More on facing “the truth”

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Phil D” has some questions and observations [I’ve corrected one typo in the following]:

When exactly did we lose the “courage to see things as they are”?

When FDR recognized the USSR in 1933, just after that regime murdered millions of its own people, did he “see things as they are”?…

As for Obama, he didn’t come as a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky. Before you became a “neocon” did you “see things as they are”? Did the anti Vietnam war “Peace movement”?…And yet it was in that period that the coming of Obama was prepared.
I think the West has for a very long time not “seen things as they are”.

It’s not always—probably not even often—an easy or simple thing to comprehend the “truth” of events as they are happening. Doing so requires a host of elements: correct information, sound judgment, some knowledge of the past in order to put the present in context, and yes, the courage to face what you see even if it is a disillusioning departure from a previously held belief and/or hope.

That’s a tall order, and not a simple one.

In the post in which Phil D made that comment, I had quoted a letter to the editor to a British newspaper written right after the Munich agreement with Hitler, in which the author of the letter, WWI war hero F. L. Lucas, opined on something that Lucas thought was crystal clear and not difficult to understand at all—the intentions of Adolf Hitler at the time.

It’s worth revisiting what Lucas actually wrote:

No doubt [Neville Chamberlain] has never read Mein Kampf in German. But to forget, so utterly, the Reichstag fire, and the occupation of the Rhineland, and 30 June 1934 [the Night of the Long Knives], and the fall of Austria! We have lost the courage to see things as they are. And yet Herr Hitler has kindly put down for us in black and white that programme he is so faithfully carrying out”

In other words, Lucas was contending that these events and their meaning were not hard to see or to understand. He felt it was as plain as the proverbial nose on one’s face (or the mustache on Hitler’s) what the end result would be, and to ignore that or not see it was a form of willful denial which could only come from a failure of courage.

Now, we can argue here about whether that charge against Chamberlain was justified or not. Some say that Chamberlain knew but that his hands were tied by the fact that England hadn’t yet armed itself sufficiently; others say he was a naive dupe. I’m not going to get into that side issue here; what I’m interested in now is the process of trying to understand what’s happening in the world and what it might signify.

I have written my personal story of “seeing things as they are” in fairly exhaustive detail in the series “A mind is a difficult thing to change,” and if you’re interested and haven’t read it yet you can click and read the posts (they’re listed in reverse order). In them, I also discuss at length the antiwar movement during the Vietnam years, so I don’t need to recap that here, either. Suffice to say I do think the roots of today were present then; that’s why I spent so much time talking about it.

In personal terms, I believe that I always had the courage to see things as they are, but I lacked the information and the context. In addition, I assumed that I was already “seeing things as they are,” and didn’t realize my error. What I didn’t realize is how looking at things more closely and changing my mind would affect me socially; how it would set me apart in ways small and large from most of my friends and family. I suppose if I’d known that it would have given me pause, but it never would have stopped me because I was driven by something else: curiosity and a personal need to know.

I’m not arrogant enough to think I’ve got the corner on truth or the complete story even now; far from it. But I now have easier access to much more information than during those years, and I give these topics much more time and effort than I did when I was young.

It’s a work in progress.

We all now have access to a lot more information (just for starters, many more periodicals and even books can easily be accessed online) than we did before. So now, people who turn away from learning that information, or who make excuses for the destructive actions and/or lying by certain public figures they admire, either are lazy, avoidant, or already know or should know certain truths but don’t have the courage to admit that their idols have feet of clay—or to admit to themselves that they have made errors in judgement in admiring those people or voting for them. If something is obvious (as F. L. Lucas thought Hitler’s intentions were back in the days of Munich), then to ignore it is a failure of both courage and judgment, and compounds earlier errors. If something isn’t the least bit obvious—if it’s complex or hidden or needs special knowledge to understand—then it’s not so much a failure of courage as of knowledge and judgment.

Take Obama. I think many things about him are now obvious—and should have been obvious even during the 2008 campaign. I’m happy to be able to look back at my posts from then and see that, although I certainly didn’t perceive everything about him, I perceived plenty. That’s not because I’m such a psychic or a genius, it’s because I think it was obvious to any intelligent person who was paying attention. And yet, plenty of seemingly intelligent people don’t see it, even today. Is that a failure of courage? Information? Judgment? Imagination? Is it in many cases a reluctance to admit one was wrong (I wouldn’t underestimate that motivation)? Or party loyalty? Or a fear of being accused of racism, even at this late date? I think it must be different for different people. But at this point, people do know or should know that something is very, very wrong.

I’m not a relativist. I do not think that truth is completely “constructed” and exists only in the mind of the beholder. I think there really is an objective truth. But I also think we can only see it through a glass, darkly.

That doesn’t mean that we cannot, and should not, do our best to apprehend it. In fact, we must do so, if we are to make decisions in the world. It’s not an easy task, nor is it a quick one. But it’s a necessary one that many people wrongly delegate to others.

