Bill Vallicella – Page 451 – Maverick Philosopher

Truth Decay

'Truth decay' aptly describes the growing lack of concern for truth among influential players in our society. I got the phrase from Douglas Groothuis. Truth itself, of course, cannot decay, but truthfulness can and is. We are in trouble, deep trouble. Victor Davis Hanson collects some examples in Lying, Inc.:

Everyone knows that “Hands up, Don’t Shoot” was an outright lie ^[3]. Michael Brown never did or said that. Forensics, logic, and the majority of eyewitness accounts confirm that the strong-armed robber struggled with a policeman, lunged at his weapon, ran away, and then turned and charged him, not that he was executed in polite submission.

Does that lie matter? Not at all. “Ferguson” is routinely listed as proof of police racist brutality — and by no less than the president of the United States. Michael Brown is now the Paul Bunyan of the inner city. U.S. congressional representatives and professional athletes alike chant and act out “Hands up, Don’t Shoot” dramatics. The public shrugs that although it is all a lie, it is felt to be sort of true on the theory that something like that could happen one day, and thus it is OK to lie that it already has. Most knew that the strong-arm robber Michael Brown was about as likely a “gentle giant” as Trayvon Martin was still a cute preteen ^[4] in a football uniform.

Community agitator and frequent White House visitor Al Sharpton has lied repeatedly about his income taxes ^[5] and the reasons why he cannot produce accurate tax records, in the manner that he habitually lied about the Tawana Brawley case, the Duke Lacrosse caper, and the Ferguson “hands up, don’t shoot” meme. The public assumes both that Sharpton is an inveterate liar and that to dwell on the fact is either a waste of time or can incur charges of illiberality or worse. Most are more interested in his more mysterious, almost daily-changing appearance than the untruth that he hourly espouses.

Hillary Clinton, to be candid, is a habitual fabulist. She entered public life lying about everything from her 1-1000 cattle futures con to the location of her law firm’s subpoenaed legal documents. Recently she has been unable to tell the truth in any context whatsoever. She will lie about big and small, trivial and fundamental, from the immigrant myths about her grandparents to the origins of her own name Hillary to her combat exposure in the Balkans. The subtext of “what difference does it make” was something like: “Even if you find out that I lied about the run-up to and follow up on the Benghazi killings, it won’t matter in the least to my career.” She was right, of course, in her assumption that lying had career utility and brought more pluses than negatives, as her current presidential campaign attests.

Her press conference on the disappearing emails was unique in American political history in that everything Ms. Clinton said was, without exception, a demonstrable untruth. It is not that no one believes her, but rather than no one can possibly believe her when she insisted that she would have needed multiple devices for multiple email accounts, or that public officials routinely alone adjudicate what is and is not public and private communications, or that other cabinet officers apparently created, as she did, exclusively private email accounts — and servers — for public business or that security personnel on the premises protect the airwaves from hackers. Even her own supporters know that she lied, and trust that it likely will not hamper her presidential run. Her life has become about as real as that of Annie Oakley’s.

Both Hillary and Bill Clinton lied about almost every aspect of the Clinton Foundation. She knew that the foundation was created to spend 90% on travel and insider salaries and benefits, and 10% on direct grants to charities, that it offered thin moral cover to skullduggery, and that it drew donations from zillionaires, who in turn offered Bill Clinton lopsided lecture fees that he otherwise would not have commanded, and expected favorable U.S. government treatment for their cash. Hillary assumed that beneath the skin of a “charitable organization” the three Clintons ran a veritable shake down operation that resulted in mother, father, and daughter becoming multimillionaires. The Clintons will expect the issue to dissolve, either on the premise that the notoriety cannot do much more damage to the already sullied Clinton name, or that the Democratic Party feels that it can nominate no other candidate who raises as much money and is so recognizable as the proverbial prevaricator Hillary Clinton.

President Obama’s approval ratings seem to have gone up almost in direct proportion to the degree he has lied. On over twenty occasions ^[6] in reelection scenarios, Obama lied in stating that he would not issue blanket amnesties and order non-enforcement of current immigration law given that it would be unconstitutional and unlawful to do so. We accept at the time that such assurances were about as truthful as his convenient opposition to gay marriage — rhetorical constructs that warp and weave according to the realities of the next election. Who objects when Obama’s lying is felt to be for the higher cause of equality of result?

Almost every element of his promises about Obamacare — easy online signups, reduced premiums and deductibles, maintenance of current policies and doctors ^[7], national savings, and less frequent emergency room use were not just untrue, but realized in advance as simply not possible. Almost every parameter that Obama outlined in advance about the current Iranian talks proved about as true as were his redlines to Syria should it use chemical weapons. As a good community organizer, Obama accepts that his noble goals are government-mandated egalitarianism and that such utopian agendas require any means necessary to achieve them. And so he lies and the public seems bored and apparently appreciates why he must do so.

When elites customarily lie without much consequence, the public follows their examples.

‘Pinkwashing’

Here:

And then there is “pinkwashing.” You can’t make this up. Some left-wing, pro-gay groups attack Israel because it is tolerant of gays. See if you can follow the twisted logic: Since Israel is evil incarnate, its positive treatment of gays must be a way of diverting people’s attention. Devious people, those Jews. The Israel haters call it pinkwashing, meaning it is whitewashing with pink tint, to emphasize its sexual-orientation. People actually tour American, Canadian, and European universities pitching this tripe. The groups that invite them – guess who? – say nothing about ISIS sending out decoys to lure gay men out of the shadows so they can behead them. Of course, they remain silent about the 200,000-plus killed in Syria, Iran’s campaign of global terror, Hamas hiding rockets in school buildings, Christians being driven out of lands where they have lived since Jesus’ time, and on and on. That would only divide the group and divert them from their anti-Israel mission.

Further proof that nothing is so stupid, vile, and detached from reality that some sizable bunch of liberals won 't jump to embrace it.

From now on liberals bear the burden of proof. Prove that you are not insane, or stupid, or not moral scum. If you can muster that proof, then we will show you some respect.

Why Stop Here?

Why stop at these traffic lights? (Pun intended) We need to go further so as to include the pederasts of NAMBLA and PIE. We need lights depicting an adult hand-in-hand with a child with a little heart between them to signify the sexual love that unites them. After all, it is discriminatory to marginalize the practitioners of sexual perversions. Surely it is the role of the state in these enlightened times to provide full acceptance and legitimation of everyone, regardless of race, creed, or sexual perversion. Story here.

Flag Burning, Muhammad Mockery, and a Double Standard

If a coalition of what some leftists call knuckle-draggers (including rednecks, bigoted white working stiffs, those who "cling to their guns and Bibles," in the derisive words of Obama) were to slaughter flag burners, the leftists would howl in protest, pointing out (rightly) that flag burning counts as protected speech in these United States. They would not 'blame the victims' for having provoked or incited the knuckle-draggers. They would insist that flag burning is protected speech and take the reasonable view that murdering people for their (benighted) views is far, far worse than the desecration perpetrated by the protesters.

Mirabile dictu, however, lefties pull a 180 when it comes to the celebration of free speech practiced by people like Pamela Geller. Suddenly people who are exercising free speech rights are castigated for doing so, and warned about inciting violence.

What we have here is a classic double standard. One standard of evaluation is applied to flag burners, who tend to be on the Left, and a very different one is applied to Muhammad mockers, who tend to be conservatives. This double standard is particularly offensive, even more offensive that the usual lefty double standard, because flag burning and cartooning are very different.

Ought flag burning come under the rubric of protected speech? Logically prior question: Is it speech at all? What if I make some such rude gesture in your face as 'giving you the finger.' Is that speech? If it is, I would like to know what proposition it expresses. 'Fuck you!' does not express a proposition. Likewise for the corresponding gesture with the middle finger. And if some punk burns a flag, I would like to know what proposition the punk is expressing. The Founders were interested in protecting reasoned dissent, but the typical act of flag burning by the typical leftist punk does not rise to that level. To have reasoned or unreasoned dissent there has to be some proposition that one is dissenting from and some counter-proposition that one is advancing, and one's performance has to make more or less clear what those propositions are. Without going any further into this issue, let me just express my skepticism at arguments that try to subsume gestures and physical actions under speech.

