The next window into Dante's Hell - Liberals assault the idea of a "culture of life."

You can see the initial eddies and currents.

The O'Reilly Factor had Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith on tonight. Harris explicitly denied that there was anything meaning to the concept of "the culture of life." He counterposed "religious dogmatism" against "mercy." Harris also - eventually - conceded that depressed drug addicts who wanted a "hot shot" should be given such a death at their request. Harris is on record as saying that society should not respect anyone's religious faith.

So, the end point of Western Civilizations long courtship with tolerance is the end of tolerance.

On another front, Get Religion posts on "sneer quoting the Culture of Life." They mention an Anna Quindlen column where she writes that the "culture of life is an empty suit of a phrase"

On the other hand, kudos to Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox who observed that Roe v. Wade started a trend which resulted in an environment where Judge Greer could easily - all too easily - find that Terry Schiavo would have wanted to die. O'Reilly's response is that the debate is about the utility of Schiavo - her parents found utility in her continued existence, while she herself could do nothing on her own and, therefore, had no utility to herself. Lost on O'Reilly is the notion that this approach turns people into things, whose right to life turns on their perceived utility; under this approach people are not treated as ends in and of themselves. (So, score 1 for the utilitarians, zero for Kant.) Napolotano concluded with the observation that a decision in a Schiavo-type case forty years ago would have left her alive and with her parents.

I don't normally think this, but kudo to Judge Napolitano.

Humanity in a fractured mirror.

Idle Mendacity has a insightful reflection which weaves together the subjects of Terry Schiavo's death, the media's interest in the possibility of Pope John Paul II's retirement and the 1932 film FREAKS. Consider this observation from the post:

That's when it hit me. The media want Terri to die and the Pope to disappear into some monastery some place because they just don't want to look at them. Terri is sick, her body is helpless, she is an infant in an adult body. The pope is old, his body is crooked, he is a shell with only the unseen brain still in working order. They are both unnatural and unseemly by modern standards. They are both ugly, grotesque, much like that of The Elephant Man, Joseph Merick, a beautiful soul in a misshapen body. So too are the Pope and Terri. Beautiful souls but awful to look at. So people would rather not. They'd rather not be reminded of age and sickness - that's why nursing homes are filled with otherwise healthy senior citizens. They'd rather not go near people so near death and infirmity - that's why literally thousands of citizens of so-called "civilized" France died of neglect during a heat wave. People just didn't care. They didn't want to care. Terri and the Pope and those like them are the Other. They are the not-us. They are the freaks of the modern world.

Go and read the whole thing.

Episcopalian Bishop preaches the good news of Easter - "Quantum uncertainty has us all in its grip."

The long-suffering Episcopalian blogger Midwest Conservative Journal plays our favorite game of collecting the best of Episcopalian sermons. My Communio group remembers the hours of delight deconstructing Bishop John Bryson Chain's 2003 Christmas sermon, which, inter alia, ratified the literal dictation of the Koran by Gabriel, and Bishop Chain's 2002 Easter sermon, which attributed the Resurrection to the myth-making capabilities of the Jews.

This year it is Bishop Michael Ingham's Easter sermon that is a candidate for our next foray into deep Episcopalian theology.

Bishop Ingham reads the Easter message through a version of physics. He writes, for example:

The new science has serious implications for Christian theology. The late Carl Sagan - still one of the most widely read modern scientists today - pointed out, for example, that if we take the biblical story of the Ascension of Jesus Christ literally we have a problem. If Jesus' body lifted off from the earth two thousand years ago, as the Bible says, and even if it reached the speed of light immediately (which Einstein says is the fastest speed any matter can travel) then it would have taken him a year to pass Pluto and after two thousand years Jesus is still trapped in the solar system. He's not yet ascended to heaven, Sagan said, unless we mean something else by `heaven.' A few brave Christians have taken up the challenge of these new ideas. There was a time when religion and science were intellectual opponents, but now many theologians and scientists are suggesting that religion and science are simply different and complementary ways of understanding the one mystery of life.

Bishop Ingham is obviously a deep thinker who is paying attention to developments in science and culture. He is not going to let the dead hand of medieval thinking stand in the way of the latest advances in science.

But, really, has anyone in the last two millenia believed that "heaven" is literally a physical location? And, by the way, if you're going to piss on the thinking capacity of your tradition, try not to play the ass; Pluto and the limits of our solar system are a lot closer than one light year away from Earth, facts known to everyone with any real interest in science.

Credit where credit is due - leftist support for the the weakest members of society.

Against the Grain links to Nat Hentoff's latest column on Terry Schiavo. He calls the Schiavo situation "longest public execution in American history."

Also, Ralph Nader weighed in on Terry Schiavo last week. He argued:

The courts not only are refusing her tube feeding, but have ordered that no attempts be made to provide her water or food by mouth. Terri swallows her own saliva. Spoon feeding is not medical treatment. "This outrageous order proves that the courts are not merely permitting medical treatment to be withheld, it has ordered her to be made dead," Nader and Smith assert

These aging liberals remind us that the core of the leftist project was once about protecting the defenseless against the vicissitudes of life.

Edges of the issue.

Just One Minute does a nice job of defining the edges that distinguish the Schiavo case from that of Tom Delay's father. He also links to this Baylor University analysis of Texas' Futile Health Care Act.

Summer's coming.

This summer should we flirt with skin cancer or risk a Vitamin D deficiency, "a condition which has been linked with heart disease, schizophrenia, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and cancers of trhe colon, breast, ovary and prostate?"

Great.

Actually, what motivated me to link to this article was the author's description of one sunburn where "I had suffered hallucinatory sunstroke on our first holiday abroad: mum had to talk me down as I ranted about the little men trying to make me straighten out all the air."

Been there; done that, except it was talking furniture. Weird, weird stuff. Thank God for SPF 50 "Solar Eclipse" sunblock.

On the other hand, Junk Science reports from a non-working link that the Ozone Hole is closing, which explains why we haven't had the annual hysterical end of the world story about that subject for a few years.

Huzzah.

A List of Things We Should All Study Before We Become Evil Overlords.

[Via Jimmy Akin.]

Here's the list.

I like #21:

I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.

Happy Easter.

NRO's Kathryn Lopez interviews David Klinghoffer about his book, "Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History."

Federal intervention overturns state court jurisdiction.

John Fund recalls the case of Elian Gonzales.

The Cultural Divide and Terry Schiavo.

Eric Cohen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center analyzes the Terry Schiavo case in an article entitled "How Liberalism Failed Terry Schiavo." Cohen observes:

But the problem went deeper than incompetence: It also had to do with ideology--with a set of assumptions about what makes life worth living and thus worth protecting. Procedural liberalism (discerning and respecting the prior wishes of the incompetent person; preserving life when such wishes are not clear) gave way to ideological liberalism (treating incompetence itself as reasonable grounds for assuming that life is not worth living).

Cohen argues that the the second understanding of liberalism has trumped the former in that Florida law clearly requires "clear and convincing evidence" before a decision can be made to suspend care for the incompetent.

The evidentiary aspect of this case is one of the things that particularly concerns me. Like most practicing trial attorneys, I have had experience with the "clear and convincing evidence" standard. It takes a particularly charitable person to find that two or three stray comments offered years after the person has been in a coma and after the principle witness has (a) not pulled the plug and (b) effectively remarried constitute "clear and convincing evidence."

Or else it requires that the legal system has its thumb sotto voce (to mangle metaphors) on the evidentiary scale.

In either case, the evidence is not what I'd call "clear and convincing" and I come out of a background where my cases often rest on two or three comments by an employer to prove their discriminatory or retaliatory animus. I've had summary judgments granted against my clients because the judges dismissed similar comments as "stray comments." In employment law "stray comments" are a recognized legal concept; a case based upon "stray comments" goes nowhere fast, even though no one is going to die as a result of the case.

In the same vein, John Podhoretz in the New York Post depicts the issue as a battle between "rationalists" and "soul believers." Podhoretz is gesturing at a legacy of the Enlightenment, which reasonably seeks to reduce everything to material causes and to dismiss anything that can't be analyzed by our senses.

On the other hand, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this isn't a Manichaean struggle between left and right. Many die-hard conservatives believe deep down that money spent on someone in a persistent vegatative state is money wasted and that there is no worse sign of social dysfunction than wasting money on bootless enterprises. For example, the curmudgeonly John Derbyshire at National Review Online has hinted that he thinks the fuss over Terry Schiavo is overwrought.

Likewise, we can't lose sight of the proud leftist tradition which instinctively leaps to the side of the helpless and weak against anyone who would oppress or injure them. I have Nat Hentoff in mind, who is an atheist and a socialist, but who finds the treatment of Terri Schiavo's circumstances by the ACLU and the media to be a complete betrayal of is core values.

Update:

Fresnan Rick, at the Unspun Zone, has his own take on cultural divide manifested in the Schiavo. According to Rick "right to lifers" like me - and oddly that's the first time I've ever been called a "right to lifer" - care about the result in the Schiavo case, whereas the other side exemplified by Andrew Cohen care about the "rule of law."

I don't think that's right at all.

First, unlike others, including the incendiary Anne Coulter, I think that it would be immoral to engage in direct action concerning Terri Schiavo. Since we have a functioning democracy, we don't live in a tyranny and we must accept the results that our system yields, even if it results in the death of the innocent. (Cf. Plato's Crito.)

In this regard, I am at least consistent because I thought that Clinton's decision in armed men to seize Elian Gonzales when the custody issues were still pending in the judicial system was tyrannical. I wonder what Andrew Cohen thought about the "rule of law" when that happened? My serious point is that I don't have a great deal of confidence in the appeal to the "rule of law" by the left because it so often is willing to dispense with the law on the books in favor of a higher law when convenient to its deeper values.

Second, one of my chief criticism of the Terry Schiavo case is that the judiciary is really not following Florida law which requires "clear and convincing evidence." Certainly, that's what theses judges say they're doing, but it is clear that "clear and convincing evidence" in cases involving people in comas is not the same as I'm used to in civil litigation. Incidentally, here's a link to Inappropriate Response from 2003 which links to my concern over evidentiary issues back then. Here's my post from October of 2003 where I look at the decision and note that the "clear and convincing evidence" was the court's fictitious intuition that anyone who had been in a coma for ten years wouldn't want to continue in that state.

Sadly, this is a case about the rule of law. The axiom is that "hard cases make bad law" and the issue of supporting family members in a coma are the hardest cases. But the real meaning of the axiom is that if we take the easy solution in the hard case, we establish a precedent in future areas, which we aren't today aware of, which can have a potentially pernicious effect.

That's how law works. Precedents don't stay neatly tucked into their own sui generis areas. They get imported from one area into another. Today's decision on trespass is tomorrow's precedent for product liability. The fact that divorce is no fault implies that corporations should be easier to dissovle. It's not rational, but it is human and we can see this development in the whole bioethics area which has de facto abandoned the presumption in favor of life because of routine hospital decisions.

Second Update:

Here is a post by Patterico, who is another Bear Flag Leaguer and attorney. Patterico shares my concerns about the evidentiary basis of the Florida courts' decisions in Schiavo.

"Why We Don't Starve Human Beings."

Catholic Match has asked that this article on the effects of starvation be broadly distributed. I know that some media articles have been asserting that death by dehydration is particularly benign, but, as the article points out, euphoria is not what most people feel when they dehydrate.

Voices from the Non-monolithic Left on Terry Schiavo.

Slate publishes a moving essay by Harriett McBryde Johnson, which supports Congress' attempt to intervene in the Terry Schiavo matter. Johnson is a disability rights lawyer with a unique perspective on the subject; because of her disability, her future will include a feeing tube. Some of her observations tie into some of the comments I made to the post several posts below, specifically as to the question of why everyone assumes that feeding tubes constitute "medical treatment."

Johnson writes:

2. Ms. Schiavo is not dependent on life support. Her lungs, kidneys, heart, and digestive systems work fine. Just as she uses a wheelchair for mobility, she uses a tube for eating and drinking. Feeding Ms. Schiavo is not difficult, painful, or in any way heroic. Feeding tubes are a very simple piece of adaptive equipment, and the fact that Ms. Schiavo eats through a tube should have nothing to do with whether she should live or die.

3. This is not a case about a patient's right to refuse treatment. I don't see eating and drinking as "treatment," but even if they are, everyone agrees that Ms. Schiavo is presently incapable of articulating a decision to refuse treatment. The question is who should make the decision for her, and whether that substitute decision-maker should be authorized to kill her by starvation and dehydration.

The rest of Johnson's essay is worth reading as well.

All hydration and nutrition in our society is artificial. Unless you are living in the countryside with a stream and a supply of animals that you can rip and rend with your teeth and bare hands, you get your hydration and nutrition artificially and through the cooperation of others. Whether the means for delivering food and water is artificial or natural is simply a red-herring.

Ultimately, the issue is whether the supply of food and water is "heroic" or inolves unreasonable risks or costs, without regard to the person being fed or hydrated. Conceivably, there could be a time when feeding someone does involve unreasonable risks. For example, if a person required a steady diet of platinum or baby livers, that diet would probably cross the line into heroic effort or cost.

But, according to Johnson, feeding tubes don't involve that kind of cost or risk. What the denial of hydration and nutrition through feeding tubes says is that the patient is not worth feeding, and, more specifically, that the purpose of pulling the tube is to eliminate the costs associated with the patient's continued existence, as distinct from the cost of feeding the patient through tubes. In other words, the removal of feeding tubes is not about medical treatment, and if it's not about medical treatment, it's really about euthanasia.

Moral Bank Accounts.

Dennis Prager has an interesting perspective on moral accountability and a "moral bank" that we make deposits into by our good conduct and withdrawals by our bad conduct. He has a fair point, but, on the other hand, per Aristotle, virtues and vices are the product of choices formed by habits. Particular conduct may therefore say quite a bit about who a person really is.

"Err on the side of life" and other ontological firewalls against the pragmatic utilitarians.

James Lileks' on the meaning of Captain Christopher Pike and his beeping wheelchair is worth reading.

I found the the concept he was circling around interesting. In the 1960s, the solution to the problem of Pike was not to "flip the switch." Instead, Mr. Spock went to grea lengths to improve the quality of Pike's life. If the same episode was filmed with the sensibilities of the 21st Century, Spock would have flipped the switch.

On the same subject, please read Peggy Noonan's amazing essay where she explains why we should "be on the side of life":

Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.

But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he'd say, "Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something's in it and you don't know if it's alive, you don't kick it, do you?" No, you don't.

So Congress: don't kick it. Let her live. Hard cases make bad law, but let her live. Precedents can begin to cascade, special pleas can become a flood, but let her live. Because she's human, and you're human.

There is something singular about the Schiavo case. It seems that the public is waking up to the sea change which has developed in medical ethics since I took Bio-Ethics and the Law in 1983. I heard Rush Limbaugh commenting that the evidence supporting the decision to stop feeding Terry Schiavo came down to nothing more than that people - the judge, his audience, himself - were imputing their belief about what they would want done to Terry Schiave, even though they had no idea what she really would have wanted.

He's right. The presumption of the law is supposed to favor life. Florida law expressly provides that the evidence in favor of discontinuation of medical treatment - and when did furnishing food and water and basic hygeine become "medical treatment"? My quick Lexis researc says it was around 1993 - must be by clear and convincing evidence. But questionable testimony by a conflicted husband - and who wouldn't be conflicted under the circumstances? - raised for the first time 7 years into the coma about what a person in her late 20s is supposed to have said about an unthinkable situation was held to be "clear and convincing."

The scandal of the Terry Schiavo case is that lip service to the sanctity of life notwithstanding, society seems to be making the opposite presumption.

Another thing that disturbs me is the casual acceptance that removing food and water merely "hastens death." Well, of course it does, but so would putting a pillow over Terry Schiavo's face, and, yet, we won't accept that. Interestingly, Justice Scalia had something insightful to say in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep't of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 296-298 (U.S., 1990):

But to return to the principal point for present purposes: the irrelevance of the action-inaction distinction. Starving oneself to death is no different from putting a gun to one's temple as far as the common-law definition of suicide is concerned; the cause of death in both cases is the suicide's conscious decision to "put an end to his own existence." 4 Blackstone, supra, at *189. See In re Caulk, 125 N.H. 226, 232, 480 A.2d 93, 97 (1984); State ex rel. White v. Narick, 170 W. Va. 195, 292 S.E.2d 54 (1982); Von Holden v. Chapman, 87 A.D.2d 66, 450 N.Y.S.2d 623 (1982). Of course the common law rejected the action-inaction distinction in other contexts involving the taking of human life as well. In the prosecution of a parent for the starvation death of her infant, it was no defense that the infant's death was "caused" by no action of the parent but by the natural process of starvation, or by the infant's natural inability to provide for itself. See Lewis v. State, 72 Ga. 164 (1883); People v. McDonald, 49 Hun 67, 1 N.Y.S. 703 (5th Dept., App. Div. 1888); Commonwealth v. