Some Relevant Views
Does anyone ever wonder why the right wing is so anti-intellectual when it actually comes to looking at the reality of things? The answer is that these authoritarian personalities- whether we're talking about Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reily, or Sean Hannity- are pathological personalities who are dreaming for a world that never was, and that never will be this side of the grave. They are simply trying to construct a view of the world that is void of nuance because they are the "intellectual" (ditto) heirs of Plato and Aristotle. The thinking of these two men plagued Western society for so long that it led to justifications for every social evil imaginable- from slavery to conquest to the oppression of women and those of other religions- all because the society is built upon an absolute and ideal ordering that can never be challenged or removed. Things must be the way they are, because the "ideal" ( whatever that is) presupposes it. So there you have it. Right wingers are presuppositionalists, and furthermore, they are direct-casue presuppositionalists, meaning that they think that all the problems of society are caused directly from other root problems, thus creating a simplistic view of the universe and of man. I don't deny that there are simple answers to many evils (mainly human selfishness), but I don't think that they are caused by such a simple factor of other antecedant causes so as to make one prima causae the whole reason for why crime, poverty, or terrorism exists in this world. Talk to any right wing reactionary, and you will find that there can be no other solution to crime than locking away more misfits. Poverty is caused by laziness. Terrorists are simply blind nihilistic fanatics who hate America because they hate America because they hate America...ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Everything which America does is all-good, by the way. We are God's chosen people, a city on a hill- to use the popular phrase of Puritan John Winthrop. Never mind that the Right has bastardized Christianity to the point that Jesus might someday be the new posterchild for recruiting by the U.S. Army, where He owuld probably be seen as encouraging the next generations of young Americans to lay down their lives for the sake of others (the oil companies). Ane never mind that the religious right spews forth its rhetoric about being a moral force for the Christianization of America, in order that we can "win the world for Christ." I hate their musings about how American culture has degenerated so much, and that only the Right can save the family. Of course, families are being ruined when we cut funding for those who are poor, or when a father, son, or brother has just been senselessly killed in Iraq because of the blind and stupid actions of this Administration, which is such a "friend" of Christianity and "moral progress."
The problem with the Right of today is that it's an authoritarian belief system which can only behold one way, the One, the Absolute, the ultimate synthesis, to borrow some Hegelian jargon. They have a similar worlview as did the German philosopher Hegel- that history is running to its climax, and the grand synthesis will result when America establishes itself as the global hegemonic hyper-power. I shouldn't use the term "synthesis", because of the fact that these neocons don't believe in "synthesizing" America with Al-qaida or any of its other enemies for that matter. America is the great thesis- all else that opposes it is the antithesis. The pendulum must end swinging on our side alone, but that can't happen anyway. I think that soon we'll see that neither America nor the terrorists will win. We will only see something different in the future. What it is, I don't know.
Those of us on the Left must be passionate about using the tools of reason to accomplish our ends. This is why we are not to emulate the Right in any of its tactics, because its ends are so closely intertwined with its means that they are almost one- to see their absolute authority as established against all else, and to bomb the living f@#$ out of those who are in the way of our plans. Liberals stand for reason, fairness, and tolerance- those oft hated values which the right thinks will only lead to weakness and fuzzy thinking because they don't just dogmatically state the Truth of All Things, that Absolute One which is the ideological guidepost for everything the right does. Thus, the right is for conventional wisdom, meaning that they simply want to live their whole lives on a set of rules that can never change concerning how they're supposed to interpret the world. Liberals value the splendor of the universe, the amazing capacities for humans to love one another, and for the amazing possibilities of the future for creating a better society based off of peace, love, and justice. Is there something so horribly impractical about this idea?
AS FOR THE FIRST VETO OF OUR 43RD PRESIDENT, I should perhaps be a little indignant that it had to involve a ban on stem cell reasearch. That my own family members suffer from diseases that could be cured makes this personal. But I am not the only one to see that this presidency is just a bit too despicable for rational minds to digest. I hate everything about George's legacy in the White House, and I don't care if we have 2 1/2 more years until he leaves. I want him gone. He is not pro-life at all. He is pandering to the religious right for orders as to how to vote regarding these vital issues, and I don't care to hear how stopping stem cell research is going to usher in a postmodern "culture of death", where the "dignity of human life" will somehow be threatened by a cadre of elite scientists who are godless moral relativists. With all of this said, I don't hold to embryonic stem cell research as the salvific panacea that others have idolized. But because we don't yet know the effects of this type of testing doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue it; after all, if it does work, we will see cures to our most dreaded diseases. If not, we will simply have to find another way, and then it would be permissible to vote against this type of research. But unlike this excrescence of a president has done, we are to base our objections to research on grounds that are empirically verifiable, not on some speculative theological/metaphysical theory ground in a particular religious viewpoint which holds that one cannot seperate human personality from an entity that may have the genetic material to develop into a human person with thoughts, feelings, volition, etc. But instead, Mr. Bush sought the easy way out. It isn't damaging to society to think that God has a Mother and to pray and go to church. But we live in a pluralistic society, and if we make rules, we use legal and practical necessity in our deliberation, not theology.
More views will be offered later on why America may not survive the next 2 1/2 years.
Does anyone ever wonder why the right wing is so anti-intellectual when it actually comes to looking at the reality of things? The answer is that these authoritarian personalities- whether we're talking about Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reily, or Sean Hannity- are pathological personalities who are dreaming for a world that never was, and that never will be this side of the grave. They are simply trying to construct a view of the world that is void of nuance because they are the "intellectual" (ditto) heirs of Plato and Aristotle. The thinking of these two men plagued Western society for so long that it led to justifications for every social evil imaginable- from slavery to conquest to the oppression of women and those of other religions- all because the society is built upon an absolute and ideal ordering that can never be challenged or removed. Things must be the way they are, because the "ideal" ( whatever that is) presupposes it. So there you have it. Right wingers are presuppositionalists, and furthermore, they are direct-casue presuppositionalists, meaning that they think that all the problems of society are caused directly from other root problems, thus creating a simplistic view of the universe and of man. I don't deny that there are simple answers to many evils (mainly human selfishness), but I don't think that they are caused by such a simple factor of other antecedant causes so as to make one prima causae the whole reason for why crime, poverty, or terrorism exists in this world. Talk to any right wing reactionary, and you will find that there can be no other solution to crime than locking away more misfits. Poverty is caused by laziness. Terrorists are simply blind nihilistic fanatics who hate America because they hate America because they hate America...ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Everything which America does is all-good, by the way. We are God's chosen people, a city on a hill- to use the popular phrase of Puritan John Winthrop. Never mind that the Right has bastardized Christianity to the point that Jesus might someday be the new posterchild for recruiting by the U.S. Army, where He owuld probably be seen as encouraging the next generations of young Americans to lay down their lives for the sake of others (the oil companies). Ane never mind that the religious right spews forth its rhetoric about being a moral force for the Christianization of America, in order that we can "win the world for Christ." I hate their musings about how American culture has degenerated so much, and that only the Right can save the family. Of course, families are being ruined when we cut funding for those who are poor, or when a father, son, or brother has just been senselessly killed in Iraq because of the blind and stupid actions of this Administration, which is such a "friend" of Christianity and "moral progress."
The problem with the Right of today is that it's an authoritarian belief system which can only behold one way, the One, the Absolute, the ultimate synthesis, to borrow some Hegelian jargon. They have a similar worlview as did the German philosopher Hegel- that history is running to its climax, and the grand synthesis will result when America establishes itself as the global hegemonic hyper-power. I shouldn't use the term "synthesis", because of the fact that these neocons don't believe in "synthesizing" America with Al-qaida or any of its other enemies for that matter. America is the great thesis- all else that opposes it is the antithesis. The pendulum must end swinging on our side alone, but that can't happen anyway. I think that soon we'll see that neither America nor the terrorists will win. We will only see something different in the future. What it is, I don't know.
Those of us on the Left must be passionate about using the tools of reason to accomplish our ends. This is why we are not to emulate the Right in any of its tactics, because its ends are so closely intertwined with its means that they are almost one- to see their absolute authority as established against all else, and to bomb the living f@#$ out of those who are in the way of our plans. Liberals stand for reason, fairness, and tolerance- those oft hated values which the right thinks will only lead to weakness and fuzzy thinking because they don't just dogmatically state the Truth of All Things, that Absolute One which is the ideological guidepost for everything the right does. Thus, the right is for conventional wisdom, meaning that they simply want to live their whole lives on a set of rules that can never change concerning how they're supposed to interpret the world. Liberals value the splendor of the universe, the amazing capacities for humans to love one another, and for the amazing possibilities of the future for creating a better society based off of peace, love, and justice. Is there something so horribly impractical about this idea?
AS FOR THE FIRST VETO OF OUR 43RD PRESIDENT, I should perhaps be a little indignant that it had to involve a ban on stem cell reasearch. That my own family members suffer from diseases that could be cured makes this personal. But I am not the only one to see that this presidency is just a bit too despicable for rational minds to digest. I hate everything about George's legacy in the White House, and I don't care if we have 2 1/2 more years until he leaves. I want him gone. He is not pro-life at all. He is pandering to the religious right for orders as to how to vote regarding these vital issues, and I don't care to hear how stopping stem cell research is going to usher in a postmodern "culture of death", where the "dignity of human life" will somehow be threatened by a cadre of elite scientists who are godless moral relativists. With all of this said, I don't hold to embryonic stem cell research as the salvific panacea that others have idolized. But because we don't yet know the effects of this type of testing doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue it; after all, if it does work, we will see cures to our most dreaded diseases. If not, we will simply have to find another way, and then it would be permissible to vote against this type of research. But unlike this excrescence of a president has done, we are to base our objections to research on grounds that are empirically verifiable, not on some speculative theological/metaphysical theory ground in a particular religious viewpoint which holds that one cannot seperate human personality from an entity that may have the genetic material to develop into a human person with thoughts, feelings, volition, etc. But instead, Mr. Bush sought the easy way out. It isn't damaging to society to think that God has a Mother and to pray and go to church. But we live in a pluralistic society, and if we make rules, we use legal and practical necessity in our deliberation, not theology.
More views will be offered later on why America may not survive the next 2 1/2 years.
posted by Bob at 1:57 PM
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