Cartooning is very different. Cartoons have propositional content. The above cartoon expresses various propositions. It expresses the proposition that Muhammad is a war-like individual who is willing to put to the sword someone who merely draws his image. It also expresses the cartoonist's opinion that such a vile and backward view ought to be opposed.

If you fart, do you express a proposition? No doubt you ex-press foul gases from your gastrointestinal tract. Could it be that the stupidity of contemporary liberals derives from an incapacity to distinguish these two types of expression? Speech worth protecting is not gassing-off.

Finally, there is the irony that we conservatives are the new liberals. It is we who defend toleration and free speech, classical concerns of old-time liberals, while the 'liberals' of the present day have degenerated to the level of fascists of the Left.

What would be left of the Left were they made bereft of their double standards? There are so many of them. We need a list.

Another Double Standard

Update and Correction (5/13):

Dennis Monokroussos comments:

The Obama quote is that they “cling to guns or [not “and”] religion [not “Bibles”]”. As for the cartoon, it doesn’t express the proposition you relate in the body of the post. It, or something very close to it, is clearly the idea that the cartoonist has in mind, but that isn’t in the cartoon itself. If, however, one is allowed to draw the inference we all do from the cartoon, then it’s not obvious to me that one is also allowed to fill in the obvious connotations of one giving the middle finger or saying “F*** you!” or from the burning of the flag.

Dennis is right to correct my faulty quotation of Obama. See this short video clip. But while I did not reproduce Obama's words verbatim, I did convey their sense. After all, with 'religion' he was certainly not referring to Islam! Besides, 'cling to guns' and 'cling to Bibles' makes clear sense; it is less clear how one could 'cling' to religion. So you could say I was charitably presenting Obama's idea in better linguistic dress than he himself presented it. But Dennis is right: I should have checked the quotation.

Can a cartoon, by itself, express a proposition? No. So Dennis is technically correct. I almost made that point myself but thought it ill-advised to muddy my point with a technicality. Cartoons, in this respect, are like sentences. No sentence, even if in the indicative mood, by itself expresses a proposition. 'Peter smokes,' for example, is a declarative sentence. But it does not express a proposition unless it is assertively uttered by someone in a definite context that makes clear who the referent of 'Peter' is.

It is interesting to note that a mere tokening of the sentence type is not enough. Suppose I am teaching English. I utter the sentence 'Peter smokes' merely as an example of a declarative sentence. I have produced a token of the type, but I have not expressed a proposition.

“If You’re a Conservative, You are not My Friend”

Rebecca Roache writes,

One of the first things I did after seeing the depressing election news this morning was check to see which of my Facebook friends ‘like’ the pages of the Conservatives or David Cameron, and unfriend them. (Thankfully, none of my friends ‘like’ the UKIP page.) Life is too short, I thought, to hang out with people who hold abhorrent political views, even if it’s just online.

Should one break off contact with those whose views one finds abhorrent?

Let me mention one bad reason for not breaking off contact. The bad reason is that by not breaking off contact one can have 'conversations' that will lead to amicable agreements and mutual understanding. This bad reason is based on the false assumption that there is still common ground on which to hold these 'conversations.' I say we need fewer 'conversations' and more voluntary separation. In marriage as in politics, the bitter tensions born of irreconcilable differences are relieved by divorce, not by attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable. Let's consider some examples. In each of these cases it is difficult to see what common ground the parties to the dispute occupy.

1. Suppose you hold the utterly abhorrent view that it is a justifiable use of state power to force a florist or a caterer to violate his conscience by providing services at, say, a same-sex 'marriage' ceremony.

2. Or you hold the appalling and ridiculous view that demanding photo ID at polling places disenfranchises those would-be voters who lack such ID.

3. Or you refuse to admit a distinction between legal and illegal immigration.

4. Or you maintain the absurd thesis that global warming is the greatest threat to humanity at the present time. (Obama)

5. Or you advance the crack-brained notion that the cases of Trayvon Martin and Emmet Till are comparable in all relevant respects.

6. Or, showing utter contempt for facts, you insist that Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri was an 'unarmed black teenager' shot down like a dog in cold blood without justification of any sort by the racist cop, Darren Wilson.

7. Or you compare Ferguson and Baltimore as if they are relevantly similar. (Hillary Clinton)

8. Or you mendaciously elide distinctions crucial in the gun debate such as that between semi-auto and full-auto. (Dianne Feinstein)

9. Or you systematically deploy double standards. President Obama, for example, refuses to use 'Islamic' in connection with the Islamic State or 'Muslim' in connection with Muslim terrorists. But he has no problem with pinning the deeds of crusaders and inquisitors on Christians.

10. Or you mendaciously engage in self-serving anachronism, for example, comparing current Muslim atrocities with Christian ones long in the past.

11. Or you routinely slander your opponents with such epithets as 'racist,' 'sexist,' etc.

12. Or you make up words whose sole purpose is to serve as semantic bludgeons and cast doubt on the sanity of your opponents. You know full well that a phobia is an irrational fear, but you insist on labeling those who oppose homosexual practices as 'phobic' when you know that their opposition is in most cases rationally grounded and not based in fear, let alone irrational fear.

13. Or you bandy the neologism 'Islamophobia' as a semantic bludgeon when it is plain that fear of radical Islam is entirely rational. In general, you engage in linguistic mischief whenever it serves your agenda thereby showing contempt for the languages you mutilate.

14. Or you take the side of underdogs qua underdogs without giving any thought as to whether or not these underdogs are in any measure responsible for their status or their misery by their crimes. You apparently think that weakness justifies.

15. Or you label abortion a 'reproductive right' or a 'women's health issue' thus begging the question of its moral acceptability.

How Liberals Ruined College

Kirsten Powers. And here is a good one (can he write a bad one?) by Peter Berkowitz: The Left's Crusade Against Free Speech.

So much incisive and intelligent writing by people of good sense. But it is not enough. What is to be done?

The Aporetics of Baptism

Peter Lupu wrote me yesterday about baptism, I responded online, and today he is back at me again:

In your response you say:

" As for the change in metaphysical status wrought by baptism, the main change is the forgiveness of all sins, whether original or individual (personal). The baptism of infants removes or rather forgives original sin only . . . ."

and

" The change in metaphysical status wrought by baptism would be better described as a change in soteriological status."

I am puzzled. Why isn't conception (or even natural birth) sufficient for a salvational (soteriological) status? After all, according to all Monotheistic views, conception marks man's metaphysical status as having a spiritual soul that would animate his natural existence post birth and determine man's metaphysical status as a vital, organic, yet spiritual, being. Granting the soul at conception and rendering it a vital, active, animating force upon natural birth should suffice to grant man salvational status. Moreover, according to the creation, the soul represents God's spirit that was transferred from God to man ('spirit' in Hebrew also means 'ruah ' or 'wind' and God's spirit is translated as 'ruah Hashem' or "God's wind or breath"). Hence, bestowing a soul upon man at conception, and rendering it a vital force that animates his life at birth and thereafter, should suffice to bestow upon man salvational metaphysical status; for the soul represents God's determination, not man's. Baptism as a determinant of soteriological metaphysical status trumps the prior decision of God to grant salvational status and, since, Baptism is an act of man, it represents man's overreaching into the divine sphere where only God may act.

Hence, I am puzzled.

Peter asked me yesterday about baptism in Christianity, and so I took my task as one of explaining concisely what the sacrament of Baptism does for the one baptized according to Christians. What I said was correct, though I left a lot out. Now I will say some more in trying to relieve Peter's puzzlement. I will not give my own view of baptism, but merely explain what I take to be the Christian view.

Peter's puzzlement concerns the necessity of baptism. Why do we need it? After all, man is made in the image and likeness of God. This likeness, of course, is spiritual, not physical. Like God, man is a spiritual being. Unlike God, he is an animal. Man, then, has a dual nature: he is a spiritual animal. This sets him above every other type of animal, metaphysically speaking. He has a special metaphysical status: he is the god-like animal. As god-like, he equipped to share in the divine life. Every creature has a divine origin, but only man has a divine destiny.

If so, if man was created to be a spiritual being, and to share in the divine life, then his special metaphysical status should suffice for his salvation. Or so Peter reasons. Why then is there any need for baptism? The Christian answer, I think, is because of Original Sin.

Man is a fallen being. Somehow he fell from the metaphysical height he originally possessed. This is not to say that he ceased to be a spiritual animal and became a mere animal. It is not as if he was metaphysically demoted. Both pre- and post-lapsarian man has the special metaphysical status. But after the fall, Man's relation to God was disturbed in such a way that he was no longer fit to participate in the divine life. I would put it like this: Man the spirit became man the ego. Overcome by the power to say 'I' and mean it, a power that derives from his being a spirit, man separated from God to go it alone. The power went to his head and he fell into the illusion of self-sufficiency. He used the God-given power to defy God. He became a law unto himself.

In short, man fell out of right relation to God. Thus the necessity of a restoration of that right relation. This is where the Incarnation comes into the picture. Only God can bring man back into right relation with God. God becomes one of us, suffers and dies and rises from the dead. Having entered fully into death and rising again, God the Son secures the redemption of man for those who believe in him. The immersion in water and the re-emergence from it signify the entry into death and the resurrection in which death is conquered.

So why do we need baptism if we already enjoy the special metaphysical status of being spiritual beings? We need it because of the fall of man, his original sin. In baptism, each individual human being appropriates the inner transformation that Christ won for humanity in general by his death and resurrection.

Peter says that baptism is an act of man. That is not the way a Christian would understand it. Baptism is a sacrament: an outward sign of an inward (spiritual) transformation. The physical rite is of course an act of man, but the inner transformation is due to divine agency.

The Peter Puzzle Potentiated

Suppose Peter accepts the foregoing. He can still raise a difficulty. "OK, I see how Original Sin comes into the picture, along with Incarnation, Resurrection, Redemption and Atonement. But if Christ died for our sins and restored humanity to right relation with God, why do we need baptism? What additional job does this do? Didn't Christ do the work for us?"

Here I suppose an answer might be: "Yes, Christ did the heavy lifting, but each of us must accept Christ as savior by faith. Baptism is the faithful acceptance whereby the individual joins the Mystical Body of Christ wherein he reaps the salvific benefits of Christ's passion."

At this point Peter might reasonably object: "But how is such a thing possible for an infant? How can an infant accept Jesus Christ as lord and savior?" Here we arrive at the vexing question of infant baptism.

There are obviously many difficult questions here, and equally difficult answers.

The ComBox is open.

Is He Your Prophet?

Here are some questions for journalists. Why do you refer to Muhammad as the Prophet? Is he your prophet? Do you mean to endorse his claim to be a prophet? Or the prophet? Do you accept the very idea of prophecy? Do you speak of Jesus as 'Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ'? Or as 'the Son of God'? If not, why not? Or perhaps you advocate a double standard: in a Christian country such as the USA one may not refer to Jesus using the honorifics employed by Christian believers, but one must, in a Christian country, albeit with a secular government, refer to the warrior Muhammad as the prophet, and this while Christians are being slaughtered by adherents of the 'religion of peace.'

Obama the Liar Update

This just in: Obama lied about the bin Laden raid. Fits the pattern. No surprise. A master of the multiple modes of mendacity. And Hillary is poised to out-Obaminate him. She is practicing hard to see how much she can get away with.

We really ought to start demanding basic truth-telling from our elected officials.

Baptism

A reader asks:

What ontic or metaphysical status does baptism bestow upon one who is baptized in Christianity? Clarification: What ontic or metaphysical status does a newborn have pre-baptism vs. post-baptism?

I am not a theologian, nor do I play one in the blogosphere. But that never stopped me from pursuing my education in public on all sorts of topics including narrowly theological ones. So here are some thoughts.

Right off the bat we need two distinctions. One is between infant baptism and baptism that comes later in life. The latter, for an obvious reason, should not be called adult baptism. Some Christians are opposed to infant baptism. A famous example is Kierkegaard. (See Attack Upon 'Christendom', p. 205 f.) The other distinction is among different understandings of baptism within Christianity. Some sects such as Baptists are opposed to infant baptism. It is also worth noting that baptism antedates Christianity. According to the New Testament, John the Baptist baptized Jesus, which indicates that baptism was a Jewish practice before it was a Christian one.

As for the change in metaphysical status wrought by baptism, the main change is the forgiveness of all sins, whether original or individual (personal). The baptism of infants removes or rather forgives original sins only since infants cannot commit personal sins, while in the case of the baptism of adults, or rather non-infants, both original and individual sins are forgiven. The effects of original sin, such as mortality, of course remain. The above is true for both the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox.

One interesting difference, however, is that in the Roman church the three sacraments of Christian initiation, baptism, communion, and confirmation, are not all conferred on infants at the same time, while in the Eastern church they are. A second difference is that the Orthodox continue the primitive practice of baptism by total immersion, whereas the Romans merely sprinkle some holy water on the candidate's forehead. The Eastern objection to this 'watering down' of the primitive rite (pun intended) is that it destroys or at least weakens the symbolism. If all sins, whether original or not, are forgiven by baptism, then this is better symbolized by total immersion than by a little water on the forehead. (See Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin 1963, pp. 283-285)

The change in metaphysical status wrought by baptism would be better described as a change in soteriological status.

Puzzles and problems and questions galore lurk beneath the surface. Perhaps I shall address some of them later. One question that occurred to me: assuming that there are good arguments for infant baptism, why not pre-natal baptism, in the third trimester, say? How would the rite be implemented? Water could be sprinkled on the pregnant woman's abdomen.

Addendum

A budding theologian friend of mine offers his thoughts here.

Stay Quiet and You’ll Be Okay

Mark Steyn:

Can Islam be made to live with the norms of free societies in which it now nests? Can Islam learn – or be forced – to suck it up the way Mormons, Catholics, Jews and everyone else do? If not, free societies will no longer be free. Pam Geller understands that, and has come up with her response. By contrast, Ed Miliband, Irwin Cotler, Francine Prose, Garry Trudeau and the trendy hipster social-media But boys who just canceled Mr Fawstin's Facebook account* are surrendering our civilization. They may be more sophisticated, more urbane, more amusing dinner-party guests …but in the end they are trading our liberties.

Right. Muslims need to learn how to 'suck it up' the way all the rest of us do on a regular basis.

Free Speech and Islamic Terror: Locating the Bone of Contention

Let me begin with two indisputable facts. The first is that here in the USA we have a legally protected and highly latitudinarian right to free speech that extends beyond speech and writing proper to include such activities as flag-burning and the drawing of cartoons. The second is that many Muslims of the present day are willing to slaughter those who exercise their free speech rights in ways that these Muslims deem offensive such as by producing cartoons that mock their prophet, Muhammad. In this respect Muslims as a group are uniquely intolerant and barbarous among the adherents of major religions at the present time. (Every attempted rebuttal of this claim I have seen is lame.)

Given these two facts, a problem arises. Should we freely limit our exercise of our free speech rights in the present circumstances so as not to set off murderous Islamist rampages that could injure public order and perhaps cause the deaths of innocents? Or should we continue the exercise of our free speech rights in defiance of the terrorist threats? Should we keep our heads down or stand tall and defiant in celebration of values that are classically American, but beyond that, classically Western?

Now the first point I want to make is that there is a genuine problem here. Nicole Gelinas of City Journal seems not to see it, and she is not alone:

. . . there should be no debate here. Geller has the right to free speech. She has the right to put on an exhibit showcasing Muhammad drawings. Likewise, we all have the right to attend it, to boycott it, to ignore it, or to march around it with protest signs.

Gelinas doesn't seem to appreciate that the question is not whether we have the legal right to free speech (in the extended sense and even if the 'speech' is deeply offensive to some); of course we have this legal right. The question is whether in some circumstances the exercise of this right by some people might be morally wrong, or if not morally wrong, then highly imprudent. Please note the italicized words. Gelinas mislocates (dislocates?) the bone of contention. (Pun intended.)

And so one cannot simply dismiss those who say that, while Geller and Co. had a legal right to hold their mock-the-prophet cartoon contest, in holding it they did something morally irresponsible given what we know about the absurd sensitivities, anti-Enlightenment attitudes, and murderous propensities of many contemporary Muslims.

