The Political Divide: Use Jargon Not Argument

The source of political and religious divide in America is wonderfully illustrated in Uncle Screwtape's first letter to Wormwood. (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters)

It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep [your target] out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. You man has been accustomed, every since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument is your best ally in keeping him from [the truth].

Gun Control vs. Abortion Control

Search "gun control" and "abortion" on-line and you'll be "treated" with a host of posts and challenging questions about why liberals support gun control (because guns kills dozens in horrific massacres like Sandy Hook), but are all for abortion (which kills millions of boys and girls whose whole life is before them).  If you think logically and humbly about this, the offensive folks from Westboro Baptist may be on to something. But then the Catholic Church has been onto this for some time... like centuries. Here are some quotes from Pope Benedict XVI's World Day of Peace Message for 2013 delivered December 14, 2012.

Peacemakers are those who love, defend and promote life in its fullness.

The path to the attainment of the common good and to peace is above all that of respect for human life in all its many aspects, beginning with its conception, through its development and up to its natural end. True peacemakers, then, are those who love, defend and promote human life in all its dimensions, personal, communitarian and transcendent. Life in its fullness is the height of peace. Anyone who loves peace cannot tolerate attacks and crimes against life.

Those who insufficiently value human life and, in consequence, support among other things the liberalization of abortion, perhaps do not realize that in this way they are proposing the pursuit of a false peace. The flight from responsibility, which degrades human persons, and even more so the killing of a defenseless and innocent being, will never be able to produce happiness or peace. Indeed how could one claim to bring about peace, the integral development of peoples or even the protection of the environment without defending the life of those who are weakest, beginning with the unborn. Every offense against life, especially at its beginning, inevitably causes irreparable damage to development, peace and the environment. Neither is it just to introduce surreptitiously into legislation false rights or freedoms which, on the basis of a reductive and relativistic view of human beings and the clever use of ambiguous expressions aimed at promoting a supposed right to abortion and euthanasia, pose a threat to the fundamental right to life.

American Catholic Leadership Has Sold Its Soul to the State

Paul A. Rahe

Perhaps the most important half-hour in media, in some years, occurred this afternoon from about 1:45 PM to 2:15 PM (ET) on Rush Limbaugh's show. He read with gusto and salient comment, significant portions of an essay by Hillsdale College professor Paul R. Rahe titled "American Catholicism' Pact with the Devil". You can read the entire essay in all its brilliance at the link in the last sentence. Rahe (a Catholic) says with historical and current depth what I've been fond of saying: Abortion is a problem that is at the foot of the American bishops. Had they been doing their job as moral leaders and not being mute dogs, abortion would not be the law of the land and it would be rare.

Rahe points out that the current contraception debate is what the American Catholic Church leadership has fostered and it's come home to bite. Here are a few paragraphs from Rahe's piece that appears on the conservative website RICOCHET.

==== QUOTE ====

Cardinal Bernadin

In my lifetime, to my increasing regret, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States has lost much of its moral authority. It has done so largely because it has subordinated its teaching of Catholic moral doctrine to its ambitions regarding an expansion of the administrative entitlements state. In 1973, when the Supreme Court made its decision in Roe v. Wade, had the bishops, priests, and nuns screamed bloody murder and declared war, as they have recently done, the decision would have been reversed. Instead, under the leadership of Joseph Bernadin, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Chicago, they asserted that the social teaching of the Church was a “seamless garment,” and they treated abortion as one concern among many. Here is what Cardinal Bernadin said in the Gannon Lecture at Fordham University that he delivered in 1983:

Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker.

Consistency means that we cannot have it both ways. We cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fiber of the society or are beyond the proper scope of governmental responsibility.

This statement, which came to be taken as authoritative throughout the American Church, proved, as Joseph Sobran observed seven years ago, “to be nothing but a loophole for hypocritical Catholic politicians. If anything,” he added, "it has actually made it easier for them than for non-Catholics to give their effective support to legalized abortion – that is, it has allowed them to be inconsistent and unprincipled about the very issues that Cardinal Bernardin said demand consistency and principle.” In practice, this meant that, insofar as anyone pressed the case against Roe v. Wade, it was the laity.

I was reared a Catholic, wandered out of the Church, and stumbled back in more than thirteen years ago. I have been a regular attendee at mass since that time. I travel a great deal and frequently find myself in a diocese not my own. In these years, I have heard sermons articulating the case against abortion thrice – once in Louisiana at a mass said by the retired Archbishop there; once at the cathedral in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and two weeks ago in our parish in Hillsdale, Michigan. The truth is that the priests in the United States are far more likely to push the “social justice” agenda of the Church from the pulpit than to instruct the faithful in the evils of abortion.
====== END QUOTE =====


Post Script: Later in the day, after perusing the turmoil in the Catholic and public radio and blog-s-sphere) about Rahe's article, I listened to one Catholic radio show host attempt to tear down Rahe's essay with arguments that are best described as ad hominem, strawman, and equivocation/. This host criticize Rahe for being a blogger from nowhere, bitter, and inaccurate, and fallacious.  I carefully studied Rahe's essay, reading each paragraph 2-3 times, looking for fallacies (which I know something about), and concluded that Rahe's perspective was credible and accurate, objective, and redemptive in tone, to say nothing of his credentials as an historian. You'll notice the essay takes us back to the Magna Charta and moves forward through time, building a logical case for the bishop's failure to lead in recent memory, and giving over responsibility to the state, with advice and lessons for today and the future. Rahe also acknowledges that the bishops are doing a good job today. If  you want, however, to "read" Rahe with some biased emotion, subscribe to Rush Limbaugh and listen to today's program from about 1:45 to 2:15 PM ET. It was a rush.

God, Science, Creation and Liberals

On a Fox News Article about bias against Christians at UC DAVIS, we find this argument in the com box. It is the classic "Watchmaker" argument, but wonderfully updated. It'd be a wonderful text to memorize.

Joseph 'the-alien' King  12 minutes ago
Regarding God and Science:

"Science" is the interpretation of God; this is why it always falls short of the proverbial mark. Within the jurisdiction of science, we have to update analytical theories all the time; conversely, with God, there is no updating, modification, or tweaking -- for obvious reasons. Science KNOWS that God is there; it's just too RETARDED and POMPOUS to admit it. Mathematically, everyone knows that God exists because it is programmed into us, literally! We are all unanimous in accepting the notion that a Microsoft Windows Operating System cannot magically materialize out of NOTHING; the probability is far beyond the parameters of logical acceptance. Well, science knows that the human body contains trillions of cells; moreover, the profoundness of this resides within the fact that just ONE of those trillions of cells contains more information than in an entire Microsoft Windows Operating System. If science fervently asserts that a Microsoft Windows Operating System cannot randomly - and magically - manifest out of nowhere, why is the hand of God so farcical? Furthermore, because science propagates the notion that we are all here because of chance, it must be true, as well, that a Playstation 3 can endure the same earthly, magical, chance-based manifestation. This is, of course, NOT TRUE because we all know that something as 'complex' as a Playstation 3 and Windows OS has one cardinal attribute in common: a CREATOR. To put this into further perspective, it is impossible for a single can of PEPSI -- as it is, with the text, logos, and all -- to magically materialize out of NOWHERE, and science knows this, just as well as all of us here. Well, with this information, it would be the dumbest characterization in history to assert that life is the most complex thing and then declare that it occurs by chance, at the same time -- while, also affirming that the Mona Lisa painting could never perform a random manifestation by chance. Well, ultimately, it's because science KNOWS that God exists, but most *scientists* and self-designated "intellectuals" are far too shortsighted, myopic, and blatantly arrogant to feel as if there is a superior, superlative intelligence at the helm of all things. They have a fervid, unfettering disdain for God because of pride and anger. They're proud because they want to maneuver within the likeness of God; they're angry because *all attempts* to encompass and replicate God's ubiquity, capacity, and omnipotence are met with perpetual, epic FAILURE.