"Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other." William Tecumseh Sherman speaking about Abraham Lincoln in his Memoirs of William T. Sherman
There is no American who is more beloved than Abraham Lincoln. A remarkable fact considering that he made war on half of this country and where many still despise the him.
Some modern day scholars have tried to play the role of iconoclast and tear down the hallowed image we have of the benevolent, but resolute President who lead us through out nation's darkest hour.
They accuse President Lincoln of being a racist because he believed that the black man was intellectually inferior to the white man. Of course the fact that this was the prevailing belief amongst whites in mid-19th century America plays no bearing upon their argument. Lincoln also did think about the issue of mental inferiority and whether blacks degraded social status had anything to do with this perceived difference in intellect.
It is also mentioned that the Emancipation Proclamation did not set all the slaves free, just those in the states in rebellion. They use this as a criticism of Lincoln when in fact it was the only thing Lincoln could have done. To order all to be free--including those of the border states--would have risked pushing those border states into the arms of the Confederacy. It was an politically smart move.
Another criticism levied at Lincoln was that he did not fight the war to set blacks free. This is true. He fought to preserve the Union. This of course, was the only thing he could do. Without a nation, he could not affect the change needed to remove the manacles of slavery from the nation's body. Therefore, his ultimate goal HAD to be the preservation of the Union.
Abraham Lincoln was not a perfect man. No person is. Not Ghandi, not Martin Luther King, and certainly not any other famous figure of history.Human beings are flawed creatures.We have become so accustomed to viewing Lincoln as a marble stature that we forget that he bled, he cried, he laugh. In short, he was a MAN.
But what made Abraham Lincoln great--and for that matter, any widely admired person of history--was his ability to transcend his fragilities as a man to accomplish something that benefitted mankind. His selflessness in his service to this nation, his magnanimity towards his foes, and his political genius in dealing with the variety of characters in his cabinet, in the army, congress, and the general population.
If Lincoln failed, he would have gone down in history as one of the worst Presidents. But he did not. This most unlikely of Presidents( he served but one term in the US House of Representatives to go along with a few terms in the Illinois House) became our greatest President. How lucky we were.
Greatness is sometimes thrushed upon a man by the circumstances in which he is thrown into. For Lincoln, that challenge was the Civil War. Fortunately for us, he proved to be the equal to this daunting task.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
The troublesome issue of genocide..
On the 9th of December 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This treaty legalized Genocide and made violations of it punishable by force of law. The man responsible for the creation of the term "genocide" and the pursuit of codifying it was a Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin.The word genocide is the synthesis of the Greek genos(family) and the latin -cide(killing).
Article Two of the convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
From January of 1951 on, this law has been on the books. As anyone who read kept on current events or has a basic knowledge of the history of the second half of the 20th century and the beginnings of the 21st knows, this has not prevented the malevolently inclined from butching millions upon millions of people for whatever reason they deem adequate to justify their bloodlust.
It seems that neither the the United States or the rest of the "civilized" world seem able or more likely, interested in preventing such man made catastrophes from happening. The world stood by while the Khmer Rouge murdered 1.76 million cambodians, 100,000 East Timorians were killed by the occuyping indonesian army, the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnians by the Serbs in Srebanica, and the deaths of 800,000 Tutsis' by Hutu militiamen over a period of 100 days.These are just the most well known large scale atrocities in recent years
But if one looks at history, one may start to understand why few react. the harsh truth is that most of the powerful nations of the modern world have a history of mass killing. The United States and Europe devastated the Americas with losses in the millions, 8-10 Africans died on the voyage from Africa to the Americas in the 200 years of the slave trade, the US's subjucation of the Phillippines cost up to a million people their lives,the aborigines were nearly wiped out in Australia,the Germans nearly successful attempt to eliminate European Jewry, the Japanese attempted to annihiliate the Chinese in the Second World War, the Turks butchered a million Armenians and the world saw large scale massacres in areas stretching from Brazil to the Congo to Azerbaijani.
The renowned political theorist Hannah Arendt once wrote of the "banality of evil" when writing about Adolf Eichmann. She was referring to the willingness of people to do evil because the state deemed it as being acceptable to achieve an ends.(in this instance the removal of Jews from germany and Lebensraum for the german people)I think that when one looks at various organizations of men have reacted thoughtout the centuries that there is more than a modicum of truth to this. The ends do at some level justify the means.
This visceral understanding of what needs to be done is one reason, I believe, why so many groups do not to this day respond to threats of mass murder. That and the rather simple idea that people just don't care about what happens to someone thousands of miles away from them and who more than likely does not speak their language or have similiar physical characteristics.
What has clouded the issue of genocide further is that many nations either refute or do not acknowledge the charge of genocide. The Turks for example adamantly refusr to acknowledge that they murdered 1 million Armenians as well as hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Assyrians. So much so that Turkey made mentioning the genocide a criminal offense.
In the United States, most Americans are aware that the Natives were "wronged", but not the extent of it. Very few are aware of the destruction to the population of the Phillippines or even the fact that the United States was even there from 1901-13.
The same willful ignorance or obstinate refusal to admit a wrong is found all across the world in lands scarred by large scale killings . One shouldn't be surprised by this considering that few people ever want to admit to such embarrassing aspects of their nations history or the fact that even less violent examples of oppression are openly discussed.
Unfortunately, when they are discussed, it is used as a means to advance an political agenda. The left--particularly those influenced by Marxism--are particularly enthusiastic in singling out the abhorrent activities of the United States government over the past two centuries.The brutal and unspeakably inhumane treatment of the indigenous populations are the most pointed examples of how cruel and wicked western civilization and its chosen economic and political systems are.
Of course, this requires one to ignore the thousands of years of barbarous behavior from people from China to the Middle East to the Pre-European Americas.This truncated and ideologically driven version of events also choses to ignore the tens of millions who died as a result of decisions influenced by the tenets of Marxist-Leninism.
The sad truth behind all this is that genocide is not brought about by capitalism, racism, or any other "ism" one can think of. Those are just convenient covers for what some call the "dark side of man".Greed, jealously, love of violence...we've heard them all before. Until we figure out how to control or eliminate man's inner beast, we will continue to deal with genocide.
Article Two of the convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
From January of 1951 on, this law has been on the books. As anyone who read kept on current events or has a basic knowledge of the history of the second half of the 20th century and the beginnings of the 21st knows, this has not prevented the malevolently inclined from butching millions upon millions of people for whatever reason they deem adequate to justify their bloodlust.
It seems that neither the the United States or the rest of the "civilized" world seem able or more likely, interested in preventing such man made catastrophes from happening. The world stood by while the Khmer Rouge murdered 1.76 million cambodians, 100,000 East Timorians were killed by the occuyping indonesian army, the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnians by the Serbs in Srebanica, and the deaths of 800,000 Tutsis' by Hutu militiamen over a period of 100 days.These are just the most well known large scale atrocities in recent years
But if one looks at history, one may start to understand why few react. the harsh truth is that most of the powerful nations of the modern world have a history of mass killing. The United States and Europe devastated the Americas with losses in the millions, 8-10 Africans died on the voyage from Africa to the Americas in the 200 years of the slave trade, the US's subjucation of the Phillippines cost up to a million people their lives,the aborigines were nearly wiped out in Australia,the Germans nearly successful attempt to eliminate European Jewry, the Japanese attempted to annihiliate the Chinese in the Second World War, the Turks butchered a million Armenians and the world saw large scale massacres in areas stretching from Brazil to the Congo to Azerbaijani.
The renowned political theorist Hannah Arendt once wrote of the "banality of evil" when writing about Adolf Eichmann. She was referring to the willingness of people to do evil because the state deemed it as being acceptable to achieve an ends.(in this instance the removal of Jews from germany and Lebensraum for the german people)I think that when one looks at various organizations of men have reacted thoughtout the centuries that there is more than a modicum of truth to this. The ends do at some level justify the means.
This visceral understanding of what needs to be done is one reason, I believe, why so many groups do not to this day respond to threats of mass murder. That and the rather simple idea that people just don't care about what happens to someone thousands of miles away from them and who more than likely does not speak their language or have similiar physical characteristics.
What has clouded the issue of genocide further is that many nations either refute or do not acknowledge the charge of genocide. The Turks for example adamantly refusr to acknowledge that they murdered 1 million Armenians as well as hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Assyrians. So much so that Turkey made mentioning the genocide a criminal offense.
In the United States, most Americans are aware that the Natives were "wronged", but not the extent of it. Very few are aware of the destruction to the population of the Phillippines or even the fact that the United States was even there from 1901-13.
The same willful ignorance or obstinate refusal to admit a wrong is found all across the world in lands scarred by large scale killings . One shouldn't be surprised by this considering that few people ever want to admit to such embarrassing aspects of their nations history or the fact that even less violent examples of oppression are openly discussed.
Unfortunately, when they are discussed, it is used as a means to advance an political agenda. The left--particularly those influenced by Marxism--are particularly enthusiastic in singling out the abhorrent activities of the United States government over the past two centuries.The brutal and unspeakably inhumane treatment of the indigenous populations are the most pointed examples of how cruel and wicked western civilization and its chosen economic and political systems are.
Of course, this requires one to ignore the thousands of years of barbarous behavior from people from China to the Middle East to the Pre-European Americas.This truncated and ideologically driven version of events also choses to ignore the tens of millions who died as a result of decisions influenced by the tenets of Marxist-Leninism.
The sad truth behind all this is that genocide is not brought about by capitalism, racism, or any other "ism" one can think of. Those are just convenient covers for what some call the "dark side of man".Greed, jealously, love of violence...we've heard them all before. Until we figure out how to control or eliminate man's inner beast, we will continue to deal with genocide.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
The War on Terror and the limits of morality
The War on Terror has exposed a fundamental philosophical difference amongst Americans regarding the lengths the United States(or a person) should go to protect the nation from
harm.
Many people--mostly liberals--believe that if the US cannot prosecute a war within accepted guidelines of warfare than it isn't a war worth being fought. They believe that ideals come before safety.
There is also a belief being propagated that a war can be fought without doing morally reprehensible things.
President Barack Obama expressed his support for such an idea when he stated this in his inaugural speech: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers ... our found fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."
Conversely, there are those who will excuse Abu Ghraib, water boarding, and other ethically questionable acts in the name of self preservation. Laws and morality are of secondary importance to the imperative of guaranteeing the safety of the nation.People on this side of the ideological fence tend to be more conservative and/or distrustful of foreign peoples and institutions.
While both arguments have their plus' and minus' and that both mean well, I have to lean towards the "defense before morality" side. Survival and protection of ones family supercedes any set of values that one may have.We are afterall, animals.It is perfectly acceptable to respond to a grave threat to the health of their tribe, nation, or family, with violence.
Of course, i do not advocate responses that indiscriminately kill, do not directly assist the means to the end, dubious in terms of effectiveness, or hinder the war effort. A nation needs leaders who place emphasis on virtues such as practicality, intelligence, resilience, and determination. That is how we ultimately won the Second World War and how we will eventually win this one.
To that end we must set certain criteria for each action to be judged by. In my mind the standards should be three things: a) does it increase the chance of ending the war quickly and in a satisfactory fashion b) does it have a realistic chance of success and c) there is not a better option that meets standards of a and b as well as protecting innocent life.
Life at times makes us decide between two equally repugnant choices. No one hopes to ever be placed in such a spot, but unfortunately life presents us with such emotionially and intellectually wrenching decisions. It is under the pressure of circumstances such as these when we see the true measure of a leader's character.
Will he be a Neville Chamberlain and prove himself to be effete, weak, and irresolute. Or will become like Winston Churchill, a source of a nation's defiance, resolution, and strength? Chamberlain strove to prevent war, but in the process lost the credibility to lead England during the Second World War .It was only when a leader who was willing to make the morally ambiguous decisions that England was able to fend off Hitler's Germany long enough until the US entered the war.
Morality is something humans need. We should all strive to be moral. But there are times when morality has to take a backseat to the realities of life as a human. We simply cannot place ethics above the safety of our loved ones. The most fundamental "right" a person has is to defend themself. Everything else comes in second.
harm.
Many people--mostly liberals--believe that if the US cannot prosecute a war within accepted guidelines of warfare than it isn't a war worth being fought. They believe that ideals come before safety.
There is also a belief being propagated that a war can be fought without doing morally reprehensible things.
President Barack Obama expressed his support for such an idea when he stated this in his inaugural speech: "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers ... our found fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."
Conversely, there are those who will excuse Abu Ghraib, water boarding, and other ethically questionable acts in the name of self preservation. Laws and morality are of secondary importance to the imperative of guaranteeing the safety of the nation.People on this side of the ideological fence tend to be more conservative and/or distrustful of foreign peoples and institutions.
While both arguments have their plus' and minus' and that both mean well, I have to lean towards the "defense before morality" side. Survival and protection of ones family supercedes any set of values that one may have.We are afterall, animals.It is perfectly acceptable to respond to a grave threat to the health of their tribe, nation, or family, with violence.
Of course, i do not advocate responses that indiscriminately kill, do not directly assist the means to the end, dubious in terms of effectiveness, or hinder the war effort. A nation needs leaders who place emphasis on virtues such as practicality, intelligence, resilience, and determination. That is how we ultimately won the Second World War and how we will eventually win this one.
To that end we must set certain criteria for each action to be judged by. In my mind the standards should be three things: a) does it increase the chance of ending the war quickly and in a satisfactory fashion b) does it have a realistic chance of success and c) there is not a better option that meets standards of a and b as well as protecting innocent life.
Life at times makes us decide between two equally repugnant choices. No one hopes to ever be placed in such a spot, but unfortunately life presents us with such emotionially and intellectually wrenching decisions. It is under the pressure of circumstances such as these when we see the true measure of a leader's character.
Will he be a Neville Chamberlain and prove himself to be effete, weak, and irresolute. Or will become like Winston Churchill, a source of a nation's defiance, resolution, and strength? Chamberlain strove to prevent war, but in the process lost the credibility to lead England during the Second World War .It was only when a leader who was willing to make the morally ambiguous decisions that England was able to fend off Hitler's Germany long enough until the US entered the war.
Morality is something humans need. We should all strive to be moral. But there are times when morality has to take a backseat to the realities of life as a human. We simply cannot place ethics above the safety of our loved ones. The most fundamental "right" a person has is to defend themself. Everything else comes in second.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The revisioning of history and the loathing of America..
I was perusing amazon in order to find a good general history of the United States to refresh my knowledge of our nation's past when I came upon Howard Zinn's "A Peoples' History of the United States".
This is a book which has become quite popular on college campus' because it purports to tell the "truth"of the history of the US and not the alleged fictionalized version we had grown up on. The reality is that this book is as poor at telling honest history as the sanitized tomes the left condemns.
The Left with their alleged concern for the Hoi Polloi, embrace this type of revisionist tripe because it tells history how they see it. The left sees United States as a greedy, vindictive, and quite frankly, evil country. I wlll say that there is alot in our history which could lead to such an opinion: slavery, genocide of indians, eugenics, jim crow, abuse of workers by companies, the support of authoritian regimes for the sake of capitalism(such governments provide a stabile business friendly environment) political repression,imperialism, assassinations of political leaders, economic downturns....the United States has had a violent, unjust,
and turbulent past there is no doubt about it.
But is our past any different than that of any powerful nation? No. The truth is that what we have gone through as a nation is what any large and/or powerful country has been through.We are not unique in having a past a past checkered with great acts of evil as well as magnificent achievements worthy of boasting about. We have become what we have because of both to be quite honest.
It is this last part that makes people uncomfortable, I believe. People do not want to acknowledge that in order for an individual or a group of people to become rich and powerful, they will have to do certain things that will cause harm to another persons or peoples. I am not aiming to justify past unjust or inhumane practices, but only to explain the reality as I see it.
People like Howard Zinn say they want to tell the "true" history of this country, but in affect, all they do is emphasis the bad over the good(as opposed to the more traditional books which did the exact opposite) They also have the tendency to make moral judgments of historical figures by applying modern sensibilities to their actions of the past. Pure folly. You simply cannot remove a person from his or her time to judge them based on current ethical standards, and expect to be taken seriously.
Another trait of this kind is to display an inability to comprehend the fact that life sometimes demands tough decisions that look unsavory on their face, but in reality help one achieve their end. The left wing denunciation of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is particularly offensive in this regard. They condemn the bombing as being unnecessary(a very dubious assertion) and cruel(prehaps, but when one considers what the Japanese did to Americans, Britons, Chinese, Phillippinos, and many other south pacific people, my sympathy is greatly reduced)
The problem with the first accusation is that there was every reason to believe that the Japanese would have defended the home islands with as much, if not more ferocity than they did Okinawa. Each battle the US fought that got closer to Japan became bloodier and bloodier. Add to this fact that the Japanese government was dominated by the military and their Bushido code. They rather die than surrender. It was only when Emperor Hirohito's voice was recorded on record and playerd over loudspeakers that the Japanese finally quit. A last second attempt by rogue Imperial Army officers to impede this transmission was broken up by his palace guard.
Yet, if you read a left wingers version of this event it will portray as the United States bombing Japan as the act of a cruel, sadistic nation bent on inflicting more pain. The reality, of course, makes a mockery of this. The left doesn't want to admit that the invasion itself would have been extremely bloody(even though evidence points to the fact that it would have been) and that other alternatives such as blockading the island would have killed a great number of people as well.Nor will they admit that President Truman had no way of knowing what the Japanese intended to do. In their world he had to be a mind reader
They much rather focus on this extraordinarily violent end to an extraordinarily violent and cruel war, in order to "taint" the general perception that this was a "good" war. The intent of this is to damage the image of the United States and not out of any real concern for morality. (How any truly moral person can select one event out of 6 years of endless acts of inhumanity is beyond me. The whole war was barbaric. That is war.) This is only one of many instances of where they warp history for their own designs.
The left's goal in all this is not to tell the truth, but to offer a partisan version of the truth. They like to think that they are speaking for the masses who did not have a voice, but in actuality they are only speaking for either the embittered and uninformed or persons who think like themselves. American history is a history balanced by the cruelty of slavery with the selflessness
of the underground railground; by the inhumanity of the white man towards the native americans with the natives showing the first europeans how to survive; by the ugly racism of the south with the inspiring words and deeds of Martin Luther King Jr and his compatriots.
American history is a story impacted as much by its villians as its heroes. Without either one, we wouldn't be what we are today. To truly love and revere this country, one must be able to honestly deal with the ugly as wellas the beautiful side of this nation. In order to do that, we must have historians to tell the whole truth and not just one part of it.
This is a book which has become quite popular on college campus' because it purports to tell the "truth"of the history of the US and not the alleged fictionalized version we had grown up on. The reality is that this book is as poor at telling honest history as the sanitized tomes the left condemns.
The Left with their alleged concern for the Hoi Polloi, embrace this type of revisionist tripe because it tells history how they see it. The left sees United States as a greedy, vindictive, and quite frankly, evil country. I wlll say that there is alot in our history which could lead to such an opinion: slavery, genocide of indians, eugenics, jim crow, abuse of workers by companies, the support of authoritian regimes for the sake of capitalism(such governments provide a stabile business friendly environment) political repression,imperialism, assassinations of political leaders, economic downturns....the United States has had a violent, unjust,
and turbulent past there is no doubt about it.
But is our past any different than that of any powerful nation? No. The truth is that what we have gone through as a nation is what any large and/or powerful country has been through.We are not unique in having a past a past checkered with great acts of evil as well as magnificent achievements worthy of boasting about. We have become what we have because of both to be quite honest.
It is this last part that makes people uncomfortable, I believe. People do not want to acknowledge that in order for an individual or a group of people to become rich and powerful, they will have to do certain things that will cause harm to another persons or peoples. I am not aiming to justify past unjust or inhumane practices, but only to explain the reality as I see it.
People like Howard Zinn say they want to tell the "true" history of this country, but in affect, all they do is emphasis the bad over the good(as opposed to the more traditional books which did the exact opposite) They also have the tendency to make moral judgments of historical figures by applying modern sensibilities to their actions of the past. Pure folly. You simply cannot remove a person from his or her time to judge them based on current ethical standards, and expect to be taken seriously.
Another trait of this kind is to display an inability to comprehend the fact that life sometimes demands tough decisions that look unsavory on their face, but in reality help one achieve their end. The left wing denunciation of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is particularly offensive in this regard. They condemn the bombing as being unnecessary(a very dubious assertion) and cruel(prehaps, but when one considers what the Japanese did to Americans, Britons, Chinese, Phillippinos, and many other south pacific people, my sympathy is greatly reduced)
The problem with the first accusation is that there was every reason to believe that the Japanese would have defended the home islands with as much, if not more ferocity than they did Okinawa. Each battle the US fought that got closer to Japan became bloodier and bloodier. Add to this fact that the Japanese government was dominated by the military and their Bushido code. They rather die than surrender. It was only when Emperor Hirohito's voice was recorded on record and playerd over loudspeakers that the Japanese finally quit. A last second attempt by rogue Imperial Army officers to impede this transmission was broken up by his palace guard.
Yet, if you read a left wingers version of this event it will portray as the United States bombing Japan as the act of a cruel, sadistic nation bent on inflicting more pain. The reality, of course, makes a mockery of this. The left doesn't want to admit that the invasion itself would have been extremely bloody(even though evidence points to the fact that it would have been) and that other alternatives such as blockading the island would have killed a great number of people as well.Nor will they admit that President Truman had no way of knowing what the Japanese intended to do. In their world he had to be a mind reader
They much rather focus on this extraordinarily violent end to an extraordinarily violent and cruel war, in order to "taint" the general perception that this was a "good" war. The intent of this is to damage the image of the United States and not out of any real concern for morality. (How any truly moral person can select one event out of 6 years of endless acts of inhumanity is beyond me. The whole war was barbaric. That is war.) This is only one of many instances of where they warp history for their own designs.
The left's goal in all this is not to tell the truth, but to offer a partisan version of the truth. They like to think that they are speaking for the masses who did not have a voice, but in actuality they are only speaking for either the embittered and uninformed or persons who think like themselves. American history is a history balanced by the cruelty of slavery with the selflessness
of the underground railground; by the inhumanity of the white man towards the native americans with the natives showing the first europeans how to survive; by the ugly racism of the south with the inspiring words and deeds of Martin Luther King Jr and his compatriots.
American history is a story impacted as much by its villians as its heroes. Without either one, we wouldn't be what we are today. To truly love and revere this country, one must be able to honestly deal with the ugly as wellas the beautiful side of this nation. In order to do that, we must have historians to tell the whole truth and not just one part of it.
Monday, January 26, 2009
"Americans are not your enemy"
President Barack Obama went on the al-Arabiya television network monday to initiate an rapprochement with the arab-muslim world. Mr. Obama spoke about the isreali-palestinian conflict, George Mitchell's assignment as peace envoy, and relations between the arab world and the US.
While i applaud Mr. Obama's attempt to reach out to the muslim world, the distrust is so deep that this may turn out to be a futile exercise.
There are fundamental differences between the west and the middle east that cannot be so easily glossed over. The west is liberal, educated, affluent, and technologically advanced. The arab world is the exact opposite.
How does one treat with a civilization that stones women to death for being raped? That does not permit open worship of other religions? That makes homosexual sex a capital offense?
The arabs-muslims are the heirs to an incredibly rich and productive culture. Literature, arts, medicine, warfare, science, and math have all been indebilty touched by the arabs.Yet, this is a people that finds itself at war not just with the west, but with itself.
The United States nor the West are responsible for the sad state of their religion and region. The fault lies with their leaders over a succession of generations who permitted their culture to decline so rapidly. Decadence, a loss of innovation stifled by religious dogma, and incompetence at the top lead to their loss of power and prestige.
To find their most ardent foe they only need to look into the mirror.
While i applaud Mr. Obama's attempt to reach out to the muslim world, the distrust is so deep that this may turn out to be a futile exercise.
There are fundamental differences between the west and the middle east that cannot be so easily glossed over. The west is liberal, educated, affluent, and technologically advanced. The arab world is the exact opposite.
How does one treat with a civilization that stones women to death for being raped? That does not permit open worship of other religions? That makes homosexual sex a capital offense?
The arabs-muslims are the heirs to an incredibly rich and productive culture. Literature, arts, medicine, warfare, science, and math have all been indebilty touched by the arabs.Yet, this is a people that finds itself at war not just with the west, but with itself.
The United States nor the West are responsible for the sad state of their religion and region. The fault lies with their leaders over a succession of generations who permitted their culture to decline so rapidly. Decadence, a loss of innovation stifled by religious dogma, and incompetence at the top lead to their loss of power and prestige.
To find their most ardent foe they only need to look into the mirror.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The moral quandry that is abortion...
A Vatican official on saturday harshly criticized President Barack Obama's decision to suspend the "global gag rule" that banned the United States Goverment from sending funds overseas to Family Planning groups that promote or conduct abortions or distribute contraceptives.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who heads the "Pontificial Academy for Life", said this about Mr. Obama's action in the Corriere della Sera: "the arrogance of someone who believes they are right, in signing a decree which will open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life....What is important is to know how to listen... without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death."
Let me first comment on the statement by the Vatican official.The President HAS the right decide between life and death. He is the commander-in-chief. As such he makes decisions everyday that could lead to the deaths of people. I will also add that Mr. Obama is not the one making the decision to abort an fetus. That it burden belongs to the mother. You cannot accuse him of something that he is not doing.
Secondly, the last sentence with the statement of "..locking himself into ideological visions.." is as applicable to Archbishop Fisichella as it is to President Obama.
As for the act of abortion itself. I am inclined to agree with their assessment of abortion. Any act that destroys an innocent life disturbs my conscious. But as with a decision to bomb or attack a town to protect your soldiers in a war that leads to civilian deaths, abortion is at times a necessary evil.
Rape, incest, and the life of the mother, are legitimate reasons in my opinion for terminating a pregnancy. I don't see how anyone can condemn a woman for choosing to abort a fetus that was created from violence, offers the potential of physical and mental deformities, or threatens the life of the mother.
Some do take an uncompromising stand with this issue. Like pacificists, hardline pro-lifers see the world in a black-and-white. Their world is one in which only ONE decision is correct, anything that deviates in the least is be denounced with the upmost vigor.
This puritanical approach to an issue suffused with morally ambiguity is simplistic and self defeating. Most people if asked straight forwardly will blanche at the notion of an abortion. But given time to ponder certain situations many(as with war) will admit that abortion should be legal. The act itself repulses, but the absence of the ability to perform an abortion in the aforementioned situations mitigates the innate aversion people have towards abortion.Right-to-lifers generate more sympathizers for people who support legal abortion by being so obdurantly hostile to any sort of compromise. Most people do not see the world in such an unyielding light.
Probably the most problematic aspect of this issue is not related to morality, but whether a person is allowed to have sovereignty over their body. Most people think that a person has a right to do what they want with their body so long as it does not threaten the safety of other human beings. Pro-Lifers approach it from the perspective that the fetus is another human so by attempting to abort the fetus the person is placing in harm's way another person. This is the crux if the issue. What exactly is an fetus? Is it an human? If not, than at what stage are we humans? At birth? Third trimester? That is a lingering question that is being hotly debated as I write.
The Pro Choice movement is driven mostly by feminists who resent deeply any intrusion into the prerogatives of women. Considering the long history of females being told what to do by their fathers or other male relatives, this bitterness is understandable.This not an issue of morality with pro choicers, but of rights. The right of a woman to determine if she wants to mate, when she wants to, and if iimpregnated, to carry the fetus to term or not.
Child bearing is one of the most fundamental aspects of being a woman. If she cannot control that element of her existence, than what can she? And if a government can control a womans' right to choose, than a government can tell anyone to do anything. That is something I cannot abide by.
Abortion as an act by itself, is an ugly, terrible thing. But when I weigh the moral and legal sides of the issue, I cannot support the banning of it without violating my conscience. This is an issue that is very much similiar to that of war in terms of morality. Both are acts of barbarity , but both are also at times necessary. If anything proves that life is cruel, it would be something like abortion or war.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who heads the "Pontificial Academy for Life", said this about Mr. Obama's action in the Corriere della Sera: "the arrogance of someone who believes they are right, in signing a decree which will open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life....What is important is to know how to listen... without locking oneself into ideological visions with the arrogance of a person who, having the power, thinks they can decide on life and death."
Let me first comment on the statement by the Vatican official.The President HAS the right decide between life and death. He is the commander-in-chief. As such he makes decisions everyday that could lead to the deaths of people. I will also add that Mr. Obama is not the one making the decision to abort an fetus. That it burden belongs to the mother. You cannot accuse him of something that he is not doing.
Secondly, the last sentence with the statement of "..locking himself into ideological visions.." is as applicable to Archbishop Fisichella as it is to President Obama.
As for the act of abortion itself. I am inclined to agree with their assessment of abortion. Any act that destroys an innocent life disturbs my conscious. But as with a decision to bomb or attack a town to protect your soldiers in a war that leads to civilian deaths, abortion is at times a necessary evil.
Rape, incest, and the life of the mother, are legitimate reasons in my opinion for terminating a pregnancy. I don't see how anyone can condemn a woman for choosing to abort a fetus that was created from violence, offers the potential of physical and mental deformities, or threatens the life of the mother.
Some do take an uncompromising stand with this issue. Like pacificists, hardline pro-lifers see the world in a black-and-white. Their world is one in which only ONE decision is correct, anything that deviates in the least is be denounced with the upmost vigor.
This puritanical approach to an issue suffused with morally ambiguity is simplistic and self defeating. Most people if asked straight forwardly will blanche at the notion of an abortion. But given time to ponder certain situations many(as with war) will admit that abortion should be legal. The act itself repulses, but the absence of the ability to perform an abortion in the aforementioned situations mitigates the innate aversion people have towards abortion.Right-to-lifers generate more sympathizers for people who support legal abortion by being so obdurantly hostile to any sort of compromise. Most people do not see the world in such an unyielding light.
Probably the most problematic aspect of this issue is not related to morality, but whether a person is allowed to have sovereignty over their body. Most people think that a person has a right to do what they want with their body so long as it does not threaten the safety of other human beings. Pro-Lifers approach it from the perspective that the fetus is another human so by attempting to abort the fetus the person is placing in harm's way another person. This is the crux if the issue. What exactly is an fetus? Is it an human? If not, than at what stage are we humans? At birth? Third trimester? That is a lingering question that is being hotly debated as I write.
The Pro Choice movement is driven mostly by feminists who resent deeply any intrusion into the prerogatives of women. Considering the long history of females being told what to do by their fathers or other male relatives, this bitterness is understandable.This not an issue of morality with pro choicers, but of rights. The right of a woman to determine if she wants to mate, when she wants to, and if iimpregnated, to carry the fetus to term or not.
Child bearing is one of the most fundamental aspects of being a woman. If she cannot control that element of her existence, than what can she? And if a government can control a womans' right to choose, than a government can tell anyone to do anything. That is something I cannot abide by.
Abortion as an act by itself, is an ugly, terrible thing. But when I weigh the moral and legal sides of the issue, I cannot support the banning of it without violating my conscience. This is an issue that is very much similiar to that of war in terms of morality. Both are acts of barbarity , but both are also at times necessary. If anything proves that life is cruel, it would be something like abortion or war.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
On January 20th, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States. In his address he stressed the need for the nation to heal the wounds of partisanship and to work together for the common good.Both are admirable goals, but based upon his early actions--the closing of Gitmo and the suspension of the Mexico City Policy(or global gag rule)--there is concern about whether he intends on pursuing the goal of bipartisanship in ernest.
To be sure, it is extremely early in his term--less than a week--but the American people have seen similiar promises go by the waste side.
President Goerge W. Bush pledged similiar cooperation with the opposition at the beginning of his tenure, but that soon fell apart after the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks upon New York, Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.The result of Mr. Bush's slide to the right was to create a poisoned atmosphere not only in Washington, but throughout the nation. The country was and is as divided as it was during the heyday of the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960's.
In order for President Obama to have a chance to succeed, he must transcend the bitter partisan warfare of the Bush Era and create an atmosphere that is conducive to respectful debate over the issues the nation faces.People in a democracy will never agree upon most things--too many different experiences and emphasis on varying values to expect that to happen--but it can be a nation that argues with a tolerance for another persons opinion.
A President can never expect to have the vast majority of the people on his side for very long--see how quickly Mr. Bush's popularity fell in the months after the invasion of Afghanistan--but what he can do is to minimize the vitriol by making the opposition feel as if they have a voice. Nothing aggravates the opposing aisle more than to be shutout of the governance of the nation.
Let's hope President Obama has learned this lesson from the mistakes of the past, because in these troubled times we need a everyone to be on board in order for the ship to be righted.
To be sure, it is extremely early in his term--less than a week--but the American people have seen similiar promises go by the waste side.
President Goerge W. Bush pledged similiar cooperation with the opposition at the beginning of his tenure, but that soon fell apart after the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks upon New York, Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.The result of Mr. Bush's slide to the right was to create a poisoned atmosphere not only in Washington, but throughout the nation. The country was and is as divided as it was during the heyday of the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960's.
In order for President Obama to have a chance to succeed, he must transcend the bitter partisan warfare of the Bush Era and create an atmosphere that is conducive to respectful debate over the issues the nation faces.People in a democracy will never agree upon most things--too many different experiences and emphasis on varying values to expect that to happen--but it can be a nation that argues with a tolerance for another persons opinion.
A President can never expect to have the vast majority of the people on his side for very long--see how quickly Mr. Bush's popularity fell in the months after the invasion of Afghanistan--but what he can do is to minimize the vitriol by making the opposition feel as if they have a voice. Nothing aggravates the opposing aisle more than to be shutout of the governance of the nation.
Let's hope President Obama has learned this lesson from the mistakes of the past, because in these troubled times we need a everyone to be on board in order for the ship to be righted.
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