Items Posted by Jim Kalb
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jul 1 07:16:36 EDT 1997
Article: 10005 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 1 Jul 1997 06:53:57 -0400
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In <386217177wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>One wonders whether people who argue like this [antiIslamophobes] can
>seriously be called liberals; I suppose it is because they believe
>that Islamist extremism is not a serious threat that they are prepared
>to defend its intolerance.
The main enemy is still the residual authority of Christian and English
or more generally European tradition. Acceptance of Islam is not meant
seriously but as a way of weakening the main enemy.
>> Liberals claim that sexual unhappiness stems from 'Victorian'
>> repression.
>Do they stuill say that? I thought that one had been dead for twenty
>years.
An argument will survive where it serves a purpose. The unhappiness
and self-destructiveness of sexual minorities for example is still
attributed to social repression. Many educators retain their loyalty
to the "let the child freely express his natural tendencies" theory,
which tendencies include sexual impulses. That's partly because
they're stupid, partly because the theory taps sentimentalism about
childhood, and partly because it furthers their interest in destroying
the authority of parents and replacing it with their own.
>A more usual argument in favour of permissiveness now seems to be 'the
>egg's broken; you can't put it back together again'.
In America the liberty and equality ("rights" and "inclusiveness")
arguments are considered quite strong. Also the difficulty of putting
an argument in favor of traditional sexual morality in persuasive
technological form. What's the program going to be? How should the
scheme of incentives be set up? etc.
>> The conventional liberal defence of the gratuitous offensiveness of
>> modern 'art' is that 'some people deserve to be shocked.'
>Again, is that one still around? Such justifications now seem to be
>replaced by tortuous euphuism.
It's praise to say that art is "confrontive" and "difficult" (in the
sense of "offensive"). Certainly in the public pronouncements of art
bureaucrats.
It's not just blasphemy and obscenity that thereby become virtues. A
few years back there was a to-do about a work by Richard Serra called
"Tilted Arc" (it was in fact an enormous tilted steel arc) that made
the plaza of the Federal Building in downtown Manhattan all but
unusable. Everyone hated it and they eventually got rid of it, in the
face of the uniform outrage of the art world, a lawsuit by Serra who
claimed the work was "site-specific" and would be destroyed by moving
it so his free speech was under attack, etc. Part of the art-world
justification for retaining it was that it was good for the federal
employees to be confronted with something at odds with their habits and
inclinations rather than being able to walk across the plaza, have
lunch there without having to stare at a rusty steel wall a couple of
feet in front of them, experience the plaza as a public space that
respects them and their legitimate purposes, etc.
>in the first [torturer] case you would be regarded as virtuous in many
>parts of the world as long as you happened to be a policeman.
Not really. Consider what de Maistre says about the hangman. And
execution was then a public festival, in contrast to torture which is
considered something to lie about and keep hidden.
>But what is needed for music to grow back?
The grace of life can't be planned any more than bought.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Whilst we are waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with
eating and with crimes." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jul 3 08:12:30 EDT 1997
Article: 10014 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Holes in distribution
Date: 1 Jul 1997 21:20:25 -0400
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In Chris Stamper writes:
>> "Whilst we are waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with
>> eating and with crimes." -- Emerson
>Why Emerson?
Because I'm reading him and he writes well.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Thu Jul 3 08:12:31 EDT 1997
Article: 10015 of alt.revolution.counter
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 2 Jul 1997 19:08:29 -0400
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[The following is actually from Bill McClain (wmcclain@salamander.com):]
Jim Kalb wrote:
> Speaking of _Chronicles_, why does the esteemed Editor devote almost
> two pages of the most recent issue to a detailed account of his
> unsatisfactory dealings with American Express?
Because it is another sign of the Decline of the West?
I notice that he has become fascinated with all things Slavic.
Also, didn't he write a few years ago that he was an atheist who would
gladly live under the right sort of theocracy? Now he writes like a
militant Christian believer. I wouldn't expect a conversion confession
>from him (although isn't that part of the faith?), and it would be
cynical and rude to infer ulterior motives.
-Bill
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From jk Tue Jul 1 09:32:22 1997
Subject: Re: Comments
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore)
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 09:32:22 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BC85AB.B0E91B60@ns01a17.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Jun 30, 97 11:09:09 pm
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Onward, ever onward:
>In the chapter where I discuss free will, I do not deny that we can
>make choices, and I would hope that my description of that freedom to
>choose would indicate that you and I do not differ about that
>experience. We can choose to do what we will to do. All I am claiming
>is that the "will" which makes the choice is itself the product of
>forces outside ourselves. This notion of mine would not depict the
>experience of our will any differently from the way an advocate of the
>"free will" idea would have it.
Descartes' "evil deceiver" speculation doesn't question that our
experience is what it is, only that it correponds to anything real.
Your view of choice seems like that to me.
Our experience is that we can choose freely, such that our choice
brings something to the process that is independent and can't be
explained away by reference to circumstances or what has happened
previously, and such that when we choose X we really could under just
those circumstances and with that background have chosen ~X. When we
choose the one we feel we really could have choosen the other -- that
is our experience.
If our experience were otherwise it could not support for example
feelings of responsibility, regret, moral aspiration, admiration for
the heroism of others, etc. My claim is that our understanding of what
the world is like should follow our experience in this respect as it
does for example in the case of physical objects. One reason is that
if it doesn't it reduces the overall coherence and usability of our
understanding of ourselves and the world.
>My notion comes in only in terms of the ultimate locus of the origin of
>our willing forces, and thus in terms of the question of ultimate blame
>or credit.
That's important though. We distinguish reality from conventional
illusions, and it's the former that in the end matters especially when
we are pushed to the wall. If our understanding of ourselves and good
and bad conduct doesn't work when we are pushed to the wall it's not
going to do us much good in the long run.
>I believe that people can do what they want, but that what they want is
>not ultimately within their control.
It seems to me the distinction between morality and what one wants has
to be preserved and treated as corresponding to something real. If you
are well brought up, and in most normal situations, the two will be the
same at least in general. It must be possible though for people to
view their obligations as different at least in principle from what
they want, and themselves as capable of doing what they should instead
of what they want when there is a conflict. If they don't then the
notion of "obligation" becomes useless whenever it's needed.
>I believe in holding people responsible in the sense of giving them the
>message, "It really matters what people want, and we will treat you in
>such a way to increase the likelihood of getting you and others to want
>what's good and right instead of what's evil and wrong.
This is more like training animals than holding responsible.
>I'm not aware of anything in my point of view being akin to the Hindu
>rejection of the reality of the world around us as illusion. I'm not
>sure I followed what that part of your discourse was in response to,
>but if it was supposed to be a counterargument to something I said or
>implied, I didn't get it.
It was a response to your statement of a preference for avoiding
committing yourself to incomprehensible things. If you do that in the
case of things moralists talk about, why not do it in the case of things
physicists talk about and say all experience is illusory?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Whilst we are waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with
eating and with crimes." -- Emerson
From jk Thu Jul 3 07:38:35 1997
Subject: Re: Comments
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore)
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 07:38:35 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BC8730.57506DC0@ns01a58.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Jul 2, 97 09:37:34 pm
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Andy --
> we "could have chosen the other." If we had wanted to. But
> apparently we didn't.
Making a choice is not the same as figuring out what you want to do.
The feeling of choice is the feeling that in just that situation,
including just that emotional state, we could decide either way. Such
a feeling is required to make sense of the notion of following
obligation rather than desire, and more generally of action that is
rational other than by chance.
> I mean, out of precisely the same situation (including in "situation"
> all our feelings, values, desires, priorities, and all the external
> factors like pressures, teachings, people trying to influence us by
> one means or another, etc.) it would seem to me that the same choice
> would be made.
This is simply a denial that our will is free, that our choices are not
fully determined by other things. It is an assertion of universal
mechanical causality. Why should I accept such a metaphysical position
if it makes it impossible for me to make sense of my experience, for
example of free choice and moral obligation?
> Do you think about a different choice arising in some different way?
Yes. It arises differently because we choose differently. We are
actors in the situation, and our agency cannot be explained away by
reference to other things.
> I am simply taking the position that just because SOME things seem to
> be inevitably mysterious and incomprehensible that is no reason to
> give up rationality and the search for sensible ways of seeing things
> where they are available.
