The Underground History of American Education

The Tragedy of Democracy

From an Aussie thinktank.

The Trouble with Libertarianism

God is Not an American

Notre Dame's Rev. Michael J. Baxter, CSC, a Catholic Worker-type and Notre Dame theologian who is actually a believing Catholic, pens a challenging critique of the rhetoric used by Bush and Neuhaus & co. following September 11.

For one thing, [Neuhaus' argument] casts the war on terrorism in the exaggerated terms of a struggle for freedom and justice against cruelty and fear, and thus fails to acknowledge the possibility that neither the United States nor al-Qaeda may be on the side of freedom and justice (properly understood) or that both may be given to spreading cruelty and fear. Possibilities such as these do not appear when the world is viewed through the simplistic lens of Neuhaus (and Bush). For another thing, after identifying the cause of the United States with the cause of freedom and justice, it employs a flawed argument to align both of these causes to the purposes of God. The argument is flawed because, while it is true, as Neuhaus argues, that God is not neutral when it comes to freedom and justice, it is also true that God's purposes may well be aligned with a form of freedom and justice that is represented neither by the United States nor by al-Qaeda, but rather by some other political entity or body or by the church itself.

Of course, Neuhaus and especially Bush are involved in stirring up the people and the troops for the conflict, and saying, for instance, "We're fighting for the lesser of two evils" is hardly the wording used to instill dedication and sacrifice. Baxter continues, touching on the vagueness of the deity to which Americans refer in saying "One nation under God," or "In God We Trust." This is a key insight, I think. How many Christians were eager to believe that Muslims do not worship the same God as they, but yet also have quoted with approval Jefferson's dictum that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights" when in fact it is certain that Jefferson neither worshipped nor believed in the God of Abraham?

Baxter's essay is a worthy examination of the tenets of American civil religion. I am surprised it appeared at Free Republic, yet it is for a thread such as this that I continue to browse that increasingly emotivist forum.

It's not a Catholic work if it shows the sins of the Religious. Really!

The opera Jongleur de Notre Dame is playing at a local opera house. No doubt this is based on the story about the juggler who enters the monastery and, shamed by his fellow monks' talents displayed before a statue of Our Lady, thinks himself an inept talentless clod. Then one evening, he decides to juggle before the statue... and the statue smiles! Such sickeningly sweet pious stories are part and parcel of Catholic life. So it's quite funny to watch the director downplay the patent kitschy Christianity of the tale. (One wonders whether the opera company performed similar contortions when it presented Dialogue of the Carmelites a few years back.) Here's the director:

"But it's not overtly religious," the director said of the opera, which opens on Saturday. "Yeah, there's a miracle at the end. But it's about the importance of being honest."

or this gem:

"It's certainly not a 'Catholic' piece. In fact, there's a lot of mocking of the clergy." Indeed, there is a scene in which the monks argue over whose artistic talents are superior."

What's even more laughable is the contrast between the commercial paper's review and the Denver Catholic Register's review, titled "Upcoming opera offers lessons in humility, devotion to Our Lady.

'Caroline is being mystical,' Ernest said.
'Caroline is a mystic,' said Eleanor. 'I've always said so. She's a mystic, isn't she, Laurence?'

'Every time,' said Lawrence, very pleasantly.

'And the trouble with these mystics, the theorise on the basis of other people's sufferings, and in the end they belittle suffering. Caroline, if you'd suffered as much as I'd suffered, you wouldn't be talking like something out of this world.'

'I won't compete with you on the question of suffering,' Caroline spoke acidly, for, after all, she rather fancied herself a sufferer.

-Muriel Spark, The Comforters

Underminding the Foundation Myths of Liberalism

Jim Kalb links to an intriguing piece attacking the standard "the secular state arose as an alternative to wars of religion" thesis. A quotation:

Now the first problem with the attempt to make religion public is that it is still religion. Neuhaus, the Himeses, and McBrien all abide by McBrien's "working assumption" that "religion is a universal category (genus) and that Christianity is one of its particular forms (species)."71 Talal Asad's critique of Geertz' work provides us with a useful antidote to these universalist constructions of religion. Asad shows how the attempt to identify a distinctive essence of religion, and thus protect it from charges that it is nothing more than an epiphenomenon of "politics" or "economics," is in fact linked with the modem removal of religion from the spheres of reason and power.72 Religion is a universal essence detachable from particular ecclesial practices, and as such can provide the motivation necessary for all citizens of whatever creed to regard the nation?state as their primary community, and thus produce peaceful consensus. As we have seen, religion as a transhistorical phenomenon separate from "politics" is a creation of Western modernity designed to tame the Church. Religion may take different cultural and symbolic expressions, but it remains a universal essence generically distinct from political power which then must be translated into publicly acceptable "values" in order to become public currency. Religion is detached from its specific locus in disciplined ecclesial practices so that it may be compatible with the modem Christian's subjection to the discipline of the State.

They're not Quacks, they're Leading Scientists

Touchstone links to a blogger's encounter with James Watson, co-discoverer of the Double Helix and advocate of eugenic abortions.

Holy Ground

William Luse excerpts a novel he likes. I might like it too. More material for the Denver Catholic Book Club?

The Stephanos Project

An Orthodox site containing a few citations of the Church Fathers against contraception.

Alexander the Great, an Orthodox blogger, links to another Orthodox Christian upholding Christian orthodoxy.

Vonnegut Goofs

I have to say that's a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus said that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.(source)

Now thanks to Mr. Vonnegut we have yet another error half-educated people will repeat as Gospel truth. Confucius, in his Analects, actually formulates the negative version of the Golden Rule, "Do not do to others what you would not like yourself." Jesus, of course, says "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" in Matthew 7:12. The negative version of the rule promotes a live and let die attitude, while the positive version enjoins feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and more meddlesome deeds like idol-smashing.

From the American Conservative

For Shame, on the abuse of prisoners of war.

An Interview with Ralph Nader

The Commonplace Book of Zadok the Roman

New Blog

The Ballad of the White Horse

A review of GKC's epic.

Intercollegiate Review Fall 1975

Coming to Grips with Darwin

Philosophical Disorder

Montesquieu’s Modern State

Intercollegiate Review Spring 1975

Was the American Founding A Lockean Enterprise? The Case of James Madison

Between Language and Silence: Wittgenstein’s Dilemma

Art and Religion: Felicitous Tension or Conflict?

The Case Against Perfection

An intriguing article in the Atlantic Monthly on eugenic enhancement.

Thoughts on the Legal Profession by a Disillusioned Lawyer

and part ii

Scita et Scienda: The Dwarfing of Modern Man

Also by von Kuehnelt-Leddin

Leftism Revisited

My newest political read is Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddhin's Leftism Revisited, a survey of left-wing thought. von Kuehnelt-Leddhin was
a Catholic aristocrat from Austria--he wrote for National Review,
back when that magazine had class. His opinions are quite thought-
provoking, though rather eccentric. He sees all democratic mass
movements as fundamentally leftist, which in his view includes
nationalism, communism, fascism, and nazism.

At first, this seems overly broad. Nazis as leftists? Yet he makes
his case for this categorization, citing voting statistics in the
elections during the rise of Hitler. The non-leftist non-Nazis
voted largely the same throughout this period. The left-wing
parties, however, all went over to Hitler.

True right-wingers support the mixed governments which have aspects
of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, rather than democracy in
its pure form. (I'm still debating whether the American government
fits the mixed government type.) von Kuehnelt-Leddhin shuns the
conservative label, considering himself an early liberal in the
spirit of other Catholic aristocrats like de Tocqueville and Lord
Acton.

I myself am torn between Chestertonian democratic populism and
Waughvian aristocratic pretension. This book hasn't helped me
resolve the tension at all, alas.