Bill Vallicella – Page 420 – Maverick Philosopher

Brussels, Hillary, Trump: Once Again Against Abstention

Both are utterly unfit to be president of the United States. They are equally bad, though in different ways. Trump, not yet having access to the levers of power, has so far shown himself to be personally and professionally disreputable. Hillary, first as the appendage, latterly as the prop of her once-charismatic husband, has been a boil on the countenance of the public for decades. Either would be a disaster for the country.

I grant that Trump and Hillary are bad in different ways, but how does Kimball know that they are equally bad? By what process of calculation or reasoning did he arrive at this assertion? As it stands, Kimball's claim is a gratuitous assertion and the Latin maxim applies: Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur. A bare assertion is adequately met with a bare counter-assertion. But I will do better and give seven reasons why Hillary is worse. I conclude that if one is a conservative, and if Trump and Hillary are the nominees of their respective parties, then one ought to vote for Trump. This is obviously consistent with holding, as I do hold, that the nominations of Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders would offer the voters a better choice, and in a two-fold sense: a starker choice ideologically speaking, and a choice between two basically decent people. By the way, it is astonishes me that there are blind partisans who think that the moral character of a candidate is irrelevant to his fitness for office. But I suppose that is what makes blind partisans blind.

A. Trump might appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court. But we KNOW that Hillary won't. This reason by itself ought to incline one to take a stand against the leftist candidate. I don't need to explain to my astute readers how important the composition of SCOTUS is. The composition of SCOTUS 'trumps' in long-term importance the identity of POTUS, if you will excuse the pun (and even if you won't.)

B. It is a very good bet that Trump will put a severe dent in the influx of illegal aliens across the southern border. But we KNOW that Hillary will do nothing to stem the illegal tide. If anything she'll encourage it because in her cynical eyes they are 'undocumented Democrats.' The strategy of the Left is to alter the demographics of the USA in such a way that conservatives are permanently rendered politically ineffective.

You will have noticed by now how liberals routinely suppress the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants by speaking of immigrants or 'migrants' without qualification. Michael Dukakis — remember him? — recently went on about how Trump's ancestors came from Germany. Right, but they immigrated legally. So how is that relevant to the topic of illegal immigration? Here again we see another example of liberal mendacity. Dukakis, De Blasio, and the usual suspects misrepresent their opponents as wanting a stoppage of all immigration. They are lying.

C. A third thing Trump might very well do is stop the outrage of sanctuary cities. But we KNOW Hillary won't. By the way, what do sanctuary cities provide sanctuary from? The rule of law.

D. A fourth thing Trump can be expected to do is enforce civil order and free speech rights in the face of such disorderly elements as the members of Black Lives Matter. These liars and thugs have targeted the police and are actively working to undermine the rule of law. They disrupt speakers. One even disrupted a speech by Bernie Sanders! Hillary is in bed with them. She repeats all the leftist lies about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, 'mass incarceration,' 'white privilege,' and so on. And what is most despicable is that she does it cynically for her own personal advantage.

When I floated this reason earlier, a reader objected:

If there is one thing that Trump is not doing and not showing any interest in whatsoever, it’s enforcing civil order, and he isn’t much for free speech either. (Except, obviously, when he is the beneficiary.) On the first point, Trump talks about the good old days when protesters would get roughed up, talked about wishing he could punch someone in the face, ever so slyly suggests that his followers will riot if the GOP denies him the nomination at the convention, has offered to pay the legal bills of a follower who cold-cocked a protester, and his conduct in the dispute between Michelle Fields and his chief of staff is rather poor as well. As for free speech, he’s a well-chronicled disaster.

I disagree thoroughly with my reader's first point. The single most important issue respecting the question of civil order is control of the nation's borders. Hillary will do nothing on this issue except lie about it. Trump may do something about it. See (B) above. This clinches the matter for me. My reader strains at a gnat while swallowing a camel when he brings up Trump's threatening remarks. Ask yourself: which is worse, Trump's words or the repeated and well-orchestrated leftist disruptions of conservative events? Words or actual physical violence?

As for my reader's second point, here he is on solid ground.

E. A fifth thing Trump might do is defend religious liberties. We KNOW that Hillary won't. Never forget that the Left is anti-religion and has been since 1789. Part of the reason for this is that the Left is totalitarian: it can brook no competitors to State power. This is why it must destroy belief in God and in the family. The god of the leftist is the State, the apparatchiki of the latter being the State's 'priesthood.'

