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”

Repost-Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy

D’Souza is a Christian, and while debating Daniel Dennett at Tufts University, he brings up Nietzsche’s argument that God is dead.   From the depths of Nietzsche’s thinking, D’Souza argues he was able to see the coming crisis in Europe; that Europeans could no longer base their lives upon defunct Christian metaphysics without radically and creatively developing new thinking from the ground up.  Nietzsche also supposed that few if any would heed his call and realize the depth of this crisis, and so would likely lumber into the tremendously violent conflicts of the 20th century.

D’Souza then charges Dennett with a similarly shallow approach; over-simplyfying the metaphysical depths of Christianity from the relatively stable position of present day scientific analysis (which, as D’Souza’s argument suggests, grew out of Christianity itself).

D’Souza is a Christian, as mentioned, and Dennett not.   Nietzsche would probably have not thought much about either a 20th century man still resting upon a belief in God…nor a 20th century man analyzing such a belief from an understanding of science (as a philosopher, Dennett, with a background in science).  Nietzsche, of course, was almost entirely ignorant of science.

You might have to come up with more than that to get to Dennett.

Good debate.  Argument starts at 5:30:

See Also:  A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom:  The Nietzsche Connection…A Few Thoughts On Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts Of Liberty”…: A Few Thoughts On The Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy Entry: Nietzsche’s Moral And Political Philosophy

From Foreign Policy: Fabrice Pothier’s ‘Time For An Afghan Surge’

Full article here:

There are some good ideas, and suggestions at cooperation:

“For too long, the West has thrown troops and money at Afghanistan, without any clearly articulated objectives for the mission.”

And thinking on McChrystal’s report (who is also the head of NATO command):

“The real story is what the report only indirectly alludes to and what has been seldom debated until the electoral crisis: the Afghan political “context” in which Afghans will be given reasons to bet on their government rather than sit on the fence or support the Taliban.”

But it also seems to be a suggestion on how to pull out as gracefully as possible.   In fact, I suspect European public opinion may be even lower for the war right now that American public opinion.

But what about American national security interests?  European interests?

Islam is the main glue that unites the tribes together, likely deeper than most national interests.  The Taliban are Muslims, but also warlords.   This country has been in and out of war for decades.  It’s not exactly clear what Afghan opinion is of the Taliban, but I’m open to ideas on how to create a government that could work to serve the people in some way, as this is probably our deepest moral commitment to the Afghan people.

There is also enough anger and resentment across the Muslim world (for many reasons, some valid) that Afghanistan became a training ground for a radical, extreme and violent defense of Islam.   Such problems obviously can’t be addressed by U.S. and NATO military operations alone (think of all the points of contact), but neither are such problems fully addressed by a pull-out either…

…unless I’m missing something.

David Rohde At The NY Times: ‘Inside The Islamic Emirate’

Full article here.  (The second in a series)

Rohde was the NY Times reporter kidnapped for months inside Afghanistan and Pakistan.  He is writing a series of articles about his experiences.  Let this be a lesson to young journalists…risking your life can be worth it…

Also On This Site:  Dexter Filkins Book On Afghanistan And Iraq: “The Forever War”…Sarah Chayes On Afghanistan In The Boston Review: Days Of Lies And Roses

From World Affairs Via A & L Daily: Jagdish Bagwhati’s ‘Feeble Critiques: Capitalism’s Petty Detractors’

Full article here.

Bagwhati is a professor at Columbia, and claims Americans need to regain social mobility against the tide of current populists (on the left), thriving during the recession:

“Capitalism works best when those who do not succeed, and are buffeted by the vicissitudes of life, still believe in success—believe that those who do succeed put their wealth to good use, and do not merely engage in self-indulgence. Remember that the Calvinists and the Jains of Gujerat accumulated wealth but spent it not on themselves but on promoting social good.”

So we need moral lights (religious), or at least moral sacrifice on the part of those who are successful.  But, do you get into bed with organized religion politically as a practical matter?  How closely?  What about where individualism, religious idealism, and politics meet?

Bagwhati does have to adjust to the current political landscape a bit as well:

“We have to respond by improving education and by relieving anxiety through reforms that make health care part of a basic provision for the poor. These reforms strengthen capitalism. Without them, the economic populists will enjoy a success that they do not deserve.”

Politically, it’s very difficult to go against some form of health-care bill, and rising costs are a problem.  Do you have to beat the public option’s supporters at their own game?  

Also On This Site:  Amartya Sen In The New York Review Of Books: Capitalism Beyond The Crisis…A Few Thoughts On Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State and Utopia”…Martha Nussbaum In Dissent–Violence On The Left: Nandigram And The Communists Of West Bengal

Repost: From Homunculus Via Virtual Philosopher: Do We Need Another Reason?

Full post here.

…to frame our thinking in the science vs. religion format?

“So there is little to be gained from trying to topple the temple – it’s the false priests who are the menace.”

and

“If we can recognize that religion, like any ideology, is a social construct – with benefits, dangers, arbitrary inventions and, most of all, roots in human nature – then we might forgo a lot of empty argument and get back to the worldly wonders of the lab bench. Given the ‘usual suspects’ feeling that attends both the Reason Project and most Templeton initiatives, I suspect many have come to that conclusion already.”

And you’re probably among those many…

See Also On This Site:  Can you build a secular structure without the depths of religion?: Repost: Martha Nussbaum Channels Roger Williams In The New Republic: The First Founder…Daniel Dennet is trying to provide a solid base of science instruction for all Americans against the follies of creationism: Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy…Do you have to follow Nietzsche and the existentialists out to radical, romantic and potentially nihilistic individualism (and the profound denial of the existence of God and morality itself)?: A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection

From The Washington Post: Andrew Bacevich ‘Let’s Beat the Extremists Like We Beat the Soviets’

Full article here.

Bacevich sees one of the root problems as a religious one (he is religious himself):

“…a dispute about God’s relationship to politics. The proposition that the two occupy separate spheres finds particular favor among the democracies of the liberal, developed West. The proposition that God permeates politics finds particular favor in the Islamic world.”

Clearly, this is a problem, and a deep one.  Also::

“At its root, this is an argument about what it means to be modern.”

As such, in this view, Islam is just too backwards to create stable modern democratic states (with separation of church and state) as we know these states here in the West.  Our military involvement is a ship crashing against the rocks of a pre-modern, perhaps incapable-of-producing-a-recognizable-democracy Islamic society.  We need to pull back, live up to our ideals and freeze the worst of the militants in a cold-war like, ideological struggle:

“…the goal of U.S. national security strategy ought to be limited but specific: to insulate Americans from the fallout. Rather than setting out to clear, hold and build thousands of tiny, primitive villages scattered across the Afghan countryside, such a strategy should emphasize three principles: decapitate, contain and compete.”

The strategy is outlined a little further in his piece.  He is a welcome voice of dissent.

What would the strategy look like further? Is Islam incompatible with democracy?  Should we frame the discussion as a religious or ideological struggle? What are the dangers?

See Also On This Site:  Bacevich has been saying something similar for a few months now:  From Bloggingheads: Andrew Bacevich And Heather Hurlburt Discuss Afghanistan And Pakistan From Commonweal: Andrew Bacevich “The War We Can’t Win: Afghanistan And The Limits Of American Power”  

Christians are putting up a defense of the religious roots of separation of church and state, but will that drive us into unnecessary conflict?:  From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism

Speaking of Russia:  Obama’s Decision On Missile Defense And A Quote From Robert Kagan’s: ‘The Return Of History And The End Of Dreams’

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?

Poems By Robert Frost And William Carlos Williams-The Poet And The Crowd: Sunday Timewaster

Maybe I’m just confusing two human pursuits (poetry and politics), and doing justice to neither.  

I’d love to hear some comments though:

Neither Far Out Nor In Deep:

The people along the sand 
All turn and look one way. 
They turn their back on the land. 
They look at the sea all day. 

As long as it takes to pass 
A ship keeps raising its hull; 
The wetter ground like glass 
Reflects a standing gull. 

The land may vary more; 
But wherever the truth may be— 
The water comes ashore, 
And the people look at the sea. 

They cannot look out far. 
They cannot look in deep. 
But when was that ever a bar 
To any watch they keep

-Robert Frost

And now what about going to a baseball game, that fairly individualistic, uniquely American (descended from cricket), and usefully civilizing (fun) sport?:  William Carlos Williams focuses on the crowd:

“The Crowd at the Ball Game”

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them —

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius —

all to no end save beauty
the eternal -

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

for this
to be warned against

saluted and defied —
It is alive, venomous

it smiles grimly
its words cut —

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it —

The Jew gets it straight – it
is deadly, terrifying —

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives

day by day in them
idly —

This is
the power of their faces

It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail

permanently, seriously
without thought

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Are we witnessing a certain kind of nihilistic influence on Williams here (a progression from Schopenhauer’s will to Nietzsche’s will to power to most 20th century art?) that we don’t see in Frost?  Aside from the meter and rhyme, do you like one poem more than the other?

I’ll just put up some quotes I’ve put up twice before:

“Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. He who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or decisions possible or impossible to execute.”

-Abraham Lincoln

See Also On This Site:  Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’…From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’   Stanley Fish At The NY Times Blog: ‘The Last Professors: The Corporate Professors And The Fate Of The Humanities’  A Few Thoughts On Allan Bloom–The Nietzsche Connection

From Andrew Sullivan: Reader Response-Islam Undergoing A Reformation?

Full post here.

Thought this would be worth posting, a reader response to a comparison between modernizing Islam and the Protestant Reformation in England:

“In immigrant communities and in urban enclaves, they tend to be embarrassed by the clergy imported from their native lands or from the countryside…”

…along with this article via the A & L Daily, about the rise of Muslim creationism, or perhaps the attempt to fit all of the world (including the Enlightenment and post-enlightenment) into the Quran:

Full article here at the New Humanist.

Are we anywhere close to having enough Muslims in America that their religious conservatism finds allies with the religious and political right?

Too soon? A pipe dream?

From Julian Sanchez here, suggesting that if you’re living in an urban area:

 ”…if you’re a believer convinced that there’s one uniquely authoritative set of commands and practices that have been divinely ordained, this can provoke enormous cognitive dissonance—and prompt a search for the “true” version of Islam purged of all these regional variations. Insofar as this also purges the system of its evolved adaptations, the result is apt to be more radical, and potentially more dangerous.”

Once you become concerned, in some way, about Islam, you have to deal with its claims (and more radical claimants) more seriously (as in extending moral concern to the Islamic world).  Some of these claims are openly and directly hostile to the West, don’t care at all for separation of church and state, and are perhaps sympathetic ideologically, if not morally, to the radicals.

Some of this has to do with the influence of the West upon the Middle East, which is unjust in some cases, and Muslims have legitimate grievances.

So…surely extending moral concern to Islam is a possible way forward, but must that moral concern be religious?  must it be in conflict with Islam?  It surely must deal with the powder keg of occupied lands, relatively weak economies, and some pretty tribal areas under which Islam is the uniting glue, as well as some of Islams claims to religious conquest?

A pipe dream?

See Also:  From Slate: ‘In Aleppo, Syria, Mohamed Atta Thought He Could Build The Ideal Islamic City’…From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”…From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism