Essays, Thoughts and Speculations

by Richard Sansom

Contents

1. Morality Without God

2. Puzzlements

3. Saving Private Minds

4. Another Take On The Matter

5. Morality, God and Language

6. Abstractions

7. Wars and More Wars

8. A New School of Law

9. A Few Votes or A Single Voice

10. Church and State Etcetera

11. Looking Forward – Looking Back

12. What Is Thinking?

13. Progress in Western Civilization

14. Speaking Out

15. Dictatorship? – Close

16. What To Do About Values

17. The Senate is an Abomination

18. Rights and Wrongs



1. Morality Without God


Introduction

This is not a polemic against religion. It is an argument for a secular morality that can be as powerful and effective and less potentially aggravating in disputes among religions and between those with and those without religious faith. The long history of humankind is filled with two opposing urges: that towards caring,. stable and secure societies and that toward selfish, aggressive actions between people and between nations. It may be false to assume that the former is based on rational and the latter on irrational thought – the workings of the human mind remains a mystery in these matters. Whence comes the feelings of empathy, compassion, tolerance? Do they arise from some homunculus who is intrinsically moral? And, equally problematic is the question, whence comes our aggressive and selfish behavior under certain circumstances – from that same, perhaps Janus-faced homunculus? Dividing the mind into categories related to how we behave toward one another is a dangerous undertaking since little to nothing is known as to how our mental processes operate across the spectrum of individual and social needs. While it is the purview of science to analyze these processes and to provide understanding for dealing with what we may term aberrant behavior, it will remain the purview of the secular humanist tradition to evolve the means, putting it quite simply, for humans and nations to get along with one another. Karen Armstrong, in her A History of God, says:

Humanism is itself a religion without God – not all religions, of course, are theistic. Our ethical secular ideal has its own disciplines of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more conventional religions.

This essay attempts to shed some light on we might go about finding and using these “disciplines of mind and heart.”

What IS Morality?

No doubt many or most will agree that “morality” has to do with human behavior towards other humans, and perhaps even toward other animals. Moral norms have changed over time and among cultures for thousands of years, and many have had associations with religions, but not all. One might ask, which came first, religion or morality? Do the prescriptions and proscriptions related to our behavior come from some transcendent source such as the allegedly divine author of the Christian scriptures or the Koran, or have those sources been guided in their behavioral regulations simply through the evolution of what works in the maintenance of a stable and secure community or society? Religious believers will probably claim that even primitive man had some kind of spiritual connection with a deity , and today so-called primitive cultures who worship various gods can be said to be misguided simply because they have been kept away from the teachings of a “true faith.” Further, the idea of a transcendent power or guiding force is not thwarted by the belief in those primitive gods, but rather made more evident. The Ten Commandments, held by the Jewish and Christian faiths as God-given moral guidance, having come directly from God or Yaweh to Moses, are considered to be sacrosanct because they came from God, not because they are generally good rules for a community to abide by. A reasonable question is: Does it matter what the source of moral guidance is, as long as it is effective in the maintenance of a civil, stable and secure society? I maintain that it does matter in a most general and serious way.

Morality that is based on secular, not religious doctrine is said by many of our preachers to be at the mercy and whims of society as it is not founded on transcendental and unchallengeable law. Societies are viewed as composed of humans with all the frailties, weakness and “sins of the flesh,” and without the guidance from on high, guidance that cannot be revoked or challenged, those sins can and will prevail in the behavior of man. In other words, without the guidance from an omnipotent deity, one that exists outside of the mind and body of man, society can sink into sinful disarray. In all matters of morality there must be a court of last resort from which there is no appeal and such a court must be the word of God or, in the case of Islam, Allah’s surrogate, Mohammed. It is a curious fact about our religions over our known history: there have always been a variety of gods and religions – never, on a global basis, has there been agreements as to any specific religion or specific god or gods. Wars and conflicts have abounded over the doctrines of these various religions, many willing to die for their belief in their God. I say curious since a rational person may naturally question this obvious disparity, if there is assumed by all of a given faith, that there is only one supreme being. This suggests to me that the ultimate choice of a religion or a god is a purely subjective and personal one. One’s personal set of moral values usually comes about from parents and other very early influences and experiences. In a few, changes in their religious affiliation come about through thoughtful examination of church doctrine as compared with other sources of information, but in any case what they believe in is what they choose to believe in. What cohesion there is in accepting any one set of moral rules in this or any other country is simply a matter of tradition and common life experiences and teachings. But, I have the strong suspicion that any two people, even of the same faith, would not define their view of morality as identical. Morality, from a global and even a national or local perspective is unquestionably relative and contingent.

Where Did God Come From?

The existence of thousands of books on this topic makes it clear that I could not, in a few pages, lay out a definitive answer to this question. But, the very presence of so many disparate voices on the topic makes the point well that there is no agreement. To answer, God is the supreme force or intelligence of the universe, or some equivalently simplistic definition merely begs the question further. For the purposes of this paper, however, the meaning of the term “God” must be put in some useful context that allows me to discuss the matter vis-à-vis the general topic of morality. Instead of discussing what God or religion is, I will discuss a possibility for their source, and the ingredients of the possibility has ramifications for the purpose and thrust of this paper.

History shows that God, or gods, have been a part of recorded human activity from the beginnings of the written word, and archeological evidence indicates religious functions may have occurred prior to that. While it is risky to claim that there is some intrinsic psychological urge toward needing a deity, there is little doubt that such an urge has come about, probably at an early stage in at least the history of homo sapiens. It is my opinion that the original impetus for this tendency in humans grew out of an awareness of causality. From the time that homo sapiens discerned that every effect had a cause it was natural for them to assume that all effects, such as earthquakes, floods, disease, tornados and the growth of plants also have causes, but those causes were invisible, inexplicable and in general, mysterious. There have been many philosophical debates surrounding the existence and meaning of “cause and effect.” To many philosophers, causality is an anthropomorphic creation that is but a useful tool in dealing with the observed world, even in the absence of any ontic presence beyond human perception. While this may or may not be the case, it is not arguable that causality is the sine qua non of science, and that without its stalwart (real or constructed) presence there could be no science, and in fact little or no human achievement of any kind. Early man perceived causality as a fact in the world – a fact he used in his daily life virtually every day or every moment. It is natural to assume that inexplicable natural phenomena would be assumed to have a cause, and eventually that cause became some kind of deity. This situation does not diminish the value or usefulness of believing in that causal deity, and indeed was no doubt a means of dealing with the natural world in a semi-rational manner.

Aristotle pursued the idea of causality to what can be termed its reductive conclusion: If every thing has a linear cause-effect relationship it is logical that at some point the original or prime cause will be found, beyond which there exists no other originating cause – which Aristotle named “the unmoved mover,” which is, or must be, God. Today such reductive reasoning is challenged, if by nothing else, the immense complexity and interrelatedness of the universe, not to mention the findings of quantum physics -- recent theories and experimental findings in quantum physics indicating that linear reductive analysis does not always apply in the observed world.

To the scientist, even the pre-Socratics, the inexplicable is not acceptable; while there may indeed be gods, the goings on of nature can be examined using the mind as a tool to separate out and analyze matter, process and events. Beginning with the ancient Greeks the great exploration of natural phenomena commenced and it moved steadily onward using the power of rational thought to make step by step headway. By the time the Enlightenment arrived Deism was chosen by many scientists over authoritarian religious or philosophical doctrine – God may exist, but nature can be examined using reason and logic and God need not be an intrusion in this enterprise. But organized religion lived, prospered and is alive and well today, though divided among many organizations and sects. The advance of science has not thwarted the desire of most people to seek spiritual guidance and assign to God the province of creation and cosmic design, not to mention rules for human behavior.

Today in the USA there are an estimated roughly 160,000,000 avowed members of the Christian faith, which represents some ninety different denominations. Those of Jewish and Islamic faith represent a small fraction of those of religious faith, and Buddhists an even smaller fraction. Those who claim to be atheists are almost too small to be counted – in the USA. It is estimated that over ninety percent of adults in America believe in some kind of god. Having pointed this out, it should also be mentioned that the codified law of the land is purely secular, and is obeyed, for the most part, fully by believers, even when the secular law runs counter to a religious tenet. Thus, like it or not, we are a secular nation when it comes to law and the maintenance of social order. It must be added, however, that for most Christians, it is believed that the basis for our laws and our constitution was, and continues to be religious.

Today it is doubtful that any preacher, priest, rabbi or mullah would agree with me that the origins of religion, gods and God can be traced to early man’s cognitive awareness of causality as an apparent ubiquitous feature of the world. God is seen by these religions as being above all such speculations – God makes causality; if it indeed does exist, it is a manifestation of his will. Contemporary theologians who do not rely on the various outdated so-called proofs of God’s existence sidestep the issue entirely, resorting to faith as an unquestionable feature of the saved person.

So, God and religion remains a large ingredient in our American culture, becoming even more involved in politics, much to the chagrin of those who hold strongly to the implied separation of church and state within our constitution – including some prominent religious leaders. Nietzsche said: God is dead, but we know different – He is alive and well in churches large and small across the land. Laws that attempt to enforce the separation of church and state are being challenged by those who believe that religion has a vital role in governance, and to exclude it is to exclude a large portion of the belief system of the population. The important questions I attempt to answer are these: Is God and religion necessary for maintaining a stable, secure and equitable society? And: Are our generally accepted moral norms separable and “spiritually” supportable in the absence of religious faith?

What Are Good and Evil?

When Ronald Reagan was president, he called the Soviet Union “the evil empire.” George Bush (II) labeled Iraq, Iran and North Korea “the axis of evil.” To many of a religious bent, evil is a palpable force among us, not merely an adjective, but a noun as well, and it exists in contradistinction to good. A person not only can behave in an evil manner, they can be evil, as if somehow possessed by this force. Plato discussed “the good” as an existing thing that is more than a quality, but something with substantive or ontic reality. Philosophy and theology has dealt with these concepts for hundreds of years and for many they remain as problematic as ever in terms of their reality. It is reasonable to ask where these terms and concepts come from and how they are perceived in the modern American psyche, since what they mean strikes at the heart of any discussion about morality.

If we begin with Plato we find that things are laid out rather neatly, but as time goes on and the Christian and Judaic religions become involved, they become more and more complex. However, the Platonic idea of the dichotomy of good and evil was infused into the Christian faith with little difficulty. Even with Aristotle’s influence on St. Thomas Aquinas, Plato’s “Platonism” remains dominant in Judeo-Christian faiths. Why is this?

I believe the answer lies in our natural human tendency to see the world in terms of dichotomies, and this tendency is quite in line with Platonic as well as Cartesian thinking. We see the opposite of good as evil – one is either a good or a bad person. This attitude was echoed by President Bush when he said, regarding the “war on terrorism” that other nations were either with us or against us – i. e. translating, they were either good or evil, according to his moral code. Much morality does not allow for gray areas.

What are Human Rights?

Our Constitution states: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is normative ethics writ large in one of the greatest documents ever created, but it begs interpretation and gets it from many sides. Almost every phrase, every noun, demands a philosophical, religious, political and sociological reading. It is a statement that grew out of John Locke and the enlightenment and those thinkers who considered man, the individual to hold a special capability and supremacy that rises above governments and rulers, and even Church. It was part of the foundation that Jefferson attempted to take to the limit in his version of democracy. He, along with many of his cohorts, believed that the individual was born capable of determining his destiny through a process of government that structured his participation in an equitable manner. He believed that humans are born with certain rights, that those rights are not ephemeral or at the whimsy of government and monarchs. This is a faith, a faith in the basic inclination of humans to seek certain basic needs unfettered by arbitrary governmental control. It is not anarchy, but rather what might be called managed individuality. We have the right to act and express ourselves as we choose, but not in ways that detrimentally affect others or the population at large. The structure that enables this process is through representative government, as opposed to a pure democracy which is not only unwieldy but too subject to the volatility of public opinion and the day-to-day and year-to-year fads that we are prone to imbibe.

But is the principle of human rights one that rests on their endowment by “our creator,” or is it a concept that has been born out of our historic experience as to what does and what does not work in forming and maintaining stable and secure societies? Notice that the word creator was used instead of God. It is my belief that this choice was a nod to both the religious and the secular ideologies of the time. After the advent of Darwin’s theories of evolution, one might reasonably claim that our creator may be seen as nothing more than the evolutionary process Darwin describes. Taking this further, humans have evolved into cognitive creatures with the ability to make decisions and influence their lives, alter their environment, make advancements in technologies, etc. Or – our creator is us – our beliefs, our institutions and our science. The rights we call human rights are simply that -- human, and they are rights we have endowed upon ourselves because, in general, they work for the betterment of our societies.

Circles of Empathy

The United States and Europe are today labeled multicultural to a large degree. This means far more than multiethnic. If we examine the lines of division in this country we see many: ethnic, religious, economic, geographic, moral and political that include rules on abortion, gun control, cloning, taxation, free trade, the environment, and so on.
(culture includes all that a group or society does on a daily basis) Going into personal choices we may even include such relatively mundane things as alignments with sports teams , and even whether or not one is a vegetarian or not. The steady influx of other nationalities and religious affiliations over the history of our nation, in addition to the freedoms we are allowed by our constitution, have allowed and to some extent encouraged this multicultural situation. It is troubling for politicians since they depend for support on a mix of beliefs and affiliations that align with their own ideologies and political ambitions. One can look at this multicultural mix as a collection of what I call circles of empathy. These circles are many and they overlap in many areas and few are mutually exclusive. These circles may also be ephemeral, coming and going with the turn of events and changes of mind, and only the most robust remain permanent. Among the more robust and permanent are (in no order of prominence):

Race

Religion

Language

Nationality & Appearance

Family connection

Political persuasion

Economic status

Geographic location

If a politician taps into the right mix of these, he or she might win a district, or state or national election. On the other hand, if they step on the toes of one or more, they may lose. To point out the ephemeral nature of these circles, one need only to look at what happened immediately following the 9/11 tragedy. A large majority of Americans (and the world) was sympathetic with our situation and with the administration. One might say that an immediate 9/11 circle of empathy formed and dominated the psyche of the nation for some time – perhaps still does, but to a lesser degree. But fleeting alignments and circles are not what holds a community or nation together – they must be lasting and deeply felt.

The issue that is relative to this paper is whether or not there is or there is the chance for a national and even a global circle of empathy that has permanence and cohesion that is independent of the winds of political, national and economic differences – one that transcends day-to-day concerns and remains paramount in all serious matters of living. Were we to ask everyone on the planet the following questions, I believe the answer to that question would become clear:

Is personal freedom important?

Is the safety and health of one’s family a high priority?

Should everyone have an equal opportunity to obtain an education?

Should the aged, poor, mentally impaired and the infirm among us be taken care of?

Is the “Golden Rule” one that we all should employ when dealing with our fellow humans?

Should the governance of a local or state or nation be based on the will of the governed?

I am guessing that a vast majority would answer “yes” to most or all of these questions. Granted, there will be those hard line so-called individualists and some libertarians who believe that we owe our real allegiance to ourselves alone, and that we are the only ones responsible for success or failure in life, but I think these voices are really a minority. Thus we see, if I am correct, that a large circle of empathy does exist among all humans based on a set of purely human and humanly invented credos that transcend, in the end, governments and all other circles. These six items come about not because of religious or political doctrine, but because they are reasonable and effective rules for our social behavior. It is when political, economic and religious forces intrude on one’s consideration of these questions that the mind gets befuddled and the focus strays beyond the basic questions.

Using our Minds

Most of us live in the moment or the day or week, especially those who eke out a living and can only afford by necessity to pay attention to the task at hand of providing for the family. While they might answer yes to most or all of the questions above, they are more concerned with dealing with their task of existence in a sometimes harsh and unforgiving world. In fact many might rebel against the forces they perceive to be marshaled against them in these basic needs of existence and resort to violent measures as a means to express their anger and frustration, and take revenge – thus the current suicide bombers in various parts of the world. This means that if one is denied, by their government or outside influences any or all of the six items listed above as desirable, they tend to reject them when it comes to their own behavior.

We focus our thoughts and actions on threats when we perceive threats – even if, in fact, there are none, or at least none that can be attributed to another person or institution. The key issue here is what can be done to deal with not only real, but also imagined threats to our way of life. If we truly believe that there is palpable evil in the world, that the devil incarnate does indeed exist in some people and in some institutions and nations, then we are doomed to see the world divided into the camps of evil versus good, and we will adhere to President’s Bush’s doctrine of a world full of good an evil doers with whom we may or may not choose to associate. When the threats are perceived as great, as they were following the events of 9/11, we tend to shift out priorities and take the side of caution, believing that we must combat those evil forces that are counter to our beliefs and way of life – including our religious faiths. But we often fail to dig deeply into the sources of our own angst, the causes, the historic reasons for the events that plague and frighten us. We feel a deep anxiety and fear of the Islamic faith because those we see as being a threat are, apparently of that faith. And yet, how many of us have taken the time to read the Koran and its related commentaries ( of which there are many)? Do we know the history surrounding the difference between the Shiite and Sunni Muslims? Do we know the five principles of Islam? Do we know who Mohammed was, when he lived, why he acted as he did, who followed him and why? But then, do we know the theories and actions of Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and many others who are a vital part of our own history? If we do not, then we are incapable of making reasonable and rational decisions about where we are and what we should do about things today.

History teaches many things about humans and the institutions humans invent to deal with human behavior, and yet I wager that most of us are sorely wanting in knowing much about that history. Does that, on its own, disenfranchise many or most of us, in terms of deciding matters of great import in the ways of government and human behavior (morals)? Yes, it does, to a great extent. We may, in part, depend on the natural inclination of humans to lean toward an empathetic and compassionate feelings about our fellow man, but on the other hand, without an awareness of what has gone before in this regard, we may fall into the trap of repeating previous errors because we have failed to learn the lessons that history may teach – and they are legion.

Today, as witnessed by much of history, decisions by governments are made for two reasons: 1) political expediency (i. e. power), and 2) ideological imperative. Embodied in the latter is the overarching influence of religion and it has been so for two thousand years, at least. But if one examines this characteristic, one finds that it is part and parcel of 1). Thus, the connection, and in many cases, a fervent and lasting one, between church and state. In the time of Queen Elizabeth I, both sides, the Protestants and the Catholics, were bent on the slaughter of the opposing side, and hideous torture and executions were carried out in the name of God. Little has changed in this regard, though it is often cloaked in the guise of respectable political give and take. Today, we invade a sovereign nation ( that is, incidentally, of a non-Christian faith) and claim that we do so in the name of righting the wrongs done by an evil force that, again, incidentally, happens to be aligned with Islam. We see a convenient nexus of economic value and moral zealotry in a war that could have been avoided by continued diplomacy and containment of any bellicose intentions. There is no moral component here, but only one of extended economic hegemony that uses moral and religious doctrine as one strong element for the sake of gaining public support. What would we do as a nation if our population was thoroughly well versed in the history of all parties involved? And, what might we have done if our moral compass was more aligned with the six items mentioned above than with those of a strong particular religious component? History has shown, though for some reason many of our leaders choose to forget it, that great moral forces abide in the hearts and actions of non-violent leaders, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and great social changes can arise from such forces. The invocation of “God” was rare in Dr. King’s speeches and even more so in Gandhi’s. Instead, they depended on a foundation of what may be an innate desire for equity, tolerance, compassion and respect for human life, all of which do not require faith in an omnipotent deity.

Morality and Science

Many scientists of the Enlightenment were deists – they chose not to quibble or argue about the existence of God and the role of religion in the way the world and the cosmos work; there is a God, somewhere, but the laws of science, whatever their source and meaning, exist, and we can discover and use them, as a function of our own human intelligence and capabilities. Today, we witness great advances in all the sciences and we witness no “advances” in religious thought. Many who are questioned in various polls appear to have religious beliefs that are not all that removed from those of the middle ages, but those same people are quick to admit to and enjoy the accomplishments of science. In defense of such seemingly archaic theological positions the argument relies on the belief that as far as God and religious faith goes, there is a stability of religious reality that does not exist in science – we Christians have the same God today as did Moses and Thomas Aquinas, whereas new facts and scientific truths emerge almost daily. This permanence of religious truth is, in fact, the real strength of a religion – that which is omnipotent cannot change, nor can one’s belief associated with it. There are scientists who are religious; and there are religious people who accept the constant advancement of scientific frontiers, and take advantage of what science offers in terms of better health, communication, transportation, entertainment, and so on. But for many there is, or may be, a serious conflict in the works. When science begins to tap into the formulations and empirically provable functionality of life itself, heretofore considered the sanctified purview of God, many are troubled that science is exceeding its rightful domain. This occurred with Darwin’s publication of his The Origin of Species, and in many ways has never stopped. But today the situation is exacerbated by recent findings in microbiology and the real possibility that human life can be created via biological manipulation, in the laboratory. To the devout, this is considered “playing God” and is criticized as being both sinful and dangerous to the natural order of things. In this new expanding world of genetic engineering we see a serious conflict of ideologies.

It is one of belief versus knowledge, and this conflict has been with us for a very long time. Belief (a. k. a. faith) is frequently not rational or not empirically provable, whereas the sine qua non of scientific knowledge is rationality and provability – therefore the conflict between these two. Unless one’s religion can bend sufficiently to include the possibility of a science that operates but autonomously within the existence of a supreme being, and unless one’s science can be seen as the “clockwork” of a master designer, the two remain at odds. But there is a way out of this conflict.

A Clash that can become a consensus

What I see as a substrate of moral belief that is not at odds with either religion or science, and one that can, in fact, bring these two into an agreement on a set of principles that are not at odds with either position, is the acceptance of the six concepts listed above, and repeated here – not as questions, but as tenets:

Personal freedom is important

The safety and health of one’s family is a high priority

Everyone should have an equal opportunity to obtain an education

The aged, poor, mentally impaired and the infirm among us should be taken care of

The Golden Rule is one that we all should employ when dealing with our fellow humans

The governance of a local or state or nation should be based on the will of the governed

None of these is at odds with either most of the world’s religions or with science – they are possible secular moral principles in communities large and small. All that is required is for them to be incorporated in rearing and teaching children and in governments. No small achievements. But my point here, as the title of the essay suggests, is that this set of principles represents morality without God, and yet does not infringe on either religions or the sciences. Taking these one at time we see how they can fit into daily life and into governance, or politics:

Personal Freedom is important:

While we are usually free to think as we choose, we are never fully free to act as we might choose. Complete freedom of action leads to anarchy and a collapse of social order and security. However, personal freedom within the framework of a universally agreed to form of the Golden Rule is desirable and workable. We know that freedom of thought and action allows for innovation, exploration, invention, all of which can profoundly aid the advancement of a society.

Safety and Health of the family

While there is surely an instinctual component to this area, much can be accomplished by community and national institutions. Modern Western governments all tend to ascribe to their responsibility in providing security in the form of police and standing armies, as well as health institutions that deal with research into the cure and prevention of disease. Most would consider this a moral responsibility of governments as well as of families, neighborhoods and communities in general.

Equal Opportunity for Education

General education, from kindergarten through a university, if not open to all, leaves a nation weakened in terms of a population that is sufficiently enlightened to make sound decisions in a democratic process. Just as it is a moral responsibility for a community or nation to provide for the security and health of its citizens, it is equally a moral responsibility to provide for their education.

The aged, poor, mentally impaired and the infirm among us should be taken care of

Given the inclusion of the Golden Rule in this list, this item should not be required – however, it is not the case that communities and nations all take on the often heavy burden of caring for those who are marginalized by virtue of their mental, physical and age conditions. Many on the political Right cast a blind eye on the homeless, the aged and those with mental problems, a modern version of casting out the deformed and the infirm at birth since they will be a burden on society. If a nation is a family then all members of that family need equal shares of security and health; those should not be the sole possession of the well-off.

The “Golden Rule” is one that we all should employ when dealing with our fellow humans

If all others in the list are ignored, this remains as the most important and the most effective moral prescription for any society. In my opinion it might be innate, in that it could be based on an evolved empathy for our fellow humans and in some cases other animals as well. In a general sense, we wish to be treated kindly, fairly and with understanding and compassion; if we wish it for ourselves, it makes logical and practical sense to wish it, as Kant would say, to be a universal imperative.

The governance of a local or state or nation should be based on the will of the governed

Without getting into the intricacies of governmental structure and the virtues one form of democratic rule versus another kind, the question is: In lieu of the consent of the governed (in some form or the other) as the foundation for governance, what other form of social law, order and collective social prescriptiveness within the specified boundaries of a nation could best serve the population? We know from history that Hitler, a monster who caused the death of millions and the destruction of nations, was elected by a democratic process. We also know that a strong religious fundamentalist population could very well elect a leader who subscribes to a form of government that is contrary to many of the six items under discussion here. Do these examples belie the virtue of a democratic process? Yes, but only for a populace that is uninformed, uneducated and generally of the same mind as that of those elected. I have heard the opinion that a good king is better than a stupid electorate, and there is some truth in this. However, depending on a good king is like depending on good weather or finding one’s true love, whereas government by the people, as fickle and volatile as it may be, has a legitimacy that is hard to deny and one that has the virtue of hopefully being correctible at the next election if mistakes are made.

The Philosophies of Ethics and Morals

The role of morality and ethics in philosophy has, up until recently, been a serious one. The great mistake of ancient philosophers was to treat these aspects of human thought as tidbits for philosophic inquiry instead of seeing them mainly from the perspective of behavior – a very practical matter. It was not until the era of Darwin, William James and Freud that discussions about ethics and morality assumed the status of a disciple that should be separate from that of philosophy, and perhaps more aligned with that of psychology and sociology. Philosophers discuss what is above the normal discourse of humans, in fact most ancient philosophers had no mind to include the daily grievances of the ordinary person in their arguments, but tended to deal in the abstractions that gave them pleasure in debating. If such terms as pain or pleasure or good or evil arose, they were treated no differently from those like hard, soft, up and down as abstractions that could be located in some system of meaning.

2. Puzzlements

I am sure that it is as much a puzzlement to a great many as it if for me that so many in a supposedly enlightened nation such as ours offer such ebullient and passionate support for an administration that has done so much to pull that nation down. We must ask why this is the case, and why, given the results of the policies that have foundered over the past four years, the support has not waned, but seemingly waxed. Even if the Democrats win in the upcoming election, we are faced with a continuation of a fiercely divided country, with anger and deep suspicions awash on both sides that no election can hope to eradicate. It is a puzzlement why this division is at hand and a deeper puzzlement as to what can be done to change it to a semblance of civil discourse and rational debate that may have some hope for resolving the still pending ills that befall us in both domestic and foreign matters of the gravest concern. In his introduction to The Federalist Papers, Hamilton posed the prescient (for all times) concern that faced our young nation, and faces us yet:

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been re­served to the people of this country, by their conduct and example to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in' which that de­cision is to be made; and a wrong election of. the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

The operative phrase is undoubtedly: whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, given the fact that, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the power structure that obtains today is attempting to thwart the principles that helped form the basis for our country and the health it has enjoyed the past two-hundred and twenty-five years? Are we capable of seeing past the rhetoric that surrounds this push toward something close to a monarchy, to a future in which we the people can take control of our own political, economic, environmental and global status?

It is a puzzlement that so many of us gleefully accept the lies and deceptions that have attended this administration – why is this the case? Has rationality, civility, discourse, debate and the give-and- take that must accompany any decent democratic structure vanished out of some perverted sense of loyalty to a regime that plays on the lowest common denominators of the human spirit – i. e. those of aggression, fear mongering, superiority, black and white morality, and domination by force?

If this is the case, then we are in for more difficulties, regardless of who wins the upcoming election. Something sad and discomforting has happened in the spirit of the United States – and not just since the tragedy of 9/11. Thomas Paine said: These are the times that try men’s souls, when we were on the brink of loosing a freedom so devoutly desired. Today, though not as imperiled as at that seminal moment, we nevertheless are on the brink of loosing a part of the American spirit that has bound us together for so long, though good and bad times and provided us the respect, admiration and envy of much of the world. When I see the faces of the crowds cheering G. W. Bush, I try hard to see into the minds behind the faces, to see their reasons for supporting such a person. I have come to the conclusion that that crowd is an amalgam of the following types: on one end of the spectrum, those who hold dear the fear of loosing their guns and bibles and hold equally dear the fear and hatred of gays and abortion, and these fears seemingly trump any concern for their own or the nation’s economic future; those at the other end, the wealthy, and those highly desirous of being so, who care only about their personal economic future. An odd mixture of types. What both groups have in common is an apparent disdain for the country as a whole, and its future. One other commonality seems to be the irrational attraction to this man, George Bush, whose constantly smiling face, feigned macho behavior and supposedly common-man-value-system give him a façade of bravado and strength he surely has not earned by accomplishments in his life. If people are to be fairly judged, they must be judged by what they do in life – not just by what they preach and what they seem to believe, nor especially what they look like.

An important consideration, religion, cannot be overlooked. People who turn to religion to the exclusion of most or all other considerations, usually do so because something is not quite right with life at the moment. Prayer and the acquiescence to a deity is not often brought demandingly into play when one is happy, secure, prosperous and up to the task of facing tomorrow with hope - - they come into play in the absence of these things. (God would probably not be required to the same extent in some Rousseauean utopia of peace, prosperity and health among us all.) But the clearly present influence of religiosity today, and its infusion into the political system, indicates that there is indeed some void, some missing piece of the human spirit (for many, at least) that helps see us through hard times to a better and safer future. A president who claims the mantle of religious guidance may be seen to be better equipped (his true beliefs, whatever they may be, aside) to provide the leverage that plays well into the minds of those who need this kind of surety. They need it because they cannot provide it for themselves – thus the age-old dependence on a leader who has the perceived power to bring God readily to his aid – God being seen to be on his side, as opposed to his being on God’s side. This Crusade-like ideology is a powerful medicine for those in need, especially when those in need imagine that we were attacked by an alien and vicious religion, Islam, that dates to the past era of iron-clad moral and religious distinctions. I pause to ask: have we really progressed from that era, wherein the world could so easily be divided between the heathen and the true believer? As long as this hovering stigma of religious war prevails here and abroad we will risk more aggression and senseless killings in the name or the two kinds of God, which should be the same, and which are, dogmatically, not all that different.

So, what is to be done? If an asteroid is seen aimed at the earth with a surety of massive destruction for us all, there is little doubt that the world would coalesce around a major defense initiative to protect the human race at whatever costs are needed. But we see no such “asteroid” in the form of massive destruction, and are willing to accept that time and the slow but steady workings of the rational human mind can see us through whatever tribulations we encounter at the moment. This simply means that our priorities are at a relatively low level of meaning in terms of what is good for this human race in the long run. We don’t want to perish as a species, and yet are seemingly content to survive as a species that advances (or not) in a direction that may derail the ambitions of those who truly care about life, liberty and pursuit of happiness -- for all. In the absence of some impending great disaster, we recoil into our personal concerns about our own tomorrows (and only those – not those of our grandchildren!) and we cater to a system, a belief, an administration, a leader, who promises our salvation and rewards if we but follow his lead and accept his ideology.

The history of humanity is replete with examples of empires, nations, communities and governments that made promises and/or held the sword over the heads of the populace enforcing whatever set of principles were deemed necessary to maintain the status quo of order and power at hand. Thus, the clear distinction between liberal and conservative. The Liberal is traditionally open-minded and curious as to the possibilities of progress as they might enhance our state of well being for now and for our tomorrows; the conservative is more frequently content to maintain an order that preserves the system at hand for the purpose of keeping the current regime of ideas, political, economic and foreign programs more or less the same, since they serve the interests of those in charge. We Liberals hopefully offer the possibility that change, growth, daring, curiosity, science, imagination are all geared to a movement that is bound to be advantageous, since it offers the only way to move upward – not trapped in the stasis of an unchanging universe of ideas and a halting of progress of the human spirit. Those who cheer the current president, those who latch so easily onto the rhetoric of a religious certitude that is based on nothing more than dogma (ancient dogma, at that) and not possibilities, hope for an improved state of life, are those standing in the dark wings of the stage of our political drama. If they are not beaten down by sheer logic and rational thought, a thin majority may dominate, and who knows for how long? This does not question the efficacy and value of a democracy, or a republic, but it does question the degree to which we have become enlightened to the extent necessary to make that democracy all that it can and should be. Recall that Hamilton asked: whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice. I believe that in the end we are capable.

In his American Soul, Jacob Needleman says: “…all the bloodshed and violence of human history are rooted in mankind’s incapacity to will the general good.” However true this is, in the absence of knowing what comprises the general good, his dictum is weak. For some, that good arises from religion, and the moral basis for social decisions and governance has dogmatic faith as its foundation. For others, morality, a self evident ethic of human behavior, is itself the basis for religion – not the other way around. In either case there must be some bedrock, some kind of superstructure for determining what the general good is and could be. I have the feeling that in both camps today, the right and the left, a consensus could be reached as to the truly useful and lasting ingredients of the general good. But what has happened is the introduction of issues, some call them purposively divisive ones, that cloud the mind for the moment and rise to a prominence they would not normally deserve. Let us hope that such issues will eventually fade from the stage and leave only those that are important for today, but more importantly, for tomorrow. I believe we all know, deep down, what they are. If we do not know, that too is a puzzlement….

3. Saving Private Minds

We have what are called “reality” TV shows, depicting the supposed struggles of young men and women under the duress of competitive combats dealing with all kinds of natural nastiness, and the TV public apparently loves them. If that is “reality” then I am from another planet. Reality is a view of 1,200 flag-draped coffins returning from an illegal war; reality is the killing of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians in the prosecution of that war; reality is the sad countenance of maimed-for-life returning soldiers, without legs, without arms, without sight; reality is the documented facts surrounding the alleged reasons for making this war in the first place; reality is the financial burden we will suffer as a result of the war and other Bush initiatives, and end up borrowing from China, Japan and other nations; reality is the set of blatant lies that we have been given in the recent Presidential election campaign regarding the threat of terrorism that will increase if Bush looses. Reality is here – we just have to be allowed to see it. The recent decision by the major TV networks to not show Saving Private Ryan (shown on national TV in 2002) reflects the propensity of those organizations to cater to the wishes of the administration in terms of playing down the horrors of war -- the current war – under the rubric of not airing foul language. Is that presenting reality? Of course not; it is presenting a null set, a vacuum that is filled with the trivia, an inconsequential and cognitively undemanding consideration of what is being viewed. (Hoosiers as a replacement?) Saving Private Ryan, probably the most honest depiction of the horrors and vicissitudes of warfare, is not to be seen because (presumably) it may offend the sensibilities of those who find the word “f * * * *” offensive. Never mind the overall message that war is hell, (not heck) that war is bloody, impersonal, sad and, though perhaps sometimes necessary, a tragic way in which to deal with the serious travails of our human condition. We have now gotten to the point where censorship is no longer in the traditional purview of government, but accomplished through its surrogate corporative agents, who donate large sums of money to the folks in charge and expect (and receive) kind treatment in exchange. The quid pro quo is: We will not show the truth about your illegal war, as long as your grant us dominant roles on the airways of TV and radio. We will not show the bloody results of your war if you continue to grant us ownership of large chunks of that lucrative news and entertainment business and give us plenty of tax breaks. Makes good business sense, right? Yes – it does, and at the same time it makes a dreadful kind of sense in terms of protecting the public from the truth, the reality, of what is going on.

Recall the “reality” of saving private Lynch, wherein we were shown the flickering green nighttime images of our brave rescuers rushing to the aid of a helpless and heroic woman, caught in the grips of foul mistreatment at the hands of vicious Islamic madmen. The TV news was given the OK, no -- more than that -- they were given the explicit
(we assume) footage of those brave helmeted soldiers rushing into an unoccupied hospital, greeted by Iraqi doctors, to carry out a wounded woman who had not been molested, but rather had been treated humanely by her captors following her vehicle accident. We were led to believe that she was some kind of heroine who fought to the bloody end against her attackers, when it has come out that this was not the case at all. Reality? Reality is an illusive and abstract term that resides in the eye of the beholder – like beauty. But we can only judge by what we are given to see and consider. We are not given the facts, such as they can be ferreted out by the scant representation of the news media; and are thus at the mercy of that media, and if it is in any way controlled and manipulated by the administration, then we are in the midst of a censorship state – like it or not.

We have been told by various (non- USA) international news sources, that the deaths of innocent Iraqi civilians is between 20,000 and 100,000; even the low end is sufficient to give concern. General Tommy Franks says, regarding such numbers: “We don’t do body counts.” But we do accurate body counts of our service people. We suffered close to 3,000 deaths on 9/11; we have wreaked vengeance on an innocent populace that may exceed ten times that amount or more, and yet we don’t seem to care about this. Is not the administration playing to this vengeance and simply displaying the kind of insensitivity that accompanies the passion of revenge? The reality is that we are killing innocent humans in the process of waging an illegal war. I have seen no major TV news that investigates this allegation. Where are the probers, the investigators, the truth seekers in all this? Where are, indeed, the Bernsteins and Woodward’s who dug out the truths of the Nixon shenanigans? Where are the Ken Starrs who so dedicatedly pursued the Clinton misdeeds? Where are the true patriots who see this war and its consequences for what they are? Reality? Reality is being swept under the rug of corporate protection for the sake of increased viewers. It has become far more important to sell toothpaste, cars and Bowflex exercisers than it is to tell the truth about what is going on.

We have been led to believe that the so-called Iraqi insurgents are young men who enter Iraq on some nefarious holy mission to kill Americans and pursue the mission of bin Laden and his ilk. However, reporters not beholden to the American corporate-run TV media tell a different story. When Paul Bremmer, presumably from orders from the White House, dismantled the Iraqi Army and declared all member of the Bathist party to be persona non grata, he essentially fired hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had no jobs and no future and had only the recourse of either begging in the streets or joining organizations that might rid their country of a not too friendly occupying force; they are doing just that. But this is not the reality that we are given.

We witnessed the famous “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” event aboard the Aircraft Carrier. So many patriotic hearts beat fast and hard at this spectacle of our Commander in Chief, in his macho flight suit (with the prominent crotch bulge), grinning among those who actually honorably served, and so many of us accepted this staged event as having some reality. We are given images and sound bites that the media and the administration know will work to their advantage, and we sit back and enjoy the spectacle as if it was a sporting event in which our side was winning and was assured to win. Remember the early days of the invasion, during which all the network TV shows came on loud and clear with excited and supporting comments about the fast moving and successful attack on a nation that possessed little more than a beleaguered third world military? Remember that? Remember Brokaw, Jennings and Rather, not to mention the talking heads from Fox, waxing jubilant about our victories in so short a time? Was that reality? Was that responsible reportage, given the fact that so little attention was given to the original reasons we went to war in the first place? Was everyone duped by the rhetoric from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice, to the extent that not one iota of questioning challenged those reasons? (I omit the questioning voices of the Noam Chomsky’s and Howard Zinn’s since they were but a small whisper among the large media outlets. Middle America knows as much about those men as they do about what a stem cell is.) I suppose that is the case. It is a sad reminder that the news media here in the USA is not free and uncontrolled, not an unfettered voice of what the true reality might be in a case of monumental national and international significance. The press, probably our last hope for truth and investigative analysis of what is going on (as it has sometimes been in the past) is no longer given that mantle of responsibility. It now seems that the internet has taken over that duty, and the thousands or millions of sources of information that emanate from that source are far too much for us to digest and act upon. Alas, we must resort in the end to our own intellect and rational consideration of the situation as we can determine it. This may be just too much for most of us. We have lives, jobs, concerns, that may not allow for the kinds of in depth research for the reality of what is happening today in Iraq and in our government. A democratic republic such as ours depends so much on our voting populace to be informed; how can we be informed in the midst of such continued misinformation?

On the other hand we must share the blame. Recent TV news viewing has been focused on the Laci Peterson tragedy, Janet Jackson’s right breast, Michael Jackson’s troubles, Kobi Bryant’s rape case. Our relationship with TV news and alleged news programs (such as the adversarial blather shows, presumably dealing with reality) is symbiotic – they get high ratings by catering to our prurient interests, then we buy more products because of flashy TV advertising and everybody’s happy. But what falls through the cracks is real and significant news, because it is either boring, too dark and unsettling or guilt producing. As Jack Nicholson said with a grimace in the movie: “You can’t handle the truth!” Well, we apparently can’t handle much real reality.

Should it be shoved down our throats by some brave and patriotic or very intellectually honest TV network? An uninformed population does not have the necessary cognitive ammunition to make rational choices. If no one of national prominence will step up to the plate and deliver reality to us, and we don’t seek it on our own, where are we? We will be at the mercy of the government and big business; government telling us what they want us to believe and big business, in cahoots with government, selling us what we probably don’t really need, or can certainly do without. Recall that VP Dick Cheney said, with such gravitas: “There is no doubt that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.” When we hear phrases from our highest officials like there is no doubt it makes a serious impression – it’s like jerking the training collar on a dog. That impression was so deep that even after it was shown that there was scant evidence of such weapons in Iraq, a majority still had strong suspicions that there were. Thus the power of the administration’s voice. Not a single person of national prominence, challenged this statement and called for a rigorous investigation of its verity. Since accepting it as true was our (alleged) basic reason for going to war, it should have had the greatest scrutiny. The same kind of duplicity was used in suggesting that Saddam had a role in 9/11, a serious accusation that one would think needed the most rigorous kind of verification. These deceptions by the administration, even after being shown to be untrue or highly suspicious, have been repeated over and over like a mantra that is heard so often they are is accepted as true. Reality? Reality is the fact that we have been deceived into supporting an illegal war and tens of thousands are dead as a result. As a free and democratic society, we cannot afford much more of that kind of reality.

4. Another take on the matter: (November 3, 2004)

While time may not heal, it does occasionally ameliorate the pains of the moment. When waking this morning and discovering the loss to this country (and the world), I was angry, frustrated, disappointed and saddened. As the day wore on, the sun coming and going among the clouds, the sporadic rain seeming to echo the depression of the event, I have arrived at the evening with a somewhat different mind – a sense that there is bound to be found some wisdom in what has occurred, and as we all know, there is always tomorrow, and all tomorrows can, if we let them, bring hope and change. We have been told, in the clearest terms, something about our country, about its will, its fears and its beliefs, and such revelation is ignored at our peril. We cannot, on this side of the political aisle, deny that there is a substantial religious element involved in the opposition that decided the vote. There is a moral substrate that motivates so many as to make them ignore the really substantial aspects of their livelihood, their future and the future of the nation. I must respect this motivation, though I strongly disagree with it. All we can do is to find and demonstrate a moral high ground that is at least equal to their own. I believe this is possible. I believe such a high ground is to be found in most of us, at some level. I go to bed tonight believing that enough of us who care to find this high ground can make a difference.

I will try very hard to not focus on my natural disdain and disrespect for our President, as deeply embedded as it is. I will even hope (since I am no praying man) that he might even have another and more real and sincere epiphany that aims at the highest calling to which any leader can aspire: the health and betterment of his people.

5. Morality, God and Language

I am always amazed at the power of language, especially when discussing morality and God. I am reminded of the conservative anti-judicial activists who claim that it was the founding fathers intention that such-and-such be the truth and not something determined by the society of today and judicial activists who claim to understand the needs of society. Would that we could go back and find the “founding fathers” of our frequently used abstractions, many of which are influential guides in what we do, say and believe in. What immediately comes to mind is “goodness” or “good and evil” as the opposing forces humanity supposedly must deal with. We know how Plato felt about this abstraction (which for him was not an abstraction) but where, and for what purpose, did the word/concept “goodness” or “good” arise? (Nielsen discusses this concept at great length in his book I mention in essay 16) Bentham defined it in his utilitarian philosophy, and his opinion is not all that bad – and difficult to argue with. But what did the idea embrace long before the 19th century and before the Christian era, and even before the pre-Socratics? I am guessing that what was “good” was anything that reduced or prevented suffering, or, even more primitively, was simply desirable, satisfying some bodily need. But over time the word/concept gradually morphed into a transcendent state, in which one could be considered good if they acted in certain ways, usually in conformity with a religious doctrine, following the connection of a deity with “goodness.” But as Nielsen asks, did that mean that God embraced goodness because it was a desirable (Platonic?) state, (outside of God) or because God and “goodness” were synonymous? Once God and goodness became intertwined the issue became a messy metaphysical problem. Long before that I imagine that the term had very mundane and unambiguous uses, as is probably the case with many or all such abstractions. (I can imagine Gorg, upon receiving and devouring his hearty meal of freshly speared water buffalo, grunting an equivalent to our Good!!) Perhaps it is the case that all or most abstractions originated out of some very basic, impressions and bodily encounter. But things changed, especially with the ancient Greeks. Words became elevated, less unambiguous, open to a variety of meanings and connotations, and finally, following the Judaic and Christian revolutions in thought, “goodness” became something far more complex. How and why did Gorg’s grunt, meaning satisfaction or “alls well,” transform into a moral term?

I am guessing that it was considered good when Zeus or Athena were pleased enough to reward a hero, and bad when they angry enough to show their wrath. To the Spartans, loyalty, courage, strength and honor were good and their opposites bad. To Moses, following the Ten Commandments was good and disobeying them was bad. Since they were the word of God, it was natural to connect goodness to God. Today, good has a plethora of uses: He played a good game. That was a good dinner! I had a good time. He is a good person. Etc. (I even have a friend, who has a PhD in astrophysics, who frequently uses the odd phrase: Good on ya!)

6. Abstractions

I love the comment by Jacques Barzun in his Science, the Glorious Entertainment ( 1964, Harper and Row) where he says:

Soon every situation will be simulated and dealt with at the second remove, for abstraction has biased us in favor of the inferential; we act not upon understanding but upon signals; and this, however successful, can never sustain the feeling man yearns for, the feeling that he is touching the real.

How wonderfully well put this is! “…touching the real.” All abstracta, and some more than others, have a very distal relationship with the real, and it is the real that we desire – it is a desire that is seemingly built into our system of language and though. We don’t want simulations, we want reality. However, today, simulations have taken the place of much of reality and we have been seduced by the promises of pleasure of these artifacts. We have gotten to the point of accepting them as what they stand in for, and taken pleasure in them, as the young do with various computer games. But it is the intrusion of abstractions that are pawned off as real that are the most seductive and the most dangerous. We have gotten to the point of accepting the existence of evil as a force that must be challenged and defeated – for example. This is tantamount to believing that evil is something REAL – some hovering presence that can, if we do not have the wherewithal to prevent it, intrude upon our conscious mind and decision making process.

Why are abstractions so dangerous? It is not that the abstraction of “apples” will lead us into a quagmire of confusion, but that all that fall under the rubric of generalized concepts of what is real (and yet is not) can lead us into a bramble of mistaken truths about the world. Granted that abstractions are useful, but the danger is in their reification. How much more safe we are in a world wherein all we know is the human mind that creates these illusions of existing entities. Why do I say this? I say it because science has proven that observation, prediction, analysis lead to a more solid foundation for what might be called “truth” than does the belief system that takes a short cut to truth via the path of abstracting what is seen and thought about into a fantasy of what is really not there at all, but yet seems to satisfy the need to relegate what seems to be there to something we can name. What we name something is intimately bound up with the cognitive machinery that gives that something credence either in the world of the known, the felt, the sensed or in the world of the imagined, the invented, the surrogate world of names that try hard to capture something that cannot be captured – i. e. the “reality” of the entity. I put reality in quotes since it is also (itself) in a class of abstractions. We want to believe that there are really these buckets of things like heat,. love, bravery, evil, beauty, truth, meaning, that have some kind of “reality: that transcends the human blessing of giving it a name. There are no such realities. There is THIS apple I am about to eat, and that’s all I can say with complete conviction about “apples.” If one claims that there is an Aristotelian class of “apples” that I use according to his hierarchical delineation of classes, I deny this, since I can find “apples” that defy any such classification. We use these classifications casually and for convenience – not for philosophical precision.

Why is it dangerous to not only reify but accept the reification of abstractions? Certainly not all uses of abstractions are deadly, poisonous or dangerous to our thought and actions, but there are some that are. Further, it is the inculcation of the inner sense that some abstractions (or perhaps all, for some of us) that direct our cognitive machinery towards a way of seeing the world that is patently wrong. The effects of such beliefs are not trivial. I will give some examples: Take the abstraction that has so much relevance for any age of man who toils to live and find joy in life: Hope. The poor man in prison may claim that it is hope that gives him succor in his times of fear and dread, and yet we know that hope is an idea, not a reality. Is it not risky to believe that hope is like a ripe fruit we can pick and hold dear when it is needed most? How about Beauty, that some believe has an eternal quality that transcends any particular instance of it. This is Platonic realist ontology that is surely alive and well today, and yet very little examination of the use of beauty finds that it is always a subjective thing, and being subjective is (only) created in the immediate application and not an essence that pervades the universe – falling on this and that entity, like a certain sunset, poem, or person. By claiming that there is such a thing as “beauty” we accept Locke’s idea of the reality of abstracta, while very little examination of the matter (along with Hume and Berkley) we see that all ideas, including abstracta, are particular and not belonging to a Platonic set that possess an ontic reality. While it may be that the very concept of abstracta is essential for our communication of ideas, action, work and invention, we run the risk of going overboard in believing that reality obtains with such concepts. The mathematician who believes that the universal constant, pi, is real is lured into the general belief that such constants are constituent aspects of cosmic reality, and this, in my opinion is dangerous. Why? Because it not only limits the possibilities of other cosmic realities, but locks into place the surety that is born only out of the inductive findings the human mind has found. The speed of light is even a better example. If all cosmological investigations are tied to the surety of the constancy of the speed of light, then all findings will be skewed by what one feels is the reality of that constancy. Likewise, if one believes in the existence of evil in the world, as some kind of nefarious gauze that can fall on our unsuspecting heads, then we are at the mercy of that gauze as a reality against which we must struggle with the countermanding force of good – another kind of gauze, but a beneficent one. Thus, the battle of abstracta, and one that may be seen as taking place on Olympia, with the gods.

7. Wars and More Wars

Introduction

One has to wonder how much of the American psyche is enthralled with war. Following the tragedy of 9/11 and even after the war was being more or less satisfactorily prosecuted in Afghanistan, we struck out against Iraq, apparently as a means to assuage our fear and hatred of Islamic terrorists. The Bush administration, knowing full well that the intelligence community had serious doubts as to the culpability of Iraq related to any threats against our country, went full steam ahead with a massive propaganda program to fire up that war-oriented part of our psyche – and it worked well. Further, during this Iraqi war, other than the thousands of service people who have died and been wounded, we at home have not been asked to sacrifice and indeed more tax cuts are on the horizon. (In no previous war have taxes been lowered – rather the opposite.) We are not allowed to view the flag-draped caskets, and the horrific events of the ground war, in terms of innocent Iraqi deaths are kept well out of sight, unless one has access to non-American TV and news sources. This means that this war is kind of a non-war, and yet the “Bring ‘em on!” bravado seems to have done the job of making us believe we are fighting, fighting well and winning the fight for freedom and against terrorism.

Not being a signatory to any kind of world court that might bring Bush to heel for prosecuting what many consider to be an illegal war, we, with our five percent of the world’s population, flaunt our military hegemony without fear of world-wide recrimination or serious challenges. Our press and media seem content to merely occasionally nip at the edges of this truth, possibly fearing being labeled as liberal wimps, peaceniks or, according the likes of Ann Coulter, traitors. This president should be prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The estimates of dead Iraqi civilians range from 20,000 to 100,000, with the number of maimed and wounded unknown. How we can stand back, knowing full well that we invaded a sovereign country that had neither the intentions nor ability to harm us, and not cry out for justice is remarkable. Is it that our war-like psyche dominates our rationality and common sense? Do we see in war (any war -- it doesn’t seem to matter) a kind of relief valve that allows us to believe we are doing something useful and securing?

The president and his administration constantly claim a moral high ground in terms of spreading Democracy and freedom, and we are killing tens of thousands of innocent people to supposedly accomplish this. Perhaps it won’t be long before the truth of this farce, this charade of moral certitude, will become evident to the majority of us. But it cannot happen until the media and those with positions of power in the Congress find their voice and not use it to whisper, but to shout out the dreadful truth of what is happening. Someone with such a voice should recall what was said to Joseph McCarthy during the infamous and sad days of the House Un-American Activities hearings, and say it to Bush: “Sir, have you no shame?”

There are now over 1,200 American soldiers dead in Iraq. Each one leaves a family behind – mother, father, wife, sister, brother, friend, lover, companion, and we are compelled to ask: Was this death necessary? Was this cascading suffering of friends and family necessary for the protection of our nation? Why have we sent so many to die for so little in the way of security for the rest of us? Why is it that many of the soldiers, when writing home, believe that they fight for the safety and protection of their country? What has been planted in the minds of so many to convince us that this war was needed to keep us safe? We can only recall the alleged evidence that justified this invasion and, finding out the truth of the matter from reliable sources, after the fact, we must know, deep down, that this war was waged on false pretenses. So many lives have gone wasted in the sands of that distant place for no reason strong enough to give us any moral high ground for waging it.

We might also consider the loss of other lives in the process – the lives of other innocents – reporters, business people, aid workers, doctors, nurses, NGO employees, camera-men, bystanders, all caught up in the fury of a war that had no rational reason for occurring. We all must again ask of Bush: “ Sir, have you no shame?”

Since the end of the Second World War, we have had no wars of necessity – only those of choice. Neither the Korean nor the Vietnam wars were needed to preserve our national security, but rather as political instruments borne out of fear of communism. The so-called war in Afghanistan is really no “war” at all, but a messy “mopping up” operation aimed at clearing out the supporters of bin Laden and his ilk – the Taliban and the al Queda. The diversion of Iraq is indeed a war but it is one of our choosing. We must face the reality that, given this clear propensity for war, war that takes care of our problems, war that shows the world how strong we are, war that generates profits for some, war that smashes the hopes and dreams of thousands, war that cannot be justified, is, in fact, justified by those in power because it serves their purpose. What is that purpose?

Our Aim of Global Domination

Some will claim that the need for oil is the only raison d’etre for our warlike intentions and actions, and there may be much truth to this. But it is clear from the actions of several administrations, including Clinton’s, that it is much more than that. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had a nearly global military and intelligence “footprint.” Today, that footprint has not diminished in size, but instead has grown. We have over 700 military bases in 138 countries around the globe; close to half a million service people, military and civilian support personnel and families (see U. S. DOD Directorate for Information) doing various things to “keep us safe.” We are creating thirteen carrier battle groups, consisting of the following: an aircraft carrier with its compliment of aircraft and cruise missiles, two cruisers, two or three destroyers, a frigate, an attack submarine and a combat support ship – a floating base with thousands of personnel. With but five percent of the world’s population, we are seemingly either very afraid of the rest of the world, or intent on something more than defense. What might that be? Let us consider some possibilities:

Control of oil and other natural resources

Domination for ideological reasons (and to be sheriff for the world)

Part of the American war-psyche

OIL

Few might be aware that even before the invasion of Afghanistan, we were part of an effort to construct an oil pipeline that went through that country; our invasion has simplified the political and geographic aspects of this effort – now we can see it through more easily. We all know that Iraq sits on top of an enormous reserve of oil, second only to that of Saudi Arabia. Our insatiable need for petroleum may mean that 1. above is reason enough for gaining global control over oil. Following the severe tightening of oil supply from the Middle East in the seventies, we did things to conserve and began buying smaller more fuel efficient cars. Gradually we have gone back to wasteful practices and the presence of so many SUVs on our streets is witness to this fact. While being only five percent of the world’s population, we use over twenty-five percent of the worlds resources. The growing need for oil in China puts us in competition with that country; how much easier to deal with them from a position of oil control (read: ownership) than one of fair and equal access.

IDEOLOGY

There should be no mistaking the ideological intentions of George Bush. As an avowed “born again Christian” he has made it perfectly clear that the United States should be the moral arbiter for the rest of the world. In a speech given at West Point, the President said: “Moral truth is the same in every culture in every time, in every place.” If we are to take him at his Christian word, this must be read as an ultimatum: we know the moral truth for the world and we will enforce it. The preamble to the National Security Strategy document says: “ The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere.” What more is needed for one to see the overt ideological intentions of this current administration? Further, the President has said on more than one occasion words to the effect: “If you’re not with us you are against us.” Such rhetoric can be seen as a prologue to and justification for preemptive attack. Such ideological intentions can be seen either as pure ideology at work – i. e. we truly believe that we are and should be the moral leaders in the world – or else as cover for nefarious schemes of world domination for other reasons, e. g. oil and economic domination. The citizens of our nation are generally what can be called moral folks, believing in things like the Ten Commandments, an equitable rule of law, fairness and humane treatment of fellow man. Presented with the simplistic and forceful argument that our morals (i. e. so-called Christian morals) are best, and should apply to all people of the world, most accept this as reasonable and right. Most of us have not delved into the complex religious and political histories of other nations to see what makes them tick morally. Appealing to our sense of moral certitude we have as a Christian nation is successful; witness the recent presidential election which turned to some extent on the issue of morality. It is hard to counter the President’s appeal to our morality, and he and his cohorts have managed to weave in a moral persuasion for our so-called war on terror. At the beginning of our retributive actions following 9/11 the administration even was so insensitive to Middle East, Muslim sensibilities as to use the term “crusade” in the name of the forthcoming military operation to deal with terrorists. The world of Islam, long on tradition and long on memory of past Islamic glories and defeats, were rightly insulted by such blatant rhetoric. They quickly backed off from the term, but not because they didn’t believe it indeed was a crusade.

WAR-PSYCHE

This nation, as are most if not all, was born out of war, and without that war of independence, had we acquiesced to King George III, we would not be what we are today. We have made war with the native Indians, war with the Canadians, war with ourselves, war with the Spanish, war with the Philippines, Mexico, then the two great world wars, then Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Grenada (!) and finally Afghanistan and Iraq. Historians may quibble over which of these was necessary for our security and which were wars of political choice, but the fact remains that we have been more or less at war since our inception. I recall reading that three things won the west for the pioneers: the barbed wire fence, the windmill and the six-shooter. In other words, the three pillars of any society: territorial protection, development of natural resources and defensive means. If we removed the six-shooter from the equation, who would defend the fences and protect the well rights? Of the three, surely it is the most important since it was the guarantor of the perceived rights. Though it is patently clear what the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution meant originally, it is used to justify the bearing of that six-shooter in its many modern guises. Recall that it reads: “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Today we have no Militia, save what one might interpret to represent that 18th century concept – namely the National Guards of the States. And yet, this Amendment provides for the production and ownership of millions of guns in millions of households and on the corners in thousands of neighborhoods. With an almost religious fervor we cling to this Amendment as a “right” since it is indeed part of our Bill of Rights. We can place no blame on the gun manufacturers for this fervor, any more than we can blame the drug cartels for one’s addiction to crack cocaine. Guns are now an integral part of the American psyche, never mind barbed wire and windmills. Now it is my opinion that we embrace this right not because it is in the Constitution, but because it is in our blood. The original intent of the Amendment is long since become null and void, and it has become transformed into a tool that supports the defensive and war-like part of our collective psyche.

Think about our government’s use of the term “war,” The War on poverty, the War on drugs, and now, the War on terror. We understand that term to be a natural response to whatever might threaten or appear to threaten us, and we use it freely and often with gusto. At the beginning of the Iraq war, we witnessed all the TV news showing the bright green flashes of bombs and rockets exploding in Baghdad, the TV announcers swept up in the excitement of the new war, not ever challenging its legality or pondering the potential cost of human lives – ours and that of innocent Iraqis. We watched these scenes with the sure knowledge that we were winning and would continue to win. Never mind that we were defeating a country that had virtually no defenses and had not threatened us in any way – the glory of imminent victory was all that counted for most of us, and certainly the news media. This tells me that it was the war and its sure success that counted, and not the reasons behind it. This is surely enough evidence for me to believe that there is something deep inside of the American psyche that relishes war, especially a winnable one.

Yes – a winnable one. While Bush incautiously referred to Iran, Iraq and North Korea “the axis of evil,” he chose to attack the most defenseless of the three, the most easily defeated by our vastly superior modern forces. If his bravado does not extend to countries that might offer some degree of serious resistance it is hollow indeed -- some might even label it as cowardice. After Vietnam it is not in the cards for us to fight any more losing battles. What this means to me is that the war mentality that is based on fighting only clearly winnable wars, is one that is intent on winning for the sake only of winning – never mind the purposes involved, never mind the arguments that might be marshaled against such wars – it’s full steam ahead to a sure victory. And the nation rallies to this clarion call for sure victory.

When I say that our war-like propensities are “in our blood” I do not mean that they are genetically determined, but rather that they have been born out of our history and are part of the social fabric of our race, or our nation. One can make grand arguments that we, homo sapiens, are predisposed to aggression and violence simply based on the evidence of horrific wars and mass destruction of people and their homelands that make up a great deal of our history. On the other hand, we can also look to the balancing forces of moderation, rationality, discoveries of common needs among potentially warring states, non-violent resistance to state cruelty and repression, the many voices that cry out for the human and humanistic values that seem to be universal in their appeal. The single person acts one way toward an infringement on their perceived rights – the group, the mob, the nation in some cases, acts differently toward such perceived infringements. A multiplying factor comes into play, a tide of collective adrenalin begins to flow and a movement is begun that has its own agenda, its own complex purpose, its own inertia , which can be quite difficult to manage or control. Why is it that at the beginning of the war on Iraq all the major television networks and other news media failed to offer a single challenge as to the reasons for going to war? Even after the proffered reasons for the war were debunked, we heard no serious outcry from the media, but only an acquiescence to the follow-up justifications by the president, his cabinet members and those on the right – i. e. Saddam Hussein was a very bad guy, a dictator who had used WMD on his own people. (How many times did we hear this?) The fact that there were few if any serious challenges in the media leads me to believe that even those given the duty (and I would say, sacred duty) to challenge the government, when such challenges deal with the life and death of our citizens, were seriously remiss, and continue to be.

The War On Terrorism

While the so-called asymmetric terrorist enemy cannot be usually linked to a sovereign regime or state, it emanates from some geographical locale, such as in the case of al Queda, Afghanistan. Bush has made it clear that any nation that is complicit in this regard will be treated as an enemy as well. But if the dispersal of the terrorists makes it hard to find that harboring geography and complicit government, what then? Thus, we use the phrase: The global war on terror. We promulgate our war on drugs by various covert and overt operations in countries that produce and sell drugs, but we know where these countries are and usually know who is doing the growing and selling.
(However, interestingly, we have yet to win this war on drugs.) But we are told that terrorists (in all cases they are Islamic terrorists) exist and operate in far flung places such as Malaysia and usually function autonomously, with little if any central control and authority. Those groups require some but not a great deal of money; we know that the attacks of 9/11 were rather cheap to execute.

Considering this situation: think for a moment about what you would do if you knew someone or some group was out to get you, harm you, kill you or destroy your home, but you had no idea who they were or their whereabouts. There are three choices: do nothing, or run all over the place knocking on doors, paying others to hunt with you, or even killing those you thought were the ones after you, or put your energies into protecting your home and those in it. Which is the more sane and reasonable? We have done little or nothing to protect our ports, nuclear facilities, electrical grids, and perhaps least protected of all is our communication system and the internet. But doing those things offer up little to the public in the way of visible and tangible evidence that we are really making a war on terrorism. Going to war with Iraq is quite visible and tangible, even if it not only does little to thwart terrorists, but in fact is probably encouraging them. In addition, since we are worried about the terrorists getting hold of nuclear devices, we have done little in the way of getting rid of the thousands of such devices in Russia and other parts of the old Soviet Union. Doing those obvious and very pragmatic things do not have the ring of war and it is that ring that gives us at least the illusion that we might win – we usually do.

The war on terrorism is unique in our history. All other enemies, either real or imagined, were well defined as being related to a nation or group of nations. We might be better served in terms of more than semantics if we called the current efforts against terrorism, something like our conflict with terrorism, or our problem with terrorism, but we know that war is the operative and inspiring concept that we embrace, rather automatically.

Wars on Islam

“Therefore we took vengeance on them and drowned them in the sea, because they treated our signs as falsehoods and were heedless of them.”

(The Qu’ran, Sura 7, verse 130)

“See, the Lord is coming in fire, his chariots like a whirlwind, bringing retribution with his furious anger and with the flaming fire of his rebukes. The Lord will judge with fire, by his sword he will test all mankind, and many will be slain by him.” (The Christian Bible, Isaiah 66: 15,16)

We should not be sanguine about our own seemingly benevolent attitudes towards non-Christian faiths and about the consequences of the duplicity in this alleged position. There is far too much evidence that we have progressed very little in the settlement of the ago-old conflict between the Christian and the Muslim faiths, going back to the beginnings of the latter’s influences in the world around the Mediterranean and Arabian geographies and elsewhere in the world. While Bush can proclaim that the recent terrorist related conflicts are not of a religious nature, the facts and actions of this administration belie this. We have a president who is an avowed Christian; our known enemies are of the Islamic faith. The perpetrators of the events of 9/11 and those that preceded it have made it quite clear that, all else being equal, (and the cultural influences and their ramifications aside) there would remain the fact that we are of profoundly different faiths. Why is it that the terrorists targeted the United States and not Sweden (a very secular nation) or France or Germany or the U. K? It is not only because the United States is the most telling presence of global economic power, but more importantly to those brought up in the madrasas of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, a Christian United States is the arch enemy of Islam. This is not only due to the fact that we are a Christian nation, but we have a (heretofore!) secular government. Thus, there are two reasons for wishing us ill. We know so little of the Islamic psyche, while we actually know little of our own. We may claim that we are open minded as to religion, pluralistic in our ideas of social order and for a free and democratic world, the Islamic world sees us differently and indeed we behave differently. If it be known, we are actually not of this open minded opinion about Islam. The wars that raged for over a thousand years between the Muslim and the Christian faiths are not so distant in the collective historic memory of all of us as to be ignored. In addition, the two faiths, in the most general terms, do not agree on critical principles that guide the actions of governments and daily life in our respective cultures.

Our Constitution is a secular document. We (here and in Europe) disavow the control of any particular faith in the management of our government. The merging of religious influences with those of governance has been from the outset one that has been rejected in the United States and most European nations, and yet this merging is seen to be not only acceptable but necessary in most Muslim societies in order to preserve the teachings, proscriptions and prescriptions laid down in the Qur’an. (Turkey is somewhat of an exception.) This is not a trivial distinction, but rather a profound one. Governments and its laws that are based on religious tenants are bound to be at great odds with those that choose secular and Enlightenment based ones. Add to this the obvious facts surrounding Bush’s Christian faith and his clear intentions of bringing this faith to bear on his decisions and those of our government, we have a dangerous brew of conflict that may not be soluble via diplomacy alone. Thus, both sides may see war as the answer. We are no less complicit in this than are those who fly airplanes into our buildings, though this remark may bring down the wrath of many who see us as innocent in all this -- we are not. Regarding the West and the Muslim world, Samuel P. Huntington says:

Both sides have, moreover, recognized this conflict to be a war. Early on, Khomeini declared quite accurately, that “Iran is effectively at war with America,” and Qadhafi regularly proclaims holy war against the West. Muslim leaders of other extremist groups and states have spoken in similar terms. On the Western side, the United States has classified seven countries as “terrorist states,” five of which are Muslim (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan)………This in effect identifies them as enemies because they are attacking the United States and its friends with the most effective weapon at their disposal and thus recognizes the existence of a state of war with them.

(His remarks, from his Clash of Civilizations, written prior to 9/11)

The West is more than the United States. It is composed of nations with deep family ties, most of which have for a thousand years been more or less a cohesive force against Muslims. Until their failed siege of Vienna in 1693, the Ottoman empire was huge and powerful and was held together in large part by the Islamic faith. European countries cased their internecine religious and hegemonic squabbles to stop the onslaught on Vienna. From that time on the Ottoman empire was pushed and squeezed to the point that the West, including Russia (also a Christian nation) held sway in much of the Muslim world. Today, the over one billion Muslims in the world are governed by a mixture of pro and anti Western regimes, but the common thread that binds them remains their Islamic faith. Further, in all Muslim nations except Turkey, it is Koranic law that is the primary basis for governmental action, as contrasted with the secular governments of the West. However, with the clear and unmistakable Christian influences on Bush and some of his key advisors, the United States is being seen lately as a Christian nation. This only exacerbates the ongoing conflicts since it infuses religion into the mix of other grievances both sides might have. Europe, a far more secular group of nations, is less inclined to join the fray of Christianity versus Islam, thus we see their refusal (except for the U. K.) to join in the war against Iraq.

Does that mean that we are engaged in a “religious war?” I believe that to the extent we hear and pay attention to the far Christian right, and, more importantly, act on their remonstrations, we will indeed be in a religious war. Much of the rhetoric from that quarter is downright dangerous and probably influential – depending on who is speaking. Army Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, speaking in uniform before a Christian fundamentalist audience said that Christians believe in a “real God” and the god of Islam is “an idol.” (Not only was General Boykin not reprimanded or fired, he was actually promoted following this incident!) The Christian Reconstructionist, David Chilton, said: “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God’s law.” These kinds of sentiments, while considered by some to be on the fringe of the religious debate, do leak out into the community and are legitimized to some extent by the very fact that they are in print and spoken by seemingly prominent men and women of the faith. They cannot be ignored. They are every bit as virulent and dangerous as those of the mullahs and Ayatollahs in Muslim countries.

The extent to which we are in the midst of a religious war will be decided by the direction we take in Bush’s second term and the extent to which he continues to be influenced and guided by not only his personal faith, but the positions taken by his advisors, many of whom share his religious convictions. If he sees the United States as a Christian nation, and believes that the recent vote gives him some kind of mandate to continue in the direction he has so far shown, we may no longer be viewed as a nation under secular law, but one that is under Biblical law. I know this sounds rather far fetched, but if there is the slightest danger of it being true, we will have to muster our vigilance, hammer our representatives, march in protest, write millions of letters, and find again what Jefferson believed to be the core principles of our governance as embodied in our Constitution.

Conclusion

The Constitution wisely placed control of the military in civilian hands. Why was this done? The founders, well versed in European history, knew that governments that were either run by or beholden to the military, or the Church, were often guided by principles that were neither democratic nor necessarily in the best interests of the nations. This is of course no guarantee against a militaristically inclined government or populace. Oddly enough, several high ranking Generals were either opposed to or reluctant to condone the war in Iraq, and it was the civilians that pushed for it – none of them, incidentally, having had any real military experience. It doesn’t take generals to make wars. Further, the nation, having suffered the attacks of 9/11, was ready to take retribution anywhere it could find it. The war in Afghanistan was not big enough, did not yield up enough retributive passion, did not yield up the arch villain bin Laden, was more of a small, mopping up operation than a real war. But Iraq was another matter. It was easy to persuade seventy percent of the country that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had something to do with al Queda and even 9/11; after all, they are Muslims, they don’t like us, they are ruled by a dictator, they are weak militarily and are in drastic need of being reformed into a “free and democratic” society – like ours. If we look carefully at what happened, knowing what we know today in terms of the ostensible reasons for making war, we see that there must have been some other reason for Bush and most of his administration to push so hard for war. We cannot know the secrets of George Bush’s mind; all we can do is be witness to his actions and draw our own conclusions. To me, they seem obvious: God is on our side; we know best for the world; we are at war with Islam; we will prevail.

Postscript:

As I was finishing this piece, the news of the death of Margaret Hassan, the long time director of CARE was announced. She was murdered apparently by the militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, having been held hostage when asking for the release of all Iraqi women detained in prisons. Margaret was a Muslim, married to a Muslim, and had devoted decades of her life to providing food, medicine and humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people. We in the West, especially here in the United States, will aim our anger and vengeful emotions toward the militants. We must remember that had there been no invasion of that country, there would be no such murders, no deaths of 1,200 American soldiers, no seriously wounded and maimed for life returning soldiers, no deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis, not to mention no vast expenditures of funds that might build schools and hospitals here at home. The spoils of this war are the spoiled and soiled souls of those who perpetrated it.