Agreed. The issue it seems to me is which mysterious and
incomprehensible things (free will? consciousness? time and space?
existence in general?) simply have to be accepted and dealt with in
order adequately to deal with reality and which can be explained away
or treated as somehow illusory. My impression was that you wanted to
do the latter with at least the first item in my parenthetical list.
My question was, if you do that with the first why not with the others?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From jk Fri Jul 4 06:55:17 1997
Subject: Re: Comments
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore)
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 1997 06:55:17 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BC879E.14686620@ns01a58.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Jul 3, 97 09:48:34 am
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> I think we may have reached the end of the line at this point, for it
> seems that we are at the point of repeating ourselves.
It does seem that way.
> You apparently believe that for it to be meaningful to say that "I
> could have chosen the other," that this possibility of making the other
> choice could have been realized WITH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BEING DIFFERENT
> ... Which to me suggests that my choice was governed by nothing;
> that it was random; or something of that sort.
No, only that my agency can not be reduced to other things. My choice
was not random, it was governed by me, which is why it makes sense to
say I'm responsible for it.
> And finally, on that point of why choose the incomprehensible in some
> situations and not in others, I would have to simply repeat what I've
> said twice before. Where I have a choice between the comprehensible
> and the in-, I choose the comprehensible. On some questions I have
> no such option --the beginning of time, for example-- while on others
> I do, and I choose what makes sense.
My position has been that (1) you *do* have a choice as to time, like
many profound thinkers you can simply say it and all other appearances
are simply an illusion, and (2) to say will is not independent of
circumstance renders our moral experience incomprehensible.
> I also cannot understand how we might have visions that foretell the
> future.
I take it you present this as simply an example of a kind of experience
that you would classify as illusory. I'm inclined to do so as well. I
can get by if I say "the future is unforeseeable;" I can't get by if I
say "all my thoughts and choices are fully explicable at least in
principle by reference to some combination of randomness and mechanical
causation by other things" because if I say that I can make no sense of
moral or even rational thought and action.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Jul 4 07:24:07 EDT 1997
Article: 10020 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 4 Jul 1997 07:09:32 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <211414880wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> rafael cardenas writes:
>> It's all so artificial. I suppose that's the point of PC -- it's a
>> way of speaking that is designed and has to be consciously
>> maintained and policed.
>But don't you find it more disturbing that some people seem to accept
>Newspeak usage as natural now -- e.g. 'gender' when 'sex' is meant?
The Newspeak usages that have caught on mostly seem to combine
self-consciousness and sloppiness in varying proportions. Take
"gender" -- I think that was originally intended to refer to the
socially-constructed aspects of sexual distinctions but that intention
seems to have been lost. People refer to the "gender" of animals, for
example.
Admittedly there is very little about human sexual distinctions that
goodthinkers squarely admit to be natural. The _New York Times_ keeps
running articles for example about the allegedly very large numbers of
infants whose (sex? gender?) is ambiguous at birth and are surgically
assigned one way or the other.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From x Sat Jul 5 07:06:12 1997
From jk Sat Jan 11 08:27:16 1997
Subject: Re: John Birch society
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 08:27:16 -0500 (EST)
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> We have some interesting information about immigration, stemming from
> the John Birch society. What is the public (media) immage of JBS? Is
> it regard as ultraconservative, or has it got a nazi label? Can we
> qoute JBS in articles without risking our immage.
Ultraconservative but not Nazi. The image (dating from the late 50s --
they've been around a while) is of narrowminded provincial
superpatriots who like conspiracy theories and have an extremely
unrealistic picture of the world. People find them more laughable than
alarming. So if you quote them people won't say you're Nazi, just that
you use very unreliable sources. Or such is my opinion.
In reality of course _The New American_, which I think is their main
publication at this point, is quite a good magazine. If the JBS says
where they got the info you could of course use the sources they use.
I think they have a web page -- if they don't give the source maybe you
could send them email and ask.
Good luck!
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: "M" lab menial slain: embalm.
From x Sat Jul 5 07:06:13 1997
From jk Mon Apr 7 08:29:41 1997
Subject: Re: your mail
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 08:29:41 -0400 (EDT)
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>Whats your solution to the problem with labor surplus depending on that
>mashines can take over more and more of production.
A great deal depends on whether artificial intelligence is possible --
that is, whether it will be possible for a computer to pass the Turing
test and so on. (It seems to me by the way that this is the fundamental
issue determining our political, social etc. future.)
My guess is that it won't be possible, so human beings -- every normal
human being -- will always be able to do things a machine can't and so
(speaking from an economist's point of view) will always be a valuable
economic resource. The freer and more technologically advanced markets
get the more they will be able to do with that resource, so I expect
incomes to continue to rise for the great majority while the current
worldwide trend toward economic liberalism continues.
Naturally there will be problems. As markets become better at using
whatever economic capabilities people have differences in income will
widen without limit. Also, better markets and technology mean that all
human capabilities will become more and more readily convertible into
money. The social and cultural problems caused by huge economic
inequalities and immediate convertibility of everything into money are
obvious and I think will end in the radical division of society on
ethnic/sectarian lines. That however is a different problem from that
of labor surplus.
>I can se several ways attractive for the establishment in the future,
>when the problems are growing over there heads.
>
>1) A communist system
A communist system run by a big computer would I suppose be possible if
artificial intelligence is possible.
>2) Forbide the low IQ:s to breed, or regulate their breeding.
Wouldn't do any good if artificial intelligence is possible. If a
machine can do anything someone with an 80 IQ can do then 10 years later
it will be able to do anything someone with a 100 IQ can do and so on.
We could all be replaced -- the difference in principle between someone
with an 80 IQ and you or me is not so great.
>A market economy depends on wage-earners who can by the products they
>produce. No wage-earners, no products sold... In this case would some
>system for distribution be the logical end of market economy.
I don't think this is a problem. There will always be someone who owns
the output and whoever that is will think of something to do something
with it. There won't be products lying around unused.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do not start at rats to nod.
From x Sat Jul 5 07:06:13 1997
From jk Mon Apr 7 17:02:15 1997
Subject: Re:
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 17:02:15 -0400 (EDT)
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> One problem of modern society is that it is based on large
> organisations and unpersonal relations. Humans are designed to live
> in a society based on kinship and close (not shallow) personal
> relations. Services are ideally carried out under such circumstances.
> Parents raising children, and children taking care of the elder. The
> more of human activities separetad from the family, the weeker it
> will be.
Agreed. I don't think it will work in the long run.
> Its a large risk that the well fare society will be the logical
> solution to the problem om labor surplus and distribution of welth
> created by machines. It will at least provide social stability in the
> short run, which makes it an attractive alternative for the ruling
> elites.
Elites love the welfare state because it puts everything in their
hands. People rely on the state and therefore on ruling elites instead
of on themselves and each other. It won't work because it makes the
tendencies described in your previous paragraph worse, because it
permits a class of the idle, resentful and useless to grow up, and
because as people come to care less about each other and markets become
more international and more flexible it will be easier for enterprises
to escape the taxes needed to support it.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do not start at rats to nod.
From x Sat Jul 5 07:06:13 1997
From jk Wed Apr 9 10:39:00 1997
Subject: Re:
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 10:39:00 -0400 (EDT)
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> Are you aware of that big bussiness are as much a threat to a sound
> with a people governing it self, as politicians, journalists and
> intellectuals.
I agree it's a threat, especially to the extent it allies itself with
government, for example by establishing regulatory requirements that
small business has trouble complying with. I also tend to favor
protective tariffs and other restraints on international business
organization.
> I regard the Tradition as a (the only) possible counterbalanse to the
> elites efforts to exercise controll. The tradition is in one way the
> deepest democratic system, since it reflects the experiences of the
> hole community.
I agree with that. The problem is to find some way of preventing
tradition from being destroyed by market and bureaucracy. One
difficulty is that most things people propose to restrain markets
increase bureaucratic control, which is worse because it's backed by
physical force and so is harder in principle to escape from.
The best I can come up with is to severely restrict bureaucracy, so to
the extent people are inclined to order their lives in accordance with
traditional arrangements they will be allowed to do so, and to limit
the scope of markets in particular ways (e.g., tariffs at national
borders, prohibitions on particular businesses and practices like
pornography and certain drugs that threaten traditional order). It
would also help to increase the political power of local communities.
Once those things are done tradition will have to evolve to maintain
itself under current conditions (e.g., cheap, easy and instant
worldwide communication). That can't be forced -- tradition is
something that must grow of itself.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do not start at rats to nod.
