The following was originally posted a couple of years ago, but because the topic has become prominent in this election season, I thought it might be helpful to repost it:
News reports from around the country have revealed a great deal of discontent among parents with their local school board members who've introduced Critical Race Theory into their children's curricula. A number of defenders of CRT, like MSNBC's Joy Reid, have insisted that the objectors who criticize its implementation in schools and businesses don't really know what it is.
She and others of her progressive ideological leanings would have us believe that CRT is just a benign attempt to educate students about the history of slavery and Jim Crow, etc. It is that, of course, but it's much more than that.
CRT, its own advocates have written, seeks to radically revolutionize America in the name of ending "oppression." It rejects the values of the earlier Civil Rights movement such as the belief that people can, or should, strive to be "color-blind." Race is paramount. To not consider race in any interaction is an instance of "white supremacy."
CRT also repudiates racial integration because, proponents argue, it leads to "cultural genocide" as the minority group is inevitably absorbed into, and assimilated by, the dominant (white) group.
It rejects classical liberalism and the notion of human equality, substituting instead an emphasis on "equity," i.e. the idea that if there are disparities between races in any metric such as mortality rates, life expectancies, incarceration rates, disciplinary actions in schools, etc. they are necessarily the consequence of racism. No other explanation is allowed.
CRT rejects logical reasoning, objectivity, standpoint neutrality and fairness in discussions about race as "white values," and the attempt to adopt these values by People of Color (POC) is to adopt whiteness and to betray one's own race by tacitly affirming the superiority of white values to the values of the oppressed class.
It furthermore dismisses the classical liberal ideals of freedom of speech and the principle of blind justice. These ideals, too, are "white."
Its emphasis is on the subjective "lived experience" of POC. Their stories are self-validating. To question them is to engage in an act of white supremacy or racism. The idea that truth is objective is rejected. Knowledge is experiential and feelings are self-validating.
Science and reason are tainted by "whiteness." Statistics are meaningless if they conflict with what a member of the "oppressed class" feels deep in her soul to be true.
It also teaches that whites, and only whites, are inherently racist, and no matter how hard they may try, they're helpless to expunge the stain. All they can do is submit to the moral superiority of the oppressed, do some kind of penance and plead for forgiveness, which, if it is granted at all, is only tentative.
Moreover, according to CRT the structures of our society are irremediably saturated with racism and must be torn down. What will replace them, they don't know or say, but, like the Jacobins in 1789 and the Bolsheviks in 1917, it's enough at this point to destroy the old order. The new non-racist order will somehow arise of itself.
Further, anyone who benefits from this "structural racism" is ipso facto a racist and if you're not actively seeking to topple these racist structures and institutions, you're also a racist. "Whiteness" refers to anyone who benefits from the norms, values and structures of society regardless of the beneficiary's skin tone. If you're black, but you integrate into the white status quo then you're white regardless of how much melanin your body produces.
But don't take my word for any of this. Instead, watch this video produced by a very bright young man who did his homework and dug into the original sources. His name is Ryan Chapman, and he presents the main points of CRT in a dispassionate, objective fashion that CRT proponents would doubtless dismiss because, after all, Chapman is a white person seeking to be objective, neutral and fair.
Even so, the video is quite good and is a very helpful explication of what the major figures in CRT are themselves saying about it. Maybe Joy Reid should watch it:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Indigenous Peoples Day
A student came across this post from Columbus Day 2019 and suggested that it'd be worthwhile to run it again this year. I concurred so here it is, a day late:
Yesterday was Columbus Day here in the U.S., past observances of which have elicited protests and disdain for the savage legacy of early European conquerors. The topic, in fact, brings to mind a stomach-churning book I read several years ago titled The Destruction of the Indies by a Spanish priest named Bartholomo de Las Casas. The book is an eyewitness account of the horrors inflicted upon the native American people in the West Indies by the Spaniards in the 16th century.