[NOTE: F. L. Lucas was also a man of great erudition, energy, and output, worthy of some attention on his own. Here are some excerpts from his Wiki profile, which is long:

Frank Laurence Lucas (1894-1967) was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, and intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during World War II…

His criticism, while acknowledging that morality is historically relative, was thus values-based. “Writers can make men feel, not merely see, the values that endure.” Believing that too many modern writers encouraged men and women to flee to unreason, decadence and barbarism, he condemned the trahisons des clercs of the twentieth century, and used his lectures and writing to campaign for a responsible use of intellectual freedom. “One may question whether real civilisation is so safely afloat,” he wrote in his last published letter (1966), “that we can afford to use our pens for boring holes in the bottom of it.” The writer or artist serving up “slapdash nightmares out of his Unconscious”, “in an age morbidly avid of uncivilised irreticence”, not only exhibited his own neuroses, but fed neurosis in others. Literary critics, too, had to take more responsibility. “Much cant gets talked,” he noted of the Structuralists, “by critics who care more for the form and organisation of a work than for its spirit, its content, its supreme moments.” The serious note in his criticism was counterbalanced by wit and urbanity, by lively anecdote and quotation, and by a gift for startling imagery and epigram.

There’s more—much much more—about this tremendously erudite, articulate, profound man, whom I’d never heard of until yesterday. He was, among other things, a classical scholar who knew many languages. Clearly, he had a lot of information and context in which to place the events of his day, far more than most people. When I read the sentence in his letter to the editor where he said that “no doubt” Chamberlain had never read Mein Kampf in the original German, it almost immediately occurred to me that F. L. Lucas, whoever he might be, had done exactly that. Sure enough, from his Wiki entry:

Having read Mein Kampf in the original and taken its threats as a statement of intent, he urged in September 1933 that Nazi Germany be prevented from re-arming.

Lucas didn’t just write that one letter. He was very active in urging preparedness against Germany in all sorts of ways;

As well as letters to the press (some forty in all) his campaign included satires, articles, books, public speaking, fund-raising for the Red Cross, petitions to Parliament, meetings with émigrés like Haile Selassie and Stefan Zweig, and help for refugees. In these activities he was inspired by the example of “that grand old man” H. W. Nevinson, “one of the most striking personalities I have ever known”, “whose long life has been given to Liberty”.

Lucas also kept a journal during the late 30s. Here’s what he wrote in it about Munich:

Even if what he did were the right thing to do, this was not the way to do it. The surrender might have been necessary: the cant was not. Any statesman with a sense of honour would at least have stilled that hysterical cheering and said: “My friends, for the present, we are out of danger. But remember that others, who trusted in us, are not. This is a day for relief, perhaps; but for sorrow also; for shame, not for revelling.” But this Chamberlain comes home beaming as fatuously as some country-cousin whom a couple of card-sharpers in the train have just allowed to win sixpence, to encourage him.

There’s much, much more. But I’ll just close by offering this from Lucas, which he wrote in 1936:

A hatred of war can be no reason for being false to ourselves, in the name of an aimless amiability that cries ”˜peace” where there is none.

Again, I suggest reading the entire Wiki entry.]

We have lost the courage to see things as they are

The New Neo Posted on by

This article features a prescient “letter to the editor.” It was published in the Manchester Guardian on October 4, 1938, right after Munich, and titled “The Funeral of British Honour.”” It was “written by F.L. Lucas, an acclaimed Cambridge literary don, a decorated – and severely wounded – veteran of WWI and recipient of an OBE for his intelligence work at Bletchley Park in WWII.”

Here is part of the text:

I appreciate the Prime Minister’s [Chamberlain’s] love of peace. I know the horrors of war ”“ a great deal better than he can. But when he returns from saving our skins from a blackmailer at the price of other people’s flesh, and waves…a piece of paper with Herr Hitler’s name on it, if it were not ghastly, it would be grotesque. No doubt he has never read Mein Kampf in German. But to forget, so utterly, the Reichstag fire, and the occupation of the Rhineland, and 30 June 1934 [the Night of the Long Knives], and the fall of Austria! We have lost the courage to see things as they are. And yet Herr Hitler has kindly put down for us in black and white that programme he is so faithfully carrying out…

…Mr. Chamberlain, canting of ”˜peace with honour,’ has debased the moral currency of England”¦

The line “We have lost the courage to see things as they are” leapt out at me when I read it. Ever since the Obama presidency began–actually, ever since some time during Obama’s first campaign for the presidency—there has been an almost constant “Emperor’s New Clothes” feeling about the public’s reaction to what he does.

In that letter, Lucas was like the child pointing and crying out that the emperor is naked. Now, as then, we cannot see what is in front of us. We cannot exercise common sense—which we should rename uncommon sense, because that’s what it has become. We cannot stick up for ourselves, cannot look out for our interests, and have given all of that up for a combination of self-righteous moral preening and a lack of critical thinking so profound that most people don’t even know what Obama has done and what it means.

Most toes feel alike to me

The New Neo Posted on by

Can you tell which toe of yours is being touched? When they’re not allowed to peek, many people can’t differentiate between which toes of theirs are being “prodded” by an experimenter.

Sounds a bit kinky:

Researchers at the University of Oxford had people close their eyes while testers gently prodded at their toes. While this happened, the volunteers were asked to identify which of their toes was being poked. They didn’t do very well.

Fingers are very very different; we’re awfully good at identifying digits on the hand, which makes perfect sense considering how important the fingers and hand are and how many nerves connect the hand and brain. Toes/feet, not so much, although certainly they are important. People did well with the big and pinky toes:

But the ones in the middle? It was just 57, 60 and 79 percent for the second, third and fourth toe respectively. Perhaps most amazingly, not a single participant was able to identify which of their toes was being prodded 100 percent of the time and some people could only get the right answer 20 percent of time.

I remember as a child seeing charts that show the relative areas of the brain used by different body parts, and the hands always loomed large and the feet small. Sure enough, here’s one online demonstrating what’s called a cortical homonculus, a “neurological ‘map’ of the anatomical divisions of the body.” Here’s the sensory map; there are motor ones as well:

sensory

You can test this at home with your loved ones, folks, for oodles and oodles of fun.