From x Sat Jul 5 07:06:13 1997
From jk Thu Apr 10 21:09:27 1997
Subject: Re:
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 21:09:27 -0400 (EDT)
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> Yes, the problem is to find a socioeconomical system that
> works in the way we wish, and like communism not only is a
> fiction. But Marx wasn't wrong in his description of
> modern society, just in his prescriptions. In one way or an
> other the economical power must be destributet to the
> people. I just don't see how it should be done.
A very major problem is that construction of a system implies radical
centralization and rejection of tradition, which doesn't seem to be a
good way to get to distribution of power and reliance on tradition.
> Do you know anything about the third way? Is it feasable?
I don't think they have anything really worked out -- just general
intentions and a few specific measures.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do not start at rats to nod.
From x Sat Jul 5 07:06:13 1997
From jk Sat Apr 12 09:18:26 1997
Subject: Re: Re:Re und so weiter
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 09:18:26 -0400 (EDT)
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>If professionals starts to work at home, out of reach fore the
>influence of cooperations, they will find it in their own interest to
>rediscover family values. The other way is allso possible, if we can
>make professionals re-discover family values they will start work at
>home. In this way you can reshape the conditions of traditional
>ruralcommunity. The question is: How to do it?
If it becomes technically possible, and it seems part of a better way to
live, people will adopt it unless something stops them.
It seems to me that a great weakness of liberal society is that
liberalism can not deal with the relation of parents and children. One
thing I expect to happen is that more parents will want more control
and involvement in their children's upbringing as the failure of the
liberal approach becomes more and more obvious. In America of course
we have many private schools, a growing homeschooling movement, and
growing demands for parental choice in their children's education. The
ultimate effect I think will be that more and more children, and more
and more of the children who are well brought up and so in a position
to become leaders, will grow up thinking of their parents as their
parents and not of the state as their parents. That in itself will be
a powerful blow for tradition and against the present order.
Another development in America is the growth of self-governing private
communities, many with walls and gates like those of the quarters of a
traditional Middle-Eastern city, which carry out many of the functions
otherwise provided by municipalities. The decline of public order here
has created a demand for such things. In the future I think they will
provide a foothold for forms of local social organization to develop
independent of the universal liberal order.
In general, I think what is needed politically is to weaken the weapons
the state uses against local and traditional forms of order. These
include its monpoly of education, its high taxes to fund its system of
bureaucratized social services, its laws against discrimination on
grounds like race, religion and sex, and so on. If that is done other
ways of life will grow up themselves if people find they make a better
life possible.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do not start at rats to nod.
From x Sat Jul 5 07:06:13 1997
From jk Sat Apr 12 17:23:59 1997
Subject: Re: Re:Re und so weiter
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 17:23:59 -0400 (EDT)
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One thing to remember is that it takes time for a new form of life to
develop. People have to develop the habits and tastes that let them
see what is good in it, and the standards that maintain its stability.
They have to find ways of limiting the effect of opposition and bad
influences. In the long run though what works and gives people a good
life will I think triumph.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
Palindrome of the week: Do not start at rats to nod.
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Tue Jul 8 09:55:54 EDT 1997
Article: 10026 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Holes in distribution
Date: 6 Jul 1997 05:49:38 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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In <5pn25m$dqb@chronicle.concentric.net> drotov@concentric.net (dimitri rotov) writes:
>Montgomery: "Why Emerson is an inadequate guide to the reality of
>Concord Mass, or any other place where dwell the sons of Adam,
>requires our looking closely into his thought."
So Montgomery thought it worth his while to read Emerson closely, did
he? I won't argue the point with him, and will look at what he says.
Thanks for the reference.
Neither reading someone nor recognizing that he writes well implies
agreement. A particular advantage to quoting Emerson, aside from his
aphoristic style, is that he said penetrating things on every side of
every possible issue. Thus:
Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances.
He was more an observer of his own spiritual landscape than a thinker.
That landscape is important because so much of America comes out of
Massachusetts, and out of the end of the era of the Founders. There
may be serious problems with the things he observed, but all the more
reason to know what they are.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!panix!news.columbia.edu!rutgers!igor.rutgers.edu!christian Tue Jul 8 09:55:59 EDT 1997
Article: 97783 of soc.religion.christian
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From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: The SBC should loose its tax exempt status
Date: 6 Jul 1997 23:00:46 -0400
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In <5pfbih$ehj@geneva.rutgers.edu> gwsmith@river.gwi.net (Gene Ward Smith) writes:
>If you think so little of a group of people you are willing to protest
>when they get health benefits, of all things, you hate them.
So far as I can tell, the Southern Baptists' objection is not to the
fact that persons who have homosexual inclinations or practice
homosexuality get health benefits. If an employee's homosexual
17-year-old son broke his arm I don't think they would object to
coverage. They do object to treating a homosexual relationship as a
ground for granting health benefits to persons not otherwise eligible
for them.
It's odd, but in America in 1997 one of the most prominent hate
epithets is the word "hate" itself.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From owner-Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com Tue Jul 8 06:22:57 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Reply-To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Message-ID: <199707081031.GAA25703@panix.com>
Subject: Re: What is a Catholic church?
To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 06:31:04 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <970707172846_2023870017@emout04.mail.aol.com> from
"NCorpinc@aol.com" at Jul 7, 97 05:29:48 pm
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> I disagree that the primary function of human (as opposed to animal)
> sexuality is reproduction. I believe its primary purpose is to
> express love and affection and reproduction is optional with the
> parties involved.
Sex does lead to reproduction though. Since reproduction is why we're
here that function seems to have a certain logical and even practical
primacy. So any set of sexual standards that doesn't lead us to act as
we should in connection to reproduction is lacking something essential.
Sex doesn't only express love and affection, it *creates* feelings.
Sometimes those are feelings of love and affection and sometimes they
aren't -- in popular language sexual references don't always suggest
loving feelings and treatment. Even if the feelings are loving they
aren't necessarily stable. Sexual attitudes and standards of conduct
should be part of a system of things that leads reliably to stable
husband/wife/children families. There are going to be major problems
if they aren't. I don't think there's going to be that kind of system
unless it's accepted that sex fundamentally has to do with marriage and
babies.
The advantage of the latter view is that it creates an objective
standard, and one that's suited to the practical necessity of promoting
stable homes. A difficulty with the "primary purpose is to express
love and affection" theory is that it's hard to see how it could give
rise to an objective standard. So if a community accepts that theory
it seems they will have no common standard of sexual conduct. As a
practical matter that means people will tend to feel entitled to do
whatever they feel like doing. I don't think such a situation would
lead to trust, intimacy, respect etc. between the sexes. Certainly
that's not what I see around me. So the "love and affection" theory
seems to have the practical effect of undermining love and affection.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From jk Sat Jul 5 17:09:14 1997
Subject: Re: Comments
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore)
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 1997 17:09:14 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BC88D3.4DE71C80@ns01a58.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Jul 4, 97 11:37:43 pm
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Hello, Andy --
> I am wondering how it comes to be that two rational people like
> us come to diverge so starkly on a matter not of fact, not of value,
> but of sense and comprehensibility.
Metaphysics -- what the world is fundamentally like, what sorts of
things make it up -- precedes I think both fact and value. What makes
sense and what is comprehensible depend on one's metaphysics, and yours
and mine differ.
My impression is that your ontology is based on modern natural science.
Mine is not. My belief is that modern natural science is far better
for telling you how to manipulate things than what those things are.
As a result an ontology based on modern natural science can not I think
make sense of mind and value.
> At any rate, if I have understood correctly, the two of us do
> share the belief that we do make choices, and that the moral
> dimension of those choices is important, and that we should be held
> accountable (in some meaningful way) for how we choose.
We do agree on that. My view is that your understanding of what the
world is fundamentally like cannot support such a belief, so the fact
that you hold it and are convinced the gap can somehow be bridged shows
you are better than your theory. Your view I would suppose is that the
things I say flow from some similarly basic confusion. (I believe you
said things that amounted to that last summer.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From jk Sat Jul 5 05:47:36 1997
Subject: Re: What is a Catholic church?
To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Date: Sat, 5 Jul 1997 05:47:36 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <970704131034_591441732@emout14.mail.aol.com> from "NCorpinc@aol.com" at Jul 4, 97 01:10:36 pm
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> The divisions of the Church, among the faithful, are of no
> consequence. I have never seen any sign from God that He loves any
> brand of Catholicism more than any other.
