Culture War Victims Racking Up

This summer, it seems like the victims of the culture wars just keep racking up. It used to be that the only battlefields for the culture wars were intellectual. Ann Coulter would publish a book about godless liberals and the New York Times would run a foreign culture piece about abstinent Americans. Occasionally Christmas would get caught in the crossfire between baby killers and capitalist pig-dogs. Otherwise, though, it was plain and obvious to most Americans that liberals are not actually Maoists in disguise and Republicans do not honestly want to sell the Supreme Court to the highest bidder.

The inflamed rhetoric and often comical excess of the culture wars all became shockingly and traumatically real this summer when, just a few weeks ago, a gunman entered a Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee during the production of a children’s show and opened fire with a shotgun, killing two adults and wounding seven others.

His declared motive for the attacks? “All liberals should be killed.” He truly believed that liberals are defeating America in the War on Terror and that homosexuality cannot be tolerated in society. Although he is hardly the stereotypical right-winger (he slammed a neighbor’s Christian beliefs earlier and said that everything in the Bible is false), he was a fervent believer in the necessity of fighting a culture war, inspired by books written by talk radio and television commentators from the fighting right.

Last month, the madness continued. A man entered the headquarters of the Arkansas Democratic Party and shot the chairman, Bill Gwatney. He was killed in the attack. Although the shooter did not have an explicitly political agenda, he stated that he had lost his job. In his demented mind, it appears that he blamed Democrats in some part for the weak economy and decided to exact revenge.

It is tragic that the rise of participatory citizenship in the internet age has meant that such extremism has had outlets to grow. We are living in a day and age in which any person can get access to ideas and become an advocate for issues. This newfound sense of connectedness and awareness is absolutely fantastic for freedom and can help our country thrive in the next generation.

Unfortunately, the explosion in passion has not been matched by an upswing in principle. People still cling to labels and marketed identities, refusing to take the time to let reason inform their beliefs. This means that we have people who truly believe that political ideology is the starting point of morality, rather than an offshoot of it. Thus, when one attacks conservatism, they are godless scum who need to be cleansed from the Earth. Of course this belief cannot possibly fit within the label “conservatism,” which is all about traditional values, community rights, national sovereignty, and free markets.

Nothing in these ideas embraces the butchering of human beings.

The right-wing has gotten caught up in this mess more than the left because, for one reason or another, it has sold out its intellectual heritage. In past generations, the right believed in men of intellectual integrity and tested reason, like William Buckley, George Santayana, Russell Kirk, and Milton Friedman. These men were passionate and even temperamental at times, but always smart enough and grounded in principle enough to truly believe in the human scale and social harmony, at least to the point of refusing to allow terrorism to become a means of change.

Now, we are somehow left with Rush Limbaugh, who praises Red China’s socialist fuel subsidies; Michael Savage, who does not believe in autism; and Ann Coulter, who believes that the 2004 GOP convention was “heaven.”

Is it any wonder that such brutal stupidity and antithetical thinking leads to very real death?

It is time to call off these culture wars, fueled by blatant idiocy, brazen propaganda, and the embrace of the very same anti-intellectualism that conservatives once prided themselves in standing against.

And it is time for all of us to set aside our philosophical arguments and conjecturing for a little while and devote our thoughts and prayers to the victims and perpetrators of these awful crimes against humanity.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/13/arkansas.shooting/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/27/church.shooting/index.html?iref=newssearch
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2008/07/call_for_culture_war_truce.html

The Sovereigntist Counterargument

“Matthew Yglesias makes it clear that the path to redemption is open, if not always pothole-free. Americans no longer support reckless Republican policies and the time is ripe—not for a new direction, but for the return of a tried-and-true direction. With Heads in the Sand, he provides a starting point for politicians, policymakers, pundits, and citizens alike to return America to its role as leader of a peace-loving and cooperative international community.”

Matthew Yglesias came on our radio show, “The Weekly Filibuster,” last month to discuss his new book, Heads in the Sand, with us. It should prove an interesting starting point for a real and meaningful conversation about the objectives of foreign policy and the best way to proceed after eight years of devastating neo-conservatism. If the jacket of his book has anything to say about it, Yglesias will be calling for liberal internationalism as the ideology that ought to drive American foreign policy. In the wake of neo-conservative arrogance, using military prowess and strong-armed treaties to deal with our enemies, a new age of cooperation and peace is undoubtedly appealing.

Liberal internationalism, however, is not the only way to go about setting things right in the world, nor is it the most humble. Among other things, liberal internationalism would propose renegotiating trade agreements to provide for labor standards, using international mediation as the primary means of resolving longstanding conflicts, and strengthening the United Nations as a humanitarian body. Each of these proposals has its heart in the right place, but are they really the best we can do in the world?

Senator Barack Obama has made the centerpiece of his trade policy renegotiating free trade agreements to provide for concrete protections for workers. Although Obama has wisely backed off of calling for America to exit NAFTA, he has said that only free trade agreements approved by groups like the International Labor Organization will pass muster under his administration. As his primary reasons for these added stipulations, Obama cites poor working standards in Third World countries.

I do not disagree with the Senator in believing that poverty is a grave moral issue to be tackled. But are stricter trade restrictions really the best way to fix the problems of globalization? When it comes to fighting poverty and improving working conditions in poor nations, it is worth keeping in mind that labor in the modern world is based on consensual contracts. To the American mind, it seems like nothing less than sheer exploitation for a fourteen year-old in Indonesia to work ten hours every day making Nike shoes for $10 a week. Before we go demanding that Indonesia either pass a $4 per hour minimum wage, though, it is worth asking why a child and her family would choose to embrace such work. Look a little farther up the road from that factory. Is it really fair to kick the child worker out of said factory and send them back to the farm, where she will work eighteen hours every day squatting in a rice paddy for $10 a month? I do not know. I have to defer to the judgment of the family. Economic progress can seem barbaric to us, but our own ancestors went through every bit of this pain two centuries ago. Over time, the buildup in wages means that workers have the leverage to demand more collective bargaining rights, safer working conditions, and compensation packages. Until then, I cannot ethically order every child and adult working of their own accord in American-owned factory to go back to the lives they chose to leave behind.