We could use some fun.

[Hat tip: Maetenloch at Ace’s.]

Dog catches car: Boehner will resign in October

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, the frustrated conservative base got what it wanted: John Boehner, Speaker of the House, will resign in October, not only from his post but from Congress as well.

The tea leaves are somewhat murky; it’s hard to read them. Reports are that he’d wanted to resign last year but stayed because of the ouster of the person who he thought would have been his natural successor, Eric Cantor.

It is also reported that his move—at least, coming at this time—was to avert a bitter fight over a possible government shutdown, which now will not happen. Of course, he was also being challenged for the Speakership and perhaps thought he would lose or be irreparably weakened.

My guess is that he was already irreparably weakened.

At any rate, he’s going, and most conservatives are very very glad. For me, it’s modified rapture. I don’t see Boehner as the heart of the problem, nor do I see that his replacement can work the wonders conservatives are hoping for. The title of this post refers to the old adage about the dog who chases and chases the car; what does he do when he finally catches it?

That is the heart of the matter. Who replaces Boehner? And what will that person be able to accomplish that Boehner couldn’t? The split in the Republican Party is very real and very deep, and the realities of not having enough power in the Senate (and McConnell’s weakness on that) are real as well, and IMHO the latter was more important to overcome than anything that was happening in the House. After all, the House kept passing bills (such as the ones repealing Obamacare, and the ones against the Iran deal) because, unlike the Senate, it could do so with a simple majority. It was in the Senate that more of the blockage occurred, and that was for structural reasons and would have required an ending of the cloture rule to change that situation.

What’s more, as I’ve written many times, none of it would (or will) change the fact that President Obama can veto anything and an override will not be possible.

I’m not a “burn it down” nihilist type who thinks all destruction is necessarily good because something better will replace it. Boehner’s resignation could be good, though; it depends. In particular, the possible benefit I see is in rhetoric and leadership and tone, depending on his successor. Boehner has been a lousy “Speaker” in the sense of failing to speak with force and clarity on major issues. He never sounded like a leader or a man who meant what he said—nor does McConnell, for that matter. Rhetoric can’t accomplish much, but it can accomplish something if it has conviction and will behind it.

The Speaker’s job is hard. Good luck to Boehner’s successor. He (or she, I suppose, but I assume it will be a “he”) will need it.

On being prolix

The New Neo Posted on by

I like that word, “prolix.”

I first learned it in high school, probably on some vocabulary list meant to prepare me for the SATs.

Or maybe it was in studying The Scarlet Letter during my sophomore year. That book had more words that I’d never heard of before than any book I’ve ever read before or since (I particularly recall, not without fondness, “physiognomy” and “enervate”).

Sure enough, through the magic of the internet and Google, there she blows (see also this):

This, in fact””a desire to put myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales that make up my volume,””this, and no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with the public…

And this:

Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand…

As well as this:

If he possess an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable.

Bingo.

But I digress—I often digress.

I wrote a very long post today. That was not my original intention. I thought I’d just dash off a quick piece on the Pope’s visit, a slight sequel to the post I wrote yesterday on the subject.

But that’s not what happened. Today’s post grew—and grew and grew—till at 3278 words I finally had to call it quits.

What happened? Well, I started researching a few things, and this point seemed very relevant to that point which seemed awfully relevant to both points, and it all started to fit together as a whole. The post segued from the Pope to the life of Dorothy Day, and try as I might I couldn’t make it shorter or more organized, and so I left it in all its prolix (“extended to great, unnecessary, or tedious length; long and wordy”) wonder.

You might try to reassure me by saying “Oh neo, it wasn’t too long, it was interesting.” And maybe you’d even be sincere (it was certainly interesting to me anyway). But, as Mark Twain (or any number of other famous people) has written, if I’d had more time, I’d have made it shorter.

Blogging is an interesting thing. The need to comment on a daily basis on the happenings of the day is at odds with complexity and completeness, and certainly at odds with proper editing and excising of the superfluous or redundant. All I can say is that I do my best, and sometimes it’s overwhelming. But something keeps driving me forward.

The past year or two has been especially—shall we say—subject-rich. Every day there are literally dozens (or more) things happening that seem pressing to write about, and a blogger must pick and choose. And there are about 400 unpublished drafts that go back many years and could be trotted out on a slow day. Usually I just write about what interests me; every now and then I write about what I think will interest readers even if I’m not that keen on it (those are often shorter). Sometimes I start a topic, as I did today, thinking the piece will be short, on a subject that doesn’t seem that compelling, and I end up discovering information that fascinates me.

That may be the best of all, like a treasure hunt where you find an unexpected and perhaps-precious jewel. These stones don’t always sparkle—sometimes they are dark, depressing, and disturbing—but the quest for truth is the thing. Truth is elusive and slippery, and sometimes hidden, but we have to keep digging, don’t we?

More on the Pope and politics

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wrote the following about Pope Francis and politics:

…I tend to think that we often seem to get the popes that match our times. Ever notice some sort of harmonic resonance between popes and other public figures of the day?…

…[T]here’s no way for a pope to retreat from politics, unless he is going to speak on ritual matters only and never venture into a single more general statement. To paraphrase Madonna (not the Madonna, but Madonna Ciccone), we are living in a political world. When Pope Francis speaks of any world events or trends, it has political meaning and is a political statement, even if he tries to couch it in more neutral language.

