Catholics, Abortion, and Voting

I would like to pick a fight. And by pick a fight, I mean have a reasonable and fruitful conversation. Policraticus of Vox Nova poses the question:

“Did liberal justices hijack the Supreme Court in 1973, forcing legalized abortion on the whole country?”

His answer: A quick look at the Justices who made that horrendous decision seems to suggest otherwise.

The rest of his post contains the following reasoning:

(a) History shows that many Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents were either responsible for the original Roe v. Wade decision or its preservation

Sidenote: Justices appointed by Republicans are necessarily conservative

(b) Therefore there is no good reason to believe that a justice appointed by a future Republican president, even a staunchly pro-life one, will oppose Roe v. Wade

(c) Conclusion – in terms of the Supreme Court and abortion, there is simply no reliable practical difference between a Republican president and a Democratic president.

This reasoning is flawed, and I would argue, dangerous. Let’s go through the argument.

The author focuses on one aspect of the legal battle (i.e. who appointed whom?) at the Supreme Court and ignores just about every other consideration. First, he assumes that justices appointed by Republican nominees before the advent of Roe v. Wade were somehow vetted for conservative jurisprudence. Obviously, this is not the case, because before Roe, the attention of the country had not yet been drawn to the activist court, and the Republican Party had not capitulated to the country’s anti-Roe constituency. Thus it is flawed to think that simply because a justice was appointed by a putatively conservative republican, that justice holds or should hold judicially conservative views. In fact, all of the justices who signed Roe into law were liberal justices, despite the fact that Republican candidates appointed them.

Even if my preceding reasoning is flawed, it does not follow that there is no good reason to vote for a candidate who, at least in principle, supports originalist or constructionist judges. This is because in this case we ought not to look at simply the history of judicial appointments, but at the present intentions of the two Parties. It is a well-known fact that that the party that currently defends the jurisprudence of the justices who uphold Roe is the Democratic Party. Witness the recent statements of NARAL endorsing Barack Obama. And on the other side of the coin, by and large, the Republican Party supports in principle justices who oppose the judicial activism that wrought Roe v. Wade. Consider the endorsement of, for example, National Right to Life.

Stepping back from the particulars, I think it is clear the author is trying to convince Catholics that we need not to consider abortion law in our political considerations as Catholic voters. He wrongly argues that the appointees of either party will not be much different, and therefore will not have much effect on the law - this is manifestly not the case.

To see one reason why this is so, think of the difference between the two appointees the sitting President has made – John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Both are known to oppose Roe in principle and are demonstrating good prudence by waiting until they can actually effect a change. Now think of who the appointees would have been under a Kerry presidency. No reasonable person can dispute that Kerry would have appointed liberal justices who believed in the legitimacy of the Roe decision.

Or, consider an argument from authority: recently, the eminent liberal legal scholar Jeffrey Toobin suggested that a McCain presidency will likely bring about the rapid end of Roe v. Wade (HT: Opinionated Catholic). Perhaps he knows something that Policraticus does not?

Finally, I would note that the author is arguing against probability, and he knows it. He says that there is no guarantee that a justice appointed by a Republican president will work to overturn Roe. And certainly no one would argue there is an absolute guarantee. No such guarantees exist about anything politically – for example, there is certainly no guarantee that a President Barack Obama will absolutely guarantee a working system of government-funded health care. For that matter, there is no guarantee he will do anything good for the poor. Johnson never won his “War on Poverty.”

Policraticus' arguments endanger the success of the legal change we are so close to achieving - legal change that will help fight the culture of death.

a short list of words we could do without

Now don't get me wrong, I love words. But aren't there some that we could do without? Here is a short list of words I think fall into that category, coupled with a short explanation. Please, if you can think of any to add, let me know.

web-log: An abbreviated and ugly expression, but perhaps more palatable than it's progeny,

blog: The sound of this word is simulatenously cheesy and painful. Plus, it refers to something of questionable respectability - a public personal journal

chillax: A heinous concatenation of the slang words chillin' and relaxin'

neocon: This is often used as a slur without any reference to what might actually mean

irregardless: Why put the "ir" there?

blogosphere: this is not a place i want to visit

parent: The speech codes at my University say that we should avoid using the words "mothering" and fathering" and instead use parenting or nuturing. This is because, according to the University thought police, we "ought to avoid gendering a non-gendered activity"

first-years: the politically corrected version of "freshmen"

attitudinize: what an ugly word!

Steven Pinker and "the Edge"

Alan Jacobs at his finest, criticizing an essay on human dignity by Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist:

Though he never quite admits it, Pinker is perhaps today’s most passionate advocate of the idea that the sciences and humanities form two cultures and that, like Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, they are predestined to eternal enmity: one of them must destroy the other. And while, as Levin and Douthat point out, Pinker does get quite bizarrely exercised about religion — anyone unfamiliar with the dramatis personae of this whole affair would come away from Pinker’s essay convinced that Leon Kass is actually the Papal nuncio posted to Washington — it’s also literature, indeed any non-scientific use of language, that tends to confuse and frighten him.

Here’s an example. Pinker is exercised by the fact that Padre Kass and some of the the other monks and nuns of the Council think that human beings possess intrinsic dignity. Au contraire, says Pinker, finger held aloft, “Dignity can be harmful.” And why is that? Because “Every sashed and be-medaled despot reviewing his troops from a lofty platform seeks to command respect through ostentatious displays of dignity.” There you have it: Stephen Pinker actually thinks that the dignity assumed by tyrants is the same thing that Kass et al. are writing about. What a shock Pinker will receive when, someday, he opens a dictionary and discovers that some words have more than one meaning.

Or this: Pinker is deeply disturbed by Kass’s “disconcerting habit of treating fiction as fact.” Evidence: in his essay for the collection, Kass comments that the Greek gods lived “shallow and frivolous lives.” Obviously, the only possible explanation for such a comment is that Kass actually believes in the Greek gods! (This could be a problem when word gets back to the Vatican.) Then Pinker lands this haymaker: “Kass cites Brave New World five times in his Dignity essay.” There you have it: who would cite works of fiction as though they were potentially relevant to ethical reflection? Surely, only someone too dim to understand the difference between fiction and fact.

This is not the first time that literature has proved to be too much for Pinker. Ten years ago, in How the Mind Works, he worried mightily over the question of why human beings read stories. Hamlet for example — what’s up with that? Here’s the answer Pinker sweated out: “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?”

To this Jerry Fodor gave the best possible response: “Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance.”

Every time I reflect on the fact that Steven Pinker is a respected professor at the putatively best university in the world, I am dumbstruck.

perceptive Nietzsche

"I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar."
- Twilight of the Idols

i.e., We will not have killed God until we have killed grammar. Think modern linguistics and literary theory, eh?

i don't get the joke

Prof. Michael Perry of Mirror of Justice highlights an interesting Youtube clip. I think it perfectly highlights the quixotic delusions of Obama supporters. Check it out for yourself!


p.s. I'm aware it's intended to be funny - if it is, I don't understand why. Who exactly are they satirizing?

Balthasar on Liberation Theology

"I Feel that the combined efforts of theology in the United States and Europe should also be directed toward helping the Latin American theology of liberation, which often becomes self-seeking and confused. I mean helping to clarify it with a sympathetic understanding of its genuine claims. Teilhard de Chardin (the French Jesuit philosopher) saw the future of theology as supranational, global, but he did not recognize the concerns of liberation theology. We must include them in our theological thinking, but in doing so, we must show greater discernment than our South American brothers do. Usually, their analysis of social situations is based impulsively on Marxist categories of "exploiting" and "exploited" countries... The tragic situation is more complex and we must show them that.

... The exponents of this third (liberation) direction must learn - with all due regard to their justified claims - that the Kingdom of God cannot be coerced into existence by any amount of social or political effort. It remains the gift of God and of the returning Lord to a world that cannot perfect itself by its own efforts."

- Hans Urs von Balthasar, "Current Trends in Catholic Theology", Communio(Sprint, 1978) pp. 84-85.

uhm, profound

"Religion, opium for the people. To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in an afterlife. And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium for the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged."

Polish Poet Czeslaw Milosz in Roadside Dog via First Things

David Brooks is strange

I tend to think that David Brooks, the peculiar prognosticator from the New York Times, tries too hard. His latest column serves as an example. He points to the current conversation between science and religion as evidence that the number of Orthodox believers is going to decline in the future - basically, that we will be more "spiritual" and less "religious".

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

Does Brooks' not realize that this phenomenon has been going on for a long time? The scientific revolution is roughly a quarter millennium old. He's hedging his bets by betting on the past.

technology and education

I am highly sympathetic to the argument advanced by "The Dumbest Generation", mentioned in the Wall Street Journal

Adults are so busy imagining the ways that technology can improve classroom learning or improve the public debate that they've blinded themselves to the collective dumbing down that is actually taking place. The kids are using their technological advantage to immerse themselves in a trivial, solipsistic, distracting online world at the expense of more enriching activities – like opening a book or writing complete sentences.

Mr. Bauerlein presents a wealth of data to show that young people, with the aid of digital media, are intensely focusing on themselves, their peers and the present moment. YouTube and MySpace, he says, are revealingly named: These and other top Web destinations are "peer to peer" environments in the sense that their juvenile users have populated them with predictably juvenile content. The sites where students spend most of their time "harden adolescent styles and thoughts, amplifying the discourse of the lunchroom and keg party, not spreading the works of the Old Masters."

Technology is not an unqualified good. A good conservative ought put their foot down and say something about this, eh?

Those Giants

“Quarry rock with razors, or moor a vessel with a thread of silk, then you may hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and pride of man.”

- John Henry Newman in The Idea of a University

beautiful

David B. Hart is an Eastern Orthodox theologian who has a beautiful reflection on Christian Truth in the face of the horror of some of the natural disasters the world has been through in the past few years:

I do not believe we Christians are obliged — or even allowed — to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.

As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes — and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”

The whole essay is available here.

some quick recommendations

I have recently had the great pleasure of reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. The book is a resounding testament to the deleterious effects arrogance can have on science. If you want to be entertained, I recommend reading it along with David Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion, a highly entertaining book that assesses the argument at hand. Finally, I must mention the movie Iron Man: it is awesome.

The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism - 6

Novak on the fundamental error of socialism:

“The fallacy of socialism is to imagine that brotherhood demands collectivism. The genius of democratic capitalism is to serve brotherhood by recognizing that the most precious of all common goods is the individuality of each person, and that the best way to increase the common good is to empower people through differentiated systems.”

“Consider the institutions of capitalism: the corporation, the labor union, banking, the stock exchange. Each of these is communal. None would make sense in a world of isolated individuals. Each depends on bonds of trust which go beyond coercive force, beyond written contracts, and beyond the letter of the law. (An effective way of halting any enterprise is to slow it down by “going by the book.”) Most interchanges within a democratic capitalist economy depend upon the good faith implicit behind the spoken word; they depend upon a bond of spirit.”

“Ironically, a society supposedly based upon competitive individualism and possessiveness seems to favor in its citizens forms of generosity, trust, extroversion, outgoingness, and reliance upon the good faith of others. Meanwhile, existing socialist societies seem to narrow the circles of trust, as group competing for the same allocations run afoul of each other’s interests. Collectivism pits man against man. A system which encourages each to seek first his own interests yields liberty and receives in return loyalty and love.” (Pg 226)

Justice and American Constitutionalism

Professor Russell Hittinger has an excellent lecture on American Constitutionalism available here. I have way too much time on my hands and decided to transcribe it so I could study it in parts. I suggest listening to the entire lecture if you have a chance. If you don't have the time, I am going to post particularly engaging segments of the lecture here for future reference. He begins this erudite discussion on the Constitution by defining that most elusive and controversial term, justice.

And I want to begin by giving you one of the most ancient definitions in Western Law, which is the definition of justice. This definition goes as far back as the 5th century BC in Rome. When called upon to define what justice is, the Roman lawyer said, “justice is giving to each what is his right.” And the way the Roman lawyers thought about this, it is very common-sensical – until someone can claim, that this is owed to me, or to him, or to them, there is simply no issue of justice. In matters of justice there can be no act of giving what is due to someone, unless there is first something to be given. We have to find something to give – property, obedience, due process, non-interference in acts of religious worship, whatever. But until we can locate something to give, and that we are obligated to give to another person, all issues of justice are moot. In fact, for there to be justice, at least three conditions have to be met. First, we have to know what it is that we owe to someone else. Second, we have to know who should receive it. Third, we have to know who should give it. And if we’re ever confused about any three of those – the thing to be given, the person who’s supposed to give it, or the person who’s supposed to receive it, we really are confused about justice. So – who owes what to whom? This is the fundamental question.

this just in

Wal-Mart is great.

"LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, announced Monday it would expand its discounted prescription drug program to offer 90-day supplies for $10 and add several women's medications at a discount. It also said it would lower the price of more than 1,000 over-the-counter drugs."

intellectual empathy

A dispiriting essay from Alan Charles Kors at the New Criterion

The academic world I so loved revealed itself best in an undergraduate course I’d taken on the history of Europe in the twentieth century. When the professor, a distinguished intellectual of the Left, returned the midterms to the hundred plus or so of us who were in his course, he said that we’d saddened and embarrassed him. “I gave you readings that allowed you to reach such diverse conclusions,” he explained, “but you all told me what you thought I wanted to hear.” He informed us that he would add a major section to the final exam: “I’m going to assign the book I disagree with most about the twentieth century. I’m not going to ask you to criticize it, but, instead, to re-create its arguments with intellectual empathy, demonstrating that you understand the perspectives from which he understands and analyzes the world.” I was moved by that. The work was Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and it changed the course of my intellectual and moral life. It also showed me immediately how I wanted to teach as an intellectual historian. Each year, I teach thinkers as diverse as Pascal and Spinoza, Hobbes and Butler, Wesley and Diderot. I offer courses on intellectual history, and the goal of my teaching is to make certain that my students understand the perspectives and rich debates that have shaped the dialogue of the West. I don’t want disciples of my worldview. I want students who know how to read deeply, how to analyze, how to locate the essential points of similarity and divergence among thinkers, and, indeed, how to understand, with intellectual empathy, how the world looks from the diverse perspectives that constitute the history of European thought. I know that I am not alone, but I also know, alas, that I am in a distinct minority in my pedagogical goals in the humanities and the so-called social sciences.

Imagine a professor doing that today? Intellectual empathy! What a great concept.

blogging? meh

The question is: what would the web-log of a saint look like?

If the goal of Christian life is to imitate Christ (and it is), it is fair to ask whether or not Jesus would blog.

I think the only answer is no, He wouldn't; I would be interested to hear a case made that argues otherwise. Perhaps some of the Vox-Nova commentators can speak to this? Perhaps the question is the wrong question.

Fairness, idealism and other atrocities

P.J. O'Rourke, resident of the small town of Peterborough (where I went to school), in southwest New Hampshire, has written a column giving "commencement advice you're unlikely to hear elsewhere." He has five "political" messages:

1) Go make money! "There's nothing the matter with honest moneymaking. Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box."

2) Don't be an idealist! Don't chain yourself to a redwood tree. Make your contribution by getting rich and doing something worthwhile with your money.

3) Get politically uninvolved! "All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I'd be standing here with my bellybutton exposed."

4) Forget about fairness! "I am here to advocate for unfairness. I've got a 10-year-old at home. She's always saying, "That's not fair." When she says this, I say, "Honey, you're cute. That's not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That's not fair. You were born in America. That's not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don't start getting fair for you."

5) Be a religious extremist! " So, avoid politics if you can. But if you absolutely cannot resist, read the Bible for political advice...The Bible is very clear about one thing: Using politics to create fairness is a sin...Observe the Tenth Commandment...If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don't whine about what the people across the street have. Get rich and get your own."

I was wrong about Life of Pi, Catherine was right.

"I'm sorry to say it so bluntly, we don't mean to hurt your feelings, but you don't really expect us to believe you, do you? carnivorous trees? A fish-eating algae that produces fresh water? Tree-dwelling aquatic rodents? Those things don't exist."

"Only because you've never seen them."

"That's right. We believe what we see."

"So did Columbus. What do you do when you're in the dark?"

The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism - 5

Maybe one of the only good things to come out of the enlightenment was the notion of a political pluralism - a society that recognizes and appreciates and tolerates a multitude of differences, yet remains united in first principles. In the Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak addresses the importance of authentic pluralism and argues against an explicitly sectarian government:

“For grave dangers to the human spirit lurk in the subordination of the political system and the economic system to a single moral-cultural vision. Daily life is (as Christians believe) a contest with the world, the flesh, and the devil. An attempt to impose the Kingdom of God upon this contest is dangerous not only to human liberty but to Christianity itself (and to any other religion similarly tempted. For darkness and recalcitrance always demand their due and corrupt those who would replace them.

In the world as it is, humans as they are often and unavoidably enmeshed in lies, betrayals, injustices, and sinful energies of every sort. Prematurely, before the endtime, to attempt to treat any society of this world as “a Christian society” is to confound precious hope with a sad reality. Human beings, even the most devout and serious Christians, cannot be expected to act always and in all ways, as Christians ought to act, under the sway and impulse of God’s grace. A political system based upon such expectations must necessarily end in disaster. An economic system based upon such expectations must necessarily confound illusions with realities. In the world as it is, Reinhold Niebuhr warned throughout his exemplary intellectual life, “the children of light” are in many respects a greater danger to biblical faith than “the children of darkness.” (pg. 68)

Such a quest is tempting for many Christians, but as Novak points out, the quest is wrongheaded. While it's intentions may be noble, a quest to Christianize the system may have unintended consequences. Like tyranny.