F. A sixth thing Trump might do is defend Second Amendment rights. We KNOW that Hillary won't. She is a mendacious 'stealth ideologue' who won't admit that she is for Aussie-style confiscation, but that is what the liberty-basher and Constitution-trasher is for. She realizes that guns in the hands of citizens are a check on her leftist totalitarianism.

G. And then came Brussells. A seventh thing Trump might do is take serious and 'meaningful' steps against Islamic terrorism. We KNOW that Hillary won't.

Add these reasons together and you have a strong cumulative-case argument for the preferrability of Trump over Hillary should it come to such a contest.

Europe at the Edge of the Abyss

Another outstanding essay by Victor Davis Hanson. I am tempted to quote the entire piece. I shall resist the temptation.

Because of what Europe has become, it now has few viable choices in dealing with radical Islamic terrorism. Its dilemma is a warning to Americans that we should turn away from a similar path of national suicide.

[. . .]

Europe’s perfect storm is upon us. A shrinking, statist, and agnostic society that does not believe in transcendence, either familial or religious, is now in a war with near neighbors of a very different sort. In the Middle East, the fundamentalists are growing in numbers, and they most certainly do believe that their own lives are nothing in comparison to the Phoenix-like resurrection of their Caliphate and the sensual pleasures in the hereafter that will reward their martial sacrifices in the here and now. Of all the many reasons why immigrants to Europe so often dislike their generous hosts, the simplest may be because they so easily can. Even H. G. Wells could not dream up any better harvest of Eloi by Morlocks, and it would take another St. Jerome (“All were born in captivity and siege, and do not desire the liberty they never knew. Who could believe this?”) to chronicle the Western tragedy. As a general rule, whatever Europe is now doing, we should do the opposite — for our very survival in an increasingly scary world.

Come on Victor, man up! Make a definite proposal. Say something plain and blunt. I understand: you are a highly esteemed historian and you are concerned with your professional standing and credibility. You enjoy the perquisites of your position among the established. But what is more important, your professional standing or the continuance of the great country and culture that made it possible for you to have a highly distinguished career and speak your mind freely?

How about this: Propose a moratorium on immigration from Muslim lands. Or this: Urge people to vote for Trump if he should garner the Republican nomination.

Related: Civil Courage

St. Jerome on the Collapse of the Roman Empire

The following, which might be relevant to current events, is borrowed from here.

St. Jerome was born around the year 340. He came to Rome and was baptized there around 360. He devoted the rest of his life to scholarly pursuits and the translation of the Bible into Latin. He died in 420. He wrote the following observations describing the devastation of the Empire around 406:

"Nations innumerable and most savage have invaded all Gaul. The Whole region between the Alps and the Pyrenees, the ocean and the Rhine, has been devastated by the Quadi, the Vandals, the Sarmati, the Alani, the Gepidae, the hostile Heruli, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, and the Pahnonians.

Oh wretched Empire! Mayence [Mainz, Germany], formerly so noble a city, has been taken and ruined, and in the church many thousands of men have been massacred. Worms [Germany] has been destroyed after a long siege. Rheims, that powerful city, Amiens, Arras, Speyer [Germany], Strasburg, – all have seen their citizens led away captive into Germany. Aquitaine and the provinces of Lyons and Narbonne, all save a few towns, have been depopulated; and these the sword threatens without, while hunger ravages within.

I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse, which the merits of the holy Bishop Exuperius have prevailed so far to save from destruction. Spain, even, is in daily terror lest it perish, remembering the invasion of the Cimbri; and whatsoever the other provinces have suffered once, they continue to suffer in their fear.

I will keep silence concerning the rest, lest I seem to despair of the mercy of God. For a long time, from the Black Sea to the Julian Alps, those things which are ours have not been ours; and for thirty years, since the Danube boundary was broken, war has been waged in the very midst of the Roman Empire. Our tears are dried by old age. Except a few old men, all were born in captivity and siege, and do not desire the liberty they never knew.