So no matter how hard a Pope tries to speak non-politically, politics enters anyway nearly every time he opens his mouth, unless it’s strictly on Church business. Even then, what he says can have political repercussions.

That said, I think that Pope Francis is being quite political on this visit to the US. It wouldn’t be the first time a pope has visited this country. And it’s not the first time a pope has spoken politically, although always from a perspective of spirituality. Take John Paul II, for example:

“Be not afraid” became [John Paul II’s] rallying cry, and following a 1979 address to the U.N. General Assembly in which he challenged the free world to defend human rights, he embarked on a courageous but dangerous nine-day public pilgrimage to “strengthen the brethren” in Poland. There he warned Communist authorities that the papacy would watch them closely, and he reminded them of their responsibility “before history and before your conscience.” The people responded to John Paul II’s visit with loyalty borne of years of shared suffering””banners with the Communist party slogan “The Party Is for the People” sported the daring addition, “. . . but the People are for the Pope.”

John Paul II’s example encouraged other leading church authorities, such as the Czech Cardinal Frantisek Tomasek, to become fierce critics of Communism. His visit also inspired an unemployed electrician named Lech Walesa to form in 1980 the Soviet Union’s first and only trade union””Solidarity””that in the words of French political scientist Alain Besancon gave the Poles back “the private ownership of their tongues.” Soviet authorities feared Solidarity could undermine Soviet power, and the Warsaw Pact planned an invasion and mass arrest of Solidarity’s leaders. John Paul II intervened by writing directly to Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev, giving his support to Solidarity and warning against the consequences of such an action. While this only delayed a crackdown, the pope had set a precedent. In 1989, when Solidarity swept available seats in a semi-free election, no one doubted who to credit for the moral fiber that had held the party together.

However, Pope Francis is the first pope to ever address an American Congress. And he’s had some curious things to say about politics in the past:

“I always was interested in politics,” Pope Francis told a journalist from his native Argentina last year. That interest was developed in childhood, in the influence on him of his grandmother Rosa, who once defied fascists in Italy while active in a church organization called Catholic Action.

As a teenager, Jorge Mario Bergoglio would drift between local political party offices as he listened to discussions. He was drawn to being a priest, but felt the tug of a political calling, too.

Beneath the gregarious, spontaneous Francis lies an unusually acute political mind. In Argentina, they speak of him as the most talented politician since General Juan Peré³n.

At first I assumed they were speaking of Vatican politics, but reading the entire piece convinced me otherwise. If the article is correct—and I have no particular reason to think it’s not, except the usual caveat about the MSM and what it publishes—then Pope Francis has some very strong political views that I would label roughly as socialist, and he has long been interested in furthering them.

Read the whole WaPo article to get the flavor of it. I was initially puzzled by the way the article uses the word “liberal,” and suspected that the author was not an American and uses the word in the European manner. Sure enough, the author, Austen Ivereigh, is a Brit who specializes in writing about the Catholic Church and has written a biography of Francis called The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope.

More from Ivereigh in the WaPo:

Pope Francis is not a social liberal. As cardinal archbishop, he was deeply opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage, and, of course, abortion.

So, that sounds conservative, right? But it’s immediately followed by this sentence:

The idea of organizing society around the autonomy of the sovereign individual repels him.

Aha: leftist. The puzzle about the word “liberal” can be solved by saying that the Pope is neither a social liberal nor a classical liberal.

Then we have:

Nor is Pope Francis an economic liberal: he describes sink-or-swim capitalism ”” in which the elderly and the unemployed are condemned to poverty ”” as “an economy that kills.”

Once again, Ivereigh seems to be using the word “liberal” here to mean “classical liberal,” because Francis sure sounds like what we would call a “liberal” or even a “leftist” in this country.

The article goes on:

In his address in Bolivia to workers in the informal sector in July, he warned that “once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home.”

In the same speech he spoke powerfully of the right of all to land, labor and housing.

Well, I suppose that “once capital becomes an idol” (emphasis on the “idol” part), I’d be against that, too. But I also think that the greatest amount of “enslaving” that’s been done in the last century in connection with “capital” has been at the hands of governments that have professed to want to abolish it, and have set about forcing that “social justice” of which Francis also sometimes speaks.

I am neither a Catholic nor Christian, and certainly no expert on Jesuits—much less twentieth-century Jesuits in Latin America, although even before Francis became Pope I was familiar with the fact that there’s a strong leftist trend among the clergy in that part of the world. But it sure sounds to me as though Francis is here positing some semi-Rousseauvian state of nature in which humans would be exhibiting fraternity, would have an unruined society, and would not be “set against one another,” but for the existence of unchecked capitalism. Now, I would imagine a large part of that vision of the Pope’s comes from the idea that “unchecked capitalism” (which, as far as I know, is not operating in this country nor in most or perhaps any countries in the world today), when curbed, should be replaced by religion and the charity that Christianity preaches. But his words still sound like Rousseauvian leftism to me, with capitalism as the great evil.

Ivereigh goes on, and what he writes may shed some light on why one of the Western Hemisphere countries the Pope has visited this trip has been Cuba:

Francis does have a distinctive political outlook, one that is shaped by his experience as a Latin American Catholic nationalist whose thinking matured in the 1960s, a time of deep political ferment in Latin America provoked by the Cuban Revolution…

“Cuba vs. US” was the Manichean choice of the time and has poisoned Latin American politics since, but the Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio rejected this polarity. He was a Peronist: anti-colonial, pro-worker, offering a “third way” between capitalism and communism that was true to Latin America’s Christian-humanist traditions. That made him naturally sympathetic, in 1959, to the original “national” and “popular” Cuban Revolution, seeking social justice, political and economic independence, but it equally horrified when within two years Fidel Castro allied with the communists and fell into the Soviet orbit.