If mom and dad are divorced and the kids aren't talking much, quite
possibly God loves them all equally. Nonetheless it seems something
has gone wrong.
> The great thing about the Anglican branch is its respect for
> individual conscience and human dignity. By that I mean one does not
> check in one's brains at the door to be welcome.
People say this but I've never understood it. There are lots of smart
RCs who think deeply about their religion and lots of trivial-minded
Anglicans. There are RC philosophers, RC theologians, RC artists and
poets, etc.
> I cannot stomach Rome's authoritarianism, shoddy treatment of women,
> and its overall sick obsession with sexuality.
Not surprisingly, I don't really understand this either. Religion is
not self-assertion or self-expression. If I want truth or trustworthy
practice in religion my private take on things is not likely to be the
best source. On women, is your objection to the male priesthood? The
RC view of abortion?
As to sex, it seems to me it's fundamental to individual, family, and
therefore social life, since it's fundamental public moral standards
are a necessity, when separated from its natural function and allowed
to follow subjective individual feeling it tends (like e.g. money and
power) to become a source of disorder and destructive of love, and that
its natural function is procreation and the bond between man and woman
that creates the family as a stable and trusting setting for rearing
children. Does that view mean I have a sick obsession?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From jk Tue Jul 8 17:55:05 1997
Subject: Re: the next, and second to the last, piece
To: schmoore@shentel.net (Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore)
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 17:55:05 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <01BC8A42.84928240@ns01a57.shentel.net> from "Andrew Bard Schmookler & April Moore" at Jul 6, 97 07:26:24 pm
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Dear Andy,
What strikes me in this section is the limits on what can be done
without going beyond evidence and reason of the kind moderns like to
appeal to. People want to draw conclusions without presuppositions. It
can't be done.
I've said that it seems to me Darwinian evolution has no implications
whatever for morality without the aid of principles (e.g., utility) that
don't arise from it or from the modern natural sciences generally. More
generally, "evidence" isn't evidence of anything beyond itself, and
therefore is not evidence at all, without the aid of principles not
derived from it. Skyhooks are thus indispensable, and on my view those
who believe they are doing without them are simply extreme dogmatists
unable to see their dogma as such.
The question thus becomes which skyhooks -- which irreducibly
transcendent realities that explain our experience -- we should rely on.
Presumably, the test is which ones support the understanding of things
most adequate to experience.
The skyhook of claiming that all realities or at least all realities we
should care about can be exhaustively described in terms of reproducible
observations doesn't seem to work. Putting mystical experience and
recondite matters like the origin of time and space to the side, *none*
of our subjective experience can be known by others as we know it. My
experience of a particular pain or whatever is simply not reproducible.
It nonetheless exists and matters. Worse, we know things only through
subjective experience. Every specific scientific observation is a non-
reproducible private experience. *My* experience of reading a
particular meter at a particular time is not something anyone else can
have. Modern natural science nonetheless depends on such things -- it
has no choice but to rely on particular readings of particular meters by
particular men at particular times.
So what should we accept? We've talked about this a little. My view is
that you need at least the existence and lawfulness of the physical
world, the reality and general trustworthiness of subjective experience,
the validity of evaluative experience, and free will. Reflection on
what kind of world would have all those things in it leads me in the end
to add the Christian God to the list, to explain and coordinate the
other items.
It therefore seems to me simply wrong to set up an opposition between
empirical anti-skyhookers who believe things because they reason about
them and dogmatic fideists who arbitrarily adopt inexplicable doctrines.
We're all in the same boat -- we all live in a world both strange and
familiar that we have to understand as best we can and that can't be
understood at all without accepting beliefs that before the belief is
accepted are not compelled by the evidence. Nor does refusal to have an
understanding of the world -- intentionally staying forever in the hole
of doubt Descartes digs for us -- seem to be an option.
On attempts to inhabit Descartes' hole -- the tendency of the
discussion seems to be to say that in morality suspense of judgement is
good, or wise, or intellectually advanced, or something of the sort.
I'm not sure how that can be, at least ultimately, when the point of
morality is action. In the end one can't avoid saying "this is right
and that is wrong" because one must act. Nor are purely personal
decisions ("I don't know the answer but for my own part I'll do this")
enough, since man is a social animal.
A basic problem is that it makes no sense to say "I'm not going to
commit myself because there's not enough evidence" because when action
or belief is unavoidable saying that amounts to a decision that
determines a specific result although it is not compelled by any
evidence. To pick an example everyone loves, sexual morality has to do
with relations among persons who reproduce sexually and have bodies that
become objects of desire, and with the essential moral nature of those
relations. Beyond determining specific actions, it defines the common
world we live in, and so is *necessarily* social. To say "people can
have their personal values but should be tolerant" is to say "our
socially accepted morality is that everyone is entitled to do what he
wants, barring perhaps force and fraud." That defines a particular
moral world, and not one that everybody thinks a good one.
It is not clear to me that in an ultimate sense it is tolerant to force
everyone to live in a world in which there are no authoritative
standards for sexual conduct other than consent. Your body is yours, to
do with as you please. It has no essential meaning. Suppose people are
unhappy in such a world -- what's tolerant about insisting they accept
it?
To go on to other current hot issues, why is it that the emphasis on
multiculturalism, tolerance, etc. has led to so much propaganda and
indoctrination? Why the re-education, thought control, bureaucratic
standards for the revision of language, what have you? To say, "well
in the past there was just a different kind of PC" is I think to
concede my point -- "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" simply can't be
established as intended because for a society to exist at all its
members must inhabit a common moral reality. An attempt to do so is
like an attempt to do without dogma and be purely empirical -- it
necessarily involves lack of self-awareness, deception of self or
others, or some combination of the two.
I hope the foregoing is helpful to you in some way. Usually after a
point that is soon reached we find each other incomprehensible. Still,
the attempt is worth the effort I think. For a discussion of religious
belief consistent with the above by someone who writes better than I do
and very clearly even though I find his style annoying, you might look
at G.K. Chesterton's _Orthodoxy_. It's available on the web and a
search engine should quickly turn it up.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From owner-Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com Tue Jul 8 18:24:26 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Reply-To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Message-ID: <199707082221.SAA00693@panix.com>
Subject: Re: What is a Catholic church?
To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 18:21:18 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <970708121829_275121904@emout04.mail.aol.com> from
"NCorpinc@aol.com" at Jul 8, 97 12:18:37 pm
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> I agree that stable homes and marriages are essential. However, that
> depends solely on the comitment level of the parties. Christ answered
> that when he condemned divorce and adulterty. In my view, marriage is
> a life of faithfulness to one's mate. It is a sacrament.
But if it's a sacrament it doesn't depend on the commitment of the
parties. The Eucharist doesn't become the Eucharist or more the
Eucharist because the participants are really gung ho about it.
> If the Church is to make a difference, that is what it must
> promote--meaning, the importance of selecting a compatible mate
> (which may entail a little "try before you buy), and above all, the
> importance of maintaining the relationship as such
The difference the Church can make I think is by adherence to its
understanding that we don't construct moral and spiritual realities and
such things don't depend on what pleases us. Marriage is not simply
our own project entered into for our own purposes. It can't be reduced
to our choices, feelings, efforts, desires, etc. What we see around us
is the consequence of efforts to do so. "Try before you buy" is I
think part of an attempt to reduce sexuality and therefore marriage to
just that. So it's not surprising that those who live together before
marriage have less stable marriages than those who do not. (Yes,
that's what surveys have shown, to the surprise of the social
scientists carrying them out.)
> However, not everyone is suited to be a parent. The notion that
> because you produce a child, ergo, you are qualified to parent, is
> nonsense. Even in the animal kingdom not every mother that gives
> birth gives her young proper care. If that were true we would not
> have child abuse.
I suppose there are pathological cases, psychopaths who become fathers
and insane women who get pregnant. On the whole, though, it seems to
me that child abuse is more a consequence of making sexuality and
children our own project. It goes with family instability and
especially with single motherhood. There have been *more* unwanted and
abused children since abortion became legal and accepted.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 9 13:47:55 EDT 1997
Article: 10035 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 9 Jul 1997 10:59:02 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <5or9gj$hnn@panix.com> <35043115wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5otnvh$np3@panix.com> <895615929wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5p07lb$ss8@panix.com> <419962853wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> <5p30uk$g17@panix.com> <5pajfn$pal$3@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk>
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In <5pajfn$pal$3@gerry.cc.keele.ac.uk> cla04@cc.keele.ac.uk (Andy Fear) writes:
>: >But what are people supposed to do when 'work' is moved away from
>: >them? Aren't they supposed to up sticks and follow it?
