Causa Belli: Why We Fight

Buchanan should like this

2005-02-16T16:45:00.001-07:00

From the AP:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Wednesday it would seek to reinstate an indictment against a California pornography company that was charged with violating federal obscenity laws. It was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' first public decision on a legal matter.

...

"The Department of Justice (news - web sites) remains strongly committed to the investigation and prosecution of adult obscenity cases," said Gonzales, who pledged during his confirmation hearing to pursue obscenity cases.

Buchanan should like this

2005-02-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

From the AP:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Wednesday it would seek to reinstate an indictment against a California pornography company that was charged with violating federal obscenity laws. It was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' first public decision on a legal matter.

"The Department of Justice (news - web sites) remains strongly committed to the investigation and prosecution of adult obscenity cases," said Gonzales, who pledged during his confirmation hearing to pursue obscenity cases.

Buchanan is not al-Zawahiri

2005-02-15T07:35:00.000-07:00

Dan over at Winds of Change cites me in his latest piece, "The Al-Qaeda Rebuttal to Bush's State of the Union." Writing on al-Zawahiri's statement on "Western" freedom, he writes:

Unfortunately, I don't think he goes far enough in explaining what exactly it is that al-Zawahiri is rejecting here. While he enumerates the traditional litany of American atrocities against the rest of the world (the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, a reference to the US rendition policy, supporting Arab dictators like Hosni Mubarak, supporting Israel in its alleged goal of destroying the al-Aqsa Mosque, human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib), the earlier part of his statement could also be read alongside Pat Buchanan's most recent column...

I guess it could, since a lot of the grievances are similar, especially dealing with secularization and moral decadence. But let's look at the al-Zawahiri passage that Dan quotes immediately preceding Buchanan:

"The freedom that we want is not the freedom of interest-bearing banks and vast corporations and misleading mass media; not the freedom of the destruction of others for the sake of materialistic interests; and not the freedom of AIDS and an industry of obscenities and homosexual marriages; and not the freedom to use women as a commodity to gain clients, win deals, or attract tourists; not the freedom of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and not the freedom of trading in the apparatus of torture and supporting the regimes of oppression and Copts and suppression, the friends of America; and not the freedom of Israel, with their annihilation of the Muslims and destruction of the Aqsa mosque; and not the freedom of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib."

I think that the bolded passage is the only part where Buchanan can be said to agree with al-Zawahiri. Then again, most Americans, I dare say, do not approve of pornography and, according to polls (and judging by 13 state referenda), it seems that a great deal, if not a majority, of Americans dissaprove of same-sex marriage. The important difference is that no one is using violence to end pornography and stop same-sex marriage in America. And, of course, that the majority of Americans don't agree with the rest of al-Zawahiri's statement.

Also, there is the very important fact that Pat Buchanan remains a Roman Catholic--his depressing pessimism notwithstanding. I don't think al-Zawahiri would approve of that. As far as he's concerned, Buchanan is just a Roman Copt.

Again: the defeatism and the fatalism is what gets me. None of this is constructive. Why not read something like The Universal Hunger for Liberty or The Case for Democracy? At least those books give one hope.

The Pope on Church and State

2005-02-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

From Zenit, the Pope on the secularity of the state:

Quoting the Second Vatican Council's pastoral constitution "Gaudium et Spes," the Pope recalled that "the Church does not have the vocation to manage temporal realities, as, in virtue of its task and competence, it is in no way confused with the political community and is not linked to any political system."

"But, at the same time, it is necessary that all work for the general interest and the common good," the Holy Father wrote.

That should put a lot of fears to rest.

(Re: those "fears," see the "Death of the Enlightenment" Roundups, Part I, Part II, Part III.)

More on Buchanan's thinking

2005-02-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

I've blogged about it before.

What makes the West worth Saving?

2005-02-14T09:59:00.000-07:00

Pat Buchanan's latest column starts off as an interesting and reasonable discussion on what exactly Americans mean by "freedom". Freedom as license, or freedom as being able to live well according to virtue and truth? But the piece ends with two disturbing paragraphs:

In "Witness," Whittaker Chambers writes of how, in a hospital, as he spoke with a priest friend about whether the West might be saved, he was brought up short by the priest's question: "What make you think the West is worth saving?"

As the West advances from aborting its unborn to assisting the suicide of its sick, from euthanasia of its elderly to mercy-killing its disabled young in Europe, from its Christian roots to its post-Christian decadence, decline and death from a lack of births, the priest's question is being asked--and not only in the madrassas of the East.

Where else is it being asked? Well, among radical groups everywhere, I suppose, in different ways. There was the late Susan Sontag who called the white race--which is not exactly the same thing as "the West"--a "cancer" on the rest of the humanity. There are many radical environmentalist groups who consider the human race as a blight on mother Gaia. On the other side of the spectrum there are Savonarolas everywhere. I for one am sick of hearing all of these prophets of doom. One side warns of 1984, the other of a Brave New World. Being a prophet of doom is too easy. It assumes that no solutions are viable, and so it relieves the prophet of looking for a solution and allows him to spend all his time writing poetic condemnations.

It's not that Buchanan and other prophets of doom don't make some good arguments; they do. There is lots to criticize and worry about in America and Europe. But what bothers me is the fatalistic and defeatist attitudes that accompany those critiques.

This site is called "Why We Fight" for a reason. There are things that are worth fighting for--in the West, more specifically. To counter Mr Buchanan's apocalyptic remarks I invite all readers reading this to help me compile a list of things that answers that priest's question--What makes the West worth saving?

-------------

On a related note...

--Victor Davis Hanson recently rebuked a few of the doomsday prophets in this article.

--He was reacting to this piece in the The Sunday Times.

Apologies requested

2005-02-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

From a friend:

AngelusErrares: Unfortunately
AngelusErrares: I have no idea why I fight since 1/3/05
AngelusErrares: My causa belli is gone

I am very sorry for going AWOL for a month. I apologize to all my three--it's three, right?--readers for betraying their expectations. However, the truth is that right now I am busy with three writing projects, 18 credit hours, 3 different language courses, and applications for internships this summer. So I will have to leave it to greater minds to discuss the philosphical issues of the war. (Tip: read Christopher Blosser's long post on the Iraqi elections in www.ratzingerfanclub.com/justwar)

'Til then, blogging, as they say, will be "light."

If it was only that simple...

2005-01-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

From the Economist:

In any event, the terms of western academia's truce between the secular and religious are different from anything in the Muslim world. Nobody in a western university would argue for the truth of a statement on the sole ground that the Bible, or church tradition, asserted it. That may be good; but the resulting climate leaves no middle ground between naive fundamentalism and a secularism that refuses to engage with religious experience.

To which a secularist may ask, so what? Is there any reason why people who believe in none of the Abrahamic religions should follow their debates on how to read holy writ? In fact, there is. Take one example from Islam: Mr Luxenberg argues that the rewards the Koran promises to martyrs for their faith when they get to heaven is not "virgins" (72 of them) but a word that means "grapes" or "white fruit." In a world where suicide-bombers are urged on by delectable prizes, that is a translation that matters.

Perhaps if it was made clear to Osama Bin Laden that it's "grapes" and not "virgins," then he would order everyone of his men to beat their swords into ploughshares, and everything would be just swell.

I wouldn't count on it, though.

Can one fight "terrorism"?

2005-01-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

As part of their fiftieth anniversary festivities, NRO has been posting various articles from yesteryear. One of them, an angry and beautiful piece written during the infancy of the Cold War about the revolt at Poznan, caught my attention:

And as they rolled over Polish bodies the Communist tanks flattened also the soft rhetoric of our George Kennans and Stewart Alsops, our experts and smug journalists, who have been telling us how the Soviet regime has come to be accepted by its subjects, how (in Kennan's servile words) "there is a finality, for better or worse [sic], about what has occurred in Eastern Europe." The people of Poznan, clasping hands as they faced the tanks demanding food and decent working conditions and an end to Moscow's rule, and the soldiers who joined them instead of firing on them: these in one day communicated more of the truth about the Soviet Empire than a decade's dispatches by correspondents and diplomats.

The embryo revolt in Poznan was not isolated, but the latest act in a series that extends over the past four years: the slave labor revolts beginning in 1952, before Stalin's death, in the Vorkuta complex; the East German uprising; the large-scale recent fighting in Eastern Tibet; the riots in Tiflis. Every such demonstration proves, contrary to the skeptics, that a policy of liberation is closer to Soviet realities than any policy of containment or coexistence.

Two thoughts:

1.) It's not too hard to draw parallels between the people of Poznan and the students in Iran, or the various factions resisting Saddam's regime. When encountering Communist regimes and autocratic Middle Eastern states that sponsor terrorism, the choices are similar: containment or engagement. What's different is that the internal politics in the Middle Eastern states are a lot more fragmented than in they were in Eastern Europe.

2.) Can the West fight terrorism the same way the West once fought Communism? The counterargument today is that terrorism is a "tactic", and that one cannot eradicate a tactic, however illegitimate its use. I think that a similar argument could have been made during the Cold War, that Communism is an idea, or an ideology, and one cannot eradicate an idea, lest one promote a totalitarian state that will burn all the books. Today, however, there is no one that claims that Communism in its pure, orthodox form, is soundly defeated, despite the fact that Cuba, North Korea, and China remain, at least nominally, Communist. The great power--the U.S.S.R.--that sustained Communism is no more. Could the War on Terror reach a similar stage, where terrorism as a tactic is only used rarely, and where only one or two small states--with no WMD capabilities--flirt with providing hospitality to terrorist groups?

This is what Bush has said:

"We meet today at a time of war for our country. A war we did not start, yet one that we will win," the president told members of the American Legion at their annual convention.

"In this different kind of war, we may never sit down at a peace table, but make no mistake about it, we are winning and we will win.

"We will win by staying on the offensive. We will win by spreading liberty," Bush said.

That's all pretty vague, and I don't expect a very philosophical--or dare I say, "nuanced"--answer in the middel of a political campaign. But if the idea of victory means that terrorism, as a tactic of war, will never be used again, then I say the war will never be won. In that sense, fighting "terror" would be like fighting burglary--you can fight burglars, but you will never end burglarly as an activity. I think the more reasonable thing to say is this: the War on Terror is a fight against an ideology, radical political Islam, which is just as totalitarian as Communism, which depends on the sponsorship of sympathetic regimes in the Middle East, and whose modus operandi is terrorism. There will be a lot less terrorism once state sponsorship has been sundered, and once all those terrorist groups have been dismantled and suppressed. Even then, you'd still have to deal with smaller, non-Islamic groups, like the IRA, which have not declared jihad against the West.