Who could believe this? How could the whole tale be worthily told? How Rome has fought within her own bosom not for glory, but for preservation – nay, how she has not even fought, but with gold and all her precious things has ransomed her life…

Who could believe that Rome, built upon the conquest of the whole world, would fall to the ground? That the mother herself would become the tomb of her peoples? That all the regions of the East, of Africa and Egypt, once ruled by the queenly city, would be filled with troops of slaves and handmaidens? That to-day holy Bethlehem should shelter men and women of noble birth, who once abounded in wealth and are now beggars?"

References:
This eyewitness account appears in Robinson, James Harvey, Readings in European History (1906); Duruy, Victor, History of Rome and of the Roman People, vol VIII (1883).

Representatives of the ‘Religion of Peace’ Crucify Priest on Good Friday

Here. What's the big deal? These things happen. As compared to the number of traffic fatalities in Muslim lands over the last ten years the number of crucifixions is vanishingly small. You are statistically illiterate if you are worried about being crucified as opposed to dying in a traffic accident.

I am of course being sarcastic. See here.

ISIS is no existential threat to us or our culture. Thus spoke Obama. A man of his experience and insight should know, right?

On this point Robert Royal talks sense:

Anyone acquainted with history knows that it’s happened before. Once robust Roman and Christian North Africa, the birthplace of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, Sts. Cyprian and Augustine, Felicity and Perpetua, lacking a strong secular state after the fall of the Western Empire, disappeared under Muslim assault. Except for their moral and intellectual achievements, in today’s North Africa those great figures might as well never have existed.

Something similar is occurring all over the Middle East. It would be foolish to think it cannot also happen, in the longer run, in Europe or the Americas, especially given the West’s demographic collapse.

Obama often says that ISIS isn’t an “existential” threat. By that, he may mean that terrorists and their armies are, for now, too small to conquer or destroy us. But there are many ways to be destroyed – and one of them is by undermining those very “values” the president thinks are “right.” Sometimes the undermining comes, unintentionally, from the very people who think they are defending them.

Is Moral Relativism Dying?

In a recent Atlantic article we read:

. . . the prevailing thought of the second decade of the 21st century is not like the mid-to late-20th century. Law, virtue, and a shame culture have risen to prominence in recent years, signaling that moral relativism may be going the way of the buggy whip.

[. . .]

In The New York Times last week, David Brooks argued that while American college campuses were “awash in moral relativism” as late as the 1980s, a “shame culture” has now taken its place. The subjective morality of yesterday has been replaced by an ethical code that, if violated, results in unmerciful moral crusades on social media.

A culture of shame cannot be a culture of total relativism. One must have some moral criteria for which to decide if someone is worth shaming.

I find the article confused, but in an instructive way. What is dying is not moral relativism but moral fallibilism. And what is on the rise is not moral absolutism but moral dogmatism. People are becoming more dogmatic in their moral commitments. But this is consistent with being a moral relativist. Or so I shall argue. There are two distinction-pairs in play and they 'cut perpendicular' to each other. Absolute-relative is one pair; dogmatic-fallible the other. This makes for four combinations.

A. Dogmatic moral absolutism. Moral values and disvalues and the truths that record them are absolute: not relative to individuals, cultures, historical epochs, social classes, racial or ethnic groups, or any other index. So if slavery is morally wrong, it is wrong period, which implies that it is wrong always and everywhere and for everyone. What makes one dogmatic in one's moral absolutism, however, is the further claim to know these values and truths with certainty, and/or the readiness to act upon them uncompromisingly, by say shouting down opponents.

B. Fallibilistic moral absolutism. Moral values are absolute, but the fallibilist admits that moral judgments are fallible or subject to error. Consider the claim that a pre-natal human being is greater in value than a healthy adult dolphin. An absolutist will hold that this claim, if true, is absolutely true. But if the absolutist is a fallibilist he will admit that he could be wrong about whether it is true. The fallibilist can be expected to tolerate those who disagree while the dogmatist can be expected to be intolerant.

C. Dogmatic moral relativism. Presumably everyone reading this will agree that slavery is a great moral evil. It is a fact, however, that it was not held to be a great evil at all times and in all places. This fact inclines some to maintain that moral values are relative, to historical epochs, say. Suppose Tom is an historical relativist about moral values, but Tim is not any sort of moral relativist. They can both be uncompromisingly committed to opposing slavery even unto shaming and shunning those who think otherwise. This shows, I think, that a moral relativist can be just as dogmatic (non-fallibilist) as a moral absolutist.