>: The basic point I thought is that work is less tied to place ... If
>: that's so I don't see the necessity of moving.
>The last senetnce is the rub. This work tends to be at least middle
>brow. That rules out a lot of the population who aren't going to go
>away.
I'm not sure I understand. Manufacturing and semiskilled service work
seem to be less tied to place than in the past as well. Isn't that the
problem, that it's now possible to move the work whereever people will
do it most efficiently? But if that's the problem then "following the
work" doesn't seem to be an answer.
>the middle classes are, certainly in Britain, the most atomised
>element of society. I fail to see why making everyone else rootless is
>going to imporve matters.
I'm not sure what line of thought you're responding to. The issue
seems to be how to maintain particularism under present circumstances.
Productive discussion of the issue requires clear understanding of just
what those circumstances are and which way they're pushing us. My
argument was simply that whatever other effects they may have they
don't have to push us toward increasing mobility.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 9 18:07:45 EDT 1997
Article: 10036 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 9 Jul 1997 17:53:18 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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drotov@concentric.net (dimitri rotov) writes:
>The principal rhetorical strategy in America is the disqualification
>gambit, by which all guile is devoted to the discovery of arguments
>that disqualify your opponent from entrance into civilized discourse.
>The conservatives of 1957 recognized this gambit and embraced the
>likes of Weaver.
It sounds like you are referring to _National Review_'s excommunication
of the Randians and Birchers. If that's right, what role did Weaver
play?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 9 18:07:46 EDT 1997
Article: 10037 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 9 Jul 1997 17:54:19 -0400
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rafael cardenas writes:
>> The _New York Times_ keeps running articles for example about the
>> allegedly very large numbers of infants whose (sex? gender?) is
>> ambiguous at birth and are surgically assigned one way or the other.
>
>Do they give figures or proportions of live births?
I remember some offhand statement of percentages that seemed to me (and
was evidently intended to seem) startlingly large. I assumed it had
been inflated somehow by inclusion of conditions that didn't really
belong. (Not a useful response, I'm afraid.)
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Wed Jul 9 18:07:48 EDT 1997
Article: 10038 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Grand rhetorical strategies for right-wingers
Date: 9 Jul 1997 18:03:47 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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rafael cardenas writes:
> >Singapore has a higher income per capita than London (though, as it
> >happens, London's GDP per capita is, or was last year, higher than
> >Singapore's). Despite, collectively, offering more and demanding
> >less than Singapore
It's difficult to infer that from the statistics you give. An island
with a completely automated oil refinery and no inhabitants except a single
night watchman would have a high GDP and low income per capita. Knowing
that implies nothing about whether the island offers much as a place to
do business.
>> I *have* said that direct government responsibility for the overall
>> material well-being of individuals is socially destructive
>> especially in the long run.
>
>The run might have to be very long: in England at least we have had
>some form of tax-raised poor relief for four centuries now.
The responsibility of government for individual well-being today of
course goes far beyond that existing in previous times, to an extent
that it seems unilluminating to refer to both the Tudor poor laws and
the post-WWII welfare state as instances of "direct government
responsibility for the overall material well-being of individuals." For
one thing the former system played little role in the lives of most
people. It may have mattered as well that it was the local authorities
and rate-payers who were responsible for the local poor. In any event
it's worth noting that Tocqueville and other competent observers
believed that the system of relief in England led to pauperism.
>> DINKs seem too self-involved to be effective tyrants in any normal
>> sense.
>
>But that makes them useful idiots who abet, for their own material
>convenience, the tyranny of others over others.
But who is the superior class for whom the DINKs will act as useful
idiots? DINKs *are* the ruling class. Bill and Hillary are basically
DINKS, although at some point they acquired what was intended as a
designer kid. The power of the evolving New World Order is the power
of universality, abstraction and logic. The perfect market, combined
with a rational universal bureaucracy, and *no* other social powers of
any consequence. It's like the power of modern natural science.
That's what makes it so inhuman. Its weakness is its individually
self-centered and self-indulgent ruling class. Can the world be made
inhuman enough for such people to remain in power forever?
>I think you may be underestimating the effect of tyrannies as a means
>of providing a source of cheap labour, including relatively skilled or
>at least educable labour, in the global economy.
I think the tendency in the countries that are productive and therefore
of economic consequence will be toward DINKdom. Productive labor can be
kept cheap only if monopolized by some employers at the expense of
others.
>If the tyrannies did not exist, then workers and other social groups
>would, within a generation or so, collaborate against the efforts of
>global corporations to play them off against each other.
Why will there be more uniting and collaboration in South Korea than in
England? Also, why unite and collaborate when the global economy means
that the smart people with organizational skill will be able to cut
advantageous deals for themselves and get paid approaching what they
would get in New York?
>Islamic society may encourage high birthrates without supporting the
>kind of cohesive communities that you have in mind.
Only if the large-scale cohesiveness of Islam is sufficient to resist
modernity and consequent radical individualism and self-seeking. I'm
doubtful it will, although new forms may evolve. My guess is that any
successful new form will have to be based on intense local cohesion.
Modernity penetrates everywhere, so there must be border defenses
everywhere.
>I'd heard that the [Amish etc.] drop-out rate had increased in the last
>decade, and I recall seeing a TV programme about them suggesting a
>weakening of communal prohibitions.
They've got an interesting system involving an _Ordnung_ the leaders
adjust from time to time to deal with changing conditions while
maintaining cohesion. They move very slowly. There are several groups,
and when consensus can't be reached as to the _Ordnung_ there's a split.
Groups that become too liberal and pass whatever the tipping point is
become an object lesson to the others.
>I think your argument is an interesting one, but the trend continues to
>be towards the erosion of such communities.
The strength of the argument is that I don't need any particular
community to be successful, any more than a bacteriologist needs to find
a strain of bacteria that is resistent to a new antibiotic to be
confident such a strain will appear. All I have to do is point to the
rewards of success (and the greater the power of modernity in dissolving
social bonds the greater those rewards will be), assert that the example
of the Amish and Haredim shows success is possible, although tinkering
or variation of existing formats may be necessary, and appeal to Darwin
and the human tendency to copy what's successful.
The argument of course takes liberal triumphalism very seriously. It's
based on considering what happens when the End of History comes and it
turns out people can't stand living that way and in fact don't even
want to reproduce under such circumstances.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Fri Jul 11 08:28:30 EDT 1997
Article: 10046 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Radio Free Amerika!
Date: 11 Jul 1997 07:36:30 -0400
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
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References: <00001FF300001432@nashville.com>
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In <00001FF300001432@nashville.com> radiofree.amerika@nashville.com (Radiofree Amerika) writes:
>The NEA, however, hasn't been able to give these same "dirty picture"
>the - if you'll please pardon the obvious pun... - exposure to such a
>mass audience as these nice Christians are doing.
It's not as if the NEA and its supporters want to do so. None of the
mainstream media have been willing to reproduce the more objectionable
Mapplethorpe photos, for example. They usually illustrate his work by
showing a vaguely sexual image of a flower or something of the sort.
Reticence is of course OK in itself, but in this case it seems
inconsistent with support of public funding for things the point of
which, after all, is public viewing.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From owner-Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com Mon Jul 7 07:16:56 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Reply-To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Message-ID: <199707071124.HAA17422@panix.com>
Subject: Re: What is a Catholic church?
To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 07:24:13 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <970706004001_-426959251@emout18.mail.aol.com> from
"NCorpinc@aol.com" at Jul 6, 97 00:40:01 am
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> Jesus' teaching as recorded in the Gospel does not reflect the
> detailed concern about sex that many traditional Christians (catholic
> and otherwise) make so much a part of their public message.
I'm not sure what "detailed" means here. Traditional Christian sexual
standards can be stated rather briefly I think.
So far as I can tell, Jesus presumed the rightness of the very strict
(by our standards) standards of his own time, and made them stricter by
forbidding divorce and emphasizing purity of thought as well as
conduct. Again so far as I can tell, from the earliest times the
Church has taken sexual sin quite seriously.
People do question why Christianity -- the system of theology,
morality, etc., etc. motivated by love of Christ and based ultimately
on the Gospels and love of God and neighbor -- should have such an
attitude. Has it all been a big mistake?