International mediation of longstanding conflicts in Israel, Palestine, Colombia, Darfur, and other nations is also on the agenda of international liberalism. After decades of conflict between ethnic and political groups, there is little that we can hope and pray for more fervently than an end to bloodshed, regardless of our political views. To that end, Yglesias and other liberals would surely welcome international mediation. Before we get started with a war against war, though, we have to step back and look at what actually works in diplomacy. Well-intentioned international bureaucrats have been trying for years to fix problems in different parts of the world. Sometimes, this process works. Exemplars of successful peace processes include Northern Ireland, Nepal, South Africa, and East Timor. Other conflicts that the international community has failed to stop include struggles in Haiti, Israel, Palestine, and Darfur. What is the difference between the first group and the second?

In each of the cases that have been successfully resolved, international mediation has played, at best, a supplemental role. Ultimately, every successful peace treaty has been agreed upon by the parties engaged in the conflicts themselves, with an emphasis on reconciliation rather than prosecution. In Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican Army was disarmed and became powerful through its political wing, Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein, other Irish nationalists, and British unionists formed a single government. No major leaders were punished for the events of the Troubles. In Nepal, the Maoist insurgency laid down arms and started campaigning alongside royalists and liberals, shifting their revolution to the political sphere. Their leader, Prachanda, is a major figure in the new government. In South Africa, the white nationalist government voluntarily ceded power. No one was punished for abuse under apartheid; commissions were established instead to allow people to talk to one another about their grievances. In East Timor, a native insurgency won international recognition and political independence from Indonesia. The East Timorese and Indonesian governments recently completed an investigation of abuse during the war, choosing to prize peace over punishment. In each case, the parties involved in a conflict were the major mediators. International venues offered a forum for banging out details, but little more.

The international community’s response to conflicts in Haiti, Israel, Palestine, and Darfur either has been or is hoped to be far more hands-on than any of these cases. The United Nations sent peacekeepers to Haiti in 2004, where they have been bogged down ever since. The nation has been in political turmoil that shows little sign of diminishing: food riots erupted only a few months ago, forcing the prime minister to resign. The last elections were marred with controversy and massive public demonstrations. The economy is based on foreign aid to an extent rarely seen in the world. Peacekeepers have not provided the context for meaningful political dialogue. Israel and Palestine have not yet seen peacekeepers, but in the wake of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza strip, continued Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands, and the increasingly contentious issue of the partitioning of Jerusalem, it is not inconceivable. At the very least, the international community will continue to offer up Oslo and Camp David accords to the leaders of both states, but the conflict will continue to drag on until political leaders closest to the dispute are willing to make meaningful compromise. As Darfur goes, African Union peacekeeping troops can be deployed and help stop people from butchering each other for a time, but unless political solutions emerge from Darfuris and Arabs about issues like political representation, land rights, and even water equity, the conflict is unlikely to end.

Without a deep commitment to the principles of national sovereignty and direct negotiations, international mediators may as well stay in bureaucratic backrooms, universities, and the blogosphere, churning out the perfect solutions to crises they have no direct comprehension of. They can come out the minute leaders directly involved in the conflicts need a hand finding an enforcement mechanism or knowing if the other side is merely bluffing with a demand.

Knocking expanded humanitarian efforts by the UN is quite a tough task, but somebody has to do it. The greatest problem with ceding more power and authority to the UN to fix the problems of the world is that this can rapidly become an excuse for a group of distant bureaucrats to make major social policy decisions for nations. Do I sound like a conspiracy theorist yet? Let’s take HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns as an example of the inability of the UN to truly respect a culture while carrying out its version of one-size-fits-all humanitarianism.

The UN is currently funding condoms as the primary weapon against HIV/AIDS in southern Africa. In Kenya, for example, condoms are now available for free at most health centers in the country. Groups like Human Rights Watch are demanding that all funding towards the fight against HIV/AIDS go to groups that promote the use of condoms. Since the HIV/AIDS epidemic began being monitored by scientists, a grand total of one country has actually decreased its number of infections. Surely it is one of those enlightened countries that has embraced the birth control revolution, right?

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Uganda, which has created one of the modern world’s first massive public campaigns emphasizing the need for monogamy and abstinence until marriage, has seen its infection rate drop 9% in a decade. This does not mean that Human Rights Watch and other liberal internationalist groups are rethinking their approach, however. Recommendations recently made by Human Rights Watch to the Government of Uganda include “Replace programs that promote abstinence-until-marriage to the exclusion of other effective HIV prevention strategies” and, inexplicably, “Rescind the recommendation of compulsory HIV testing for couples intending to marry found in the AB (Abstinence and Being Faithful) policy.”

Why have birth control regimes failed to provide the universal relief so desperately needed in countries slammed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic? There is no universal way to provide relief. Condom distribution only works when the use of artificial contraception does not contradict the core beliefs of a people. One shopkeeper in Kenya put it bluntly in an interview with afrol News: “I will never sell condoms in my shop; it is like promoting adultery and operating a brothel.” The UN is not suited to handle such controversial issues. Whether or not a London diplomat sees condoms as the equivalent of prostitution, Kenyans do. Either the UN must custom-tailor humanitarian initiatives based on the needs of each individual country, a gargantuan task, or leave certain humanitarianism up to more qualified groups with a deeper understanding of local needs. A similar issue is arising in negotiations over a possible UN treaty regulating the shipment of small arms in combat zones. While well-intended initiatives are being discussed to prevent militants from stealing guns, the very same restrictions could disarm civilian populations that rely on their own private arms for self-defense. Is it ever possible for the UN to do humanitarianism without imposing values? Yes, but not to the extent that liberal internationalists want.

The best course for us to pursue in the world is not a new global crusade of liberal internationalism against the evils of the world. Rather, it is for the United States to humbly seek peace and trade with all nations. We should keep a close eye on how much the UN can hold the gun to the head of local traditions. We must stay vigilant in pursuing free trade and seeking to bring the benefits of globalization to all who desire them. We have to ensure that sovereignty and direct engagement, not mediation theory and selective history, remain at the forefront of international conflict resolution.

More than that, America needs to stop doing harm. This means ending talk of war with Iran to destroy a non-existent weapons program that cannot strike us, lifting the embargo on Cuba that has starved a people and turned their hearts against us, promoting trade with Latin America to combat false populism, stopping arms shipments to Israel and other nations involved in bloody conflicts, and bringing our troops home from 37 countries that have no ongoing wars. Honestly, how can we claim to be against imperialism and have permanent military presences in Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Great Britain, and Iceland? Is there nowhere else we need those troops?

This country was founded on ideals of non-interventionism. John Quincy Adams summed up early American foreign policy quite succinctly: “Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” George Washington laid the foundations for these views in his farewell address: “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to domestic nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”

We do not need to practice the same level of isolation these early founders saw fit for, but a humble respect for the rights of all nations, the principle of national sovereignty, and a genuine yearning for non-interventionism need to be at the center of American foreign policy.

• Human Rights Watch report on the AB policy: http://hrw.org/reports/2005/uganda0305/2.htm#_Toc98378359
• afrol News piece on UN HIV/AIDS programs in Kenya: http://www.afrol.com/articles/26739

Conservative Values Cannot be Political Values

I am a social conservative. I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman until death do them part. I believe that contraception is wrong, and that all sex outside of marriage, including pornography, masturbation, and premarital sex, is immoral. I believe that parents have a duty to raise their kids according to accepted social norms. I believe that God, not our human nature or anything else, is the sole source of our rights. I believe that the Church is the legitimate authority on moral matters. I believe that the traditional family is the most stable, healthy environment for people to bond together. I believe that burning your country’s flag is a sick act. I believe that disrespecting my religion’s central tenets, images, and authorities is patently offensive.

And I believe that using the government to enforce any of these beliefs is a gross abuse of the role of civil authority. That is why I will vote for same sex marriage should it ever appear on a ballot in my state, something I hope for. That is why I will stare on in amazement at the FCC for refusing to let parents alone decide what is appropriate for their children to watch. That is why I do not support DCF showing up in the middle of the night to take your kids simply because you are… uncouth in your lifestyle (Texas polygamists come to mind). That is why I fully embrace the First Amendment and the separation of church and state in America. That is why I will be mortified should the Constitution ever be amended to define marriage or prevent physical desecration to the flag. That is why I support your right to insult and blaspheme my faith however you please.

I will tolerate your actions so long as you do not harm other people or the society we share. I will love you as a person regardless of anything. It is not me that will succeed in changing the way you view the world. My role is to do the best I can to respect you as a human being and care for you, setting your actions aside and getting to know you as a person, gay, straight, single, hooking up, Christian, militant atheist, patriot, nationalist, or whatever else you choose to do.

Social conservatives do themselves and their causes a great injustice by seeking to politicize everything they find and seeking to criminalize the behavior of others. This is not the way that we are taught to bear witness to our choices as evidenced by Jesus, Gandhi, or whoever else we listen to. There is a reason that the prophets do not preach to the king. It is the people we must convince. To do this, we must show tolerance. Seeking to bring the forces of government to bear against people who live differently than us is more than just a poor choice of tactics: it is a contradiction of the very message we believe in.

We believe that there are laws regarding human conduct that transcend humanity itself. Why, then, do we insist that the government step in and side with us in our battles? Let others do what they please. Get to know them and interact with them. Do not try to use coercion to bring them into line with our ways. Be upright in your own ways. Be lights on posts, cities on hills. Do not be intolerant of others, but cherish them and, without saying a proselytizing or self-righteous word, bear constant witness to life that points to something greater than itself.

All too often, the people who drive people away from tradition are the very ones who preach the loudest about the need for social restraint. How many conservative pastors need to be arrested for money laundering before we get the point? How many conservative politicians need to fall from grace committing deplorable sexual acts before we understand?

We believe in what we believe in. If we live it truthfully, we have to have faith that we will be justified and respected, regardless of the laws of men.

It may sound cliche thanks to others who use it, but if you don’t want a gay marriage, don’t get one. Do not try to convince others of the correctness and benefit of our beliefs at the bars of a jail cell, the denial of a piece of legal paper, or a microphone silenced.

Tolerance and compassionate coexistence are the only ways social conservatives are going to accomplish anything in this world.

Popcorn Christianity

A Christian is one who works out his salvation with One Who causes so much fear and trembling that the Christian fears no man and trembles before no law.

A Christian is an anarchist of the highest moral order; he obeys every law and needs none to tell him to harm none, care for the poor, and to be satisfied with his lot in this life.

A Christian is one who believes that God’s Word is a seed that falls upon the good ground of a ready heart where it grows into a harvest of belief and is gathered, at which point the wheat of wisdom is separated from the chaff of falsehood and made into the bread that is God’s Body on Earth, the Church.

A Christian is one for whom the most natural thing to do is to turn the other cheek after being hit on the first, give a robber the coat off his own back, and forgive a thousand times the man who deserves it none of them.

A Christian is one who sees in every unborn child, tired laborer, drug addict, hopeless convict, destitute immigrant, institutionalized patient, abandoned grandparent, orphaned child, desperate prostitute, and street bum nothing less than the Face of the God he worships.

A Christian is one who believes that the most original, new, and radical idea that has ever existed is the one at the heart and core of tradition, history, and orthodoxy.

A Christian is one who gives thanks for the sun, sings praise because of the rain, is grateful for freedom, and is joyed to be oppressed for the sake of God.

A Christian is one who bears witness without speaking and worships without a word in his mouth.

Looking East? Try the Vatican!

It is a sad result of the Reformation and “Biblical Christianity” that so much of legitimate Christian belief and practice has been lost on Americans. There are lots of reasons why American religious seekers turn away from Christianity, to be sure. Some truly do not believe in the concept of a personal God. Others really do affirm that reincarnation, nirvana, the many avatars of the Divine, and Bodhisattvas are the most accurate ways to see the universe.

For a lot of Eastern-oriented seekers, though, it seems like a lot of issues with Christianity are based on practice and hackneyed understandings of Christian doctrine. A lot of people, even people who still identify as Christian, look to the East for beneficial spiritual practices. Yoga, meditation, Zen, koans, and incense are all great spiritual practices, to be certain. I have experimented with all of these practices and find them useful. However, it really strikes me when Christians earnestly desire personal spiritual fulfillment, but don’t believe that deep spiritual practices fit into Christianity.

American Christianity has two main wings: liberalism and conservatism. Much like our politics, these two wings are often at odds with each other, endorsing different sources for legitimacy. Liberalism often looks to modern culture and personal experience as the starting point for religious understanding, while conservatism tends to look to the Bible and little else. Given that context, it is well-worth asking what the original Christians saw as the source of legitimacy in their faith.

It was obviously not our modern culture, and, shocking though it may seem, the first four centuries of Christians could not have been Biblical Christians! After all, the New Testament was not compiled and there was no definitive Christian scripture beyond Jewish scripture.

The early Christians sought legitimacy by seeking Christ in contemplation, service, and their interactions with others. The Church, however you define it, is essential for a Christian. Jesus promises us that whenever two or three are gathered in His name, there He is also. Service is also essential: after all, whatever we do for the least among us, we do for Christ. These first two are fairly obvious parts of Christian tradition and are still alive and well in American Christianity. Doubt it? Google “Bible study + (your zip code)” or “Faith rehab program” and see how many gazillions of hits pop up.

Contemplation, essential to the Christian life, has tragically fallen by the wayside. We are taught to speak to Christ in prayer, but never taught anything other than verbal prayer. When our voices get sore and we just feel frustrated, it can seem like Christianity has reached the end of its rope. We are told to meditate day and night on Scripture, but given no means of doing so. We are taught that Christ transcends our ability to understand Him fully, and given no way to interact meaningfully with Him in light of that. Needless to say, many Christians leave the faith frustrated, or seek to bring Jesus with them into Eastern spirituality.

Eastern traditions offer a lot of promise when Christianity stops making sense and offering fulfillment. Zen offers intense meditation focused on cutting through illusion of every type and awakening. Yoga offers us a way to bring the body and mind into harmony and feel connected to the Divine. Koans engage our minds in active contemplation of their mysteries. Looking at images of Buddhas, with a smile as enigmatic as Mona Lisa’s with a radiant joy that can only be spiritual in nature, it can be easy to see Christianity as a rigid set of rules when compared with the vital spirituality of the East.

For everyone who seeks the spiritual enlightenment that only comes from personal interaction with the Divine, however, no conflict with Christianity is needed. Catholicism (not exclusively, but primarily in the modern Christian world) has set contemplation at the forefront of its traditions. Contemplation is seen as the highest expression of spirituality. The Church (as I define it this time) is chock-full of spiritual disciplines and practices. All too often, they are dismissed as “superstitious” or “outmoded” at best, and heretical at worst. The same personal searching that animates Eastern faith is at the very heart of Catholicism, albeit with a different understanding of metaphysical context.

Some of the most blatantly contemplative practices of the Church are often the most understood:

-The monastic life: somehow, many of the same critics of Catholicism find the idea of celibate men living in silent communion in the middle of nature practicing communal prayer find the idea of celibate Tibetan men living in silent communion in the middle of nature practicing communal mantras highly enlightened. Catholic monks are every bit as dedicated to seeking direct interaction with spiritual truth and legitimate living as the religious of the East, yet they are seen as out of place in the West when, in reality, they are one of our greatest spiritual resources. Monastic authors like Thomas Keating, Thomas Merton, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross have written spiritual works on the nature of the soul that equal the understanding and wisdom of Lao Tzu, Mahatma Gandhi, Ramakrishna, and D.T. Suzuki.

-The rosary: no, it isn’t us sitting around babbling out to Mary until we’re blue in the face. Every bead of the Rosary marks not just a verbal prayer, but an event from the Gospels that we recall while praying. The rosary is, arguably, the most potent of all Catholic mantras, using the intense images of the Gospel to draw us more fully into an understanding of God in life and the world.

-The Ignatian Exercises: instead of teaching that the Bible is a “plain and simple” book, Catholics believe that the Bible is incredibly complex and requires much mental effort and spiritual devotion to understand. To that end, St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, offered up a series of disciplines, including reading Scripture and meditating as though you are in the story and seeking to rest in God’s wordless peace after reading. These practices seek to let God’s Word truly speak to us and change the way we see the world and know ourselves.

-The Blessed Virgin Mary: Many Americans find the concept of the Mother Goddess or the feminist god appealing. In Catholic belief, Mary is our loving intercessor before Christ, leading us gently and maternally to awareness of the Divine. She isn’t a modern incarnation of the pagan goddesses of old; she is the best example we have of how to love Jesus. She is the presence bearing witness to what complete spiritual transformation truly means for humanity and the person.

-Contemplative prayer: for the first fifteen centuries of Christianity, Christians incorporated contemplative prayer into daily worship. Much like meditation in Eastern traditions, the idea is to let go of thoughts and illusions to come to a more mature understanding of the Divine and live more authentically. Rather than opening ourselves to emptiness, as Eastern traditions teach, Catholicism teaches that the Christian opens himself to the Holy Spirit’s infinite fullness in contemplative prayer, thus welcoming the transformation that Christ promises us constantly in the Gospel. After centuries of neglect, contemplative prayer is rising again in the Church.

-The Bible: okay, the Good Book is definitely not neglected in American Christianity. However, it is rarely seen as a call to contemplative seeking. All too often, emphasis is placed exclusively on one aspect of Scripture: service, piety, history, or whatever else is the sole doctrine of the day. Far too little emphasis is placed on the concept of spiritual transformation, which is indeed the root of everything else we are called to do. Jesus is a great healer: is this a call to abandon medicine, or a call to look to Jesus to heal us of the brokenness of illusion? Idols are condemned: is this about Krishna and Buddha, or about putting a desire for the Divine over every false desire in the world, an extraordinarily difficult task in mega mall America? We are described as born anew in Jesus: does this sound more like signing a testimony sheet or awakening to the true nature of reality?

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and one of the great Catholic contemplatives of the twentieth century, described Zen as the atmosphere of the Gospels. During his life of contemplative prayer, he also wrote that awareness helps us to be better Christians, just as it makes a Buddhist a better Buddhist. A man some Catholics consider a saint, Merton was considered by at least one Tibetan monk to be the only natural-born Buddha he had ever met. Is there really such a great gap between how the saint and how the bodhisattva experience the world?

Being aware without making judgments, adding commentary, or reverting to prejudice is indeed the call of Christ in our lives. As Eastern religious traditions have made obvious to many Americans, contemplation is an arduous, but ultimately enlightening, path for the spiritual seeker.

As Christians, it is high time we reclaim our own contemplative legacy, with an understanding of the Living Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life that all sincere seekers interact with.

Utopia Kills: Reflections on The Communist Manifesto

I read The Communist Manifesto for the first time this summer. Marx’s ideas are certainly interesting. The vision of a world free of class, where every person is free to explore their potential and is unbounded by cruel prejudice and oppressive conventions is certainly appealing at first glance. Karl Marx finds a world very fraught with inequality and explotation, certainly not entirely alien to reality at the height of the Gilded Age.

Reading the scriptures of communism made me reflect on the teaching of Jesus that we are to judge a tree by its fruit. What is the outcome of communism? Is it the fruits of a free, humane society that actually serves people, not capital? Hardly.

Like any other ideology, the promises of utopia awaiting at the end are intoxicating. They are so intoxicating that people are willing to go to any lengths in order to make the perfect society. Every ideology breaks down the world into simple segments, some of which stand in the way of utopia. For fascism, it is the outcast or the minority. For neoconservatism, it is foreign dictatorship. For radical Islam, it is the Great Satan of global superpowers. For communism, it is the rich.

Given the utopias promised by each of these ideologies, how could the people reasonably not go to any lengths to bring them about? After all, what is the price of some human lives, some freedoms for the time, and a few more wars before an eternal age of liberté, egalité and fraternité for humanity?

It is this kind of obsessive, single-minded logic that strikes paranoia into the heart of the ideologue. Since utopia is not yet here, there must be someone standing in the way. Of course, that someone will always exist, because the dreams of utopia will not be fulfilled. It is this brutal fact of reality that has led to the kind of irrational paranoia that, rather than being coincidental, is consequential to the ideological mind.

The best sign that an ideology has grasped the mind of a man is the moment he feels threatened by the defenseless. Vladimir Lenin felt threatened by the czar’s thirteen year-old son and ordered him shot dead. Osama bin Laden felt threatened by 3,000 middle- and working-class New Yorkers and sent a plane to demolish them. Adolf Hitler’s regime felt threatened by a young diarist named Anne Frank and killed her in the death camps. President Bush felt threatened by an AP photojournalist and had him held at Guantanamo Bay without charges for several years.

Karl Marx is no better than any of these men, and communism no more humane than any other ideology. It wraps its promises and visions up in reason expressed by theories of the intellect, not in faith expressed by love of the heart.

As Flannery O’Connor so poignantly warned Christians, “In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.”

Obstinately Pro-Life from Conception to Natural Death

Albert Camus, an ex-Communist and staunch opponent of the death penalty, certainly had his own experience in mind when he put the words below into the mouth of Tarrou in The Plague. It is well worth remembering that today, supporters of the death penalty cannot bear to see chemicals stop the beating heart of a man lying helpless on a gurney. Supporters of war cannot bear to see cluster bomb shrapnel tear apart the lungs of men no older than their own sons. Supporters of abortion cannot bear to see scissors tear apart the limbs of a fetus.

How is it that we have learned to shout out the ideals “Justice!”, “Peace!”, and “Freedom!” over the screams of the dying? How do we care more about theoretical, abstract concepts than human persons? Like Tarrou, “I chose to be blindly obstinate, pending the day when I could see my way more clearly.”

From The Plague, by Albert Camus:

“Have you ever seen a man shot by a firing squad? No, of course not; the spectators are hand-picked and it’s like a private party, you need an invitation. The result is that you’ve gleaned your ideas about it from books and pictures. A post, a blindfolded man, some soldiers in the offing. But the real isn’t a bit like that. Do you know that the firing-squad stands only a yard and a half from the condemned man? Do you know that if the victim took two steps forward his chest would touch the rifles? Do you know that, at this short range, the soldiers concentrate their fire on the region of the heart and their big bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist? No, you didn’t know all that; those are things that are never spoken of… Decent folks must be allowed to sleep easy o’ nights, mustn’t they?…

…When I spoke of these matters they told me not to be so squeamish; I should remember what great issues were at stake. And they advanced arguments, often quite impressive ones, to make me swallow what none the less I couldn’t bring myself to stomach. I replied that the most eminent of the plague-stricken, the men who wear red robes, also have excellent arguments to justify what they do, and once I admitted the arguments of necessity and force majeure put forward by the less eminent, I couldn’t reject those of the eminent…

In any case, my concern was not with arguments. It was with the poor ‘owl’; with that foul procedure whereby dirty mouths stinking of plague told a fettered man that he was going to die, and scientifically arranged things so that he should die, after nights and nights of mental torture while he waited to be murdered in cold blood. My concern was with that hole, big as a fist, in a man’s chest. And I told myself that meanwhile, so far anyhow as I was concerned, nothing in the world would induce me to accept any argument that justified such butcheries. Yes, I chose to be blindly obstinate, pending the day when I could see my way more clearly.”

Where Religion Makes Me Progressive

Anyone who has been reading this blog since its inception last week can reasonably infer at least two things about me: I am a Republican and a Catholic. Astute observers will also note that because of my belief in social morality, personal responsibility, and charity, my religious views have an impact on my anti-statist economic views. I also take traditional religious views against abortion, physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, and embryonic stem cell research. Does this make me a member of the vast right wing fundamentalist conspiracy to dismantle the welfare state and reject modern science as the basis of morality?

Absolutely.

That said, my Catholicism features far more fully into my political views than just my beliefs about bioethics and the market. My religious beliefs inform nearly all of my political views. Before you cry “separation of church and state!” on me, hear me out. There are many places in which my Catholicism pushes me away from my fellow Republicans and puts me in company with the liberal Democrats I grew up around.

Perhaps the greatest issue of global moral urgency is the environmental crisis. As a believer in the message of Genesis, I believe that God has set us as stewards of the natural world. We have nothing less than a religious duty to protect God’s creation and undo the damage that centuries of consumerist excess have wrought. In the process of adopting new regulations on the use of natural resources, we will pay a price in prosperity. Indeed, the fuel crisis will only get worse and every American, from the middle-class parent to the corporate executive to the food stamp recipient, will be hit by inflation and costs. My faith in God teaches me that, painful though they are and as much as we have to work to minimize their impact, these sacrifices must be made for the sake of fulfilling our duties as stewards of the environment.

Another issue that transcends our borders is that of war. Catholic doctrine holds that just war is a last resort and must be practiced only when diplomacy has absolutely failed. Wars of aggression are not morally justifiable. A clear plan for the protection of civilians and a transition to a livable peace must be made before the first shots are fired. Permanent occupation is not acceptable. America violated these doctrines in declaring war on Iraq, and is now poised to do so again with Iran. We are not waging preemptive war. We are executing preventive war. There is no moral ground for this. I was wrong to support the decision to start the Iraq War through 2007 and do not support any permanent occupation of the nation once stable conditions have been established.

Other acts of violence and degradation of humans have also been made known over the past eight years. My Catholic heart has been mortified by pictures of sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib. My conscience has been hurt by the plight of prisoners held without charge for years on end at Guantanamo Bay. My mind has been disturbed by news of secret flights over Europe bringing prisoners to be tortured at covert prisons. My prayers have been with innocent men, women, and children murdered at Haditha, and my soul was troubled when the perpetrators were declared innocent by courts. That so many religious Americans have remained complacent about the moral atrocities committed by the current administration and its agents only makes the pain worse for me.

Another gross crime against the dignity of the human person continues in the death penalty. Where Jesus preaches a message of forgiveness and healing, American “justice” teaches that some people are irreparably broken and must be killed in atonement for their crimes. This policy denies the redeemable nature of humans as found in Sts. Paul, Mary Magdalene, and Dismas, the thief saved as he was crucified beside our Lord. Like any instrument of death wielded by the state, the death penalty stands for a rejection of life that plagues our society. Our drug policies are also based on the irreligious assertion that punishment, not healing, is the goal of the “correction” system. If we held to the teachings of the Gospel about the primacy of reconciliation over separation, we would find more ethical ways to treat drug abusers than by locking them away from their families for years.

Catholicism, which by its dictionary definition means “universalism,” also teaches us not to judge those who are different. America is considering deporting approximately 12 million people from our midst because they violated our immigration laws. They hold a different culture, language, and worldview than we do. Our first ancestors in the faith were in the same situation. God called the immigrants Abraham and Sarah to leave all they knew for the sake of their descendants and start a new life abroad. The early Christian apostles spent their lives crossing many borders to proclaim the Gospel. Christians are a people whose nation is the Kingdom of Heaven. Though we have the right to secure our borders, enforce our laws, and expect people to honor our culture if they come here, we are called to be merciful to wanderers, not legalistic, and to reject nationalism as the basis for our identity.

As evidenced by the coming together of Jews and Gentiles at the table of the Lord, we are also meant to overcome the differences of race and ethnicity we find in society. We are meant to live in a society in which there is a mingling of races, social classes, and nationalities. Policies like gentrification, slum clearance, and panhandling restrictions, while they may make us more comfortable, belie a lack of faith in the ability of God to bring together His children that all may be one. We also have to learn to embrace our homosexual brothers and sisters, ensuring that they are treated with compassion, dignity, and respect, as called for in the Canon of the Church. Though we may disagree on the specific measures needed to make this happen while still showing proper honor to tradition, it is a task we must work towards.

Exploitation of the poor is also an area of grave concern to the Catholic. We are taught by the Gospels that the poor in spirit, those who are free of ambition and are not attached to material riches, are the heirs of the Kingdom of God. We are called to work towards a world, in the words of Catholic Worker Peter Maurin, “in which it would be easier for men to be good.” Government protection of monopolies and the corrupt rich is fundamentally at odds with this calling. We must work for a world in which the most people have access to capital and the means of production. Far from state socialism, we fight for a truly free market that all people have access to and can reap the rewards of. This means vigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws, ending corporate welfare, and protecting the right of all workers to join together in labor unions, a right declared expressly by the Church in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum. It also means rejecting the consumerism that is usually used as a measure of the wellbeing of a people. Without a sense of dignity and identity, what is the purpose of all the wealth in the world?

All too often, the faith of an American falls along the lines of a political manifesto. Conservatives find religion to be an affirmation of hawkish views, retribution against criminals, the corporate system, nationalist patriotism, and the defense of the comfortable people in society. Liberals find religion to be an affirmation of feminism, gay identity, the welfare state, abortion rights, and the defense of social deviance. I believe religion is meant to transform us to a radical defense of the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person in any state of living, from the unborn to the criminal to the foreigner to the worker to the parent.

My belief in the Revelations of Christ as the source for this belief makes me a believer in conserving our morals at any price. In many cases, though, this means progressing back to them first.

The Fisherwomen of Tahiti (Good and Evil Continued)

PATRICK:

“Did the historical pattern of “truth” and “right and wrong” and develop as a predictable result of natural processes, or is it modeled on a law above nature?”

MATT:

The historical patterns of truth and the concepts of right and wrong are modeled on a law above nature, and there are scientific explanations for morality that, while accurate in their own context, cannot grasp the full meaning of morality, which can only be found in natural law. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to said law as “natural law”, though others refer to it as “the will of God”, “human nature”, or other concepts. The idea I am aiming to express is that there is a law above nature that, indeed, nature herself is grounded in, and that this law forms the core of our beliefs about truth and right and wrong, which, again for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to broadly as “morality.”

That morality is informed by something greater than the natural processes evident in history seems obvious. If it were the case that morality is simply in flux and constantly changes based on our perceptions and social expectations, then there is no reasonable way to account for the relative universality of morality across both time and space. This is certainly a point to be argued, but would you not agree that all cultures have similar concepts of “truth,” “hope,” “loyalty,” “compassion,” “love,” “justice,” “order,” “equality,” and “freedom”? Although the way we implement and balance each of these ideals is radically different, the vast majority of societies give credit to them as the basis for civilization. At the very least, they form the ideological core of every society that lasts beyond a very brief amount of time. In contrast, as the last two hundred years have so painfully shown, societies that choose instead to glorify “relativism,” “change,” “reordering,” “liberation,” “the common good,” “competition,” “perfection,” and “revolution” as the ultimate goods, without reference to tradition or the high ideals listed before, tend to devolve entirely into tyranny and violence, ultimately collapsing and giving way to the ideals that are timeless.

How this core group of morals is applied to a given society seems to be the product of thousands of years of refinement. Justice once meant an eye for an eye (to some, it still does!). Now, according to the UN and most of the developed world, it means rehabilitation over retribution. Freedom once meant that your tribe had the right to govern itself internally as it saw fit. In 21st century America, we would prefer to argue that freedom is freedom to the extent that the freedom of another is not impaired. Our traditions, it would seem, are refinements of our morals. As a Darwinist might suggest, tradition can be viewed as the product of natural selection, as societies prune teachings that lead to destruction and glorify ideals that tend towards continuity and stability. In this sense, perhaps you are right to suggest that morality is a creation of natural processes.

As a believer, however, I believe that all natural processes are the result of something greater than them, namely, God. Natural law is not, as many would claim, exclusive as an understanding of the universe. I acknowledge the accuracy of science in explaining the natural processes of the universe. I acknowledge that biology has mountains of evidence suggesting that my ancestors on this 13 billion year-old Earth were single-celled organisms composed of material that once banged outwards in a single explosion. I also acknowledge that anthropology has evidence suggesting that my most dearly held beliefs about the nature of morality are the product of millennia of social interaction and psychological development in humans. These acknowledgments do not bar from me a belief in natural law.

You see, Patrick, I believe that there is a reason underlying all of the natural processes we observe, and that every intricacy of morality ultimately spawns from natural law. Just as I can look at an exhibition of Impressionist paintings and see the soft transitions between colors, the tropical plants, and the lightly-dressed people and deduce that they are all made by Paul Gauguin, I can look at a library moral codes and see the emphasis on reciprocity, the triumph of the just, and the wise teacher figures rooted in human experience and deduce that they are all inspired by natural law.

I cannot “prove” that there is a natural law, and if this is what you were looking for in my response, you will be sorely disappointed. You and I actually agree on what you think is your most contentious point: science does offer an explanation of morality. I believe that viewing this explanation as the ultimate reason, however, is as uninformed and anti-holistic as seeking to understand “The Fisherwomen of Tahiti” as a series of spontaneously arising pixels that we only understand because we have interpreted it subjectively, rather than as a work that came forth from the mind of a creator with a clear intent in mind.

You may still admire the work, or dismiss it as entirely irrelevant. You may even understand entirely the technical aspect of it. But without Gauguin, it cannot be called “art,” which is the very thing it was made to be.

Moving forward, I would like to hear your response to this (something other than the “I do not conceive of God arising from my basic ration, therefore, God does not exist” argument), or, your answer to the following question: as a logical person, how can you believe that something emerged from nothing in the absence of any Divinity? Is everything nothingness still? Is there something outside of time that is not divine that is still a basis for everything?

The Clamorings of a Fanatic (An Old Facebook Debate Rekindled?)

(This argument initially took place on Facebook in early May. The 29 comments initially left between us and other observers have not been copied over here.)

Patrick recently posted an interesting piece on the nature of human morality (on Facebook), and I responded with a question. He countered my arguments, suggesting that the entire concept of good and evil is baseless. Since my response to him was too long to be a reply to the original note, I have pasted the entire exchange below.

PATRICK:

1. Fear
You’re afraid all the time. If you’re not, then you’re not thinking about things hard enough. Not thinking is cowardice. All humans can overcome all fear. Fear is wretched, contemptible, and subhuman.
Worth lies in actions done in spite of fear.

2. Trace things to their principles (stop lying)
What blighted adults in the world they fucked up don’t live with constant lies? Throw a fashion show for charity, spend 10,000 and donate 5,000. Work at the Clinton Foundation, and have a nice house. Singer claims 200 is enough to save a human life, and real estate in NY is uppers of half million for some of the more decent apartments. Stop lying to yourself.
Humility is lying. If you’re good at something, stop wimping around claiming you’re not.
If you hate your job, quit. If you hate school, quit. You are anything you want to be at anytime, and you will die very soon. Perhaps tomorrow. Do things all the way or not at all.