While in Cuba, Pope Francis has been helping to build a pluralistic Cuba resting on nationalist-Christian foundations. In a 1998 book reflecting on Pope John Paul II’s visit to the island, he wrote that neither “neoliberalism” nor “communism” reflected what he called “the soul of the Cuban people,” a phrase he used in his speech arriving at Havana airport on Saturday. A new politics has to be forged in Cuba, one that takes the original national-popular ambitions of the Revolution and combines them with a social democracy that cares for the vulnerable.

In other words, he wants a kinder, gentler Cuban revolution. Good luck with that; the history of socialism is very poor on that score, to say the least. It’s pretty lousy in the economic sense, too.

To go on:

This is not just about Cuba. Francis is convinced that the whole of Latin America has a key role developing such a politics in the future as it achieves greater continent-wide integration. He regularly uses a phrase first coined by early 20th-century Latin-American nationalists to capture the idea of the patria grande, or greater homeland.

As cardinal, he supported the idea of Latin America playing a key role on the world stage…

As pope, he has spoken of how Latin America can offer “new models of development” that reconcile both technological progress and Christian concern for justice and equity. Francis believes politics must be rooted in, and serve, the values and concerns of ordinary people, uniting them by focusing on the needs of the poorest…

Few realize how deep his vision for the renewal of politics runs. On Thursday, they will find out.

If all of this is true—and again, I see no reason to doubt it at this point—I think it’s fairly clear that Pope Francis has a political agenda rooted in his vision of an ideal society that he believes can actually come about, and that society is what we would call socialist and not really into protecting individual liberty or property. The models of that society are in Latin America, but a perfected Latin America. It’s one that I believe has zero chance of ever occurring in actuality, and is inherently dangerous because it can easily go in a very bad direction (look at, for example, Venezuela).

I just skimmed Pope Francis’ speech today to Congress. As one might expect, he speaks a great deal about poverty and the need to alleviate it, while paying a bit of lip service to business as “a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth…especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good.” This is followed by a call to protect the environment.

The thing that seems to me to be missing is that in all the emphasis on providing for the poor there is not much about liberty. Yes, there are some words, but if you read the whole speech it’s clear that they are an afterthought compared to the rest, and their context seems rather curious.

For example, Pope Francis quotes the famous Declaration of Independence’s “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” phrase, only to make this further point immediately thereafter:

If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance. Politics is, instead, an expression of our compelling need to live as one, in order to build as one the greatest common good: that of a community which sacrifices particular interests in order to share, in justice and peace, its goods, its interests, its social life.

But “our compelling need to live as one” seems actually antithetical to liberty, or at least strongly opposed to it. The first comes at the expense of the second, particularly when the former—living as “one”—is compelled by law rather than freely entered into in a voluntary manner, such as through the exercise of personal charity. I don’t see the Pope making that distinction clear, although he may have made it elsewhere, or in his mind. Nations ordinarily make choices, and come down more in favor of one than of the other. The US has been singular in coming down in favor of liberty (at least in the past), and therein lies its exceptionalism.

Pope Francis also mentioned liberty in this context:

A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to “dream” of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.

If I understand what the Pope is saying, the word “liberty” is used there to mean freedom as opposed to slavery. The freeing of the slaves was certainly an excellent thing. But it’s a different thing from a government protecting individual liberty for all of its citizens against the encroachment of a welfare state or statism in general. The fact that Lincoln’s defense of liberty is followed in Pope Francis’ speech by praise for Dorothy Day, an American Catholic convert, activist, and socialist (who is being considered for sainthood by the Church) says a lot, I think.

There was no question about the sincerity of Day’s religious fervor and her desire to help the poor, but there is also no doubt about her socialism/leftism. Here’s some background about Day, in case you’re unfamiliar with her life and work:

[In her early years, before her conversion) she settled on the Lower East Side and worked on the staff of several Socialist publications, including The Liberator, The Masses, and The Call. She “smilingly explained to impatient socialists that she was ‘a pacifist even in the class war.'” Years later, Day described how she was pulled in different directions: “I was only eighteen, so I wavered between my allegiance to Socialism, Syndicalism (the I.W.W.’s) and Anarchism. When I read Tolstoy I was an Anarchist. My allegiance to The Call kept me a Socialist, although a left-wing one, and my Americanism inclined me to the I.W.W. movement.”

She celebrated the bloodless February Revolution in Russia in 1917, the overthrow of the monarchy and establishment of a reformist government…

She maintained friendships with such prominent American Communists as Anna Louise Strong, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who became the head of the Communist Party USA.

Shortly thereafter, Day had a child, converted to Catholicism, and increased her involvement with work for the poor. Of this period she later wrote:

I could write, I could protest, to arouse the conscience, but where was the Catholic leadership in the gathering of bands of men and women together, for the actual works of mercy that the comrades had always made part of their technique in reaching the workers?”

Day’s subsequent work with the poor was informed by her Catholicism, which deepened and became more and more important in her life. But she seems to have continued to support leftist causes, with the addition of an absolute pacifism that included advocating pacifism during World War II and rejecting Catholicism’s Just War theory.

Here’s Day’s reaction to the Cuba Revolution, which tells you a lot:

In 1960, she praised Fidel Castro’s “promise of social justice”. She said: “Far better to revolt violently than to do nothing about the poor destitute.” On January 3, 1962, a Vatican press conference revealed that Castro had excommunicated himself by his persecution of the clergy and bishops…Several months later, Day traveled to Cuba and reported her experiences in a four-part series in the Catholic Worker. In the first of these, she wrote: “I am most of all interested in the religious life of the people and so must not be on the side of a regime that favors the extirpation of religion. On the other hand, when that regime is bending all its efforts to make a good life for the people, a naturally good life (on which grace can build) one cannot help but be in favor of the measures taken.”

So violence was okay in Cuba in the cause of “social justice,” and religious persecution could be balanced by Castro’s supposed economic good intentions?

I could go on and on and on and on, but I’ll close with these two quotes from Day:

In 1970, at the height of American participation in the Vietnam War, she described Ho Chi Minh as “a man of vision, as a patriot, a rebel against foreign invaders”…

In the Catholic Worker in May 1951, Day wrote that Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse-Tung “were animated by the love of brother and this we must believe though their ends meant the seizure of power, and the building of mighty armies, the compulsion of concentration camps, the forced labor and torture and killing of tens of thousands, even millions.” She used them as examples because she insisted that the belief that “all men are brothers” required the Catholic to find the humanity in everyone without exception. She explained that she understood the jarring impact of such an assertion:

“Peter Maurin was constantly restating our position, and finding authorities from all faiths, and races, all authorities. He used to embarrass us sometimes by dragging in Marshall Petain and Fr. Coughlin and citing something good they had said, even when we were combating the point of view they were representing. Just as we shock people by quoting Marx, Lenin, Mao-Tse-Tung, or Ramakrishna to restate the case for our common humanity, the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.”

In 1970…she wrote:

“the two words [anarchist-pacifist] should go together, especially at this time when more and more people, even priests, are turning to violence, and are finding their heroes in Camillo Torres among the priests, and Che Guevara among laymen. The attraction is strong, because both men literally laid down their lives for their brothers. “Greater love hath no man than this.”

“Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” Che Guevara wrote this…

It seems to me that such passages are key to the political philosophy of Day and of those who support her. She acknowledges the violent excesses these people committed in the name of social justice. But it seems that she is more deeply moved (and admiring of) what they stated as their do-good aims—which in Day’s mind doesn’t entirely absolve them but certainly mitigates things considerably. She also seems to take those stated aims at face value and does not even consider that they may be lies through which people drunk with power see their way clear towards gaining and using power by justifying that quest with the cover of a fake altruism. She also doesn’t seem to understand that, even if they were sincere, there must be something wrong with the entire leftist endeavor if it keeps leading to such egregious abuses of vast numbers of human beings.

Day never seemed able or even willing to consider making the leap toward rejecting leftism. From what I see, it seems clear that Day’s intentions were good, but she ended up placing herself in the service of some very destructive forces in the world.

[NOTE: Here is some background on the pros and cons involved in the drive to canonize Day.]

RIP…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Yogi Berra, who has died at 90.

One of a kind. A witty guy, a great catcher, a true character.

berra

Go here to read some of his bon mots. A selection:

I really didn’t say everything I said.

If people don’t want to come to the ballpark how are you going to stop them?

If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be.

I wrote that Berra was a witty guy. Looking at many of those quotes again, I’d say that maybe he was even an accomplished philosopher, and certainly a nuanced wordsmith.

The Pope and politics

The New Neo Posted on by

Is Pope Frances a leftist, and should we even be talking about him in the context of politics? Or, as Kemberlee Kaye writes at Legal Insurrection, is it better to think of him this way:

Pope Francis is not speaking as a politician. He’s not an economist. He’s never claimed to be any of the above. He speaks as a moral authority…

If we could extricate ourselves from the political cesspool for a measly ten minutes, perhaps we could appreciate Pope Francis’ words of encouragement. Maybe we could heed the gentle reminder that we have a responsibility to be diligent stewards with what we’ve been entrusted. We might even be able to enjoy the perspective of an Argentinian who recognizes and reveres America’s long-standing tradition of religious freedom. We might even remember that we are all on a journey ”” irrespective of our partisan leanings, and that even those with which we disagree respond to truth and love.

And it’s this view I choose.

Here’s the view I choose.

You may notice I’ve written very little about Pope Francis on this blog. There are several reasons for that. First and foremost, I suppose, is that since I am a non-Christian and non-Catholic, a pope doesn’t grab my attention all that much. That’s just the way it is for me, although I’m well aware that millions and millions of people see it very differently.

The second reason is that I tend to think that we often seem to get the popes that match our times. Ever notice some sort of harmonic resonance between popes and other public figures of the day? For example, when Reagan and Thatcher were our secular leaders in the West, the Pope was John Paul II, also a strong anti-Communist. The anti-relativist and more traditional Pope Benedict came on the scene during the Bush/Blair era, and exited it while Obama’s tenure was in full swing.

Now we have Obama—and sure enough, Pope Francis comes along. Somehow it’s not a surprise that he’s in line with Obama in many ways.

Another point I’d like to make is that there’s no way for a pope to retreat from politics, unless he is going to speak on ritual matters only and never venture into a single more general statement. To paraphrase Madonna (not the Madonna, but Madonna Ciccone), we are living in a political world. When Pope Francis speaks of any world events or trends, it has political meaning and is a political statement, even if he tries to couch it in more neutral language.