Tsunami Help

2004-12-31T15:34:00.000-07:00

Happy New Year's to everybody, and please let's remember those whose New Year is off to a bad start:

Tsunami Help

American Red Cross

More contacts compiled here. (Thanks to Oxblog.)

But, what is truth?

2004-12-26T20:15:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Raban seems to know. At least, the truth about terrorism. For that is the title of his piece in the latest edition of the New York Review of Books.

If you live, as I do, in an American city designated as a likely target by the Department of Homeland Security, the sheer proliferation of security apparatus in the streets assures you that there is a war on. Yet the nature and conduct of that war, and the character—and very existence—of our enemy, remain infuriatingly obscure: not because there's any shortage of information, or apparent information, but because so much of it has turned out to be creative guesswork or empty propaganda.

He gets pretty critical of Podhoretz, too, and about his dismissal of US policy towards Israel as one of the "reasons why 'They' hate us."

"Death of the Enlightenment" Roundup, Part III

2004-12-25T18:21:00.000-07:00

(Hyperlinks to the first two parts of this series: Part I and Part II.)

Not only do we have a famed promoter of the Enlightenment defending the Catholic Church (Jurgen Habermas from Germany), and a Catholic historian decrying the supposed death of the Enlightenment in America (Garry Wills), but now we have Jacques Derrida, notorious deconstructor of the Western philosophical tradition, a Gorgias to your Plato, calling himself a defender of the Enlightenment!

In a largely laudatory piece that deals primarily with two things, the greatness of Le Monde and the greatness of Europe (and which had to have been one of the last things he ever wrote before he passed away), Derrida says,

Caught between US hegemony and the rising power of China and Arab/Muslim theocracy, Europe has a unique responsibility. I am hardly thought of as a Eurocentric intellectual; these past 40 years, I have more often been accused of the opposite. But I do believe, without the slightest sense of European nationalism or much confidence in the European Union as we currently know it, that we must fight for what the word Europe means today. This includes our Enlightenment heritage, and also an awareness and regretful acceptance of the totalitarian, genocidal and colonialist crimes of the past. Europe’s heritage is irreplaceable and vital for the future of the world. We must fight to hold on to it. We should not allow Europe to be reduced to the status of a common market, or a common currency, or a neo-nationalist conglomerate, or a military power. Though, on that last point, I am tempted to agree with those who argue that the EU needs a common defence force and foreign policy. Such a force could help to support a transformed UN, based in Europe and given the means to enact its own resolutions without having to negotiate with vested interests, or with unilateralist opportunism from that technological, economic and military bully, the United States of America.

The "Enlightenment heritage" of Europe is the one hope in a world caught between China, Islamic Theocracy, and the "US Hegemony." To me this sounds a lot like the third-way movements during the Cold War, some of which proposed a sort of moral equivalency between the USSR and the USA, a belief which time has thoroughly discredited (Thomas Merton, for example, called both powers "Gog and Magog," while admitting that the United States--"Magog"--was slightly superior). I doubt that Derrida would argue that the Mullahs and Al Qaeda are morally equivalent to George Bush and his Cabinet, but nothing here helps you determine anything. The US, if anything, apparently does not share in the great "Enlightenment tradition" that Derrida speaks about. This if course is not true--perhaps the US was not influenced by the more revolutionary and anti-clerical French brand of the Enlightenment, but it certainly was influenced by the British Enlightenment. In her recent book on the history of the Enlightenment, Gertrude Himmelfarb even goes so far in her latest book to claim that the US produced its own brand--"the American Enlightenment." But I don't want to say too much about a book I haven't read.

Derrida goes on:

This Europe, as a proud descendant of the Enlightenment past and a harbinger of the new Enlightenment to come, would show the world what it means to base politics on something more sophisticated than simplistic binary oppositions. In this Europe it would be possible to criticise Israeli policy, especially that pursued by Ariel Sharon and backed by George Bush, without being accused of anti-semitism. In this Europe, supporting the Palestinians in their legitimate struggle for rights, land and a state would not mean supporting suicide bombing or agreeing with the anti-semitic propaganda that is rehabilitating (with sad success) the outrageous lie that is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In this Europe it would be usual to worry both about rising anti-semitism and rising Islamophobia. Sharon and his policies are not directly responsible for the rise of anti-semitism in Europe. But we must defend our right to believe that he does have something to do with it, and that he has used it as an excuse to call European Jews to Israel.

Apart from the reference to "Muslim theocracy," Derrida does not give much attention to the threat of fundamentalist terrorism. It makes you wonder how much he perceives organizations like Al Qaeda as threatening to the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.

Derrida is painting quite a Utopian picture of the Europe of the "Enlightenment to come." There will come a time, he says, when a new world will be born:

That is my dream. I am grateful to all those who help me to dream it; not only to dream, as Ramonet says, that another world is possible, but to muster the strength to do all that is needed to make it possible. This dream is shared by billions of men and women all over the world. Some day, though the work may be long and painful, a new world will be born.

Well, it's nice at least to know that an old man like Derrida could still maintain a youthful optimism about the world, even though his vision for the future is patchy at best. But using the term "Enlightenment" so loosely does a disservice to those trying to answer the question: What is the Enlightenment?

A Hopeful Note for Christmas Eve

2004-12-23T18:47:00.000-07:00

In light of all the recent bad news, at a time when the war in Iraq is undergoing one of its darkest chapters, an essay by George Orwell--one of his last--can inspire hope.

When an article by George Orwell titled "Toward European Unity" appeared in the Partisan Review in the summer of 1947, the human race appeared to be running out of international political options. Two years earlier, the United States had inaugurated the nuclear era with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A year after that, in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill, that courageous leader of Britain and the Allies, warned that an Iron Curtain had descended and divided Europe. Ultimate international power was spliced into two opposing poles. "I would give the odds against the survival of civilization within the next few hundred years," Orwell wrote. The only hope for humanity, he argued, was the foundation of a United Socialist States of Europe.

If that didn't happen--and he didn't really think it would--Orwell saw three possibilities for the immediate future. The first involved the United States using the atomic bomb before the Soviets got their own, and starting a preventive war that would lead to many more years of destruction (this seemed to him the least likely outcome of the three. Interestingly, he claimed that "a preventive war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy"). The second possibility saw the Cold War continuing until the Soviets did get the bomb. After a nuclear exchange between the major powers, civilization would have to start anew with a population of a few million. The third possibility, which later provided the setting for Orwell's novel, 1984 (1948), involved a cold war between two or three super-states, each unable to conquer the other without risking an atomic apocalypse. This, he wrote, would be the worst outcome of all, because the structure of these super-states would be "hierarchic, with a semi-divine caste at the top and outright slavery at the bottom, and the crushing out of liberty would exceed anything that the world has yet seen."

These were the dangers he foresaw. "The only way of avoiding them...is to present somewhere or other, on a large scale, the spectacle of a community where people are relatively free and happy and where the main motive in life is not the pursuit of money or power. In other words, democratic Socialism must be made to work throughout some large area." To him, the place was Western Europe.

Orwell frankly admitted that it was unlikely that Europe would unite. In his essay, he starts making concessions before he puts forth his idea. He outlines four main obstacles to a united and socialist Europe: Soviet hostility to unity, American hostility, European nation's dependence on its foreign colonies, and the Roman Catholic Church.

Overall, Orwell's tone and outlook is pessimistic. But in the last paragraph of the essay, almost as an afterthough, he sees a chink of light:

Or again, it is even possible that if the world falls apart into three unconquerable super-states, the liberal tradition will be strong enough within the Anglo-American section of the world to make life tolerable and even offer some hope of progress. But all this is speculation. The actual outlook, so far as I can calculate the probabilities, is very dark, and any serious thought should start out from that fact.

And that's exactly what happened. The Anglo-American section of the world--along with the help of numerous allies--defeated the Soviet Bloc. Freedom prevailed.

The outlook for Orwell was much bleaker than it is for us. There is no reason to lose hope now.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa.

Non-Syncretistic Pluralism

2004-12-23T17:50:00.000-07:00

This is America!

Religion has recaptured the public square in Bartow, Florida:

BARTOW, Florida (AP) -- When a Florida church group put a Nativity scene on public property, officials warned it might open the door to other religious -- and not-so-religious -- displays. They were right.

Since the Nativity was erected in Polk County, displays have gone up honoring Zoroastrianism and the fake holiday Festivus, featured on the TV sitcom "Seinfeld."

The Church group that erected the Nativity set--which I am quite sure professes a belief in the Virgin Birth--is not objecting to anything:

"The real spirit of Christmas is the birth of Christ," said Marvin Pittman, a retired law enforcement officer and member of the congregation. "We felt it needs to be in the public eye, so we did it."

Other displays are fine, too, he said, adding, "If somebody wants to do that, it's their right."

How about that for American religious tolerance? This is a long tradition that stretches back to George Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport in 1790. The ACLU, however, would have nothing of it:

Richard Blank, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, objected to the Nativity scene's presence on public property, arguing it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

"The Nativity scene is totally celebratory of the birth of Christ," he said. "Not everyone subscribes to that, and those who do should put it on their own property."

I'm not with the ACLU on this one. The city of Bastow has not taken steps to set up an official "Municipal Religion," and this spirit of religious pluralism--non-syncretistic, mutually respectful, peaceful--is something you don't find in most places in the world. Where else can you have sucha situation as this, and not end up in violence? Certainly not in Iraq, where the tension between different Muslim sects is threatening to stall the elections. In the United States, not only have Protestants and Catholics come together, but even Zoroastrians and Seinfeld fans can have a piece of the public pie.

There are still those that say that this type of pluralistic set up is conducive to unrest and violence (Cf. the scarf ban in France) or that it leads to epistemological and moral relativism (Cf. some religious thinkers). Call me idealistic, but I'm for it.

When War Must Be the Answer

2004-12-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

James V. Schall of Georgetown University writes a compelling essay on the War on Terror in Policy Review:

A calm and reasonable case can and should be made for the possession and effective use of force in today's world. It is irresponsible not to plan for the necessity of force in the face of real turmoils and enemies actually present in the world. No talk of peace, justice, truth, or virtue is complete without a clear understanding that certain individuals, movements, and nations must be met with measured force, however much we might prefer to deal with them peacefully or pleasantly. Without force, many will not talk seriously at all, and some not even then. Human, moral, and economic problems are greater today for the lack of adequate military force or, more often, for the failure to use it when necessary.