3. Sex
Sex is life-affirming. Sexual energy, an evolutionary urge, got all muted and fractured and fucked up, and now most people project it by buying clothes they don’t need or getting degrees they don’t want, for trophy wives, rich husbands, trophy husbands, or rich wives.
You’re going to die. Soon. Have sex while you can. Have as much as you can. It’s six million years of evolution telling you to do it, and 6000 years of bogus Judeo-Christian morality telling you not to do it.

4. Physical Realization
You evolved to survive. Your body is crying out to be used, pushed, maxed out. It wants to run, sweat, swim, fuck, fuck, eat, fuck, sweat, climb, dive, leap. If you are locked up in a florescent-lighted hell-cell, you are dying. Your evolutionary urged is dormant, dead. What pain will you experience? What struggle will you know? None, none, none!

5. Drugs
Do drugs out of fear, nihilism, boredom, depression= cowardice. Do drugs in a reckless experiment to push the boundaries of your own psychology= awesome. Drugs are not life-affirming. They’re actively destructive, and they will shorten your life and dull your brain and fuck up your body. That’s all you have. But you can choose to do it, purposely, knowing full well the consequences. In this case, you are acting bravely on a stupid principle, which is more than most worms ever do in their short, blind, numb lives.

6. Nature Shit
It is possible that we are just glorified animals, and quieting the hellish clamor of our psyche is the only thing that will save us from the post-industrial Wal-mart ennui that will gut us of all the life in our corpulent bodies. If we are just clever animals, than in makes sense to get right into nature, right the fuck out of society, and right the fuck into what you were born to be. Completely savage. Maybe some kind of contentment can be found in this.

MATT:

what qualifies you to dismiss 6,000 years of judeo-christian morality as practiced by over one-third of humans alive today as “bogus”?

PATRICK:

Matt, so far the only things you say are that lots of people do it, and they’ve been doing it for a long time. Lots of people have orgies, and that’s been going on a while.
Why dismiss it? There is no justification whatsoever for framing human experience as good or bad, or good or evil. Who can even defend that there is a binary? Why not a continuum? Why anything at all? We evolved from the slime, we are fragile creatures that experience fleeting lives, and we can never see beyond phenomena to things-as-they-are, or noumena. What are people talking about when they say bad? Do they mean pain? That is real. But moral bad or good does not exist, and no satisfactory proof, beyond the clamorings of fanatics, has ever been furnished to indicate otherwise.
We are effects and causes in long series of causes and effects, and there is no answer to the question “How should I live” in the whole damn pack of organized religions.

MATT:

dear pat,

i could play the numbers game and suggest that there may be more reason to believe the opinions of at least 25 billion living and deceased thinking, rational human beings over the opinions of a select few, but that would hardly be a rational refutation. so, here’s my shot…

your chief claim here is that good and evil do not exist, and that there is no justification for branding human experience as such. surprisingly, i agree with you that human experience should not be branded as such. however, the way we perceive our own experiences can be ultimately joyous or ultimately painful, depending on the myriad choices we make. human experience itself is neither, but certainly you can agree that being driven by greed, lust, hatred, anger, and fear from one moment to the next is a pathetic existence providing no sense of satisfaction. you claim that pain is real, but morality does not. however, there is an emptiness that plagues many who cannot say they feel pain. if i am a millionaire mafioso who has killed off literally all of my opponents, has a hot wife who does not care about my mistresses, and millions of dollars, you could hardly say my life is painful! in the absence of consequence, there simply will be no pain. that said, i hope you and i would agree that something is inherently disordered about this life, even with the absence of pain.

we use the moral term “evil” to suggest something that, while it may or may not incur pain through consequence, still seems abhorrent to us. imagine, if you will, that a scientist invented a hallucinatory acid with no adverse side effects in the long-run and no limits on usage. couldn’t a person simply pass into an anesthetized dream for 80 years and then die without ever feeling pain? would you have any criticism whatsoever of that? there is no pain, and certainly this life would be a continuum if anything at all, rather than a binary.

this may unsettle you somewhere, and i am eager to hear you define where this would be. given your implied definition of the good life, though, meaning one lacking any semblance of binary morality, we are already living in the greatest acid trip we will ever know. we are bombarded by sensation, and respond accordingly. we wake up in the morning, eat, sleep more, get money, spend money, eat more, fuck, and sleep again. if your beliefs about sexuality as a natural urge to be fulfilled as often as possible is practiced and extended to other innate urges, like violence or eating, then life is simply going from one hit to the next. we are perpetual junkies with a perpetual and insatiable withdrawal syndrome. then we die.

religion at the very least offers us another way to view existence. rather than one chemical reaction to the next driving what we “should” do (a term which cannot even exist independent of values and, by extension, good and evil!), religion teaches that we can actually detox ourselves from reality. yes, pat, i’m giving up the fucking, drugging, drinking, and consuming in exchange for chastity, sobriety, clarity, and simplicity. am i doing it perfectly? absolutely not. but i profess a belief system that says that there is a better way to live, that such a thing as better exists in a more absolute sense than pleasure vs. pain (even in the long run, without consequences), and that i can be more than a primal creature emerging briefly from the slime.

is this the clamoring of fanatics? possibly. if i knew it was, i’d still take it. at least their fanatic vision is one free of the flaming passions that consume our lives. i give in to passion and desire in my life, even given my choice, and even when it brings no “real” pain as you define it, i feel less meaningful for it. i have also experienced abstaining from desire and letting go of passion, and even when it brings more real pain than giving in to desire, i still feel more free and alive for it in the long run.

causes and effects have a role, and are ultimately one of the driving forces between our concepts of morality across the religious spectrum. today, i will profess belief in a better life than the ultimately subjective and unitary one. i have found that this causes the effect of understanding reality more clearly, treating other people better, and crucially, living with a sense of soothing disconnect from the burning desires all around me.

just another clamoring fanatic,

-matt