I thought of that book when I read of people who see Columbus as the initiator of the terrible oppression inflicted upon native Americans. I think the record regarding Columbus himself is a bit ambiguous, and I don't have too much sympathy for those who wish to efface his memory. Indeed, it's easy to suspect some of them of ulterior motives, but, be that as it may, neither have I much sympathy for those who wish to replace Columbus Day with what they're calling "Indigenous Peoples Day."
In the first place, there are no indigenous people, or if there were, they're lost to history. The Indians the Spaniard explorers encountered and often massacred had themselves driven out, slaughtered or assimilated other groups who preceded them hundreds, or even thousands, of years before.
But more importantly, if the Spanish Conquistadors were unimaginably savage and cruel, and they certainly were, many of the Indians they conquered (though not all) were their equals in barbarity. Mel Gibson's movie Apocalypto illustrates this disturbingly well. So does an essay by Michael Graham at The Federalist.
About the Indians the Spanish encountered in the New World Graham writes:
If Europeans have managed to dominate and oppress others throughout much of the last millenium or so it's not because they're more evil than others but because for the last thousand years they've been more technologically advanced. Every other group has behaved in exactly the same cruel fashion whenever they've been more powerful than their neighbors.
The great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously observed that,
Yesterday was Columbus Day here in the U.S., past observances of which have elicited protests and disdain for the savage legacy of early European conquerors. The topic, in fact, brings to mind a stomach-churning book I read several years ago titled The Destruction of the Indies by a Spanish priest named Bartholomo de Las Casas. The book is an eyewitness account of the horrors inflicted upon the native American people in the West Indies by the Spaniards in the 16th century.
I thought of that book when I read of people who see Columbus as the initiator of the terrible oppression inflicted upon native Americans. I think the record regarding Columbus himself is a bit ambiguous, and I don't have too much sympathy for those who wish to efface his memory. Indeed, it's easy to suspect some of them of ulterior motives, but, be that as it may, neither have I much sympathy for those who wish to replace Columbus Day with what they're calling "Indigenous Peoples Day."
In the first place, there are no indigenous people, or if there were, they're lost to history. The Indians the Spaniard explorers encountered and often massacred had themselves driven out, slaughtered or assimilated other groups who preceded them hundreds, or even thousands, of years before.
But more importantly, if the Spanish Conquistadors were unimaginably savage and cruel, and they certainly were, many of the Indians they conquered (though not all) were their equals in barbarity. Mel Gibson's movie Apocalypto illustrates this disturbingly well. So does an essay by Michael Graham at The Federalist.
About the Indians the Spanish encountered in the New World Graham writes:
[I]f we really want to commemorate horrifying, unspeakable violence and oppression in the Americas, I’ve got the perfect holiday: “Indigenous People’s Day.”Nor was the bloodlust and oppression limited to Central and South America:
“Long before the white European knew a North American continent existed, Indians of the Northern Plains were massacring entire villages,” says George Franklin Feldman in the book Cannibalism, Headhunting and Human Sacrifice in North America: A History Forgotten. “And not just killed, but mutilated. Hands and feet were cut off, each body’s head was scalped, the remains were left scattered around the village, which was burned.”
When thinking of pre-Columbian America, forget what you’ve seen in the Disney movies. Think “slavery, cannibalism and mass human sacrifice.” From the Aztecs to the Iroquois, that was life among the indigenous peoples before Columbus arrived.
For all the talk from the angry and indigenous about European slavery, it turns out that pre-Columbian America was virtually one huge slave camp. According to Slavery and Native Americans in British North America and the United States: 1600 to 1865, by Tony Seybert, “Most Native American tribal groups practiced some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America.”
“Enslaved warriors sometimes endured mutilation or torture that could end in death as part of a grief ritual for relatives slain in battle. Some Indians cut off one foot of their captives to keep them from running away.”
Things changed when the Europeans arrived, however: “Indians found that British settlers… eagerly purchased or captured Indians to use as forced labor. More and more, Indians began selling war captives to whites.”
That’s right: Pocahontas and her pals were slave traders. If you were an Indian lucky enough to be sold to a European slave master, that turned out to be a good thing, relatively speaking. At least you didn’t end up in a scene from “Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom.”