One answer is that Christianity wants to free us from the blindness and
obsessions that separate us from God. Appetite entangles us in such
things and blocks the growth of Christian love. Accordingly, Christian
morality has been concerned with restricting our most vehement
appetites, those for power, money and sex.
That is why Christian monasticism is based on a vow of poverty,
chastity and obedience. Those who aren't monks are to live by a
morality that accepts that power, money and sex have a necessary role,
and are in themselves good things, but ties them to their necessary and
limited role. Since the natural and necessary function of sex is
reproduction, and the tie between man and woman that constitutes the
family as a setting for rearing children, Christian morality attempts
to limit the expression of sex to that setting.
Another consideration is that since traditional sexual standards have a
natural function, the strengthening of the family unit, that is
necessary for the good of all, violation of those standards is a
violation of charity. Loose sexual morals mean shaky families mean
suffering.
> Not everyone desires, or is capable of functioning in, a traditional
> family. Are those people supposed to choose between celibacy or being
> cut off from the grace of the sacraments? Recall how Jesus dealt with
> the scribes and phrarisees, who were so concerned about everyone
> following all the rules!
You seem to treat traditional Christian sexual morality as if it were
some ritual prescription established by positive law, like not doing
this or that on the Sabbath. That seems wrong - sex and sexuality are
fundamental to human life in a way the things with which the scribes
and pharisees were concerned were not.
People often have profound and seemingly irresistible desires to do
things they shouldn't. The degree to which acting on such desires cuts
one off from the Christian community raises issues beyond sex. It
occurs to me that if someone is pursuing a fundamental pattern of life
that is wrong in some very clear and direct way -- making his living as
a mafia operative for example -- the extent to which he can participate
in the sacraments becomes an issue.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From owner-Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com Tue Jul 8 06:49:41 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Reply-To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Message-ID: <199707081058.GAA28611@panix.com>
Subject: Re: What is a Catholic church?
To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 06:58:15 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To:
from "Jonathan Webster" at Jul 7, 97 12:44:49 pm
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> we all have to understand how and why the 'many' now consider sexual
> sins to be pre-eminent.
There are several issues here. One is the current horizontal,
moralizing emphasis in the Church. People seem to have forgotten that
love of God is the first of the two great commandments. Racism or
sexual morality or inclusive community are big issues but the filioque
gets dropped and no one cares much either way.
Whether the things traditionally considered sexual sins are in fact
sins is a separate question. I don't know of anyone, not even among
_hoi polloi_, who considers sexual sin pre-eminent among sin, although
my impression is that those who consider it sin at all consider it
serious sin and denial of its sinfulness a serious matter.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From owner-Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com Thu Jul 10 08:12:10 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Reply-To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Message-ID: <199707101221.IAA17440@panix.com>
Subject: Re: What is a Catholic church?
To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 08:21:10 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <970709141912_389885637@emout05.mail.aol.com> from
"NCorpinc@aol.com" at Jul 9, 97 02:19:12 pm
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> The Eucharist is and always has been a community celebration of the
> Body of Christ. In the same way, marriage is what it is because of
> the faith of the parties in the institution and their participation
> therein. It is by faith that we have a Eucharist!
In both cases the people involved have to recognize what they are doing
and intend to do it. More general moods and feelings aren't the
essential issue.
> However, if the pro-life lobby were serious about preventing
> abortions, they would promote birth control.
Don't agree. It seems to me the issue is the consequences of accepting
birth control generally rather than of particular instances of birth
control. To make a child a choice, which is what accepting birth
control does, tends to legitimate abortion. Also, if the value of a
child depends on his parents' intentions and choices, then changes in
parental intentions and choices change the child's value. So it seems
to me a society that accepts birth control and abortion is likely to
experience increasing child abuse as well. We wanted the kid when we
had him but that was then and this is now. Certainly that's the way
things have developed in America.
> The facts are that child abuse is no ocasional accident by a
> disturbed person here and there, but a pervasive ethic in our society
> whereby parents treat children as chattels rather than respect them
> as people.
The alternative you present (either treatment as a chattel or respect
as a person) is the one presented by liberal rights theory. On that
theory the two possible forms of human relationship are arbitrary
domination and mutual respect for autonomy. The "rights revolution,"
in which that theory triumphed as our sole public way of talking about
moral issues, has in fact gone along with worse conditions for
children. The problem with the theory, by the way, is that it has no
place for love. Love makes us closer to each other than liberal
respect for autonomy would permit.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From jk Sun Jul 13 16:31:22 1997
Subject: Re: Supreme Court
To:
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 16:31:22 -0400 (EDT)
Cc:
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>The Court was meant to be an elite Constitutional bulwark against
>majoritarian, democratic impulses precisely because those impulses
>would likely *erode* conservative and libertarian rules.
>
>Over the long haul, might we not expect the Court to serve those rules
>more often than not, or does present activism (and innovative creation
>of obscure Constitutional "rights") prove it was inevitable from the
>start that a branch rooted more in the Federalists' fear of the mob
>than in democratic power would become an elitist, tyrannical force?
Good question.
It seems to me the main overall effect of the Court has been as a
nationalizing force. It's really been rather uncommon for them to tell
Congress or the President not to do something. They do that much more
often to the states.
I think it's inevitable that the Court, like say the national media,
will have a strongly nationalizing point of view. You take a small
group of men sitting together in an imperial city, with enormous and
self-defined responsibility for the affairs of what amounts to a whole
continent, and to be able to understand what's going on and act at all
they're going to rely on universally-applicable standards defined and
applied by the center. If there are people elsewhere who look at things
differently they must be wrong (it would make life unmanageable to
consider other possiblities), and if those people take their deviant
point of view seriously they're stupid, evil, or both.
If we have a reasonably well-defined national ruling class with its own
ideology the Court will necessarily buy into it, maybe with a little
lag. The lag is less now in the past because the media are more
pervasive and there's less local social coherence to resist new trends.
Those conditions also make the national ruling class and its ideology
far more important than in the past. Beyond centralization, it seems
to me the function of the Court is to increase the doctrinal and
ideological coherence of the established order. So if you've got some
questions about the order of things that is now established, at least
in principle and in the minds of our rulers, you've got to have some
worries about the Court as such.
So today and into the foreseeable future I think the power of the Court
is going to be a Bad Thing from a conservative or libertarian
standpoint. The Court isn't going to dedicated to the 1789 vision of
things, they're going to be dedicated to turning our governing elite's
current vision of things into universally effectual rational principle.
Countermajoritarianism deals with a problem that is not the problem
today. The People is not going to be a tyrant, because it's losing the
coherence and public spirit needed for it to act at all. That's the
effect of multiculturalism. So tyranny will take the more natural form
of a small ruling class acting in its own interests. Our tyrants will
keep power (at least initially) by rather sophisticated means -- a
little force, more fraud, and most of all an emphasis on weakening
other centers of social power. The last is the function of the Court's
enunciation of novel rights, to eliminate all sources of social order
except government bureaucracy and money.
Don't know if the foregoing is at all helpful -- grandiose theories
mostly make sense to people who already at least halfway accept them.
Still, one can only give the answer one has.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From owner-newman@LISTSERV.VT.EDU Mon Jul 14 06:01:26 1997
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Sender: newman Discussion List
From: Jim Kalb
Subject: Re: "Christian fiction"
To: NEWMAN@LISTSERV.VT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19970713211554.006ace80@swva.net> from "Seth
Williamson" at Jul 13, 97 09:15:54 pm
Status: RO
> the bottom line being that all art that is great and true to
> experience is, in a real sense, "Christian art." In the same way that
> all truth is catholic truth.
Is all philosophy that is great and illuminates experience Christian
philosophy? How about all religious thought? Is Buddhism at its best
really another form of Christianity?
It may be true that in the end all thought, art, feeling, whatever
converge on a single truth but that end seems very far from us today.
Very far from me anyway.
> Off the cuff it would seem to me that the girl doesn't have a leg to
> stand on.
You can always come up with something. Sex discrimination is a good
one. The girl's the Kelly Flinn of academia. Claim a male student
similarly situated would have been treated differently, or that a
denial of sexual freedom is a sort of obverse of sexual harassment
(forced abstention instead of forced sex) that necessarily implicates
sexist and heterosexist gender-based stereotypes of appropriate conduct
and reinforces traditional patterns of sexist domination and is
therefore illegal under the civil rights laws.
Or maybe you could say that a one-sided contract of adhesion giving up
privacy rights to sexual expression is oppressive, against public
policy and therefore not enforceable, or that the policy is irrational
given the legitimate interests of an educational institution especially
one receiving Federal and state subsidies in the form of tax exemption.
You could say it expresses nothing but an animus against a class of
persons (the sexually active unmarried) and therefore may not be used
as a justification for denying the girl her legitimate interests in an
education.
Or maybe it's all a lot simpler -- if the girl and the young man had
been married there would have been no problem so it's plainly a case of
discrimination based on marital status. An open-and-shut case, I
should think.
You have no idea how easy it is to churn this stuff out once you get in
the frame of mind.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From dopost@grunt.dejanews.com Fri Jul 11 12:07:03 1997
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Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 11:13:41 -0600
From: jk@panix.com
Subject: Re: Who really thinks for themselves (con/lib) ?
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh
Message-Id: <868636701.28186@dejanews.com>
Reply-To: jk@panix.com
Organization: Deja News Usenet Posting Service
To: jk@panix.com
References: <33BC433B.7BF0@lava.net> <5pne5o$f2b$1@postern.mbnet.mb.ca> <33C07272.148F@earthlink.net> <33c04f82.144154891@news.lava.net>
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[This is a courtesy copy of an article posted to Usenet via Deja News]
In article <33c04f82.144154891@news.lava.net>,
jhavok@antibot.stuff.lava.net (James R. Olson, jr.) wrote:
> That's a load of crap. Read the conservatism FAQ. The basis of
> conservatism is tradition, not freedom. The only reason that
> conservatives want to restrict government is because of its
> essentially democratic nature, which tends to make it eventually
> attack traditional privileges.
I happened to notice this when I did a search to see if there were any
comments on the FAQ. Actually, the issues are considerably more
complicated. First, tradition is at least as democratic -- reflects the
concerns, understandings, interests of ordinary people at least as well
-- as voting. It's much harder for example for clever, well-placed and
rich people to manipulate tradition. Second, tradition is certainly far
more democratic than government by bureaucracy, which is what we have in
the case of modern big government. And third, freedom is not something
that can be easily administered. It requires self-government, which
means popular habits and understandings that permit the people to look
out for themselves and cooperate with each other freely for common ends,
which in turn requires traditions of a particular character. Government
action can more easily destroy than create such traditions.
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
From owner-Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com Thu Jul 17 06:18:24 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Reply-To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Message-ID: <199707171016.GAA07996@panix.com>
Subject: Re: Basic Info
To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 06:16:44 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <33CDCF6C.7304@space.net.au> from "Dale Howden" at Jul 17, 97
03:53:16 pm
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> I thought I would put 'my two bob's worth in' and say that perhaps,
> without wanting to be politically correct, but not to 'isolate' our
> sisters, that more inclusive language may be appropriate?
Depends on what one thinks of revising language to fit feminist
sensibilities. My own rant on the subject:
"He" and similar words have been used for hundreds of years in an
inclusive sense with no misunderstandings. There are similar
conventions in other languages. Until very recently no-one claimed to
feel isolated by such usages in spite of billions of occasions daily to
do so.
The campaign against the traditional inclusive sense (using "he" for
"he or she") is based I think on an understanding of the history of the
relations between the sexes as one of male oppression of women. To
give in to that campaign is to buy into that understanding, and more
generally to the understanding of sex and gender as somehow external to
the human person. Among other things, that understanding makes
nonsense of traditional Christian sexual morality and the male-only
priesthood. If you accept it then traditional views on such subjects
really *are* bigotry.
During the fascist period in Italy it was considered bad form to use
"lei" instead of "voi" as the polite second person pronoun because
"lei" is basically a feminine pronoun. The effect of substituting
"voi" was to give a fascist salute. In America in 1997, why comply
with demands that we give feminist salutes?
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Mon Jul 21 00:14:50 EDT 1997
Article: 10060 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Self-rule
Date: 15 Jul 1997 12:46:11 -0400
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Bill McClain writes:
> Since we are no longer capable of self-rule, we should expect
> self-contempt.
Hence the propagation of new standards for valuing oneself, for example
"fear of change" as an indicator of psychological and moral weakness.
To accept happily whatever our rulers see fit to do to us is the new
standard of health and strength.
> This suggests an approach to the libertarians: the conflict is not of
> the individual vs the State, but rather of those capable of self-rule
> vs the tyrants.
Agreed. I take it the paleolibertarian view is that in the long run or
maybe not so long run the two conflicts are the same. Libertine
libertarianism ends in tyranny.
> Although self-rule has individualistic components, it is expressed in
> collective, communal ways. By emphasizing individualism exclusively,
> libertarians allow the tyrants to use them as a battering ram against
> those communities capable of self-government.
The most obvious instances of "individualism" as a tyrant's battering
ram against community are the civil rights laws and other protective
legislation that would not exist in a libertarian legal order. I
suppose laws protecting public decency and the like are an example to
the contrary, but the paleolibs may be able to get by that by proposing
that "public" areas be subjected to various regimes of private rule.
It's not clear to me what the paleolib answer to the world market and
all-pervasive electronic media might be though, apart from saying that
everyone's free to preserve community by joining the Hasidim.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"The greatest genius is the most indebted man." -- Emerson
From owner-Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com Thu Jul 17 12:14:24 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Reply-To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Message-ID: <199707171619.MAA19592@panix.com>
Subject: Re: He vs (S)he
To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 12:19:56 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <33CE1C23.16C6@space.net.au> from "Dale Howden" at Jul 17, 97
09:20:35 pm
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> > Depends on what one thinks of revising language to fit feminist
> > sensibilities.
>
> I am sensible in not suggesting to revise a language.
The revision of language to which I was referring is the rejection of
the inclusive sense of "he," "man" and the like.
> > "He" and similar words have been used for hundreds of years in an
> > inclusive sense with no misunderstandings. There are similar
> > conventions in other languages. Until very recently no-one claimed to
> > feel isolated by such usages in spite of billions of occasions daily to
> > do so.
>
> Some seem to forget that our history is written in a patriarchal
> context. The authors, readers and commentators were all male at that
> time. Few women were educated enough to partake in intellectual
> debate
Be that as it may, we learn our mother tongue at our mother's knee.
The inclusive sense of "he" and the like has been part of colloquial as
well as scholarly English for a long time. There has never been
anything learned or intellectual about it. In contrast, the various
contrivances and maneuvers to avoid that usage, such as "(s)he," are
bureaucratic jargon. Those who like democracy and don't like rule by
unrepresentative elites should oppose them, it seems to me.
On the history of the relation of the sexes -- I don't question that
the history of gender, like the history of government, property,
ecclesiastical hierarchies, and armies, can be told as a long train of
oppressions and abuses. In recent times such approaches to history
have supported serious attempts to get rid of all those institutions in
anything like their traditional forms. Since the consequences of such
attempts have ranged from the bad to the horrendous, I find it neither
just nor charitable to support them. Which is not to say that
supporters are necessarily unjust and uncharitable -- only that in my
view they are mistaken.
> Therefore, since the sexual equilibrium has swung back to a more
> central position _we_ should be able to see clearly, and objectively,
> that exclusivity is harmful, deceitful and downright unfair
The currently favored attitudes toward sex and gender seem to me untrue
to human nature and therefore wrong. I don't see for example how they
are going to give rise to workable patterns of behavior between the
sexes that support stable family life. If my concerns are valid, then
it is support for those attitudes that is harmful, deceitful and
unfair, at least objectively, although a mistaken understanding of what
the world is like can of course lead us to support bad things without
moral fault.
However that may be, the specific question is whether traditional
usages of "man" and the like mean exclusivity. I don't believe they
do, any more than I believe the Fascists were right in considering the
use of "lei" as the polite form of "you" effeminate. If exclusivity
were the message someone would have noticed it a long time before 1970.
> > Among other things, that understanding makes nonsense of
> > traditional Christian sexual morality and the male-only priesthood.
> I can't see how you can bring into the argument the male-only
> priesthood considering, again, that feedback was asked for a FAQ for
> new 'people' who were joining the discussion group. Perhaps you are
> missing the whole point!
I certainly miss the point you are making here. The FAQ should avoid
reflecting understandings contrary to traditional Anglicanism. It
seemed to me your suggestion tended in that direction. My comment may
very well have been wrong, but I don't see how it could be thought
irrelevant.
> > In America in 1997, why comply with demands that we give feminist
> > salutes?
>
> I think it rather presumptuous of you to assume that everyone in this
> discussion group lives in the great old USofA.
