Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Absolution at a Terrible Price?

These days I’m sitting around imagining how we night avert a cruel descent of our culture into both a moral and social cesspool, and quickly considering whether such reflection might not be utterly futile. For many years, George Will has written of a “coarsening” of the culture. Today, we might justly wonder if such language would amount to a enormous understatement.

Characteristic of the elation of many people at the election of Barack Obama was the recurring camera shot of an aging Jesse Jackson in tears. Now, Jesse Jackson has been derided as a “race pimp” and a “shakedown artist,” certainly not without cause. But, irrespective of his deepest motivations, Jackson was not alone among elder blacks who were overcome at the events in the light of their long experience with racial tension in America. Many years ago, I asked a conservative black friend how frequently he actually experience racial discrimination in our society. He responded that the last time he was reproached as a “nigger” was that very day in a parking lot. I think such things come from a tint minority in America, today. But, such a minority can and surely will shout abuse out car windows. Anyway, a black man of Jesse Jackson’s age and many like him doubtless genuinely feel the reprieve from a lifetime in which they saw and experienced the disfavor that was once widely accorded blacks in America. So have their children who have heard the stories and though maybe have experienced something different, have never seen it realized in such high hanging fruit as the US presidency. Similarly, American youth prized the opportunity to overthrow the most high-profile closed door of the history they have heard and read of. The plain fact is that the election could not have been won without a strong backing from white Americans generally who wanted to realize the ultimate absolution for prejudice they may have practiced or carried the blame for in public forums. I’m just a middle-aged, middle-class white guy, but I think I get it, and I understand and appreciate it.

Understand, I loathe the fixation on “race” that has pervaded social discussion for the entirety of my now 51-year-old lifetime. Strictly speaking, that distinction is a delusion. There is only one human race. Color does not imply another kind in humans any more than in animals. For the little that it’s worth, the black and white couples that I have known have produced children that were not only whole and healthy but extraordinarily beautiful.
Many will claim that “progressive” (now there’s a linguistic misappropriation) social and political action has induced racial conciliation. Now, many events indicate that propagaing an ethos via popular culture does move the disposition of the masses. There’s the aforementioned enthusiam for “green” technology as well as the enthrall with Barack Obama for whom the organs of popular culture purred. Mike Huckabee spoke of the popularly induced sentiment against smoking and for seat belts and motorcycle helmets.

But, I don’t need textbooks and magazines and television networks to inform me that racism is wrong. Traditional vehicles of decency and wisdom have done that for many millenia. Ironically, the much derided traditions of Judaism and Christianity were quite explicit about that from their foundations, irrespective of how individual adherents may have defied the instruction. I am a Christian. Christianity even today flourishes all around the world and I have watched the decency and fraternity of Christians from every culture and ethnicity. The first catalogued Christian outreach and conversion, noted in the book of Acts, was of an Ethiopian man. The earliest books of the heritage of Judaism (which Christians obviously recognize) instructed repeatedly to treat “the alien” with grace and decency. In that regard, we of those traditional faiths can say to the secular moralists, “Welcome to basic human civility.” By the way, I have long since voted for a black presidential candidate: a conservative one, of course.

If it genuinely works for them, a feeling of absolution is a fine thing, and I’m glad people may feel bertter. But in this case, such feeling was paid for at a potentially terrible high price. Unless conservatives can do something extraordinary, it is reasonable to assume that that price will be WAY TOO HIGH. Notwishstanding his ringing rhetoric (almost a requiste to leading a people to a dramatic move…or mice into a river, or lemmings off a cliff), in the content of his relatively unguarded words, Barack Obama is an exceptionally liberal man. A liberal friend, after asscertaining that I wasn’t only a cold, selfish, leg-biting, hair-pulling conservative, wondered whether I just had an evidently socially-induced need to be identified as a “conservative.” I care little about labels and am not known for a fear of disagreeing with anyone, my Christian and conservative fellows included. And this particular liberal is an exceptionally gracious individual, whom I like as well as some of my conservative friends and more than many of them. He’s also a very literate (a professional writer, in fact) person to whom one needn’t mind one’s diction.

But, call it what you like, to me conservatism is not about disposition or anyone’s dogma. It is about some very fundamental beliefs about objective obligations and human nature and its inclinations in interaction. It isn’t about what I like. It’s about what I believe are the facts of reality and what works. My conservatism isn’t about self-interest or identity. It’s about conviction rooted deeply in my perspective that could seemingly only be overthrown by an infection of chemical insanity.

Chief among those obligations and primary in America’s founding documents, is the right to life. And, as I always clarify, this is not just for the protection of those whose right might be violated. It’s about the civil integrity of the society that reveres that right. God takes care of the victims of abortion. In the big picture, these victims whose deaths like our own is inevitable in any case, are only spared te turmoil of passing through this earthly vale of tears. On the other hand, the society which practices, countenances and assimilates the practice of abortion…of the selfish putting of perceived personal amusement and convenience over the dignity of human life, including ONE’S OWN OFFSPRING! …is in a very bad way: civilly sick and declining. Only those of us who have read the musings of some morally impaired but logically consistent academics who have proposed a grace period to decide whether to keep a born baby alive can imagine a historic posture on abortion more extreme than is Barack Obama’s. Obama has expressed his eagerness to sign a federal Freedom of Choice Act. He has opposed a partial-birth abortion ban of the sort passed nationally and in every state where it was posed. As an Illinois state senator, Obama even opposed, multiple times mind you, a bill to require life sustaining medical attention for infants born alive after a failed abortion. In that solidly Democratic body, he was the only senator to do so and spoke out in his opposition. I’m not even fully in accord with all boilerplate Republican approaches to it. But on this morally and civicly crusial matter, a politician could really not get more extreme. But, that is far from all.

It is a great irony to me that many voters idenitified Obama as more able to deal with America’s economic difficulties. After the election, a large majority expressed confidence that Obama can help our economic situation. That makes no sense and is only one indication that our communications and education establishment have tremendously narrowed the American public’s thinking and historical awareness. That ignorance is particularly accute among our youngest and most media-dominated voters. The week before the election, Peggy Noonan said on “This Week” of these 18, 19, 20-year-olds that, “Not only have they never met a payroll, some of them have never been on a payrol. They live a lovely abstraction from reality.” Lovely or not, anyone who doesn’t understand that taxing and spending does not boost the economy, particulrly in economically difficult times, lives an abstraction from reality. Actually, I’m sure that Obama and most Democrars do understand this. But, they don’t care. Not only will these prescriptions not help, they are usually disingenuous. I think they don’t care because they want to keep power, and you keep power by keeping people down and throwing them crumbs. Obama will not improve the economy with the ideas he voiced in the campaign. John Kennedy was a Democrat who stimulated the economy. And, he did it with policies exactly the opposite of what Obama has proposed.

The tale is that Republicans favor the very wealthy. In fact, I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard “tax cut(s) for the rich,” referring to an across-the-board tax cut. If there is a 5% tax cut, who gets the bigger dollar cut, one who makes $30,000 or one who make $1,000,000. The first pays $1500 less. The second pays $50,000 less. That’s called tax cuts for the rich. But, Republicans rarely talk about the fact that the one who gets the $50,000 tax cut either spends it and makes work for vendors and their employees, invests it and makes work for people, or saves it and provides liquidity for lenders. Those things provide jobs for the former level of worker. When you tax the higher earner, you deprive the lower earner of work. That’s how an economy works. If government takes the money, the work is not provided and government passes a part (after it has taken a part) to those without the work.

That leaves out the fact that expanding government usually sides with large businesses, subsidizing them and maintaining their market advantage. This is what is known in command economies as “industrial policy.” That is economic policy for the entrenched wealthy and entrenched government. The victims are the rest of the peons who might otherwise aspire to achieve a level of prosperity, but in this systemwill not even have o, tax, ccasion to think about it. Recently, government has massively invested in formerly private large industries. I quickly predicted that automobile companies would follow. And so they are now lining up and in office Obama intends to oblige. Everyone wonders how Obama might implement these things, given the current economic conditions. But they can be the excuse for these actions, especially in light of the recent unprecedented federal intrusion into markets under a Republican administration and the decade of outrageous spending that it played a major part in.

One can hope that judicious people might soon gain office and to some great extemt extract government from the domain of commerce. But, I can’t imagine how we might repeal the damage that an Obama-appointed judiciary may well inflict on society for the remainder of my lifetime.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I"m am soooo glad you evil conservative fucks lost. :D

Anonymous said...

Thanks again for another good post. As before, your description of conservatism is one that I wish more people heard, understood or at least acknowledged. I get instead the liberal societal sense that religious conservative automatically means idiot, so all religious conservatives are viewed through that templet, and not an insignificant number of people who would be conservative act with shame, take the fiscal conservative/moral liberal stance, and invent oxymorons like "neo-conservative" in an attempt to be viewed as intellegent. Since when has intellegence and philosophy been tasked with making things obscure and un-intellegible? I'm guessing that if they ever read anything by greek philosopers, early church Fathers or Thomas Aquinas their heads would implode. Neo-sophism and neo-gnosticism are actually what we are up against.
Sometimes it is difficult to see things from out of our own times; I think it would surprise people to know how much of the extreme racism we have learned about in America is a result of our peculiar institution of slavery, the supposed rational scientific mindset trying to decide which races were more highly evolved, and America's eugenics movement, which is still alive and strong in a semi-hidden underground form. Sometimes it takes the form of race/ideological discrimination, as when a loving liberal co-worker declared that white trash evangelicals should not have the right to breed. She did not see the absolute danger to human freedom in anybody deciding for anyone else this right, because the end (triumph of her worldview and saving the planet from overpopulation) overruled the means. I do reserve respect for liberal true believers that choose to consume as little as possible and have no children for holding to their beliefs. It is like the difference between original hippies and the commercial status neo-hippies (bohemian bourgeois) that frequent Whole Foods (national chain natural food store) and buy exotic organic food flown in from all over the world. Much of the greenwash marketing is designed to appeal to that same need for absolution, and it really works. These stores were loaded with SUV's disgorging LL Bean clad ideal 2 career 2 child families with Obama and "too poor to vote republican" bumper stickers. I agree that despite the deep psychological/sociological tendancy to favor our own tribe and fear the other, Christianity has often (and officially) focused on salvation for all people, with missionarys expressly giving up their lives for that purpose. (I was actually hoping for Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze whom I have met in the last conclave, but am happy w/ Benedict XVI.) Christianity is a religion of love, that is wishing the good of the other, regardless of the color of the other, and sometimes this entails attempting to share the Good News of Salvation. And as evidence, the number of recognized non-white saints, from St. Martin DePorres to the Ugandan martyr Charles Lwanga is vast and growing.
As a Catholic, we have a sacrament of Confession for absolution. One of it's useful aspects is that a person is required to examine his/her conscience, admit and speek out loud their sins (all of them that they can remember), and leave with the understanding and assurance that they have been washed clean. It is one of the most joyful events imaginable, I suppose similar to an intraverted altar call. Leaving aside arguments between different denominations about which sacraments are valid, one of the points is that you are absolved of sins that you personally do, there is no collective racial or social responsibility for people who have never participated in slaving to apologize and feel guity towards people who have never been slaves. (Obama, from a Kansas white family and Kenyan father, is actually more likely to fall into the slaver than the slavee). This is a cop-out to avoid facing their own personal sins- its much easier and less painful to confess to sins that other people did because it leaves your own idealized self image intact! And Jesse Jackson, even if he could grant absolution, never will because as we have just experienced, that felling of guilt is a great instrument of power. They have paid a terrible price for something that will not profit them. Outside of God there is no absolution, and that nagging doubt will always be there, surfacing in the elitist pride noticed in this last election "thank God I am not like other men, liars, cheats, thieves, adulterer's, or even like this tax collector". It is an attempt at self reassurance.
I am ashamed that the majority of Catholics voted for Obama, but take some comfort that the majority of them that take their faith seriously and actually go to Mass and Confession voted for life. The democrats have long been the party of bad catholics.
I am afraid that Mike Huckabee is going to have a substantial problem with the Catholic vote, and if I have any insights I will try to direct them to his site. Strategically this is serious, and quite frankly even I have to look beyond my relexive unfavorable reaction to someone that speaks in the rhetorical style of a baptist preacher (having heard too many whore of Babylon comments and "Left Behind" echos) to look at actual policies. This will have to be handled very carefully, but even if it is, his enemys will attempt to magnify any comment by the Bob Joneses or even Dr Laurence White (judging by other things still floating around attached to your name). The northern/southern/western tricotomy in the republican party is going to be a problem too.
Sorry, I didn't mean this comment to be this long, but you do have thought provoking posts.

Anonymous said...

dirtyfilthy.net

Do you assume that all conservatives are evil? I'm pretty sure that there are generally decent liberals and conservatives, and generally corrupt ones as well.

Secondly, are you happier that conservatives lost (many systematic conservatives weren't exceptionally enthralled with McCain, btw) or that something good is going to happen to America?

If the latter, can you suggest what that might be beyond oft-repeated and vacant generalities like "hope" and "change?"

By the way, I see you have an exceptional gifting of diction.

Anonymous said...

Borghesius:

dirtyfilthy had a more colorful description of conservatives than "stupid." Judging by the altitude of his diction, I should not be surprised if he, like so many liberal Internet travelers, has no idea what the word "neoconservative" denotes or how or in whom it originated. For them, "neoconservative" is just a pseudo-informed epithet.

These people seem also non-cognizant of the fact that slavery was a worldwide phenomenon in history and is still practiced in places. And "racism" is also universal, though there is really only one race. But discomfort with difference exists across cultures in the world. Slavery certainly was an awful practice and in defiance of the stated ideals of The Founders as Lincoln expressed ("A house divided against itself...") I'm just saying that that human audacity was not unique to America, where in fact it was usually but not always relatively gentle.

I did a relatively intense study of Catholicism a few years ago, which was very enlightening and instructive. I conclude that we are as one of my Catholic friends expressed it to me: "separated brethren." It is unfortunate when some don't see it that way. I wish more would and that in fact, we would act to minimize the degree of separation. In fact, persecution of Christians will likely move Christians to acknowledge a fraternity that they otherwise might not have.

If Mike Huckabee is ever to engage a national campaign again, he will have to go out of his way to resolve issues with more than one population. Frankly, Catholics would be the least of his worries, but I think he is perfectly accessible and obliged to them. I think that like myself he has no inclination to and disdains the "whore of Babylon" perspective. Myself, while my family did, I didn't even read the "left Behind" series. They did tell me that, while the story line was leading, the writing itself was not exceptional.

I would like to be clearer on the reference to things "attached to my name." Laurence White is a nearby Lutheran pastor, a national pro-life speaker and a pro-life Republican co-traveler.

I'll have to say this for Obama: I've never prayed as hard for my country, my family, and myself.

Anonymous said...

Larry:
Separated Brethern works for me. From what I can tell believers of most faiths Christian Jewish and sometimes Islamic have more in common with each other on political than with modern secular relativists.
Specific reference was to a post by Stephen Mahoney on Campaign2008Victory which appeared when I first googled your name to locate your blog. I'm relatively new at this and have not fully developed the ability to ignore un-informed comments, although I will ignore dirtyfilthy.

Anonymous said...

Broghesius:

Stephen Maloney is someone who has operated several Blogs who in fact, contacted me in July of 2007 when he was part of an early movement to win attention for Sarah Palin to be selected as the VP running-mate of whomever won the Republican nomination. And, he wanted to curry my interest as I was listed on Mike Huckabee's Blogroll.

I looked at her record and bio online and was impressed with it in addition to her character and visage and agreed that I would hold her name up if Huckabee were to win the nomination. Of course he didn't, but one way or another obviously, McCain saw what we had seen over a year before.

He and a few others were a loooong way ahead of the curve on that one. And, BTW, he is now operating a Blog promoting Palin for President in 2012 at http://draftpalin2012.blogspot.com.

Based on other expressed focus on Palin appears to derive more from his conviction that Republicans must broaden their appeal to women, minorities and traditionally non-Republican constituencies than with he assertive pro-life conservative disposition, though he is agreeable and certainly not hostile. I am pretty assertive about both objectives. BTW, Stephen Maloney and I are allies. He even contacted me by telephone recently.

The comment you cite occurred at the time when Stephen was advocating for a different Republican candidate than I was. As the old saying goes, "politics ain't beanbag." As the field narrowed, he moved to McCain and when he secured the nomination, so did I...and Huckabee, for that matter. I myself, have a history that included criticism and abandonment of The Republican Party, including pretty assertive criticism of McCain and his reasoning. But I suspect I backed him for reasons not entirely separate from Mike Huckabee's.

I supported McCain because of 1) my perception of his character, 2) his pro-life record and statements, 3) his exceptionally strong record on spending control, where Bush and recent Republicans had been exceptionally weak, 4) his strong history and disposition with regard to the defense of America and its interest and values around the world, and 5) the typical old Republican argument that I had disdained but seemed critically acute with respect to both the times and Barack Obama specifically: I felt we literally could not afford to have Barack Obama as President. Well, we shall certainly see and irrespective of the resignation and resolve of so many Republicans to move forward in the hope of better days, I must say that I am not so sanguine about the hopes for recovery from the critical damage that Obama and a Democrat Congress might inflict.

As for Palin specifically, as I said, I like her rather a lot. Before considering other Palin questions, I should say first that her marked ability to enthuse the base and draw crowds and attention is something the too-often foolish Republican Party would be particularly so to ignore.

Lastly with respect to Palin's critics: As for liberal critics who simply disparage conservatives generally, that's a big subject that is part of the overall discussion and is immediately interesting to me only to the extent that I wish they thought differently and would consider another perspective beyond the idea that conservatives are "evil," which is ironic in that most secularist liberals deny any transcendant reality such as "evil."

But, I am interested and have commented on the criticisms of many who are acknowledged as "conservative" such as David Brooks to name a convenient example for discussion. On this Blog, you can look up my comments subsequent to Brooks' assertion that Palin is unqualified and that he prefers conservatives who are people of letters and ideas (which to him appear to be inexorably coincident.

But in brief: one wonders to what conservative he refers, particularly in the recent Republican primaries. There is no well-known evidence that ANY of them have submerged themselves in conservative literature, though Huckabee has read and written many books. Many however, have a demonstrated ability to win voters, to lead, and to govern, Sarah Palin included and not just incidentally but rather exceptionally. It sounds as though the musings inside Brooks' idealistic coccoon are entirely divorced from reality.

Secondly, I have been strange enough and fortunate enough that I have read a few books and articles of both conservative and liberal bents. The greater part of that fact is that it has been amusing and applicable to ME. Beyond that, SO WHAT? It has little relevance to society as a whole.

This is somewhat related to the whole idea of "inexperience" most notably charged in relation to foreign policy. Again, this is foolish if not outright silly.

What experience the President requires is experience with human beings, which can be acquired in any manner of social organization, whether business, government, civic, non-profit or whatever. Mike Huckabee said of his experience as a pastor: "There isn't a social pathology that I can't put a name and a face to."

As I said before, people are people and what varies is not their manner but mainly the size and color of the marbles they play with, including in foreign policy. No state governor, which includes the great majority of US Presidents, comes to that office with a great deal of or usually ANY "foreign policy experience." What they have to apply is the wisdom and judgment about human beings to not beaken advantage of by others. Some have been and some have not. And government experience had nothing to do with it. I'll tell you: If I had in mind to take advantage of a US President, Sarah Palin is not the one I would wish to speak with. To me, David Brooks would seem to marinate himself in delusion.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the explanation. I also came to McCain after having supported (I think) four of the other candidates: Ohio's primary on the same day as Texas', basically allows me to vote after things have been decided, so this time I am trying to look at and influence the groundswell.
I agree that wisdom is more important than "letters", and have heard interviews of Sarah (being Sarah before handlers) that were quite impressive.

IntReviewer said...

Glad that liberals communicate with such uplifting rhetoric. Makes thrills go up my leg. Ironically, his response was to a post that outlined points of agreement with liberal concerns, although disagreeing with liberal solutions.

Great post.

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