Ritual human sacrifice was widespread in the Americas. The Incas, for example, practiced ritual human sacrifice to appease their gods, either executing captive warriors or “their own specially raised, perfectly formed children,” according to Kim MacQuarrie, author of The Last Days of the Incas.
The Aztecs, on the other hand, were more into the “volume, volume, VOLUME” approach to ritual human slaughter. At the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs performed a mass human sacrifice of an estimated 80,000 enslaved captives in four days.
According to an eyewitness account of “indigenous peoples” at work—in this case, the Iroquois in 1642, as observed by the Rev. Father Barthelemy Vimont’s The Jesuit Relations—captives had their fingers cut off, were forced to set each other on fire, had their skin stripped off and, in one captured warrior’s case, “the torture continued throughout the night, building to a fervor, finally ending at sunrise by cutting his scalp open, forcing sand into the wound, and dragging his mutilated body around the camp. When they had finished, the Iroquois carved up and ate parts of his body.”The lesson in all this is that there is no race of people who is exempt from the human inclination toward savage depravity. White, black, brown and yellow, no race is free from the stain of a deeply corrupted human nature. As Graham points out, racism, violence and conquest are part of the human condition, they're not endemic to Europeans.
Shocked? Don’t be. Cannibalism was also fairly common in the New World before (and after) Columbus arrived. According to numerous sources, the name “Mohawk” comes from the Algonquin for “flesh eaters.” Anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of “Cannibals and Kings,” reports that the Aztecs viewed their prisoners as “marching meat.”
The native peoples also had an odd obsession with heads. Scalping was a common practice among many tribes, while some like the Jivaro in the Andes were feared for their head-hunting, shrinking their victims’ heads to the size of an orange. Even sports involved severed heads. If you were lucky enough to survive a game of the wildly popular Meso-American ball (losers were often dispatched to paradise), your trophy could include an actual human head.
If Europeans have managed to dominate and oppress others throughout much of the last millenium or so it's not because they're more evil than others but because for the last thousand years they've been more technologically advanced. Every other group has behaved in exactly the same cruel fashion whenever they've been more powerful than their neighbors.
The great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously observed that,
[T]he line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an un-uprooted small corner of evil.What Solzhenitsyn said is true of every human being no matter what the race or ethnicity of the individual may be. In these days of identity politics that's worth remembering.
Monday, October 14, 2024
Ackman's Reasons
In the recent edition of First Things Liel Leibovitz notes how absurd the debates at stake in today's culture would've seemed to people three decades ago. In a column titled "The Screwtape Election" Leibovitz writes:
,Every voter inclined to vote for Democrats should read the whole list. I've only copied the first twelve here. He staes that he can no longer support the party to which he has donated multiple millions of dollars because their policies either would do, or already have done, the following:
(1) open the borders to millions of immigrants who were not screened for their risk to the country, dumping them into communities where the new immigrants overwhelm existing communities and the infrastructure to support the new entrants, at the expense of the historic residents,
(2) introduce economic policies and massively increase spending without regard to their impact on inflation and the consequences for low-income Americans and the increase in our deficit and national debt,
(3) withdraw from Afghanistan, abandoning our local partners and the civilians who worked alongside us in an unprepared, overnight withdrawal that led to American casualties and destroyed the lives of Afghani women and girls for generations, against the strong advice of our military leadership, and thereafter not showing appropriate respect for their loss at a memorial ceremony in their honor,
(4) introduce thousands of new and unnecessary regulations in light of the existing regulatory regime that interfere with our businesses’ ability to compete, restraining the development of desperately needed housing, infrastructure, and energy production with the associated inflationary effects,
(5) modify the bail system so that violent criminals are released without bail,
(6) destroy our street retailers and communities and promote lawlessness by making shoplifting (except above large thresholds) no longer a criminal offense,
(7) limit and/or attempt to limit or ban fracking and LNG so that U.S. energy costs increase substantially and the U.S. loses its energy independence,
(8) promote DEI ideologies that award jobs, awards, and university admissions on the basis of race, sexual identity and gender criteria, and teach our students and citizens that the world can only be understood as an unfair battle between oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressors are only successful due to structural racism or a rigged system and the oppressed are simply victims of an unfair system and world,
(9) educate our elementary children that gender is fluid, something to be chosen by a child, and promote hormone blockers and gender reassignment surgeries to our youth without regard to the longer-term consequences to their mental and physical health, and allow biological boys and men to compete in girls and women's sports, depriving girls and women of scholarships, awards, and other opportunities that they would have rightly earned otherwise,
(10) encourage and celebrate massive protests and riots that lead to the burning and destruction of local retail and business establishments while at the same time requiring schools to be shuttered because of the risk of Covid-19 spreading during large gatherings,
(11) encourage and celebrate anti-American and anti-Israel protests and flag burning on campuses around the country with no consequences for the protesters who violate laws or university codes and policies,
(12) allow antisemitism to explode with no serious efforts from the administration to quell this hatred,
I think it's fair to say that the Democrats have given us only two reasons to vote for them: 1) They'd do what they can to get the Dobbs SCOTUS decision overturned, and 2) They're not Trump. Based on the last four years and based on what they've told us so far in the current campaign, voters have no reason to think that what we'd get from another Democrat administration isn't just more of what Ackman lists above plus his other 21 reasons.
As if the elevation of Kamala Harris, to the role of national savior wasn't enough, we gawk at our media in amazement and witness debate that, not very long ago, would've seemed patently absurd. Should a nation have borders? Should it keep convicted felons from ambling in whenever they please? Should males announce themselves to be female, saunter into the women's locker room at will, and compete freely in women's sports? Should we have a police force, and if so, should our cops be permitted to uphold law and order?The Democrats have moved so far to the left so quickly that they're losing many of their most rational adherents. One example is Democrat megadonor and investor Bill Ackman who has declared that he's seen enough from his party. Writing on Twitter/X he gives 33 reasons why he can no longer support the Democrats.
That these matters, once uncontested givens in public life, are hotly debated - rather than, say, bothersome hypotheticals in some agitated adjunct professor's introduction to political philosophy class - is all the proof we need that this is a grave moment for our republic.
,Every voter inclined to vote for Democrats should read the whole list. I've only copied the first twelve here. He staes that he can no longer support the party to which he has donated multiple millions of dollars because their policies either would do, or already have done, the following:
(1) open the borders to millions of immigrants who were not screened for their risk to the country, dumping them into communities where the new immigrants overwhelm existing communities and the infrastructure to support the new entrants, at the expense of the historic residents,
(2) introduce economic policies and massively increase spending without regard to their impact on inflation and the consequences for low-income Americans and the increase in our deficit and national debt,
(3) withdraw from Afghanistan, abandoning our local partners and the civilians who worked alongside us in an unprepared, overnight withdrawal that led to American casualties and destroyed the lives of Afghani women and girls for generations, against the strong advice of our military leadership, and thereafter not showing appropriate respect for their loss at a memorial ceremony in their honor,
(4) introduce thousands of new and unnecessary regulations in light of the existing regulatory regime that interfere with our businesses’ ability to compete, restraining the development of desperately needed housing, infrastructure, and energy production with the associated inflationary effects,
(5) modify the bail system so that violent criminals are released without bail,
(6) destroy our street retailers and communities and promote lawlessness by making shoplifting (except above large thresholds) no longer a criminal offense,
(7) limit and/or attempt to limit or ban fracking and LNG so that U.S. energy costs increase substantially and the U.S. loses its energy independence,
(8) promote DEI ideologies that award jobs, awards, and university admissions on the basis of race, sexual identity and gender criteria, and teach our students and citizens that the world can only be understood as an unfair battle between oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressors are only successful due to structural racism or a rigged system and the oppressed are simply victims of an unfair system and world,
(9) educate our elementary children that gender is fluid, something to be chosen by a child, and promote hormone blockers and gender reassignment surgeries to our youth without regard to the longer-term consequences to their mental and physical health, and allow biological boys and men to compete in girls and women's sports, depriving girls and women of scholarships, awards, and other opportunities that they would have rightly earned otherwise,
(10) encourage and celebrate massive protests and riots that lead to the burning and destruction of local retail and business establishments while at the same time requiring schools to be shuttered because of the risk of Covid-19 spreading during large gatherings,
(11) encourage and celebrate anti-American and anti-Israel protests and flag burning on campuses around the country with no consequences for the protesters who violate laws or university codes and policies,
(12) allow antisemitism to explode with no serious efforts from the administration to quell this hatred,
I think it's fair to say that the Democrats have given us only two reasons to vote for them: 1) They'd do what they can to get the Dobbs SCOTUS decision overturned, and 2) They're not Trump. Based on the last four years and based on what they've told us so far in the current campaign, voters have no reason to think that what we'd get from another Democrat administration isn't just more of what Ackman lists above plus his other 21 reasons.