My apologies. I was puzzling over the issues rather than thinking of
my audience. Luckily, nothing I said had any special connection to the
USA, and I would be happy to change the offending sentence _nunc pro
tunc_ to "Why should traditionalist Anglicans in 1997 comply with ... "
> Here in Australia we are perhaps more tolerant of others
I look forward to any further discussions with a tolerant opponent. I
should mention that I am about to leave for an extended weekend, and
will not be able to continue this until probably Tuesday, by which time
the topic may have grown old and cold and the FAQ long since have
reached its final form.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From owner-Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com Mon Jul 21 10:19:34 1997
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From: Jim Kalb
Reply-To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Message-ID: <199707211428.KAA00334@panix.com>
Subject: Re: Feminist sensibilities?
To: Anglican-Tradition@dragon.com
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 10:28:40 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To:
from "Jonathan Webster" at Jul 17, 97 05:32:14 pm
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[Apologies if need be for reviving a discussion that has died down, but
Jonathan has raised some interesting issues. If there are protests the
thread can go private.]
Jonathan Webster writes:
>What we call the English language has so developed over all the
>centuries. A language dies when it does not respond to the needs of
>the day.
Languages do of course develop, although I know of no language that has
died from unresponsiveness. The development is normally much less self-
conscious than current feminist reforms, which involve linguistic
engineering by committee, lists of objectionable and acceptable forms
not based on usage, resolutions and mandatory guidelines forbidding
traditional expressions based on newfound political, moral and social
objections, insistence on circumlocution and clumsy and sometimes
unpronounceable formations, and so on. All this has a Newspeak quality
that I find objectionable.
>What 'similar' words do you include?
The words to which objections have been raised. Apart from personal
pronouns they include "man" and formations using "man," "brother" used
in a figurative sense, whatever. I'm not the one who makes the list.
>if people do feel isolated by sudden realisation then they may be
>justified in this feeling.
The feeling may be honest and have some basis.
>Jim says:
>>The campaign against the traditional inclusive sense (using "he" for
>"he or she") is based I think on an understanding of the history of the
>relations between the sexes as one of male oppression of women. To
>give in to that campaign is to buy into that understanding, and more
>generally to the understanding of sex and gender as somehow external to
>the human person.>
>
>Reply:
>Not so!
I don't see how anything you said rebuts what I said. Is it the "more
generally" you object to?
>It is quite impossible today to consider the role of a woman as
>anything like what it was less than a century ago.
Sex roles do change, just as governments change, the kinds and
significance of property changes, and the modes of organized use of
force change. Still there is fundamental stability as well as change in
all those things. The masculine and feminine figures in ancient myths
are still recognizably masculine and feminine.
Feminism is a movement to abolish sex roles - "gender" - as a principle
of social order. It can be an admirable ideal, just as anarchy,
communism and pacifism can be admirable ideals. The world is I think
better for having some feminists in it, just as it is better for having
some anarchists, communists and pacifists in it. None of that however
makes serious attempts to put such ideals into effect throughout society
any the less destructive, especially when like contemporary feminism
they are backed by force.
>Women were chattels
I've heard this repeatedly, but don't understand it. Does it mean that
men could buy and sell women, use or abuse them at will and so on? Some
have claimed that, but it's not the impression I get from reading
novels, poems, old letters, folk tales and so on, even those written or
told by women.
>Whether we like it or not the use of the all embracing male pronoun
>does not come from an inadequacy of the language (we can perfectly
>easily say 'he' or 'she' or even 'she' or 'he') but from the
>traditional consideration of the women as a less important person than
>the man.
Seems odd. Men talk less than women do, and the mother tongue is
learned at the mother's knee, so it seems hard to view language as a
male-dominated institution.
I would agree though that the use of masculine for common gender was not
a random choice. At all times and places men have been more associated
with formal public roles than women, and language is more public than
private. So if one talks about a person in general, thereby putting him
in public and making him abstract, that person becomes grammatically
masculine.
For somewhat analogous reasons abstractions and inanimate objects when
personified have tended to become feminine. If what lay behind our
conventions of signification were the simple brutality of "women don't
matter" then ships would not have been female to their crews. A statue
of "honesty" or whatever would not normally have been a statue of a
woman. The polarities of masculine and feminine are *far* more complex
than "more important/less important."
>In such circumstances it is difficult not to have some sympathy with
>the protesters.
Part of tolerance and for that matter charity is the ability to have
some sympathy with people from whom in the end one differs.
>I cannot make the connection between a woman objecting to being
>included in a male pronoun and sexual morality - there you have the
>better of me - but I am sure you will explain.
It seems to me the strong and organized objections to using "man" and
the like in an inclusive sense have to do with an objection to gender as
a principle of social organization and thus with the view that sex roles
in principle are unjust and simply mean domination of women by men.
My point is that if sex roles are simply unjust, then distinctions
between men and women can't much matter. Men and women differ in
sexuality, though, in ways that go far beyond obvious physical
distinctions. So the views lying behind strong demands for "inclusive"
language in the end I think require one to feel that sexuality does not
or should not touch us very deeply. I find such views impossible to
reconcile with traditional sexual morality.
The chain of reasoning may seem somewhat long, but I think it has been
tested in real life and found applicable.
>There are roles in life and in the family which are not interchangeable
>- child bearing and fatherhood are two of them. In the church some of
>us would hold that this also applies to priesthood.
And thus would hold that there are important distinctions between men
and women that go far beyond biology. Gender for you is thus a divine
institution rather than a social construction. Such a view is of course
logically consistent with a desire to reform language on feminist lines.
The combination seems odd to me though, and not likely to be very
durable in many cases.
>I am not, however, able to stretch my often fertile imagination to
>seeing the use of pronouns as being God inspired.
Nor can I, except maybe the choice of pronouns to use in referring to
God Himself. That's not the issue though. The demands for compulsory
change have made choice of language in this area a way of waving a flag.
The belief that the language mothers have taught their children for
centuries must be changed as a way of saying "women are OK" makes no
sense to me apart from feminism, and I don't want to be forced to wave a
feminist flag. It would be wrong to do so I think for someone who
believes as I do in the essential destructiveness of feminism.
>In Christian terms we might turn our attention to rendering God as
>'she' as just as objectionable as referring to God as 'he' and the Holy
>Spirit??
Tradition and scripture seem on the side of masculine pronouns. Reason
tells me that the exclusive use of such pronouns for deity, in contrast
to other religions of classical antiquity and the Near East, emphasizes
the separateness of God from his creation. Since pantheism seems a
temptation to which we are particularly subject in modern times, reason
thus tells me it would be a bad idea to change the traditional and
scriptural practice.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
From news.panix.com!not-for-mail Sun Jul 27 16:53:00 EDT 1997
Article: 10087 of alt.revolution.counter
Path: news.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Newsgroups: alt.revolution.counter
Subject: Re: Fleming in National Review
Date: 26 Jul 1997 18:21:32 -0400
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References: <19970716144221822116@deepblue15.salamander.com> <199707241458211991537@deepblue4.salamander.com> <704234093wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk>
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In <704234093wnr@bloxwich.demon.co.uk> raf379@bloxwich.demon.co.uk (rafael cardenas) writes:
>You had the weathermen in the seventies.
These were kids, though, college dropouts with stereo systems and
dogeared paperbacks. I think Bill's thought was that it might not be
kids next time around but grown men who are used to doing things that
have results. It's an interesting question - are there any modern
precedents? The Oklahoma City thing I suppose shows what can happen
when someone efficient with military training gets involved.
>But for success such groups need a fairly substantial, and preferably
>geographically concentrated, body of passive supporters, who won't
>denounce them to the authorities -- the sea in which, according to
>Mao, guerrilla fish swim. A long tradition of violent resistance to
>established authority helps, too.
I just wonder how much is needed in an extensive urbanized society with
lots of irregular households and lots and lots of people of all kinds
travelling around and moving stuff here and there for different
purposes. Remember how hard it was to find Cunanan.
Haven't things been written on the vulnerability of modern societies to
terrorism? Maybe domestic terrorism will turn out to be like usenet
spam. It just took a few people to show the way, and now 70% of usenet
traffic consists of spam and spam-related messages (cancels, etc.) I'll
have to add that to my collection of arguments proving we'll all end up
living in walled enclaves. The death of a shared public moral world is
likely to have any number of consequences.
--
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com and http://www.panix.com/~jk)
"Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible
reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances." -- Emerson
Do let me know if you have comments of any kind.
Back to my archive of posts.