A Few Thoughts On Relativism In The Wake Of The Fort Hood Shootings: The NY Times PTSD Theory

Full post here. (From Althouse, with interesting comments)

There is an argument attached to the Hasan killings; namely that Hasan may have been giving signs of a belief in a more radical Islam that would conflict with his military duties (though it’s perhaps not reasonable to suspect that such extreme and violent action would ever be taken).  The argument states that an environment of fear (or oversensitivity, at least) has been created and potentially institutionalized in the military.  Such an environment (motivated by an overly pc cultural climate) might have led some who were alarmed at Hasan’s behavior to turn their heads and avoid the problem, and thus may have helped to prevent the extreme outcome.

As the facts are discovered, it seems Islam was likely a motivating factor in Hasan’s decision to attack soldiers who would soon deploy to fight Muslims, and it may even be that he was connected with specific groups that would support such an action.  Muslims of course, are free to practice their religion, and to follow the laws, and most do. However, there are clearly an issues of concern here for further consideration (also some on the American right which will too easily incite the passions into a mold of religious conflict for political gain…mostly thanks to Hasan).

Addition:  Or perhaps people were monitoring him but he fell through the cracks.

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More broadly, a friend of mine further on the right than me is making the argument there are at least two issues:

1.  the real threat of radical Muslims willing to attack American targets from abroad and potentially at home, in the name of their religious beliefs…and how to best handle this threat…and the underlying reasons which help to cause it.

…as well as:

2.  An overly relativistic and confused set of ideas guiding the political left, which might not be deep enough to handle the type of situation that Hasan has presented us with.  In addition, such lack of depth (on full display in the Times article) forces us into more bitter partisanship, creating deeper rifts in the body politic.

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A few facts and a lot of generalizations…your thoughts and comments are welcome.  Here’s a quote from Simon Blackburn I put up a while ago:

“Nigel: Has relativism had its day as an influential philosophical position?

Simon: No – and I don’t think it should ever die. The danger is that it gets replaced by some kind of complacent dogmatism, which is at least equally unhealthy. The Greek sceptics thought that confronting a plurality of perspectives is the beginning of wisdom, and I think they were right. It is certainly the beginning of historiography and anthropology, and if we think, for instance, of the Copernican revolution, of self-conscious science. The trick is to benefit from an imaginative awareness of diversity, without falling into a kind of “anything goes” wishy-washy nihilism or scepticism….”

See Also On This Site:   From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…How do you reasonably deal with relativism anyways?: From Virtual Philosophy: A Brief Interview With Simon Blackburn…From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”

From The Washington Post: Anne Applebaum On The Arrest Of Roman Polanski

Full post here.

Applebaum offers a defense of Polanski’s recent arrest in Switzerland:

“To put him on trial or keep him in jail does not serve society in general or his victim in particular. Nor does it prove the doggedness and earnestness of the American legal system.”

But it’s still morally reprehensible, and illegal, and he fled prosecution (despite the fact that he is a fine director and has already suffered).  

While the facts of the case are discussed, I’ll just offer a previous post I put up on Martha Nussbaum’s commentary on Eliot Spitzer’s indiscretions, because it mirrors this one is some important ways:  Martha Nussbaum On Eliot Spitzer At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“Spitzer’s offense was an offense against his family. It was not an offense against the public. If he broke any laws, these are laws that never should have existed and that have been repudiated by sensible nations.”

Quite different in many ways, of course, but Nussbaum used the Spitzer incident as a springboard to argue that the prostitution laws (which Spitzer previously helped prosecute) were Puritanistic and antiquated.   I’d simply offer that perhaps there is a kind of trans-atlantic liberalism on display here in both examples. There are deep arguments to be made of course, but there might be also be a little disingenuousness and distance from the people who make and uphold the laws here in America.

Perhaps if you live in Europe, and you’re American, European mores and attitudes affect your opinions quite deeply. 

Also On This Site:  Charles Murray argues we need to resist such Europeanization…though is he still bringing in politics?:  Charles Murray Lecture At AEI: The Happiness Of People…From Reason: Going Dutch?

Repost: Martha Nussbaum Channels Roger Williams In The New Republic: The First Founder

Full essay here.

Fashioning a coat to fit the times?

Nussbaum may be trying to address waves of Muslim immigrants that have poured into European, and Western societies.  She also seems to be asking a central question:  How do you create a civil society that does not place religion above a concept of the moral good, yet that also does not pursue the moral good while zealously excluding religion? 

She tells the story of Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, who held deep religious beliefs, yet, Nussbaum argues, was someone who cast his moral thinking deeper than those beliefs, drafting the Rhode Island charter on the idea ‘individual human conscience:’

“Conscience, for Williams, plays the role that the directive faculty of moral choice plays in the ancient Stoic authors whom he studied: it is a faculty of searching and choosing, although for Williams it includes imagination and emotion as well as ethical reasoning. It is, Williams holds, the main source of our identity as agents: it is “indeed the man.”"

So, WIlliams tempered his religious beliefs with classical learning and a certain political pragmatism…yet he also tempered that political pragmatism with his religious beliefs (avoiding a true, hard-hearted Stoicism).  Nussbaum further suggests that some of Williams’ thinking even pre-sagedImmanuel Kant:

“Just as Kant asks a person to test the principle of his or her conduct by asking whether it could without contradiction be made a universal law for all human beings, so Williams’s critique of the leaders of Massachusetts and Connecticut is that their idea cannot pass a test of that sort: they love freedom–but only for themselves.”

“For both, the source of moral principles, and of all moral worth, is ultimately in our own freedom, and that freedom must be respected.”

I’m not convinced, though it’s an interesting connection to make in the wake of the Iraq war: Freedom is a universal idea, yet how one pursues that idea can be taken into account, and potentially meet such moral maxims (if only it were that simple).  Nussbaum goes on to contrast John Locke with Roger Williams, and points out how Williams was more sympathetic to the idea that:

“…different religious doctrines meet and overlap in a shared moral space. Each religious person will connect this moral space to his own higher religious goals and ends; but within that space we are all able to speak a common language and share moral principles. As I have argued, this idea of overlap is ultimately more fruitful than the idea of separation.”

But upon what moral principles?  I’m hoping it’s more than the Jesse Prinz’s recent work (deep arguments for morality based on the emotions, but also a Nietzschean extremism and defense of moral relativism).  Nussbaum has done a lot here, and while I don’t share her political views, I very often respect the depth of her thinking.  

Related On This Site:  Martha Nussbaum In Dissent–Violence On The Left: Nandigram And The Communists Of West Bengal…Martha Nussbaum On Eliot Spitzer At The Atlanta Journal-Constitution…Another Note On Jesse Prinz’s “Constructive Sentimentalism”…and what to do with the Native Americans?:  Roger Sandall: Marveling At The Aborigines, But Not Really Helping?

From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”

Full review here.  (updated, Fouad Ajami’s piece, which was not the original)

Book found here. 

A lot of the discussion I’ve seen about Muslim immigration to Europe as much involves the anti-multiculturalist crowd (from reasonable voices to shrill doomsayers) as it does the problems on the ground, which are quite real.  Usually, it’s the politically, economically, and socially conservative who have been the most vocal, lamenting the hold on public opinion and sentiment such a problematic set of ideas has had.  Of course, Caldwell goes a little deeper than that, and of course so do the problems and conflicts that can result.

A few quotes:

“The most chilling observation in Mr. Caldwell’s book may be that the debate over Muslim immigration in Europe is one that the continent can’t openly have, because anyone remotely critical of Islam is branded as Islamophobic”

Remember the Dutch cartoonists?  Some of them were perhaps irresponsible,even inflammatory, but that was probably no less a time to offer up a reasonable and principled liberal defense of their right to publish.  

Also:

“For Mr. Caldwell, the fundamental issue is also, more centrally, about irrevocable societal transformation.”

Is it irrevocable?  Is the idea of democratic liberalism incompatible with Islam?

If you’ve read the book, please share your thoughts.

See Also On This Site: From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…From The Middle East Quarterly Via A & L Daily: Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic

Kenan Malik In The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Twenty Years On: Internalizing The Fatwa’-Salman Rushdie

Theodore Dalrymple argues that France has the potential to handle Muslim immigration better because of its ideological rigidity, which can better meet the ideological rigidity of its Muslim immigrants…Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain

How do you reasonably deal with relativism anyways?: From Virtual Philosophy: A Brief Interview With Simon Blackburn

A long time ago, and not so long ago.  *chiwai*’s photostream here.  Excellent photo.

From The Middle East Quarterly Via A & L Daily: Europe’s Shifting Immigration Dynamic

Full article here.

Our author points out that immigration policies have opened the door for a continuing stream of people in Europe, people who are still arriving.  She argues these policies and many European laws have created too easy a haven for them, perhaps even detracting from a truer spirit of Western human rights and refuge.   At their worst, such policies do little to prevent immigrants from maintaining their own religious beliefs, cultural practices and languages of origin (often in ghettoes, which is arguably the greatest moral failure here).  They also devalue the deeper reasons immigrants come in the first place. 

The problem poses a sort of identity crisis for many European societies, as well as many real and serious sources of social and political conflict.

I would argue that our author wants to keep in mind some of the same ideals that Roger Scruton does (marriage, the role of the church, the moral depths of religious thinking) and their influence on the institutions that can maintain those freedoms and reasons. 

On that note, Scruton doesn’t necessarily jump into bed with the hard European right (where violent nationalism and racial identity lurk), but he finds the current public sentiment and an excessive multi-culturalism driving public policy and law-making to not be sufficient in handling the problem.

Though continuing further…there is an argument in this article (and in some of Scruton’s thinking) that leads back to religious idealism, and perhaps doesn’t do enough to avoid a confrontation between say…Christian/Jewish religious idealism and Islamic religious idealism.

Addition:  I should add that the goal is not to prevent immigrants from maintaining their own religious beliefs, cultural practices, and languages, but to give them good reasons to adopt those of their chosen countries.   Some policies may serve the ideological interests of some citizens, but do little to help the actual immigrants integrate.  Another fault line where such tension can be observed could be in Sarkozy’s recent statements to ban the full body Muslim garments worn by a few women in public. 

See Also On This Site:  From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…Low European Birth Rates In The NY Times: No Babies?

From RealClearPolitics: Sotomayor’s Aversion To Impartiality

Full post here.

We’re discussing libertarianism here, so what about a libertarian opinion on Sonia Sotomayor?

Wasn’t she letting her guard down a little, giving the La Raza crowd a bit of what it wanted?

Point taken, but the argument isn’t so impressive.

From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism

A few key arguments Scruton makes:

1.  The drive to expunge religion from public life in America is, in some cases, being pursued with a zeal that is not un-religious.  It is a largely unreasonable interpretation of the no-establishment clause.

I would even suggest that the argument allows that if such secularists are successful, they could open the door to government bloat (after all, welfare is given out for moral and moralistic reasons) if the church were gotten out of the way.    

Against this,  I think many reasonable people would say that they just want to keep religion out of politics for the sake of both, and that they’re not attacking religion per se, but merely adhering to a reasonable interpretation of the no-establishment clause.  Scruton is casting light on the zealots here.  Religious belief however, especially Christian belief in the U.S., really isn’t going anywhere.

2.  Scruton also argues that under the banner of secular multiculturalism, the extremely intolerant views of some Muslims, and the religious idealism of most Muslims (and all true religious believers) has found too free a home in Britain.  For Scruton, the development of secular society and the rule of law is perhaps a uniquely Christian phenomenon (he makes the argument here).   The Christian doctrines that laid such groundwork are conveniently bashed while Muslims pour in from societies without such rule of law and a pretty frightening idealism (how much of this is due to being an immigrant is worth examining).  

One criticism I’d have against this view is that it’s uniquely British.   The tension between the British left (with more embedded socialist and Marxist groups) and the Church of England’s once dominant influence is arguably the kind of set-up the framers of the Constitution wanted to avoid here in America.   Obviously, socialism and Marxism came later and the argument would need to be further developed, but in returning to the doctrines of the church, strengthening Christian faith and submitting the individual will to the church are we finding the best way forward?

Philosophically, how do you justify the existence of God?

See Also On This Site: From The City Journal: Roger Scruton On “Forgiveness And Irony”/Roger Scruton In The American Spectator: The New Humanism/Repost: Martha Nussbaum Channels Roger Williams In The New Republic: The First Founder

From The New Perspectives Quarterly: Francis Fukuyama’s ‘Is America Ready for a Post-American World?’

Full essay here.

I’ve often admired Fukuyama because he thinks deeply and is a moral realist enough to realize that American influence abroad has a strong military component.  However, he’s also hitched himself to the neocon wagon, which then hitched itself to the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq…and well..it’s not a good time to be seen anywhere near those wagons.   I don’t think this invalidates much of Fukuyama’s thinking, but he’s been busy looking in other directions.

So, where does Fukuyama see us headed?

“This is not a story about American decline. The US remains the dominant power in the world, but the rest of the world is catching up.”

Why?  In part because we owe a lot of countries money, and they’re earning and saving their own money:

“The People’s Republic of China has $1.5 trillion in reserves; Russia, $550 billion; South Korea, $260 billion; Thailand, $110 billion; Algeria, $120 billion. The little states of the Gulf Cooperation Council collectively have about $300 billion in reserves. Saudi Arabia just by itself is saving money at the rate of approximately $15 billion every single month as a result of energy exports.”

Another of Fukuyama’s reasons is that we’re still operating on dated models of statecraft: 

“We are trying to use an instrument—hard military power—that we used in the 20th century world of Great Powers and centralized states in a weak-state world. You cannot use hard power to create legitimate institutions, to build nations, to consolidate politics and all of the other things that are necessary for political stability in this part of the world.”

Yet, if we are in a weak-state world, we must work with our allies more closely, and I suppose this includes the U.N.  The U.N has problems and we are currently rationally pursuing much of our interest outside of it.  Also, the weak-state world is only part of the world.  Russia seems happy to try and re-live the cold war days by being weak enough to need to do so, and powerful enough to succeed in some ways.

Fukuyama goes on to argue that our biggest problems are of our own making and need our own solutions.  There are three that he highlights:

“…first, the diminishing capacity of our public sector”  

“…second, a certain complacency on the part of Americans about understanding the world from a perspective other than that of the US…”

“…third, our polarized political system that is incapable of even discussing solutions to these problems.”

He characterizes his 1st point by example of FEMA, The Department of Homeland Security, and other enormously inefficient public behemoths. 

The second is kind a vague moral chastizement of Americans for meeting their moral obligations as they did during the cold war:

“It is a scandal that in this monstrous new embassy we’ve created in Baghdad, we only have a handful of fluent Arabic speakers.”

I don’t know what to say to this, other than the fact that it’s a pretty bad argument.  

I suspect the many Arabic speakers we do have in America aren’t entirely integrated into our society enough to offer their services to fill that new embassy even if they wanted to (however much the equity ideologues insist that it’s so).  Bush has committed us to Iraq in many ways we didn’t, and couldn’t, forsee.   It’s important to note that Fukuyama himself has been distancing himself from Bush, the necons, and precisely those elements that have decided where our moral obligations are to be pursued.

The third point may be news to nobody:

“Polarization has put off the table serious discussion of how to solve some of these long-term and very clear challenges that every public policy expert understands.”

I’m pretty unsure as to what to do about this either.

See Also:  Fukuyama’s The End Of History

Related On This Site: Charles Krauthammer From March 2006: Fukuyama’s Fantasy…A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection…From Bloggingheads: Robert Kagan Discusses The U.N. Security Council…Fareed Zakaria BBC Interview: America In Decline?…Richard Lieber In The World Affairs Journal–Falling Upwards: Declinism, The Box Set…

Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain

Only On the Left In This Photo

Full post here.

Dalrymple (pseudonym of an English doctor) is concerned about massive immigration to London, but even more about the British response. He goes so far as to compare Britain unfavorably with France.

Britain:

“…is not an ideological state; it has no foundation myths that are easy to identify with…”

Remember the French Revolution? According to Dalrymple, the French ideological rigidity that came of it may be more useful for handling the ideological rigidity of many millions of Muslims on the outsides of Paris:

“Multiculturalism, that is, is not compatible with the founding Enlightenment mythology of France; assimilation, not integration, is the goal “

France can enforce assimilation through its laws…Britain can’t, apparently, and this puts it in a bind.  Its culture may disappear in these waves of immigration and it may not be able to stop it. 

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I’m not convinced, but I do think Dalrymple is onto something:

If liberalism (both British and American) continues to ignore much of its own legacy, its own intellectual and cultural traditions as well as its own history (as it follows the inexorable logic of multiculturalism, valuing all cultures and peoples) it will continue to be a liberalism that is unmoored and unrealistic..

Here in the U.S., I think this excess leads us to an angrier and more bitter ideological response from the right. The ensuing fight eats up political capital and common social ground. We divide. As a result, we can’t solve our problems with the same sensibility and reasonableness. Think border fence with Mexico.

See Also: Theodore Dalrymple In The City Journal: Atheism’s Problems which has an interesting critique of atheism as well.

Photo by: Jaap Stronks 

A Mexican Among The Minutemen

Very strong language. 

Here are a few thoughts.

1.  Nationalism can be mixed with racism, but is certainly not exclusively racist.  It seeks to define and by definition, include and exclude.  The minutemen seem to be obeying U.S. law and are perhaps seeking to change it within a very militant and narrow nationalism.  Are they effective?

2..  Some Mexicans (especially those of Indian descent) claim pre-European sovereignty to the land, and obviously threaten the current national boundaries…how they would establish this ideal is frightening to think about.  

3.  Of course, many of the problems of the Mexican economy and society as well as Mexican nationalism are being dealt with in the U.S through the influx of legal and illegal immigration…

Maybe your grandma’s out there?