Saturday, October 12, 2024
Paying Their Fair Share
Politicians are fond of telling us that the rich must pay their "fair share" of taxes, but "fair share" is almost never defined. What is the fair share of the very rich? Should they pay all of the taxes required to feed our voracious federal government? What percentage of the total tax burden would be fair?
Parts of the following are excerpted from an article by William McBride, Vice President of Federal Tax Policy. It may surprise you to know that according to the latest IRS data for 2020 the top 1 percent of taxpayers (about 1.6 million filers who earn more than $548,336) paid $723 billion in income taxes, or 42.3 percent of all income taxes paid—a larger share than the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined.
The top 5 percent of taxpayers (about 7.9 million filers that earn more than $220,521) paid in aggregate $1.1 trillion in income taxes, amounting to 62.7 percent of all income taxes paid that year.
I couldn't find more recent data but economists think the tax paid by the highest earners is even greater since 2020. According to White:
The next time you hear a politician demand that the rich "pay their fair share" ask yourself why they don't tell us what they think a fair share would be. Maybe the answer is because they know that the rich are already paying a very hefty share of the taxes collected by the federal government every year and that they're just demagoguing the issue.
Parts of the following are excerpted from an article by William McBride, Vice President of Federal Tax Policy. It may surprise you to know that according to the latest IRS data for 2020 the top 1 percent of taxpayers (about 1.6 million filers who earn more than $548,336) paid $723 billion in income taxes, or 42.3 percent of all income taxes paid—a larger share than the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined.
The top 5 percent of taxpayers (about 7.9 million filers that earn more than $220,521) paid in aggregate $1.1 trillion in income taxes, amounting to 62.7 percent of all income taxes paid that year.
I couldn't find more recent data but economists think the tax paid by the highest earners is even greater since 2020. According to White:
High income taxpayers also pay the highest tax rates, according to the IRS. The average income tax rate in 2020 was 13.6 percent.
The top 5 percent of taxpayers paid a 22.4 percent average rate while the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 26.0 percent average rate—more than eight times higher than the 3.1 percent average rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers.
The top 0.001 percent, or the richest 1,575 tax returns filed in 2020, paid nearly $71 billion in income taxes and had an average tax rate of 23.7 percent.
Friday, October 11, 2024
American Christian Nationalism
For some time there's been concern among many of our fellow citizens, especially those on the left, for what they believe is a threat to our polity from what they call "Christian nationalism." I've been perplexed by this concern, indeed for some folks it's even a fear, and have asked a few of my liberal acquaintances for a definition of this threat.
Unfortunately, "Christian nationalism" has proven to be a difficult term to define. Different people give different answers and often the definition reduces to something benign, like "patriotism" or "American exceptionalism," in which case one wonders what the concern is all about. Others define Christian nationalism as something more virulent but advocated by a relatively tiny fringe group, in which case one again wonders what the concern is all about.