I conclude from this that a rise in moral dogmatism should not be confused with a decline in moral relativism. Moral relativism may be on the decline; but this cannot be shown by citing a rise in moral dogmatism.

D. Fallibilistic moral relativism. This is a consistent position. One might hold that that moral values are culturally relative while also holding that one could be wrong about which putative values within one's culture are the binding values within one's culture, or without agreeing how to rank order competing values within one's culture. For example, liberty and equality are both values. Suppose they are not absolute but relative to Western culture. One can still have doubts about whether liberty trumps equality or vice versa. If Tom says that liberty trumps equality, and Tom is a fallibilist, then Tom will be open to arguments to the contrary.

Atlantic article here.

“Europe Might be Dying”

According to Bernard-Henri Levy in this eight or so minutes of video.

Memo to London Ed: Levy's comments on Brexit will be of interest.

Easter Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 15:14: Christianity and Buddhism

Biblia Vulgata: Si autem Christus non resurrexit, inanis est ergo praedicatio nostra, inanis est et fides vestra.

King James: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

Orthodox* Christianity stands and falls with a contingent historical fact, the fact of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. If he rose from the dead, he is who is said he was and can deliver on his promises. If not, then the faith of the Christian inanis est. It is vain, void, empty, delusional.

Compare Buddhism. It too promises salvation of a sort. But the salvation it promises is not a promise by its founder that rests on the existence of the founder or on anything he did. For Christianity, history is essential, for Buddhism inessential. The historical Buddha is not a savior, but merely an example of a man of whom it is related that he saved himself by realizing his inherent Buddha-nature. The idea of the Buddha is enough as far as we are concerned; his historical existence unnecessary. 'Buddha,' like 'Christ,' is a title: it means 'the Enlightened One.' Buddhism does not depend either on the existence of Siddartha, the man who is said to have become the Buddha, or on Siddartha's becoming the Buddha. Suppose that Siddartha never existed, or existed but didn't attain enlightenment. We would still have the idea of a man attaining enlightenment/salvation by his own efforts. The idea would suffice. (One might wonder, however, whether the real possibility of enlightenment needs attestation by someone's actually having achieved it — which would drag us back into the realm of historical fact — or whether the mere conceivability of it entails, or perhaps provides good evidence for, its real possibility.)

Hence the Zen saying, "If you see the Buddha, kill him." I take that to mean that one does not need the historical Buddha, and that cherishing any piety towards him may prove more hindrance than help. Non-attachment extends to the Buddha and his teachings. Buddhism, as the ultimate religion of self-help, enjoins each to become a lamp unto himself. What is essential is the enlightenment that one either achieves or fails to achieve on one's own, an enlightenment which is a natural possibility of all. If one works diligently enough, one can extricate oneself from the labyrinth of samsara. One can achieve the ultimate goal on one's own, by one's own power. There is no need for supernatural assistance. If Buddhism is a religion of self-help, Christianity is most assuredly a religion of other-help. On the latter one cannot drag oneself from the dreck by one's own power.

Trouble is, how many attain the Buddhist goal? And if only a few renunciates ever attain it, how does that help the rest of us poor schleps? By contrast, in Christianity, God, in the person of the Word (Logos) made flesh, does the work for us. Unable ultimately to help ourselves, we are helped by Another. And the help is available to all despite their skills in metaphysics and meditation. As Maurice Blondel observes, . . . if there is a salvation it cannot be tied to the learned solution of an obscure problem. . . It can only be offered clearly to all. (Action, p. 14) (By "do the work for us," I of course do not mean to suggest the sola fide extremism of some Protestants.)

I remain open to Christianity's claims because I doubt the justification of Buddhistic self-help optimism. Try to hoe the Buddhist row and see how far you get. One works and works on oneself but makes little progress. That one needs help is clear. That one can supply it from within one's own resources is unclear. I know of no enlightened persons. But I know of plenty of frauds, spiritual hustlers, and mountebanks. I have encountered Buddhists who become very upset indeed if you challenge their dogmas such as the anatman ('No Self') doctrine. The ego they deny is alive and well in them and angry at having the doctrine to which their nonexistent egos are attached questioned.