The problem, then, is genuine. What is the solution? The proximate solution is defiance. Geller, Spencer, et al. are right. We must not allow ourselves to be cowed by barbarian scum. But note what I said earlier: if the Muslim response to mockery were as benign as the Christian response to the tax-payer funded outrages of so-called 'artists' like Serrano of Piss-Christ notoriety, then it would be morally wrong to mock that which the Muslims regard as holy. For in general it is morally wrong to mock, deride, belittle, abuse, and show disrespect generally for other people and their religious beliefs, practices, holy places, icons, etc. In the present circumstances, however, we must stand up and defy the Muslim scum and their leftist enablers. Not only is a serious principle at stake, but any display of weakness will lead to further outrages. Unopposed evil doers are emboldened in their evil doing. And the jihadis are indeed moral scum as David French reports:

I’ve seen jihad up-close, in an Iraqi province where jihadists raped women to shame them into becoming suicide bombers, where they put bombs in little boys’ backpacks then remotely detonated them at family gatherings, where they beheaded innocent civilians while cheering wildly like they were at a soccer match, and where they shot babies in the face to “send a message” to their parents. I’ve seen the despair in the eyes of the innocent victims of jihad, and — believe me — that despair is infinitely greater than the alleged “anguish” caused by a few cartoons.

So defiance is the proximate solution. The ultimate solution is to seal the borders against illegal immigration and limit the legal immigration of Muslims. For it makes no sense to admit into our country people with radically different values. No comity without commonality, as one of my aphorisms has it. There cannot be peace and social harmony with people who reject civilized values or who were never brought up to appreciate them. Of course, not every immigrant from a Muslim county is a benighted savage or a silent supporter of jihadis. I lived in Turkey for a year and travelled around the country. I met many fine, decent, civilized people, most of them Muslims, more or less. That is why I said we need to limit Muslim immigation. Not stop, but limit. We need to vet the people we let in. Obviously, no foreigner has any right to come here. But we do have the right to exclude unassimilable elements. On top of that we need to deport potential terrorists and execute convicted terrorists. Indeed, we need a judicial fast-track for trial and execution of terrorists. Why is Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, still alive? Is that not a deep affront to justice? What does it say about us that we have lost the will to defend our way of life, a way of life manifestly superior to that lived in vast tracts of the rest of the world, a way of life that has benefited countless millions of people here and abroad? If you are not speaking German now, you may have an American GI to thank. (May 8th was the 75th anniversary of VE, Victory in Europe, day.)

Charity Navigator on The Clinton Foundation

Here. According to Peter Schweizer, only about 10% of what the Clinton Foundation takes in in donations goes to the people in need. But since Bill and Hillary are known by all to be ethically above reproach, Schweizer must be lying.

Peter Kreeft on the Gender-Neutral Use of ‘He’

A reader sent me the following quotation from Peter Kreeft's Socratic Logic, 3rd ed., p. 36, n. 1:

The use of the traditional inclusive generic pronoun "he" is a decision of language, not of gender justice. There are only six alternatives. (1) We could use the grammatically misleading and numerically incorrect "they." But when we say "one baby was healthier than the others because they didn't drink that milk," we do not know whether the antecedent of "they" is "one" or "others," so we don't know whether to give or take away the milk. Such language codes could be dangerous to baby's health. (2) Another alternative is the politically intrusive "in-your-face" generic "she," which I would probably use if I were an angry, politically intrusive, in-your-face woman, but I am not any of those things. (3) Changing "he" to "he or she" refutes itself in such comically clumsy and ugly revisions as the following: "What does it profit a man or woman if he or she gains the whole world but loses his or her own soul? Or what shall a man or woman give in exchange for his or her soul?" The answer is: he or she will give up his or her linguistic sanity. (4) We could also be both intrusive and clumsy by saying "she or he." (5) Or we could use the neuter "it," which is both dehumanizing and inaccurate. (6) Or we could combine all the linguistic garbage together and use "she or he or it," which, abbreviated, would sound like "sh . . . it." I believe in the equal intelligence and value of women, but not in the intelligence or value of "political correctness," linguistic ugliness, grammatical inaccuracy, conceptual confusion, or dehumanizing pronouns.

What a sexist Neanderthal this Kreeft fellow is! Send him to a re-education camp!