Feeling the need to more deeply educate myself on this issue, I recently read Michael Austin's brief volume titled American Christian Nationalism in which he lays out five features of Christian nationalism culled from the writings of some of its proponents. He states that Christian nationalists adhere to most and sometimes all of the following five beliefs:
I personally agree with #1 through #4, and, depending on the definition of "nationalist," maybe #5, but Austin points out that there are those who call themselves Christian nationalists who urge implementation of #2 and #3 by force, if necessary. If that's what Christian nationalism is then I want no part of it, but I doubt that those who support the use of compulsion and violence are more than a small fraction of those who, like me, think that all these beliefs are anodyne and/or desirable.
Let me explain why I think each of these admits of a perfectly innocuous or even salutary formulation.
#1 I think this statement is manifestly true in the sense that the values promoted in the founding documents were explicitly Christian values. Some of the men who founded the nation may themselves have not been Christian but the values they sought to base the nation on were derived from the Christian worldview in which they were immersed. Justice for all, equality under the law, liberty, individual rights, etc. all arose gradually in Europe in a Christian milieu, and there's little doubt that our founders, though not wishing to establish a particular religious denomination, nevertheless were operating from Christian assumptions.
#2 Of course these values - justice, equality under the law, liberty, individual rights, etc. - should be promoted by our government. They should also promote the Christian values of compassion, peacefulness, concern for the poor, honesty, etc., and the government should seek to protect its citizens from vices like greed, lust for power, and tyranny that are expressly forbidden in a Christian worldview.
#3 Christians should seek to be involved in every area of culture and society. That's what it means to be salt in the earth. Why would any Christian think that any profession that's not inherently immoral should be off limits to Christians? We need more Christian influence in the world, not less.
#4 We have obligations of loyalty to those whom God has placed us among and those obligations radiate in concentric circles. First, is our duty to our family, to protect and advance their best interests, then we have a similar but secondary duty to our communities - our neighbors, our church, then a similar duty of loyalty to our nation and then to the world. To the extent that those radiating responsibilities are acknowledged or affirmed by Christian nationalism I fail to see the problem with it.
#5 Every American should hold the values stated above and enjoined upon us by a Christian worldview. Anyone, Christian or non-Christian can hold those values and if holding them, if adhering to what I've said about #1-4 makes one a Christian nationalist then I see nothing wrong with the term.
However, if someone wants to define a Christian nationalist as someone who believes that any of this should be accomplished through compulsion or violence then we part company. If someone believes that the government should actively promote specifically Christian doctrines and that those who don't accept them must be relegated to second-class status then he and I again part company.
So, when we hear people throw around the term "Christian nationalism" as either a threat to democracy or the savior of democracy, either derogating it or affirming it, we need to ask them what they mean by it, and, if what they mean is a resort to violence or compulsion in order to transform the country Christian into a Christian nation then we should distance ourselves from it but we might also ask how many people really hold to that view.
I suspect that, among genuine, thoughtful Christians, as opposed to nominal Christians, it'd turn out to be relatively few, and if that's the case I fail to see why anyone should see it as a serious or imminent threat to our national fabric.
Unfortunately, "Christian nationalism" has proven to be a difficult term to define. Different people give different answers and often the definition reduces to something benign, like "patriotism" or "American exceptionalism," in which case one wonders what the concern is all about. Others define Christian nationalism as something more virulent but advocated by a relatively tiny fringe group, in which case one again wonders what the concern is all about.
Feeling the need to more deeply educate myself on this issue, I recently read Michael Austin's brief volume titled American Christian Nationalism in which he lays out five features of Christian nationalism culled from the writings of some of its proponents. He states that Christian nationalists adhere to most and sometimes all of the following five beliefs:
- America was founded as a Christian nation
- The American government should promote a particular kind of Christian culture
- American Christians should pursue political and cultural power in order to take "dominion" over America
- American Christians should prioritize American interests over the interests of other nations.
- To be American should be identical to being a Christian nationalist
I personally agree with #1 through #4, and, depending on the definition of "nationalist," maybe #5, but Austin points out that there are those who call themselves Christian nationalists who urge implementation of #2 and #3 by force, if necessary. If that's what Christian nationalism is then I want no part of it, but I doubt that those who support the use of compulsion and violence are more than a small fraction of those who, like me, think that all these beliefs are anodyne and/or desirable.
Let me explain why I think each of these admits of a perfectly innocuous or even salutary formulation.
#1 I think this statement is manifestly true in the sense that the values promoted in the founding documents were explicitly Christian values. Some of the men who founded the nation may themselves have not been Christian but the values they sought to base the nation on were derived from the Christian worldview in which they were immersed. Justice for all, equality under the law, liberty, individual rights, etc. all arose gradually in Europe in a Christian milieu, and there's little doubt that our founders, though not wishing to establish a particular religious denomination, nevertheless were operating from Christian assumptions.
#2 Of course these values - justice, equality under the law, liberty, individual rights, etc. - should be promoted by our government. They should also promote the Christian values of compassion, peacefulness, concern for the poor, honesty, etc., and the government should seek to protect its citizens from vices like greed, lust for power, and tyranny that are expressly forbidden in a Christian worldview.
#3 Christians should seek to be involved in every area of culture and society. That's what it means to be salt in the earth. Why would any Christian think that any profession that's not inherently immoral should be off limits to Christians? We need more Christian influence in the world, not less.
#4 We have obligations of loyalty to those whom God has placed us among and those obligations radiate in concentric circles. First, is our duty to our family, to protect and advance their best interests, then we have a similar but secondary duty to our communities - our neighbors, our church, then a similar duty of loyalty to our nation and then to the world. To the extent that those radiating responsibilities are acknowledged or affirmed by Christian nationalism I fail to see the problem with it.
#5 Every American should hold the values stated above and enjoined upon us by a Christian worldview. Anyone, Christian or non-Christian can hold those values and if holding them, if adhering to what I've said about #1-4 makes one a Christian nationalist then I see nothing wrong with the term.
However, if someone wants to define a Christian nationalist as someone who believes that any of this should be accomplished through compulsion or violence then we part company. If someone believes that the government should actively promote specifically Christian doctrines and that those who don't accept them must be relegated to second-class status then he and I again part company.
So, when we hear people throw around the term "Christian nationalism" as either a threat to democracy or the savior of democracy, either derogating it or affirming it, we need to ask them what they mean by it, and, if what they mean is a resort to violence or compulsion in order to transform the country Christian into a Christian nation then we should distance ourselves from it but we might also ask how many people really hold to that view.
I suspect that, among genuine, thoughtful Christians, as opposed to nominal Christians, it'd turn out to be relatively few, and if that's the case I fail to see why anyone should see it as a serious or imminent threat to our national fabric.
Thursday, October 10, 2024
A Sea of Incoherence
I've often made the argument in these pages that moral judgments are vacuous unless there's an objective standard of moral goodness that transcends human feelings or subjectivity. I've also argued that the only such standard that can qualify is God, so that if God does not exist there really is no basis for moral judgment and no obligation to live one way rather than another.
But, why must the objective standard be God? Why can there not be a standard that transcends human subjectivity but also be something like Plato's ideal form of the good?
Plato (c. 427-c.347 B.C.), you might recall, believed that there existed in some ethereal realm the ideal (or form) of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True and everything that existed, to the extent that it contained some goodness, beauty, or truth did so because it derived these qualities from these ideals or forms. But ideal goodness cannot serve as the basis for moral obligation because a) it's not personal and b) it's unable to hold us accountable.
How, for example, can an impersonal standard of behavior communicate to us how we should act and how can it obligate us to act that way? And how can an impersonal abstraction hold us accountable for how we live?
The only adequate foundation for meaningful moral behavior is a transcendent, personal moral authority who is perfectly good and thus able to serve as a universal standard of goodness, and who has somehow intentionally instilled that standard in us and is powerful enough to hold us accountable for our fidelity to it.
This is very close to saying that in order for there to be objective moral duties there must be a God who grounds them.