Both Buddhism and Christianity are life-denying religions in that they both reject the ultimacy and satisfactoriness of this life taken as end-all and be-all. But while Christianity denies this life for the sake of a higher life elsewhere and elsewhen, Buddhism denies this life for the sake of Nirvanic extinction. The solution to the problem of suffering is to so attenuate desire and aversion that one comes to the realization that one never existed in the first place. Some solution! And yet there is much to learn from Buddhism and its practices. Mindfulness exercises and other practices can be usefully employed by Christians. Christianity and Buddhism are the two highest religions. The two lowest are the religions of spiritual materialism, Judaism and Islam, with Islam at the very bottom of the hierarchy of great religions.

Islam is shockingly crude, as crude as Buddhism is over-refined. The Muslim is promised all the crass material pleasures on the far side that he is forbidden here, as if salvation consists of eating and drinking and endless bouts of sexual intercourse. Hence my term 'spiritual materialism.' 'Spiritual positivism' is also worth considering. The Buddhist is no positivist but a nihilist: salvation through annihilation. What Christianity promises, it must be admitted by the intellectually honest, is very difficult to make rational sense of. For example, one's resurrection as a spiritual body. What does that mean? How is it possible? For an introduction to the problem, see Romano Guardini, The Last Things, "The Spiritual Body," pp. 61-72.

Admittedly, my rank ordering of the great religions is quick and dirty, but it is important to cut to the bone of the matter from time to time with no mincing of words. And, as usual, political correctness be damned. For details on Buddhism see my Buddhism category.

I should say that I take Buddhism very seriously indeed. It is deep and sophisticated with a rich tradition of philosophical commentary. Many of the sutras are beautiful and ennobling. Apart from its mystical branch, Sufism, I cannot take Islam seriously — except as a grave threat to other religions and indeed to civilization itself. An interesting and important question is whether Muslims are better off with their religion as opposed to having no religion at all. The question does not arise with respect to the other great religions, or if you say it does, then I say it has an easy answer.

There are some affinities between Christianity and Buddhism. One is explored in The Christian 'Anatta Doctrine' of Lorenzo Scupoli.

As for why I am not a Buddhist, I give one reason in Buddhism on Suffering and One Reason I am not a Buddhist. Others are in the Buddhism category.

Here is something for lefties to think about. While there are are some terrorists who are socioculturally Buddhist in that they were raised and acculturated in Buddhist lands, are there any Buddhists who terrorize from Buddhist doctrine?

___________________________________

*By 'orthodox' I do not have in mind Eastern Orthodoxy, but a Christianity that is not mystically interpreted, a Christianity in which, for example, the resurrection is not interpreted to mean the attainment of Christ-consciousness or the realization of Christ-nature.

Holy Saturday Night at the Oldies: Death and Resurrection

Herewith, some definite decouplings of rock and roll from sex and drugs.

Norman Greenbaum, Spirit in the Sky

Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus. This is one powerful song.

Johnny Cash, Redemption

Clapton and Winwood, Presence of the Lord. Why is Clapton such a great guitarist? Not because of his technical virtuosity, his 'chops,' but because he has something to say.

George Harrison, My Sweet Lord

George Harrison, All Things Must Pass. Harrison was the Beatle with depth.

Bob Dylan, See that My Grave is Kept Clean

Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and Buffy Sainte-Marie, Passing Through

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 45e: "Go on, believe! It does no harm."

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 75:

The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of iron; such is the human condition; space and time are the cause of it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite which is in man to a point on the pointed part, a point on the handle, at the cost of a harrowing pain. The whole being is stricken in the instant; there is no place left for God, even in the case of Christ, where the thought of God is then that of privation. This stage has to be reached if there is to be incarnation. The whole being becomes privation of God: how can we go beyond? After that there is only the resurrection. To reach this stage the cold touch of naked iron is necessary.

'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' There we have the real proof that Christianity is something divine. (p. 79)

We are spiritual beings, participants in the infinite and the absolute. But we are also, undeniably, animals. Our human condition is thus a predicament, that of a spiritual animal. As spirits we enjoy freedom of the will and the ability to encompass the whole universe in our thought. As spirits we participate in the infinity and absoluteness of truth. As animals, however, we are but indigent bits of the world's fauna exposed to and compromised by its vicissitudes. As animals we are susceptible to pains and torments that swamp the spirit and obliterate the infinite in us reducing us in an instant to mere screaming animals.