Is God Beyond All Being?

This entry is a third response to Aidan Kimel. Fr. Kimel writes,

Reading through Vallicella’s article, I kept asking myself, Would Mascall agree with the proposition “existence exists”? I find the proposition odd. [. . .] What about the assertion of Pseudo-Dionysius that God is beyond all Being? Aquinas would certainly agree that the Creator transcends created being; but I suspect that Dionysius is trying to say something more. I wonder what the Maverick Philosopher thinks about “beyond Being” language (I can pretty much guess what Tuggy thinks about it).

I plan to discuss the strange question whether existence exists in a separate post. Here I will say something about whether God is beyond all Being.

Well, what would it be for God to be beyond Being? What could that mean?

First we must distinguish between Being and beings, esse and ens, das Sein und das Seiende. It is absolutely essential to observe this distinction and to mark it linguistically by a proper choice of terms. If we do so, then we see right away that Kimel's question is ambiguous. Is he asking whether God is beyond all beings or beyond all Being? Big difference! (Heidegger calls it the Ontological Difference.) I think what Kimel means to ask is whether God is beyond all beings. A being is anything at all that is or exists, of whatever category, and of whatever nature. Being, on the other hand, majuscule Being, is that which makes beings be. Now one of the vexing questions here is whether Being itself is, whether that which makes beings be is itself a being or else the paradigmatic being. Heidegger and Pseudo-Dionysius say No! Aquinas says Yes! (That is, Aquinas says that Being is the paradigmatic being from whch every other being has its Being.) Tuggy would presumably dismiss the question by maintaining that there just is no Being, there are only beings; hence the question lapses, resting as it does (according to Tuggy) on a false presupposition.

Now distinguish three positions. (A) God is a being among beings. (B) God is not a being among beings, but self-subsistent Being itself. (C) God is neither a being among beings, nor self-subsistent Being itself, but beyond every being. Tuggy, Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius. (You're in good company, Dale!)

I have already explained what it means to say that God is a being among beings. But to repeat myself, it it to say that the very same general-metaphysical scheme, the very same scheme of metaphysica generalis, that applies to creatures applies also to God. This implies, among other things, that God and Socrates (Socrates standing in for any creature whatsoever) exist in the same way. It implies that there are not two modes of Being, one pertaining to God alone, the other pertaining to Socrates. If, on the other hand, one denies that God is not a being among beings, then one is maintaining, among other things, that God and Socrates exist in different ways. The difference can be put by saying that God is (identically) his existence and existence itself while this is surely not the case for Socrates: he has existence but he doesn't have it being being it. In God there is no real distinction, no distinctio realis, between essence and existence while in Socrates there is a real distinction beteen essence and existence.

Equivalently, if God is a being among beings, then God is one member of a totality of beings each of which exists in the very same sense of 'exists' and has properties in the very same sense of 'has properties.' But if God is not a being among beings, then there is no such totality of beings each of which exists in the very same sense of 'exists' and has properties in the very same sense of 'has properties such that both God and Socrates are members of it.

How does (B) differ from (C)? On (B) God is (identical to) Being but also is. God is not a being, but the being that is identical to Being itself. (C) is a more radical view. It is the view that God is so radically transcendent of creatures that he is not! This is exactly what pseudo-Dionysius says in The Divine Names (Complete Works, p. 98) It is the view that God is other than every being. But if God is other than every being, then God in no way is.

This can also be explained in terms of univocity, analogicity, and equivocity. For Tuggy & Co. 'exists' in 'God exists' and 'Socrates exists' has exactly the same sense. The predicate is univocal across these two occurrences. For Aquinas, the predicate is being used analogously, which implies that while God and Socrates both are, they are in different ways or modes. But for Pseudo-Dionysius the predicate is equivocal.

Fr. Kimel suspects that Pseudo-Dionysius is saying more than that God transcends every creature. The suspicion is correct. Whereas Aquinas is saying that God is, but transcends every creature in respect of his very mode of Being, Pseudo-Dionysius is saying more , namely that God is so transcendent that he is not.

My question for Fr. Kimel: Do you side with the doctor angelicus, or do you go all the way into the night of negative theology with Pseudo-Dionysus?