors. But this has produced a paradox. For most of human history, food was a matter of taste while sex was governed by universal moral laws. Now the situation is nearly reversed. Food has become enmeshed in moralism while the privacy of the bedroom is sacred. Eberstadt asks why, and provides a philosophical answer.

I have not read the essay yet, but I thought that both food and sex were traditionally considered under the domain of morality. The classical view towards food was it should be regulated in light of the cardinal virtue of Temperance. Gluttony was condemned not so much because it harmed your figure, but because it enslaved your reason to your appetites, thus inhibiting the ability to choose. This is a significantly different take from the way the ‘Whole Foods’ Crowd thinks about food today. They are still moralistic, if not downright preachy, about overeating or eating poorly; however, it is for health reasons. Harming one’s body is a serious no-no. Health and Safety (one is tempted to add the environment) are the only sources for moral absolutes in this picture.

Having eliminated the distinction between soul and body, the choices left are either to deify the body (pantheism) or reject the divine altogether (atheism). If latter approach is taken, then the Cultural Libertarian view emerges in which food and sex are viewed as merely personal preferences or lifestyle choices. Either way, both approaches are fruits of the same ideological tree.