Cynthia Weisboro, a member of the South Kingstown Library Board of Trustees, doesn’t apparently believe that self government extends to determination of the principles by which we ought to govern ourselves:
[David] O’Connell bases his opposition to such research on the very questionable theological concept of the “soul,” a concept unproven and unprovable. Speculation on the existence of the soul is intellectually stimulating, but should not be the basis for public policy in our pluralistic society. Rather, policy should be rooted in rationality and humanitarianism.
Unfortunately, I can’t find Mr. O’Connell’s full letter online (without paying for it), but it’s adequate to note that he was explaining to pro-life U.S. Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI) that an honest “search for foundational, objective truths regarding the presence of the spirit, human identity, and universal justice” would ultimately invalidate support for embryonic stem cell research. To Ms. Weisboro, that search — honest or not — is irrelevant. Religious citizens are not allowed strive for a government that designs policy in accordance with the area of their lives that they consider most important. Her preferred doctrine — rationalism — is the exclusive guide of our “pluralistic society.”
It isn’t even the fact that soul is “unproven and unprovable” that disqualifies the religious view. (One wonders by what mechanism Ms. Weisboro achieved the revelation that soul is unprovable.)
Putting the well-being of a cluster of cells, with or without souls, over the interests of our suffering loved ones is not rational, nor is it humane.
So, even if human beings in the early stages of development have souls, even if they are in that sense “persons,” it would still be the “humane” choice to kill thousands of them based on speculation that doing so will lead to treatment for human beings with more cells. Frankly, I suspect — rather, I hope — that Cynthia didn’t quite mean what her language states, because I’ve never heard its like. Or, to be more accurate, I’ve never heard its like in modern discussions about the rights of the unborn; the general idea has been promoted before in different contexts, and we should all tremble if it has found a new entrance to our culture.
[Open full post]As I noted at the time on Dust in the Light, the Providence Journal‘s editorial page recently made an astonishingly forward-looking suggestion:
The problem of job quality is complex, involving trade, education and other issues. But we hope that political leaders will take an especially close look at the health-care factor. Our employment-based health-insurance system is collapsing. Any policy that frees employers from the burden of insuring their workers — and controls health-care costs — would also free them to hire more people.
Today, however, it’s the unacknowledged turnabout that’s astonishing:
Meanwhile, employer mandates are not an untested idea. For three decades, Hawaii has required companies to cover their workers who put in at least 20 hours a week. The Hawaiian economy is doing all right.
It’s become the fashion in America to portray every corporate mandate as anti-business and bad for the economy. But that’s not necessarily true. When you let some companies shift their workers’ health-care costs onto more responsible companies, you are in effect imposing a tax on your most desirable businesses. And when the uninsured end up on Medicaid or in hospital emergency rooms, the public pays more.
We urge Massachusetts leaders and citizens to clear the cobwebs of old thinking and try a bold approach to health care. The richest and most progressive states are doing it, and Massachusetts should be among them.
I don’t know anything about Hawaii, but here in a New England border town, living in Rhode Island and working part-time from home for a company in Massachusetts, I’m finally about to enter that month when the infamous Northern specter of heating the home will break my already slipping grip on solvency. The wherefore is simple: I can’t find full-time work in the range that I incurred so much debt (and lost so many years) to reach.
My family is fortunate to have healthcare (at a cost) through the employer that I do have, and as I managed in December, there is at least the chance to find non-career jobs to meet necessities. Considering my family’s circumstances, I’d say I’m particularly justified in asking this question of fellow citizens who are desirous of a place among the “most progressive states”: If healthcare costs do discourage hiring — and I don’t doubt that they do — what bizarre calculus leads one to conclude that we’d be better off forcing the less “responsible” companies, those offering jobs that don’t generally supply healthcare, to supply it?