8. A New School of Law – With Christ at the Helm

“If our graduates wind up in the government, they’ll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they’ll be presiding under the Bible.” Jerry Fallwell, Chancellor of the Liberty University, including its new Law School

Here we go, in the wake of the election of a born-again Christian president, retrogressing back to the pre-Enlightenment era wherein religious dogma ruled the political, social, cultural and even military systems. One of the teachers in this newly created (Christian) Law School, Professor Tuomala, said: “Something that is contrary to the law of nature cannot be law.” and “The statues of the Lord are trustworthy….” Given these pronouncements on what is law and what is socially desirable today, we see that the Christian Right is attempting to make inroads, not only through the avenues of discourse and local grass roots movements (as strong as they are becoming) but in the very heart of our system of jurisprudence. Notice that the language of Jerry Falwell is blatantly theocratic, and makes no bones about this. His swagger is, in his mind, and no doubt in the mind of George W. Bush, justified by the interpretation of the moral value issue that reportedly played some significant part in the recent presidential election.

Bruce W. Green, the dean of the Liberty Law School, says: “The prevailing orthodoxy at the elite law schools is an extreme rationalism that draws a strong distinction between faith and reason.” Yes – well, and should it not? Apparently statistics indicate that a very large percentage of law school professors are Democrats or Liberals, and this is the metric that is being used to justify a law school that intends to counteract this liberal inclination of most professors of law. I must wonder: is there perhaps some strong and defensible correlation between (especially in the case of law) those Democrat professors’ beliefs and opinions and sensible, rational, logical, historically based thought? I find it peculiar and even humorous that so many in the Christian Right (and fundamentalist religions in general) equate liberal or secular humanism with “extreme rationalism,” and thus the cognitive experience of seeking truth and objective analysis, over unproven and often superstitiously based religious dogma! They seem to find it unacceptable that truth and objectivity might very well be based on positions of rational inquiry as opposed to religious orthodoxy, myth and superstition.

But we mustn’t forget that the preachers, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, are one thing, and the public perceptions and beliefs surrounding what is rational, possible more plausible and true, are another and more potent and dangerous aspect of all this. The current, though for now rather small movement toward teaching creationism along side and in contradistinction to the teachings of Darwinian evolution, is an example of a movement that is frightening – not only because it throws up logically indefensible challenges to a virtually proven theory, but that it represents a mind-set of accepting dogma and faith over rational thought. Such a trend (if indeed it is a trend) can undermine not only the necessary and correct teachings of biology, but broader concerns of society that deal with a host of issues from gay marriages to stem cell research. Once a young (or old!) mind is suckered into a justifiable way of seeing the world that is simple, straightforward, defensible by the “word of God” and requiring no investigation or serious research (i. e. using the full mind to the fullest) it is hard to undo that mental paradigm. Our researchers, scientists, thinkers, philosophers and educators spend years of preparatory study in learning their field. But a single sound-bite from the lips of a prominent and respected person (of the same or related religious faith) can make a person become an instant accepter of an idea or “fact,” and challenger of a host of learned people, Nobel laureates included.

We, and by that “we” I mean all of us, religious zealots too, must be on guard. The history of religious control of governments is replete with horrors that we in the country have so far managed to avoid, mainly because the structure of our founding principles as embodied in our constitution, insures against, or tries to, the usurpation of our governance by any religious creed or dogma. If those who would redo this to instill some form of a theocracy, they might be warned and informed by history, that it just doesn’t work – instead it leads to internal struggles and even warfare that can bring a nation to its feet. (Examples are too numerous to mention.)

9. A Few Votes or a Single Voice

One would like to believe that important matters are decided by substantial, not thin, majorities, to give weight and effectiveness to the decision, not to mention mitigating the frustrated divisiveness that usually follows such marginal results. But recently we frequently see the occurrence of thin majorities, and in the case of the 2000 Presidential election, when Gore won the popular vote and lost by only a relatively small handful of votes in Florida (via the electoral college process), that thin majority has caused laughter and tears among us all. Supreme Court decisions that are 5/4 are always disheartening and 9/0 or at least 7/2 ratios are far more desirable and respectable for issues that affect our lives for the foreseeable future. The recent margin of victory for Bush in the 2004 election was that of about 119,000 votes in Ohio, which means, had that state gone for Kerry, he would be the one taking the oath on January 20, 2005, not Bush. One voice in the Supreme Court probably decided the Bush v. Gore case in favor of Bush; stop and think what that one voice has done, regardless of where you stand politically, assuming that a full recount of the Florida votes would have made Gore the winner –questionable but possible. Those thin majorities make many of us nervous, angry and frustrated because very narrow victories/losses leave roughly half of us dissatisfied. Just a one seat majority in the Senate results in a profoundly significant legislative process and results, since the majority, no matter how thin, controls all of the powerful committees. One might opine that, well, this is democracy at work, but is it?

Lani Guinier, in her The Tyranny of the Majority, makes the excellent point that our winner-take-all, or zero-sum game of governance is frequently a profoundly unfair mechanism, especially when the margin held by the majority is extremely thin.(This reminds me of our judicial and legal system of criminal law, in which the adversarial system is at work to insure that one or the other side wins – not at work to find the truth of the case and the real cause of the crime.) What drives congressional decisions, in addition to the efforts of lobbyists, the influence of money, the desire for pork and the quid pro quos made among members, are the ideologies of the members and the parties. We see that strong willed and persistent leaders of the majority can ram through legislation that is vehemently opposed by the minority, even when that minority is a whopping 49%! (If roughly half the people in your family hate you, you have problems!) (See essay 17 – The Senate is an Abomination)

There have been periods in our political history during which amity, cordiality and cooperation have prevailed and resulted in legislation that was balanced in terms of dealing with the needs of both sides of the political spectrum. Those days now seem far behind us. We might ask why this is the case today. I have the feeling that something unique and quite dangerous is happening to the system: a strong ideological force is moving into congress, and that force is seemingly well removed from the secular humanism that was the foundation of our Constitution and the original intent of the founders. The imbalance in legislation that is created by the thin majority, while it should signal a divided nation that needs a conciliatory hand of fairness, has, instead, given that winner-take-all construction the power to run rough shod over roughly half the desires and needs of the nation. When but a handful of votes in congress can decide the expenditure of trillions and the passage or defeat of critical legislation we must take notice of the situation.

I assume that when the public gives their vote, they do so based on a set of criteria that they perceive to be the ones that most seriously address their lives and livelihood. i. e I assume that they are quite parochial and concerned mainly with bread on the table, jobs and the security of their families, friends and neighbors. If they vote their morality, as some have suggested was the recent case for many, then they will vote for a candidate who is of like mind, or is believed to be. They don’t care about the niceties and rules dealing with how the system operates in its complex congressional machinations. They go to the voting booth with one or a set of beliefs and emotions that are then manifested in the touch of a button or the punching of a card. They don’t think about the “winner-take-all” result that may indeed disenfranchise roughly half the electorate; they don’t think about any arguments that may be raised against their position on matters of national consequence; they think about their own immediate needs and persuasions – moral and otherwise. This is, of course, democracy at work. But it is not a pure democracy – it is a representative one, in which we elect those in whom we place a trust to vote on legislation the way we want them to. Some, but certainly not all, may know that the person for whom they vote, will vote according to the pressures of either an ideology or financial pressure from contributors, and at the same time vote, believing that their candidate truly represents their needs and interests. If and when these align, like planets in the predictions of astrologers, to form a cohesive direction, there is little doubt that the voter will smile in satisfaction that they have cast the right vote at the right time. I wonder how many times such an alignment is propitious? Who knows the minds of their representatives? Who knows the pressures that have been placed on that person selected to ostensibly serve their interests?

In any case, the representatives march to Washington, meet their colleagues, receive the bombardment of special interest and monies, examine the legislation before them and vote from a position of singular power invested by the vote of their constituents. The outcome is what it is –be it 51/49 or 80/20, the democratic process is at work tending to the needs of the voting populace. They will not pay much attention to the fact of a 51/49 result, contending that that is the way it is, and the laws of the land will proceed based on the winner-take-all process. It seems that winning is what’s important, never mind the best interests of the national population in terms of their needs and wants. Again, I am reminded of the adversarial composition of our criminal court system; what’s important is winning – truth is irrelevant.

Whatever happened to cooperation? Whatever happened to a real concern for the health and well being of the whole nation? The thin and fragile majority can dominate the national scene in terms of what is deemed to be important by that majority; the large and cast-aside minority (even if it is 49%) can be ignored to the peril of roughly half the nation. Is this right?

There is little we can do about this; it is the current nature of things. We are a divided nation – that is obvious. It brings into question the whole matter of not only what a democracy really is, but also what it serves in terms of a balanced consideration of the larger population – those who do not vote; those who are confused or vote passion and not rational consideration; those who are duped and swayed by TV commercials and the hammering of ideologues or corporate controlled media; those who accept the moral credos of the supposedly like-minded moralists.

I have suggested in other writings that it has been the ingredients of fear and ignorance that produced the recent election results. But I should not belittle those emotional proclivities as marginal and without merit; they do have merit. Who I blame are the paid and unelected consultants who manage these campaigns and who infuse all kinds of extraneous factors that detract from the more serious matters at hand. The thin margin, the one voice, the fragile majority is ruling the country and we must become aware of this and decide to do something about it. What can really be done is complex and difficult. We cannot expect that millions will mount a movement aimed toward some abstract concept of fairness and balance as their primary reason for voting a certain way – that will never happen. We will all continue to vote our emotions, needs, our hatreds and our fears. But perhaps some Lincolnesque figure may come along and remind us with his or her eloquence, that there is far more to our vote than our immediate parochial interests; there is a vote for the health and well being of the nation. We might look to altering that thin majority rule, that winner-take-all construct that has so much impact on our lives, to something that reflects the whole body of the nation. I know that this might require that we look outside ourselves, to others, to the poor, the downtrodden, the mentally ill, the homeless, the non-voters who cannot or choose not to be involved in the process. It might even require that we adopt what the Christian Right claim as their domain of expertise and domination – the teachings of Jesus, as written in the New Testament: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
(How quixotic that suggestion is!) This profound dictum alone might be sufficient to alter the great divide that we now see and will suffer in the coming few years.

The recent coalescing of groups under the general rubric Christian Right is large and growing. There are secular groups too, disparate and loosely ideologically related, but they are usually far less outspoken, less passionate, appealing more to our rational not our emotional sides than the religious groups. As for influencing the minds of those in that Christian Right, these secular groups are almost entirely ineffective. The thin majorities in Congress do not reflect the majorities of the states and counties of the so-called Red States. Southern states generally had substantial majorities for Bush. This means that we are divided geographically. The Red/Blue map of the nation clearly shows this divide, the Blue States hugging the North East and West coasts and representing the center of gravity of our manufacturing, financial, economic, cultural and educational systems. (The federal subsidies provided farmers in those southern and Midwestern Red States, come from taxes, the majority of which come from the Blue States – this goes without notice.) This means that the thin but controlling majority in Congress is apparently more reflective of the beliefs and desires of the Red States than of the Blue ones. This is an interesting situation, since the bulk of the controlling cultural, economic and financial forces of the nation reside in the Blue states! This, in turn, means that issues like abortion, gay marriage and fear of terrorism (as pounded into us by the Bush spokes people prior to the election) are the controlling factors in Congress – not those of the general health and well being of the whole nation. I realize this is a somewhat simplistic view, and possibly overstated to some degree, but there is truth in it, and it is an important consideration to be aware of.

10. Church and State Etcetera

Introduction

Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s – Jesus, Mark 12:17

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction – Blaise Pascal

One can only speculate as to when the conflict between secular and religious authority began; probably between the first shamans and the tribal leaders; the shamans speaking from their revelations, and the tribal leaders from their practical responsibilities. There were undoubtedly two separate agendas from the start, and by the time our Enlightenment arrived those agendas had become distinctly separate to the extent they were in a serious conflict. One would have thought, given the great strides in science and technology from the Enlightenment onward, particularly in the West, that secular humanism would have had the upper hand, and in Europe it probably does. But here in America, this is not at all the case. Lately we have even seen a rise in what is called the Christian Right, a movement that is not composed of any single religious denomination, but an amalgam of Christian faiths that tend to be fundamentalist in their beliefs and generally opposed to secular humanism. The issue seems simple enough to frame in a few words: from the side of the Christian Right: Either one accepts the Christian scriptures as the word of God, whose omnipotence is incontrovertible, or one is virtually a heathen and should be ignored. On the other side, the issue would be framed quite differently: Believe what you choose but acknowledge and respect secular authority and science because they, for the most part, act in your best interests over time. Both of these are problematic and they are in profound disagreement. The Christian Right denies the validity of opinions that veer from the scriptures and the admonitions of the preachers, and the secular humanists claim that their pursuits and methods are aimed at doing the right thing for society and are not at all bound by any religious dogma. We know that politicians, business people, even scientists often are not truly concerned with the health and betterment of society, but more concerned with their own wealth and aggrandizement. We also know that some preachers preach hatred and bigotry; there’s lots of human fallibility to go around on both sides.

But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of governing, making decisions for the nation, dealing with life and death matters, health, poverty, foreign involvements, wars and keeping the peace at home, the issue of Church and State are lately rising to the fore more than in the recent past, and this should give us pause. It is important to look into the causes and possible solutions dealing with this recent development.

Causes for the Recent Rise and Influence of the Christian Right

The movement is certainly not new, but it seems to have gotten a head of steam during the Clinton presidency. But at the beginning of the 20th century the religious right was a strong social presence in our country and while it may have waned for a period, it waxes today.

We cannot know the extent to which those who claim to be practicing Christians are truly practicing Christians – i. e. those that adhere to the teachings of Christ as chronicled in the New Testament. But we do have a handle on the number who profess to be of that faith. Here are the numbers as of 2000: (NY Times 2004 Almanac)

Total Christian Churches = 158, l29,022

Roman Catholic Church = 62,018,436

Baptist Churches = 28,293,420

Methodist Churches = 13,090,542

Pentecostal Churches = 11,326,188

Lutheran Churches = 8,316,331

Latter-Day Saints Churches = 5,066,052

Orthodox (Eastern) Churches = 4,013,497

Churches of Christ = 3,451,052

Presbyterian Churches = 4,114,350

Episcopal Church = 2,364,559

Reformed Churches = 1,948,167

Jehovah’s Witness = 1,040,283

Adventist Churches = 866,081

Church of the Nazarene = 627,054

Salvation Army = 471, 416

Mennonite Churches = 316,267

Christian and Missionary Alliance = 345, 664

Churches of God = 277,255

International Council of Community Churches = 250,000

Evangelical Free Church of America = 242, 619

Brethren Churches = 280,411

Friends (Quaker) Churches = 186,282

Christian Congregation = 117,039

Christian Brethren = 100,000

Other Christian (39 denominations ) = 480, l479

Out of a national population of over 290 million, this represents a percentage of roughly fifty percent of the people to be acknowledged to be some variety of Christians. We can assume that the balance of the population is composed of the Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and other faiths, together with those who disavow any kind of religious belief or affiliation. (That does not mean that they are necessarily atheists, but simply that they are not practicing any kind of organized religion.)

That number is large by any standard of national influence, however we must be mindful that that number does not reflect that portion of Christians who are what may be considered as “far right Christians.” There is a clear divide among Christians regarding major social issues that their faith may inform, and that number is hard to define. There are those who recommend the bombing of clinics that perform abortion and the murder of doctors who might perform them, and there are those, using more circumspect and Christian ideals, who disavow any connection to such murderous intentions. But the fact remains that the influence of that far right element of the Christian faith is telling and significant in today’s political scene.

The origins of the Christian Right can be traced far back, but most importantly, they should be traced to the McCarthy era, wherein this nation faced what it believed to be the threat of Communism, with its profound disconnect of and revulsion for any kind of religion. Marx, who was seriously misused in the Soviet Union to justify the version of Communism that that nation embraced, stated that religion is the “opiate of the people,” but this was a less important aspect of his economical, philosophical and political agenda for the world. The Christian Right began to decry against: Jews, Catholics, Communists, atheists, to the extent they formed organizations that mounted volumes of polemics and groups to defeat those people and organizations. They tied their religious beliefs to those of patriotism, thus melding a jingoistic and religious fervor that is potent and remains today.

The issue of abortion is apparently the fuse or touchstone that coalesces many of the faithful into either action or serious spiritual and financial support, and an example of the rhetoric that has been used in this effort among Christians is the following from the “A Pro-Life Manifesto” my a major Christian publisher (Westchester Ill: Crossway Books, 1988)

If we are going to attempt to close abortion clinics and end abortion by the current strategy, then the only logical thing to do is to take that strategy to its ultimate conclusion, to take it all the way. We would take the Declaration of Independence at its word and, since we have at­tempted to change the laws to no effect, we would change the govern­ment. That means revolution….. It would mean serious armed aggres­sion against both the clinics and hospitals that perform abortions and the abortionists themselves.

If armed aggression were the answer, it would have to be aggression that did not hesitate. It would have to be done on a large scale, and more than a few abortion clinics would have to be destroyed. To succeed, it would require the destruction of all hospitals or clinics that performed abortions. Heroes who would lay down their life for the cause would have to come forth. Armies would need to be organized. Companies producing abortifacients would have to be bombed and their employees terrorized. In short, we would have to be willing to plunge ourselves into civil war.

It is hard to reconcile this severe rhetoric with any teachings of Christ, which means that those teachings have been subverted to the uses of those who have an agenda of their own construction. Why and how this happened remains a mystery to me. The “Operation Rescue” founded by Randal Terry, had the overt support of the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Beverly LaHaye and Cardinal John O’connor, and espoused the following in a letter to its followers:

Our specific task is to save babies by placing our bodies between the innocent victim (the pre-born) being transported by another victim (the mother) and the executioner (the abortionist).

We are part of a larger community of rescuers united by this common purpose with different but complementary callings. Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Birthrights, Heritage Homes, Post Abortion Syn­drome counselors and many other ministries that offer compassion and alternatives to women allow us to say to the mother "we'll help you" with integrity. Right to Life, Concerned Women of America, Eagle Forum and others lobby to provide legislative relief that may one day make our actions unnecessary.

A by-product of our rescues has been the elevation of the issue of abortion to the front pages, challenging both the church and secular community to act on their convictions. Many organizations have re­ceived new recruits both from previously uninvolved rescue participants and others challenged by them.

Another force that was at work during this period was that of the intense and violent outrage against homosexuality and the alleged evidence that it was the cause and promulgator of AIDS. Homosexuality was, and remains to be, seen as a deviant practice that is supposedly passionately disavowed by the teachings of the church – though no such proscriptions against it are found in the teachings of Christ, i. e. the New Testament.

It seems that a center of gravity among the far right Christians can be found in the collective abhorrence of: communism, atheism, abortion and the gay life style. I might add that other ingredients might be included in the minds of many of that group are those of ethnic purity, in the belief that true Christians are white, possessing a purely white heritage. (Witness the Republican candidacy of David Duke, a past Grand Master of the KKK, a known racist.) So we see a large admixture of traditional religious dogma, homophobia and racism.

But perhaps the most telling and influential of the components is that of abortion, which remains as a consistent and potent raison d‘etre for resisting any secular humanistic
(read: liberal) movements. It is worth a few words here.

At the heart of this conflict are the competing and seriously conflicting beliefs surrounding the idea of when a human life comes into existence. The subject takes us back to the Enlightenment, wherein serious thinkers in the Western world began to embrace a rational approach to the explanation of physical phenomena. That seminal period was a watershed in the beginning of a divide among so many regarding what human life is, how it works and how it may be treated medically and understood scientifically. Science and religion, frequently at odds, became more at odds following that explosion of rational thinking and explanation. With Darwin and his revolutionary ideas regarding the origin of species, fuel was added to the fire of this conflict. The power of revelation and Church dogma was put up against the findings and opinions of some very intelligent and courageous people. Science deals with what can be observed, measured, analyzed and theorized about, independent of beliefs that are a-scientific at best, and anti-scientific and superstitious at worst. It is hard for the ordinary person to see into the complexities of scientific inquiry – it requires long and dedicated study; it is far easier to rely on dogma that makes no such demands, and this is as true today as it was in the seventeenth century. Today, telling the layperson that a few undifferentiated embryonic cells in a Petri dish are simply that – cells that have no “life” or human identity, is far more complicated a concept than telling them that, since those cells were the result of human sexual intercourse, which, by definition, is the producing agent of human life, they are human life. While it escapes me as to the reason for these deep religious feelings on this matter, I might even have some respect for their position if it was informed by at least a smattering of study and learning on their part; there is little. It is purely and only a matter of faith.

Entering the Political Arena

Religious movements have always been a part of politics, going back to the foundation of our republic. Madison and Jefferson waxed long and eloquently on the subject of how and why the Church and the State should be and remain separate. The first colonies had severe conditions for their citizenry regarding religion, and it is ironic that many of them, having fled European religious persecution, faced even stronger admonitions to be of a specific faith in order to enjoy the rights of the colonies. Madison clearly saw the dangers of this situation and many attribute the First Amendment to our Constitution to him. Recall that it reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

This amendment has been laboriously argued since its inception, and the judicial twists and turns fill volumes. As simple and straightforward as it seems to the lay person, not equipped to pursue the sophistry and legalese that abounds in the courts, it is certainly not that. One of the most thoroughgoing interpretations I have read is the following, coming out of the Supreme Court case of Everson v. Board of Education. In his opinion of the court, Justice Black said the following:

The "establishment of religion" clause of the' First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or processing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between church and State." (My emphasis)

Interestingly, the Everson case dealt with reimbursing Catholic parents for the costs of using public busing to get their children to parochial schools. (The busing of children to public schools was free.) On the face of it it seems that the court should have ruled against such reimbursements, but they did not and their reasoning is sound, in spite of Black’s strong and specific interpretation of the First Amendment. If the State refused to reimburse the parents, they would be, de facto, giving preference to one set of students as a function of a religious condition. This shows the potential complexity and depth of the possible meanings of this Amendment.

Today the issues surrounding the connections between Church and State are becoming more and more widespread and complex. Challenges are being thrown up that a few years ago would have been unheard of. A judge recently had constructed a massive granite structure containing the Ten Commandments and had it placed in the lobby of the state court house. This was seen by the court of that state to be a violation of the First Amendment and it was removed by court order and the judge was removed from office. However, both his actions and his removal launched a firestorm of protest from the religious right. There is a large movement afoot to establish the fact that this is a Christian nation, founded on Christian principles and morals. The very basis for the Bill of Rights is seen to be the result of Christian, not secular, motivations with clear historic precedent. Those attempting to enforce the acceptance of this idea seem entirely ignorant of history and the movements in the previous three centuries that dealt with the broader and purely secular rights of man. Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Locke developed the ideas of a purely secular social contract between people that were to be the eventual basis for both the French and American Constitutions. Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution make no mention of “God,” but instead, uses “our creator,” with the clear intention of being ambiguous and not invoking a term (and concept) that might reasonably attach to the Christian, or any specific concept of God. The social contract and rights of man concepts grew out of the Enlightenment, and not out of any religious dogma – on the contrary, they were specifically a-religious. We should be thankful to the framers of our early government for the First Amendment; not only has it thwarted attempts to infuse religion (specific ones) into government, but it also blessed the rights of anyone to choose and practice their faith of their choice without intervention by the government. Religious intrusion into government is bound to be that of a specific religion, and we can see the dangers of religious states over history and in today’s world as well – it is a sad story indeed.

But the question: Are we in fact a Christian nation? bears some scrutiny, since a great many of us believe the answer to be yes, and that yes is significant when it comes to who we choose as our elected officials and who is appointed to the courts of the land. It also might be asked: Does it really matter what most of us feel about this? For me the answer is a resounding Yes! It matters for many reasons. The list above showing the population of various Christian churches is significant for two reasons: first, just the large membership numbers, and second, the great number and diversity among the Churches. The First Amendment is partially responsible for that number and diversity, since, by not singling out any one denomination as sanctioned by the government, it encouraged diversity, and thus somewhat diluted the strength of any single Church. If one claims that we are a Christian nation, which brand of Christianity would that be? Catholic? Baptist, Latter-Day Saints? And if we are not a Christian nation, does that mean we are all immoral atheists and pagans?

I believe this issue can be boiled down to what we believe to be the source and meaning of our morality – not just or only our religion or lack of it. Surely it is a truism that not all Christians are necessarily good, and not all good people are necessarily Christians. Goodness can be seen in more universally accepted social norms across most all religions and cultures. I like to believe that religions, in addition to their mythical, shamanistic and priestly origins, also came out of an evolved necessity for individuals and groups to get along with one another for mutual safety and survival, and that the evolved social norms helped give rise to religion, not the other way round. Even the Mosaic laws can be seen in large part to be reasonable rules for a community to abide by. This is not to denigrate religion as an institution for the practice of spiritual comfort, but to give it a basis that simply makes good sense from a societal point of view. Seen in this way our nation can be viewed as one that is based on a set of secular but fair, humane and unwavering principles that are not at the mercy of sectarian conflicts and interpretations of religious dogma.

But it remains the case that today the Christian Right is gradually nudging its way into politics and government.

The intrusion of religion into government

The Christian Right is strong partly because so often dogma trumps rational thought and questioning. I have had discussions with those of that ilk and find that they can always acquire an air of certainty by resorting to the scriptures and the word of God. This position cannot be argued with – it is a matter of faith, not reason. For many in that camp, it is scripture that supercedes secular law, and some of those people may be quite dangerous. (There are numerous organizations that are melds of religious fundamentalism, racism and political opinion that espouse violence against the government and certain classes of citizens – the law of the land being seen to be inapplicable in their view.) For the most part, however, this is fortunately not the case. But challenges to court decisions, such as Roe v. Wade are in a similar category. The Ten Commandments includes the proscription against murder, and many Christians believe abortion (and embryonic stem cell research) breaks this commandment by taking the life of an unborn human. The secular law of the land is hard up against an ancient and respected law of the Christian faith. Oddly enough “murder” does not include, for most, execution of criminals or the killing of combatants during war, so there is clearly room to maneuver in this definition of murder.

Recently I have heard the loud voices of protest against what are perceived as activist courts (e. g. Roe v. Wade, same-sex marriage, etc.) that are outside the province of legislation and thus the voice and will of the people. Regarding the status, power and influence of the courts (especially the Federal courts) Hamilton had an interesting opinion. From The Federalist Papers, Number 78:

The judiciary, on the contrary, has no control over the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society, and take no active resolution whatsoever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment….

Were Hamilton alive today, he might be forced to rethink that sentiment since indeed the courts have become active to the point of making, not only interpreting law. While the courts don’t wield either the sword or the purse, they do make determinations that can have a moral component, and for many that is as important and strong a weapon as any sword or purse. While during the Roe v. Wade deliberations (the 1973 Burger court), national polls indicated that a large percentage of people thought abortion should be legalized. Too many dangerous procedures led to death and serious injury as a result of unwanted pregnancies, but there was no national referendum nor any legislation that dealt with the matter and that might nullify the Supreme Courts ruling. The court effectively made law in this instance. Today there are massive movements afoot that aim to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision, and given the born again Christian president we can expect to see Supreme Court nominations whose documented opinions suggest the likelihood of such an overturn. The rules of the Senate are such that it will require the use of the filibuster to stop or delay such appointments – a risky procedure, especially if overused. (With a 55/44 Republican/Democratic split even a filibuster may be hard to muster.) The Republican Senate Majority leader, Bill Frist (a medical doctor), has hinted at changing the Senate rules to essentially do away with the filibuster. Such an action could thwart the will of roughly half the nation as represented by the 44 Senators.

It has been claimed that the Christian Right was responsible in large part for the Bush win this year, and this may be so. If it is so, and Bush claims he has a mandate for pursuing his programs (read: his ideology) we can expect to see judicial nominations and legislation that lean strongly toward implementing that ideology. It is a Christian ideology, thus, the infusion of Christian belief and dogma into our government through our elected officials – especially the president. I am not fully convinced that it was the vote of the Christian Right that did the trick for Bush; in my opinion much of the nation voted out of fear and ignorance, but I believe there to be a correlation between far right Christian fundamentalism and fear and ignorance.

What Can be Done?

I suppose the only plausible answer is: vote and actively protest, but the ship of state, Congress and especially the Supreme Court, all have enormous inertia, and making changes against the rising tide of the current ideological bent of that ship, congress and the courts will take time and great energy. The plethora of books on the shelves before the election that denounced Bush and his programs and “accomplishments” were good sermons for the choir, but did little to stem that tide. The ignorant and fearful digested sound bites hinting at the dreaded terrorists that will strike if Bush is voted out, and I seriously doubt that any in the Christian Right bothered to read any of those books. The old adage: Don’t’ change horses in the middle of the stream, worked effectively – even if the horse is obviously lame.

In his book What’s the Matter With Kansas? Thomas Frank points out that a great number of poor, blue collar people in Kansas voted for Bush because of his moral beliefs, and the fear that a patrician, liberal Easterner like Kerry would instigate such draconian measures as banning the Bible, allowing gay marriages, even outlawing guns, and at the same time be weak on terrorism. Nor did they vote their pocket book or that of their children, or grand children. They did not equate morality with an array of programs and intentions of this administration that have clear moral (or immoral) components – such as: the fact of forty-three million without health insurance of any kind; millions of children below the poverty level; dismantling Social Security risking the income of the aged; the prosecution of an illegal war that is taking the lives of tens of thousands of innocents, not to mention over a thousand American service people to date; the dismantling of environmental protections, resulting in polluted air and water. If we include the dollar cost of the war, going well over two hundred billion, one can do their own arithmetic to see what such an enormous sum would do to alleviate so much suffering here and around the world. (i. e. in the construction of hospitals, schools, medical research, dealing with the environment, etc.) That too is a moral component, in my estimation.

So, vote and actively protest; write letters, make phone calls, pester your representatives frequently, march when possible – these are our only tools and we should use them if we care about where the country is going.

Postscript I: A word on secular humanism

A comment on the meaning of secular humanism is in order, since I have referred to it above, without explanation. Secular humanism attempts to remove religion and any taint of mysticism, mythology and superstition from the decision making process of science and social management. This removal of “God” and necessarily the Christian scriptures from this process is seen by many as a threat not only to the basis, functionality and importance of religion, but as a threat to the very core of what gives our morality its genuine and unswerving meaning and permanence. Many have commented on the idea that the two, religion and secular humanism need not be conflicted, since the cosmic order of things could very well embrace all manner of interpretations, including a God, as well as a collection of forces that do what they do in a fashion that we can only speculate on and investigate scientifically. But when it comes to the management of a society that is ethnically, physically, intellectually, and in all ways so vastly varied in its composition, any single credo of transcendental belief that excludes all other credos is suspect from the outset. We are a great mixture of beliefs, histories, experiences and embraced truths given to us by our predecessors, parents and teachers, and with those we must be content – and content to argue, discuss, defend, change our minds, drift into discontent and the old existential angst over the meaningless of life, and yet come out of it all as humans, with human needs and human joys and sadness. Whether or not we believe in Christ and his teachings, in the end we all tackle more or less the same challenges in life, face the same demons, confront the same imminent end to our lives. We spend perhaps too much time on our arguments about what is “right” and what is “wrong” in some absolute sense, and far less time on the facts at hand that deal with simple and basic human considerations – such as suffering, pain, inequalities, the unfairness imposed by this and that regime, the fact that we are all of the same species and compelled to behave as that species dictates in terms of how we get along -- or don’t. Secular humanism recognizes that it is profoundly important to probe and investigate all that we can on any given issue, be they scientific or societal, so that we can be as informed as possible on important matters and try to find workable solutions to our common problems. It is not that hard, nor is it that much conflict with serious and well intentioned religious minds that have the best interests of our species in mind. Perhaps that is the real key.

Postscript II: The conflicts of our parties – A Democrat’s perspective

There is a palatable and unmistakable difference between the two political parties now in contest in our Congress and across the land – regardless of what Ralph Nader says. Political parties, no matter what their differences in a modern democracy, must and should, in their allegiance to the Constitution and the well being of the nation, be engaged in a defense of the rights and continued progress of the human spirit and achievement beyond today, to a better, more productive, more peaceful and generally healthier tomorrow. These objectives seem self evident to me; perhaps they are not so to everyone. We can look at the short term, the quick buck, the fast return on investment, the protection of our personal fortune, the security of our personal well being and that of our like- minded cohorts. Or, we can take the broader, longer and more inclusive and more responsible view that those in power, those equipped and given the responsibility for changes that benefit all in our nation, have the duty to see to the future and its health as much as they do for the moment and for any personal gain or aggrandizement. Therein, in my estimation, lies the key difference between the two major political parties today. Labels are cheap and fleeting. Labels demean and trivialize the underlying meaning and intentions of a party, Whig versus Tory, Liberal versus Conservative, Democrat versus Republican, are all shorthand abstract denotations for some varieties of political persuasion that are contingent, relative and in the end valued or disdained only by their actions and effects, not their names. But I have found that, over the long haul, the Democratic party, as messy and disorganized, even schizophrenic as it frequently seems to be, tries in its heart to be as close to the needs of the ordinary citizen as possible. Recently we have witnessed the unmistakable fact that the competing party is truly ruthless in its ambitions to control the nation, and the Democratic party has been loathe to engage in the same tactics, or at least to the same degree. What does this mean regarding the ingredients and meaning of this paper? It means that one party looks to the search for a common and human ground for making the most important decisions regarding life in this Republic, and the other one seeking to find whatever advantage they can find for the sake of power and control and the promulgation of a particular ideology. We Democrats do not seek to embrace for political expediency the Christian Right or any such denominational group of citizens, or any inflexible philosophical ideology, but rather to find a common thread that is uniting, not dividing. It is far easier to find fault lines among us – they are many, if we but pull them out and focus on them. Far more prevalent are those elements that connect and unite us – that is the goal of the Democratic party – thus its often fuzzy and disorganized, since that is truly the map of the American soul, disparate, unique and independent. We know from polls and research that there are no more religious Republicans than Democratic ones. We know from personal experience that the underlying basis of religious convictions are generally more alike than they are different and that the universal objectives of most are security, health, contentment and freedom of expression as well as freedom of belief. What I call the fringe considerations of abortion and gay marriages, pale in comparison to those more substantial and lasting personal convictions that connect us. By playing up those elements that divide us, any party abrogates its duty to seek, find and use the ones that unite us. It has been shown in the recent election that the tactics of one party, the tactics of division and fear, convinced a majority to vote their way. Let us hope that time will, by the results of this national decision, eventually inform us all of the mistakes we have made in catering to this tactic. The importance of those fringe elements that had a strong impact on the vote will fade in significance when the other, major and long lasting impacts become apparent.

We might take some solace in the fact, borne out by our own history and that of some other nations, that the pendulum of political will and control does swing back and forth from right to left and left to right. We might remember that the Reagan era produced, among other results, high inflation, rising debt, seriously reduced values of farm land, and yet we eventually recovered. That same era, incidentally, gave birth to many Christian Right and other disenchanted religious and political organizations, some of which blamed the Jews and the communists for our woes and also blamed Reagan for his less than fully enthusiastic embrace of the religious right agenda during his tenure. We see that the pendulum did swing back to the center under Clinton; for all his human flaws, he tried to steer a centrist course for the nation, since that is where he believed
(rightly so, in my opinion) the nation is, politically. So, it will swing back again. We can only hope that the harm that is being done to the environment and the fiscal status of the country is reparable in a relatively short period of time, and that the social programs Bush apparently intends to dismantle can weather the storm and remain healthy in the long run.

The waxing and waning of the political will and direction of a nation is actually a healthy sign of the curative powers of a state that has the flexibility to change with the times and conditions that prevail. An earmark of an unhealthy state is that which, through fascism, monarchy, theocracy or oligarchy, stultifies movement in any direction but the one those in power wish. A democratic republic, however flawed (and ours is flawed to some extent) can retain that flexibility and resilience, that ability to return the pendulum to its motion and its reflection of the general will of the people.

11. Looking Forward – Looking Back

Am I happy to be alive here and now in this fast moving century? No, I am not. But then if one asked anyone in the past who tried to think about things if they would choose their current era over another, they might say the same thing. We either want to go back or forward in time – back to join the ranks of those we assume were of like minds, where things were exciting, new, bubbling over with change and adventure of the mind – like, say, the turn of the 19th Century, with Darwin fresh on the taste buds, Freud looming with his strange and frightening theories, then the advent of quantum physics, etc. Or go forward to a different time of our safe and loving fantasies. We are enmeshed in the moment and its contents to the point we cannot see it for what history will tell us it was; we can only experience it as it actually is, and far less perspective of purpose, intention., meaning and effects can be seen here and now. Where would I like to be? Probably Vienna in about 1905, but then all that I can imagine is just that, a dreamy invention of what my books tell me of that waltz-soaked, pastry beribboned, intellectual cauldron that I would love so passionately – sitting in one of the side walk cafes, reading the latest writing by someone like Karl Kraus or Fritz Mauthner, recalling Mahler’s 5th symphony, thinking on the paintings of Gustav Klimt, pondering Schonberg, Kokoschka and Ernst Mach, sipping absinthe! That is, of course my dream world. I cannot begin to imagine the surroundings of misery, the vicious bigotry and anti-Semitism, the faltering and doomed Hapsburg Empire, and I choose to focus on what is merely appealing to my sensibilities.

If I try to leap forward a hundred years and consider me there, thinking about the past and where I might enjoy returning to, this present era might seem every bit as attractive as that of the fin de siecle world of Vienna. But today I see a squalor of the mind here in this country – I cannot raise myself above the detritus of this cultural morass, with its virtual this and virtual that; its horrible killing computer games; its unnecessary killing wars; its tilting toward a religious government; its uneducated masses; its wanton materialism and greed, and thus, who the hell would want to come back to this? But, those future time travelers might find our era exciting, with the advances in computer technology, communications, space travel, biology, medicine, etc. and all the rest, that squalor of the mind, might have faded into obscurity by then.

We must (?) be satisfied with where we are, as dark, as uninformed, as seemingly dangerous as it might be – there’s nothing that can be done anyway. If I think long and hard about it, I might even be able to invent my time-traveling self from the future and find all this amalgam of invention and discovery to be tasty and perhaps even wonderful in some dimension. All I have to do is adjust my stupidity and squalor filter, and try to see the pieces of the present that might offer some decent steps to our tomorrows that have little of the garbage hanging on to them. This takes some effort…..

12. What is Thinking?

Heidegger says: “Thinking is thinking when it answers to what is most thought-provoking.” (From his little collection of lectures called: What is Called Thinking) I find that remark rather like the person who, when asked what heat is, replied that it is thermal activity. Tautologies do not inform us.

The other day I was behind a car containing a single bumper sticker that read: “I THINK – THEREFORE I VOTED REPUBLICAN.” How strange it felt to see this plain Cartesian statement, a young woman at the wheel, no doubt believing in the dictum on her car. Strange since, to us progressives and liberals, the Republican party is not the thinking party, but the ideological, war-mongering party, the party that uses iron fists and not rational thought and sound reasoning. But, assuming that the woman (or perhaps her husband) actually believes the statement, what are we to THINK? I recently visited family in LA and in the group was a rabid Bushite, hunter, Catholic, no-nonsense guy who was a whisper away from calling for the nuking of all Muslim nations. There was not one argument I could pose that would have convinced him of the errors of this administration. And yet, I assume he imagines that he has given all this a great deal of THOUGT. I tried to play at being Socrates (I’m not very good at it, wine and all!) and that did not work – he merely shook his head and said things like: You don’t know what you are talking about! Or: You are just playing with words! It felt as if I held up a piece of black paper and he would say with complete conviction that it was white.

So it must be something going on in the synapses and neurons, some little twist that defines truth in a direction that some other part of the brain relies on for balance and stability. Noam Chomsky, speaking about “reality” and perspective, says, in his Propaganda and the Public Mind:

The world's a complicated place. Anything you look at, whether it's a molecule or international society, there are many different per­spectives you can take, and you'll get very different answers depend­ing on which perspective you take. That's a standard problem in the sciences. Why do people do experiments? Doing experiments is a creative act, an effort to try to peel away things that you believe, rightly or wrongly, are irrelevant to determining the fundamental principles by which things are operating and see if you can find something simplified enough that those principles will actually be apparent and then try to rebuild some picture of complex reality from that. But you never get anywhere near it because reality is just too much of a mess. There are too many intervening factors.

Any experiment in the hard sciences is attempting to discover a perspective which will be illuminating. That approach is all the more necessary when you look at things as poorly understood and as com­plex as human affairs. You have to discover a perspective from which interesting things seem to appear, recognizing that at best you'll capture one significant aspect of a highly complex reality. You hope it's an important one.

That statement: You have to discover a perspective from which interesting things seem to appear, recognizing that at best you'll capture one significant aspect of a highly complex reality. You hope it's an important one. contains the danger (or promise) of moral, or any kind of, relativism. One can carefully pick out of a situation that which aligns with his entrenched beliefs, and therefore actually learns nothing – simply reinforces a belief. There is something at work blocking conflicting points of view and facts. If reality is all that complex there seems to be little hope for truth, in all the messiness that abounds. You hope it is an important one…and may hope that it is an important one for YOU – not for some unbiased objective reality, if there actually is such a thing!

But we cannot do experiments on the world we see and read about. We have to take what is given and trust that all the necessary goodies are there for us to pick and choose from. We know that this is not the case, we must take what is given – there’s no other choice.

The women with the bumper sticker believes that all that she comes into contact with in her world (and god only knows of what that might consist!) reinforces her already established beliefs – nothing counter-active or counter-intuitive is allowed in. For her, it might even be that Chomsky is wrong, that reality is really not all that complex. This seems to tie into the Bush philosophy (and I am loathe to call it that) that the world should be seen as black and white; good and evil; right and wrong; with us or against us. This is pretty simple stuff – all the nuances and complexities are sliced away by a kind of Gordian cut that bifurcates the world, thus making it simple and easy to understand. And you know what? It works. Those people who voted the guy back in office truly do believe that they ARE thinking about things. And I’ll bet that the poor souls in Germany, circa 1930, had the same feelings.

Truth is an interesting concept. Its kissing cousin, reality, is equally so. I have come to dislike both of them, though I use them like everyone else. A friend recently remarked that such abstractions are the inventions of our institutions, and these two must be the inventions of the institution of mankind – useful and also very dangerous.

I recently discovered that fifteen years or so ago there were about fifty independent news/TV media outlets for information in this country and now there are six! Further more, those six do not allow advertisements or information that is against the government/administration or its policies in the world. This is the management (derailing) of dissent, and it is dissent that is the engine of change and progress among us today. Without that we are sheep being led to slaughter, or at best, sheering. I have no idea what movement can alter the direction that is being taken; truth is being managed by the powers that be, and that is scary as hell. If blatant truth is managed, then there is scarce hope for opinions that might mount to the level of serious dissent and change.

I am afraid….

13. Progress In Western Civilization

Synonyms for “progress”: development, growth, advancement, improvement, evolution, steps forward, movement

Introduction

You know, all is development – the principle is perpetually going on. First there was nothing; then there was something; then – I forget the next – I think there were shells; then fishes; then we came – let me see – did we come next? Never mind, we came last and the next change will be something very superior to us, something with wings. Lady Constance in Disraeli’s novel Tancred, 1847.

“Progress” is a common enough word, used most often to speak of change for the better, or improvement, and relates most frequently to the advancements of the sciences and other physical accouterments of civilization. But we also speak of progress in the arts, in politics, social conventions and morality, but in these, progress relates more to change, since it is arguable as to the degree of betterment that accrues in these areas. The music of Beethoven, for example, represents a marked change from that of his predecessors (e. g. Bach, Handel, Mozart and Hayden, et al) and heralded the so-called Romantic period of music. But must we consider this change as progress? I believe that we must if it represented a new and better expression that music can convey in light of other attributes that were appearing in Western civilization at the time – an expression that was more closely related to the feelings, aspirations, beliefs of the community. There was an equivalent shift in painting at the time, as reflected in the works of Delacroix and Turner, both of which began the departure from classicism to romanticism, and in the case of Turner, impressionism. This period, beginning around 1800, also evidenced great changes in literary, political and philosophical systems as well as science. While the so-called modern era is often taken to have begun with the Enlightenment, the movements related to romanticism, were intertwined in ways that form a somewhat cohesive whole as regards progress. Western civilization gradually shifted from one milieu to another very different one, and the various gears of that shift were interrelated in complex ways across all Western societies.

Progress, therefore, should be seen as an integrated process, with multiple interconnections and influences, and not as a simple linear movement, as is more the case with specific science and engineering accomplishments. The way in which humans began to see their world and their connection to it and to other humans changed and with the seminal events of Darwin’s publications, Wagner’s music and the social/economic philosophy of Karl Marx, that period reached a kind of apex – i. e. the beginning of its decline. I cite these three men as exemplars and quote Jacques Barzun:

After allowing for superficial differences, we find so many links uniting Darwinism, Marxism and Wagnerism that the three doctrines can be seen as the crystallization of a whole century’s beliefs. Each of the systems may be likened to a few facets of that crystal: at the core they are indistinguishable.

The movement ascribed to (or following) these men can be simplistically called materialism, even as that frequently has a bad name to many. Progress, during that period, was indeed one that was materialistic, and the idealism of the romantic age was slowly shucked off and replaced by another kind of idealism – the belief in the physical world as the only one worth paying serious attention to.

I use these three men somewhat arbitrarily, except for Darwin – his is a special case since his thesis of natural selection as the basis for change, speciation and, if you wish, progress among organisms, is itself perhaps the greatest example of there progressive nature of man’s theorizing. His formulations of natural progress itself exemplified progress in how we see our world; the jury may still be out as to the ultimate (if ever) structure of a “complete” and thus proven theory of evolution, but I see their deliberations as nearing an end. The use of Wagner is an attempt to bring into our thought on progress the question: Does art and expressiveness progress, or does it simply change? Stephen Jay Gould in his essay Up Against a Wall discusses the many arguments that surrounded dating the various cave painting of the Paleolithic age – some seeing a linear progression of style and accuracy of representation, but Gould doubting this, pointing out that a distant archaeologist upon finding a Michelangelo and a Picasso, would hard pressed to establish a linear progression of style, with no knowledge of the intervening art. So, ascribing progress to art is tricky, to say the least. But if one ties art, in general, to the other dimensions of society the various styles and intentions can be easily linked to what was going on in society. As for Marx, he attempted to grab by the throat what he considered to be a law of equity as relates to labor, value and goods in terms of class. What he witnessed in the societies he could witness was conflict, one possible ingredient for progress – conflict of the distribution of wealth as relates to how wealth is produced. Indeed, his theories were monumentally influential, in various forms for a very long time and cannot be considered as crackpot. He was instrumental in making us look at the conflict, even if our solutions have to date been less than fully successful.

Civilization progresses through three not mutually exclusive forces: need, conflict and exploration. All of these forces are seemingly aspects of our species; there are needs related to sustenance, shelter, procreation and defense (and more recently in the history of our species: expressiveness); there are conflicts over territory, beliefs and possessions, and there is exploration of geography, ideas and invention. There is hardly any progress or achievement by humanity that has not come about without one or all of these; (accidental discoveries that contribute to material progress do exist.) These are contrasted with change or evolution in nature (i. e. in the absence of human intentions) that are non-teleological, and the literature is awash with descriptions of the how’s and why’s of this process; it is to be strictly separable from human progress, even though we are a part of nature.

It is interesting to ponder how ancient man came about his inventions related to his needs, and brings up the cognitive processes involved. In his three stages of human development and progress, Auguste Comte assigned to our primitive forbears the belief in the gods to bring about change and explain earthly phenomena – the theological stage. The next stage, the metaphysical, assigned to phenomena some hidden force or power; and in the third stage, the positive or scientific, all phenomena are the result of laws of nature or physics, which may or may not be discoverable. While his chronology may be more or less accurate, he omits dealing with a stage that might have preceded his theological one – namely a stage during which man had no gods, but only a relatively undeveloped cognitive capability, and dealt with his world very much in the moment within a very narrow spectrum of challenge and change. Did the invention of the axe or eventually the spear and bow and arrow precede early man’s concept of gods? I think it probably did. Yet, even with a limited language (if any) he was able to perceive cause and effect to the degree necessary to make improvements and discoveries. Finding himself away from the naturally provided cave, he built huts. Finding the river too deep and swift to walk across, he rode on a log. Discovering that very sharp stones pierced the skin of prey more easily, he devised a way to make them sharp. Early man was a problem solver and his daily needs were the impetus for improvements, once he was able to perceive causality.

Progress, or improvement was related to an immediate need, one that may have existed unattended for some time, and there may have been much trial and error involved. But in any case, there was an objective in the process, and that objective was to accomplish something better – more quickly, more efficiently, more thoroughly and even more cheaply in terms of utilizing resources at hand. Today the same objectives apply in most cases, however there is a broader set of concerns at play in the society at large. Changes and improvements come about via a network of needs and capabilities. Bridge building in Taiwan is not unrelated to bridge building in the United States, since that technology is codified and connected world-wide through the interaction of people in various ways. In addition, bridge building is connected to the traffic that will use the bridges, and the vehicles have their own technologies, and the need for those vehicles vary widely. There exists today a vast network of interrelated needs and associated technologies that all go hand in hand to create opportunities for improvements – progress. This all began when societies had interlocked needs and solutions for those needs.

Progress in the Small

In today’s interconnected societies and material enterprises progress, as mentioned above, can be viewed from afar as a massive movement that includes cultural and scientific achievements, but each such achievement can be examined individually as progress in the small. Man’s early inventions are basically no different in this respect from current ones; there was a recognized need, the wherewithal at hand to effect improvement and possibly the other influences of conflict and exploration at work. But, in any case the singular improvement was the direct result of the human mind solving some problem arising from need. (As Karl Popper says: “All organisms are constant problem solvers; even though they are not conscious of the problems they are trying to solve.”) It involved using what was at hand to create something new – something that satisfied the need. In the case of a more effective tool for cutting up carcasses, the idea of piercing or sharpness became evident, though probably unnamed as such, thus one tool could be said to be sharper than its predecessor and thereby more useful. It perhaps can be said that the very concept of sharpness came about through its use, thus concepts grew out of utility and practice and eventually, tradition.

Over the hundred thousand or so years of homo sapiens existence as a species, a great many such concepts have arisen and eventually became part of the language and thought of our race. Even today, in the midst of almost daily findings in quantum physics, this repertoire of concepts is useful – as in the case of electron “spin” where spin is a concept that is a useful, though not exact concept, to distinguish a certain characteristic of electrons. No doubt this repertoire is growing still, both in the sciences and in cultures, and they are embedding themselves in our language and thinking. . As to the meaning of “concepts” I recall what Richard Feynman said of them: “Concept is a very strange concept.” I won’t debate the ontological or epistemological aspects of the word except to say that, whatever one may say about them, they are indispensable; causality may or may not have some ontic presence, but it is the sine qua non of all science and most of human intercourse. One can develop quite a long list of concepts which have been useful in scientific progress and invention – a few are:

weight size area straightness curvature leverage advantage distance greater than smaller than containment balance symmetry etc.

For the most part this list, if extended to its fullest extent, form the basic set of cognitive tools used in invention, therefore in progress as for physical objects.

Another set is useful in discussing sociological change and advancements:

good bad evil recompense reward equality fairness wealth poverty control superiority power weakness etc.

In the field of art, including literature sculpture and architecture (which is related to technology) we find concepts such as:

balance symmetry meaning message impact content proportions imagination fantasy etc.

It is easy to picture all three sets being mixed in a potential palette for invention and for understanding and using invention and art and dealing with human interaction.

Another significant aspect of invention is that of bringing together disparate concepts, observations and facts to formulate a synthesis, thus a new construction to solves some need. The modern automobile is a prime example of the fusion of many concepts and realities in the world: the wheel, chemical combustion, metallurgy, mechanical advantages, processing of rubber, plastics, electricity, refinement of crude oil, etc. The transistor, perhaps the most influential invention of the 20th century (or ever) invented in 1948, came about through the knowledge of atomic structure and processing techniques of various metals. It replaced the thermionic vacuum tube, a bulky, heat producing, fragile and short lived device. A host of concepts were involved in the conception of the transistor, and today if all such devices were suddenly made ineffective or removed from the developed nations a monstrous devastation of civilized society would ensue. Progress in the small adds to progress in the large, as witnessed by the example of the transistor, and may have profound influence on society. It is by now a two-way street; the complexities of the modern world beg more and more improvements since the concepts and previous inventions at hand offer more and more opportunities for use.

The recent invention of cell-phones that take and transmit pictures has spawned the use of jammers which can thwart the use of cell phones by those nearby; those who wish to either not risk being photographed or are simply irritated at the use of the phones in their presence merely flip on their jammers. Similar equipment is used by speeders on the highway who wish to jam police radars. Thus we see technology chasing technology. No doubt the pilotless planes that are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually be jammed to diminish their efficacy in war. This points to warfare that is without soldiers on the ground, but an arsenal of robots fighting one another – technology at war with itself. Perhaps the good news might be that eventually wars will be fought only in and by computers. Is that progress?

Progress in the Large

Progress in the large means the full matrix of all of what may be called collective advancements in all human endeavors, be they scientific or cultural and artistic. The idea of the improvement of man and his domain is quite old, perhaps beginning with Plato and his utopian ideas about what a society and its governance should look like. All the concepts mentioned above, to Plato, would be considered as having a transcendent ontology that is independent of man, and that knowledge (as opposed to opinion) will lead mankind toward finding and using these concepts to his benefit. The idea of the perfect man, the man who has attained the pinnacle of developmental possibilities in this world was part of the Enlightenment and remains a part of most religions – man becoming perfect through contact with the perfect God. We see progress all around us every day, and may ask: Progress toward what? It is tempting to cast this issue in the same light as non-teleological nature; looked at from afar, we humans and our world might be seen as an integrated physical process that is moving in some direction without any specific directed vector, but with surety and apparent success. (More about success later) But all progresses in the small, which are surely quite purposeful, accumulate to become progress in the large; if progress in the small is purposeful, is not the accumulated result also purposeful? Perhaps the sheer complexity of our modern world belies this possibility, since predicting the future is undeniably impossible, and predictability is part of purposefulness. Undoubtedly no one in Newton’s day could predict all the technology involved in landing a human on the moon, and though science fiction is filled with a plethora of possible futures, the vagaries of human belief and the uncertainties of the physical world deny even the most seemingly prescient sci-fi writers the possibility of accurate predictions. So, progress toward what?

It has been said by both secular and religious philosophers that there is a vector for human progress – the pursuit of truth or of salvation. Truth in the understanding of the phenomenology of the physical universe and truth in the make up of human kind and the human mind. Regarding this, Frederick R. Karl, in his Modern and Modernism, says: “By pursuing utility, we can arrive at truth; for, in fact, truth and utility are dependent on each other.” This is problematic, since “truth” is an abstraction (Plato aside) that has been invented by humans to help deal with the world, and is nowhere settled in the world of philosophy. However, it is settled in the world of science; truth is what works.

This brings us to success. Success normally relates to the achievement of an intended objective. Without teleology, there is no success, since there is no intended objective. Success in nature (sans human intervention and objectives) can arguably be considered the continued existence of a species. The shark has been around for sixty million years with scarcely any changes in its habits or morphology – does that mean it is a successful species simply due to its longevity? The fact that it has reached, to date, a state of stasis with regard to its environment might by some be considered as a successful achievement of its evolution. On the other hand, in lacking the stresses of changing environments and the ensuing process of selection through variation, it also might be considered to be not so much successful as evolutionarily dormant. We humans probably shy away from wishing such dormancy on ourselves since movement and change (for the “better”) is a continually desirable process. So, can we even speak of success in terms of reaching a kind of human developmental nirvana, in which we are secure and content with what we have and what we are? During Rousseau’s time, there was an enchanting fixation by some on the possibility of a society of primitively content humans, harkening back to the age of a simple life based on simple needs and simple solutions. Such a desire was short lived and went the way of many other utopian dreams; why? Probably because it is the nature of humans to change, to explore, to dream, to lack satisfaction with what is at hand and hold onto the idea of progress as the means to make a better life. While we can envision the Polynesians, without the rude interruption of the 18th century explorers, as having a stable and relatively peaceful existence with their fish and bananas, sexual freedom and easy going life style, we would, for a variety of reasons not exchange places with them. Why is this? They may be seen as having reached something akin to the developmental dormancy of the shark, the absence of external forces and changes in their environment resulting in a static culture. We “civilized” humans eschew this state.

Success, therefore, is a relative matter, and dependent on the presence or absence of the forces at work to induce change. But is change always progress? One can ask, with a perfectly straight face, if the life of the pre-explored Polynesians is less content than the life today of the stressed, worrying, in-debt middle class human, who must deal with a myriad of distracting influences and potential physical dangers. What is success? What is progress toward it?

Human nature is strange in this regard. The millionaire who has every conceivable material object required to fulfill his basic needs, often wants still more. While he is considered a success, he pictures success further down the road, when he has more of what he already has. Perhaps this condition is to be placed in the category of gluttony – a sin in the Christian faith. But his personal standard of success demands that he have more. A wonderful example of the dangers and pitfalls of this view of success is the recent prison term given to Sam Waxel, who headed up a successful pharmaceutical firm that produced new drugs. He was already a wealthy man, but upon hearing that the FDA had not approved a new drug his company had invented, he sold his stock in the company – what is called “insider trading” – and was severely punished. While in prison, ironically, the drug has since been approved and the stock is on the rise. Thus, the convolution of science and greed! Had he merely been patient, all would have worked out fine. Is Sam Waxel a success? The same question can be asked of any criminal who gets away with something and becomes rich. Is he a success?

But here we are concerned with society as a whole and what can be called a successful society, through progress. No one can have an accurate vision of the future, and therefore no one can define the sociological and scientific vector that will get us there, to some place where all is well for all humans, and perhaps the planet as well. But does that mean that we let progress take its own random walk to the future, hoping that by some law of human progress that naturally aims toward the “good” we will come out alright? For those who hold to the Platonic idea of “the good” they might also hold to the idea of the “right path” toward this “good.” If they are religious they might believe that the direction is governed by faith in God; if they are scientific they might believe that by understanding the universe and the human mind (pure materialism) we can choose the most efficacious vector to get us there – wherever and whatever there is. Of course there are others, myself included, who hold that things will proceed as they will, much like nature itself, inexorably moving toward something inexplicable and unknown, and that we should not fret about it – it will, and must, happen without guidance.

But there is a kind of guidance. The critical issue is, what kind of guidance exists in this many-sided society with all the various forces pulling us this way and that? There are those, like the descendents of the Newtonian age, who believe that the inexorable laws of nature and of physics, once discovered and harnessed, will open the doors to the true and beneficent abode for humanity. But we must think of the consequences of even getting close to the age in which we have conquered all disease and infirmities, fed all the hungry, done away with poverty and mental illness, eradicated bigotry, become one people under one sway of a consummately benign government – will we have attained the evolutionary stasis of the shark, with no forces acting upon us to further change and “progress?” Is it in our human make up to be satisfied with such a status? I don’t think so, but then I cannot imagine myself in such a place.

Yes, there is guidance in our progress, but we have no idea of what that guidance consists - - it is the sum total of all separate individual bits and pieces of progress that go on each day, and none of us is capable of wrapping our conceptual arms around the meaning and direction of this progress. It seems to me that the ingredients of this progress is the sum of all concepts that comprise the tools of progress, and they are legion. We have become a species of concepts, some in conflict, others in harmony, but all tending toward an inexorable movement toward something we know not of. If we deny that there is some law of human progress, divine or not, and are left with a yawning abyss of random direction we may sink into some existential angst; if we believe that there is such a law, unless this is believed by all or most, then it is of little value and we are left with the same old brand of conflicts among us.

A Confluence of Progresses

I mentioned Darwin, Marx and Wagner, following Barzun’s use of these as exemplars of an age, for a reason. We may separate them out as three disparate tentacles of societal functions, but they feed on one another in very interesting ways and conspire to form a whole in terms of seeing not only how but why societies take the directions they do. The pinnacle of romanticism as personified in Wagner was not only a pinnacle, but it was a repudiation of what it embodied in the sense that it took romanticism to the edge and shoved it over. Wagner cannot be taken as a serious commentator on his age, but he can be taken seriously as a force for change. (Music so-called “classical” or “serious” still shows the influence of Wagner.) The gods are dead, and those gods are the gods of righteous surety, of prescriptions for morality, of dead and dying styles. All of Wager is climactic – not introductory. While it may touch one’s emotions in terms of the sheer force of the music, it also leaves one with an emptiness – a sense of the tragic and of loss. Darwin, a somewhat unwilling representative of the overthrow of creationism and a God-directed natural order, was as much a ringer of the death knell of order as he was the harbinger of a new kind of order – that was, in fact, uncertainty. If chance mutations were the cause of speciation and the eventual arrival of humans, the God of Moses must be replaced with the god of chance. This startling suggestion remained only that until the advent of quantum physics wherein it is demonstrated that uncertainty is one of the hallmarks of microphysics and a serious element in understanding the world and the universe. Marx, seeing a new formula for establishing what the meaning of value is in human intercourse, summed up (not invented) the accumulation of opinions long since held regarding what is significant in managing the affairs among men in terms of labor and the exchange of goods related to that labor. He attempted to level the playing field in terms of what progress means for the individual but more importantly, for the group, the state. He believed, as opposed to the beliefs of the Utopians of his day, that a new society built on the laws he envisioned regarding value and labor cannot be invented and enforced by fiat, but must come about naturally through an inexorable revolution that is an organic component of mankind once emancipated from old thinking. Of course he was wrong in this – there appears to be nothing that is inexorable except movement and change, a system that seemingly guides itself. Each of these three dealt with change in the way humans view themselves and their world, and they are connected in both bold and subtle ways.

In looking at where we are today in terms of the three headings of art, science and social order and management, the canvas is large and the colors wild, but there are changes worth mentioning. No longer can we look up to great paintings such as those by Delacroix, David and Goya as depictions of what humanity is doing to itself, because there appears to be no single social force, led by but one or a very few leaders, and no large single event that dominates our fears and hopes, and no heroes. We see terrorists, enthralled with religious fervor using cell phones – the merging of technology with outdated fundamentalist religious beliefs. We see art created and displayed via complex and expensive technology and obtained at the touch of a button. We see political persuasions through the medium of television that uses the “art” of propaganda to make us think a certain way. We no longer witness the rise of great leaders and heroes who, in an earlier age might be painted on large canvases and hung in museums where they can affect public opinion. We see the advance of medical technology not only in increasing our longevity, but being used to augment and alter our physical appearances, making us conform to some ideal human morphology. We see art and music scattered into a plethora of styles that do not represent an age or social milieu as much as a chaos of outlooks that pervade society. The common thread through most of this scene is technology, and it seems that not only is society today dependent on technology, it is dependent on its continued advance – its continued progress. There is no walk of life today that is not affected in profound ways by technology, and if there is a vector that aims in some direction, that vector is nowadays bound up by technology. Technology in robotics is increasingly casting Marx’ s labor/value concepts even more in doubt as the paradigm for desirable social order, since we can easily envision human physical labor vanishing altogether, leaving humans to rely solely on their brain and the computer, activities that are easily accomplished away from any concentration of labor at factories, etc. “Intellectual property” is replacing physical property – nowadays most would much rather own a lucrative patent than a acre of land.

Progress today can be seen as an amalgam of interrelated activities that all have the common substrate of technology. Even the most cerebral of activities, writing, is being influenced by the advent of word processing with its spell check and instant availability of reference material via the internet. Some writers claim that using word processing, e-mail and the internet has altered the way they think and pursue their craft. The most dominant art forms, movies and television, have become completely taken over by and dependent on technology. The sociological influence of the steam engine in the 19th century can’t hold a candle to that of current technology (begun with the transistor in
1948).

So, progress toward what? If one were to ask that question of anyone within one of the sciences, no matter which one, I have the feeling the answer would always be the same: A solution to the problem I face at the moment. This problem and its surrounding complexities will always be a complete mystery to laity. All of science and technology is, for the most part, a mystery to the vast majority of those who benefit from them. This situation can be likened to ancient or so-called primitive societies in which fire was used and depended on but not understood and perhaps even worshiped; Western society today is being structured by a group who might as well be gods in this regard. The vector of progression is a large and diverse one, but it is at least confined to a group who are intensely involved in solving their particular problem within their particular niche. There are no Marx’s or Darwin’s in the mix for whom progress is a global and monolithic matter, there are no giants of political, artistic, scientific or economic vision. The doctor in medical research, though he may have tucked away in his mind some far reaching utopian concept of a disease- free world, is mainly dedicated to solving the specific problem at hand – possibly the cure for a specific pathology. The world and its scientific milieu is far too large and complex for a visionary to wrap his arms around it as a messiah for the true path for the future through progress.

Conclusions

Every step the mind takes in its progress toward knowledge makes some discovery, which is not only new, but the best, too, for the time at least. John Locke

Science tends to be difficult, subtle, ambiguous, and biased by all manner of social and psychic prejudice – though surely directed in a general way toward increasingly better understanding of a real world ‘out there’ Stephen Jay Gould

Perhaps the metaphor of a random walk is appropriate – there is progress, but the compass points are irrelevant or nonexistent, and the path may re-cross itself from time to time. Today, to some degree, we see a return, if it can be called that, of more “classical” art in painting and sculpture, as if there is a kind of magnetic pull toward representing the world accurately, perhaps in reaction to a century of artistic chaos. The clash of cultures, or in some minds of civilizations, as indicated by the conflict between Islam and Western ideologies and religions harkens back to the attempted intrusion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe, and even the Crusades – the issues dividing Islam from the West having only simmered the past few hundred years. So what’s new? What is undeniably new is the geometric explosion of science and technology and the resulting impact it is having on daily life in the developed nations of the world. What is not new is the fact recurring global conflict based on a variety of causes – religion being not the least of these. While we find cures for disease and build spacecraft capable of going to Mars, giant airplanes and huge ocean going ships, develop complex communication and entertainment systems, we have not conquered conflicts within the human psyches and between them. Wars of the 20th century were the most brutal and life-taking in our history. Drugs are being designed to deal with depression, what used to be called melancholia and hysteria and is yet to be fully understood. We see a unique kind of human progress at work, technologies that will someday do away with human physical labor, leaving us to depend on our cognitive powers alone, our hands used only on the keyboard, and eventually not even that. If there is a directional vector to our progress it is one that is gradually tending toward nothing but the use of the mind, and that mind has yet to be understood. The internet is also doing new things to human interaction; it provides both free-wheeling conversations that may or may not be honest or accurate in terms of one’s status or nature, and at the same time it offers us the ability to speak freely and honestly with little consequences. The “delete” button accomplishes now what more and less subtle means of the termination of conversations existed in the past. For some, this is an isolating process, for others it is an expanding one, since we can make acquaintances around the globe and come in contact with other views at the touch of our keyboard.

The apparent random walk of our progress, while not entirely random, due to technology, remains a mysterious walk – over the next hill, through unexplored forests, as if seeking something we cannot comprehend, or perhaps fleeing that which we find dangerous or ugly. Our progress is apparently inexorable, but its goal does not exist. We witnessed at the end of the 19th what was labeled “the absurd,” following Darwin’s revelations about our development as having been the result of chance mutations. The theory of quantum physics, particularly Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle, and Godel’s undecidability theorem which proved there were flaws in our most basic axiomatic system of integer mathematics, conspired to cut us loose from the assumed solidarity of Newton’s mechanistic universe as well as from our belief that there was such a thing as iron-clad predictability and certainty in the world. Freud’s expose of our unconscious mind instilled in us the frightening knowledge that a great deal is going on in our minds than we cannot be aware of, and recent studies in the neurosciences enforce this fact.

It must not be forgotten that progress and its synonyms are themselves abstract concepts we have invented for ease of explanation in dealing with the world and our social interactions in it. An alien creature, upon discovering out planet and our civilization with all its monuments to our physical progress, might deem the whole thing as simply another non-teleological enterprise of matter, and if we could communicate, it is problematic as to whether the alien would then change its mind.

We shy away from being called animals, and yet, with all the trappings of science and technology, we remain animals, and as we watch the deer roaming across the valley or the eagle circling in the sky, we too wander and circle. We know that animals, in their movements are either fleeing predation, seeking sustenance or procreation; perhaps in our own way we are doing the same.

14. Speaking Out

In 1792, in his The Rights of Man, Thomas Pain, speaking of the period prior to the American revolution, said: “Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.” This phrase seems highly apt this morning following our presidential election. This president, arguably the worst in a hundred years, has been voted into office by a populace moved by fear, and fear alone. That slavery of fear has indeed made men afraid to think – to think of tomorrow, to think of all else in our nation that is important for our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. There is little doubt that in the absence of the tragedy of 9/11 he would not have been reelected, and his mantra from that sad day onward has been one of holding up the fear and even the prediction of its recurrence. He took us to war in Iraq, having convinced the vast majority and congress, that Iraq posed a serious threat to our security. It has been fear, daily thrust before us, and aided by the media, that has pushed reason, rationality, thoughtful debate and discourse aside. The estimates of innocent Iraqi civilian deaths in this war are somewhere between twenty and a hundred thousand, accurate counts being no concern of our government. Will there ever be enough deaths of innocents to make up for the three thousand lives lost on 9/11? Will the deaths of over a thousand American soldiers and civilians be worth this war of choice? Will the thousands of wounded and maimed for life suffer their sad conditions believing that their sacrifice has been worth it?

Now for the next four years….what can we expect from this administration? He will no doubt claim a mandate to continue on the path of war, of catering to the wealthy, of ignoring and even thwarting scientific investigations, of continuing to damage the environment, of placing in the Federal Courts those of his ideological ilk, of presenting himself in a near-messianic guise of evangelical truth, of ignoring the needs and plights of the poor, the homeless, those of color, those of different faiths. Must this be the case? If ever there was a time to muster the courage needed to start the pendulum swinging back to at least a center of consideration for the average citizen, it is now. It must happen, or we are doomed to see this nation begin its decline – history is replete with empires of such arrogance and the misguided belief that might does indeed make right. With but five percent of the world’s population and enough military power to overcome any nation or group of nations we are seen as something like another Rome, with our legions scattered across the globe, wielding influence, controlling resources, banking the hatred and fear of much of the world.

Thomas Paine also said: “Reason and Ignorance, the opposite of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.” We must begin using reason and rejecting ignorance born of fear. It is my profound hope that out of the undoubtedly great wealth of brave, intellectual, courageous, wise and dedicated men and women in this country, at least one will emerge, as another Lincoln, to see us through what is bound to be a most trying and frustrating period that lies ahead.

15. Dictatorship?..... Close

“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I am dictator” George Bush, October 11, 2000

In February, 1933, shortly after Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany and just prior to an important election, a fire destroyed the Reichstag. Historical research informs us that though there is little doubt that the Nazis were complicit in this event, the Communists were blamed and purged with the full backing of the German people. Fear was stirred up in their minds – no one wanted a Communist revolution. On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked. Of course even if very few odd-ball conspiracy theorists believe that the Bush administration was in any way complicit, it has unquestionably benefited from this disaster. Fear has been instilled in the minds of the people and the terrorists, not the Communists this time, are blamed, and rightly so. The day after the Reichstag fire, Hitler composed a decree, “for the Protection of the people and the State,” which President Hindenburg was prevailed upon to sign:

Restriction on person liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of the postal, telegraphic and telephonic communication; and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Of this and other dictatorial measures taken by the Nazis, William Shirer, in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, says:

Thus with one stroke Hitler was able to not only legally gag his opponents and arrest them at his will but, by making the trumped-up Communist threat “official” as it were, to throw millions of the middle class and the peasantry into a frenzy of fear that unless they voted for National Socialism at the elections a week hence, the Bolsheviks might take over.

Recall the gravitas-filled monotone declarations of Cheney leading up to the recent elections, suggesting in no uncertain way that if Bush was not elected we would be much more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. This outlandish assertion must have done a great deal to those who were already made afraid from the constant 9/11 references from Bush, Condi Rice, Cheney and others.

Hitler’s decree has an eerie resemblance to the Patriot Act, the latter not being nearly as blatant and draconian, but considering all that has happened in terms of media management and manipulation, it matters little. In today’s world intrusions into our freedoms must be more subtle and disguised as measures to insure out safety in the midst of terrorist threats following 9/11. Here are but a few samples of the things that have happened since 9/11:

-- The Patriot Act was easily and quickly passed essentially without debate.

(contained in this Act is the provision that one’s library check-out records can be searched without giving notice of such; ditto for prying into one’s home computer)

-- A congressional resolution was passed, also with scant debate, giving the President the authority to wage war against a sovereign nation that had not attacked us in any way.

-- Prisoners presumably associated with terrorism, including American citizens, can now be retained indefinitely on the sole say so of the President, without any due legal process.

-- Those attending a pre-election Republican rally wearing the wrong kind of t-shirt (ones that are against Bush or Cheney) were not allowed in the rally.

-- One at least one occasion, those attending such a rally were asked to sign pledges of loyalty to the current administration before being allowed in.

-- A Republican controlled Senate and House of Representatives and a sitting Republican President can insure the domination of one party – i. e. one set of ideologies and agenda that can influence the direction of the country for years to come.

-- Porter Goss, Bush’s new head of the CIA, after telling the Senate that he would be non-partisan in his operation of the agency, upon his confirmation and taking the job, sent out a memo to the CIA troops, informing them that resistance to the agenda of the administration would not be tolerated.

Bush can act with the full authority of Congress to implement his objectives – whatever they are – in much the same way Hitler did. Hitler did not come to power via a coup or revolution, but through a shoddy but nevertheless legal democratic process. (One might say the same about Bush’s first election, considering the actions of the Supreme Court in removing the prerogatives of a State in its election process.) With Bush’s second “win” he claims a mandate to govern the way he governed the first term. But the first election was won by tricks of law; the second was won by tricks using fear and ignorance – the same ingredients that gave Hitler the power he had in 1933.

Surely few would doubt that without the tragedy of 9/11 Bush would not have been reelected. That infamous date has been spoken of so often in his speeches and those of his supporters that it has become burned into our minds as a fear-filled mantra, and the fear of its recurrence remains alive. Coupled with that fear there is a general ignorance of facts surrounding why the government does certain things and facts associated with the current Iraqi war. We are kept ignorant since knowledge of the truth of things would show up the administration for what it is, and show the bloody results of the current war for what they are – criminal acts against humanity. (Current estimates of innocent civilian Iraqi killings range from 20,000 to 100,000 – even the low end is startling and shameful.) But, as I mentioned, the media conglomerates are part of the problem with our ignorance. Real investigative reporting on the major TV outlets (the main source of our “knowledge”) is virtually non-existent. The media gets far too many breaks from the administration (and the FCC) to challenge its actions. We should all know that he who controls information to the nation is sitting along side those who control the government in terms of power and influence. So, we are kept ignorant, just as the German people were kept ignorant as to the real intentions of Hitler’s regime and the real perpetrators of the Reichstag fire..

I am not claiming that Bush is a modern Hitler, but I am saying that the concentration of political (and military) power in one party, arrived at by dubious means (i. e. through lies, deception and unconstitutional court rulings) can be dangerous. Our modern version of a dictator is not that of a blatant Zieg Heil! monster, but rather one seemingly legally elected, but who has close to absolute power on big ticket choices for the country, such as taxation, foreign policy, social programs, personal freedoms, moral issues and Federal judicial appointments.

Looking at the Bush cabinet selections to date, we see that instead of dutifully examining the undoubtedly hundreds of intelligent, experienced, politically neutral candidates some of which might serve the nation well, Bush has selected an old friend to be Attorney General, and an ideological soul mate to be Secretary of State. He is surrounding himself with yes-people, not anyone who might (as did Colin Powell) offer a view contrary to his. To my way of thinking, this is a kind of dictatorship – subtle, but real.

Added to this dangerous situation is the ingredient, played up strongly, of religion. On numerous occasions Bush has invoked God as his source of guidance and even hinted at being President because he was chosen by God to lead us though these hard times of terrorism. There are an estimated one-hundred and sixty million avowed Christians in our country. Bush’s strong religious pronouncements are appealing to many or most of these people. If one couples that with the fear and ignorance I mentioned above, they combine to form a solid base of support across the country.

Leading us into a kind of theocratic state is a disastrous step, as history has proven many times over. We have always been a secular nation, governed by a secular Constitution. The word “God” does not appear in that document – only “creator” which to the generally deistic faiths of the main founders of the nation was a sufficient nod to the religious minded in the states. Jefferson had written, originally: “We hold these truths to be sacred…”: and then Benjamin Franklin took his pen and prudently changed sacred to self evident, following in the tradition of the secular humanists.

There is another parallel worth mentioning – the relationship of the Bush administration to Labor. It is no secret that the Republican party and Labor have historically not been all that friendly. After Hitler’s ascendance to power in 1933 he immediately went to work to dismantle the trade unions, confiscating their funds and occupying their buildings, in the face of his recent promises that labor would be protected. The big businesses were happy – for a time, since they had contributed heavily to the Nazi party and expected quid pro quos, that seemed to be forthcoming. In our recent presidential election, Labor went 61% for John Kerry, indicating where their sentiments generally lie, and big business is happy since Bush is obviously catering to that part of his base – not to labor. Tax breaks for the wealthy and free range for businesses to do pretty much as they please was undoubtedly a boost for his election. Of course, Bush cannot do what Hitler did in terms of dismantling Labor altogether, as a force in the nation, but he can cater to the wishes of big business over the needs and demands of Labor – and you can bet that he will.

From the start, in the year 2000, prior to the first Bush election, he promised to be the uniter, not a divider. We see what that has meant to the nation in terms of the roughly
50/50 split in the popular vote and the representation in both houses of congress. This nation is more divided than in recent memory, and the two sides are not subtle in their vituperative denouncements of their opponents – things are getting nasty, far nastier than even in the Clinton administration. But Bush, with his “mandate” is charging ahead as if the left-behind roughly 49.5% of the country is irrelevant and not worth paying much attention to. Hitler did the same thing – ignoring and marginalizing Labor, Jews, Catholics, Communists, Socialists and some elements of business that were not willing partners with his vision for the Third Reich. Bush, I am guessing, has a vision for our version of the American Reich. It is has the following components:

Big business, especially the large corporations that influence and control our spending/consumer habits and supply us with consumer and military goods, will be taken care of. Bush sees big business as the sole engine of our economy and clearly big business and the fat cats who got the recent (and continuing) tax breaks support Bush, fully. Hitler was careful not to alienate the big businesses of Germany – they made the steel, the tanks, the guns, managed the banking and were indispensable in the new Reich. Big business also gave much money to the Nazi party. Bush’s adherence to the supply-side economic theories applied during the Reagan era, means that he trusts the investment strategies of big business to keep the economic engine running smoothly – never mind what the consequences could be for inflation and increased national debt.
(Remember interest rates following the Reagan era?)

Energy, which is primarily oil, must be managed in terms of availability and price management. The invasion of Iraq, contrary to the Right Wing spin doctor’s opinions that Iraq was invaded for humanitarian reasons (!), was done for oil – plain and simple. Not that we will have free access to that resource, but that our hegemony in that region will control it to the extent we require for our own economic needs. Having this kind of management over the second largest reserve of oil on the planet is a very big deal.

Global military hegemony is important for the USA since we are slowly but inexorably loosing economic hegemony – the EU, China and Japan will soon (if they haven’t already) swamp our heretofore domination of the world economy. But with the most powerful military (and no challengers in sight) we have a trump card: if you do something we don’t like, we can invade you at the cost of a few billion (borrowed) dollars. Why is this important in Bush’s vision for the future? The mode of ancient Rome is applicable: rule the world with your military and all will fall into place. It didn’t work then, and it is bound for fail today. But we maintain more than 700 military bases in over 130 countries, and are in the process of putting 12(!) carrier battle groups to sea. What on earth are we afraid of? The fact that we both control, to some degree, and thoroughly dislike and distrust the United Nations is an indication of our hubris, in the face of the fact that we are but five percent of the world’s population. While we are an original signatory to the UN Charter, we sidestep or ignore which ever of its tenets we choose. In addition, by refusing to sign on to the Kyoto environmental treaty on global warming, breaking the anti-ballistic missile treaty and refusing to sign on to the outlawing of land mines (only three examples!) we show our true colors as to being a helpful partner to the world community. (It should also be noted that in 2003 a leaked Pentagon document revealed the administration’s desire to acquire what is called “mini-nukes” – small bunker-busting nuclear bombs. This would be a blatant violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1970. Even thinking about such measures is a bit scary to contemplate.)

Moral authority is a large component of Bush’s vision. Regardless of his rhetoric regarding how religiously pluralistic he is (attending Mosque services following 9/11, etc.) it is clear that, as a born again Christian Bush has at least a professed faith in a particular religion that is famous for its non-inclusive agenda. As to his real religious beliefs, that is anyone’s guess, but it is mine that all his religious posturing is politically motivated, seeing, as he does, the power of religion in our nation today – especially following 9/11. Bush’s either-you’re-with-us-or-you’re-against-us rhetoric is an indication of his black and white moral certitude. Such certitude plays well across the mostly Christian heartland.

Personal power is also a critical aspect of Bush’s agenda. A quote from a 2002 New Year’s Eve press conference is telling:

Reporter: Mr. President, looking ahead here. with a possible war with Iraq looming, North Korea nuclear conflict as well as Osama bin Laden still at large, is the world safer as we look ahead to 2003?

Bush:….You said we’re headed to war in Iraq. I don’t know why you say that. I hope we’re not headed to war in Iraq. I’m the person who gets to decide, not you.

[Of this exchange, Mark Crispin Miller, in his book Cruel and Unusual, says: “Also worth noting is the president’s puerile locution: ‘I’m the person who gets to decide’ suggests that that decision struck him not as agonizing but as pretty cool. Otherwise, he would have said that he was the person who has to decide, implying a painful rather than a neat prerogative.” In addition to Miller’s insightful comment, it must be pointed out that our Constitution gives the sole right to make war to congress – not the President. His cavalier remarks suggests that war is his personal prerogative.]

Bush admittedly doesn’t read the newspapers, and one would guess that he watches little TV news – especially that of non-network television, such as Link TV, or the BBC. This means that his information comes from his advisors, his generals, his cabinet, his friends and family. This in turn means that his knowledge of events, domestic and global, is not only limited, but skewed in the direction of his own inclinations and those of his advisors, and I am guessing that his advisors generally tell him what he wants to hear. The serious and far reaching consequences of the current Iraq war, which were predicted by not a few thoughtful and experienced people in and outside government, were either ignored or not known to that inner circle. We know now that Bush planned the war even before 9/11, indicating that its basis had nothing to do with the “war on terrorism” but more to do with his personal choice of war, for his own reasons. We also know that the alleged reasons for going to war were not only mistakenly false, but knowingly false or at least highly suspect, since there were many voices in the CIA and elsewhere that raised serious doubts about those reasons. We must ask ourselves: What kind of leader makes an unprovoked war on a sovereign nation (that has a decimated military) claiming, in the end, only a moral prerogative to do so?

Of course we must admit that congress, and the rest of us, for the most part, were complicit in this war. We were hoodwinked, lied to, deceived into believing that it was a necessary and a just war. Little or no real investigative reporting was done that might have seriously challenged the reasons for going to war or the facts surrounding those reasons. We were, put simply, scared, and believed in our leaders because in a time of crisis we need to have faith in their leadership. The German’s were also scared following the fire at the Reichstag, having been convinced by Hitler’s propaganda machine that the fire was the beginning of a Communist revolution in Germany. This fear allowed Hitler, following the elections, to impose the most draconian civil and military control measures Germany had ever witnessed. Secrecy, Fear, ignorance and propaganda are the tools of a dictatorial regime.

Concluding Remarks

The dictionary defines “dictator” as follows:

1) A ruler exercising absolute power without hereditary right or free consent of the people, 2) a person invested with supreme authority during a crisis, 3) a person who authoritatively prescribes conduct, usage, etc.

I am not claiming that G. W. Bush is a dictator according to this definition. He clearly has free consent of about half the people in the nation – enough to get him elected. However, in our brand of a republic, party control of the legislature, if that party is the same as that of the sitting president, gives an enormous degree of power to that president and his/her party. If we had another terrible terrorist event like, or worse than that of 9/11, I can see Bush suspending habeas corpus, or even invoking marshal law, with the acquiescence of both houses of congress. The passage of the Patriot Act, which contains items that are arguably unconstitutional, occurred very quickly during a time of nationwide fear and paranoia. 2) above fits this event just fine. The “crisis” is terrorism following 9/11 and it has been played up to keep it at a perceived crisis level since it happened. This is not crisis management – this is crisis invention.

Another aspect, propaganda, is important in all this. If the major TV networks are ideologically and economically tied closely to the Bush administration, it is easy enough to have a crisis managed or even invented and promulgated by those media. We have all seen the virtual glorification of the war on most TV networks from day one of the war. Bush’s image as a “great leader” has been broadcast for the past three years, following 9/11, and many viewers have become convinced it is a correct one. Efforts by those who doubt his qualities as a leader have been thwarted simply because there are so few outlets for them to make their case. Attempts by independent thinkers, writers and film makers, such as Michael Moore and his Fahrenheit 9/11, have been met with vicious criticism and marginalized to the point of not being taken seriously by many.
(While if only a fraction of the information and innuendo shown in that film were true we should have cause for worry!) Those who disagree with Bush and his policies on the “war on terror” have been branded all kinds of terrible things, including traitor, enemy helper, unpatriotic and even worse. Dissent, a precious part of our American spirit, has been kept tamped down by the large and effective hand of the TV media, and this has worked well for Bush.

A prime example of the news media voices that champion Bush and his hegemonic agenda is that of the Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who, in a Time article in March 5, 2001, said:

America is no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome. Accordingly, America is in a position to re-shape norms, alter expectations and create new realities. How? By unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will.

That says it all, doesn’t it? It might have been written by Nietzsche, or even Goebbels! I can imagine our truly great leaders and patriots of the past turning over in their graves upon hearing such bellicose, imperialistic language.

I seriously doubt that Bush has read much if any history. He might profit (though this is highly problematic since he doesn’t like to read) from reading the history of the Roman empire, the history of the Ottoman empire, the history of the British empire and definitely the history of the Third Reich. In those histories he will discover the pitfalls of empire and imperial ambitions. If he reads (or it is read to him) comments by the likes of Krauthammer, he will only be emboldened to continue on his imperial path.

A true “dictator?” No, probably not. But it should be close enough to make us a bit fearful and watchful.

As a parting glimpse into the mind of G. W. Bush, here is what he said to the Washington Post journalist, Bob Woodward, from Woodward’s book, Bush At War -- 2002:

“I’m the commander – see, I don’t need to explain things – I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”

This blatant hubris tells us much…..

16. What To Do About the Values Issue?

The GGGA Group

Much has been made of the apparent fact that a great many folks voted for Bush based on the agreement between their set of “values” and those of the president. This means that those values have become an important component in the minds of many voters – to the exclusion of other very significant aspects of Bush’s agenda as well as their own economic and social needs. It is important to examine exactly what those values are and why they have become so relevant in our politics today.

We have heard the phrase: God, Guns Gays and Abortion as the four key components of this value system. Each one is worthy of analysis. I have addressed the God issue in more than one essay above, and I will address the other three here.

Guns

We know what the 2nd Amendment regarding guns says: A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and we may be familiar with the various court rulings regarding this amendment -- it stands as is, regardless of the outdated purposes of the language of the era in which it was created. Gun owners, of which there are many millions, rely on that amendment for retention of their fire arms, claiming it as a right that is given to us by our founding document. We take these constitutional rights very seriously and the large and effective gun lobby has always been successful in keeping that amendment intact and interpreted as they want it to be. I heard that, during the recent presidential election, gun owners were warned by some unscrupulous Bush supporters that if Kerry was elected, they would have to give up their guns – even if Kerry is an acknowledged gun owner and hunter. (He went out of his way, during the campaign, in what I felt was a rather comic and unconvincing display of gun appreciation, to have himself filmed in camouflage while hunting geese!) I believe that gun owners are usually of a strong conservative bent – never mind any publicity about the patrician liberal from the East Coast who might boast of being a gun guy. This means that gun owners view liberals as anti-guns. Is there a grain of truth in this? Probably, yes. But, does this mean that a liberal president will push for the passage of a constitutional amendment doing away with the 2nd amendment? No – of course not, but that is the perception. Thus, the nexus between ownership of guns and the conservative mind set – no surprise.

This gun issue is rather interesting in that it speaks to what is apparently a visceral attachment to our weapons – rather like the spears and swords of old, that were virtually a part of the man, his extension of might and strength in a tough and dangerous world filled with potential enemies. Couple this with the belief among many that we need our guns to protect us from the dangerous activities of our government (a potential enemy) whereby we can, with our “militia “defend ourselves with our weapons. The absurdity of this position is clear to many and quite obscure to many others. We have the State’s National Guards as our modern version of militias – we need no vigilante type organizations with their caches of weapons on the ready to defend against the egregious acts of a distasteful federal government, or that of a King George III. I have little doubt that in the foreseeable future the 2nd amendment will remain as is and the gun owners can rest easy, but that does not prevent them from forming a great wave of protest against any perceived threat to their constitutional right to bear arms. Any Democrat who wishes to gain the office of Presidency must, whatever else he or she might profess to support, make it quite clear that gun rights are protected. This does not mean that I agree with the 2nd amendment – I do not. But I am bucking a huge wave of entrenched gun owners and that force is far too much to try and resist at this moment. We must cave in to the validity of that amendment while keeping our moral compasses aligned the way we wish, and biding our time.

Gays

This issue is worthy of a book or two. As I don’t wish, nor am I equipped, to write such a book, and so I will put down merely a few thoughts on the matter.

There are two schools of thought regarding why or how a person is or becomes gay. (I use gay and homosexual as meaning the same thing – attraction to the same sex) One school believes one is born gay, or that it is a genetic condition; the other school believes it is a choice. To a rational mind this distinction is important; to an irrational one it doesn’t matter, and to many of those kinds of minds the genetic discussion will have little meaning in the first place. But, assuming that it cannot be proved one way or the other (yet), there are gays among us in rather large numbers and they are demanding at least their civil rights. The GGGA group is demanding that certain of those rights not be given to gays, mainly the right to get married. The arguments for this position vary, but it seems the most compelling one has been that gay marriage will destroy the institution of marriage. Another one is that the institution of marriage came about as a natural process or law of nature for the sole purpose of procreation and the rearing of children. But lingering behind both of these fears is simply the revulsion that many feel when thinking of the gay life style and sexual proclivities. (The laws prohibiting sodomy reflect such revulsion and the recent Supreme Court ruling that sexual behavior in the privacy of a bed room cannot be considered illegal in any state.) In the absence of this visceral fear and loathing of gay life style I doubt that the other two key arguments against gay marriage would have much force.

It is patently obvious to anyone who would take the time to think about or research it, the institution of marriage has always, at least since divorce has become so ubiquitous in this country, been a fragile one as witnessed by the following quote:

The National Center for Health Statistics recently released a report which found that 43percent of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years. The study is based on the National Survey of Family Growth, a nationally representative sample of women age 15 to 44 in 1995. Bramlett, Matthew and William Mosher. "First marriage dissolution, divorce, and remarriage: United States, Advance Data From Vital and Health Statistics; No. 323. Hyattsville MD: National Center for Health Statistics: 2 1.

It seems that the institution of marriage is already threatened by heterosexuals who make mistakes in their choice of a mate. In fact, there is no such thing as an institution of marriage; marriage is both a religious and a legal process only, and the anti-gay marriage people are arguing against the legal aspect – churches/religions can do as they see fit in the matter.

The anti-gay marriage crowd are most certainly a combination of Christian right and fundamentalist believers who are deep down concerned about what the gay life style might do to the society as a whole, including the schools, churches and government. They seem afraid that such a life style will creep into their family or community and corrupt the youth – thus they probably believe that homosexuality is a choice, not a genetic condition. This is interesting in that it suggests that they fear there might be something alluring about the life style or else the children would not be attracted to it – rather like drugs, alcohol, sexual promiscuity, or even communism! This in turn suggests that those who feel threatened in this way admit to the strong possibility that the way they raise their children may not condition the children to resist the perceived evils of homosexuality.

One argument that I have heard from a U. S. senator runs something like this: Marriage exists for the procreation and rearing of children; it takes a man and a woman to produce a child, therefore marriage should be the sole domain of heterosexual couples. This specious argument ignores the fact that many couples incapable for physical reasons of producing children manage to get them anyway through various medical or legal procedures, and that octogenarians often marry with no intention or capability of producing progeny.

Christians who profess to be Christians in the true sense of the word – following the teachings of Christ – know that the scriptures in the New Testament make no mention of the sins of homosexuality. Sodomy, a practice that has been seen as perverse for thousands of years really has little to do, necessarily, with homosexuality – a fact usually overlooked. The dictionary definition of sodomy is: anal or oral copulation with a member of the same or opposite sex. Since this kind of sexual behavior cannot produce offspring, it is possible that we do possess an innate revulsion for it, though this is problematic and, in the context of this discussion, irrelevant. If the issue is marriage and civil rights, the sexual practices of people is of no legal concern here, especially following the recent Court ruling on the matter.

I believe it to be beholden on the gay community to pridefully and honorably take their cause to the public by their behavior as well as through reasoned legal arguments. But it is equally beholden on the rest of us, those who see nothing wrong in gay marriage, to quietly but diligently argue their case for them. Our civil rights are precious and there is no telling which of ours may be threatened in the future. As far out and draconian as it might seem, would you like to see your right to vote challenged if you were not a Christian, or if you were a Muslim?

Abortion

This may be the single most divisive cultural issue we are facing today. It boils down to two simple questions: What is human life? and, When does it begin? The abortion matter has spilled over, from these questions, into the recent embryonic stem cell research controversy. There is apparently a deep visceral feeling surrounding the belief that human life commences at the instant of conception – when the sperm manages to enter the egg, whether by natural sexual intercourse or by laboratory manipulation. Yet such a definition cannot be found anywhere in the Bible, therefore its original basis cannot be scripture or even early church dogma. Modern microbiology has introduced medical possibilities that have heretofore never been considered, and along with them are new ethical tangles that often accompany new unimaginable science. (The list is long, if one goes back to Copernicus, of religious arguments with the findings of science.)

Related to this topic is that of what is and what is not considered to be natural. Many of the Christian faith, and others as well, believe that what is natural is not to be tampered with, and that there is a great difference between what is man made and what is natural. Few stop to realize that everything under the sun, including what natural humans do is natural. If the beaver’s dam is natural, then so is the Eiffel Tower and the Space Shuttle. As natural human animals, all that we do is, therefore, natural. This concept is hard to digest by those who believe that there is a consequential difference between what we do as humans and what, for example, the chimpanzee does, or the elephant, or the beaver, or the rose or the mushroom. If one simply removes this distinction, a great deal changes in one’s thinking.

The basis for this distinction is clouded in our history and it is hard to find exactly where and why it came about. When the telescope was invented, and the Catholic Church denied its veracity in establishing the nature of the heavens, it began the path of the value and truth of human invention and discovery versus that which is (by religious dogma) established and given by divinity. What is divinely given is not of the hand of man, but the hand of natural, and God-given law . Therefore, the cognitive powers of man, as strong and as pervasive as they have proven to be, are not superior or as divinely sanctioned as those that occur naturally – without the intrusive hand of man. How strange, in my opinion., is this distinction. It relegates man (and of course I mean men and women!) to a category of agents that is separate from divine surety and purpose, and yet, the Bible tells us that we have been created in the image of God. If that is so, why are we thus given the back seat in the process of life and living, thinking, inventing, building, and yet, those same capabilities in the other creatures of the earth are fully sanctioned as being natural, and thus protected from the admonitions of the church? Of course, the church cannot hold forth on the aberrant and sinful behavior of apes, ants and antelopes! – that would be absurd. Why? Think about it.

Arguments against abortion usually involve the idea that abortion is murder. We should not make life, by cloning for example -- it’s unnatural!, and we cannot take life since that is murder and against God’s commandments, as well as against our own secular laws. Life begins at egg-sperm connection, therefore using that microscopic bit of matter for anything but becoming a human is tantamount to murder. Our hands are tied by religious dogma in these areas, not tied by rational thought. We kill humans every day by legal executions, unnecessary police shootings and war. We can choose to make life via in vitro fertilization – unnatural?

As long as people view a blastocyst (the few undifferentiated cells occurring after sperm-egg fusion) as a living human, this argument will be waged. Therefore the concept of what a human is needs airing out and agreed to. The reason the Supreme Court allowed abortion during the first four months of gestation is that it was assumed that after that period the fetus had a chance for viability of growth outside the womb. It was also a nod to the moral revulsion we all probably share, of destroying something that looks like a human. It is an understandable moral position that I cannot argue with.

My encyclopedia says, of the early embryo:

The implanted embryo consists of a hollow sphere, the blastocyst, containing a mass of cells, called the embryonic mass, attached by a stalk to one side of the encircling membrane. In a blastocyst less than two weeks old and measuring 1 mm (0.04 in) in diameter, the microscope reveals the amnion (a sac surrounding the embryo), chorion
(a membrane that develops around the amnion and lines the uterine wall), yolk sac, and distinct germ layers.

Those embryonic cells, at this very early developmental period are undifferentiated; they have not been given the necessary signals to become spinal chords, hearts, eyes, legs, etc. They cannot by any stretch of the imagination, be called a human. Arguments are made that they are potential humans. But potential is not existence. A match, before being struck, is not fire; it may or may not produce fire when it is struck!

Conclusion

Ever since the emergence of Christian church dogma via the Popes of Rome, contests have raged between secular and religious concepts as to what is right, necessary and allowable for human behavior, and what human values should be. Science has, from the start, been at odds with the church. Today we see millions of people who seriously doubt the veracity of Darwinian theories of evolution, believing instead that everything living has been specifically designed and created by God – from bacteria to humans. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, from fossils to atomically based dating methods and laboratory experiments, this creationist view has strong support among many Christians. It is tied to this general topic since it is based on pure dogma and belief, not knowledge and facts. However, in my opinion, it is alright to believe something as long as that belief does not prevent one from either having another belief or gaining knowledge. The Catholic church, in choosing not to believe in the truth of what the first telescope saw, denied themselves the knowledge of what was seen, and prevented another belief – that the instrument was not the work of the devil. By choosing to believe that early embryonic cells are humans, one is disallowed from believing that some good might come from using those cells to save lives and prevent suffering. This seems like a no-brainer to me, but for many it certainly is not.

It is interesting that God, Guns, Gays and Abortion are usually all of a piece in many people’s minds. I suppose one could wrap it all up in the statement: We must obey God’s laws, as we believe them to exist, and own guns because we have the right to own them.

Our values are derived from deeply felt beliefs, but if those beliefs are based on what cannot be demonstrably shown to be of either personal or general social good, for now and for the future, how can they be justified? All beliefs that lead to our value system, are based on something – usually the teachings from our parents, schools, churches and friends. They do not come packaged in our brains at birth. Many of us, at some point in our lives, begin to question some of those taught beliefs, and if they fail the test of rational examination and analysis. by the discovery that indeed they are not of either personal or general social good, they are usually rejected. Sometimes this is a painful loss of religious faith; other times it is a refreshing experience of liberation from a constraining dogma that made no good sense. Kai Nielsen, in his Ethics Without God, says:

But the validity or soundness of a belief is independent of its origin. When one person naively asks another where he got his moral beliefs, most likely he is not asking how he came by them, but rather (a) on what authority he holds these beliefs, or (b) what good reasons or justification he has for these moral beliefs. He should answer that he not and cannot hold these beliefs based on any authority…….. one’s moral principle must be something that is subscribed to by one’s own deliberate commitment, and it must be something for which one is prepared to give reasons.

As fruitless as secular versus religious discussions with devoutly religious people often are, I believe it to be essential to keep harping on Nielsen’s excellent points; give me your reasons. Humans are, or should be, reasoning animals.

17. The Senate is an Abomination
                   (at best -- a tyranny at worst)

No, not the people in it, (or all of them anyway) but its meaning, power and structure. Way back when we were but thirteen colonies, more or less sovereign ones and the structure of our representative government was being defined, the Articles of Confederation included the statement: Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled. The letter and the spirit of this condition went smoothly into the Constitution, since without it there would have been no ratification of that document. At that time the states were little fiefdoms, self centered and self serving and there was certainly no grand and unified passion for a central government that might usurp the powers of those states. It took the tireless efforts of men like Hamilton, Madison, Jay, Jefferson, Washington and Franklin to win over the reluctant governors and people of the states, and in that process compromises were made to assuage the fears of such a usurpation. Perhaps the greatest compromise of all was that defining the Senate, a body of nearly equal stature and importance to that of the House of Representatives. The House is composed of representatives numerically proportional to the populations of their respective districts, counties, boroughs, etc. The Senate is composed of two representatives from each state. Why was this done? States with relatively small populations would obviously have less representation in the House of Representatives than those with large populations; the Senate structure tends to mitigate this representative imbalance – each state is equally represented in the Senate. What that means in terms of representative government can be seen today. In the Senate the Republicans have fifty-five Senators, The Democrats have forty-four, thus the Republicans control the Senate. (By control is meant they make the rules, they chair all the committees – they run the show.) This means that in terms of making and passing bills, ratifying treaties, confirming judicial appointments and trying the President following impeachment, today such important functions are controlled by those who represent about half the nation’s population.

Now I can hear all those voices out there who champion state’s rights, and I understand their passion, and I understand the logic of that original compromise: we mustn’t deny any sovereign state an equal power in governance, no matter how small its population. That compromise effectively altered our supposed representative republic government to the point it is really not one. But we know today that no state is truly sovereign. The nation is integrated by its laws, by its commerce, by its highway system, by its military organization and by the Federal judiciary to the extent that the states have relatively small say in what can and cannot be done on a national level. States can pass laws that deal only with the citizens of that state – period – but the really important laws of the nation effect all citizens in numerous and complex ways and are left to the Federal government, as they should be. Those who argue with me as to the fairness of the Republican control of the Senate can only argue from the same position as the governors and land owners of the original thirteen colonies who wanted an equal share of federal governance. Is this an important consideration today? It is only if the true sovereignty of the states is an important consideration today. Is it? I argue that it is not.

The main reason I say this is: the idea of a state is composed of one primary factor: its borders. Its identity as something more than a specific and well defined piece of geography is an abstraction that the inhabitants hold dear and with pride. Most Texans will claim that “I am a Texan!” even before they claim they are an American and every inch of the prescribing border of that state is a precious line of demarcation between Texas and the states contiguous with it. This is rooted in the history of our country and will probably never change, but that does not make it a rational basis for making decisions that affect the whole nation.

In The Federalist Papers, 62, it was probably ( ?) James Madison that dealt to some extent with this compromise. In my estimation his offering on the subject is weak and probably a political cave-in so as not to muddy the waters of a difficult time prior to the adoption of the final Constitution. His remarks are worth quoting in full here:

The equality of representation in the Senate is an­other point which, being evidently the result of compro­mise between the opposite pretensions of the large and the small States, does not call for much discussion. If indeed it be right that among a people thoroughly incor­porated into one nation every district ought to have a proportional share in the government and that among independent and. sovereign States, bound together by a simple league, the parties, however unequal in size, ought to have an equal share in the common councils, it does not- appear to be without some reason that in a com­pound republic, partaking both of the national and federal character, the government ought to be founded on a mix­ture of the principles of proportional and equal represen­tation. But it is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered in­dispensable." A common government, with powers equal to its objects, is called for by the voice, and still more loudly by the political situation, of America". A movement founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the States is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischief which may ensue to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacri­fice.

I see this, perhaps none too charitably, as rhetorical obfuscation that gives the Senate representation concept some oratorical cover for the sake of making the smaller states happy and thus more likely to approve the Constitution. (Since elsewhere in the Papers Madison decries the potential for the tyranny of the majority, I am not sure that Madison wrote the above.)

I used to have the naive idea that Senators, though they did represent the local concerns of their states, also had a fiduciary responsibility for the nation as a whole. Actions taken in response to those responsibilities would be based on their own view of national needs and priorities as well as those they believed to be held by their constituents. Why should a Senator from Alabama be concerned about drilling for oil in the Artic National Wild Life Refuge, or where nuclear waste should be dumped? They should care based on their moral and patriotic persuasions, but in fact their care is also based to a large degree on the quid pro quos that they may make with other Senators related to things they may want for their state.

As for political ideologies as embodied in the two parties having great influences in Senate decisions, one can see the obvious dangers that exist today with the representational divide I mentioned at the outset. The current Republican party is one that is caught up in an ideology that does not fully represent that of the nation, and yet its thin majority status can work its will to carry out that ideology – the Democrats having only the fragile and risky to use device of the filibuster. Infused with that ideology is the growing influence of the religious right and the creeping connections between church and state. While polls indicate that there remains strong public support for legalized abortion, the Republican ideology also includes a clear intention of reversing the Roe v. Wade decision. Embryonic stem cell research is another area, related to that of abortion, that is looked upon in that Republican ideology as immoral, even though the polls also indicate that a majority of the public supports such research. What this and many other examples indicate is that a broad and often unpopular agenda can be promulgated by a group of people who represent only one half of the population, and especially with a sitting President of the same party, there is little that can be done about it.

Thus, the title of this little piece: The Senate is an Abomination. Can one make an argument for a unicameral congress, doing away with the Senate? Yes, but it will never happen. I can see no reason for having a bicameral congress; it causes delays in legislation, places huge hurdles in front of important national decisions, and was obviously done to assuage the fears of those little colonial states that feared being beaten down by the big bad more populated states up north. It perverts the whole idea of a representational government, since it really is not one. Wyoming, for example, has about half a million people, and has two Senators – just like California, with over thirty-eight million. Is that fair representation? Of course not, but just try to take those Senators away from Wyoming and all hell would break loose.

A very recent incident occurred that drives home my point regarding this situation and the dangers of an ideology-driven controlling Republican majority in the Senate. Arlen Specter, who is in line to chair the Judiciary committee, responsible for hearings on Federal jurist nominations, voiced his opinion: “When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, over-turn Roe v. Wade, I think that it is unlikely….The President is well aware of what happened when a bunch of his nominees were sent up with the filibuster.” (Specter supports a woman’s right to choose.) the Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist came down like a hammer on Specter and Spector recanted. This in light of the fact that what Specter said was well known and true. This means that not only will there be litmus tests for judicial appointments, but apparently litmus tests for the committee chairs as well! Never mind seniority, experience, intelligence and any spirit of bipartisanship – go with ideology first.

Another recent development is the nomination of Condi Rice as Secretary of State. While she is expected to pass muster in the Senate, she is clearly an extension of the President’s ideology, or else she would never be nominated in the first place. In lieu of a filibuster (highly unlikely in this case) she will get through the hearing process even if all Democrats and Independents voted against her.

If the Senate is as bad and as dangerous as I believe it to be, what, if anything, can be done about it? We have two routes: elections of Senators and pressure on the ones we do elect. I would like to think that we can elect Senators whose vision of their role in the Senate is the well being of the whole nation, not just or only their ideology or the quid pro quos they can arrange among themselves for pork. It is important where nuclear waste is dumped – not only because no state wants it in their back yard, but because a solution for its storage or destruction is important from an environmental point – the environment of the nation and the world, not just any single state.

As for Federal judicial appointments, can it be so hard to find experienced, competent and ideologically neutral judges to be given life-time jobs? Both sides of the aisle should eschew nominations that are either way, liberal or conservative, in their previous rulings, papers and publications. I am reminded of the nomination of Lani Guinier by President Clinton, to be the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Her nomination was withdrawn after a huge resistance was offered by the Republicans because of their interpretation of some of her writings. In my opinion, Clinton caved in far too easily; she was never given the chance before the Senate hearings to make her views and past opinions well understood. Stephen L. Carter, in his Forward to Guinier’s book The Tyranny of the Majority said the following:

The attacks on Guinier ignited a firestorm that the White House was unable to quell. Although furious Guinier supporters insisted that she was being railroaded, the President who had nominated her finally made the hard choice to withdraw her name. This decision, though perhaps in­evitable, denied her even the opportunity for a hearing on her views (a privilege, her friends pointed out, granted even to such doomed nominees as Zoe Baird and Robert Bork, and, for that matter, to Clar­ence Thomas, whom Washington insiders mistakenly believed was doomed). On the other hand, it spared Senators the apparently unwel­come task of standing up to be counted on one side or the other of the controversy.

And it was all a terrible shame, for this time, finally, as we as a nation were once more caught up in what sometimes seems our semimonthly confirmation angst, there was actually something to be accomplished by holding hearings. Had Lani Guinier had her hearing, her chance to de­fend herself and explain her views, no one can tell whether she would have been confirmed. Certainly the deck was stacked against her, and, more often than not; political reality will out. Nevertheless, had her accusers been forced to raise their charges in a forum in which Guinier herself was entitled to equal time-the hearing room-we might have had the tele­vised "national seminar" that some have said we got in the Bork hearings, this time on the fundamental dilemma that has shaped our nation's his­tory: the dilemma of race.

Thus we see the effects of partisan pressure; not only was a qualified person denied a place in government, and denied even a hearing, the Senators were not required to make their partisan opinions public thus protecting them from any back lash from African-American voters in their states. (Lani Guinier is an African-American woman with impeccable academic credentials)

In her book she says, dealing with this topic:

The problem of majority tyranny arises, however, when the self interested majority does not need to worry about defectors. When the majority is fixed and permanent, there are no checks on its ability to be overbearing. A majority that does not worry about defectors is a majority with total power.

Today, taken as a whole, our government is controlled by a Republican majority since the Presidency and both houses of congress are of that party. In addition, there is little evidence of any defectors being on the way to leaving the party and becoming an Independent or Democrat. This means that the checks and balances so dear to the conceptual hearts of Madisonians are out the window for the time being at least.

Madisonian democracy, as I sure he envisioned it, is quite different from what we have today. The carefully laid out system of checks and balances is a fine way to insure equity, fairness and representation that has some meat to it, but the way in which the current system is structured would probably make Madison cringe. We read The Federalist Papers number 47, by Madison:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judicial in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed , or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. (my emphasis)

I doubt that Madison envisioned the situation that we encounter today, in which the rules of both houses can be so easily manipulated as to grease the skids for accommodations that give the Republicans the decided edge in all matters of legislation and rules. Most recently, the House of Representatives has changed the rules governing the active participation of any member who is under indictment from some court. One such member, Tom Delay of Texas, who may be indicted for his shenanigans in his home state, and who is one of the moving forces in his party (Republican) is now free to remain active and participatory, even under the indictment. In the Senate, Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, has indicated that he intends to alter the rules dealing with the filibuster so as to mitigate the minority’s ability to stall and eventually halt actions they feel are against a huge percentage of the population – i. e. about half of the nation. We are witnessing an erosion of the checks and balances that Madison and Jefferson believed to be the hallmark of a new kind of republican government that was not only beholden, honestly, to its constituents, but also to itself as an institution of high integrity that could not fall into the disarray of the tyranny of a majority. It might be one thing if the representation in congress was something like eighty to twenty, wherein the majority was compellingly and obviously so strong as to represent the population in a very large proportion – but we do not have that today. This current condition should give us pause, and not only those out of power, but those in power, since the constructs, rules and precedents that are now being set, will prevail when they are no longer in power; and they will not be there forever.

I have not mentioned any moral components to this situation; morality is a sticky and confusing concept that has managed to intrude itself in the recent election to a degree that is surprising and unsettling. But morality might need reexamination in light of the election and what some have said regarding its influences on the outcome. To begin with, it is my opinion that the election turned on fear and ignorance – not any serious degree of rational consideration of the kind of leadership our nation needs at this time. The fact that so many poor folks who have no job, no health insurance, little hope for a better tomorrow for themselves and for their children, voted for Bush, tells me that they did so out of fear of what has been suggested to be fearful of, and ignorance of the facts or non-facts on which that fear is based. They can be forgiven for this; our elected leaders cannot. In addition, the so-called moral component for many relates to social concerns that have little or nothing to do with their livelihood and the tomorrows of their children – i. e. gay marriages, abortion, gun control, stem cell research. The party in power, the Republicans, tapped into this fear, this fixation on what I would term fringe elements of serious societal importance, and played it for all it was worth. Now we have the 55/44 split in the Senate that means we will be under the sway of the current Republican ideology for the next few years and perhaps beyond. To suggest that there is a real moral component to this is absurd. It is not moral that forty-two million are without health insurance; that millions of children live below poverty; that we are killing innocents in Iraq out of a political choice; that we are dismantling protections of the environment; that we are exploiting the labor of those abroad to fill the coffers of big business. We are forgetting that morality has a broad and lasting reach into all parts of our lives – not simply those niches that might catch our attention and ruffle our feathers a bit. If the Senate, with it s slim majority can railroad legislation towards what amounts to a truly immoral future, then our democracy has failed and we will suffer the consequences for a very long time.

I suppose that “abomination” is a bit hyperbolic. There are some good things about that body. In some cases it has put the breaks on unnecessary or ridiculous legislation and in many ways is a more circumspect group of people. But when the desired checks and balances the founders envisioned are thwarted by such a thin majority, I am concerned, and we all should be. I say this because the movements of a population can gain a momentum that apparently fuels itself by its own inertia. If there are fears
(and ignorance) that hover over the nation, from whatever source, it is a proclivity of the nation to support the regime in power if that regime has a perceived mandate to ameliorate those fears. That regime can take advantage of this and feed the fears by more threatening news and scare tactics – as was obviously done in the recent election cycle. We should be concerned that the Senate, a hopefully more sane and far seeing body, has become a tyrannical, one-party organization that will do, more or less, the bidding of the Republican party and the president, and ignore the needs and general welfare of the whole nation. The Senate is indeed an abomination if it chooses to ignore roughly half the nation in its bid to make the nation what IT wants it to be. If it succumbs to the enchantment of its own power in this 55/44 split, it will not be serving us well at all.

18. Rights and Wrongs
        (Comments on Alan Dershowitz’s Rights From Wrongs)

What are human rights? Do they have any legitimate standing in our judicial, legislative and cultural systems? Can we rely on their existence to defend ourselves against perceived wrongs by others, including the government? Alan Dershowitz argues that a reasonable basis for making a determination as to the validity of such rights, is the historic record regarding a collection of what have been determined to be unquestionably wrong. At first glance this position might seem to be one that makes good sense. Dershowitsz himself points out that times, situations and cultures change, and morals, ethics and laws change with them – introducing the element of moral relativism in the issue. What then are we to make of things in the fluctuating milieu of moral and legal correctness and acceptability? If we are bereft of the guidance of a deity, religious dogma and natural laws, then are we not cast adrift on a sea of either solipsism or nihilism, which offer no solace or moral compass? Dershowitz suggests that it is the collection of past wrongs that we have come to see as intellectually (and in all ways) indefensible and socially undesirable that should determine that moral and legal compass for now and for the future. This seems reasonable, but there is a flaw in it. While in the midst of a cultural and/or political upheaval (take Germany, circa 1930) or even today, whilst we are engaged in a so-called “war on terror,” we often cannot see the forest for the trees. We cannot see the all the ramifications that might obtain from our actions. It is usually from the perspective of history that we can make such determinations. I agree with Dershowitz that the wrongs he chronicled were indeed wrong
(and more on that later) but I can see that from my height of experience and knowledge of history..

As to the perceived wrongs, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the actions of Hitler’s regime, etc. of course we now see them as wrong; did we then see this? No – not really. The people’s attitudes in Germany in the 30’s was one of fear and trepidation based on the economy and the propaganda the fascist forces were putting out there. They did not, or could not see the potential ramifications of Hitler’s agenda; or if they did, it was accepted as what was needed at the time. The Inquisition, as nasty and unwarranted as it seems today, might have seemed perfectly reasonable even to the lay person, who accepted the draconian measures of a fiercely doctrinal Catholic Church since they made some kind of religious sense. The Crusades’ actions of the knights in the holy lands might have been romantically perceived by many as necessary reactions to the unbelieving Muslims living in Jerusalem . Therefore the “truth” of any given “wrong” might very well have been the “truth” of a justified action. Let me give an example that is applicable today in this country.

We are not witnessing (at least here at home) any massive hue and cry against our current administration’s actions – the Patriot Act; the unprovoked war on a sovereign nation; the intrusion of religion into our government; the neglect of habeas corpus in our dealing with assumed enemies of the state. (The list is long) and yet it may prove that this situation might be one that is akin to the conditions and actions that obtained in Hitler’s Germany in the 1930’s. Fear and ignorance were the driving forces that allowed Hitler to come to power, and few imagined the possible consequences. It is surely the same kind of fear and ignorance that is at work today. How can the general population be made aware that we are on a slippery slope here? The collective persuasion is one that apparently accepts the direction our recently elected president pursues. If it takes historical distance to understand and measure the effects of governmental actions and their potential wrongs, what can be done, now, to prevent the serious wrongs that may be lurking in these actions?

I believe that very few of us pay much attention to the future in this regard. The internment of the Japanese during WWII seemed like the correct thing to do for most of us, including our high court. It took the distance of time and cultural change as well as a calmer reflection on the matter to discern the unfairness of that act. If this is the case, then there is little that can be done in the moment to prevent repeats of such acts. Humans are emotional and often knee-jerk animals; we don’t usually stop and weigh all the philosophical, legal and moral aspects of an issue, especially one that we believe to bear on our own immediate security and peace of mind. If “wrongs,” and therefore their opposite “rights,” are determined by often quite distal ramifications, what good does that do to our situation today?

I am certainly not arguing for any kind of absolute determination of what is wrong and what is right. Dershowitz makes an excellent case against such absolutism (for a while at least) – religious, legal or moral, and I agree completely with him. But where does that leave us? Must we wait for the next generation to discover that the actions of this administration were blatantly against the best interests of the people? Of course this begs the question: How do I know this? Do I know it simply based on the face value of what Bush is doing, or is it based on my historic knowledge? Am I applying my own personal perspective and sensibilities to the matter? If I am, where do they come from and can I defend them rationally?

Perhaps a more telling example is the current decimation of the rain forests in South America. Must we wait until the last tree is felled and the oxygen level on the planet is dangerously low before we perceive the wrong that has been done? Is it not wrong right now? Of course the same argument can be made about global warming. In both these cases it is science and its predictive powers that are up against various economic forces; was this not the case with early scientists who were up against church dogma? Are we more enlightened today than in the time of Da Vinci, Bruno or Copernicus?

Dershowitz’s premise is that there are certain kinds of activities that rise to the level of obviousness or self evidence in terms of their egregious wrongness: slavery, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Holocaust, torture, the internment of the Japanese during WWII. But as I have mentioned, all of those have often found acceptance during their execution, to greater and lesser degrees. If slavery is wrong today, was it not wrong in 1810? It seems to me that Dershowitz is indeed claiming some kind of absolutism here: Were they always wrong? Will they always be wrong? If his answer to these two questions is yes, then this is a kind of moral absolutism. Is this kind of absolutism any different from that arising from religious dogma or the belief in natural law? Wittgenstein said that something is true or certain only if there are no grounds on which to doubt it; that is a tough and problematic test for any considered truth. Someone can easily invent grounds on which to doubt just about anything, especially an abstraction – and wrongs and rights are abstractions.

Today we do have slavery, but it would never be labeled as such. Many who labor at the minimum wage level are a kind of slave, since they are bound by circumstance to do the bidding of others and essentially kept by those circumstances from improving themselves. This is a pretty good definition of slavery. Will some future generation look back on this practice with moral indignation and see it as a wrong? If so, is it not wrong today? Must we wait for that more enlightened and humane day to arrive before we right this wrong? Of course, I am applying my own personal take on the matter; I have no way of knowing who else, in what numbers, might agree with me. But isn’t Dershowitz doing the same thing in his labeling those past wrongs?

I mentioned that rights and wrongs are abstractions. They are also contingent, relative and ephemeral in nature. I have a nominalist friend who would even claim they do not exist! He would state that slavery is not a wrong, but rather that any individual who is in that state is being individually wronged. There is a difference. By using the terms rights and wrongs, we are being no less dualistic than Bush, when he bifurcates the world into good and evil forces. If we try to see the human experience in terms of black and white abstractions we may be missing the heart of the matter – our humanness and our animal nature. If we focus on those and the suffering that is either at hand or is portended then we might better understand the whole issue of right and wrong and human rights.

Dershowitz quotes Stephen Jay Gould as saying, regarding our species:

There is nothing special about us. The world is not there for us. We are not the object of creation, but rather the product of random forces.

As the “product of random forces” we came about not through a grand design of some deity, and random forces are still at play in our makeup and actions. We know precious little about how our minds work, Freud and the cognitive scientists notwithstanding, and the structures of moral, legal and religious reference we construct are no stronger than our collective sensibilities – and those are impossible to understand or predict. I hold to the engineer’s and scientist’s dictum: What is true is what works. But I would invoke something like this for wrongs: What is wrong is what hurts.