This view goes against a certain rhetorical grain, but it is a fact that needs attention and comprehension. We are not in some new world-historic age in which we can bypass these "outmoded" instruments of power, however rhetorically fine it may be to talk that way. Human nature has not changed, neither for better nor for worse. Human institutions, whether national or international, have not so improved that they themselves cannot be threats to the human good. Who watches the watchdogs remains a fundamental, if not the fundamental, question of the human condition. It is an issue with philosophical, theological, and political dimensions.

Schall critiques Utopian projects in the following paragraph, but also, implicitly, warns against waging war for Utopian ends (e.g., the Wilsonian "war to end all wars"):

Still, we are not free not to think about this consequence that failure to act can make things worse. Nor can we deny that there is a comparative difference between "bad" things and "terrible" things. We can be as immoral and as inhuman by not acting as by acting. The history of lost wars is as important as the history of victorious ones, perhaps more so. The idea of an absolutely warless world, a world "already made safe for democracy," is more likely, in practice, to be a sign either of utopianism or of madness, and a world in which war is "outlawed" is more likely to mean either that we are no longer in the real world or that the devils and the tyrants--who allow us only to agree with them and do as they say--have finally won. We are naïve if we think that formal democratic procedures, lacking any reference to the content of laws, cannot have deleterious effects. A democratic tyranny is quite conceivable, many think likely, and on a global scale. Globalization is not neutral. Not a few of the worst tyrants of history have been very popular and have died peacefully in bed in their old age amidst family and friends.

And here is something that is relevant to this post:

There is considerable talk both in the West and in certain sections of the Muslim world about making Islam over into politically acceptable forms without altering any of what are considered its basic beliefs. This radical reconstruction of Islam, which identifies the current military attacks as coming from a minority "terrorist" movement and not from Islam in any genuine form, is said to be the main "neoconservative" project.

One can, I think, defend this program on prudential grounds. No one, including the churches, is willing to examine in a serious way the truth claims of Islam, not only its own understanding of Allah and of Judaism and Christianity, but also its practiced way of life and the direct relation of its religion and its politics. Until this latter effort is undertaken in a much more serious way, the prudential approach can be justified as a holding operation. But what is ultimately behind the effort to provide models and forms of "democratic" and "free" political systems is the effort to undermine those teachings and customs of Islam that cause the problem, the first of which is the claim of the truth of Islamic revelation and its understanding of the absolute will of God as arbitrary. In this sense, MacArthur was right. Political problems often have theological import at their basis.

Taxi Driver Shoots Man in Bin Laden Mask

2004-12-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

From the AP:

"For me and I think for anybody else at a time like that one thinks the worst and so I fired my gun," Sandoval told Channel 7 television.

Police declined to detain Sandoval, saying he had believed he was acting in self-defense.

This guy didn't take much time to mull over the pacifist arguments...

Swiss Protestant Imams?

2004-12-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

This is an odd situation:

But Ueli Maurer, president of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, says that there is "no place" for Islamic courses in a Christian country like Switzerland.

The plan to educate Imams was put forward by the Swiss Bishops' Conference and the Swiss Protestant Church Federation.

Agnell Rickmann, secretary-general of the Bishops' Conference, said he was "convinced" it would make sense to create structures for a course for prayer leaders, in an interview with the 'NZZ am Sonntag' newspaper.

I can understand why the Swiss are wary of importing radical Imams, but why does the Swiss Protestant Church have to be the body that deals with this issue? Makes one glad to live in a country where Church and State are kept seperate.

However, Maurer from the Swiss People’s Party is fundamentally opposed to the idea.

"Switzerland is a Christian country," he said without compromise, arguing there was "no place" in it for Islamic courses at state universities.

Maurer added that he did not believe that Imams educated in Switzerland would be any less radical than their colleagues from abroad.

"A certain fanaticism is simply part of this religion. Studying in Switzerland will not change that," he added.

Whether or not fanaticism will become intrinsic to Islam is up to Muslims to decide. Reform and renewal can only come from them. In the meantime, the Swiss Protestant Church will try to do what it can. But that solution appears to be makeshift and tenuous at best.

I'm back!

2004-12-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

The monkeys are off my back, and the books are scattered all over the floor.

Radical Islam and Utopianism

2004-12-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting piece from the Foreign Policy Research Institute which, among other things, points out what could be called a utopian element in the thought of some of these radical Islamic groups:

The Khartoum period is critical, because what these violent Salafists basically want to do is to create a Salafi state in a core Arab country. Salafi (from Salaf, “ancient ones” or “predecessors” in Arabic) is an emulation, an imitation of the mythical Muslim community that existed at the time of Mohammed and his companion, which Salafists believe was the only fair and just society that ever existed. A very small subset of Salafis, the disciples of Qutb, believe they cannot create this state peacefully through the ballot-box but have to use violence. The utopia they strive for is similar to most utopias in European thought of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, such as the communist classless society.

There is a lot that can be said about all that. Thanks for the link, Fred.

I would write more, but, alas, as I wrote in my previous post, I am still swamped with end-of-semester work. I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, though.

Gary Wills' Worst Fears Are a Reality

2004-12-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

Gary Wills warned us about this. From MSNBC/Newsweek, "A Christmas Miracle": "Most Americans believe the virgin birth is literally true, a NEWSWEEK poll finds."

Wait--what is the "Christmas miracle"? The Incarnation, or the fact that in 2004 people still believe in the Incarnation?

Context, context, context.

I am way too tied up this week with work to blog. More on the other side of next Sunday, where freedom awaits.

The Primacy of the Cultural

2004-12-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

My friend Clark has given me some much-appreciated feedback on my blog. He wrote:

I think your blog is losing focus. It seems like it's about religion and the difference between America and Europe... But all of this seems tangential. It just seems like you could write about anything... It's kinda like, "What is society and is it worth defending?" Though it is an interesting read.

This was my first reaction: the West has to resolve its identity crisis before it can really find something to fight for. By an identity crisis I mean cultural identity crisis. Under this falls the issue of the "Christian identity of Europe," that has swallowed up Rocco Buttiglione, among others; issues in bioethics, in the US and abroad; also, the model of secularism that the West wants--French-style laicism or American-style secularism? The issue of identity is of the utmost importance.

But there is also a culture war within Islam. People like Irshad Manji are struggling in an effort to retrieve the religion from the hands of fundamentalist extremists who give it a bad name. Their success against the extremists is just as instrumental to defeating terrorism as any effort the West can make.

At the core of the War on Terror are cultural questions, on both sides. That's what I try to cover in this blog. This may mean lots of articles on Europe, bioethics, and pop culture, but those are the battlegrounds.

The Show Must Go On

2004-12-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

The show (i.e., the elections in Iraq) must go on as scheduled, say William Safire and Charles Krauthammer. Safire has an interesting angle: he says that the Iraq elections will complete the cycle of four elections that all signal popular commitment to the War on Terror:

So far, voters who support implanting freedom in the Middle East have won three in a row, electing President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, the American ally John Howard in Australia, and George Bush here.

Now pessimists are trying desperately to call off the fourth election - the one scheduled for late January in Iraq to elect a 275-member national assembly that will write a constitution - lest they lose that vote, too.

The election might become a mess--for pollsters, vote counters, and prognosticators--but the vote must go on:

It's simplistic to prognosticate the coming election as 60 percent Shiite, 15 percent Sunni, 20 percent Kurd, 5 percent other. Only half the Shiites and Sunnis are fervent Islamists, while most of the Kurds are secular Sunnis. The result is an Oliver Hardy demographic: "a fine mess," susceptible to democratic surprises by charismatic local candidates.

The most important element in the two months leading up to this fourth election is a sense of inexorability. The U.N. may run, the Pachachi reactionaries may drag a foot, the terrorists may intimidate - but the vote must go on. Democracy delayed is democracy denied.

Quite a bold statement, that. Charles Krauthammer is equally bold:

There has been much talk that if the Iraqi election is held and some Sunni Arab provinces (perhaps three of the 18) do not participate, the election will be illegitimate. Nonsense. The election should be held. It should be open to everyone. If Iraq's Sunni Arabs -- barely 20 percent of the population -- decide they cannot abide giving up their 80 years of minority rule, ending with 30 years of Saddam Hussein's atrocious tyranny, then tough luck. They forfeit their chance to shape and participate in the new Iraq.

He makes an equally bold comparison between this election-to-be and two elections-that-were, over here, in 1864 and 1868:

In 1864, 11 of the 36 states did not participate in the presidential election. Was Lincoln's election therefore illegitimate?

In 1868, three years after the security situation had, shall we say, stabilized, three states (not insignificant ones: Texas, Virginia and Mississippi) did not participate in the election. Was Grant's election illegitimate?

The groups asking to postpone the Iraqi election have their own political motives--though they are not necessarily against the project of democracy per se, and their goal is not to leave Iraq, as was the case with those 11 states in 1864. But if 20 percent of the Iraqi population does not vote, will the vote be illegitimate? Well, what percentage of the American public votes--or did vote, before the unusually high turnout we had this year?

Then again, if the 20 percent are conducting an earnest boycott, they could argue that because of their boycott, the elections are illegitimate.

Funny how this works. My not-voting is worth something only if I don't vote on purpose. And if I get a lot of people to not do it with me.

Fareed Zakaria's ideas on what we should do about Iran...

2004-12-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

...are very different from Michael Ledeen's. A few days ago I posted Michael Ledeen's article on Iran that came out in NRO. Ledeen ended his piece by saying that a non-military solution to the Iran situation is possible, if we help fund the reformers and help to bring about democratic regime change from within. Zakaria doesn't appear to acknowledge this opinion; he argues that the "Washington hawks" who favor regime change from within, favor regime change from within accompanied by airstrikes. But this will no work, he says:

The strategy behind strikes, for many Washington hawks, is not disarmament but regime change. They hope that by turning up the heat we will topple the current regime, which they believe is teetering on the edge. But this seems highly unlikely. Iranians are clearly unhappy with the corrupt and dictatorial regime they live under. They are also, however, wary of revolutions, having suffered through one for the last 25 years. Iranian protesters and reformers have hoped for greater mass action than they have gotten. The regime for its part has found a way to use Iran's vast oil revenues to create a large patronage network and to bribe the Army and secret police. One day this evil regime will pass from the scene. But long before that, Iran will go nuclear. A long-term vision will not solve a short-term danger.

This is what Ledeen had said:

We have a real chance to remove the terror regime in Tehran without any military action, but rather through political means, by supporting the Iranian democratic opposition. According to the regime itself, upwards of 70 percent of Iranians oppose the regime, want freedom, and look to us for political support. I believe they, like the Yugoslavs who opposed Milosevic and like the Ukrainians now demonstrating for freedom, are entitled to the support of the free world.

