Category Archives: Politics

The Theological Basis Against Abortion and Secularism of Choice

I have always been amazed that folks which are rabidly against abortion cannot understand, at least in principle, why 80% of Americans since 19761 are in favor of abortion being allowed in some or all circumstances. The radical anti-abortion folks quickly label these 80% of Americans as “baby killers”. First, let’s take a step back and clarify terms.

I do not call anti-abortion folks “pro-life” simply because they are not in any sense pro-life for the following reasons:

In a purely logical sense, pro-life is not compatible with the belief in the death penalty.

Similarly, pro-life does not justify war, the mass and indiscriminate extermination of human life. The pro-lifers that voted for G.W. Bush do not think of themselves as murdering hundreds of thousands of children, women and men in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to their vote, we also murdered more of our own children than 911accomplished. Even their infamous president admitted at least one of those wars was a ‘mistake’. I have never heard a rabid pro-lifer refer to themselves as murderers for their vote for G.W. Bush but they do refer to those who vote for choice as murders. Can anyone say ‘double-standard’.

If pro-life includes all life, anyone that is not a vegan can also be called a murderer.

Some have gone so far as to claim plants have life and those that eat plants are murderers. How far psychological neurosis can go in this direction is unclear but I guess that really is the definition of neurosis and ultimately self-destruction.

The basic problem that the anti-abortion folks have is that for most reasonable folks one cell subdividing does not constitute a human life. Every animal on the planet starts out as one cell subdividing as far as I know. A fetus goes through almost all the evolutionary stages in early development that many other animals go through. So, from a secular, scientific point of view the distinction of human life and animal life at conception or the early stages of fetal development can hardly be justified. To call someone a ‘murderer’ for believing in the validity of this rationale does not incriminate the hard, cold logic and reasonableness of this point of view. It really tells us something about the psychology and religious beliefs of the accuser.

If the anti-abortion folks would overtly make their claim against abortion based on religious and metaphysical beliefs, I would have no argument against that since belief and faith are not qualified by logic and reason. Certainly, history has shown us and still demonstrates the possible downside of belief and faith when logic and rationality are thrown out the window. Certainly, there have also been atrocities when the appearance logic and rationality have also been at the fore. The difference between religious belief and secular understanding is that, as Popper stated, secular, scientific logic and reasoning is contingent, it is falsifiable. Religious belief cannot be falsified without violating the basic tenant of faith. Falsifiability depends on a community of rigorous experimentation and consensus based on the scientific method not on tenants of dogma or intimidation. By the way, I am not suggesting faith and religious belief is altogether bad. I do recognize its upside potential.

The anti-abortion folks have learned that their fanaticism gets easily dismissed when they appeal solely to religious dogma. Therefore, they have made feeble attempts to justify their extremism with insults and pseudo-science. Reminiscent of the appeals many of them also make to creationism and against human caused climate change, they attract marginal and apparent ‘facts’ to justify what is fundamentally a religious belief not a proven scientific fact. They change and shade the meaning of the word ‘fact’ and commonly accepted meanings of words to seemingly substantiate their religious belief. They used to proclaim that “all life is sacred”. It seems now that this has been superseded by insults, indignant and even violent assaults on anyone that thinks one cell subdividing is not yet a ‘baby’. Simply put, ask any rabid anti-abortion person if one cell subdividing could in any way not be called human. None will tell you yes, or even, “I can understand the legitimacy of that claim”. Instead, those of us for choice are met with a barrage of intense hatred and character insults. The apparent idiosyncrasy of their hatred and their implicit religious metaphysic especially in the example of Jesus are amazingly at odds. The adamant claim that human life occurs with conception, the penetration of the sperm into the egg, is a purely definitional and arbitrary assignment. To claim that they are ‘pro-life’ and the rest of us are murderers for not accepting this definition as gospel fact is absolutely ludicrous.

There is an interesting philosophical consideration that Aristotle was famous for thinking through when the claim is made for potential. At conception, there is potential for human life. This does not mean that there is absolute, human life at conception as those born with a vegetative brain can reasonably bring into question whether this kind of life is human as it does not in any apparent, functional or observable way rise above or even equal a common animal life. Sure we can believe that this vegetative state has the potential to be different just as pigs could fly and stones could talk but we need to understand the difference between hope and desire and brute fact. Potential is not absolute but relative. Potential is relative to actuality. Actuality never has a some kind of hermetically sealed (or definitionally sealed) ‘life of its own’. It is always contingent on temporality; its unfolding expression through time. To make potentiality an absolute, as ‘human life’ from conception, apart from existence is to shift the meaning of the word into metaphysics. I might add that this is why later Latin theologians largely misinterpreting Aristotle, applied the title Physics and Metaphysics to two famous collections of Aristotle. I have discussed this aspect more thoroughly in other posts on this site.

In any case, the intensity and zealotry of the anti-abortion folks goes way past the claim for a philosophical, religious or even rational claim and can only properly be thought in terms of a pathological and deviate psychology. Watching Carly Fiorina the other night on the Republican debate talk about abortion is a clear example of how these folks process abortion. Chopping up babies in some sort a sadistic ritual of capitalistic pleasure is quite a long way from the position that one cell subdividing is not a human life. However, for these folks, you are either a sadistic baby killer or one of them. While this kind of sentiment is more akin to ISIL than to Jesus or common sense, it is commonly and unquestionable accepted on the far right. What this should tell the rest of us is not any kind of legitimacy to their point of view but contrarily to the depth of their personal psychological delusions and maladies. Would we really want a person with these kinds of issues as president? Many of the current Republican presidential contenders have sided and defended these abnormalities which should inform us about their viability as well.

I am and have always been more than willing to politically compromise with rational folks on restrictions to abortion but it is increasingly hard to find folks on the other side of choice that can compromise on abortion. They are committed as much as any fighter for ISIL on making abortion illegal in any and all circumstances. They would impose harsh criminal penalties on doctors, women that get abortions and folks that are pro-choice. It is not unimaginable that their psychological traumas would impose violent and undemocratic ends on the profane as George Tiller and other killings have amply demonstrated. If you give them a inch they demand a mile because they would rather undermine our system of democracy, throw away the judicial branch of government in some unthought ‘constitutional’ fashion than consider that most folks, 80% since 1976, are not like them and vote against them. Nothing else matters to a zealot except their own physiological fascination and pathology. The only thing I can add is that if folks vote these lunatics in we will all get what we deserve. It will not be democratic and reasonable but will only result in violent, dictatorial consequences on women and those that believe women should have the right to choose.

 

 

 

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1 Fallacies from Anti-Abortionists

The Lack of Logic: Huckabee and S.E. Cup

Today on CNN S.E. Cup, a right-wing commentator, defended Mike Huckabee’s comment that Obama is marching Israelis to “the door of the oven” by agreeing to the Iran nuclear deal. She stated that Huckabee was correct because the right’s already assumed failure of the nuclear deal would mean that Israeli Jews would be killed in mass. This is an example of the media and journalism school’s failure to make students take more logic classes. More importantly, this lack of logic and the dismal failure of the media to conduct a serious debate is why folks get so aggravated with politics. The aggravation comes from the lack of closure due to popular rhetoric’s failure to utilize the tools of logic.

In the case of S.E. Cup she should have been challenged by the CNN interviewer on her logic. Using S.E. Cup’s logic we could also say the Republicans are leading the Israeli Jews to the oven because when the right kills the nuclear deal and Iran develops a bomb in two months as experts, including Netanyahu have predicted, the right will have enabled Iran to drop the bomb on Israel. By her own logic, the right could be called be Nazi fascists for killing the nuclear deal. This flawed logic can be used for or against the Republicans. The flaw here is that assumptions are hypothetical. We could equally argue that unicorns are overpopulating and rednecks should have an open season on them. Just because the right believes some hypothetical outcome strongly does not make their logic correct. They may assess probabilities differently in which case their assessments need to come into detailed question with the facts not the hyperbole.

In my opinion, The bigger issue goes back to Kant: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”. If S.E. Cup’s maxim about the fascist left is true based on her assumption about the nuclear deal, integrity would dictate that it would also be true about the right if they kill the deal and Israel gets nuked. Folks today are all too willing to hurl their maxims on everyone else but too often can’t take it when their logic is turned back on themselves. Kant’s categorical imperative should be called integrity and that is all too often missing in rhetorical dialog.

I have many other current topics I would like to pursue these days but alas, my software work and taking care of my 92 year old dad at home leave me little time these days.

Origin and Chaos – The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

In Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s recent and interpretive decision, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA V. HELLER1, the majority ruled that gun ownership is an individual right and not just a collective right. The Second Amendment simply states:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

As recently as the 1990s total estimates of people in the civilian militias in this country range from 20,000 to 60,0002. These groups are chiefly comprised of far right wing groups. If the right to bear arms were limited to fringe groups like these, we are faced with an overwhelming dilemma:

Does the U.S. Constitution maintain an absolute right to abrogate itself?

Put another way,

Does the U.S. Constitution provide the right for groups, hostile to the United States and its Constitution, to destroy the country?

Of course, these particular groups discussed in footnote 2 would certainly maintain that they are protecting their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. However, is the Constitution meant as a document for multiple and widely varying interpretations or is there a process described by the Constitution for deterring what are lawful and unlawful interpretations? Of course there is, the Legislative and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government. Do individuals have the right to have their own interpretation? Yes, they do but their interpretation is not protected against the interpretation of the courts and the legislative branch. The government maintains the exclusive right to determine what is constitutional and what is not constitutional. Therefore, like it or not the individual right to interpret the Constitution is trumped by the document itself and founding structural articles of the United States.

This is logically a necessity as many individual, widely varying interpretations could never be enacted into a cogent, defensible structure. If everyone with an opinion determined the formal and authorized meaning of the Constitution, the structure of the country would be ‘no structure’, an-archy, without origin. Origin is what validates and authorizes meaning. Accidental meanings, singular and without integral cohesion, are essentially thought in the context of origin as willy-nilly, whimsical and therefore, superfluous.

This is widely divergent from popular opinion about the individuality of the will and its protections in the structure of our government. Certainly individual rights are protected in a relative sense by the Constitution but not in an absolute sense. No one has the absolute authority to destroy the United States. It is sovereign not the citizens. The absolute right of an individual or group to destroy the country is not protected by the U.S. Constitution. Nor is any right given to an individual or a group to usurp the system of checks and balances set up by the Founding Fathers to impose their interpretation of the Constitution over and against the will of the people given by their elected representatives and judges.

Therefore, if a citizens militia group hates our current government and is hell bent on violently and singularly imposing its constitutional interpretation on the United States, it is limited by the document itself. Even Judge Scalia writes near the end of the majority decision that,

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott 333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2 Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n. 11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” See footnote 1

The majority opinion goes on to state that all laws would have to pass rational-basis scrutiny and that the constitution itself prohibits irrational laws in footnote 27. Scalia goes on to add that “rational-basis is not just the standard of scrutiny, but the very substance of the constitutional guarantee”. Certainly this would cover that case where a fringe, radical terrorist group would decide it knew the ‘true’ meaning of the Constitution and would overthrow the current U.S. Government as the blood patriots and martyrs. The Constitution and “rational-basis” is the “substance” of the Constitution. The Constitution protects the rights of all Americans not just the ‘survival of the fittest’ Americans as in the pure market place of Austrian Economic’s capitalism. There is no hope that capitalism would find a ‘natural’ protection for the rights of the less fortunate but in the U.S. Constitution, there is an unmitigated guarantee. The market place is not given the right to determine a structure for the government just as the citizens militia is not protected by the Second Amendment to do whatever they want in the name of the ‘true’ (i.e. interpretation of the Constitution).

The Constitution and the elected government are given absolute power to make all final determinations, all “rational-basis” for the standard of scrutiny. In so doing, the irrational and accidental are by the same basis co-determined. The appeal to origin, is itself an appeal to rationality and its necessary irrational determinations. Any subsequent authorizations can only be made via the original authorization of the U.S. Constitution. If these subsequent authorizations are found to ‘deviate and perverse’ by the courts and elected representatives they cannot legitimately maintain their authority. The absolute authority of the government cannot be abnegated by the very existence of the government itself, its constitution. In this way the human instinct to survive is similarly taken up in the same exercise as inability of the Constitution of legitimate its own destruction. However, distinct from the individual will to survive the constitutional ‘will to survive’ has additional caveats.

The Constitution is a written document. An individual is alive, existing not as a writing but as an excess to writing. All writing, the body of writing, is only meaningful to a human that knows language. It is in whole meaningless to animals or atoms. Therefore, writing is inherently human. Any excess to writing does not imply a fundamental difference to writing but a qualitative difference. Therefore, we think to exist, as only humans can think they exist as such, suggests something more than a certain kind of human grapheme but exactly what this more is seems to deviate from constitution, the structure inherent in writing. Writing is not non-sense, it defines sense, it defines what is possible for ‘rationality’. To deviate from constitution, “rational-basis”, is chaos. Since Christendom, chaos has largely been thought from the basis of rationality as irrational, without meaning, empty. And yet, these negative connotations seem to be dismissive of any excess to ‘constitutionality’, the writing of God and the thought of immortality. These negative connotations of chaos bring up the nonsensical as the extremist right wing militia groups which cannot deviate from an authorizing origin and are condemned to live in the hinterland of their ‘truth’, their unthought and assumed right to exist as such. They are forever held prisoner by their ‘constitutional blood of patriots and martyrdom’ and at the same time, by the same Constitution, denied their insistence on absolute authorship. They are hopelessly lost in a singularity without an excess. They cannot endure an excess of chaos. They must in futility hold on to chaos in the passion of a singular death grip on gun, God and glory authorized by an absolute denial to their Constitutional authority. In this negation without excess, their existential angst, they take up chaos without ever becoming aware of it as such. They can only rail and rally in their desperation.

What escapes these desperados cannot be given or thought in common contemporary philosophical avenues. There is a sense of excess beyond writing, beyond constitution, that ‘constitution’ essentially cannot come to grips with. When excess to origin cannot be allowed to escape the insistence on constitution, on rational-basis, without becoming yet again a pseudo-rationalism it is condemned as Sisyphus to eternally roll a boulder up a hill only to have it fall again. This is why Hegel’s System can never be completed as Kierkegaard recognized. Not because it is inadequate but because it cannot constitutionally recognize what the early Greek philosophers realized from Hesiod,

“Tell me all of this, you Muses who have your homes on Olympus, from the beginning [archê, ἀρχῆς], tell who first of them (the gods) came-to-be [genet’, γένετ᾽].

First of all Chaos came-to-be [genet’, γένετ᾽]; but then afterwards…” Hesiod

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1 See DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA V. HELLER

2 Right-wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort

By Chip Berlet, Matthew Nemiroff Lyons, Pg. 289, See Link


 

Calling All Citizens Militia

Alert! Alert! The legendary and widely heralded citizens militia has received orders to converge on Wacko, Texas. We all know their constitutional call:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

We have heard about these super heroes for years. The NRA has told us that good guys carrying guns is the only way to stop a bad guy carrying a gun. Well, now is the time, Texas is the perfect place, for these citizen soldiers to bear arms and come to the aid of Wacko, Texas. The evil biker gangs of the world are all racing towards Wacko. There are four guns, tanks and bazookas for every man, women and child in Texas. Elementary schools are mandated to certify Kindergartners to be registered gun dealers by the state of Texas.

Now, the citizens militia can prove its case. Now they can show the world that they are not a bunch of drunk, red-necks shooting every tree in the woods imagining them to be the notorious bad guy trying to rob their house or kill their children only to find the strong hand of the militia beating them to a pulp with lead. Come on militia, show us you metal now! Head to Wacko and kill the bad guys. Trees don’t shoot back but we know trees are only part of your paramilitary training. Now you can shoot at an enemy that shoots back. Now is the time to show us your metal, make your day, and finally show the world that the Founding Fathers were not protecting drunken red-necks on parade at the expense of anyone that might accidentally get shot by them but the Founding Fathers were creating the citizens militia to hate the government they had just created. Gee, those guys were almost as smart as the good ‘ol boys in the militia.

 

The Strange Case of Rand Paul

Rand Paul, as his father, make an odd footnote in the history of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is fond of acquiring token representations of its ‘new face’ exemplified in their analysis of why they lost the last election to President Obama. They understand the need for good public relations. After all, they have been weaving the ‘we are the working class heroes’ tale for many years. They are really good at it. The Paul’s offer the Republican Party the opportunity to capture some of the conservative, libertarian leaning folks. So, let’s take a look at Rand Paul.

Rand and his father were both huge fans of Ayn Rand and of the Objectivist philosophy. As a philosophy Objectivism is not well respected among serious philosophers. Their philosophical exegesis of great philosophers tend to be shallow and more opportunistic than penetrating. Ayn Rand wrote fiction books which highlight elitist views with its necessary accompanying condition of the lowly, uneducated masses. Her books favor a social Darwinism where the strong, the bright and the wealthy are the masters and creators of human destiny and the huge rest of the masses are simply cattle for herding and feeding off of. The elitists are the survivors of the fittest. The masses are simply failed genetics which are condemned by their own tragic inadequacies.

The Paul’s were also fans of the Austrian School of Economics which I have written at length about on this site. The Austrian School is the economic equivalent of the Objectivist philosophy. They are pure and fundamental ‘free marketers’. They believe the problem with the market has always been the government. They think that left totally to its own the free market will solve all the problems we thought we needed governments for. Whenever the government intervenes in the market, the market fails to work to its fullest and results in all the booms and busts of market history. They think government intervention resulted in the Great Depression not free market, unregulated banking and stock market failures as most economists believe. The think monopolies are the result of government intervention and corporatism where corporations buy off the government for the dreaded market regulation. Market regulation is a free market enemy because it deforms the natural workings of the market and gives companies a protectionist strategy that the market left to its own would not provide.

The Austrian School is a reductionist philosophy which accounts for market dynamics as a kind of zero sum game albeit not about wealth creation but about market dynamics. The purist school of Austrian Economics start from the assumption that the market, free of government intervention, will always be the best and most efficient delivery of goods and services in the long run. Any government intervention will ‘gum up the works’ and proportionally destroy the markets effectively. In this sense, the zero sum dichotomy at work is the absolute poles of free, unregulated market and encumbered, regulated government intervention. There is absolutely no middle ground for the purists. There is no daylight between government regulation and market degradation. The more the government intervenes in the market the more the market fails. This is a zero sum game. Regulation can never be thought as aiding the market. So, for example, if planes crash because of poor maintenance, the FAA is not the answer. The market is the answer. Folks will not fly with airline companies whose planes crash. The market will reward the company whose planes do not crash and punish the company whose planes crash. Eventually, the market will fix its own problems left to its own workings (just hope you are not flying in the meantime). Intervention by a government agency like the FAA will degrade the ability of the market to police itself.

The zero sum game played by the Austrians is really a thin veneer for survival of the fittest. Those that survive and thrive in the unregulated market get to establish their dominance. Those that fail in the market fall into the trash heap of wannabes. Of course, the Austrians would never say this. Their line concerning the ‘less fortunate’ is that the market will decide their fate. They think whatever happens with human failures of the market will eventually be corrected by the market. Although the Austrians would rather leave the ultimate outcome of their ideal unaddressed, it could be a place at the table for everyone in the long run but more likely human tragedies and failures are swept under the old proverbial rug as Austrians cannot address the conditions for human tragedy except by the faith of the market. They could never acknowledge that the market, free of government intervention, could result in an elitist economy that is simply the latest face of tragic human history.

The Paul’s are students and advocates for these ideologies. The Republican Party fits very well with these concepts. The Party has convinced folks that their problem is not the market but the government. All the while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The faithful just turn this reality back on the government. They blame the government for these inequities. Regular folks are feed a steady diet of this dogma to the point where they cannot think that maybe the free, unregulated market could be part of the problem. This fictitious production does play into the power broker hands of the Republican Party. However, the Republican Party will never allow a Ron or Rand Paul be more than a token gesture.

The Pauls attract social libertarians even though they personally advocate for anti-abortion groups and favors laws to vastly restrict abortion. The Pauls are also against same sex marriage. Rand Paul is not in favor of government anti-discrimination laws. He thinks the market should decide. Business should not be hindered by anti-discrimination laws. He has also supported laws to protect ‘religious freedoms’. The Pauls tend to be non-interventionists when it comes to foreign affairs and aid but they still have strong affiliations to Israel. While the Pauls have some positions that seem to contradict civil libertarian ideologies, they have many positions which certainly give lip service to a libertarian ideology. However, what one must not forget is that they are not running independently. Their campaigns are bought and paid for by the Republican Party. Therefore, they have indebtedness to the Party that I suspect is probably partly responsible for some of their deviations from a strict libertarian ideology.

The Republican Party has too much interest in social conservatives to ever let the Pauls get too close to winning a presidential bid. The Party is all too happy to display adherence to diversity but when push comes to shove Rand Paul will never get the nomination just as his dad before him. Rand Paul will follow the Party line and would never run as an independent. His willingness to shift his positions to placate the Republican Party is troublesome. If he ever were president I think he would cave to party pressure and be more likely than he pretends now to engage in military campaigns and foreign aid. Admittedly, these are simply my concerns not anything factual. What I find more troublesome is his alliances with Ayn Rand and Austrian Economics.

I do think that Rand Paul would dismantle the government to the point of dangerous economic consequences. Ron Paul has written extensively about how he believes the Federal Reserve is corrupt and unconstitutional (See End The Fed). Of course, he would expect the free market to fill the gap and do a better job. Anyone that thinks this should check out this site before locking in a vote for Rand Paul. Check out the facts detailed on this site before blatantly deciding that the government is mostly dispensable. Most people are totally unaware of what the government does for them every day. Anyone who is willing to think about this rationally will inevitably have concerns about whether and how the free market could effectively address vital concerns that the government currently addresses. Rand Paul would, at the least, be a huge gamble that this unfettered, free market ideology would and could fill the gap right away.

Towards the end of the Great Depression the Fed was given much more power to stabilize the economy. Take a look at these graphs which show the effects of the Feds market intervention beginning in the 40s. While I did not graph the detrimental effects of GDP, unemployment and inflation before 1917 (that data is harder to find but is well known), it was even more erratic with many more severe depressions. These early years of our country would have been the ugly reality of what an Austrian Economy would look like with the gold standard and almost no regulation. However, instead of the most efficient utilization of goods and services we actually saw widespread poverty, early death and mass subsistence as a quality of life. Anyone that would vote for Rand Paul would have to think if they are really willing to take the chance of a Mad Max type existence. If the unfettered free market would have worked so greatly it would have worked in the first hundred years or so of our country. This Austrian style ideology became a free for all that resulted in a bought and paid for government in the Gilded Age at the expense of the majority of the country. Of course, the Austrians would blame the government for this but anyone with common sense will recognize that when big money is given carte blanche to do as it pleases, it will create a corrupt government if one does not exist. The Republican Party is smart enough to know that a Rand Paul type figure could never get elected president. They know that their benefactors do better when they keep a low profile as their prize victory, Citizens United, clearly demonstrates.

Senator Cory Gardner Prefers War With Iran…

The following is the gist of what Senator Cory Gardner had to say responding to the email I sent him about the nuclear talks with Iran:

“This framework, based on details released thus far, appears to leave vast portions of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact despite their continued sponsoring of terror, and would expire in as few as ten years, allowing Iran to build nuclear weapons unrestricted. The American people, through their representatives in Congress, should be provided the opportunity to reject any deal that does not completely eliminate the threat of a nuclear Iran. I am also concerned that the current deal ignores other state-sanctioned terror activity Iran is pursuing.” Senator Cory Gardner

To “completely eliminate the threat of a nuclear Iran” is a fine and lofty goal but diplomacy is all about what is possible not what is ideal. What I pointed out to him in my initial email was that war is always an option regardless of any previous treaties. I cannot understand why, if there is a possibility for a treaty to monitor and restrict Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, why wouldn’t we try? Military experts have made it clear that even if we bomb Iran we will at most delay their nuclear development by a couple years. Isn’t ten years better than two years which is in effect the Cory Gardner default plan? Iran is within a year of developing a bomb if we pursue Senator Gardner’s ambitions. He and everyone that voted for him will be personally responsible for the inevitable outcome.

It is apparent that Israel will not hesitate to do whatever they think they need to do whenever they think the time is right. If they make a decision to attack unilaterally they know that we will have their back. Personally, I am tired of committing our soldiers and financial resources to conflicts that do not threaten our national security except in some politician’s war hawk brain. Our Founding Fathers including Washington and Jefferson were very adamant that we should only declare war in case of a vital threat to our national security. Since the War Powers Act that FDR signed after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the executive ability to effectively declare war without a Constitutional act of Congress has become easier and easier with every subsequent administration.

Perhaps American exceptionalism has contributed to our eagerness to involve ourselves in foreign military campaigns. As the world’s number one energy producer I find it hard to believe that the U.S. is merely motivated by commerce. In any case, anyone that is a strict Constitutionalist will have to recognize this fundamental deviance from the Constitution and the Founding Fathers intention. To oppose this possibility to avoid war with Iran is certainly tantamount to inviting war. Republicans have historically favored war on various non-Constitutional grounds. Did you know that Eisenhower, a Republican, started our involvement in Vietnam? Check it out. The opposition of the Republican dominated Congress to any attempt to avoid war should be punished by the voters. However, I tend to doubt if it will since Americans seem to turn a blind eye to these kind of international involvements. I hope war weariness will show itself in the actions of the American electorate. We have enough problems here in this country without spending more American resources on efforts that just create more problems for us and hatred of the U.S..

Please listen to the Republican presidential candidates. They really think that tough talk and actions will be better in the long run for the U.S.. Are we willing to once again tragically take that chance? Every historical despot has thought the same thing. History is replete with examples which proves it does not work. Rome overextended its military campaigns on this line of reasoning only to lose the empire. The German Nazis also spread themselves too thin on the Western and Eastern fronts. The U.S. will not make our country more secure by becoming more aggressive with every regional and international skirmish. We will only create more enemies, kill our young folks and rake up multi-trillion dollar debts as we did with Iran and Afghanistan. If we keep electing war hawks we will not get peace but more war. American voters should make it very hard for our politicians to get us into war. This should have been the lesson of Vietnam. I am not sure we are capable of learning these lessons. If we do not, we will not be remembered well by history. The U.S. should always err on the side of peace if we want to do something historically different.

War is always an option and Senator Gardner is not doing any of us a favor by disregarding any treaty in advance to restrict Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We may not be able to “completely eliminate the threat of a nuclear Iran” for all time but any delay to war, even if ten years, should not be dismissed lightly and ideologically. Senators Gardner’s inability to think and act rationally due to political affiliations proves that he is none other than the typical partisan, Republican war hawk that G.W. Bush and the neocons were. They were wrong then and they are STILL wrong! Please write him and let him know but don’t get your hopes up.

Texas Fishing for Islamic Radicals

Right wingers in Texas are at it again and this time with the help of a far right wing hate group called the American Freedom Defense Initiative. Their latest “art exhibit and carton drawing contest” was designed to award the funniest cartoon drawing of Mohamed. Their key note speaker Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who makes his living hating Islam.

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott called out the Texas Rangers to “protect his state from an Obama-led military takeover” from U.S. troops doing training exercises in the Southwest including Texas.

All these right wing nuts are on a fishing expedition to catch Islamic radicals. Well, they snagged a couple nuts, nuts killing nuts.

If Americans keep voting for these right wing nuts our country will start fighting wars that make the wars of G.W. Bush look like a Texas bar room brawl.

Levinas and Hitlerism

How is universality compatible with racism? The answer-to be found in the logic of what first inspires racism involves a basic modification of the very idea of universality. Universality must give way to the idea of expansion, for the expansion of a force presents a structure that is completely different from the propagation of an idea. The idea propagated detaches itself essentially from its point of departure. In spite of the unique accent communicated to it by its creator, it becomes a common heritage. It is fundamentally anonymous. The person who accepts it becomes its master, as does the person who proposes it. The propagation of an idea thus creates a community of “masters”; it is a process of equalization. To convert or persuade is to create peers. The universality of an order in Western society always reflects this universality of truth. But force is characterized by another type of propagation. The person who exerts force does not abandon it. Force does not disappear among those who submit to it. It is attached to the personality or society exerting it, enlarging that person or society while subordinating the rest. Here the universal order is not established as a consequence of ideological expansion; it is that very expansion that constitutes the unity of a world of masters and slaves. Nietzsche’s will to power, which modern Germany is rediscovering and glorifying, is not only a new ideal; it is an ideal that simultaneously brings with it its own form of universalization: war and conquest. But here we return to well-known truths. We have tried to link them to a fundamental principle. Perhaps we have succeeded in showing that racism is not just opposed to such and such a particular point in Christian and liberal culture. It is not a particular dogma concerning democracy, parliamentary government, dictatorial regime, or religious politics that is in question. It is the very humanity of man.1 Emmanuel Levinas

As a victim of fascism and concentration camp survivor, Levinas well understood the outcome of power and racism. In the quote above Levinas sketches out what he believed to be a critical ground of racism not in the horrific acts of racism but in the seemingly banal appeal of what he terms the “idealist liberalism” in historical Christianity. Levinas thinks that in Christianity we have a liberation of spirit, an unprecedented act of freedom in the idea. Prior to this denouement where freedom begins, the human spirit was chained to the powerlessness of the body and the brutality of the natural world. Levinas writes,

It makes it impossible to apply the categories of the physical world to the spirituality of reason, and so locates the ultimate foundation of the spirit outside the brutal world and the implacable history of concrete existence. It replaces the blind world of common sense with the world rebuilt by idealist philosophy, one that is steeped in reason and subject to reason. In place of liberation through grace there is autonomy, but the Judeo-Christian leitmotif of freedom pervades this autonomy.

The temptation the liberation of the soul from the body brings is expanse. Expanse is the exercise of power. Force is the ontic effect of power. Power does not diminish in its use; it intensifies itself in the manifestation of force. I might add, the freedom and universalization of the idea perhaps indulges the natural narcissism of human being. As the old motif goes ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’. The spiritual liberation of spirit sets the conditions for infinite expansion of the ego. From this authentic epoch of being, a new man draws its first breath, the modern master and the slave emerge. The master expresses the ideal world of the soul. The slave remains bound by the shackles of the natural world, the abomination of abominations. In the clear light of reason an unbridled exercise of egoistic freedom announces itself, free, liberated, unchained from every constraint, natural and ethical determinations. In this moment, Hitlerism blinks and gazes long into an abyss and the abyss gazes back.2

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1 Reflections on the Philosophy of Hitlerism

Author(s): Emmanuel Levinas and Seán Hand

Source: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 62-71

Published by: The University of Chicago Press

 

2 I would like to thank Robert Bernasconi for an inspiring lecture last night at the University of Colorado in Denver and the occasion for my discovery of this text of Levinas.

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Republicans are calling out the Clintons for not disclosing all the donors to their charity foundation. Let’s see, what party to this accusation has put all the resources and money into making it easy for political donors to not disclose their identity? What party bought and won the Citizen’s United Decision?1 If there is quid pro quo in the Clinton’s case, a vigilantes group shouting hang-um high and tying to reap the political benefits of gossip is not the way to settle it. We have ample law enforcement groups in the Federal Government to discover and prosecute any violation of law. Of course, if you conveniently have been conditioned to hate or distrust the Federal Government then you probably have also decided another source is more reliable and trustworthy like Fox News for instance. Certainly there must be more checks and balances in Rupert Murdoch’s organizations than anything the framers of our Constitution could have set up. After all Rupert set up the largest collection of gossip media on the planet so he must know something about facts right?

I really do believe the Republican’s dominate rhetorical strategy is to publicly disavow the Darwinian, survival of the fittest,2 ‘free’ market strategies they employ and shift any righteous indignation from the less survivable types towards any ideologies which threaten the conqueror’s dominance. They actually blame the advocates of these ‘dangerous ideologies’ for the very activities they employ covertly and overtly much more effectively and with much greater impact. So, for example, Hillary Clinton is accused of taking money for a charity organization where she receives none of the proceeds for some alleged quid pro quo bribe. She did not benefit from these contributions directly but other, less fortunate folks benefited from them. Allegations of indirect financial benefit have no basis in fact but convenient election year politics by a factually challenged author.3 All the while, the political party which consistently aligns themselves with big business has effectively changed laws which benefit their benefactors.

One such effort the Republicans got through in the Clinton administration deregulated the financial market. From the Clinton years through the Bush years, the sub-prime loans these derivatives where partially based on went from millions of dollars to multiples of billions of dollars. The Bush administration continually resisted efforts to reign in sub-prime lending by gutting regulatory oversight.4 This directly resulted in the collapse of these ‘free range’ financial derivatives effecting the entire planet during the Great Recession. The failures of mortgages alone in the U.S. could have never had this large of an impact on the world economy without the multiplier effect of the deregulated derivatives. Yet, the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation blamed sub-prime loans in the U.S. not financial deregulation even though the bi-partisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission found financial deregulation to be a major factor in the collapse.5

In addition, Republican intelligentsia know if they can convince the slaves they are free they can suppress rebellion and trouble makers. They cater to the aspirational desires of the less fortunate with an illusion of financial success and freedom all the while enacting laws and protections which make it harder for the less fortunate to realize their dreams and easier for the most fortunate to protect and increase their gains. It will be interesting to see how long this charade can go on before it begins to wear thin and it dawns on folks that perhaps the ‘free’ market is more like Santa Clause than reality. One thing we can certainly ascertain that Marx seemed to have missed completely is that people appear to be much more disposed towards aspirational, wish-fulfillment6 than necessity.7 To die without hope is worse than to die without food. It is too bad that this dismal bi-polar choice is also a produced illusion as the tools of a market economy and democracy and fairness do not have to be essentially at odds.

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1 Formalism: When a Lie Becomes Truth (really)

2 Free Market Either/Or Government?

3 The Washington Post, Rachel Maddow explores ‘Clinton Cash’ book’s connection to New York Times, Washington Post

4 The Credit Crisis: The Bush Administration’s Record of Denial and Regulatory Neglect

5 Latest Observations on the Housing and Economic Crisis

6 Aspirational, wish-fulfillment is not rooted in the material conditions of human labor and overcoming alienation. It has no practical basis in need but in wish, phantasma. In this sense, fantasy becomes the nexus of wish and fulfillment. It is rooted in the concrete production of abstract possibility for the implicit purpose of perpetual illusion, the mirage of utopia. In this case, Sisyphus did not roll the huge boulder up the steep hill for punishment but for reward which can never quite be realized. The machinery of this production is built on the ever deferred pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Immediate need is marginalized for the promise of unbridled success. This notion makes Marxist alienation into fulfillment. In effect, it reverses the dialectic of materialism into a totalizing dialect of spiritualism. It diminishes the negative effects of alienation into non-existence, unconscious sublimation which favors the ‘truth’ of the desire for completion over the concrete struggle for existence. The collective and constant reaffirmation of fantastic aspirations replace the Marxist dialectic of aspiration and alienation. Perhaps, this could be thought in terms of Marx’s critique of Hegelian Idealism but with the ‘higher order’ production of non-falsifiable and totalizing ideals and desires for capital utopia replacing the Hegelian Idea (Begriff) and inverting the Marxist analysis of alienation into a collective virtue.

“True heteronomy begins when obedience ceases to be obedient consciousness and becomes an inclination. The supreme violence is in that supreme gentleness. To have a servile soul is to be incapable of being jarred, incapable of being ordered. The love for the master fills the soul to such an extent that the soul no longer takes its distances. Fear fills the soul to such an extent that one no longer sees it, but sees from its perspective.”
Levinas, E. (2012-12-06). Collected Philosophical Papers (Phaenomenologica) (Kindle Locations 1066-1069). Springer Netherlands. Kindle Edition.

7 What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

“Personhood” Amendment in Colorado

If you oppose the latest attempt by a radical minority in Colorado to continually usurp the will of the voters, please send your elected representative an email and let them know. You can use any or all of the letter I wrote to my state representative and senator below…

 

I am writing to ask that you oppose Senate Bill 15-268, A BILL FOR AN ACT CONCERNING OFFENSES AGAINST AN UNBORN CHILD. This bill is a yet another blatant attempt by the anti-abortion folks to force their dogma into government policy. The bill contains the following description:

THE TERM “PERSON” INCLUDES AN UNBORN CHILD AT EVERY STAGE OF GESTATION FROM CONCEPTION UNTIL LIVE BIRTH.

This bill and others like it should be struck down by good legislative stewardship for the following reasons:

The voters in Colorado have voted against these “personhood” bills for some time. This is the will of the people.

During weeks 1 and 2 of gestation a woman “is not yet pregnant”. Also, week 5 is when the heart and brain begin to develop in a fetus. The science tells us that certainly without a brain we cannot call the fetus human or a person. See Fetal Development

The Supreme Court has continually reaffirmed that a fetus is not a person if it cannot survive outside the womb. Any law which goes against the solid, historical jurisprudent precedence will ultimately cost the Coloradan taxpayer needlessly for legal expenses.

Any aggravated assault of a pregnant woman already caries criminal penalties which include life in prison. This law is not necessary and a blatant attempt to erode the will of the people.

Since the beginning of the gallop pole in 1975, only 20% of our citizens believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and 80% believe that abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances even though some of the latter folks call themselves “pro-life”. See Gallop Pole

I believe all these facts indicate that responsible, legislative representation should resist any and all attempts of a radical minority to legislate what is ultimately their religious beliefs.

Best Regards,