So, if one refuses to accept that God exists several things follow:
1. Their moral judgments - whether about racism, sexual abuse, child abuse, torture, war and peace, whatever - are moral nullities. They're simply expressions of the speaker's personal predilections or tastes, and are of no more significance than their expressed preference for Coke rather than Pepsi. Individuals may adopt any attitude toward any of these behaviors they wish. They can choose to be kind, respectful, gentle and honest, but these are just individual preferences. Had they chosen to be the opposite they wouldn't be wrong in any moral sense, they'd just be different.
2. Anyone who asserts that racism, torture and the rest are objectively wrong but who denies there's an objective standard of right and wrong is sailing on a sea of incoherence.
3. The only rational position for such a person to hold regarding morality is moral nihilism - the denial of any objective moral duties altogether.
Of course, most people find moral nihilism repugnant, but it's the inevitable endpoint of any worldview that denies a personal, good, and very powerful God to whom we are morally accountable.
But, why must the objective standard be God? Why can there not be a standard that transcends human subjectivity but also be something like Plato's ideal form of the good?
Plato (c. 427-c.347 B.C.), you might recall, believed that there existed in some ethereal realm the ideal (or form) of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True and everything that existed, to the extent that it contained some goodness, beauty, or truth did so because it derived these qualities from these ideals or forms. But ideal goodness cannot serve as the basis for moral obligation because a) it's not personal and b) it's unable to hold us accountable.
How, for example, can an impersonal standard of behavior communicate to us how we should act and how can it obligate us to act that way? And how can an impersonal abstraction hold us accountable for how we live?
The only adequate foundation for meaningful moral behavior is a transcendent, personal moral authority who is perfectly good and thus able to serve as a universal standard of goodness, and who has somehow intentionally instilled that standard in us and is powerful enough to hold us accountable for our fidelity to it.
This is very close to saying that in order for there to be objective moral duties there must be a God who grounds them.
So, if one refuses to accept that God exists several things follow:
1. Their moral judgments - whether about racism, sexual abuse, child abuse, torture, war and peace, whatever - are moral nullities. They're simply expressions of the speaker's personal predilections or tastes, and are of no more significance than their expressed preference for Coke rather than Pepsi. Individuals may adopt any attitude toward any of these behaviors they wish. They can choose to be kind, respectful, gentle and honest, but these are just individual preferences. Had they chosen to be the opposite they wouldn't be wrong in any moral sense, they'd just be different.
2. Anyone who asserts that racism, torture and the rest are objectively wrong but who denies there's an objective standard of right and wrong is sailing on a sea of incoherence.
3. The only rational position for such a person to hold regarding morality is moral nihilism - the denial of any objective moral duties altogether.
Of course, most people find moral nihilism repugnant, but it's the inevitable endpoint of any worldview that denies a personal, good, and very powerful God to whom we are morally accountable.
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Brilliant Engineering
Drew Berry creates computer generated animations of cellular processes and this particular video (below) is especially artful. The processes he depicts are occurring 24/7 in each of the trillions of cells in our bodies. As you watch the video keep in mind a few questions:
1. The proteins which work with the DNA to produce other proteins were themselves produced by DNA. So which came first? How did the DNA produce the helper proteins before the helper proteins existed to guide the process?
2. How did unguided processes like mutation and genetic drift produce such coordinated choreography? How did blind, unguided processes produce the information which tells the proteins where to go and how to function?
3. How does this information get processed by mindless lumps of chemicals, and how is it passed on from generation to generation?
Notice how the motor proteins are structured in such a way that enables them to "walk" along microtubules carrying various items to locations in the cell where they're needed. How do these motor proteins "know" how to do this, and how did this behavior evolve in the first place?
There may indeed be naturalistic, materialistic answers to these questions which we'll someday discover, but it seems that the more progress we make in biology the more implausible and remote such explanations sound to all but the most inveterately committed and the more it looks like the living cell has in fact been engineered by a mind.
If you don't have time to watch the whole video start at the 2:54 mark:
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