I don't know which of these two knows more about the inner workings and present state of the Iranian resistance. Ledeen certainly sounds a lot more hopeful about the whole thing, and, in any case, his approach is worth trying once at least before engaging in risky strikes. Ledeen still believes that a nuclear Iran is not inevitable. Zakaria isn't as positive, though he offers a possible solution:

So far Tehran has not really borne much of a cost for its behavior. American sanctions have been toothless because the rest of the world eagerly trades with Iran. As the Iranians often point out, it is not they who are isolated but the Americans. Europe has now joined hands with the United States and is offering Iran a choice—nuclear weapons or normal trade, but not both.

It might well work. As Iran scholar Ray Takeyh points out in the journal Survival, there is a vigorous, ongoing debate in Iran over the advantages of having a nuclear capacity. Many within the regime argue that if operating nuclear facilities means isolation from the world economy, that would be too costly and ultimately unnecessary. If Europe threatened sanctions as well as offered rewards, it would strengthen the case of those who want a modern Iran more than they want a nuclear Iran.

Zakaria would have a hard time trying to convince Ledeen of this strategy, though, since Ledeen dedicated most of his NRO piece to uncovering the real motive behind the present European diplomatic strategy.

There are three ways, then: direct military action, funding the reformers, or asking Europe to get tough. At least both men agree that the decision must be made pretty soon.

The UN's new plan for world security

2004-11-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

It isn't gonna please Charles Krauthammer, that's for sure. Rather than a "unipolar moment," the UN advisory panel supports an "international system governed by the rule of law."

"What is needed is a comprehensive system of collective security, one that tackles both old and new threats, and addresses the security concerns of all states -- rich and poor, weak and strong," Annan said in an introduction to the report.

The way the US is doing things is not the best way, they seemed to say:

In setting out a blueprint for collective security decisions, the report also takes implicit aim at the United States over the Iraqi war, which was strongly opposed by Annan and many Security Council member states.
"There is little evident international acceptance of the idea of security being best preserved by a balance of power or by any single -- even benignly motivated -- superpower," the panel said.

"The yearning for an international system governed by the rule of law has grown," it said. "No state, no matter how powerful, can by its own efforts alone make itself invulnerable to today's threats."

The panel's report identified the main threats to international security:

Annan has repeatedly maintained that many people around the globe are concerned about disease and poverty rather than terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and much of the report underlines his core argument.

The report identifies a wide variety of threats to international security today, citing organised crime, poverty and failed states along with war, terrorism and WMD.

It should be interesting to read the reactions to this report.

Five bloggers are in jail

2004-11-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

...in Iran. Reporters Without Borders has the story. I hope that western diplomats bring this up next time they meet with the Mullahs.

Andrew Sullivan on Pat Buchanan on Islam and Europe

2004-11-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan said this about Pat Buchanan's latest column:

I've been waiting for the social right in this country to start sympathizing with Islamic theocracy. ... And you can see the glimmers of it in Buchanan's piece - his preference for intolerant faiths, his disgust at secular Europe, his contempt for many of the things (feminism, gay rights, cultural pluralism) that the Islamists also hate. In the piece, he also calls Theo van Gogh the "Michael Moore" of Holland. But there is a difference between Moore's anti-Western lies and van Gogh's pro-Western truths.

But let's see what Buchanan actually wrote:

In August, van Gogh, known as the Michael Moore of Holland, aired on Dutch television a 10-minute English-language film titled, "Submission." The movie, writes the BBC, "caused an uproar."

Apparently, someone told Buchanan that van Gogh was known as the "Michael Moore of Holland." But it doesn't seem like he is making this up himself. Seeing how Buchanan chose to quote a quite graphic description of van Gogh's murder, I wouldn't venture to say that he is actually sympathizing with the murderers--or if he is, then that's really scary. Buchanan cites an account written by Ronald Rovers of Slate, though I myself couldn't find it in the Slate's website. Here it is as Buchanan quoted it:

On the morning of Nov. 2 in a busy street in east Amsterdam, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri pulled out a gun and shot ... Theo van Gogh, who was riding a bike to his office. Van Gogh hit the ground and stumbled across the street to a nearby building. He didn't make it. As the Moroccan strode toward him, van Gogh shouted: "We can still talk about it! Don't do it! Don't do it."

But the Moroccan didn't stop. He shot him again, slit Van Gogh's throat and stuck a letter to his chest with a knife. He was slaughtered like an animal, witnesses said. "Cut like a tire," said one.

Here is the section that Sullivan cited:

To devout Muslims, what Europe offers is godless materialism and hedonism, a life devoid of meaning and purpose, save pleasure and self-indulgence. They prefer to do Allah's bidding in this world to ensure they share his paradise in the next.

Undeniably, Islam is rising. And, like all rising faiths, it is intolerant. Disbelieving that all religions are equal--"There is one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet"--Islam does not believe all faiths should be treated equally. Why should they be? If one has God's revealed truth, why should one tolerate lies that lead to the damnation of the faithful?

In its new constitution, the European Union has declared Christianity a dead relic. What Islam is saying--with its militancy, its soaring birth rate, it steady replacement of dying Europeans with young Muslim immigrants--is: "Christianity may be your past, but we are your future."

My money's on the true believers.

It doesn't seem to me that Buchanan is siding with the Islamic radicals. If anything, he is saying that we aren't gonna beat them. This is just a piece of defeatism. I don't know why Buchanan doesn't think we can win the War on Terror. But it appears that he doesn't think we will. Very sad, especially for young people. Ye of little faith!

I wonder if Buchanan ever thought like this during the Cold War?

Sorry

2004-11-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

For some reason I forgot to put the link on my post about the Dutch film festival. Here it is. And for some reason this whole blog was erased for a period of time. No idea what's going on. Sorry if you've been trying to read my previous posts. They're great, let me tell ya.

Michael Ledeen on Iran: "Faster, please!"

2004-11-29T17:49:00.000-07:00

Michael Ledeen has a new piece up on NRO (and in The Australian) claiming that the European strategy with Iran amounts to nothing but defeatist appeasement. Moreover, the Iranians cannot be trusted:

No serious person can believe that the negotiations are going to block, or even seriously delay, the Iranian race to acquire atomic bombs. The European posturing is the Western counterpart of the Iranian deception, a ritual dance designed to put a flimsy veil over the nakedness of the real activities. The old-fashioned name for this sort of thing is "appeasement," and was best described by Churchill, referring to Chamberlain's infamous acceptance of Hitler's conditions at Munich. Chamberlain had to choose between war and dishonor, opted for the latter, and got the former as well. That is now the likely fate of Blair, Chirac, and Schroeder.
They surely know this. Why do they accept it?

It is my understanding that Ledeen has worked a long time on Iran and understands the situation there pretty well. And he is not advocating a military solution to the problem. Not necessarily, at least:

We have a real chance to remove the terror regime in Tehran without any military action, but rather through political means, by supporting the Iranian democratic opposition. According to the regime itself, upwards of 70 percent of Iranians oppose the regime, want freedom, and look to us for political support. I believe they, like the Yugoslavs who opposed Milosevic and like the Ukrainians now demonstrating for freedom, are entitled to the support of the free world.

Unlike Iraq, there are already a substantial number of Iranians who want democracy. Creating a democracy in that country, then, should not be as hard as it is in Iraq. But if the U.S. does opt to use military force to disarm Iranian nuclear capabilities, will there be people crying out that force was not used as a last resort, that diplomacy was not squeezed to the very last drop? Would they be right in saying so?

Diplomacy, however, requires an equal exchange of goods or benefits, whereupon both sides get something they want. But what will satisfy the Mullahs' desire for nukes, if not nukes?

Note: Interestingly enough, the phrase "Faster, please!" appears in NRO but not in The Australian.

Theo van Gogh's Revenge...More or Less

2004-11-28T22:21:00.000-07:00

In the Netherlands, top prize at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival went to a film on "Islamic radicalism in Indonesia."

"Death of the Enlightenment" Roundup, Part II

2004-11-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

A friend recently sent to me an article written by Michael Novak called "What Did Jesus Do?" in the print edition of the National Review (funny to speak of a "print edition") which draws a similar conclusion to the one I wrote about in Part I of this series. Novak writes:

The Democratic Left, especially in its non-believing wing, simply does not understand that for believers, reason itself is the Divine Light within each human being, and faith nourishes in us trust in that reason, and also in human experience, down many long centuries of reflection and careful argument. Not many ethical formulations have been "immutable" in the way they have been understood by people trying to be faithful to the Light given them by God. Jews and Christians have, in fact, made great progress in understanding their moral obligations, in many different fields of thought--in religious liberty, for instance.

In fact, it was the "theocratic" Baptists of what is today Jerry Falwell country who insisted on the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the amendment that extended religious liberty to every other conscience--even that of "Mahometans," Jews, atheists, and others.

It's almost as if this article was addressed to Gary Wills himself. What Novak is saying here is that the difference between Islamic fundamentalists and American "Bible Christians" is that, despite the fact that both believe in a literalist interpretation of their sacred text, "Bible Christians" like Falwell, Robertson, and Co. all defend the American tradition of religious tolerance, which, incidentally, owes a great deal to the Enlightenment thinking of Jefferson and Locke. Morevoer, Falwell, Robertson and Co. always claim to defend the Constitution, which insures religious liberty. On top of this we have the fact that, as I have posted before, the idea of religious tolerance in America antedates its Constitution. So I really do not think Wills has anything to worry about. Most Islamic fundamentalists, however, do not have a tradition of religious tolerance to look towards within their own societies--or if they do, these traditions are distorted or erased by propaganda of intolerance and hate.

Interestingly enough, L'Espresso reports that Jurgen Habermas, the German atheist philosopher, defender of the Enlightenment before the postmodern onslaughts of men like Foucault and Derrida, is arguing that the Christian tradition is a necessary ally in the preservation of certain Enlightenment virtues in the West. The remarks were made during a two day dialogue between Habermas and, among other thinkers, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

Between the likes of Ratzinger and Habermas, naturally, the distance remains intact. Habermas defines himself as, and is, "a methodical atheist." But to read his most recent essay translated in Italy, "A Time of Transition," published by Feltrinelli and available in bookstores since mid-November, Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization: "To this day, we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

This was all duly blogged, by the way, by Christopher of Against the Grain. There's more:

In commenting on "You shall have no gods but me," he writes:

"From a philosophical point of view, the first commandment expresses that 'leap forward' on the cognitive level which granted man freedom of reflection, the strength to detach himself from vacillating immediacy, to emancipate himself from his generational shackles and the whims of mythical powers."

And on the contribution of philosophy to the meeting between the Church and other religions, he says:

"In the dialogical dispute among competing religious visions there is a need for that 'culture of recognition' which draws its principles from the secularized world of the universalism of reason and law. In this matter, it is thus the philosophical spirit which provides the concepts instrumental in the political clarification of theology. But the political philosophy capable of making this contribution bears the stamp of the idea of the Covenant no less than that of the Polis. Therefore this philosophy also hearkens back to a biblical heritage."

Does Habermas think that one must first put away such dogmas as the Virgin Birth in order to begin a peaceful dialogue? Doesn't seem like it:

On relations with other civilizations, Habermas maintains that "recognizing our Judaeo-Christian roots more clearly not only does not impair intercultural understanding, it is what makes it possible."

He contests modern "unbridled subjectivity," which is destined to "clash against what is really absolute; that is, against the unconditional right of every creature to be respected in its bodiliness and recognized in its otherness, as 'an image of God'."

So in Europe, where Christianity is said to be in decline, an atheist philosopher, Habermas, defender of the Enlightenment, defends the Christian tradition as a necessary ally in the preservation of Enlightenment values. In America, where everyone is saying that religion is as popular as ever, we have a self-professed Catholic historian, Wills, arguing that Christian orthodoxy (e.g., belief in the Virgin Birth) is antithetical to the legacy of the Enlightenment (see Part I for my comments on Wills' piece). The cultural and ideological divide between Europe and America does not get more stark, or more ironic, than this.

Intricate and Abstruse Books of Philosophy...

2004-11-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

Dan Darling has facilitated for me some links to online editions of the works of Sayyid Qutb, the man Paul Berman has dubbed "the philosopher of terror," in an article cited by Michael Novak in his latest book, The Universal Hunger for Liberty: Why the Clash of Civilizations is Not Inevitable. (I think, in a way, Michael Novak wants to become "the philosopher of charity," but that is for another time.) Qutb's thought is supposed to have influenced Osama Bin Laden and his kin.

Like Milosz said, "intricated and abstruse books of philosophy..."

Czeslaw Milosz

2004-11-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

This quotation from the late Czeslaw Milosz comes from an obituary essay written by Leon Wieseltier in the September 12, 2004 edition of the New York Times Book Review:

"It was only toward the middle of the 20th century that the inhabitants of many European countries came, in general unpleasantly, to the realization that their fate could be influenced directly by intricate and abstruse books of philosophy."

May we never forget this lesson.

Does anyone know what book this comes from?

"Death of the Enlightenment" Roundup, Part I

2004-11-26T22:03:00.000-07:00

In more then one place now I've read about people claiming that Bush's win signals a deathblow--or at least a blow--to the Enlightenment. The most explicit wailing came from Northwestern University's Gary Wills in the November 4 edition of the New York Times. Wills argues that the importance that a majority of the country places on "values" issues signals the death of the Enlightenment tradition in America.

This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.

Thus Wills (a professed Catholic) poses the provocative question: "Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?" Something to ponder. But then Wills goes on to make the argument, already echoed in other places, that the fundamentalist Christian Right in red-state America is getting to look more and more like the Islamic fundamentalists we are fighting abroad:

America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, when a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.

The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies.

Yikes. Europe, however, is much more tolerant:

Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity? Not in France or Britain or Germany or Italy or Spain. We find it in the Muslim world, in Al Qaeda, in Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists. Americans wonder that the rest of the world thinks us so dangerous, so single-minded, so impervious to international appeals. They fear jihad, no matter whose zeal is being expressed.

Similar outcry came from the pages of The Guardian, in a column by Timothy Garton Ash, writing from San Francisco:

I'm getting seriously worried about anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism in America, that is. Here are just a few of the things that I've heard travelling through blue, ie liberal, America over the two weeks since George Bush won the election. "The truth is, they just are stupid." (A New Yorker, of people in the red, ie conservative, states.) "The snakes." "Fascism." "Christian fascism." "I wanted to make a film about a time when young Americans fought against fascism and not for it." (A producer, explaining why he commissioned a film about the Spanish civil war.)

Strong words, indeed. The mission before us: to defend the legacy of the Enlightenment:
When all that has been said, the fact remains that America is now one of the most deeply divided countries among all the liberal democracies of the world. Looking at the unfolding debate on the website I have set up in connection with my book, Free World, I'm struck by the fact that the fiercest, most bitter arguments are not between Europeans and Americans but between Americans and Americans.

Battle may soon be joined to preserve the strict separation of church and state that the founding fathers intended. Or, to put it another way, to defend the legacy of the Enlightenment. No wonder liberal Americans have been feeling so blue. But there is one silver lining to the cloud hanging over them. Overstated though the dichotomy is between red and blue America, it does mean that no one who is at all well informed can believe that America is Bush and Bush is America. If the west is divided, the dividing line runs slap-bang through the middle of America.

So, to sum up: The Bush win signals a deathblow to--or at least, severely threatens--the tradition of the Enlightenment in the West, and Christian fundamentalism in the Red states has the potential to become, or is already, as dangerous as the Islamic fundamentalism that blows up buildings. Both of these men are writing from America.

Of course both men are taking this electoral loss way too far. American-style "Bible Christians" have been around for over a century without a reputation of insidious and intolerant acts like public beheadings and such. And, unlike the jihadists of the Middle East, Falwell, Robertson and Co. have the curious habit of always standing up and defending the American tradition of religious toleration, which finds its roots, among other places, in the Enlightenment thinking of Thomas Jefferson, and which is safeguarded by the First Amendment of the Constitution (a document that Falwell, Robertson and Co. always claim to defend) and that dates back to even earlier times in American history, as I have pointed out in a previous post.

The reports of the death of the Enlightenment have been greatly exagerated. But, anyway, can we really talk about "The Enlightenment" as if the term is unambiguous? After all, not all Enlightenment thinkers agreed with each other on everything--some, like John Locke, even believed in the Virgin Birth, while others, like Voltaire, were adamantly anti-clerical (i.e., "Ecrasez l'infame!"). More on this later.

Unacknowledged Legislation Roundup

2004-11-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

Shelley wrote that "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." Today, pop musicians are the ones legislating. Or wishing they could legislate. Or thinking they ought to. Some recent attempts at legislation:

--One of my favorite bands, U2, released a new album today: How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb. I know that with a title like that, a lot of people will roll their eyes and dismiss it as wussy flower-child propaganda. Those people would be surprised to know that the conservative National Review has a review (!) of the album, and a good one, too. Sorpresas te da la vida... I'm not sure how useful Bono's lyrics are to those trying to formulate foreign policy, but then again, who cares? The realm of art has a special nook in the human soul, one that cannot be satisfied by any number of articles in Foreign Affairs--or National Review, for that matter. I think we are all aware of this, though.

--This news is old, from September. But I'm not sure how many of us in America heard about it. Madonna, showing remorse over the horrible tragedy of Beslan, covered "Imagine" in a concert in Paris, France. According to CNN:

As video images of war and children were broadcast behind her on giant screens, the 46-year-old pop diva urged fans to think about what happened in Russia and about Lennon's lyrics.

--And speaking of "Imagine," there's a new, lugubrious cover of the song by the band A Perfect Circle is getting a fair amount of airplay--at least around here. Maynard James Keenan, leader of the band, says he understands why the song's video won't get much airplay on TV: "This is footage that is available on network television, you've seen it on the news...and I guarantee that it won't get played. That's the irony. And that's the point of the decline of western civilization, the 1984 scenario that we're living in." In the video, the dreary funeral procession-sounding cover is accompanied by ghastly images from the modern world--suffering in the Middle East, soldiers from North Korea, and an American man pigging out on fast food. During the part when Lennon croons, "Imagine no religion," the Pope appears on the screen. Maynard (this is what he goes by) calls himself a "pessimistic optimist," and says he might be "giggling all the way to Doomsday." But perhaps Lennon's message will save us from it.

The cover is, actually, really depressing, a far cry from the hopeful and whimsical tone of the Lennon original. I don't understand why so many bands make such depressing music these days. Look at Bono. He is actually engaged in helping the needy, and U2's music is only getting happier and happier.

Why does all this matter? Because culture matters. Look at what Shelley called the poets: unacknowledged legislators. Odds are that young people in this country are as much influenced by pop artists as they are by the books they read in school. Not only that, but the music that a culture produces is a reflection of what it is feeling.

So what do we have here? Well, one hopeful and idealistic group of artists--U2--actively involved in relief efforts in Africa, and a couple of singers--Maynard and Madonna--appealing to a utopian vision to relieve their deeply human grief over that horrendous terrorist massacre in Beslan. Culture matters--it mattered enough to Plato that he kicked the poets out of his ideal city, and it mattered enough to Nazi and Communist regimes that they went to great pains to extinguish and replace the culture of the societies they were trying to conquer. Culture informs and shapes the attitudes of people, and there is an important cultural dimension to the War on Terror, at home and abroad. Maybe these anecdotes are evidence for this. Or maybe I am over-pontificating.

I don't understand

2004-11-23T22:49:00.000-07:00

Why is this article titled, " 'Blogs' embarrassed by misleading poll data in US vote"? Shouldn't the pollsters be the embarrassed ones? From the article:

Still, there was not doubt about the impact of the blogs.

"The thing about blogs, of course, is that a hot story tends to spread exponentially, so by early evening, the early exit-poll results were all over the blogosphere," said Steve Outing, a senior editor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

But Outing said the new Internet bloggers showed they don't have the same standards as traditional journalists.

"To astute media watchers, it should come as little surprise that the Internet supported an 'information wants to be free' philosophy on Election Day," Outing said in a Web column.

I guess it's true that bloggers lack the "standards" of "traditional journalists." That's in part because most bloggers aren't journalists--they are, as I like to think I am, media watchers. All the bloggers did on election day was take the exit polling data and post it up on their blogs, along with a witty comment or two. Is that irresponsible? Should bloggers feel embarrassed about that?

This doesn't very well fit under the theme of this blog, but this is a blog, after all, and the idea of blogging must be defended.

Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk on the war in his country

2004-11-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

From Zenit.org:

"It is not all death and destruction," explained Archbishop Louis Sako in an interview Tuesday published by AsiaNews.

"Much is positive in Iraq today," he said. "Universities are operating, schools are open, people go out onto the streets normally." He did acknowledge that "where there's a kidnapping or a homicide the news gets out immediately, and this causes fear among the people."

Yet, "there is no organized resistance" in Iraq, the prelate insisted. "Those who commit such violence are resisting against Iraqis who want to build their country.

"Iraqis instead are resisting against terrorism and are not carrying out attacks, which instead are the work of foreign infiltrators. I have stressed this before: Saudis, Jordanians, Syrians and Sudanese have entered Iraq. Prime Minister Allawi has said this as well. And clearly, there are also Iraqi collaborators who, for money, help the terrorist hide."

This reminds me of a couple things Hitchens said in that Tim Russert Show interview from September:

"The Christian churches, almost in their entirety I believe, were opposed to the regime-change in Iraq. And so was the president's own church, the United Methodist Church. It was very interesting to me to find how completely useless Christianity was in a struggle of this kind. It was awful to find that Christianity was a religion of peace, or at least of pacifism and of surrender."

"And, it's not my province...but the Christian churches can't seem to make up their minds whether we are fighting for our civilization or not, or whether we should feel guilty about existing--"

I wonder if the Archbishop's words make Hitchens think a bit differently. About Iraqi Christians, anyway.

Shouldn't it be "Casus Belli"?

2004-11-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

Depends on what you want to say. "Casus belli" means "the cause for war." In just war theory parlance it's used to denote the reason for starting the war, i.e., whether it is morally justified or not. "Causa belli" means--as confirmed by Erasmus scholar Dr. Charles Kovich--something like "on account of war." That works, for the purposes of this blog. I got the name for my blog from the poem "Causa Belli," by Andrew Motion, poet laureate of the United Kingdom. He wrote the poem in January of 2003, when the invasion of Iraq was becoming ever more imminent. Here it is in its entirety:

Causa Belli
They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad;
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

Joseph Bottum, book critic for The Weekly Standard, wrote a scathing review of the poem.

More on Rocco Buttiglione...

2004-11-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Peter Preston of The Guardian says that the whole affair has "made us all Europeans now," because it united them together in one cause:

During those few weeks, Britain suddenly had an inkling of what it might be like to live in a pallid version of that European superstate the tabloids savage every breakfast. There was a common agenda, an issue that roused 25 countries from apathy. Could a devout Italian Roman Catholic with views on gays fiery enough to make Lambeth's hair curl dispense justice on behalf of the union?

The answer was no, of course, but the asking of it was more important than any answer. Here at last was a European public opinion, engaged and participative in EU affairs. Readers and viewers found a story well worth the covering. But how, in truth, were we to cover it? Was there a genuine European media space, a European view, as opposed to 25 different national takes on a rattling good yarn? Was there a European story - not a British/German/French/Italian one?

There surely was. There surely is a genuine media space. See how, in the wake of the Bush victory, Guardian columnists such as Simon Tisdall rush to proclaim that now 'Europe must believe in itself' while Gerard Baker in the Times finds Washington neo-conser vatives turning against the whole EU idea. See how Jacques Chirac interviews become front-page news, much more than space-filling. And if that's the case, what about European news futures?

And while the Europeans were involved in that imbroglio, America elected a president that campaigned, in part, on promoting a constitutional amendment defining marriage as an institution between a man and a woman. Similar amendments to state constitutions have been passed by referenda--13, to be exact. A difference in values, perhaps? George Weigel thinks so, and you can tell what side he is on:

What kind of polity is it that doesn't want a man like Rocco Buttiglione looking after the administration of justice and the protection of human rights? A polity in which too many people believe that the God of the Bible is the enemy of human freedom. A polity in which too many people believe that freedom is license.

A polity in which "anti-discrimination" has become the excuse for active discrimination against Catholics and others whose moral convictions ill-fit the relativist-secularist opinion mainstream.

Hopefully, though, such cultural differences won't make it harder for the US and Europe to ease the diplomatic strains that came with the Iraq war. After all, we have too much in common--interests, history, democracy--to not want to fight terrorism together.

But how? What kind of world order are we fighting for? Simon Preston, also of The Guardian, writes about the European answers to the questions. Among them, Joschka Fischer:

For its part, Germany yearns for a return to the pre-Iraq or, more accurately, pre-Bush consensus. Its foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, spoke recently of three "pillars" - the US, the UN and Europe - under-pinning a multilateral international structure.

I wonder how much this view differs from that of the current Administration.

I guess there are atheists in foxholes...

2004-11-20T17:34:00.000-07:00

According to the Military Association for Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF), anyway.

An Islamic Woman on Europe

2004-11-20T16:43:00.000-07:00

In one of the best articles I've read on the subject of religion and the West, Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith, contrasts American and European attitudes on Islam and religion in general:

...allow me to observe key differences between the debate over Islam in Western Europe and North America. In Western Europe, the entry point for this debate is the hijab - the headscarf that many Muslim women wear as a signal of modesty. By contrast, the entry point in North America is terrorism.

Some might say that difference is understandable. After all, Sept. 11 happened on American soil. But March 11 happened on European ground, yet the hijab remains the starting point for Europeans. Meanwhile, it makes barely a ripple in North America.

This difference speaks to a larger gulf in attitudes toward religion. To a lot of Europeans, still steeped in memories of the Catholic Church's intellectual repression, religion is an irrational force. So women who cover themselves are foolish at best and dangerous otherwise.

It's true that the memory of the religious wars of the Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition, the Dreyfuss Affair and other periods of infamy has helped to associate religion with the forces of reaction and injustice in Europe. The fact that the people responsible for the death of Theo van Gogh were inspired by religion--fundamentalist religion--also does not help. But religion itself is not the problem.

But there's something else going on. The mass immigration of Muslims is bringing faith back into the public realm and creating a post-Enlightenment modernity for Western Europe. This return of religion threatens secular humanism, the orthodoxy that has prevailed since the French Revolution. Paradoxically, because many Western Europeans feel that they're losing Enlightenment values amid the flood of "people of faith," they wind up sympathizing with those in the Muslim world who resent imported values that challenge their own. Both groups are identity protectionists.

As one young Turk told me, "If Western values are tolerance, democracy, justice, equality and freedom, then I live in a Western country: Turkey." Try explaining that to those Europeans who want to impose their baggage from the Vatican onto Muslim immigrants. Their secularism can be zealous, missionary - dare I say it, religious.

It's the same secularism that's led to the banning of headscarves in public schools in France, a decision that certainly has fueled the imagination of religious extremists. Contrast this attitude to the American one: America was founded by people that had to leave Europe so that they might practice their religion freely and openly. Despite some dark chapters of our own (e.g., the Salem witch trials, the JFK/Catholic problem), for the most part, Americans have always been tolerant of other religious groups who want to practice their religion freely and without fear of persecution. Our pluralism is non-syncretistic--the public square is a fair with many different booths. European "secularism," or "laicite'," or whatever you want to call it, is syncretistic and homogenuous: practice your religion in private, don't show it off, and when you are in the public square, be sure to follow the civic religion of the state (see Rousseau for that).

She ends with this:

Which brings me back to the question of why I, an independent-minded woman, bother with Islam. Religion supplies a set of values, including discipline, that serve as a counterweight to the materialism of life in the West. I could have become a runaway materialist, a robotic mall rat who resorts to retail therapy in pursuit of fulfillment. I didn't. That's because religion introduces competing claims. It injects a tension that compels me to think and allows me to avoid fundamentalisms of my own.

Islam today has deep flaws, and I know saying so makes me a blasphemer in the eyes of countless Muslims. C'est la vie. If they move beyond emotion, they'll come to appreciate that for the rationalists among us, religion can be a godsend.

Now, I would say that religion is more than just a "set of values" and a "discipline." Religion, as a private and a communal enterprise, is an expression and a search for fulfillment of the intense human desire for an infinite, transcedental being. But I am pretty sure that Ms. Manji would agree with me on that, anyway.

I am happy and proud that you are choosing to live in America, Ms. Manji.

The Philosopher of War

2004-11-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

Victor Davis Hanson is an intriguing figure to me: a serene Classics professor who lives in a farm in California, and who applies his profound understanding of human conflict to political discernment about the current War on Terror. And he has a penchant for writing fiery essays.

His latest is making it to my prestigious list of "Readings in the Debate": "The Real Humanists." It serves as a summary of the War on Terror so far--as viewed by its proponents on the right--and his little snide remarks against the anti-war crowd are reminiscent of Hitchens (for example: "Westerners simply now assume that there was never any controversy, but rather a general consensus that Afghanistan is a "good thing" — as if the Taliban went into voluntarily exile due to occasional censure from The New York Review of Books.") But Hanson is coming from a different political angle than Hitchens. I think, though, that they can agree on one key point: the War on Terror is justified and necessary to defend democracy at home, but one of the best ways to fight terror abroad is also to promote democracy.

Hanson's defense of war in general can be easily misinterpreted as an enthusiasm for it. But that is not the case. As he makes clear in other writings, Hanson sees the necessity for war as a symptom of the tragic state of "fallen man." I'm not sure whether he would use the Judeo-Christian language of "fallen man," but the idea is the same: the tragic state of affairs we are in, that makes it difficult to always resolve things through diplomatic and rational means, and that sometimes--under certain conditions--justifies the use of force. Here is his defense for the Coalition's current use of force:

Those on the left who are ignorant of history lectured the Bush administration that democracy has never come as a result of the threat of conflict or outright war--apparently the creation of a democratic United States, Germany, Japan, Italy, Israel, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, and Afghanistan was proof of the power of mere talk. In contrast, the old realist Right warned that strongmen are our best bet to ensure stability--as if Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been loyal allies with content and stable pro-American citizenries. In truth, George Bush's radical efforts to cleanse the world of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, bring democracy to the heart of the Arab world, and isolate Yasser Arafat were the most risky and humane developments in the Middle East in a century--old-fashioned idealism backed with force in a postmodern age of abject cynicism and nihilism.

Quite literally, we are living in the strangest, most perilous, and unbelievable decade in modern memory.

This coming from a guy that's seen the 60s and 70s. Exciting and scary.

The EU meets Sam P. Huntington

2004-11-20T16:17:00.000-07:00

From SFgate.com:

European Union justice and interior ministers agreed Friday that new immigrants to the 25-nation bloc should be required to learn local languages, and to adhere to general "European values" that will guide them toward better integration.

European values? What are those? The article does not specify.

"It's not like we are against immigration," Verdonk said. "If you want to live in the Netherlands, you have to adhere to our rules ... and learn our language."

No, Verdonk is not a pseudonym for Victor Davis Hanson. It's Rita Verdonk, Dutch Immigration Minister.

Whether or not the anti-immigration measures that Europe is taking in the wake of the van Gogh murder are justified and proportional remains to be seen. But, why is it that the van Gogh murder is what is waking up Europeans to the problem of radical Islam in their countries? Why wasn't Madrid enough?

Christopher Hitchens Gets Religion... Well, sort of.

2004-11-19T18:05:00.000-07:00

Reading Christopher Hitchens' attacks on his fellow thinkers on the Left is one of life's simple pleasures for me. Not for ideological reasons--just because he's funny. In the Mirror he has a new screed, "Not So Dumb, Then?", attacking those who dismiss Bush supporters as, well, "dumb." But in light of my previous comments on Hitchens and religion, I think I should quote the following lines:

In the UK, the Queen is the head of the church and head of state, as well as the Armed Forces - a state of affairs that is so ridiculous that many people hardly notice it. In the US, the Constitution states that the government cannot sponsor any church.

This means, and has meant for some time, that voluntary religious participation is one of the defining things about American life. As an atheist I am sorry to say it, but there it is.
It may seem regrettable to you that these pious church-goers also have the right to vote but so they do. They had it when the British were living under absolute monarchy.

And it was prayer-muttering farm-boys from Tennessee and Vermont who came over to Europe in such large numbers, bringing their various chaplains along, and did us all such a favour a generation ago.
At the time, many of the black members of this great people's army were prevented from voting but they later managed to win that right, led largely by clergymen, and are still quite loyal to their touching Sunday devotions.

Of course, I would prefer that only secular humanists and believers in Darwin had been in the front line against first fascism and then Stalinism and now Islamic nihilism but one can't have everything.

Funniest of all:

And whether it is Saturday night or Sunday morning, I can usually get my right-wing friends on the phone without finding that they are chanting or moaning in some church or temple.

His new right-wing friends seem to be helping him develop something close to cautious respect for religion.

Iran and nukes

2004-11-17T23:09:00.000-07:00

From MSNBC/Washington Post. Powell:

"I have seen some information that would suggest that they have been actively working on delivery systems. . . . You don't have a weapon until you put it in something that can deliver a weapon," Powell told reporters traveling with him to Chile for an Asia-Pacific economic summit. "I'm not talking about uranium or fissile material or the warhead; I'm talking about what one does with a warhead."

I hope some more people start talking about what we do if--or when, as the case may be--they get deployable warheads. Just war theorists, sharpen your pencils...

Another execution of a minor in Iran

2004-11-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

Can all of us in the West agree that this is a disproportionate punishment, for a minor?

Again with the elephants

2004-11-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

Dan Darling with a nice article about Iran at Winds of Change.

Wills on War

2004-11-16T17:58:00.000-07:00

Gary Wills has a long review in the New York Review of Books where he discusses just war theory.

Rocco Buttiglione's Letter to America

2004-11-16T17:43:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, OpinionJournal.com posted this article by the controversial Italian intellectual Rocco Buttiglione. No doubt inspired by his recent ordeal, the article dealt with what he saw as the fundamental difference between Europe and the United States in matters pertaining to the relationship between Church and State:

If you consider that Mr. Bush won re-election in part because of his firm stand on family values and other moral issues, it becomes apparent that Europe and United States are drifting apart not only on foreign policy but also on their vision of a democratic society and of the proper relationship between politics and ethics.

One of America's founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, was convinced that politics needed values it could not produce itself and had to rely on other agencies (mainly the churches) to nurture the virtues civil life needs. The state could therefore not privilege any church in particular but had to maintain a positive attitude to religion in general.

Jean Jacques Rousseau thought, on the contrary, that the state needed a kind of civil religion of its own and the existing churches had to bow to this civil religion by incorporating its commandments in their theology. Many scholars see in this idea of Rousseau's the seminal principle of totalitarianism. The tradition of Rousseau and of the Jacobins has survived in Europe in less virulent forms than in the not too distant past, but it's still part of the European political and ideological landscape.

So the difference is between the Jefferson and Hamilton on the one hand, and Rousseau and Jacobins, on the other. But there is more to this than philosophy. There is, of course, the 60s:

These differing philosophical approaches to religion and politics do not give us, however, the whole truth. In the 1960s, both Europe and the United States lived through a cultural era that belittled traditional values and wanted to prepare the young generation for a world of tomorrow in which individual responsibility, self-sacrifice and other virtues of the past would be needed no more. In this world nobody would need moral convictions. It would be a world without the constraint of limitedness disposable resources. Nobody would need to toil for his bread.

I wish Buttiglione would have been more specific about who these people were that announced the up and coming Utopia, and what this Utopia was supposed to be--I just want specifics. More than likely he is pointing to a general mood. But why Europe? After all, the U.S. went through the 60s, too--France had May 1968 at the Sorbonne, but we had the Democratic National Convention. Interesting to contrast this with Novak's letter.

The New York Times' Effect on Man

2004-11-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

We can try to understand
The New York Times' effect on man.
--The Bee Gees

The Editorial Board of The New York Times calls for a halt to the "run" toward a UN cloning ban:

The Bush administration is once again trying to stampede the United Nations into approving a ban on cloning embryos for research or therapeutic purposes. There is deep irony in this ill-advised campaign. The administration has thus far been unable to force a ban on therapeutic cloning through a divided Congress, where even some prominent Republicans favor the research, so now it is pinning its hopes on the U.N., an organization it routinely reviles in other contexts.

This shouldn't be too hard for the Bush Administration. After all, even Jacques Chirac favors a ban on reproductive cloning. But the US--along with the Vatican, Costa Rica, and other nations, are pushing for a complete ban on all cloning, even for therapeutic and research purposes:

That is an extreme measure that seeks to snuff out all research on microscopic entities that religious conservatives consider potential babies but scientists consider mere clusters of cells in a laboratory dish.

Aha. Here we have it again: "the religious conservatives" v. "the scientists." Of course, if you pit anyone as standing "against science," you are bound to lose in the court of public opinion. But the Times is wrong; there are scientists who agree with these "religious conservatives," too--among them Leon Kass, MD chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, who, as far as I know, does not call himself "pro-life," but who is very cautious, thoughtful, and nuanced when it comes to the delicate matter of human cloning.

But what does this have to do with the War on Terror? As I said in my first post, the cultural identity of our country, and of the West as a whole, has a profound impact on the War. How we deal with questions of bioethics is an indicator of what we are as a nation and as a civilization. And this polarizing editorial is not helping by pitting "religious conservatives" against "the scientists" in a dichotomy that does not exist.

The editorial ends with this:

There is no need for the United Nations to meddle in an ideologically driven issue on which consensus is impossible.

Impossible? I sure hope not!

Michael Novak's Letter to France

2004-11-11T16:49:00.000-07:00

This appeared in Le Monde on the day of the election, and also appeared in NRO and The Tablet.

Interesting bit:

Finally, there is the importance of religion in American life. The great French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in Democracy in America that what most made America different from Europe was religion. In America, religion was, from the very beginning, on the side of liberty, and liberty on the side of religion. The reason the American colonists had the courage to fight for independence against the British king and parliament was their Christian belief that the Creator held them accountable for their own liberty. Since liberty (as they believed) was the purpose the Creator had in mind in creating the cosmos, and in offering to humble humankind His friendship in freedom, then that same Creator was unlikely to abandon His subjects who chose the path of freedom. Britain had one of the two greatest armies and navies on earth at that time (the other was France), and the Americans had neither army nor navy. They put their trust in the hands of Providence, and they prevailed.

Ever since, anyone who would lead the Americans has had to show gratitude to the Almighty, express commitment to Him. Here there may be separation of the institutions of the churches and the institutions of the states, but there can be no separation of religion from the tissue of national life. President Bill Clinton, for example, spoke of religion far more frequently than George W. Bush, and was often praised for it. Some may have doubted how seriously he meant it, but he was in fact publicly and openly quite religious. It is a normal practice for a president. It is practically mandatory.

This is a point that's been made over and over by conservatives, but Novak's is the most articulated presentation of the argument I've ever read. An interesting counterpoint to Hitchens. I think Hitchens would already disagree with de Tocqueville, that "In America, religion was, from the very beginning, on the side of liberty, and liberty on the side of religion." Impossible, I'm sure he'd say. Not even in America. But who knows, I am no Hitchens scholar and I should not speak for the man.

The idea of a letter to France is significant. The author's objective, I surmise, is to make a contribution to the healing of the rift between Europe and America, in part by explaining to Europe why America votes the way it votes--on this, the article was a bit prophetic. A united West is necessary for the War on Terror. I remember that The Economist had something about the "split in the West" on its cover once, before the Iraq invasion. I don't think it's that grave a problem yet, but it's never too early to work towards a solution and reconciliation.

From the Netherlands

2004-11-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

An article on the Dutch reaction to the van Gogh murder.

Another Elephant in the Room

2004-11-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

This article is a couple months old, but still worth a read. Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete reports on a 9/11 anniversary dinner hosted by NYU and attended by various distinguished figures in business, journalism, and academia. Albacete was invited as a "Catholic educator and scholar," but he felt out of place in what was turning out to be an increasingly political discussion:

It became immediately clear that we were facing two hours of old, pre-packaged opinions challenged by other, opposing pre-packaged opinions. At no time did anyone give evidence of having changed his mind or penetrated more deeply into the subject. From the outset, it was mostly a discussion about politics.

NYU President Sexton, a Catholic lawyer with a degree in religious studies, tried numerous times to bring the conversation to a deeper level of discourse, but it quickly returned again to the usual themes: unilateralism vs. multilateralism, globalization, US arrogance, Arab resentment, poverty and hopelessness, racism and loss of civil liberties, and comparison with casualties in other terrorist attacks, tragedies, genocides, and even traffic accidents.

But the Monsignor, as someone who devotes as much attention to the eternities as he does to the Times (which he occassionally writes for), wished the discussion would address the underlying cultural and religious element of the present conflict. Salman Rushdie, another guest, came to his aide:

The only difference was Salman Rushdie, who, frankly, seemed out of place in a discussion like this one. Early on, he insisted on the need to understand the present religious situation of Islam and the internal struggles for its future. It seemed he was suggesting that the "future of the West" was tied to this struggle between modernity and a religion that had yet to go through the encounter with critical thinking and tolerance.

In other words, Rushdie was stressing the importance of questions that go beyond geopolitics and international law. There is a battle of ideas, a battle between worldviews, that has to be reconciled and won.

Albacete added to Rushdie's comment:

President Sexton asked me to more or less try to summarize the new insights learned from the conversation (providing more or less the "exalted" view "from the perspective of eternity, I guess), but since I had not discovered any new insight so far, I repeated again what I had said before, namely, that we would not understand our present situation adequately if we failed to perceive its basis as a religious war.

Perhaps "religous war" is an unfortunate choice of words, since the term carries with it so much historical baggage, and would leave people like Christopher Hitchens fuming. But the underlying idea that this is a war between worldviews--between totalitarian theocracy on the one hand, and pluralistic, liberal democracy, on the other--is a valuable insight that we can take from this article. Albacete goes on:

The human vocation to the Infinite had been effectively suppressed by modern criticism and, instead of disappearing, it had struck back with a deadly force. The proper response, I suggested, was not further suppression of the religious instinct, but its adequate education by insistence on the requirements of reason and a humble respect for a non-syncretistic pluralism based on true religious liberty.

This passage is interesting, for two reasons. First, the human vocation to the Infinite. What does Albacete mean by that? Probably the natural inclination that all human cultures have to make and live a religious life--even secular anthropologists would agree that the religious element is essential and universal to all human societies (borrowing the few enclaves of logical positivists that pop up here and there in the West. Just kidding). The suppression of this vocation, Albacete seems to say, is what causes the visceral reaction of religious extremism and fundamentalism, and what leads religious zealots to fly planes into buildings.

Second, a humble respect for non-syncretistic pluralism based on true religious liberty. I suspect Albacete, a Catholic priest, gets this idea, in part, from the Second Vatican Council's Declaration of Religious Freedom. Non-syncretistic pluralism would mean, then, a pluralism that respects rival claims to truth: a society where a Muslim can say, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet," and a Catholic can reply, "No, you are right about there only being one God, but He made Himself flesh in his Son, Jesus Christ," and where both both live peacefully together. Albacete wants to avoid slipping into relativism, and living in a society where all religions are deemed equally true, and equally false. The best answer to Islamic fundamentalism and totalitarianism is a free society where religion is free to make the claims it wants, and were religious expression is free and open, and respectful of the norms of civil society.

Does Albacete's "non-syncretistic pluralism" clash with Christopher Hitchens' idea of secularism? That would be something to consider. Hitchens and Albacete share a common ground on which to begin dialogue: they are both impressed by Salman Rushdie. Hitchens actually says the first understood about the menace of "Islamo-Fascism" after learning of the fatwa against his friend, Rushdie:

I was a friend of Salman Rushdie's, for example, and for me the fatwa in 1989, Valentine's Day, was a warning. I didn't realize it as much as I should have. "We are headed for confrontation with Islamic totalitarianism. Yes." There's a civil war going on in the Muslim world. We must not let the tyrannical side win there. We've already demonstrated in Afghanistan that we have many more Muslim supporters in Afghanistan than they do. Many more. We haven't been able to prove that in Iraq; it's partly our fault. But everything rides on this. That civil war must not be won by the other side.

Hitchens should consider the words that Rushdie had for Albacete: "We have all failed tonight to see the elephant in the room. Only the Monsignor has described it adequately. In the end, our future depends on the encounter between religion, critical reasoning, and humility."

I wonder if Hitchens knows about this...

2004-11-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

AFP has a story on American soldiers and religious faith at Fallujah.

"There are no atheists in the foxholes," as the old saying goes.

It's almost as if he read my blog!

2004-11-09T18:04:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens, today in the Slate: "Bush's Secularist Triumph".

Hitchens does his usual haranguing of left-wing liberals for being the "only one faction in American politics [that] has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now." Then there is the mandatory reference to religion: "all faiths are not always equally demented in the same way, or at the same time." Then there is this:

George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he--and the U.S. armed forces--have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollary—that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?

An interesting question, but I'm more curious about the "Christian, but" at the top of the paragraph. George Bush is a Christian, but--in spite of this? Ironically? Surprisingly?--he has fought religious extremists. And he has fought them in the name of "secularism"--whatever that is.

Hitchens here agrees with Bush on the negative aspect of the War on Terror: what we must destroy, i.e., religious extremism. But on the question as to what we are fighting for, "secularism," Hitchens does not define the word in postive terms. From reading this article, all I can deduce about Hitchens' understanding of the word is that secularism means to not tolerate dangerous religious extremism that justifies murder and advocates totalitarianism. Well, everyone will agree with him on that. Everyone should, at least.

This is as close as Hitchens comes to defining "secularism":

Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution, and the liberals have gone AWOL. I dare say that there will be a few domestic confrontations down the road, over everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the display of Mosaic tablets in courtrooms and schools. I have spent all my life on the atheist side of this argument, and will brace for more of the same, but I somehow can't hear Robert Ingersoll or Clarence Darrow being soft and cowardly and evasive if it came to a vicious theocratic challenge that daily threatens us from within and without.

It's comforting to see the word "pluralistic" there, but I would contest Hitchens' apparent notion that the two greatest crusaders for pluralism--and religious tolerence, and "secularism"--are Robert Ingersoll and Clarence Darrow. American experimentation with the idea of religious tolerance dates back to pre-Revolutionary days--one thinks of Roger Williams' Rhode Island, or William Penn's Pennsylvania. And I'm pretty sure that both Williams and Penn believed in the Virgin Birth.

Why This Site

2004-11-08T18:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, in the haste to get something very important accomplished, we forget the essentials. I stumbled upon one particular--and very important--instance of this sort one night a few months ago, and it inspired the idea for Causa Belli.

On September 25, 2004, Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan were Tim Russert's guest on his other show, The Tim Russert Show (not Meet the Press). The choice of guests was interesting because while both men began their political journeys from different starting points--Hitchens as a soixante huitard Marxist, Sullivan as a Thatcherite--both now appeared to converge in the center, driven there by what they saw as the need to respond to the threat of radical Islamic fundamentalism, or, as Hitchens likes to put it, "Islamo-Fascism." Toward the end of the show, Hitchens made a poignant and demanding remark:

"Another thing that's very important to me about this war is that it is in effect a war for secularism. President Bush may believe that God saved him from booze and so on. He's quite entitled to that belief as far as I can see, but he must know, and certainly the people in this administration do understand, that our only real allies are secular--that, in Afghanistan, we must hope for even more secularism. ... I'm for secularism and separation of church and state. Everywhere. I want more of it here, not less, and much more of it there. And it's a perfectly consistent thing. Even if John Ashcroft doesn't realize it, it's objectively--as we used to say in Marxist discussion--true. It's objectively true."

Andrew Sullivan agreed:

"Chris [Hitchens] is a militant atheist. I'm actually a Roman Catholic. But I couldn't agree with him more. I really don't believe that people of faith should be leery of secularism. I think the separation between church and state is the best thing for religion ever. And I feel no qualms at all, as a believing person, in supporting secularism. "

Now, most western political thinkers, as well as political leaders, support the idea of seperation between Church and State. That's not what caught my attention. What caught my attention was the word, "secularism," a word that always carries with it ideological baggage from the left or from the right, wherever it is being used. What did Hitchens mean by "secularism"? Is the cultural identity of the West--and, more specifically, of the United States--"secularist" or "Judeo-Christian" or even, "religious"?

Immediately, I recalled the words that Michael Novak wrote in an essay published in the National Review a month after 9/11:

The present war is not a war between a secular nation and a Muslim nation. Ours is not a secular nation. We are the single-most religious of all the advanced nations, and the third- or fourth-most religious of all nations anywhere on earth.

Our Founding's religion, in case you want to know, is predominantly Christian and Jewish. And a good thing, too!

Both Novak and Hitchens agree about the enemy. Both agree that we ought to use force in order to defeat it. But both have dramatically different conceptions of what it is we are defending, and what ideals we are fighting for. An elephant in the room, if I ever saw one. How much discrepancy is there among American politicians and thinkers? Among Western politicians and thinkers? Does it run on ideological lines? Religious lines? National lines?

I set up this blog to explore the philosophical questions surrounding the War on Terror. Whether we ought to fight, and how we should fight, are matters of just war theory. What we are defending, and what we are fighting for, are trickier matters, and to answer them, you have to deal with cultural questions.

That's why I think that the current brouhaha over the "divided country" that we live in, mired in a "culture war" over "values," has deep implications on the War on Terror. The same goes for the recent debate in Europe over a reference to Christianity in the preamble to the new European Constitution. Both of these conflicts deal with the cultural identity of the West, which right now is highly disputed. But the West is what we are defending. And if we don't know exactly what we are defending, how can we know that it's worth fighting for?

Then there is the question of Iraq. Some would argue that the invasion of Iraq had little or nothing to do with the War on Terror. Consequently, a site devoted to following the debate on the War on Terror should not concern itself with Iraq. But even those that argue this have to agree that the present situation in Iraq, volatile, delicate, and important as it is, has become entangled with the struggle against Al Qaeda, thanks in part to people like Al-Zarqawi. So the debate on Iraq will be presented here, too.

These are the arguments that have been raging in the pages of periodicals, journals, and books in the three years since 9/11. I hope to be able to catalogue and comment on a few of those voices that are taking part in the most important conversation of the 21st century.

Causa Belli: Why We Fight

Buchanan should like this

Buchanan should like this

Buchanan is *not* al-Zawahiri

The Pope on Church and State

More on Buchanan's thinking

What makes the West worth Saving?

Apologies requested

If it was only that simple...

Can one fight "terrorism"?

Tsunami Help

But, what is truth?

"Death of the Enlightenment" Roundup, Part III

A Hopeful Note for Christmas Eve

Non-Syncretistic Pluralism

When War Must Be the Answer

Taxi Driver Shoots Man in Bin Laden Mask

Swiss Protestant Imams?

I'm back!

Radical Islam and Utopianism

Gary Wills' Worst Fears Are a Reality

The Primacy of the Cultural

The Show Must Go On

Fareed Zakaria's ideas on what we should do about Iran...

The UN's new plan for world security

Five bloggers are in jail

Andrew Sullivan on Pat Buchanan on Islam and Europe

Sorry

Michael Ledeen on Iran: "Faster, please!"

Theo van Gogh's Revenge...More or Less

"Death of the Enlightenment" Roundup, Part II

Intricate and Abstruse Books of Philosophy...

Czeslaw Milosz

"Death of the Enlightenment" Roundup, Part I

Unacknowledged Legislation Roundup

I don't understand

Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk on the war in his country

Shouldn't it be "Casus Belli"?

More on Rocco Buttiglione...

I guess there *are* atheists in foxholes...

An Islamic Woman on Europe

The Philosopher of War

The EU meets Sam P. Huntington

Christopher Hitchens Gets Religion... Well, sort of.

Iran and nukes

Another execution of a minor in Iran

Again with the elephants

Wills on War

Rocco Buttiglione's Letter to America

The New York Times' Effect on Man

Michael Novak's Letter to France

From the Netherlands

Another Elephant in the Room

I wonder if Hitchens knows about this...

It's almost as if he read my blog!

Why This Site

Buchanan is not al-Zawahiri

I guess there are atheists in foxholes...