From where I sit, on the decidedly non-academic side of the theoretical divide, it seems plausible, if not probable, that the end result of an employer-based mandate for universal healthcare will be a worst-of-all-worlds situation. In the first editorial here noted, the Projo lamented that the jobs that are available are increasingly of the low-paying variety. In the second editorial, it laments that people without health insurance become a significant burden on the taxpayers. Who’s going to pay for healthcare when even low-salary jobs become scarce?
I previously posted a piece entitled Where is the Moral Outrage? which documented both the political harassment of American college students by left-wing professors and the hiring by Hamilton College of an instructor who was an unapologetic alumna of the Weather Underground terrorist group.
Yesterday’s mail brought the January 2005 issue of Commentary magazine to my house and it included yet another example – this time at Duke University – of morally indefensible behavior by people who are so caught up in their left-wing politics and multiculturalism-centric relativism that they have lost touch with the guiding principles of our country and just don’t get the concept of tolerance.
While the magazine article entitled “The Intifada Comes to Duke” is not yet available on the web, I would encourage you to read the Power Line posting I saw this morning on the issue.
After reading the Power Line posting, consider this excerpt from the article and reflect again on how extreme and intolerant the enemies of freedom have become:
…the close of the conference did not mark the end of Duke’s experiment in “discussion and learning.” To appreciate what happened next, it helps to know that…the university’s two Jewish organizations…had opted from the beginning to refrain from criticizing the university…At the same time…they formulated a “Joint Israel Initiative.” This was a resolution pledging that both they and the PSM [Palestinian Solidarity Movement] would conduct a civil dialogue, would together condemn the murder of innocent civilians, and would work toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…
But whatever hopes the Jewish campus organizations held out for a civil dialogue were rapidly dashed. Representatives of the PSM refused to sign the Joint Israeli Initiative, objecting in particular to its condemnation of violence…[then] Duke’s Jewish organizations themselves – and Jews in general – became the object of furious attack.
Meanwhile, the article noted the response of the President of Duke:
“…the deepest principle involved [in hosting the conference] is not even the principle of free speech. It’s the principle of education through dialogue.”
The President subsequently went on to condemn the “virulence” of some of the PSM’s critics.
Contrast this whole episode with the peaceful and democratic change that has been happening in the Ukraine. Or, the similar change in Poland roughly 20 years ago. Which pathway – PSM or Ukraine/Poland – represents the tradition we should be spending our time studying and encouraging as models for the future of the civilized world?
So, I ask the same question again: Where is the Moral Outrage? These people should be ashamed of themselves. We should be outraged at and appropriately intolerant of the lack of moral principles rearing its ugly head – yet again – in the politically correct American academy.
ADDENDUM:
The article is now available online.
ADDENDUM II:
Duke University and the article’s authors have engaged in a subsequent exchange about the original article.
Froma Harrop’s latest jeremiad against the Bush Administration and pharmaceutical companies combined with the news that Michael Moore’s next target for a “documentary” is the pharmaceutical industry has finally prompted me to shake myself of my “healthcare debate” ennui. (Justin has admitted to the same malady in the past). Harrop’s recitiation of an oft-repeated theme (“The pharmaceutical industry owns the Bush administration and a good chunk of the Republican-controlled Congress”) and the spectre of another potential media campaign extolling the brilliance of Moore’s forthcoming bit of propaganda launched me on a preliminary search for information with the hope of determining the current situation in the health care debate.
It seems the latest “must-have” book for those who have cast the drug companies in the role of antagonist in this battle is The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It by Marcia Angell. (Angell has presented this work in a shorter format here). To this, Elizabeth M. Whelan has responded. Additionally, the role of lawyers cannot be dismissed, as some see lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies as a lucrative proposition. Finally, the drug companies have provided their own reasons for high drug costs (such as too much consumer consumption [though it was only a joke, MAC]), and have their own organizations countering the claims of their opponents.
As a latecomer to the issue, I fully recognize that the depth of the debate is such that a pithy comment is not sufficient. The amount that has been written on this topic is voluminous and difficult to wade through and the rhetoric thrown up by both sides also makes it difficult to decide whom to trust. While I have my own predispostions as to who I tend to believe, I am also mindful of the importance of setting inherent biases aside when analyzing the debate objectively. Given all that, I have a lot to read and digest before I believe I can offer any sort of substantive, much less unique, commentary. As such, consider this post the first tentative step into the health care forest. I have yet to sharpen my axe, but I have whetstone in hand.
[Open full post]Each of two recent articles on the troubles in the Netherlands contained interesting quotes on the long-term impact of multiculturism. There is a warning for America in these words as they highlight the ongoing confusion over the meaning of “tolerance.”
A quote in the first article said:
…tolerance became a pretext for not addressing problems…
A quote in the second article said:
We have been so tolerant of others’ culture and religion, we are losing our own…Europe is losing itself…One day we will wake up, and it will be too late…
I looked up the definition of the word “tolerance” and it said:
sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own…the allowable deviation from a standard…
The definition of tolerance clearly states there are pre-existing standards, without which the very concept of tolerance has no significance. But multiculturism has led us into a world of relativism where there are no standards. And that means there is no way to define allowable deviations.
In a free and democratic society, we owe it to ourselves to openly debate what will be the appropriate standards and the allowable deviations from them that we will tolerate in our American society.
I hope we can conduct that debate in a context that keeps sight of the standards given to us through our Founding in the Declaration of Independence, the lessons learned over the entire history of America, and the natural law principles that have guided Western Civilization for centuries.
We owe it to our children and the future of America not to let the relativism of multiculturism result in any further dumbing down of our society based on the misguided thinking and ahistorical practices of the last forty years or so.
ADDENDUM:
Power Line has highlighted Mark Steyn’s new comments on the “tolerance” debate with some updated stories, one of which is a tall tale. However, one of them is quite true and involves a now well-publicized story from our own state of Rhode Island, which Justin has written on here.
The January-February 2005 issue of The American Enterprise magazine contains an interview with Michael Medved, whose background is summarized at the beginning of the interview:
Michael Medved was voted “most radical” in his Los Angeles high school class, then graduated from Yale and attended Yale Law School, where he knew Bill and Hillary Clinton. He was an anti-war protester and backer of Eugene McCarthy, after which he worked for Robert Kennedy’s Presidential campaign. He was at the Ambassador Hotel when Kennedy was shot. Medved also took part in George McGovern’s 1972 Presidential run, and while living in Berkeley, California worked briefly for the re-election of Congressman Ron Dellums, described as the “angriest black radical in Congress.” Medved eventually became a film critic, and for 12 years co-hosted the popular PBS movie review show “Sneak Previews.”
The interview is good reading. Here are several interesting comments:
[Open full post]One of my “aha” moments in my 20’s was recognizing that all the things I wanted in my life – stability, love, community, friendship, sense of purpose – all of those things were vastly more accessible within a religious context…
What we did go through in the 1960’s and ’70’s was the revolt of the elites. Traditionally, elites defined duty, honor, good behavior, and the like for the rest of the population. Today that has been reversed. Today, if you’re seeking strong concepts of duty, honor, discipline, and the kind of character that makes you a military leader, for instance, you’re more likely to find that in a family named Gonzalez than a family named Winthrop…
[TAE: You write that “I refused to give up on thinking of myself as a liberal because I didn’t want to stop seeing myself as a good person.” How have liberals done such a good job of associating themselves with virtue?] By emphasizing good intentions while ignoring bad results…
“Liberal” became a dirty word in America not because of Republican ad campaigns, but because anybody with eyes could eventually see that liberalism just doesn’t work…
Contemporary liberalism is based on the idea that the world is coming to an end. You can’t embrace liberalism if you are optimistic about the world in which you live, or grateful, or cheerful. Liberalism today is based on gloom.
This is not a gloomy or failing country. Yet the Left believes we need to radically remake everything from our family structure to our economic system, because we’re in the midst of a national epidemic of greed, and evil, and all-around badness. This whining has never been less appropriate for any people in the history of the planet than it is for Americans of the twentieth century.
This posting relates to a previous posting on the American Founding and also relates to Liberal Fundamentalism and The Naked Public Square Revisited, Parts I, II, and III.
Thanks to Power Line for referring to a 1926 speech by Calvin Coolidge on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If you ever have any doubt that certain apostles of liberal fundamentalism are actively attempting to rewrite our country’s history, read the entire speech. In the meantime, here are some powerful excerpts:
There is something beyond the establishment of a new nation, great as that event would be, in the Declaration of Independence which has ever since caused it to be regarded as one of the great charters that not only was to liberate America but was everywhere to ennoble humanity.
It was not because it proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history…
…Three very definite propositions were set out in [the Declaration’s] preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed…
While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination…
It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world…
…when we come to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live…
In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignity, the rights of man – these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in religious convictions…Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish…
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776..that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final…If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people…
In all the essentials we have achieved an equality which was never possessed by any other people…The rights of the individual are held sacred and protected by constitutional guarantees, which even the government itself is bound not to violate. If there is any one thing among us that is established beyond question, it is self-government — the right of the people to rule. If there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them. We hold that the duly authorized expression of the will of the people has a divine sanction…The ultimate sanction of law rests on the righteous authority of the Almighty…
…We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all of our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it…We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed…
The speech connects to an excerpt from another Power Line posting:
[Open full post]Knowledge of American history holds the key to much of the current discussion of political issues, such as the ongoing liberal attack on Christian belief and on arguments premised on belief in God…Absent knowledge of American history, one would never know that the United States is founded on the basis of a creed, rather than on tribal or blood lines, in which God plays a prominent part. Absent knowledge of history generally, one would never know that this fact makes America unique.
What is the American creed?…The American creed is expressed with inspired concision in the words of the Declaration of Independence…
But does the Declaration have any legal status such that these words can be truly deemed to state the American creed? It does, although virtually no one seems to know it. In 1878 Congress enacted a revised version of the United States Code that included a new first section entitled “The Organic Laws of the United States.”
The Code is Congress’s official compilation of federal law; the organic laws of the United States are America’s founding laws. First and foremost of the four organic laws of the United States is the Declaration of Independence…
Professor Jaffa [of the Claremont Institute] teaches us that the Declaration contains four distinct references to God: He is the author of the “laws of…God”; the “Creator” who “endowed” us with our inalienable rights; “the Supreme Judge of the world”; and “Divine Providence.” Americans declared their independence, “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.”
The Declaration states the American creed, the creed that recognizes the source (Nature and Nature’s God) of our rights.
With the current confluence of Christmas and our nation at war, I think it appropriate to mention a few noteworthy writings that deal with the topic. First is a recent column written by Idaho Senator Mike Crapo that details the Continental Army’s Christmas in 1778. Despite the sense of desparation surrounding the cause of upstart colonies during that Christmas, the small, underfed and under-equipped army weathered that winter at Valley Forge under the leadership of George Washington and went on to help build a nation.
I also offer these poignant words written during the Civil War by Corporal J. C. Williams, Co. B, 14th Vermont Infantry, December 25, 1862:
This is Christmas, and my mind wanders back to that home made lonesome by my absence, while far away from the peace and quietude of civil life to undergo the hardships of the camp, and may be the battle field. I think of the many lives that are endangered, and hope that the time will soon come when peace, with its innumerable blessings, shall once more restore our country to happiness and prosperity. (source)
Equally as poignant are the words of Corporal John Ferguson of the Seaforth Highlanders, who noted the irony of a Christmas scene during World War I
What a sight; little groups of Germans and British extending along the length of our front. Out of the darkness we could hear the laughter and see lighted matches. Where they couldn’t talk the language, they made themselves understood by signs, and everyone seemed to be getting on nicely. Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill. (source)
Finally, I’d like to point you to a piece by W. Thomas Smith Jr. at NRO about the Christmas time Battle of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. (This is of particular significance to me as my great uncle Victor Comtois, a Captain in the infantry, died on Christmas Eve 1944 in Luxembourg during the pushback.)
With these stories in mind, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and hope that we all take the time to remember both the true reason for the season and to remember our brave men and women who find themselves in harm’s way at this time. May God Bless America and may He protect our troops.
[Open full post]The author listed in the corner of the latest print edition cover of National Review (writing about Andrew Sullivan) has a familiar name:
Skimming the online version, I see the author apparently writes for this blog and Dust in the Light. Interesting development.
[Open full post]Given current jurisprudence, this is surely the prudent action:
BENNINGTON — Officials at the Vermont Veterans Home were ordered to take down a red, white and blue lighted cross Wednesday after trustees decided it is illegal at a state-owned facility. …
Employees had put the large cross, strung with patriotic colored lights, atop a gazebo to honor local Vermont Guard troops who left last month for a tour of duty in the Middle East.
But think of how far we’ve slipped that this seems so obvious. From “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” we’ve arrived at a society in which a state-operated home for veterans can’t follow long American tradition and use a cross “in respect for those who have fallen and those who in the future may fall fighting for the freedoms whose costs are so dear,” as Commandant Earle Hollings II put it.
The invocation of “fighting for freedom” raises perhaps the most offensive aspect of these little debacles:
Hollings said he received a phone message from an irate woman who was disturbed by the home’s display of a religious symbol. Someone also sent a letter to the state, he said.
Irate? One imagines this woman believing that she — in keeping with the American Civil Liberties Union’s rhetoric about itself — is “fighting for our freedoms.” (Many who share her radical secularism would also dispute that our troops are doing so.) The veterans fought foreign forces that would have liked to overwhelm and subjugate our nation and its people; the “separation” purists fight the veterans and the military to snuff out the merest whiff of a religion that a majority of those citizens share.
What often gets lost even in the opening arguments of the debate about church and state is that “this is a Christian nation” is primarily a cultural assertion. Generally, arguments orbit the law — what the Founders intended to constitute through their documents. But the law that those documents created left the nation’s religious culture unmolested, even to the degree of allowing laws and public symbolism to be formed from religious clay.
The underlying dispute in modern times is how our government ought to behave with respect to religion and its symbols, and the victorious view will inescapably affect our culture through the law. One view is clearly the established traditional approach, and the other is revolutionary. One side believes that God, being real, is properly not eschewed from public dealings; the other side believes this to be an antiquated assertion. There is no “separation” at this depth of difference.
The question that must be asked before delving into the minutia of legislation and litigation is what sort of a culture we want. Do we want a culture in which our symbolism is not disqualified from public display for the reason that a majority of citizens attribute religious significance to it? That encourages those who don’t hold the religious beliefs to seek common ground and not hesitate to articulate the shared theme’s manifestation in their own beliefs? Or do we want a culture in which individuals feel irateness to be justified when any group labeled “public” displays such symbols?
In a letter to the Bennington Banner responding to the cross’s removal, Darrin Smith wonders whether “a complaint should be sent to the Arlington National Cemetery too.” The sad conclusion to which one must come, based on the secularists’ rhetoric and its heat, is that they would surely make such complaints if it were politically feasible to do so. In the name of tolerance and freedom, Christian imagery mustn’t be tolerated when deriving from a public source, and the people of our Christian nation mustn’t be free to draw from their faith for public purposes.
So where does that leave us?
Trustees said a more appropriate symbol would be a lighted pole or five-point star as is emblazoned on Army vehicles.
I’m partial to the pole idea. If we must erase a symbol (generically speaking) of suffering, sacrifice, and redemption, it would only be appropriate to replace it with a stiff erection that most aptly symbolizes the manner in which a whining minority feigns neutrality to stick it to an accommodating majority.
(via Michelle Malkin)
