Points to Ponder:
(On Patriotism and Building a Just Society)
With soul enlightened by the Gospel, it is possible to better understand how it is necessary to love one’s homeland, so that it actively makes its contribution as it progresses on the road of culture and civilization. Membership in a certain nation should be accompanied by sacrificial efforts and the sincere exchange of gifts received as an inheritance from previous generations, in order to build a society open to other peoples and the exchange of traditions. [Pope John Paul II (circa 2003)]
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Highlighting a Key Problem With Common Apologetics Methodology:
Unlike any other subject matter which I have dealt with on this weblog, the ancillary subject matter briefly touched on in this thread (read: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is one that I will not respond to email traffic on in any forum until at least next August. Readers of this weblog for more than a year presumably know the reason why I have taken this position and if not, they can consider the threads in footnote one{1} to be my main reason for that decision -as what interests me at a given time can differ for various and sundry reasons. Having noted that, there is a larger issue of which the ancillary issue is a subtext and it is for that reason that I will touch on the subject at this time.
To start with, what brought about this post is what I view as a cheap trick attempted by Jimmy Akin to comment on something without seeking to substantiate his position by rational argument. I view such tactics as lowbrow and in proportion to my respect for the intelligence of the person making them, a degree of disgust is inevitable. In the case of Jimmy Akin, that makes the degree of disgust quite high indeed because he is a very intelligent man and one of the best of the contemporary Catholic apologists. In response to his attempted slipping of a blurb about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings into what was otherwise a very enjoyable sci-fi thread, I made the following brief comment in the comments box of the thread. Jimmy's words will be italicized in the original comments and in darkgreen throughout the balance of this posting.
In real life, some argued during World War II that the entire population of Japan was functioning as combatants and so we could nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is not tenable, given human nature
When dealing with a conscripted population, the dynamic of the situation is different than when dealing with unconscripted civilians. When that is taken into account along with a plethora of other factors{1} that are glossed over in simplistic fashion by not a few "apologist" sorts, what is rashly presumed to be "untenable" becomes quite tenable indeed.
Too bad you had to ruin a really good sci-fi post with that attempted fast one.
I decided to omit the footnote from that response as the link it contained is among the ones in the first footnote of this post. In response to Jimmy, original blurb, Greg Mockeridge also wrote some stuff -indeed much more than I did. Readers interested in what he said can peruse that combox thread at Jimmy's blog.{2} My interest in this posting is fourfold: (i) to respond to what Jimmy said to Greg and myself, (ii) to deal with the broader issue of certain fallacies which are common to many who approach this issue, (iii) to cover them at the same time, and (iv) to be reasonably brief about it all. How well I succeed in achieving all four objectives in this post will be debatable of course but without further ado, here goes...
Shawn & Greg:
I know that y'all have a burr under your saddle on the subject of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but you really need to keep perspective on matters.
If I have a burr under [my] saddle on anything Jimmy it is (i) the complete lack of sound thinking that permeates Catholic circles on these subjects and (ii) the way Greg and I have been treated by members of the apologetics oligarchy when discussing this subject. I am also aware that if an opinion is reiterated enough, many people will accept it as correct even if it is not. The latter is human nature sadly whereas the former is something that should be of concern to those who believe that Catholics have important contributions to make to the arena of ideas. There are serious problems here which too many want to pretend do not exist which I have noted in past public postings on this subject matter:
Catholic apologists are oftentimes intellectually dependent. I say this because they demonstrate a serious lacuna in their ability to utilize the thinking mechanism. Their intellectual dependence is on what the Catholic Church's magisterium[...] says on issues. Where this authority speaks with a clear voice, they can wade their way into issues of discussion with a degree of comfort. However, where this authority does not speak[...], they are at a loss of what to do. This is where they flail around like a drowning man seeking to find anything they can remotely ascribe to a magisterial statement on the issue in question as their way of coping with a lack of such guidance which they so evidently need.
For it is easy to argue a position where there are definite guidelines of sorts and Catholic doctrine does provide certain principles which are able to be grasped. The problem is the areas where there is not the same authoritative guidance. Finding themselves unable to argue a position on the grounds of what is reasonable and what is logical[...], they seek to manufacture an intervention by magisterial authority in the hopes of avoiding accountability for the grey matter between their ears. This approach is (of course) not a properly Catholic one and any hope of convincing non-Catholics that their position is the correct one evaporates like dew on a hot summer morning. The end result is various apologists claiming magisterial sanction for certain doctrinal applications and parroting sections of the catechism where general principles are espoused as if they are one and the same. Then, when you point out to these "apologists" that they are not defining their terms either at all or at least not correctly, the response in return is either hostile shrieking, insults, or continued repetition of the same flawed approaches as before as if such repetition constitutes a valid argument. From there, a disintegration of any genuine dialogue occurs (if one existed to begin with) and the end result is hardly edifying in any way to those who are casually observing what is going on--let alone to those who are involved in the disputation as active (or passive) participants.
Anyway, that is what we have seen occurring in recent years in the Catholic apologetics movement with the old apologetics hegemony breaking down and the previously unchallenged bigwigs not being properly equipped to provide a coherent and persuasive voice in the arena of ideas viz. application of principles in the public square. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa August 5, 2006)]
And again:
Frankly, what I wrote is not a rubix cube. It is a theory properly understood and is intended to provoke logical thought and reasoned analysis. And as logical thought and reasoned analysis is quite rare in most circles (including "apologetics" ones), a degree of condescention is required to outline certain elementary factors that are required for that.
It is indeed unfortunate but after over seven years of observing this phenomenon of "Catholic apologetics" and seeing this problem manifest itself not only amongst the neophytes but to a larger extent the seasoned apologists, I am not about to stand by and pretend that the ship is not sinking when indeed it is. On making a positive contribution to the arena of ideas and influencing culture for the good, Catholic apologists are (as a whole) miserable failures!!! A key reason for this is that they presume a competence in certain issues[...] which they do not have.
Furthermore, as many of them evince either ignorance of (or an unwillingness to differentiate) between what is an authoritative Church pronouncement and what is not, they inevitably[...] throw everything into the same kettle and this is erroneous. It is also disingenuous to no small degree.
I am beyond tired of seeing illogical fideism and warmed over neo-ultramontanism by these self-anointed "experts." All they do is provide fuel for the anti-Catholic caricatures of Catholics as intellectual infants who cannot think and blindly accept anything that is said by a curial representative -no matter how illogical and opposed to sound reasoning it happens to be. As Catholics we recognize that magisterial teachings require religious submission. This is a tall order and it should not be casually presumed without adequate warrant. I refuse to stand by, even by proxy, and watch a bunch of ignorant self-anointed "experts" lump every curial utterance into that category as a cheap expedient to shut off legitimate and necessary debate on various issues. This kind of crap has gone on for too long and it needed to be stopped yesterday. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa August 22, 2006)]
More could be noted{3} but that suffices to get my point across adequately at the present time.
Now despite more and more evidence that there are few who take the idea of sound rational logical thought seriously in Catholic circles, I am perhaps a bit of an optimist in thinking there are still some out there who have not bent the knee to the Baal of intellectual dependence yet -even among those who call themselves "apologists." But based on what I have observed, I have found myself as a rule less and less optimistic{4} as the years go passing by.
The fact that the Japanese--unlike the Borg and the Cylons--had free will means that one cannot simply rely on the idea that "they all count as aggressors" and exterminate them en masse.
It is better to say nothing at all than play this kind of "lets take a position but slip it into an unrelated post to appear to be not taking a position per se" kind of game. It is disappointing to see that even someone as intelligent as you are Jimmy can fail to make some of the necessary distinctions in this situation that need to be considered for a fair assessment on the matter. Maybe the argumentation fallacy of provincialism that impairs a lot of Catholic approaches to this issue is a deeper problem than I initially presumed.
You'd have to *show* that they were all aggressors, which is dubious in view of the fact that different human use their free will in different ways.
Jimmy, when the mass population was conscripted and working actively against the allied forces in the war -and even had brainwashed children to act as little kamikazes- this is not the same as opening fire on a defenseless city or populace. But rather than speak in the abstract, lets make of this a more real life situation.
Assume for a moment Jimmy that you are a soldier in Okinawa in 1945 and a child sidled up to you with a bomb pack on. Are you telling me you would stand there and let yourself get blown away??? Hardly, you would with the greatest of likelihood do what you could to make sure the bomb would not hurt you -even going so far as shooting the child if you had to. The latter would not be done because you wanted to hurt the child but because if you did not, you would be killed too: either by the child's bomb or by your fellow soldiers who would see any attempt at helping to be giving aid and comfort to the enemy.{5} These kinds of decisions are always made in a snap second and with survival in mind.
That you see is what such children would be (enemies) in the scenario noted above. And for the sake of survival in that situation they must be viewed as such. It is a ghastly picture but guess what: war is a very ghastly business and there is a reason why it should never be undertaken lightly.
In a post *about* killing fictional races that do not have human freedom of will, it is entirely appropriate for me to make passing mention of this difference and to state what is, in fact, the dominant opinion among Catholic thinkers about the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And as I have noted on more than one occasion Jimmy, opinions unsubstantiated by rational argumentation are not worth consideration no matter who makes them. There is no shortage of uninformed opinions out there; ergo one must judge an opinion by objective criteria. The problem is, people are disposed to think of what certain people say as being right irregardless of the merits of their arguments (if they provide any). That is why I would not consider on this matter of discussion that there are many "thinkers" at all: even normally very sharp knives react emotionally to the issue and that impairs the thinking mechanism more times than not. Throw in a general ignorance of many prevalent factors involved and the dominant opinion does not surprise me at all.
Arguing to consensus is of course a fallacious form of argumentation but I trust you were not doing that with your statement but instead making a general statement. Nonetheless, to address the majority view briefly, I know Jimmy that you know as well as anyone that the predominant view of theologians can change on issues and indeed has changed on many of them. Indeed, many of the theological positions taken by the Second Vatican Council were hardly majority viewpoints prior to the convening of that synod. Other examples could be noted but that suffices to point out the problem with staking anyone's tent with "the majority view" among theologians.
There is another problem more implicit and it is this Jimmy: you happen to be one of these people, by virtue of your position in apologetics and the overall quality of the work you have done over the years, whom many people will accept something as true simply because you say it. This is problematical in some respect because there are a lot of people who do not know how to think very well and that is how they approach people whom they have an implicit faith of sorts in. This is why such people need to be careful in what they say and how they say it.
Surely you do not think I am somehow unaware that most theologians disagree with the position I have taken. If anything, I have been far more generous in giving those who disagree with me a fair amount of latitude as long as they stick to the issues and do not attempt indirect attempts to cut myself or others down or shut off legitimate disagreement on the issue as not a few so-called "apologists" do when the shoe is on the other foot: both on this issue and also several others which could be noted.
Another reason I will not call most who disagree with me on this issue "thinkers" as far as the issue goes because frankly, I have seen no attempts thus far to put together a hypothesis on the matter that can be subjected to reasonable scrutiny. And until I see such an attempt made, it would be fallacious to accept the opinion of anyone whomever they are. That is the problem with many if not most on this issue: they namedrop people whose opinions seem to concur with theirs but without presenting any evidence as to how said people arrived at their opinions. Sorry but that is not think[ing] Jimmy no matter how you chop the turkey.
This is not "attempting a fast one." The mention must be brief because of the nature of the post.
Other examples could have been made and you could have avoided giving the impression that this is a closed issue when in fact it is not. Again, your word carries a lot of weight with people Jimmy. There are those who would take your word over any assemblage of facts and rational analysis that would be provided by others. It is a sad spectacle{6} but it is what it is.
I am not obligated, just because I known that some Hiroshima-defenders out there, to slam on the brakes and conduct an extended discourse on the moral illegitimacy of the indiscriminate killing of Japanese people.
You assume it is indiscriminate but do not make any attempt to defend this assumption by rational argument. Apparently, people are supposed to tip the biretta, bow three times, and uncritically incense it because Jimmy Akin says so. In reality, the burden is on someone who makes an assumption to defend it or else to not make it. And this works both ways Jimmy, not just one way.
The burden is on defenders of the nuking to prove that it was morally legitimate to indiscriminately kill Japanese people--particularly given what the Catechism says on the subject of indiscriminate killing in wartime.
Again, the burden Jimmy is on both sides, not merely one.{7} For those who claim that the Catechism passage on indiscriminate killing in wartime applies to what happened on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945, they have to demonstrate this and cannot merely assume it. I have already explained in detail why this assumption is faulty for many reasons but I am not about to rehash the issue here. I have already more than established a solid burden of proof for my theory{8} on this matter. Beyond that, the arguments on this score from people of your persuasion without fail tend to be normative and thus subjective rather than non-normative and objective.
For example, does any bomb really kill with discrimination when it hits its target??? Obviously not. I have yet to find a bomb that actually asks who is home before it explodes so that it only kills the persons so aimed for. Therefore, the problem in the atomic bombing case is not what you claim it is. You and others essentially make an arbitrary normative or subjective "it is too big" attempted argument which is hardly non-normative or objective no matter how you slice the bread. More could be noted but as I have already more than adequately established by sound rigorous logical argument my position on this matter and various contingent factors in a series of threads{9}, I am not about to do so again.
And, let me point out, this combox is not the proper place for that discussion.
That is why I blogged this thread and will post the link to the combox so it does not clutter your combox. But kindly keep matters in context Jimmy: when this subject erupted back in 2005, you were AWOL on it as was (in truly predictable fashion) the rest of the apologetics oligarchy. I did not anticipate that my theory would be accepted either immediately or without some friction but I was shocked at the unethical behaviour that masqueraded about as "apologetics"{10} by some whom I once thought fairly highly of. Not a few persons disgraced themselves in how they handled this matter -some more so than others.
Despite what happened, I still think highly of you Jimmy (you are one of a select few apologists I can say that about). What happened in 2005 was a symptom of a much larger problem that has been going on for a long time. I hope therefore that you will call those self-styled "apologists" I refer to in the previous paragraph from the cliff over which they are running (to the discredit of Catholic apologetics). Again, you do have that kind of influence Jimmy -you are probably one of the few who does. It is my hope that you will use it and not seek merely to preserve the status quo: a subject I will touch on another time in another posting when I feel inclined to speak on these matters again.
Notes:
{1} Threads on the Atomic Bomb Droppings, Military and Statistical Calculations, the Moral and Ethical Aspects of the Subject Matter in Question, Etc. (circa August 17, 2005-September 20, 2005)
"Armstrong Illusions" Dept. Revisited (circa January 23, 2006)
Preserving the Historical Record (circa January 26, 2006)
Guest Editorial on the Atomic Bombings, the Continued Emphasis on it Publicly by Certain Apologists, and the Goal of Catholic Apologetics --By Dr. Art Sippo (circa January 26, 2006)
A Followup Guest Editorial on the Atomic Bombings, the Continued Emphasis on it Publicly by Certain Apologists, and the Goal of Catholic Apologetics--By Dr. Art Sippo (circa January 31, 2006)
Some Brief Wrapup Comments on the Previous Guest Editorial (circa January 31, 2006)
Dismantling the GS 80 Attempted "Argument" By Recourse to General Norms of Theological Interpretation (circa February 4, 2006)
{2} Which for the record is among my semi-regular reads.
{3} I could also mention the public flap over supposed "torture" but will save that one for another time as this is too long already. Oh and another more explicit writing is being considered for posting which would get to the core of what is noted above amongst the apologetics oligarchy and do so in a much briefer and much less irenic way. Whether or when it is blogged remains uncertain at this time.
{4} Fortunately (I suppose) in recent weeks I have found some Catholics who can honestly interact with an issue on its merits and this has made me at least cautiously optimistic that there are more people of character out there than I was starting to presume. I refer of course to Dr. Scott Carson and Dr. Michael Liccione. Maybe the reason they can do this is partly because they are not part of the apologetics oligarchy and therefore have no vested interest in circling the wagons to protect one another from legitimate scrutiny while hypocritically condoning similar scrutiny being hurled at rival apologist camps.
{5} I am sure some of the brainless overreactive sorts will claim that this means I endorse murder or something equally as stupid: I note it here so that when it happens, people cannot say that I did not anticipate this pathetic Jerry Springeresque-mainstream mediaesque attempt to avoid intelligent discussion via cultic deadangenting tactics.
{6} I do not mean this in any way as a personal slight against you Jimmy, only as a lament of sorts against people in general. (The metaphor of people as sheep which was used in the Gospels makes more and more sense to me the longer I observe humanity.)
{7} To assert otherwise is to endorse (however tacitly) intellectual and ethical laziness on one side of the issue.
{8} I say theory because it is far more than a mere hypothesis.
{9} See footnote one.
{10} The problems were many but one which was particularly noxious was the violation of private correspondence by a certain party I will not name at this time. When it happened again, I wrote a blog post on the subject which can be read HERE. Certain persons whom I shall not name tried to assert that I "lied" on this matter but if not for my growing tired of responding to them only to have said parties dodge the issues and involve themselves in more character assassination, I would have easily dispatched with this baseless assertion and done so by objective criteria as I had previously done with a panopoly of their other public assertions. Or as I have noted elsewhere:
As for the claim that I lied about his violation of private correspondence, I could easily shred that thread also if (i) I wanted to take the time to do it and (ii) if I actually thought it would do any good to take the time to do it.[...] Unfortunately, unlike XXXX, I do not have all the time in the world to cut and paste people's work to create libelous distortions even if I wanted to. And I most certainly do not countenance this attitude at all -viewing instead a potential excess of prose as preferable to such mutilations of the work of others to insure that the words of others are not taken out of context. [Excerpt from an Unsent Email Correspondence (as of November 25, 2006)]
The approach take by the apologetics oligarchy against one of their own engaging in this unethical libelous behaviour??? Why silence of course.
Unlike any other subject matter which I have dealt with on this weblog, the ancillary subject matter briefly touched on in this thread (read: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is one that I will not respond to email traffic on in any forum until at least next August. Readers of this weblog for more than a year presumably know the reason why I have taken this position and if not, they can consider the threads in footnote one{1} to be my main reason for that decision -as what interests me at a given time can differ for various and sundry reasons. Having noted that, there is a larger issue of which the ancillary issue is a subtext and it is for that reason that I will touch on the subject at this time.
To start with, what brought about this post is what I view as a cheap trick attempted by Jimmy Akin to comment on something without seeking to substantiate his position by rational argument. I view such tactics as lowbrow and in proportion to my respect for the intelligence of the person making them, a degree of disgust is inevitable. In the case of Jimmy Akin, that makes the degree of disgust quite high indeed because he is a very intelligent man and one of the best of the contemporary Catholic apologists. In response to his attempted slipping of a blurb about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings into what was otherwise a very enjoyable sci-fi thread, I made the following brief comment in the comments box of the thread. Jimmy's words will be italicized in the original comments and in darkgreen throughout the balance of this posting.
In real life, some argued during World War II that the entire population of Japan was functioning as combatants and so we could nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is not tenable, given human nature
When dealing with a conscripted population, the dynamic of the situation is different than when dealing with unconscripted civilians. When that is taken into account along with a plethora of other factors{1} that are glossed over in simplistic fashion by not a few "apologist" sorts, what is rashly presumed to be "untenable" becomes quite tenable indeed.
Too bad you had to ruin a really good sci-fi post with that attempted fast one.
I decided to omit the footnote from that response as the link it contained is among the ones in the first footnote of this post. In response to Jimmy, original blurb, Greg Mockeridge also wrote some stuff -indeed much more than I did. Readers interested in what he said can peruse that combox thread at Jimmy's blog.{2} My interest in this posting is fourfold: (i) to respond to what Jimmy said to Greg and myself, (ii) to deal with the broader issue of certain fallacies which are common to many who approach this issue, (iii) to cover them at the same time, and (iv) to be reasonably brief about it all. How well I succeed in achieving all four objectives in this post will be debatable of course but without further ado, here goes...
Shawn & Greg:
I know that y'all have a burr under your saddle on the subject of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but you really need to keep perspective on matters.
If I have a burr under [my] saddle on anything Jimmy it is (i) the complete lack of sound thinking that permeates Catholic circles on these subjects and (ii) the way Greg and I have been treated by members of the apologetics oligarchy when discussing this subject. I am also aware that if an opinion is reiterated enough, many people will accept it as correct even if it is not. The latter is human nature sadly whereas the former is something that should be of concern to those who believe that Catholics have important contributions to make to the arena of ideas. There are serious problems here which too many want to pretend do not exist which I have noted in past public postings on this subject matter:
Catholic apologists are oftentimes intellectually dependent. I say this because they demonstrate a serious lacuna in their ability to utilize the thinking mechanism. Their intellectual dependence is on what the Catholic Church's magisterium[...] says on issues. Where this authority speaks with a clear voice, they can wade their way into issues of discussion with a degree of comfort. However, where this authority does not speak[...], they are at a loss of what to do. This is where they flail around like a drowning man seeking to find anything they can remotely ascribe to a magisterial statement on the issue in question as their way of coping with a lack of such guidance which they so evidently need.
For it is easy to argue a position where there are definite guidelines of sorts and Catholic doctrine does provide certain principles which are able to be grasped. The problem is the areas where there is not the same authoritative guidance. Finding themselves unable to argue a position on the grounds of what is reasonable and what is logical[...], they seek to manufacture an intervention by magisterial authority in the hopes of avoiding accountability for the grey matter between their ears. This approach is (of course) not a properly Catholic one and any hope of convincing non-Catholics that their position is the correct one evaporates like dew on a hot summer morning. The end result is various apologists claiming magisterial sanction for certain doctrinal applications and parroting sections of the catechism where general principles are espoused as if they are one and the same. Then, when you point out to these "apologists" that they are not defining their terms either at all or at least not correctly, the response in return is either hostile shrieking, insults, or continued repetition of the same flawed approaches as before as if such repetition constitutes a valid argument. From there, a disintegration of any genuine dialogue occurs (if one existed to begin with) and the end result is hardly edifying in any way to those who are casually observing what is going on--let alone to those who are involved in the disputation as active (or passive) participants.
Anyway, that is what we have seen occurring in recent years in the Catholic apologetics movement with the old apologetics hegemony breaking down and the previously unchallenged bigwigs not being properly equipped to provide a coherent and persuasive voice in the arena of ideas viz. application of principles in the public square. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa August 5, 2006)]
And again:
Frankly, what I wrote is not a rubix cube. It is a theory properly understood and is intended to provoke logical thought and reasoned analysis. And as logical thought and reasoned analysis is quite rare in most circles (including "apologetics" ones), a degree of condescention is required to outline certain elementary factors that are required for that.
It is indeed unfortunate but after over seven years of observing this phenomenon of "Catholic apologetics" and seeing this problem manifest itself not only amongst the neophytes but to a larger extent the seasoned apologists, I am not about to stand by and pretend that the ship is not sinking when indeed it is. On making a positive contribution to the arena of ideas and influencing culture for the good, Catholic apologists are (as a whole) miserable failures!!! A key reason for this is that they presume a competence in certain issues[...] which they do not have.
Furthermore, as many of them evince either ignorance of (or an unwillingness to differentiate) between what is an authoritative Church pronouncement and what is not, they inevitably[...] throw everything into the same kettle and this is erroneous. It is also disingenuous to no small degree.
I am beyond tired of seeing illogical fideism and warmed over neo-ultramontanism by these self-anointed "experts." All they do is provide fuel for the anti-Catholic caricatures of Catholics as intellectual infants who cannot think and blindly accept anything that is said by a curial representative -no matter how illogical and opposed to sound reasoning it happens to be. As Catholics we recognize that magisterial teachings require religious submission. This is a tall order and it should not be casually presumed without adequate warrant. I refuse to stand by, even by proxy, and watch a bunch of ignorant self-anointed "experts" lump every curial utterance into that category as a cheap expedient to shut off legitimate and necessary debate on various issues. This kind of crap has gone on for too long and it needed to be stopped yesterday. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa August 22, 2006)]
More could be noted{3} but that suffices to get my point across adequately at the present time.
Now despite more and more evidence that there are few who take the idea of sound rational logical thought seriously in Catholic circles, I am perhaps a bit of an optimist in thinking there are still some out there who have not bent the knee to the Baal of intellectual dependence yet -even among those who call themselves "apologists." But based on what I have observed, I have found myself as a rule less and less optimistic{4} as the years go passing by.
The fact that the Japanese--unlike the Borg and the Cylons--had free will means that one cannot simply rely on the idea that "they all count as aggressors" and exterminate them en masse.
It is better to say nothing at all than play this kind of "lets take a position but slip it into an unrelated post to appear to be not taking a position per se" kind of game. It is disappointing to see that even someone as intelligent as you are Jimmy can fail to make some of the necessary distinctions in this situation that need to be considered for a fair assessment on the matter. Maybe the argumentation fallacy of provincialism that impairs a lot of Catholic approaches to this issue is a deeper problem than I initially presumed.
You'd have to *show* that they were all aggressors, which is dubious in view of the fact that different human use their free will in different ways.
Jimmy, when the mass population was conscripted and working actively against the allied forces in the war -and even had brainwashed children to act as little kamikazes- this is not the same as opening fire on a defenseless city or populace. But rather than speak in the abstract, lets make of this a more real life situation.
Assume for a moment Jimmy that you are a soldier in Okinawa in 1945 and a child sidled up to you with a bomb pack on. Are you telling me you would stand there and let yourself get blown away??? Hardly, you would with the greatest of likelihood do what you could to make sure the bomb would not hurt you -even going so far as shooting the child if you had to. The latter would not be done because you wanted to hurt the child but because if you did not, you would be killed too: either by the child's bomb or by your fellow soldiers who would see any attempt at helping to be giving aid and comfort to the enemy.{5} These kinds of decisions are always made in a snap second and with survival in mind.
That you see is what such children would be (enemies) in the scenario noted above. And for the sake of survival in that situation they must be viewed as such. It is a ghastly picture but guess what: war is a very ghastly business and there is a reason why it should never be undertaken lightly.
In a post *about* killing fictional races that do not have human freedom of will, it is entirely appropriate for me to make passing mention of this difference and to state what is, in fact, the dominant opinion among Catholic thinkers about the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And as I have noted on more than one occasion Jimmy, opinions unsubstantiated by rational argumentation are not worth consideration no matter who makes them. There is no shortage of uninformed opinions out there; ergo one must judge an opinion by objective criteria. The problem is, people are disposed to think of what certain people say as being right irregardless of the merits of their arguments (if they provide any). That is why I would not consider on this matter of discussion that there are many "thinkers" at all: even normally very sharp knives react emotionally to the issue and that impairs the thinking mechanism more times than not. Throw in a general ignorance of many prevalent factors involved and the dominant opinion does not surprise me at all.
Arguing to consensus is of course a fallacious form of argumentation but I trust you were not doing that with your statement but instead making a general statement. Nonetheless, to address the majority view briefly, I know Jimmy that you know as well as anyone that the predominant view of theologians can change on issues and indeed has changed on many of them. Indeed, many of the theological positions taken by the Second Vatican Council were hardly majority viewpoints prior to the convening of that synod. Other examples could be noted but that suffices to point out the problem with staking anyone's tent with "the majority view" among theologians.
There is another problem more implicit and it is this Jimmy: you happen to be one of these people, by virtue of your position in apologetics and the overall quality of the work you have done over the years, whom many people will accept something as true simply because you say it. This is problematical in some respect because there are a lot of people who do not know how to think very well and that is how they approach people whom they have an implicit faith of sorts in. This is why such people need to be careful in what they say and how they say it.
Surely you do not think I am somehow unaware that most theologians disagree with the position I have taken. If anything, I have been far more generous in giving those who disagree with me a fair amount of latitude as long as they stick to the issues and do not attempt indirect attempts to cut myself or others down or shut off legitimate disagreement on the issue as not a few so-called "apologists" do when the shoe is on the other foot: both on this issue and also several others which could be noted.
Another reason I will not call most who disagree with me on this issue "thinkers" as far as the issue goes because frankly, I have seen no attempts thus far to put together a hypothesis on the matter that can be subjected to reasonable scrutiny. And until I see such an attempt made, it would be fallacious to accept the opinion of anyone whomever they are. That is the problem with many if not most on this issue: they namedrop people whose opinions seem to concur with theirs but without presenting any evidence as to how said people arrived at their opinions. Sorry but that is not think[ing] Jimmy no matter how you chop the turkey.
This is not "attempting a fast one." The mention must be brief because of the nature of the post.
Other examples could have been made and you could have avoided giving the impression that this is a closed issue when in fact it is not. Again, your word carries a lot of weight with people Jimmy. There are those who would take your word over any assemblage of facts and rational analysis that would be provided by others. It is a sad spectacle{6} but it is what it is.
I am not obligated, just because I known that some Hiroshima-defenders out there, to slam on the brakes and conduct an extended discourse on the moral illegitimacy of the indiscriminate killing of Japanese people.
You assume it is indiscriminate but do not make any attempt to defend this assumption by rational argument. Apparently, people are supposed to tip the biretta, bow three times, and uncritically incense it because Jimmy Akin says so. In reality, the burden is on someone who makes an assumption to defend it or else to not make it. And this works both ways Jimmy, not just one way.
The burden is on defenders of the nuking to prove that it was morally legitimate to indiscriminately kill Japanese people--particularly given what the Catechism says on the subject of indiscriminate killing in wartime.
Again, the burden Jimmy is on both sides, not merely one.{7} For those who claim that the Catechism passage on indiscriminate killing in wartime applies to what happened on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945, they have to demonstrate this and cannot merely assume it. I have already explained in detail why this assumption is faulty for many reasons but I am not about to rehash the issue here. I have already more than established a solid burden of proof for my theory{8} on this matter. Beyond that, the arguments on this score from people of your persuasion without fail tend to be normative and thus subjective rather than non-normative and objective.
For example, does any bomb really kill with discrimination when it hits its target??? Obviously not. I have yet to find a bomb that actually asks who is home before it explodes so that it only kills the persons so aimed for. Therefore, the problem in the atomic bombing case is not what you claim it is. You and others essentially make an arbitrary normative or subjective "it is too big" attempted argument which is hardly non-normative or objective no matter how you slice the bread. More could be noted but as I have already more than adequately established by sound rigorous logical argument my position on this matter and various contingent factors in a series of threads{9}, I am not about to do so again.
And, let me point out, this combox is not the proper place for that discussion.
That is why I blogged this thread and will post the link to the combox so it does not clutter your combox. But kindly keep matters in context Jimmy: when this subject erupted back in 2005, you were AWOL on it as was (in truly predictable fashion) the rest of the apologetics oligarchy. I did not anticipate that my theory would be accepted either immediately or without some friction but I was shocked at the unethical behaviour that masqueraded about as "apologetics"{10} by some whom I once thought fairly highly of. Not a few persons disgraced themselves in how they handled this matter -some more so than others.
Despite what happened, I still think highly of you Jimmy (you are one of a select few apologists I can say that about). What happened in 2005 was a symptom of a much larger problem that has been going on for a long time. I hope therefore that you will call those self-styled "apologists" I refer to in the previous paragraph from the cliff over which they are running (to the discredit of Catholic apologetics). Again, you do have that kind of influence Jimmy -you are probably one of the few who does. It is my hope that you will use it and not seek merely to preserve the status quo: a subject I will touch on another time in another posting when I feel inclined to speak on these matters again.
Notes:
{1} Threads on the Atomic Bomb Droppings, Military and Statistical Calculations, the Moral and Ethical Aspects of the Subject Matter in Question, Etc. (circa August 17, 2005-September 20, 2005)
"Armstrong Illusions" Dept. Revisited (circa January 23, 2006)
Preserving the Historical Record (circa January 26, 2006)
Guest Editorial on the Atomic Bombings, the Continued Emphasis on it Publicly by Certain Apologists, and the Goal of Catholic Apologetics --By Dr. Art Sippo (circa January 26, 2006)
A Followup Guest Editorial on the Atomic Bombings, the Continued Emphasis on it Publicly by Certain Apologists, and the Goal of Catholic Apologetics--By Dr. Art Sippo (circa January 31, 2006)
Some Brief Wrapup Comments on the Previous Guest Editorial (circa January 31, 2006)
Dismantling the GS 80 Attempted "Argument" By Recourse to General Norms of Theological Interpretation (circa February 4, 2006)
{2} Which for the record is among my semi-regular reads.
{3} I could also mention the public flap over supposed "torture" but will save that one for another time as this is too long already. Oh and another more explicit writing is being considered for posting which would get to the core of what is noted above amongst the apologetics oligarchy and do so in a much briefer and much less irenic way. Whether or when it is blogged remains uncertain at this time.
{4} Fortunately (I suppose) in recent weeks I have found some Catholics who can honestly interact with an issue on its merits and this has made me at least cautiously optimistic that there are more people of character out there than I was starting to presume. I refer of course to Dr. Scott Carson and Dr. Michael Liccione. Maybe the reason they can do this is partly because they are not part of the apologetics oligarchy and therefore have no vested interest in circling the wagons to protect one another from legitimate scrutiny while hypocritically condoning similar scrutiny being hurled at rival apologist camps.
{5} I am sure some of the brainless overreactive sorts will claim that this means I endorse murder or something equally as stupid: I note it here so that when it happens, people cannot say that I did not anticipate this pathetic Jerry Springeresque-mainstream mediaesque attempt to avoid intelligent discussion via cultic deadangenting tactics.
{6} I do not mean this in any way as a personal slight against you Jimmy, only as a lament of sorts against people in general. (The metaphor of people as sheep which was used in the Gospels makes more and more sense to me the longer I observe humanity.)
{7} To assert otherwise is to endorse (however tacitly) intellectual and ethical laziness on one side of the issue.
{8} I say theory because it is far more than a mere hypothesis.
{9} See footnote one.
{10} The problems were many but one which was particularly noxious was the violation of private correspondence by a certain party I will not name at this time. When it happened again, I wrote a blog post on the subject which can be read HERE. Certain persons whom I shall not name tried to assert that I "lied" on this matter but if not for my growing tired of responding to them only to have said parties dodge the issues and involve themselves in more character assassination, I would have easily dispatched with this baseless assertion and done so by objective criteria as I had previously done with a panopoly of their other public assertions. Or as I have noted elsewhere:
As for the claim that I lied about his violation of private correspondence, I could easily shred that thread also if (i) I wanted to take the time to do it and (ii) if I actually thought it would do any good to take the time to do it.[...] Unfortunately, unlike XXXX, I do not have all the time in the world to cut and paste people's work to create libelous distortions even if I wanted to. And I most certainly do not countenance this attitude at all -viewing instead a potential excess of prose as preferable to such mutilations of the work of others to insure that the words of others are not taken out of context. [Excerpt from an Unsent Email Correspondence (as of November 25, 2006)]
The approach take by the apologetics oligarchy against one of their own engaging in this unethical libelous behaviour??? Why silence of course.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Points to Ponder:
(On Discussion Subjects That Interest Me at a Given Time)
[A] subject as a rule needs to be of contemporary significance to be of interest to me in its discussing. This can take many forms including but not limited to (i) something that interests me that I have a reasonable degree of knowledge about which I may not have discussed before and want to discuss for some reason, (ii) that someone emails me on a subject previously discussed and I am predisposed for some reason to discuss it again at or approximate to that time, (iii) contemporary events which provide for the opportunity to in some fashion expound on timeless principles pertaining in some fashion or another to the subject so discussed, (iv) something I recall from reading which is of interest to me at a given moment in time, or (v) a situation whereby some additional threads can be added to the mosaic of subjects which have been of interest to me at various times as a way of further refining through development my views on a given subject matter. [Excerpt from an Email Correspondence (circa November 27, 2006)]
(On Discussion Subjects That Interest Me at a Given Time)
[A] subject as a rule needs to be of contemporary significance to be of interest to me in its discussing. This can take many forms including but not limited to (i) something that interests me that I have a reasonable degree of knowledge about which I may not have discussed before and want to discuss for some reason, (ii) that someone emails me on a subject previously discussed and I am predisposed for some reason to discuss it again at or approximate to that time, (iii) contemporary events which provide for the opportunity to in some fashion expound on timeless principles pertaining in some fashion or another to the subject so discussed, (iv) something I recall from reading which is of interest to me at a given moment in time, or (v) a situation whereby some additional threads can be added to the mosaic of subjects which have been of interest to me at various times as a way of further refining through development my views on a given subject matter. [Excerpt from an Email Correspondence (circa November 27, 2006)]
Friday, November 24, 2006
Points to Ponder:
(On Building One's Character)
One builds one's own character. The required first step is a choice. One's got to choose to build one's character; one's got to hold it as a value - that's the first step. Once one understands that one possesses the faculty of volition, or the power of choice, that particular individual will go about seeking the character traits and integrating them into his personality structure or character structure. The question for most people is "how does one go about doing that?" The first step after making, deciding or focusing on the fact that he has a choice, is that he has to decide what character traits he finds valuable and meaningful. Most people would agree on most of them. Some of the "eternal verities," so to speak, very few people would challenge the importance of character traits such as honesty, integrity, hard work, discipline, and so forth. Then, when you get into the more debatable -- from certain points of view -- things such as altruism, or self-sacrifice, there would be considerable area for debate. But generally, just to answer your question, the most important factor in going about building character is, first of all, to decide or choose to hold that particular value as a high value, a premium, in one's life, and then actually the rest will fall into place. There are bound to be ups and downs along the way -- even some mistakes made in terms of what's integrated -- but if one holds Reason as a value, along with character-building, the rest will fall into place much easier. The very fact that a person would choose to hold character building as a high-value, I would assume that the person is a "seeker;" that is, a "seeker" after truth. [Mike Mentzer to John Little (circa 1986)]
(On Building One's Character)
One builds one's own character. The required first step is a choice. One's got to choose to build one's character; one's got to hold it as a value - that's the first step. Once one understands that one possesses the faculty of volition, or the power of choice, that particular individual will go about seeking the character traits and integrating them into his personality structure or character structure. The question for most people is "how does one go about doing that?" The first step after making, deciding or focusing on the fact that he has a choice, is that he has to decide what character traits he finds valuable and meaningful. Most people would agree on most of them. Some of the "eternal verities," so to speak, very few people would challenge the importance of character traits such as honesty, integrity, hard work, discipline, and so forth. Then, when you get into the more debatable -- from certain points of view -- things such as altruism, or self-sacrifice, there would be considerable area for debate. But generally, just to answer your question, the most important factor in going about building character is, first of all, to decide or choose to hold that particular value as a high value, a premium, in one's life, and then actually the rest will fall into place. There are bound to be ups and downs along the way -- even some mistakes made in terms of what's integrated -- but if one holds Reason as a value, along with character-building, the rest will fall into place much easier. The very fact that a person would choose to hold character building as a high-value, I would assume that the person is a "seeker;" that is, a "seeker" after truth. [Mike Mentzer to John Little (circa 1986)]
"Santayana's Dictum" Dept.
(A Synopsis of Our Overall Prescience Viz. the 2006 Elections and A Bit of Analysis As Well)
[Prefatory Note: Your host apologizes for the delay in posting this thread -it was ready to go back on November 22, 2006 but there were too many glitches in the text formatting to be posted at that time and not enough time to fix them. Anyway, the text here is the same as before with only the most minor of adjustments (including the addition of a footnote among them). -ISM]
As it has been customary for the present writer to write an analysis of sorts after each election cycle{1}, it seems appropriate to do so after the recent election; ergo, the post you have before you.
Now readers of this weblog are aware that your humble servant has reiterated numerous times certain principles to account for in making prognoses on future events. We intend with this email to outline some areas where we were remarkable prescient before getting to one area where we must eat some crow. But without further ado, let us get to it.
To start with, there is the historical trackrecord of elections. Often did the present writer speak of these matters in private conversations and sometimes even in public media formats. In perusing the archives, the following bits were found which will be revisited in sequential order so that readers can denote the consistency of my approach to these matters for reasons which will soon be evident:
For those who know their history, political savvy is going to be needed in much greater supply than normal in the next year and a half. I will outline in this post reasons for that seemingly bold assertion.
To start with, I have noted before that a year is an eternity in politics.[...] For that reason alone, what seems like a certain thing now may not be that way a year from now. (Let alone a year and a half from now.) But that does not mean that there are not certain lessons that history can teach us of general tendencies which can give us probabilities of what is more likely than not to happen. And it is utilizing the latter that I intend to do in the rest of this post in discussing the 2006 elections.
By all historical indicators of norms, the 2006 elections should favour the Democrats because historically the party which holds the White House loses ground in the midterm elections of a two-term president as a rule. And while many might scoff at the idea of the current crop of Democrats achieving that kind of feat, it frankly does not matter as a rule how potent or impotent they are politically. And as a brief outline from recent history should help clarify this a bit, that is what we will do at this time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa June 21, 2005)]
The above text was the first public utterance we made on the principle of midterms in the second term of a presidency. Readers can review the entire thread to see the historical outline sketched which showed itself to apply again in this election year. The subject was revisited in the months prior to the election both in chat format as well as on this weblog. Here are the salient threads that can be recalled offhand -the first is a chat with Kevin Tierney which is reproduced in substantial integrity{2} at this time:
Kevin: the Machiavellian in me wants the dems to win the house so something like this can be put out and I'm at work, so I can't view it :)
me: well, if nothing else Conyers keeps me from having any of my blog postings be considered the "world's longest blog post" ;-)
Kevin: some of the charges there, let the dems go forward with that. It would give new definition to the concept of "hari-kari"
me: I predict Conyers and company may well use that report as their manifesto of sorts for this November and yes, it would turn off most people enough to marginalize the dems to make their takeover of the House go from possible/probable to snowballs-chance-in-hell ish
Kevin: their chances have declined incredibly from the beginning of the year when everyone was taking it as granted the dems were taking over both houses
me: agreed but I still think they are to be favoured
Kevin: I don't think either side is favored now it's 50-50 the dems have a chance in the senate, not the house I think
me: my reason is the "midterm of a two term president election cycle" pattern historically but the Senate will hold either way methinks the question mark is the House and that is key cause even if they take over and try impeachment schtick the Senate holding guarantees that there will be no removal of Bush prior to January 20, 2009
me: admittedly my Machiavellian side would get joy in seeing such hearings take place...cause it would make the Dems in 2008 less likely to win the presidency because we would see all the rabidness in full media view rather than somewhat sequestered as it is now and most people would be turned off by it to no small degree
Kevin: the only problem is astute democrat congressmen are few and far between
me: in short, we are in agreement here
Kevin: even Hillary Clinton is not that smart. One thing is for sure, she does not have her husband's charisma or the ability to bullshit
me: Lieberman is being challenged by the rabid moronic leftist fringe sorts in his re-election I hope Joe kicks the fringe candidate's keister soundly. I like him and wish there were more Dems like him [Excerpt from a Chat With Kevin Tierney (circa August 7, 2006)]
As readers can see, our hope for Leiberman panned. Readers can say that our comments on Conyers and the strategery we noted not being used means that we missed a prediction but at best it is a half-prediction and the germ of the point remains intact.{3} The present writer also made another reference to the historical pattern in the above thread. And from another chat file with Kevin, we noted these points including some predictions which remain to be fulfilled{4}:
me: well, that is what closed door sessions are for and a complicit media remember only with the 1994 congress did a lot of this stuff get televised prior to that, it was not on TV for viewing on CSpan or whatever and if the Dems win, they will probably make some excuse that the subjects to be treated on are "too delicate a matter to be publicly broadcast" or some other bullshit of that sort
me: if I sound downright nasty in my portrayal, it is because of experience in seeing them when they have a majority and how haughty they act. The Republicans act stupid a lot but the Democratic ancients are downright evil at times...not to mention vindictive...think of the way high school bullies and the "popular class" sorts acted for a good picture of the mentality
Kevin: their flanks have collapsed now, so my worries are less
me: my worries are less too...but a wounded animal is a fiercer fighter and there is enough anger out there at Bush
Kevin: the republicans don't have to win in November they just have to not lose
me: if they can convince enough fools to make the 2006 election a referendum on Bush, it may well work this time...things have changed since 2004...Bush has shown weakness in spots which is from our POV appalling...from their view, it is exploitable if they know what they are doing
Kevin: they won't be able to focus their message though since they call for a referendum on bush, but then state we achieve that by withdrawing from Iraq which nobody outside of the angry left blogosphere actually believes
me: put it this way...if I was the strategist for the Dems in 2006, I guarantee they would win the House cause I know where to hit Bush for maximum effect
someone on their side has to know too...the Q is if they will be listened to
which odds are is no
Kevin: let the dems charge the line, all anyone has to do is just hold the spears forward. Sure one horse breaks through, but they don't take the ground :)
me: lol nice analogy
me: I hope it is apropo...history is not on our side here though midterms of a two term president are rarely not a disaster for the incumbent party particularly if one party holds both houses and the presidency
Kevin: I do not believe history is a God who is infallible and to be worshipped. :) the tides of history are always shifting.
me: even the Republicans after the absolute ass kicking they got in 1932 and a further setback in 1934 and a 1936 electoral absolutely cleaned House literally in 1938 (about 75 House seats and 14 Senate seats were gained that year)
history is not to be worshipped nor is it infallible, but as Newman said it has lessons that we ignore to our own detriment...or as Santayana said "ignore history and you are doomed to repeat it" [Excerpt from a Chat With Kevin Tierney (circa September 6, 2006)]
Again, readers can notice your host's appeal to history on this matter as something to be taken seriously. However, the present writer would be dishonest if he did not admit that the tea leaves were reading differently to him in September as noted in the following blog posting of miscellaneous tidbits:
Some have opined that there will be a tidalwave of anti-Republican sentiment this November aimed as some kind of "referendum" on President Bush. Others have claimed the converse: that the Republicans will consolidate and maybe expand their holdings as the Democrats come apart at the seams. I have noted in the past on various occasions that a year is an eternity in politics. Keeping that factor in mind, it suffices to note that even two months is a long time -maybe an ice age or whatever. My gut intuition on these matters at the moment is the following:
---The Republicans will not lose the Senate. Period. They are vulnerable in the House this is true both by virtue of current circumstances as well as the traditional pattern of parties out of power gaining in the mid term elections of a two term presidency. But the Senate will hold -only 33 are up for re-election and the Democrats would have to hold serve on all their guys and pick up about ten seats or so in the Senate just to tie. (Remember, Cheney is the tiebreaker.) But ultimately I see the Republicans at the moment losing some seats in the House but holding serve. They may lose some in the Senate too but whatever happens, they will retain the Senate no matter what. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 14, 2006)]
While making note of the historical pattern and also that two months is a long time in politics; nonetheless, your host writing on the fly should have double checked the Senate numbers before posting some of what is in the above thread. For some reason, we were thinking it was ten to tie instead of six which may not sound like much of a difference but it is for reasons now to be explained in brief.
In an elected body where only one third are elected in a given cycle, basically assuming an even split roughly between the parties (which is something that is not necessarily a given), we were seeing approximately a third of the senators up for election (ten) being needed to close the senate gap rather than roughly a fifth (six). If we had taken a few minutes to double check the numbers above, the above statement would never have made about the Dems "not winning the Senate period" but instead we would have recognized that it was much more probable than we were presuming.{5}
Basically not much changed between what was noted on September 14, 2006 and what was posted on the weekend leading up to the election. Or to quote a post of miscellaneous tidbits on some subjects:
---As I have told not a few friends and associates in recent weeks, watch for this election cycle's "October Surprise." Well, it took 30 days but on 10/30 we got it in John Kerry's recent public snafu. After this one, I cannot see how the Democrats can win either house of Congress because (i) seven days before an election is too quick to be able to spin this one away and (ii) this will anger Independents like your weblog host as well as Republicans who may have been a bit lax viz. the upcoming election. Anyway, that is what our gut intuition is on the election at the present time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 1, 2006)]
For the record, it is obvious that our intuition in the above paragraph was wrong. However, while the present writer did note more than once his intuition about the Republicans holding, he also noted a concern that they would not get the message if they did. Or to quote a post from the day of the election when it was too early to tell where the winds were blowing:
It needs to be made clear that any support for the Republicans is done grudgingly and not because people think they are that good a party because they are not...
[W]e must avoid being one-issue focused here. Granted national security is a huge issue and definitely must be at or near the top of the list of anyone who actually is concerned with the survival of not only themselves but also civilization. But we cannot let these guys off the hook in the myriad of areas where they are screwing up. They need to be told in no uncertain terms that they are not being approved of in this election as much as their opponents are being rejected. [Excerpts from Rerum Novarum (circa November 7, 2006)]
Obviously our concern there ended up being not founded as the Republicans were rebuked on election day. And the reasons why they were rebuked are ones which your host outlined in advance. In other words, while we outlined what the Dems would need to do to win and also noted the historical trackrecord, we obviously underestimated the Dems being smart enough to know what they needed to do to win and to actually do it. We said they would need to nationalize the election around Bush and they did that. We also said that they would need to shut their traps and not tell people what they really planned to do{6} and they actually did that also. Give them credit for actually learning from past mistakes if nothing else. The question is, will the idiotic Republicans realize why they lost in the election or not. Alas, we cannot say there is much optimism here at Rerum Novarum that they will -at least not in the short term. Maybe it will take handing over the gavels in the chambers on January 20, 2007 for them to realize what happened and start the process of pondering why what happened actually happened.
How does your host feel about the election results??? He noted on the day after the election, that he was not that disturbed by what happened in the election -which is a surprise cause the converse was actually presumed to be how he would take it. And as time goes on, we find that appraisal not changing in the slightest. What happened to the Republicans and why did they lose -history's pattern working against them notwithstanding??? Well, the present writer summarized it in an email just the other day and will quote from it{7} at this time:
[T]he Republicans...saw their congressional power obliterated overnight because they were not true to conservative principles first and foremost.[...] They were in other words hypocrites for preaching about caring for the Constitution while they spent like drunken sailors in the most foul and unconstitutional fashion ala the Democrats in the old days. They also gave every impression of trying to do just enough to placate the base and get re-elected. Frankly, I can respect the people for throwing the Republicans out because if they are going to govern like Democrats, why go with a pale impressionist of the real thing when you can have the real thing...[Excerpt from an Email Correspondence (circa November 14, 2006)]
There is also the fact that no conservatives lost their seats and if anything, conservatives were either re-elected amongst the Republicans or elected amongst the Democrats. The reason the Dems will have majorities in both houses is because of southern conservative Democrats being elected. This makes the majority the Democrats will have a very fragile one -particularly in the Senate- and if the more rabid Democrat sorts do not show that they can work and play well with others{8}, then they will fail to govern effectively and will be thrown out in 2008.
To wrap up this thread, while more could be noted than just what is in the above snippet and followup paragraph, that will nonetheless have to suffice for now -though your host will probably revisit this subject after the new congress convenes in January of 2007. In summary: conservatism did not lose in 2006 while party loyalty at all cost amongst the Republicans did. Thank God the present writer is an Independent voter of ten years standing is all he will say about that at the present time.
Notes:
{1} Here are the analyses blogged on the elections that have taken place since this weblog debuted:
A Rerum Novarum Post-Election Commentary, Development of Some Key November 2002 Post-Election Observations, Etc. (circa November 24, 2004)
Analysis of the Overall Election Trends (circa November 6, 2002)
{2} The only changes made were some spelling glitches, removing the time stamps to give the thread a better cohesion, and imbedding any url links from the chat log. All of these were done for easier reading of the material.
{3} For while the Democrat leadership did not act as we said they may well act, at the same time (i) if they had acted that way or essentially been honest with the electorate, they would have lost soundly and (ii) their silence in the final weeks from public interaction shows that they knew well that to speak their minds would have meant defeat.
{4} For the record, your host hopes to be disproven on the predictions of upcoming Democrat party media censorship of congressional proceedings.
{5} Gut intuitions do not constitute "predictions" properly-speaking but we note it here nonetheless in the interest of disclosure.
{6} We may post that email in its entirety and not revealing the identity of the person it was sent it to; however, because of the contents of said email and what it says about certain persons and institutions, we want to mull over that for a while longer before deciding one way or the other on what to do with it.
{7} Or in other words, be profoundly disingenuous to the voting public.
{8} Your host predicts that to some extent they will not be as rabid as they may want to for one reason: it would sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations in 2008. You gotta know that Bill Clinton will have a talk with the party leadership about that before they are sworn in on January 20, 2007 --if he has not done so already-- and tell this crowd to not impair Hillary's chances by acting out their extremist tendencies on several polarizing issues. (We may discuss some of them later including a couple predictions made in private on this crowd that may shock the readers of this humble weblog.)
(A Synopsis of Our Overall Prescience Viz. the 2006 Elections and A Bit of Analysis As Well)
[Prefatory Note: Your host apologizes for the delay in posting this thread -it was ready to go back on November 22, 2006 but there were too many glitches in the text formatting to be posted at that time and not enough time to fix them. Anyway, the text here is the same as before with only the most minor of adjustments (including the addition of a footnote among them). -ISM]
As it has been customary for the present writer to write an analysis of sorts after each election cycle{1}, it seems appropriate to do so after the recent election; ergo, the post you have before you.
Now readers of this weblog are aware that your humble servant has reiterated numerous times certain principles to account for in making prognoses on future events. We intend with this email to outline some areas where we were remarkable prescient before getting to one area where we must eat some crow. But without further ado, let us get to it.
To start with, there is the historical trackrecord of elections. Often did the present writer speak of these matters in private conversations and sometimes even in public media formats. In perusing the archives, the following bits were found which will be revisited in sequential order so that readers can denote the consistency of my approach to these matters for reasons which will soon be evident:
For those who know their history, political savvy is going to be needed in much greater supply than normal in the next year and a half. I will outline in this post reasons for that seemingly bold assertion.
To start with, I have noted before that a year is an eternity in politics.[...] For that reason alone, what seems like a certain thing now may not be that way a year from now. (Let alone a year and a half from now.) But that does not mean that there are not certain lessons that history can teach us of general tendencies which can give us probabilities of what is more likely than not to happen. And it is utilizing the latter that I intend to do in the rest of this post in discussing the 2006 elections.
By all historical indicators of norms, the 2006 elections should favour the Democrats because historically the party which holds the White House loses ground in the midterm elections of a two-term president as a rule. And while many might scoff at the idea of the current crop of Democrats achieving that kind of feat, it frankly does not matter as a rule how potent or impotent they are politically. And as a brief outline from recent history should help clarify this a bit, that is what we will do at this time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa June 21, 2005)]
The above text was the first public utterance we made on the principle of midterms in the second term of a presidency. Readers can review the entire thread to see the historical outline sketched which showed itself to apply again in this election year. The subject was revisited in the months prior to the election both in chat format as well as on this weblog. Here are the salient threads that can be recalled offhand -the first is a chat with Kevin Tierney which is reproduced in substantial integrity{2} at this time:
Kevin: the Machiavellian in me wants the dems to win the house so something like this can be put out and I'm at work, so I can't view it :)
me: well, if nothing else Conyers keeps me from having any of my blog postings be considered the "world's longest blog post" ;-)
Kevin: some of the charges there, let the dems go forward with that. It would give new definition to the concept of "hari-kari"
me: I predict Conyers and company may well use that report as their manifesto of sorts for this November and yes, it would turn off most people enough to marginalize the dems to make their takeover of the House go from possible/probable to snowballs-chance-in-hell ish
Kevin: their chances have declined incredibly from the beginning of the year when everyone was taking it as granted the dems were taking over both houses
me: agreed but I still think they are to be favoured
Kevin: I don't think either side is favored now it's 50-50 the dems have a chance in the senate, not the house I think
me: my reason is the "midterm of a two term president election cycle" pattern historically but the Senate will hold either way methinks the question mark is the House and that is key cause even if they take over and try impeachment schtick the Senate holding guarantees that there will be no removal of Bush prior to January 20, 2009
me: admittedly my Machiavellian side would get joy in seeing such hearings take place...cause it would make the Dems in 2008 less likely to win the presidency because we would see all the rabidness in full media view rather than somewhat sequestered as it is now and most people would be turned off by it to no small degree
Kevin: the only problem is astute democrat congressmen are few and far between
me: in short, we are in agreement here
Kevin: even Hillary Clinton is not that smart. One thing is for sure, she does not have her husband's charisma or the ability to bullshit
me: Lieberman is being challenged by the rabid moronic leftist fringe sorts in his re-election I hope Joe kicks the fringe candidate's keister soundly. I like him and wish there were more Dems like him [Excerpt from a Chat With Kevin Tierney (circa August 7, 2006)]
As readers can see, our hope for Leiberman panned. Readers can say that our comments on Conyers and the strategery we noted not being used means that we missed a prediction but at best it is a half-prediction and the germ of the point remains intact.{3} The present writer also made another reference to the historical pattern in the above thread. And from another chat file with Kevin, we noted these points including some predictions which remain to be fulfilled{4}:
me: well, that is what closed door sessions are for and a complicit media remember only with the 1994 congress did a lot of this stuff get televised prior to that, it was not on TV for viewing on CSpan or whatever and if the Dems win, they will probably make some excuse that the subjects to be treated on are "too delicate a matter to be publicly broadcast" or some other bullshit of that sort
me: if I sound downright nasty in my portrayal, it is because of experience in seeing them when they have a majority and how haughty they act. The Republicans act stupid a lot but the Democratic ancients are downright evil at times...not to mention vindictive...think of the way high school bullies and the "popular class" sorts acted for a good picture of the mentality
Kevin: their flanks have collapsed now, so my worries are less
me: my worries are less too...but a wounded animal is a fiercer fighter and there is enough anger out there at Bush
Kevin: the republicans don't have to win in November they just have to not lose
me: if they can convince enough fools to make the 2006 election a referendum on Bush, it may well work this time...things have changed since 2004...Bush has shown weakness in spots which is from our POV appalling...from their view, it is exploitable if they know what they are doing
Kevin: they won't be able to focus their message though since they call for a referendum on bush, but then state we achieve that by withdrawing from Iraq which nobody outside of the angry left blogosphere actually believes
me: put it this way...if I was the strategist for the Dems in 2006, I guarantee they would win the House cause I know where to hit Bush for maximum effect
someone on their side has to know too...the Q is if they will be listened to
which odds are is no
Kevin: let the dems charge the line, all anyone has to do is just hold the spears forward. Sure one horse breaks through, but they don't take the ground :)
me: lol nice analogy
me: I hope it is apropo...history is not on our side here though midterms of a two term president are rarely not a disaster for the incumbent party particularly if one party holds both houses and the presidency
Kevin: I do not believe history is a God who is infallible and to be worshipped. :) the tides of history are always shifting.
me: even the Republicans after the absolute ass kicking they got in 1932 and a further setback in 1934 and a 1936 electoral absolutely cleaned House literally in 1938 (about 75 House seats and 14 Senate seats were gained that year)
history is not to be worshipped nor is it infallible, but as Newman said it has lessons that we ignore to our own detriment...or as Santayana said "ignore history and you are doomed to repeat it" [Excerpt from a Chat With Kevin Tierney (circa September 6, 2006)]
Again, readers can notice your host's appeal to history on this matter as something to be taken seriously. However, the present writer would be dishonest if he did not admit that the tea leaves were reading differently to him in September as noted in the following blog posting of miscellaneous tidbits:
Some have opined that there will be a tidalwave of anti-Republican sentiment this November aimed as some kind of "referendum" on President Bush. Others have claimed the converse: that the Republicans will consolidate and maybe expand their holdings as the Democrats come apart at the seams. I have noted in the past on various occasions that a year is an eternity in politics. Keeping that factor in mind, it suffices to note that even two months is a long time -maybe an ice age or whatever. My gut intuition on these matters at the moment is the following:
---The Republicans will not lose the Senate. Period. They are vulnerable in the House this is true both by virtue of current circumstances as well as the traditional pattern of parties out of power gaining in the mid term elections of a two term presidency. But the Senate will hold -only 33 are up for re-election and the Democrats would have to hold serve on all their guys and pick up about ten seats or so in the Senate just to tie. (Remember, Cheney is the tiebreaker.) But ultimately I see the Republicans at the moment losing some seats in the House but holding serve. They may lose some in the Senate too but whatever happens, they will retain the Senate no matter what. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 14, 2006)]
While making note of the historical pattern and also that two months is a long time in politics; nonetheless, your host writing on the fly should have double checked the Senate numbers before posting some of what is in the above thread. For some reason, we were thinking it was ten to tie instead of six which may not sound like much of a difference but it is for reasons now to be explained in brief.
In an elected body where only one third are elected in a given cycle, basically assuming an even split roughly between the parties (which is something that is not necessarily a given), we were seeing approximately a third of the senators up for election (ten) being needed to close the senate gap rather than roughly a fifth (six). If we had taken a few minutes to double check the numbers above, the above statement would never have made about the Dems "not winning the Senate period" but instead we would have recognized that it was much more probable than we were presuming.{5}
Basically not much changed between what was noted on September 14, 2006 and what was posted on the weekend leading up to the election. Or to quote a post of miscellaneous tidbits on some subjects:
---As I have told not a few friends and associates in recent weeks, watch for this election cycle's "October Surprise." Well, it took 30 days but on 10/30 we got it in John Kerry's recent public snafu. After this one, I cannot see how the Democrats can win either house of Congress because (i) seven days before an election is too quick to be able to spin this one away and (ii) this will anger Independents like your weblog host as well as Republicans who may have been a bit lax viz. the upcoming election. Anyway, that is what our gut intuition is on the election at the present time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 1, 2006)]
For the record, it is obvious that our intuition in the above paragraph was wrong. However, while the present writer did note more than once his intuition about the Republicans holding, he also noted a concern that they would not get the message if they did. Or to quote a post from the day of the election when it was too early to tell where the winds were blowing:
It needs to be made clear that any support for the Republicans is done grudgingly and not because people think they are that good a party because they are not...
[W]e must avoid being one-issue focused here. Granted national security is a huge issue and definitely must be at or near the top of the list of anyone who actually is concerned with the survival of not only themselves but also civilization. But we cannot let these guys off the hook in the myriad of areas where they are screwing up. They need to be told in no uncertain terms that they are not being approved of in this election as much as their opponents are being rejected. [Excerpts from Rerum Novarum (circa November 7, 2006)]
Obviously our concern there ended up being not founded as the Republicans were rebuked on election day. And the reasons why they were rebuked are ones which your host outlined in advance. In other words, while we outlined what the Dems would need to do to win and also noted the historical trackrecord, we obviously underestimated the Dems being smart enough to know what they needed to do to win and to actually do it. We said they would need to nationalize the election around Bush and they did that. We also said that they would need to shut their traps and not tell people what they really planned to do{6} and they actually did that also. Give them credit for actually learning from past mistakes if nothing else. The question is, will the idiotic Republicans realize why they lost in the election or not. Alas, we cannot say there is much optimism here at Rerum Novarum that they will -at least not in the short term. Maybe it will take handing over the gavels in the chambers on January 20, 2007 for them to realize what happened and start the process of pondering why what happened actually happened.
How does your host feel about the election results??? He noted on the day after the election, that he was not that disturbed by what happened in the election -which is a surprise cause the converse was actually presumed to be how he would take it. And as time goes on, we find that appraisal not changing in the slightest. What happened to the Republicans and why did they lose -history's pattern working against them notwithstanding??? Well, the present writer summarized it in an email just the other day and will quote from it{7} at this time:
[T]he Republicans...saw their congressional power obliterated overnight because they were not true to conservative principles first and foremost.[...] They were in other words hypocrites for preaching about caring for the Constitution while they spent like drunken sailors in the most foul and unconstitutional fashion ala the Democrats in the old days. They also gave every impression of trying to do just enough to placate the base and get re-elected. Frankly, I can respect the people for throwing the Republicans out because if they are going to govern like Democrats, why go with a pale impressionist of the real thing when you can have the real thing...[Excerpt from an Email Correspondence (circa November 14, 2006)]
There is also the fact that no conservatives lost their seats and if anything, conservatives were either re-elected amongst the Republicans or elected amongst the Democrats. The reason the Dems will have majorities in both houses is because of southern conservative Democrats being elected. This makes the majority the Democrats will have a very fragile one -particularly in the Senate- and if the more rabid Democrat sorts do not show that they can work and play well with others{8}, then they will fail to govern effectively and will be thrown out in 2008.
To wrap up this thread, while more could be noted than just what is in the above snippet and followup paragraph, that will nonetheless have to suffice for now -though your host will probably revisit this subject after the new congress convenes in January of 2007. In summary: conservatism did not lose in 2006 while party loyalty at all cost amongst the Republicans did. Thank God the present writer is an Independent voter of ten years standing is all he will say about that at the present time.
Notes:
{1} Here are the analyses blogged on the elections that have taken place since this weblog debuted:
A Rerum Novarum Post-Election Commentary, Development of Some Key November 2002 Post-Election Observations, Etc. (circa November 24, 2004)
Analysis of the Overall Election Trends (circa November 6, 2002)
{2} The only changes made were some spelling glitches, removing the time stamps to give the thread a better cohesion, and imbedding any url links from the chat log. All of these were done for easier reading of the material.
{3} For while the Democrat leadership did not act as we said they may well act, at the same time (i) if they had acted that way or essentially been honest with the electorate, they would have lost soundly and (ii) their silence in the final weeks from public interaction shows that they knew well that to speak their minds would have meant defeat.
{4} For the record, your host hopes to be disproven on the predictions of upcoming Democrat party media censorship of congressional proceedings.
{5} Gut intuitions do not constitute "predictions" properly-speaking but we note it here nonetheless in the interest of disclosure.
{6} We may post that email in its entirety and not revealing the identity of the person it was sent it to; however, because of the contents of said email and what it says about certain persons and institutions, we want to mull over that for a while longer before deciding one way or the other on what to do with it.
{7} Or in other words, be profoundly disingenuous to the voting public.
{8} Your host predicts that to some extent they will not be as rabid as they may want to for one reason: it would sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations in 2008. You gotta know that Bill Clinton will have a talk with the party leadership about that before they are sworn in on January 20, 2007 --if he has not done so already-- and tell this crowd to not impair Hillary's chances by acting out their extremist tendencies on several polarizing issues. (We may discuss some of them later including a couple predictions made in private on this crowd that may shock the readers of this humble weblog.)
On an Upcoming Weblog Update, Etc.
I am working bit by bit on a weblog update which will cover materials blogged since the last update (August 16, 2006). It will probably incorporate some old threads from the archives and also remand some other threads to the archivesbut the main focus will be on the stuff since the last update. As some threads will be removed from the side margin in this update, it seems appropriate to explain what my criteria is for such a selection -as I have been asked before why some threads are included and others are not.
Of course some threads are simply better than other ones subject-wise, argumentation-wise{1}, and the like. Other times, I look back and wish I had handled a subject better and decide for that reason to remand existing side margin threads or not include a particular thread in the update sequence. But this is not an exact science by any means.
Remanding threads to the archives does not necessarily mean that I disapprove of them. Sometimes it happens that certain threads are no longer as relevent to particular circumstances to remain in the side margin when there are space limits to consider and other threads of greater prevalance to take their place. Another way of saying it is this: nothing gets deleted here at Rerum Novarum but sometimes certain threads are not as relevant so they are removed from the side margin but are still accessible in the archives.{2}
Anyway, I should have the weblog updated by December 1st. That is the time frame I am shooting for time-willing.
Notes:
{1} Unfortunately, shorter threads are usually not my best though over time I have been improving in this area.
{2} Sometimes on those rare occasions where I actually change my mind on a person or issue, I will update the thread to note this if I remember the existence of said thread. (Not easy to do with so many blog entries.) The same is the case with threads directed at arguments made by individuals.
I am working bit by bit on a weblog update which will cover materials blogged since the last update (August 16, 2006). It will probably incorporate some old threads from the archives and also remand some other threads to the archivesbut the main focus will be on the stuff since the last update. As some threads will be removed from the side margin in this update, it seems appropriate to explain what my criteria is for such a selection -as I have been asked before why some threads are included and others are not.
Of course some threads are simply better than other ones subject-wise, argumentation-wise{1}, and the like. Other times, I look back and wish I had handled a subject better and decide for that reason to remand existing side margin threads or not include a particular thread in the update sequence. But this is not an exact science by any means.
Remanding threads to the archives does not necessarily mean that I disapprove of them. Sometimes it happens that certain threads are no longer as relevent to particular circumstances to remain in the side margin when there are space limits to consider and other threads of greater prevalance to take their place. Another way of saying it is this: nothing gets deleted here at Rerum Novarum but sometimes certain threads are not as relevant so they are removed from the side margin but are still accessible in the archives.{2}
Anyway, I should have the weblog updated by December 1st. That is the time frame I am shooting for time-willing.
Notes:
{1} Unfortunately, shorter threads are usually not my best though over time I have been improving in this area.
{2} Sometimes on those rare occasions where I actually change my mind on a person or issue, I will update the thread to note this if I remember the existence of said thread. (Not easy to do with so many blog entries.) The same is the case with threads directed at arguments made by individuals.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
I should have the election synopsis thread done in about an hour. If that is achieved, then it will be the last thread posted until the weekend -I would have said last thread posted until Monday but I want to possibly remember an old friend before ceasing posting before that time. It depends on how much spacing I can get in essentially but if it is not possible than I will remember my old friend sometime next week.
"None Dare Call It A Zionist Conspiracy" Dept.
(With no apologies to Gary Allen)
With that title, we have a resumption of a thread started here and a followup note from someone accusing me of "zionist complicity: or whatever. I will let them explain it in their own words so here goes...
Mr. McElhinney,
One could only wish that you were as concerned about the heinous Zionist influence in the Catholic apologetics community and Church in general as you are about the spelling of your name! But I will at least give you credit for putting up my letter. I did not think you had the guts to do it. Maybe you are not completely brainwashed, a mind-numbed robot working for the Zionists in their filthy drive to rebuild the insane profanity known as the "Jewish Temple". We shall see.
But rest assured, Mr. McElhinney, I have the proof and you and everyone in the apologetics world is going to be rocked by the proof I will provide. It will be iron-clad and only those living in the Zionist fool's paradise will be able to ignore it. It will be completed soon and only then will the world see whether you are a buffoon and coward. Will you have the guts to print it, Mr. McElhinney? Will you have the fortitude to be Catholic?
These are the questions to be answered.
Henrik Hassen
In short, no proof yet from "Mr. Hassen" so we must wait a bit longer it seems. I wonder if Mr. Hassen realizes that the whole idea of "cliffhangers" be it in books, television shows, or whatever is an invention of the Zionists to distract people from reality and fixate their attention on unimportant minutiae while the cabal of semitic globalists move their agenda for world domination along outside of the public eye. Or perhaps he has not gotten that far along in the "conspiracy theorist manual"??? ;-) We shall see I suppose...
To be Continued...
(With no apologies to Gary Allen)
With that title, we have a resumption of a thread started here and a followup note from someone accusing me of "zionist complicity: or whatever. I will let them explain it in their own words so here goes...
Mr. McElhinney,
One could only wish that you were as concerned about the heinous Zionist influence in the Catholic apologetics community and Church in general as you are about the spelling of your name! But I will at least give you credit for putting up my letter. I did not think you had the guts to do it. Maybe you are not completely brainwashed, a mind-numbed robot working for the Zionists in their filthy drive to rebuild the insane profanity known as the "Jewish Temple". We shall see.
But rest assured, Mr. McElhinney, I have the proof and you and everyone in the apologetics world is going to be rocked by the proof I will provide. It will be iron-clad and only those living in the Zionist fool's paradise will be able to ignore it. It will be completed soon and only then will the world see whether you are a buffoon and coward. Will you have the guts to print it, Mr. McElhinney? Will you have the fortitude to be Catholic?
These are the questions to be answered.
Henrik Hassen
In short, no proof yet from "Mr. Hassen" so we must wait a bit longer it seems. I wonder if Mr. Hassen realizes that the whole idea of "cliffhangers" be it in books, television shows, or whatever is an invention of the Zionists to distract people from reality and fixate their attention on unimportant minutiae while the cabal of semitic globalists move their agenda for world domination along outside of the public eye. Or perhaps he has not gotten that far along in the "conspiracy theorist manual"??? ;-) We shall see I suppose...
To be Continued...
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Note of an Upcoming Weblog Posting:
As it sits at the present time, the previously mentioned election review and analysis is on pace to be published on November 22nd of this month. Whether that timeframe is achieved or not depends on finding the time to finish and format it but that is where we are at with it at the present time.
As it sits at the present time, the previously mentioned election review and analysis is on pace to be published on November 22nd of this month. Whether that timeframe is achieved or not depends on finding the time to finish and format it but that is where we are at with it at the present time.
The Rerum Novarum Miscellaneous BLOG has been updated!!!
The new entry is a definition for the word "torture" since thus far no one I am aware of has shown an interest in doing that.
The new entry is a definition for the word "torture" since thus far no one I am aware of has shown an interest in doing that.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
"None Dare Call It A Zionist Conspiracy" Dept.
(With no apologies to Gary Allen)
The emailers words will be in dark red font.
Mr. McIlhenny,
I am aware that you and others like you are either in a deep state of denial about the Jewish conspiracies that abound world-wide or you are yourselves directly cooperating in them.
Now, before you cut me off as a lunatic, I insist that you hear me out. I have proof that Jews are basically into EVERYTHING and that you and your friends are all pawns and dupes (at best). There are even some among you who are masquerading as gentiles, while I have come into the possession of irrefutable evidence that some are Jews. One of your colleagues even has ties to the Israeli Mossad.
I am dead serious, Mr. McIlhenny and I will be coming forth with the evidence shortly. I must insist that you publish it, unless your pro-Jew, pro-Zionist sycophancy will not allow it.
We will all see, Mr. McIlhenny and the world will know whether you tried to cover this up or not.
Sincerely,
Henrik Hassen
Why do people continue to think I am related to the Avery Island crowd of tabasco makers??? Look, it is not as if my name is absent this site or any other that I run so at the very least, my name should be spelled correctly. That minor issue aside, I am left wondering where people presume somehow that I am so "pro-Zionist" but I will get to that in a moment too.
My remarkable consistency over the years{1} includes a constant trackrecord of expecting at a minimum that those who either disagree with me or who kvetch about some issue over and over again that they (i) be reasonably civil and not not act like a pompous asshole, (ii) define their terms, (iii) make viable arguments, and (iv) document their sources. I have little patience with those who cannot meet this minimal threshold by my own admission.{2} But I am accustomed to being called a panopoly of names from "modernist" to "liberal" to "fascist" to "neo-con" to "Bush sycophant"{3} to "Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde", to "Satan's bedfellow", etc over the years. This is done (of course) by a consortium of carping cowards who demonstrate in their own words that they are intellectually dependent sorts who cannot meet the minimal requirements for a proper dialogue grounded in logic and reason as I noted above.
Now certainly, I have had no problems dispatching with such people's pitiful excuses for "arguments" with the only challenge being finding the time to do such things amidst my constantly-insufficient extra time for these matters. So in that respect, I see little different from this letter except the person involved actually claims they have "irrefutable proof" of their position. So for that reason (and despite no small degree of profound misgivings I have about what I am about to do), I will play along here and see what this Henrik Hassen fellow has to offer in the weeks ahead (if anything).
To be Continued...
Notes:
{1} Modesty aside for a moment.
{2} It reminds me of those who think I am some kiss up to the Bush Administration when I mention an area or three where I agree with them at least to a macro extent. For every agreement I can think of with the Bush Administration, there is a disagreement if not two and I have not been shy in pointing many of them out over the years here at Rerum Novarum. Of course to actually have the integrity to admit to this is something that the contingent of carping cowards and intellectually dependent sorts cannot do lest they admit that they are lying like a carpet about what they say about me. But that is neither here nor there.
{3} And (of course) those who make arguments will have what they offer scrutinized and those who provide documentation of positions they take can expect to have their sources fact-checked. If the work is shoddy, I will not mince words or irenic tonalities saying so -particularly if it is someone whom I know can probably do a better job.
(With no apologies to Gary Allen)
The emailers words will be in dark red font.
Mr. McIlhenny,
I am aware that you and others like you are either in a deep state of denial about the Jewish conspiracies that abound world-wide or you are yourselves directly cooperating in them.
Now, before you cut me off as a lunatic, I insist that you hear me out. I have proof that Jews are basically into EVERYTHING and that you and your friends are all pawns and dupes (at best). There are even some among you who are masquerading as gentiles, while I have come into the possession of irrefutable evidence that some are Jews. One of your colleagues even has ties to the Israeli Mossad.
I am dead serious, Mr. McIlhenny and I will be coming forth with the evidence shortly. I must insist that you publish it, unless your pro-Jew, pro-Zionist sycophancy will not allow it.
We will all see, Mr. McIlhenny and the world will know whether you tried to cover this up or not.
Sincerely,
Henrik Hassen
Why do people continue to think I am related to the Avery Island crowd of tabasco makers??? Look, it is not as if my name is absent this site or any other that I run so at the very least, my name should be spelled correctly. That minor issue aside, I am left wondering where people presume somehow that I am so "pro-Zionist" but I will get to that in a moment too.
My remarkable consistency over the years{1} includes a constant trackrecord of expecting at a minimum that those who either disagree with me or who kvetch about some issue over and over again that they (i) be reasonably civil and not not act like a pompous asshole, (ii) define their terms, (iii) make viable arguments, and (iv) document their sources. I have little patience with those who cannot meet this minimal threshold by my own admission.{2} But I am accustomed to being called a panopoly of names from "modernist" to "liberal" to "fascist" to "neo-con" to "Bush sycophant"{3} to "Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde", to "Satan's bedfellow", etc over the years. This is done (of course) by a consortium of carping cowards who demonstrate in their own words that they are intellectually dependent sorts who cannot meet the minimal requirements for a proper dialogue grounded in logic and reason as I noted above.
Now certainly, I have had no problems dispatching with such people's pitiful excuses for "arguments" with the only challenge being finding the time to do such things amidst my constantly-insufficient extra time for these matters. So in that respect, I see little different from this letter except the person involved actually claims they have "irrefutable proof" of their position. So for that reason (and despite no small degree of profound misgivings I have about what I am about to do), I will play along here and see what this Henrik Hassen fellow has to offer in the weeks ahead (if anything).
To be Continued...
Notes:
{1} Modesty aside for a moment.
{2} It reminds me of those who think I am some kiss up to the Bush Administration when I mention an area or three where I agree with them at least to a macro extent. For every agreement I can think of with the Bush Administration, there is a disagreement if not two and I have not been shy in pointing many of them out over the years here at Rerum Novarum. Of course to actually have the integrity to admit to this is something that the contingent of carping cowards and intellectually dependent sorts cannot do lest they admit that they are lying like a carpet about what they say about me. But that is neither here nor there.
{3} And (of course) those who make arguments will have what they offer scrutinized and those who provide documentation of positions they take can expect to have their sources fact-checked. If the work is shoddy, I will not mince words or irenic tonalities saying so -particularly if it is someone whom I know can probably do a better job.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
On the Blues and Painting a Lyrical Picture of Reality:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
When listening to the blues Monday night on the car radio while enjoying a very fine Don Tomas Maduro, I decided on a whim to call a good friend of mine{1} whom I had not spoken to in a couple of months. As it was, he happened to be listening to the blues also at that exact same time. (What are the odds of that???) We discussed a number of subjects as we always do including on this occasion the subjects of honesty and integrity and how we both find these things in such short supply today by many persons whom would give the appearance of being pious or otherwise honourable. "Is it a coincidence" my friend asked "that the one sin that Jesus was most angry about was the sin of hypocrisy???" Frankly, I think not and after our conversation, I resumed listening to the blues CD I was listening to and a song came up which reminded me of what my friend and I were discussing. Here are the lyrics as composed by Don Nix and sung by Albert King circa 1970:
Ev'rybody wants to laugh
Ah, but nobody wants to cry
I say ev'rybody wants to laugh
But nobody wants to cry
Ev'rybody wants to go to heaven
But nobody wants to die
Ev'rybody wanna hear the truth
But yet, ev'rybody wants to tell a lie
I say ev'rybody wants to hear the truth
But still they all wanna tell a lie
Oh ev'rybody wants to go to heaven
But nobody wants to die
Ev'rybody wanna know the reason
Without even askin' why
Oh, ev'rybody wanna know the reason
Oh, without even askin' why
You know ev'rybody wanna go to heaven
But nobody wants to die
What more really needs to be said{2} than that???
Notes:
{1} I refer here to my good friend Albert Cipriani -someone with whom I have a long history of passionate disagreements with but who never (despite those disagreements) has sought to go the route of showing disrespect for reason and logic. Nor was he at any time a public hypocrite. Insofar as sin makes everyone a hypocrite at least privately, I will not go there. However, there is the integrity required to admit to mistakes and do so to the extent they have been made -a point I have discussed more than once on this weblog over the years including here. Where it counts, Albert has always stood on principles and I have always appreciated that. Would that more friends (past and present) would have acted in like manner but I digress.
{2} Basically, that gets to the crux of it really: people want things they are not willing to do what is needed to get. They want to laugh but do not want to cry as if you can have one without the other. They want to hear the truth but they want to (and do) tell lies. And when it comes to things that happen, they want to know the reasons without asking why things happen as they do.
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
When listening to the blues Monday night on the car radio while enjoying a very fine Don Tomas Maduro, I decided on a whim to call a good friend of mine{1} whom I had not spoken to in a couple of months. As it was, he happened to be listening to the blues also at that exact same time. (What are the odds of that???) We discussed a number of subjects as we always do including on this occasion the subjects of honesty and integrity and how we both find these things in such short supply today by many persons whom would give the appearance of being pious or otherwise honourable. "Is it a coincidence" my friend asked "that the one sin that Jesus was most angry about was the sin of hypocrisy???" Frankly, I think not and after our conversation, I resumed listening to the blues CD I was listening to and a song came up which reminded me of what my friend and I were discussing. Here are the lyrics as composed by Don Nix and sung by Albert King circa 1970:
Ev'rybody wants to laugh
Ah, but nobody wants to cry
I say ev'rybody wants to laugh
But nobody wants to cry
Ev'rybody wants to go to heaven
But nobody wants to die
Ev'rybody wanna hear the truth
But yet, ev'rybody wants to tell a lie
I say ev'rybody wants to hear the truth
But still they all wanna tell a lie
Oh ev'rybody wants to go to heaven
But nobody wants to die
Ev'rybody wanna know the reason
Without even askin' why
Oh, ev'rybody wanna know the reason
Oh, without even askin' why
You know ev'rybody wanna go to heaven
But nobody wants to die
What more really needs to be said{2} than that???
Notes:
{1} I refer here to my good friend Albert Cipriani -someone with whom I have a long history of passionate disagreements with but who never (despite those disagreements) has sought to go the route of showing disrespect for reason and logic. Nor was he at any time a public hypocrite. Insofar as sin makes everyone a hypocrite at least privately, I will not go there. However, there is the integrity required to admit to mistakes and do so to the extent they have been made -a point I have discussed more than once on this weblog over the years including here. Where it counts, Albert has always stood on principles and I have always appreciated that. Would that more friends (past and present) would have acted in like manner but I digress.
{2} Basically, that gets to the crux of it really: people want things they are not willing to do what is needed to get. They want to laugh but do not want to cry as if you can have one without the other. They want to hear the truth but they want to (and do) tell lies. And when it comes to things that happen, they want to know the reasons without asking why things happen as they do.
On Torture, the Limitations of Dignitatis Humanae, Logic, Etc.:
(A Response to Dr. Michael Liccione)
[Update: I added a footnote to the text below after receiving an email responding to this thread which clarified a point I made in the text by providing additional support. -ISM 11/15/06 12:30pm]
It should be noted in advance that I was unaware of the academic credentials that Dr. Michael Liccione possesses; ergo my more personal references to him in the previous off-the-cuff posting.{1} I will therefore refer to him in a formal fashion in this note as befits someone with his manifested educational background{2 } and because we are not well acquainted (yet). His words will be in dark green font and any citations from my previous posting made by him in his recent response will be in blue font.
Shawn McElhinney of Rerum Novarum ('SM' for short), a Catholic apologist well-known in the blogosphere, has undertaken to rebut my treatment of the Church's development of doctrine on the question of punishing heretics.
I am a person who writes on a variety of subjects which are of interest to me at a given point in time who happens to be Catholic, not a Catholic apologist Dr. Liccione. Nonetheless, I will presume in light of our general unfamiliarity with one another that this is not intended as a slight on your part. I make this clarification because I have no small degree of annoyance at the garbage that so often passes for "Catholic apologetics"{3} and as a result I do not want to be affiliated with them in the slightest -at least not directly.{4} But enough on that for now.
Be it noted that the point of my post was to argue that the Church's development of doctrine on this question does not constitute any negation of doctrine that had been infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium. I'm sure SM agrees with that point, but he doesn't like what he takes to be my argument.
That can be noted but I disagree that there has actually been an authentic development of doctrine on this issue. That is where we part company Dr. Liccione. I explained this in the first of my public postings on torture and general norms and you may not have seen that thread. However, if you give it a review, you will understand with far greater accuracy what my actual position on these matters is.
Readers should also note that, on the nest of moral topics associated with that of the punishment of heretics, SM has disagreed with Mark Shea, who as far as I can tell agrees with me that the Church has come to recognize as intrisincally evil certain acts which many bishops and popes once thought fit punishment for heretics in a Catholic state.
Actually, that is not primarily what my disagreement with Mark Shea is Dr. Liccione. I disagree with the entire pattern of disgraceful antics Mark has involved himself in pertaining to the subject of torture in general for several reasons I have not viewed as appropriate to note publicly prior to this time. If he had conducted himself as gracefully as Dr. Scott Carson has or even as you have, things would be different. But that has not been the case at all and Mark has displayed some of the same noxious traits that are common to many who call themselves "Catholic apologists" and that is hardly the worst of it by any stretch of the tape.{5}
I make my rebuttal of McElhinney herein.
Ok.
As usually happens when debating this issue, many others get conflated with it.
Agreed.
One is whether any sort of act that can reasonably be classifed as torture is intrinsically evil as opposed to being merely evil in most circumstances. Since the term 'torture' does not have a definition that's both consensual and decisive for the purpose, the question cannot be answered to everybody's satisfaction.
I agree and that is why I have noted the necessity of those who bandy about this term to define how they are applying it. I reviewed your site a bit before writing this response and it seems you have taught logic in academia. For that reason (and kudos to you for doing that btw) you should be among the first to agree with me that this whole issue being discussed in the absence of definitions is a problem. Furthermore, people like Mark Shea have been completely disingenuous in refusing to define their terms from the get-go.
It does not matter if you agree with me or not on the crux of this issue per se Dr. Liccione though I have explained my position more than adequately enough and been careful to explain how I apply the terms I use and the approach I have taken on this matter. I would though expect us to agree that discussions where terms are not explained as to how they are to be understood go nowhere and the deliberate refusal to explain terms is disingenuous and to be discouraged to no small degree. Far from merely refusing to define his terms, Mark has actually ridiculed those who have made this request publicly as if they are somehow asking for something indecent. While on the one hand, he has pointed to the definitions of others he has not bothered to explain how he understands this term. This is easy to demonstrate{6} and frankly is not even debatable.
But McElhinney isn't even totally forthcoming about his own, tentative answer; by his own account (see below), it seems he wishes to avoid giving scandal. That's a red flag in itself. Perhaps the brouhaha at Shea's blog has made him unwilling to be totally frank.
I have no problem at all with being frank, indeed I am usually criticized for refusing to play "see no evil, hear no evil" when it comes to the crap paraded about by catholic pundits, agenda provocateurs and apologists. The problem is opening up a plethora of subjects I do not want to talk about at this time.
At any rate, if I went on as SM does, I wouldn't be totally frank either.
We shall see...
Candor would not be politic even in ecclesiastical terms.
Other forms of misunderstaning appear in SM's critique of me, so let's get to it.
He claims that Dignitatis Humanae "does not contradict the injunctions of Lateran IV viz. persecuting heretics however it may appear," and cites his reply to Brian Tierney for his argument on that point. Having examined that reply, as well as SM's reply to Scott Carson, I find the nub of the issue in the interpretation of this passage from DH §2:
This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others within due limits.
The question, specifically, is what the phrase "within due limits" modifies. I've always taken it to be modifying the immediately preceding phrase "in association with others...."
This interpretation appears problematical for reasons of the syntax of the paragraph. First of all, one wants to avoid being too repetitive with words beyond what is necessary. The essential statement is as follows:
--The Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom and to be immune from coercion on the part of any individual, social group, or human power insofar as that they will not be forced to act in a manner contrary to their own beliefs within due limits.
To boil down the entire declaration to a single sentence, that would be it. Obviously, a single sentence is not enough to understand the teaching adequately because many of the words in that statement are not explained as to what is meant by them. But for the sake of this posting, it will have to do except that there are four factors which qualify the preciseness of this requirement. Dr. Liccione is only focusing on one of them rather than all four for whatever reason.
I would assert that it is far more probable to look at it as a modifying factor of everything subsequent to the declaration itself about immunity from coercion rather than just a modifying factor "in association with others" as Dr. Liccione has asserted. Instead, it would seem to denote four specific areas which one is not forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs and those areas are (i) whether privately (ii) [whether] publicly (iii) whether alone or (iv) [whether] in association with others The clarifying within due limits applies to all four of these areas. The due limits are spelled out later in the declaration when defining the meaning of the concept of "public order" in conjunction with the traditional criteria of "the common good." To go over all of this with the detail it deserves would detract from my intentions here so that is all I will say on it at the present time except to direct readers back to my original detailed exposition on torture and general norms circa early October of 2006.
Such due limits might mean, for example, the forbidding of certain cult practices, especially those involving minors, or open attacks on public morality, such as what one sees at "gay-pride" parades.
I concur with this assessment.
(Of course even the latter wouldn't comport with the First Amendment as currently understood in American jurisprudence, but that is secondary; the focus here is meaning of the teaching of the Church.)
To go over the problems with activist judges is beyond the scope of this post; however, it can be more than adequately defended a hypothesis that the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to allow for the defense of societal order. But that is a subject for another time perhaps.
I limit the scope of 'within due limits' as I do because, if one takes it to be modifying the whole previous part of the sentence, then it can be so interpreted that the alleged "right to religious freedom" would be no different in principle from a right extended only to Catholics.
People can place a lot of interpretations on a text absent context Dr. Liccione. I do not see how one can get around applying to the whole previous part of the sentence without their position being one of arrested development both logically as well as syntaxually.{7} You assert that you think this can be interpreted as any different in principle from a right extended only to Catholics but that would be to pay no heed whatsoever to the declaration's own explanation of what "due limits" is. If the latter is taken into account, it is evident that the right to civil religious liberty is not one extended only to Catholics. I have discussed this before and do not want to revisit it again at this time except in a footnote{8} perhaps.
That indeed is pretty much how it was understood in the Middle Ages.
This is true.
Some trads would have no problem with that, to be sure;
Which is unfortunate but again, true.
but if that's how DH is to be construed, it's not easy to explain how its teaching constitutes a substantive development of doctrine as distinct from a mere rhetorical game. It's more natural, as well as more common, to explain the passage in question as forbidding some forms of coercion not only practiced but mandated in the medieval Church.
I am not necessarily in disagreement with you on this in principle Dr. Liccione, only in how you appear to go about explaining it. Your approach seems to dismiss a lot of history wholesale in order to get to your position whereas my approach does nothing of the sort.
Now I claimed that the older teaching rejected by DH can be conveniently formulated thus:
(HP) Heretics should be punished with torture and/or death if their being so punished is necessary for the common good.
Yes you did.
SM criticizes that formulation as follows:
The problem with the way the statement is phrased is that it involves a normative or subjective element into the equation. It involves a value judgment in other words as to what should or should not be done. The only concern we need in the current context is not whether someone should be punished with torture or death under certain circumstances but only if they could. The latter is a non-normative or objective question in the sense that we are only interested in what can be done in these situations.
I'm afraid that illustrates the sort of confusion generated by assuming too sharp a distinction between value and fact. In the objective, factual, sense, of course heretics can be punished in any manner lying within the genius of the torturers.
That was not the point I was making Dr. Liccione. If torture in all formulations is ipso facto "intrinsically evil" than it cannot be used in any form period. My point in making the distinction is in asking if torture in some form or another --and again the lack of defining this term by those who kvetch on this matter publicly is no small annoyance-- is permissible.
But the question is not whether they can be so punished, but whether there are circumstances under which they should be. That's the question to which HP, or a proposition relevantly similar to it, is an answer. The phrasing of HP reminds us that making moral judgments typically involves the exercise of prudence and that this case is no exception.
I agree with your analysis in the paragraph above.
One might snippily dismiss the judgments HP calls for as "subjective," but that hardly makes them irrelevant. In general, the relevant question is how such judgments ought to be made; in the particular case, the question is what sort of punishment of heretics, if any, is necessary to serve the common good. One doesn't make that question go away by dismissing in advance any answer as 'subjective'.
I would suggest you familiarize yourself with what I wrote on these matters before presuming that I have snippily dismiss[ed] anything.
I had written:
Between the fourth and eighteenth centuries, most popes and prelates believed HP. Even St. Thomas Aquinas believed it. But the Church's development of doctrine has it that the torture and execution of people for their religious beliefs is a violation of their consciences, which is intrinsically evil inasmuch as it violates one of the most basic of human rights.
SM doesn't like that one bit. He replies:
Notice the bait and switch: Michael goes from "[h]eretics should be punished with torture and/or death if their being so punished is necessary for the common good" to claiming that they are not to be punished in that way whatsoever for their religious beliefs and what exercising those beliefs may or may not involve. This may appear to be not what I assert but consider for a moment the relevant factors involved in a nutshell:
---In a society where church and state are closely intertwined, heretics who were zealous in propagating errors which were seen rightfully so as undermining the common good of society were not tolerated. That does not apply in a society as we have seen construed in recent centuries but it also overlooks a key factor: the necessity of the common good factor. If the heretics so called are seeking militarily to infringe upon the rights of others and threatening their survival unless said persons or nations bow to coercion and accept the aggressor's religious beliefs, then such "persons and societies" (cf. DH §1) can under the rubric of self-defense of persons and society be tortured or executed within certain parameters.[...] It depends of course on how "torture" is defined.
Apparently, the subject of the question needs to be reiterated. The question is not about whether heretics seeking to use force on others should be physically resisted and punished. As far as I know, that is not in dispute.
Wanna bet??? Read what the apologists for Al Queda are saying publicly Dr. Liccione. What angers me so much on this subject is that they are doing just that under the cover of being "faithful Catholics" when indeed they are mouthpieces for sedition. If Dignitatis Humanae is considered in its logical import and in the light of tradition, it is not possible to accuse the Church of undermining the common good of society or just public order. But by the interpretation of people such as Mark Shea, that is not the case.
The question is whether heretics should be punished just for publicly propounding heresy, not just for actions which would count as crimes even if heresy were not at issue. I clarify the question in that way because that's precisely what's at issue in the DH passage quoted above. And I've already indicated what the natural interpretation of DH's statement would be, when taken as an answer to the question properly understood.
We are not addressing the same thing then Dr. Liccione.
Thus, I had claimed that, given the teaching of DH, "...it is never necessary to serve the common good by doing such an evil that good may come," where by 'such an evil' I meant torturing and/or execting heretics for publicly propagating heresy. What seems to have set off SM is that I was not crystal clear about the distinction between imposing heresy and merely propagating it.
No, that is not what angers me Dr. Liccione. I made the mistake of drawing you into the orbit of Mark Shea and Professor Kevin Miller and what are obvious flaws in their understanding of general norms of theological interpretation. That is not to say that your approach is free from potential problems of course but to get a better gauge of that would require a closer examination of your position than I have taken.
Thus SM replies:
Again, torture is not necessarily an intrinsic evil any more than the death penalty is. That does not mean that both torture and the death penalty are unable to be conducted in ways which are inhumane and objectively evil of course. But it does mean that not all means of coersing others or of executing them are intrinsically evil. The Pandora's Box that such a notion opens up is far wider than I originally asserted and I am frankly not sure I want to delve into it in the public medium at this time lest it scandalize some of my readers of a religious nature and start more fires than I care to deal with (metaphorically speaking).
Oy vay: doesn't want to light fires he can't put out!
Frankly Dr. Liccione, it is not that I cannot put them out, only that I do not think the time required to do so would be time well spent. Should I have the time to deal with them later on (and feel the inclination to), then it may be different.
OK, but SM doesn't have to do that in order to address my point, which he fails to do. I did not claim that "all means of coercing others or executing them" are "intrinsically evil."
Then we are not in disagreement it seems.
If SM wishes to define 'torture' simply as 'means of coercing', that is his affair; but he's going to be talking to himself, since nobody condemns all means of coercing others as intrinsically evil.
Apparently you have not been watching some of those who have made the "torture is intrinsically evil" argument very carefully Dr. Liccione because in the absence of those persons explaining what they mean by the word "torture", they by logical extension are saying just that. How else do you explain that they whine and kvetch about every kind of attempted coercion on the part of the US Government in trying to get information from Al Queda operatives as "torture" either explicitly or by logical inference in other things that they have said??? And then when this is pointed out to them, they lack the basic integrity to admit to what they are doing!!! Nonetheless, it is far more evident in what you wrote in your rebuttal that you have not done this and I apologize for presuming in my off-the-cuff email response to what you wrote{9} that you had.
What DH condemns, and I condemn, is forcing others to act against their conscience; yet in certain instances centuries ago, the Church enjoined the civil arm to do just that. Whether the means of doing so should be classified as 'torture' according to somebody-or-other's definition of torture is sometimes an interesting question; but I take it we all recognize the rack and the stake as forms of torture that were used to do to heretics just the sort of thing that DH implies may not be done.
I agree with this Dr. Liccione.
I also claimed that DH does not negate any teaching infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium—a claim with which SM would surely agree. His objection is to how I reach that conclusion, not to the conclusion itself.
Yes and also because I saw in what you were writing an excuse to condone an undermining of national security. But that was because I was so livid over this whole subject that I presumed that you were on the side of those persons due to similarities in position at some points. However, similarly of position does not necessarily mean identical positions as I have often said; fidelity to principles requires me to acknowledge when I fall short of them as I did in this case.
Now I had said:
But since HP itself is a material conditional, the falsity of its antecedent makes it trivially true
and
So even if HP does meet the criteria for having been infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium, it is trivially true.
That gets SM rather hot under the collar:
The crux of the issue is being avoided with the above statement so I will highlight it in bold font: Defending persons and society from the menace of heretics out to either undermine the common good of society or who seek to coerce people under threat of physical mutilation or death to violate their consciences and accept alien systems of thought is not "trivially true" no matter how you stretch the tape!!!
SM seems to think I consider this topic unimportant. Quite the contrary, of course, else I wouldn't have written more than one lengthy post about it.
We are obviously not too familiar with one another's work on some of these subjects Dr. Liccione.
It is evident that SM has completely misunderstood my use of the logician's term of art 'trivially true.' In logic, statements of the form 'P if Q' or 'If Q then P' are called "material conditionals." The truth-conditions on statements of that form are such that if the 'if-clause'—i.e., the antecedent—is false, then the whole statement is true regardless of whether the 'then-clause', the consequent, is true or false. That's why material conditionals whose antecedents are false are only "trivially" true. They are "if-then" statements but the condition, the state of affairs described by the 'if-clause', doesn't obtain; so it doesn't matter whether the consequent is true or not; the whole statement is true, but only "trivially" so in virtue of the antecedent's falsity.
As I noted above, I was seeing red when I wrote my original response for reasons which I hopefully have noted adequately above. As for the argument you make above about logic, you appear to be saying that the statement "P if Q" as the proposition depends on the truth of falsity of Q. For that reason, the falsity of Q would mean the falsity of P and therefore if Q as a variable changes, than its relation to P changes also. Am I understanding you correctly on this???{10}
From the standpoint of development of doctrine, then, it doesn't matter that HP is true; it's only trivially true. The doctrine developed in DH only goes to show what makes its antecedent false. And what makes it false is that, be they called "torture" or something else, attempts to force people to violate their consciences are intrinsically evil.
Unless (as I noted above) what is involved is a violation of the common good of society. This was the rationale used in the Middle Ages. What differs in the modern context is that ascertaining what is and is not "the common good" is a normative issue fundamentally. For that reason, logically an objective criteria is needed to help interpret "the common good" in a non-normative framework. DH does this by defining a new term for the Catholic lexicon "public order." To ascertain that something most not undermine "the common good" and recognize that how the latter is objectively verified is to consider how it relates to the "public order" of society. The latter provides an objective verifier to an equation that previously only had a subjective element to it. I have explained this before on numerous occasions{11} and presume that you are getting at essentially what I noted above.
SM complains about anti-Catholic apologists not wanting to do the work necessary to understand in context the magisterial statements they criticize.
Correct.
He would do well to try to understand his Catholic opponents better than his Protestant opponents understand Catholicism.
This is a sword that cuts both ways Dr. Liccione. Nonetheless, for my part in the misunderstanding, I apologize to you.
Notes:
{1} A similar thing happened in an earlier response to Dr. Scott Carson. As for this post, it is a revised version of an email I sent to someone who brought Dr. Liccoine's thread to my attention.
{2} [A] valid PhD does not grant them immunity from making crappy arguments. For that reason, focus on their arguments not their presumed "credentials" or lack thereof.
The truth is, one can be logical without being learned. My father did not have a high school diploma, could not read well due to poor vision, etc., but he hardly was incapable of making logical arguments. The two do not have an intrinsic connection insofar as they must be present at the same time. Obviously knowledge can assist someone in making an argument but the tools for making a proper argument are not (and never have been) a special preserve of the educated.
Indeed, the moment it is conceded (even tacitly) that one has to be learned to be logical is the moment that academic elitists can impose an intellectual tyranny onto the rest of humanity. The truth is, intellectuals are often quite stupid and can make stupid arguments. Likewise, recognized "experts" in a particular area of study also can make poor arguments or misjudge matters. This is why what must be assessed is the validity (or lack thereof) of a theory or thesis they seek to advance, not the status of the person involved. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa February 11, 2006)]
The above text is referenced to remind readers of an important principle not often recognized, not as any kind of commentary on Dr. Liccione's writings.
{3} I find the lack of charity and tact on the part of many who call themselves "apologists" to be disgraceful. However, that is not all as there is also (i) the tendency towards manufacturing conflict that those of that mentality so often display, (ii) their narrowminded dogmatism of their own opinions as somehow of requiring assent, (iii) the general shoddiness of their arguments on a whole panopoly of issues. I have have become convinced over time that the latter is due to the incapability of many of them to exercise the faculties of reason and logic and (in several cases) a kind of intellectual dependence.
There is also the issue of how disgracefully the Catholic apologetics establishment has refused to take seriously the problems that exist in this area and prefer to play "see no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil" and that as much as anything is why I want no affiliation whatsoever with them. (If said establishment powers show a reasonable degree of concern at cleaning up the Augean stables of Catholic apologetics, I will reconsider my position on apologetics methodology in general but not until then.)
{4} Before this comes across as sounding contradictory, I should note that just because I do not want to be confused as a Catholic apologist does not mean that there are not others who have an interest both in that affiliation and in cultivating their capabilities in this area. For that reason -and because I tire of those who only criticize and do not offer functional solutions to problems- I do have an interest in (and to a certain extent am involved in) fostering the development of people who want to do apologetics and how to do it properly.
{5} One of the reasons my tonality in the response to your stuff was less than amicable is that I sense there are certain aspects of this that you are not paying sufficient attention to Dr. Liccione. I have written on the subject of the fundamental rights of man often at this weblog --most recently touched on a bit in this post series-- and one of those fundamental rights is the right to life. Under the heading of the right to life is the right to survival and I see the shameful antics of Mark Shea as contributing to the aid and comfort of those in the war on terror who want to see us converted or killed. I see your arguments as doing the same in the absence of defining one's terms and if there is one thing I will not do it is stand by quietly and let any apologist, philosopher, politician, or pope endanger my right and the right of my loved ones to personal security and survival. Period.
{6} A reader responded to the original posting with this observation which clarifies the point I made a bit:
Mark has refused to define the term "torture" himself; however, in fairness he did refer to three definitions a number of times: the dictionary, "Check the regulations for treatment of prisoners that have been used by the military and police for the past 50 years," and the Interrogator's Golden Rule ("If you'd call it "torture" if it were done to you or a friend, then it's torture"). Each are laughable in their fuzziness. [Excerpt from an Email Correspondence (circa November 15, 2006)]
In other words, he is playing a disingenuous semantics game here and refusing to undertake the bare minimum requirements of an authentic dialogue on these issues.
{7} I think I just invented a word there ;-)
{8} A Few Notes On Dignitatis Humanae (circa July 18, 2003)
Some More Notes on Dignitatis Humanae (circa December 16, 2004)
Particularly applicable to this discussion is what is noted in the posting from 2004.
{9} The post material was a slightly expanded version of an email circulated to an inquirer.
{10} I believe I am familiar with the argument you make -having used variations of it myself over the years- but not as much with the technical terms to explain it.
{11} See footnote eight.
(A Response to Dr. Michael Liccione)
[Update: I added a footnote to the text below after receiving an email responding to this thread which clarified a point I made in the text by providing additional support. -ISM 11/15/06 12:30pm]
It should be noted in advance that I was unaware of the academic credentials that Dr. Michael Liccione possesses; ergo my more personal references to him in the previous off-the-cuff posting.{1} I will therefore refer to him in a formal fashion in this note as befits someone with his manifested educational background{2 } and because we are not well acquainted (yet). His words will be in dark green font and any citations from my previous posting made by him in his recent response will be in blue font.
Shawn McElhinney of Rerum Novarum ('SM' for short), a Catholic apologist well-known in the blogosphere, has undertaken to rebut my treatment of the Church's development of doctrine on the question of punishing heretics.
I am a person who writes on a variety of subjects which are of interest to me at a given point in time who happens to be Catholic, not a Catholic apologist Dr. Liccione. Nonetheless, I will presume in light of our general unfamiliarity with one another that this is not intended as a slight on your part. I make this clarification because I have no small degree of annoyance at the garbage that so often passes for "Catholic apologetics"{3} and as a result I do not want to be affiliated with them in the slightest -at least not directly.{4} But enough on that for now.
Be it noted that the point of my post was to argue that the Church's development of doctrine on this question does not constitute any negation of doctrine that had been infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium. I'm sure SM agrees with that point, but he doesn't like what he takes to be my argument.
That can be noted but I disagree that there has actually been an authentic development of doctrine on this issue. That is where we part company Dr. Liccione. I explained this in the first of my public postings on torture and general norms and you may not have seen that thread. However, if you give it a review, you will understand with far greater accuracy what my actual position on these matters is.
Readers should also note that, on the nest of moral topics associated with that of the punishment of heretics, SM has disagreed with Mark Shea, who as far as I can tell agrees with me that the Church has come to recognize as intrisincally evil certain acts which many bishops and popes once thought fit punishment for heretics in a Catholic state.
Actually, that is not primarily what my disagreement with Mark Shea is Dr. Liccione. I disagree with the entire pattern of disgraceful antics Mark has involved himself in pertaining to the subject of torture in general for several reasons I have not viewed as appropriate to note publicly prior to this time. If he had conducted himself as gracefully as Dr. Scott Carson has or even as you have, things would be different. But that has not been the case at all and Mark has displayed some of the same noxious traits that are common to many who call themselves "Catholic apologists" and that is hardly the worst of it by any stretch of the tape.{5}
I make my rebuttal of McElhinney herein.
Ok.
As usually happens when debating this issue, many others get conflated with it.
Agreed.
One is whether any sort of act that can reasonably be classifed as torture is intrinsically evil as opposed to being merely evil in most circumstances. Since the term 'torture' does not have a definition that's both consensual and decisive for the purpose, the question cannot be answered to everybody's satisfaction.
I agree and that is why I have noted the necessity of those who bandy about this term to define how they are applying it. I reviewed your site a bit before writing this response and it seems you have taught logic in academia. For that reason (and kudos to you for doing that btw) you should be among the first to agree with me that this whole issue being discussed in the absence of definitions is a problem. Furthermore, people like Mark Shea have been completely disingenuous in refusing to define their terms from the get-go.
It does not matter if you agree with me or not on the crux of this issue per se Dr. Liccione though I have explained my position more than adequately enough and been careful to explain how I apply the terms I use and the approach I have taken on this matter. I would though expect us to agree that discussions where terms are not explained as to how they are to be understood go nowhere and the deliberate refusal to explain terms is disingenuous and to be discouraged to no small degree. Far from merely refusing to define his terms, Mark has actually ridiculed those who have made this request publicly as if they are somehow asking for something indecent. While on the one hand, he has pointed to the definitions of others he has not bothered to explain how he understands this term. This is easy to demonstrate{6} and frankly is not even debatable.
But McElhinney isn't even totally forthcoming about his own, tentative answer; by his own account (see below), it seems he wishes to avoid giving scandal. That's a red flag in itself. Perhaps the brouhaha at Shea's blog has made him unwilling to be totally frank.
I have no problem at all with being frank, indeed I am usually criticized for refusing to play "see no evil, hear no evil" when it comes to the crap paraded about by catholic pundits, agenda provocateurs and apologists. The problem is opening up a plethora of subjects I do not want to talk about at this time.
At any rate, if I went on as SM does, I wouldn't be totally frank either.
We shall see...
Candor would not be politic even in ecclesiastical terms.
Other forms of misunderstaning appear in SM's critique of me, so let's get to it.
He claims that Dignitatis Humanae "does not contradict the injunctions of Lateran IV viz. persecuting heretics however it may appear," and cites his reply to Brian Tierney for his argument on that point. Having examined that reply, as well as SM's reply to Scott Carson, I find the nub of the issue in the interpretation of this passage from DH §2:
This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others within due limits.
The question, specifically, is what the phrase "within due limits" modifies. I've always taken it to be modifying the immediately preceding phrase "in association with others...."
This interpretation appears problematical for reasons of the syntax of the paragraph. First of all, one wants to avoid being too repetitive with words beyond what is necessary. The essential statement is as follows:
--The Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom and to be immune from coercion on the part of any individual, social group, or human power insofar as that they will not be forced to act in a manner contrary to their own beliefs within due limits.
To boil down the entire declaration to a single sentence, that would be it. Obviously, a single sentence is not enough to understand the teaching adequately because many of the words in that statement are not explained as to what is meant by them. But for the sake of this posting, it will have to do except that there are four factors which qualify the preciseness of this requirement. Dr. Liccione is only focusing on one of them rather than all four for whatever reason.
I would assert that it is far more probable to look at it as a modifying factor of everything subsequent to the declaration itself about immunity from coercion rather than just a modifying factor "in association with others" as Dr. Liccione has asserted. Instead, it would seem to denote four specific areas which one is not forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs and those areas are (i) whether privately (ii) [whether] publicly (iii) whether alone or (iv) [whether] in association with others The clarifying within due limits applies to all four of these areas. The due limits are spelled out later in the declaration when defining the meaning of the concept of "public order" in conjunction with the traditional criteria of "the common good." To go over all of this with the detail it deserves would detract from my intentions here so that is all I will say on it at the present time except to direct readers back to my original detailed exposition on torture and general norms circa early October of 2006.
Such due limits might mean, for example, the forbidding of certain cult practices, especially those involving minors, or open attacks on public morality, such as what one sees at "gay-pride" parades.
I concur with this assessment.
(Of course even the latter wouldn't comport with the First Amendment as currently understood in American jurisprudence, but that is secondary; the focus here is meaning of the teaching of the Church.)
To go over the problems with activist judges is beyond the scope of this post; however, it can be more than adequately defended a hypothesis that the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to allow for the defense of societal order. But that is a subject for another time perhaps.
I limit the scope of 'within due limits' as I do because, if one takes it to be modifying the whole previous part of the sentence, then it can be so interpreted that the alleged "right to religious freedom" would be no different in principle from a right extended only to Catholics.
People can place a lot of interpretations on a text absent context Dr. Liccione. I do not see how one can get around applying to the whole previous part of the sentence without their position being one of arrested development both logically as well as syntaxually.{7} You assert that you think this can be interpreted as any different in principle from a right extended only to Catholics but that would be to pay no heed whatsoever to the declaration's own explanation of what "due limits" is. If the latter is taken into account, it is evident that the right to civil religious liberty is not one extended only to Catholics. I have discussed this before and do not want to revisit it again at this time except in a footnote{8} perhaps.
That indeed is pretty much how it was understood in the Middle Ages.
This is true.
Some trads would have no problem with that, to be sure;
Which is unfortunate but again, true.
but if that's how DH is to be construed, it's not easy to explain how its teaching constitutes a substantive development of doctrine as distinct from a mere rhetorical game. It's more natural, as well as more common, to explain the passage in question as forbidding some forms of coercion not only practiced but mandated in the medieval Church.
I am not necessarily in disagreement with you on this in principle Dr. Liccione, only in how you appear to go about explaining it. Your approach seems to dismiss a lot of history wholesale in order to get to your position whereas my approach does nothing of the sort.
Now I claimed that the older teaching rejected by DH can be conveniently formulated thus:
(HP) Heretics should be punished with torture and/or death if their being so punished is necessary for the common good.
Yes you did.
SM criticizes that formulation as follows:
The problem with the way the statement is phrased is that it involves a normative or subjective element into the equation. It involves a value judgment in other words as to what should or should not be done. The only concern we need in the current context is not whether someone should be punished with torture or death under certain circumstances but only if they could. The latter is a non-normative or objective question in the sense that we are only interested in what can be done in these situations.
I'm afraid that illustrates the sort of confusion generated by assuming too sharp a distinction between value and fact. In the objective, factual, sense, of course heretics can be punished in any manner lying within the genius of the torturers.
That was not the point I was making Dr. Liccione. If torture in all formulations is ipso facto "intrinsically evil" than it cannot be used in any form period. My point in making the distinction is in asking if torture in some form or another --and again the lack of defining this term by those who kvetch on this matter publicly is no small annoyance-- is permissible.
But the question is not whether they can be so punished, but whether there are circumstances under which they should be. That's the question to which HP, or a proposition relevantly similar to it, is an answer. The phrasing of HP reminds us that making moral judgments typically involves the exercise of prudence and that this case is no exception.
I agree with your analysis in the paragraph above.
One might snippily dismiss the judgments HP calls for as "subjective," but that hardly makes them irrelevant. In general, the relevant question is how such judgments ought to be made; in the particular case, the question is what sort of punishment of heretics, if any, is necessary to serve the common good. One doesn't make that question go away by dismissing in advance any answer as 'subjective'.
I would suggest you familiarize yourself with what I wrote on these matters before presuming that I have snippily dismiss[ed] anything.
I had written:
Between the fourth and eighteenth centuries, most popes and prelates believed HP. Even St. Thomas Aquinas believed it. But the Church's development of doctrine has it that the torture and execution of people for their religious beliefs is a violation of their consciences, which is intrinsically evil inasmuch as it violates one of the most basic of human rights.
SM doesn't like that one bit. He replies:
Notice the bait and switch: Michael goes from "[h]eretics should be punished with torture and/or death if their being so punished is necessary for the common good" to claiming that they are not to be punished in that way whatsoever for their religious beliefs and what exercising those beliefs may or may not involve. This may appear to be not what I assert but consider for a moment the relevant factors involved in a nutshell:
---In a society where church and state are closely intertwined, heretics who were zealous in propagating errors which were seen rightfully so as undermining the common good of society were not tolerated. That does not apply in a society as we have seen construed in recent centuries but it also overlooks a key factor: the necessity of the common good factor. If the heretics so called are seeking militarily to infringe upon the rights of others and threatening their survival unless said persons or nations bow to coercion and accept the aggressor's religious beliefs, then such "persons and societies" (cf. DH §1) can under the rubric of self-defense of persons and society be tortured or executed within certain parameters.[...] It depends of course on how "torture" is defined.
Apparently, the subject of the question needs to be reiterated. The question is not about whether heretics seeking to use force on others should be physically resisted and punished. As far as I know, that is not in dispute.
Wanna bet??? Read what the apologists for Al Queda are saying publicly Dr. Liccione. What angers me so much on this subject is that they are doing just that under the cover of being "faithful Catholics" when indeed they are mouthpieces for sedition. If Dignitatis Humanae is considered in its logical import and in the light of tradition, it is not possible to accuse the Church of undermining the common good of society or just public order. But by the interpretation of people such as Mark Shea, that is not the case.
The question is whether heretics should be punished just for publicly propounding heresy, not just for actions which would count as crimes even if heresy were not at issue. I clarify the question in that way because that's precisely what's at issue in the DH passage quoted above. And I've already indicated what the natural interpretation of DH's statement would be, when taken as an answer to the question properly understood.
We are not addressing the same thing then Dr. Liccione.
Thus, I had claimed that, given the teaching of DH, "...it is never necessary to serve the common good by doing such an evil that good may come," where by 'such an evil' I meant torturing and/or execting heretics for publicly propagating heresy. What seems to have set off SM is that I was not crystal clear about the distinction between imposing heresy and merely propagating it.
No, that is not what angers me Dr. Liccione. I made the mistake of drawing you into the orbit of Mark Shea and Professor Kevin Miller and what are obvious flaws in their understanding of general norms of theological interpretation. That is not to say that your approach is free from potential problems of course but to get a better gauge of that would require a closer examination of your position than I have taken.
Thus SM replies:
Again, torture is not necessarily an intrinsic evil any more than the death penalty is. That does not mean that both torture and the death penalty are unable to be conducted in ways which are inhumane and objectively evil of course. But it does mean that not all means of coersing others or of executing them are intrinsically evil. The Pandora's Box that such a notion opens up is far wider than I originally asserted and I am frankly not sure I want to delve into it in the public medium at this time lest it scandalize some of my readers of a religious nature and start more fires than I care to deal with (metaphorically speaking).
Oy vay: doesn't want to light fires he can't put out!
Frankly Dr. Liccione, it is not that I cannot put them out, only that I do not think the time required to do so would be time well spent. Should I have the time to deal with them later on (and feel the inclination to), then it may be different.
OK, but SM doesn't have to do that in order to address my point, which he fails to do. I did not claim that "all means of coercing others or executing them" are "intrinsically evil."
Then we are not in disagreement it seems.
If SM wishes to define 'torture' simply as 'means of coercing', that is his affair; but he's going to be talking to himself, since nobody condemns all means of coercing others as intrinsically evil.
Apparently you have not been watching some of those who have made the "torture is intrinsically evil" argument very carefully Dr. Liccione because in the absence of those persons explaining what they mean by the word "torture", they by logical extension are saying just that. How else do you explain that they whine and kvetch about every kind of attempted coercion on the part of the US Government in trying to get information from Al Queda operatives as "torture" either explicitly or by logical inference in other things that they have said??? And then when this is pointed out to them, they lack the basic integrity to admit to what they are doing!!! Nonetheless, it is far more evident in what you wrote in your rebuttal that you have not done this and I apologize for presuming in my off-the-cuff email response to what you wrote{9} that you had.
What DH condemns, and I condemn, is forcing others to act against their conscience; yet in certain instances centuries ago, the Church enjoined the civil arm to do just that. Whether the means of doing so should be classified as 'torture' according to somebody-or-other's definition of torture is sometimes an interesting question; but I take it we all recognize the rack and the stake as forms of torture that were used to do to heretics just the sort of thing that DH implies may not be done.
I agree with this Dr. Liccione.
I also claimed that DH does not negate any teaching infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium—a claim with which SM would surely agree. His objection is to how I reach that conclusion, not to the conclusion itself.
Yes and also because I saw in what you were writing an excuse to condone an undermining of national security. But that was because I was so livid over this whole subject that I presumed that you were on the side of those persons due to similarities in position at some points. However, similarly of position does not necessarily mean identical positions as I have often said; fidelity to principles requires me to acknowledge when I fall short of them as I did in this case.
Now I had said:
But since HP itself is a material conditional, the falsity of its antecedent makes it trivially true
and
So even if HP does meet the criteria for having been infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium, it is trivially true.
That gets SM rather hot under the collar:
The crux of the issue is being avoided with the above statement so I will highlight it in bold font: Defending persons and society from the menace of heretics out to either undermine the common good of society or who seek to coerce people under threat of physical mutilation or death to violate their consciences and accept alien systems of thought is not "trivially true" no matter how you stretch the tape!!!
SM seems to think I consider this topic unimportant. Quite the contrary, of course, else I wouldn't have written more than one lengthy post about it.
We are obviously not too familiar with one another's work on some of these subjects Dr. Liccione.
It is evident that SM has completely misunderstood my use of the logician's term of art 'trivially true.' In logic, statements of the form 'P if Q' or 'If Q then P' are called "material conditionals." The truth-conditions on statements of that form are such that if the 'if-clause'—i.e., the antecedent—is false, then the whole statement is true regardless of whether the 'then-clause', the consequent, is true or false. That's why material conditionals whose antecedents are false are only "trivially" true. They are "if-then" statements but the condition, the state of affairs described by the 'if-clause', doesn't obtain; so it doesn't matter whether the consequent is true or not; the whole statement is true, but only "trivially" so in virtue of the antecedent's falsity.
As I noted above, I was seeing red when I wrote my original response for reasons which I hopefully have noted adequately above. As for the argument you make above about logic, you appear to be saying that the statement "P if Q" as the proposition depends on the truth of falsity of Q. For that reason, the falsity of Q would mean the falsity of P and therefore if Q as a variable changes, than its relation to P changes also. Am I understanding you correctly on this???{10}
From the standpoint of development of doctrine, then, it doesn't matter that HP is true; it's only trivially true. The doctrine developed in DH only goes to show what makes its antecedent false. And what makes it false is that, be they called "torture" or something else, attempts to force people to violate their consciences are intrinsically evil.
Unless (as I noted above) what is involved is a violation of the common good of society. This was the rationale used in the Middle Ages. What differs in the modern context is that ascertaining what is and is not "the common good" is a normative issue fundamentally. For that reason, logically an objective criteria is needed to help interpret "the common good" in a non-normative framework. DH does this by defining a new term for the Catholic lexicon "public order." To ascertain that something most not undermine "the common good" and recognize that how the latter is objectively verified is to consider how it relates to the "public order" of society. The latter provides an objective verifier to an equation that previously only had a subjective element to it. I have explained this before on numerous occasions{11} and presume that you are getting at essentially what I noted above.
SM complains about anti-Catholic apologists not wanting to do the work necessary to understand in context the magisterial statements they criticize.
Correct.
He would do well to try to understand his Catholic opponents better than his Protestant opponents understand Catholicism.
This is a sword that cuts both ways Dr. Liccione. Nonetheless, for my part in the misunderstanding, I apologize to you.
Notes:
{1} A similar thing happened in an earlier response to Dr. Scott Carson. As for this post, it is a revised version of an email I sent to someone who brought Dr. Liccoine's thread to my attention.
{2} [A] valid PhD does not grant them immunity from making crappy arguments. For that reason, focus on their arguments not their presumed "credentials" or lack thereof.
The truth is, one can be logical without being learned. My father did not have a high school diploma, could not read well due to poor vision, etc., but he hardly was incapable of making logical arguments. The two do not have an intrinsic connection insofar as they must be present at the same time. Obviously knowledge can assist someone in making an argument but the tools for making a proper argument are not (and never have been) a special preserve of the educated.
Indeed, the moment it is conceded (even tacitly) that one has to be learned to be logical is the moment that academic elitists can impose an intellectual tyranny onto the rest of humanity. The truth is, intellectuals are often quite stupid and can make stupid arguments. Likewise, recognized "experts" in a particular area of study also can make poor arguments or misjudge matters. This is why what must be assessed is the validity (or lack thereof) of a theory or thesis they seek to advance, not the status of the person involved. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa February 11, 2006)]
The above text is referenced to remind readers of an important principle not often recognized, not as any kind of commentary on Dr. Liccione's writings.
{3} I find the lack of charity and tact on the part of many who call themselves "apologists" to be disgraceful. However, that is not all as there is also (i) the tendency towards manufacturing conflict that those of that mentality so often display, (ii) their narrowminded dogmatism of their own opinions as somehow of requiring assent, (iii) the general shoddiness of their arguments on a whole panopoly of issues. I have have become convinced over time that the latter is due to the incapability of many of them to exercise the faculties of reason and logic and (in several cases) a kind of intellectual dependence.
There is also the issue of how disgracefully the Catholic apologetics establishment has refused to take seriously the problems that exist in this area and prefer to play "see no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil" and that as much as anything is why I want no affiliation whatsoever with them. (If said establishment powers show a reasonable degree of concern at cleaning up the Augean stables of Catholic apologetics, I will reconsider my position on apologetics methodology in general but not until then.)
{4} Before this comes across as sounding contradictory, I should note that just because I do not want to be confused as a Catholic apologist does not mean that there are not others who have an interest both in that affiliation and in cultivating their capabilities in this area. For that reason -and because I tire of those who only criticize and do not offer functional solutions to problems- I do have an interest in (and to a certain extent am involved in) fostering the development of people who want to do apologetics and how to do it properly.
{5} One of the reasons my tonality in the response to your stuff was less than amicable is that I sense there are certain aspects of this that you are not paying sufficient attention to Dr. Liccione. I have written on the subject of the fundamental rights of man often at this weblog --most recently touched on a bit in this post series-- and one of those fundamental rights is the right to life. Under the heading of the right to life is the right to survival and I see the shameful antics of Mark Shea as contributing to the aid and comfort of those in the war on terror who want to see us converted or killed. I see your arguments as doing the same in the absence of defining one's terms and if there is one thing I will not do it is stand by quietly and let any apologist, philosopher, politician, or pope endanger my right and the right of my loved ones to personal security and survival. Period.
{6} A reader responded to the original posting with this observation which clarifies the point I made a bit:
Mark has refused to define the term "torture" himself; however, in fairness he did refer to three definitions a number of times: the dictionary, "Check the regulations for treatment of prisoners that have been used by the military and police for the past 50 years," and the Interrogator's Golden Rule ("If you'd call it "torture" if it were done to you or a friend, then it's torture"). Each are laughable in their fuzziness. [Excerpt from an Email Correspondence (circa November 15, 2006)]
In other words, he is playing a disingenuous semantics game here and refusing to undertake the bare minimum requirements of an authentic dialogue on these issues.
{7} I think I just invented a word there ;-)
{8} A Few Notes On Dignitatis Humanae (circa July 18, 2003)
Some More Notes on Dignitatis Humanae (circa December 16, 2004)
Particularly applicable to this discussion is what is noted in the posting from 2004.
{9} The post material was a slightly expanded version of an email circulated to an inquirer.
{10} I believe I am familiar with the argument you make -having used variations of it myself over the years- but not as much with the technical terms to explain it.
{11} See footnote eight.
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