Now if God were to become one of us, fully one of us, would he not have to accept the full measure of the spirit's hostage to the flesh? Would he not have to empty himself fully into our misery? That is Weil's point. The fullness of Incarnation requires that the one incarnated be tortured to death. For if Christ is to be fully human, in addition to fully divine, he must experience the highest exaltation and the lowest degradation. These extreme possibilities, though not actual in all, define being human.

The Crucifixion is the Incarnation in extremis. His spirit, 'nailed' to the flesh, is the spirit of flesh now nailed to the wood of the cross. At this extreme point of the Incarnation, doubly nailed to matter, Christ experiences utter abandonment. He experiences and accepts utter failure and the terrifying thought that his whole life and ministry were utterly delusional.

The darkest hour. And then dawn.

Brussels? What’s the Big Deal?

In the 22 March 2016 attack in Brussels 34 people (31 victims and 3 perpetrators) were killed and 300 injured. Why should anyone care about this? In 2013 in Belgium alone there were 746 traffic-related fatalities. And in 2010 there were in Belgium 197 gun-related deaths. Surely it can't be rational to get excited over 34 dead as compared to the 746 dead or the 197 dead. People kill people. Things happen: things like nail bombings, highway crashes, and gun deaths.

My astute readers will of course detect something severely 'twisted' in the 'reasoning' I presented above. Horribile dictu, this is the way many leftists and some libertarians think! I shit you not. Shit happens.

Robert Paul Wolff writes,

Fourteen people were murdered in San Bernardino, and almost two dozen were injured, several critically. That is perfectly awful. Since September 11, 2001, I believe almost three score people have been killed in the United States in similar terrorist attacks, or so one television commentator asserted. The number sounds about right. During those same fourteen years, 120,000 Americans have been killed by guns (including those who killed themselves, just to be clear .) I cannot imagine any rational mode of discourse that treats the former number as somehow more important than the latter number. And yet, people who would pass most tests for sanity, if not intelligence, are eager to take dramatic steps to prevent another San Bernardino although they would not even consider equally vigorous steps to diminish, say by half, the number of deaths from firearms in the next fourteen years. [Emphasis added.]

I refute Wolff in Thinking Clearly About Terrorist and Non-Terrorist Gun-Related Deaths.

And then there is this:

Bryan Caplan quotes "the brilliant Nathan Smith" who advances "A familiar truism well-expressed:"

If we're still driving cars despite thousands of automobile accident deaths per year, we don't really set the value of human life so high that attacks in Paris (130 victims) and San Bernardino (22 victims) objectively warrant the massive media attention, revolutions in foreign policy, and proposals to shut the borders completely to Muslims that they evoke. Such events get such attention because of statistical illiteracy.

My refutation of this nonsense is in Why Some Think that Terrorism is no Big Deal

Prospects for Catholic-Muslim ‘Dialogue’ and the Foolishness of the Catholic Bishops

Robert Reilly is too politic to refer to the Catholic bishops as fools, so I'll do it for him. Not all of them are fools, of course, but many if not most, and not just on the topic of Islam, but on other topics as well, such as capital punishment. Reilly's recent Catholic Thing piece is essential reading if you care about hard truth as opposed to liberal-left feel-good pablum. I'll pull a few quotations.

. . . like most Americans, the bishops know almost nothing about Islam. Therefore, they don’t understand the context in which their Muslim interlocutors are speaking. As a result, they engage in mirror imaging, i.e., understanding the Muslims as the good bishops understand themselves. A big mistake.

A big mistake indeed. See the detailed discussion in my Islam and the Perils of Psychological Projection. Reilly continues:

San Diego Bishop Robert W. McElroy recently provided an example at the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. The Catholic News Service headlined the event: “Bishop challenges Catholics to combat ‘ugly tide of anti-Islamic bigotry.’” The bishop said Catholics must speak out against “distortions of Muslim theology and teaching on society and the state.”

What might these distortions be? Apparently, that we should view with repugnance the “repeated falsehoods” that Islam is inherently violent, that Muslims seek to supplant the U.S. Constitution with sharia law, and that Muslim immigration threatens “the cultural identity of the American people.”

Bishop McElroy’s dialogue partner for the evening was Sayyid Syeed, a leader of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), whose name was familiar to me because he has been a fixture in the Midwest Catholic-Muslim dialogues. Perhaps the bishop was unacquainted with the pedigree of ISNA, which was spawned by the Muslim Brotherhood, the premier world organization for the reestablishment of the caliphate – whose purpose is the establishment of sharia.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.

Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, also a frequent dialogue partner with the bishops and past president of ISNA, had this to say in the newspaper Pakistan Link: “We must not forget that Allah’s rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction.” In 2001, he wrote, “Once more people accept Islam, insha’allah, this will lead to the implementation of Sharia in all areas.”

[. . .]

While acknowledging the terrible situation of Christians in the Middle East, Bishop McElroy apparently praised Islam’s respect for “the peoples of the Book.” In this, he was eagerly seconded by his dialogue partner, Mr. Syeed, who, according to CNS, said that the first millennium was marked by positive relations between Christianity and Islam, but that all changed in the millennium that followed, which included the Crusades.

This is an interesting perspective on history.

By A.D. 650, Muslims ruled Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt – all of which had been Christian lands whose inhabitants were demoted to the subject status of dhimmis. Less than a century later, Islam had spread to North Africa and Spain – all within the first millennium of “positive relations.” In none of these places did Muslims arrive peacefully.

I suggest that the bishops put Bat Ye’or’s book, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, on their reading list so they can speak accurately about Islam’s respect for “the peoples of the Book” in the first millennium and afterwards. From this history, is it unreasonable to consider that there is something “inherently violent” in Islam?

Mr. Syeed went on to say that, in the second millennium, “the two faiths divided the world into a ‘house of Islam’ and a ‘house of Christianity.’” Actually, the division was made well before that by Islam, which created the distinction between between the dar al-islam and dar al-harb, with the Christian world being described as the “house of war.”

But perhaps this distinction is superannuated? Somewhat around the time of Bishop McElroy’s speech, in a Friday sermon in Edmonton, Alberta, Imam Shaban Sherif Mady declared, “Look forward to it, because the Prophet Muhammad said that Rome would be conquered! It will be conquered. Constantinople was conquered. Rome is the Vatican, the very heart of the Christian state.”

Now who is misunderstanding Islam here, the imam or the bishop? (I leave out Mr. Syeed because he could hardly deny that Mohammed said this.)

In other words, the San Diego Peace Institute event provides a microcosm for what generally goes wrong in Catholic-Muslim dialogue as conducted by the bishops’ conferences. None of the many Muslim intellectual reformers with whom I have worked over the years has ever been invited to such a dialogue. For the most part, only Islamist organizations need apply.

Citizens Lynching Citizens

In light of the Brussels attack and Obama's unbelievably lame 51 second response thereto, in which he once again refused properly to name the source of the carnage, the following re-posting of an entry from over a year ago is justified.

……………………………..

Imagine a history teacher who tells his students that in the American South, as late as the 1960s, certain citizens lynched certain other citizens. Would you say that the teacher had omitted something of great importance for understanding why these lynchings occurred? Yes you would. You would point out that the lynchings were of blacks by whites, and that a good part of the motivation for their unspeakable crimes was sheer racial animus. In the case of these crimes, the races of the perpetrators and of their victims are facts relevant to understanding the crimes. Just to describe the lynchings accurately one has to mention race, let alone to explain them.

I hope no one will disagree with me on this.

Or consider the case of a history teacher who reports that in Germany, 1933-1945, certain German citizens harassed, tortured, enslaved, and executed other German citizens. That is true, of course, but it leaves out the fact that the perpetrators were Nazis and (most of) the victims Jews. Those additional facts must be reported for the situation to be properly described, let alone explained. Not only that, the Nazis were acting from Nazi ideology and the Jew were killed for being Jews.

According to recent reports, some Muslim jihadis beheaded some Egyptian Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach. Now beheading is not lynching. And religion is not the same as race. But just as race is relevant in the lynching case, religion is relevant in the beheading case. That the perpetrators of the beheadings were Muslims and the victims Christians enters into both an adequate description and an adequate explanation of the evil deeds of the former.

This is especially so since the Muslims were acting from Islamic beliefs and the Christians were killed for their Christian beliefs. It was not as if some merely nominal Muslims killed some merely nominal Christians in a dispute over the ownership of some donkeys.

Bear in mind my distinction between a 'sociological' X and a 'doctrinal' X. Suppose you were brought up Mormon in Idaho or Utah, but now reject the religion. Your being no longer doctrinally a Mormon is consistent with your remaining sociologically a Mormon.

What did Barack Obama say about the beheading? He said: “No religion is responsible for terrorism — people are responsible for violence and terrorism."

Now that is a mendacious thing to say. Obama knows that the behavior of people is influenced by their beliefs. For example, he knows that part of the explanation of the lynchings of blacks by whites is that the white perpetrators held racists beliefs that justified (in their own minds) their horrendous behavior. And of course he knows, mutatis mutandis, the same about the beheading case.

He knows that he is engaging in a vicious abstraction when he sunders people and their beliefs in such a way as to imply that those beliefs have no influence on their actions.

Why then is Obama so dishonest? Part of the explanation is that he just does not care about truth. (This is a mark of the bullshitter as Harry Frankfurt has pointed out in his celebrated On Bullshit.) Truth, after all, is not a leftist value, except insofar as it can be invoked by leftists to forward their agenda. It is the 'progressive' agenda that counts, first, and the narrative that justifies the agenda, second. (Karl Marx, 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it.") Truth doesn't come into it since a narrative is just a story and a story needn't be true to mobilize people to implement an agenda.

There's more to it than that, but that's enough for now. This is a blog and brevity is the soul of blog as some wit once observed.

What is to be done? Well, every decent person must do what he or she can to combat the destructive liars of the Left. It is a noble fight, and may also be, shall we say, conducive unto your further existence in the style to which you have become accustomed.

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook

You probably knew that Elizabeth Warren, aka Fauxcahontas, contributed recipes to the cookbook, Pow Wow Chow. You might even know that some have alleged that these recipes were plagiarized by the Indian maiden. But I'll bet you don't know that Jean-Paul Sartre worked on a cookbook. Another reason why you need to read my blog.

Here is a 'taste':

We have recently been lucky enough to discover several previously lost diaries of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cushions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Aparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy, had hoped to write "a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavor forever.'' The diaries are excerpted here for your perusal.

October 3

Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.

October 4

Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.

October 6

I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of a cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.

October 7

Today I again modified my omelet recipe. While my previous attempts had expressed my own bitterness, they communicated only illness to the eater. In an attempt to reach the bourgeoisie, I taped two fried eggs over my eyes and walked the streets of Paris for an hour. I ran into Camus at the Select. He called me a "pathetic dork" and told me to "go home and wash my face." Angered, I poured a bowl of bouillabaisse into his lap. He became enraged, and, seizing a straw wrapped in paper, tore off one end of the wrapper and blew through the straw. propelling the wrapper into my eye. "Ow! You dick!" I cried. I leaped up, cursing and holding my eye, and fled.

Socialism Kills

Literally

Callicles as Precursor of De Sade

At Gorgias 492, tr. Helmbold, the divine Plato puts the following words into the mouth of Callicles:

     A man who is going to live a full life must allow his desires to
     become as mighty as may be and never repress them. When his
     passions have come to full maturity, he must be able to serve them
     through his courage and intelligence and gratify every fleeting
     desire as it comes into his heart.

[. . .]

     The truth, which you claim to pursue, Socrates, is really this:
     luxury, license, and liberty, when they have the upper hand, are
     really virtue, and happiness as well; everything else is a set of
     fine terms, man-made conventions, warped against nature, a pack of
     stuff and nonsense!

Now let us consider what the decidedly undivine Marquis de Sade has Mme. Delbene say in Julliette or Vice Amply Rewarded:

. . . I am going to dismiss this equally absurd and childish obligation which enjoins us not to do unto others that which unto us we would not have done. It is the precise contrary Nature recommends, since Nature's single precept is to enjoy oneself, at the expense of no matter whom. But at our leisure we shall return to these subjects; for the nonce, let's now put our theories into practice and, after having demonstrated that you can do everything without committing a crime, let's commit a villainy or two to convince ourselves that everything can be done. (p. 30, emphasis in original, tr. Casavini)

From the cover: "abridged but unexpurgated from the original five-volume work especially for the adult reader." In other other words, the good stuff, i.e., the philosophy, has been cut, but the 'adult matter' remains. I get a kick out of this use of 'adult' — but that's another post.

The natural man, in the grip of his lusts, is a natural sophist: what can be done is eo ipso permissible to do. Reason in a philosopher without God easily becomes unhinged.