Pope Francis is reported to have given an interview on the flight over here in which he explicitly denied being a liberal. Since the conversation was in Spanish, and the Pope is from Argentina, I’m not sure how he defines “liberal” but my guess is that it’s well to the left of the way we would define it in this country. He also said this:

It is I who follows the church ”¦ my doctrine on all this ”¦ on economic imperialism, is that of the social doctrine of the church.

“Economic imperialism” sure sounds like leftist language to me. Again, perhaps something got lost in translation. But my guess is that Pope Francis has been so steeped in the leftism of his Argentine milieu that he may not be aware of how much it has influenced him.

For Catholic believers, the Pope is supposed to be infallible. But my understanding of that principle is that it’s only the case when the Pope is speaking ex cathedra (see this), which is a formal process that is not happening here.

Pope Francis is speaking at least partly politically when he talks about climate change, because it is a hot-button political issue and no one can avoid political repercussions when it comes up, not even the Pope. Maybe especially not the Pope, because he influences a great many people every time he speaks on anything.

Politics, Obama, and cynicism

The New Neo Posted on by

Noah Rothman writes, in “The Poisonous Obama Years,” on the effect Obama’s tenure has had on the public as a whole:

The scale of this scandal [about Middle East intelligence-twisting in the Obama administration], as exposed in a recent piece published in The Daily Beast, is chilling. “Some analysts have also complained that they felt ”˜bullied’ into reaching conclusions favored by their bosses, two separate sources familiar with analysts’ complaints said,” the report read. “In some cases, analysts were also urged to state that killing particular ISIS leaders and key officials would diminish the group and lead to its collapse. Many analysts, however, didn’t believe that simply taking out top ISIS leaders would have an enduring effect on overall operations.” How high up the chain does this culture of corruption that prevailed at CENTCOM lead? Who knows? No one is asking.

It is simply too coincidental that this White House, which wanted nothing more than to avoid becoming embroiled in a new conflict in the Middle East, was being fed intelligence that reinforced their preferred preconceptions. It is the height of irresponsibility for an informed citizenry to learn that the commander-in-chief of the military was allegedly being misled by his subordinates, putting American interests in jeopardy in the process, and to simply brush it off as the cost of doing business.

Do Americans no longer care about good governance? Has the public grown so inured to scandal that most are willing to dismiss them or to excuse them when they arise? Is the popular political press so committed to preserving the mythology surrounding this administration that it would abdicate its responsibilities to the public? The reprehensible revelations above are just a handful of the abuses of public trust that have occurred over the last six years. Americans have grown complacent over the course of Barack Obama’s presidency. A sense of disillusionment that would shrug off these and other misuses of the public trust is unnerving and dangerous. It is a level of dissatisfaction that paves the way for Caesarism. For the sake of the republican ideals, the voters and the press must get serious about holding this White House to account.

The cynicism Rothman describes became clear to me some years ago. I wrote this post about it shortly after the 2012 election, and I wrote another about two months later, entitled “What difference does it make?”

But although I yield to no one in my feeling that Obama has poisoned discourse in this country and contributed greatly to that growing cynicism, I don’t lay the blame entirely on him. Equal blame (maybe even more, in a way) goes to an MSM that has abdicated its role in informing the public (and not just in the Obama administration, as Rothman seems to be suggesting, although it has gotten worse during that time). If the press keeps saying “nothing much to see; move along” when incredibly important outrages are occurring, if the press covers up for the president and the federal government, if the press fails to make a big deal over what actually is a big deal, much of the public doesn’t know, or if it knows it doesn’t care.

Most people follow the lead of others, and most people don’t dig behind the story; that’s why propaganda is so effective. Non-coverage is a negative form of propaganda, as well. If the people are told it’s no big deal, they will think it so.

Another group I blame are the educators. If the press has a duty to tell the public some current truths about current events, educators have a duty to tell the public some ancient truths about past events and principles in order to teach Americans how to put the present into the context of the past. Educators also are supposed to guide students towards critical thinking—how to evaluate and assimilate new information without getting taken in.

None of these things have been happening. And they haven’t been happening for a long time, although that has greatly accelerated and reached critical mass under Obama. Obama is just the visible iceberg’s tip. A huge number of people have been working hard for many decades to make it all happen.

France’s Marine le Pen faces trial for hate speech

The New Neo Posted on by

It was about nine years ago that it was first impressed on me how little France and most of Europe defends the right of freedom of speech, as compared to this country. The context of that learning was a libel trial in France, but I’m also well aware of Europe’s hate speech laws, which I deplore.

So it doesn’t come as such a surprise to me that this sort of thing can happen, and is happening, in France today:

Marine Le Pen, head of France’s far-right National Front party, will face trial in October on a charge of inciting racial hatred for having compared Muslim street prayers to the occupation of France by Nazi troops during World War II, Agence France-Presse reported Tuesday.

The charge, which relates to comments that Le Pen made to a group of party activists in eastern France 2010, creates an unfortunate distraction for the far-right leader as she seeks election in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region in December.

“It’s an occupation of swathes of our territory, of neighborhoods in which religious law is applied,” she said at the time. “Indeed there are no tanks, no soldiers, but there is an occupation just the same, and it weighs on the inhabitants.”

The remarks prompted two anti-discrimination groups to file lawsuits against Le Pen and a court in Lyon, where the remarks were made, opened a preliminary investigation against her.

In 2013, the European Parliament, of which Le Pen is a member, lifted her immunity, allowing the Lyon court to launch a formal investigation, which led to Tuesday’s decision that she would have to face trial.

“It is scandalous that a politician should be sued for expressing their opinions,” Le Pen told Le Monde newspaper, reacting to the ruling. “I will go before the court in order to say so.”

The trial is due to take place in the middle of a hotly-contested election campaign in which she’s leading.

It is now a form of secular blasphemy (not an oxymoron) to state the truth about what’s going on with the Islamic inhabitants of Europe.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: how about telling the truth?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t care if you are against this candidate or that candidate, as long as you’re against them for what they actually do and say and not what someone else says they are doing and saying.

In other words, check it out.

Now we read stuff like this, quoted by commenter “MJR” in the comments section here. MJR writes* [see “ADDENDUM” below], “Ya just lost me, Ms. Fiorina ”” for good, I’m afraid,” and then quotes that linked post, which said:

Carly ordered Ben Carson to apologize about the “Muslim” issue and highlighted her belief that the Islamic Civilization of the 800-1500 era was the most “enlightened,” reiterating a theme she brought up in a post 9/11 letter to HP staff, prior to laying them all off.

“When people get to know me, they tend to support me,” she told Fallon. “That’s what you see in the polls.”

Perhaps everyone should try looking up what Fiorina actually said, rather than what other people falsely report her as having said.

Just as Palin never said she could see Russia from her house, Fiorina did not say what she is quoted there as having said.

The Fallon interview is available. Here it is; I’ve kept whole thing, but the relevant part starts at minute 1:48:

Watch it and see what she actually says; don’t take my word (or anyone else’s) for it.

Fiorina does not ask Carson to apologize nor does she laud Islamic civilization in that interview. She states that Carson was wrong to dismiss a candidate simply on the basis of religion, because the Constitution explicitly forbids any religious tests for office.

I don’t care if you like Fiorina or don’t like her. But don’t misquote her—or any other candidate—just to whip up hatred towards them.

This sort of thing will be happening quite regularly. It’s a favored political tactic, and right now the long knives are out for Fiorina. Again, feel free to disagree with what Fiorina (or anyone else says)—but keep it to what she actually said. And I don’t care if it’s Fiorina or anyone else; I try to correct misquotes from any candidate when I find them. These memes get going and the lie replaces the truth in most people’s minds.

[NOTE: By the way, I noticed that the article MJR quoted has a lot Facebook comments. It’s stirring up a storm. If you would like to correct the misstatement on Facebook, please go to the post and do so. I can’t, because I’m not on Facebook, and you have to be on Facebook to do it, I believe.

And if I’m wrong about this, and I missed part of Fiorina’s Fallon interview and she really did say things on the show yesterday like “Carson should apologize” and/or reiterate her 2001 HP speech about Islam being so enlightened (although I don’t think she did), please let me know and I’ll correct myself.]

[ADDENDUM: * “M J R” wants me to add that M J R deeply regrets the error and has offered an apology in the comments, which can be found here. My reply to M J R is here.]

The 80s called, and they want their foreign policy back

The New Neo Posted on by

For real, as recent war games reveal:

Given the recent reductions in the defense budgets of NATO member countries and American pullback from the region, Ochmanek says the blue team was outnumbered 2-to-1 in terms of manpower, even if all the U.S. and NATO troops stationed in Europe were dispatched to the Baltics — including the 82nd Airborne, which is supposed to be ready to go on 24 hours’ notice and is based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

“We just don’t have those forces in Europe,” Ochmanek explains. Then there’s the fact that the Russians have the world’s best surface-to-air missiles and are not afraid to use heavy artillery.

After eight hours of gaming out various scenarios, the blue team went home depressed. “The conclusion,” Ochmanek says, “was that we are unable to defend the Baltics.”

[Hat tip: “Open Blogger” at Ace’s.]

For those who don’t get the reference in the title of this post, see this (I’ve cued it up to start at the right point; watch it from there till about minute 14:00):

That exchange has become even more bitterly ironic with the passage of time. It’s not just that Obama was wrong (or purposely duplicitous, or both). It’s that he was so spectacularly, comprehensively wrong, and that in his wrongness he excoriates Romney for his supposed wrongness when Romney is, in fact, completely right. It’s that Obama accuses Romney of errors that are actually Obama’s own (if in fact they are errors at all, versus intentional acts), and describes himself as doing the opposite of what’s he’s doing. It is an almost perfect bizarro world, where everything is backwards.

And it’s not just that, either. It’s the way Obama does it. Mean-spirited, disrespectful, condescending, snarky. Meanwhile, Romney is the consummate gentleman, although he’s fairly tough in his response.

Of course, no liberal pundit seems to want to hark back to this moment. They flush it down the memory hole. But forgive us conservatives for not quite trusting Obama’s perspective on the Iran deal, since he’s proven himself to be such a fine, fine prognosticator.

Oh, and those who didn’t vote for Romney in 2012…are you reconsidering whether that move was wise?

Obama’s affect is even more more offensive when it’s not in split screen. This is how it looked in real life:

I have an idea. I think that whoever the Republican nominee ends up being ought to take some excerpts from these videos and make them into an ad. Even though neither Romney nor Obama will be running in 2016 (at least, I hope not), a point could be made about Republicans vs. Democrats, and about who’s been right and who’s been wrong. It might also be tied into Hillary Clinton or Biden’s role as supporting Obama’s disastrous policies, whichever one of them ends up as the nominee.

Actually, if it ends up being Biden, there’s one that’s practically ready-made: