The presidential bid of Senator Brownback(R-KS) was always a longshot, but Brownback today basically called it quits. He voted for amnesty and we have seen how Republican primary voters feel about supporters of amnesty in Senator McCain's plummet in the polls. Brownback is not so stupid that he couldn't be aware that his vote sinks his unlikely campaign.
Why his vote? I suggest his vote simply reflects Brownback principles as a convert to Catholicism. This would surprise many people if thought about it. Most people think of Catholics as those normal people around us all the time who say they are Catholics. We forget these normal people Catholics knew next to nothing about Catholic doctrine and aren't interested in learning more. For instance, my fitness instructor calls herself a devout Catholic. We talk about gay romance often. I asked her if she felt any conflict between being open to gays and her Catholicism. Her pitiful attempts at answering indicated that the question hadn't even occurred to her. She ended up saying "you can't take all that stuff seriously." However, when people convert as Brownback did, they take the values seriously, and this means following Catholic moral teaching--even at the cost of a long-shot presidential bid.
I wish to pursue further the theme of what Catholicism may inspire people to do in further posts, but let me tell you where I'm going. Catholicism becomes a suicidal ideology when confronted with a jihadist religion like Islam. Catholicism has lost it Medieval survival instinct. Obviously, the Catholic Church did a lot of evil back during the Middle Ages, but we should always be conscience that the Crusades were not one of them. The Catholic Church finally decided to fight back after a few centuries of Islamic aggression. The decision to fight back against evil can only be considered good--even if Christiandom implemented the decision to fight back rather poorly.
Since Catholicism will not save us, we need either conservative protestantism or a militant secularism to save us. I hope we can pursue both paths, because both conservative protestantism and militant secularism have done so much to make the West a great place to live. Yet, as a militant secularlist, I'm forced to admit that at the current time secularism, like Catholicism, is failing to defend us from the Muslim savages. Conservative protestantism may be our best hope for decent societies for the future. It brothers me not at all to say,"Onward, Christian Soldiers". Really, Pat Robertson's America is not that bad of a place. The Christian Broadcasting Network has some great recipes!
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
The Empty Minds of the Political Elite
Senator Trent Lott must have been trying to make some point when he illustrated immigration issues with his troubles in keeping his goats on his property, but no one is quite sure what it is. The honours committee that selected Salmon Rushdie for knighthood claims to be startled that the selection of Salmon Rushdie caused a furore in the Islamic world. There is of course the well known lack of subtly and depth in U.S. president George W. Bush or the socialist French President candidate Ségolène Royal, who was luckily defeated, but still got 47% of the vote. Utter cluelessness transcends nation and political philosophy in Western nations. Why?
The ability to think about political issues is intimately related to the ability to think about moral issues. Morality addresses the question of how we are live together in a shared world. Sadly we are not taught to think about morality. Instead, we learn the morality consist of simple rules. On the left, we have "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" by Fulghum and such feel good rot. On the right, we have simple-mindedness posing as intellectual depth in discussion of "objective morality". Let's pause for a second on the "intellectually deep" right talk about objective morality. Objective morality is the idea that morality consists of the simple minded application of a small set of rules without any consideration of context. It sounds intellectually to me. In discourse, the right loves to criticize the left for having a relative morality, yet leftist "anti-racism" is as objective as morality gets. Furthermore, the right does think about moral context, except when it doesn't. It depends on the context. We are lucky that the right gets over it objective morality insanity that killing anything homo sapien--even fetuses--when it comes to war.
Instead, of simple mindedness, we need honest conversation about morality so we can have honest political conversation. Of course, part of this is simply get over simple minded hatefulness like assuming that either George Bush or Hilary Clinton are wrong about everything. (I do believe both are wrong about almost everything, but I'm aware of how hard it is to be right.)
For us to have serious political conversation where we address the many complex facets around each issues, in which we admit that have to compromise and that some bad as will as some good will come out of the compromise, we need to start by learning to talk about morality. We should teach logical argumentation about morality in our high school literature classes. Most literature has serious moral components and people can learn to enjoy talking about them. Obviously, high school students will come to many bad answers, but once they learn to think about the questions, they can do a better job as they age. It will take a long time for this program to change society, but the empty headedness of our political elite suggests we can only go up.
The ability to think about political issues is intimately related to the ability to think about moral issues. Morality addresses the question of how we are live together in a shared world. Sadly we are not taught to think about morality. Instead, we learn the morality consist of simple rules. On the left, we have "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" by Fulghum and such feel good rot. On the right, we have simple-mindedness posing as intellectual depth in discussion of "objective morality". Let's pause for a second on the "intellectually deep" right talk about objective morality. Objective morality is the idea that morality consists of the simple minded application of a small set of rules without any consideration of context. It sounds intellectually to me. In discourse, the right loves to criticize the left for having a relative morality, yet leftist "anti-racism" is as objective as morality gets. Furthermore, the right does think about moral context, except when it doesn't. It depends on the context. We are lucky that the right gets over it objective morality insanity that killing anything homo sapien--even fetuses--when it comes to war.
Instead, of simple mindedness, we need honest conversation about morality so we can have honest political conversation. Of course, part of this is simply get over simple minded hatefulness like assuming that either George Bush or Hilary Clinton are wrong about everything. (I do believe both are wrong about almost everything, but I'm aware of how hard it is to be right.)
For us to have serious political conversation where we address the many complex facets around each issues, in which we admit that have to compromise and that some bad as will as some good will come out of the compromise, we need to start by learning to talk about morality. We should teach logical argumentation about morality in our high school literature classes. Most literature has serious moral components and people can learn to enjoy talking about them. Obviously, high school students will come to many bad answers, but once they learn to think about the questions, they can do a better job as they age. It will take a long time for this program to change society, but the empty headedness of our political elite suggests we can only go up.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Immigration and What the Voters Want
Since it looks like the Bush-McCain-Kennedy Amnesty bill will get through the Senate, I just called Congressman Doyle's office to express my opposition to the Amnesty Bill. I asked if there had many calls about the Amnesty bill. The intern girl said she had received many, many calls. I asked her how many she had received in favor of the Amnesty bill. She said none. Doyle is a moderate Democrat who will probably vote in favor of the amnesty bill.
The intern girl mentioned the issue of families. In her mind, it seems because one child was born on American soil that an entire family is entitled to live in America. She says we can't break up families. I asked why the child couldn't go back with the parents to Mexico or wherever. She said because the child is an American. Now, I'm a patriotic American, but I can't help but notice that people have someway managed to survive in other countries. It's not like Mexico has some horrible government that routinely tortures its citizens to keep its grip on power, like say Cuba is. Yet, we sent back Elian Gonzoles. I supported sending back Elian Gonzoles to Cuba, and so my feelings about reuniting families in Mexico is even stronger.
The intern girl mentioned the issue of families. In her mind, it seems because one child was born on American soil that an entire family is entitled to live in America. She says we can't break up families. I asked why the child couldn't go back with the parents to Mexico or wherever. She said because the child is an American. Now, I'm a patriotic American, but I can't help but notice that people have someway managed to survive in other countries. It's not like Mexico has some horrible government that routinely tortures its citizens to keep its grip on power, like say Cuba is. Yet, we sent back Elian Gonzoles. I supported sending back Elian Gonzoles to Cuba, and so my feelings about reuniting families in Mexico is even stronger.
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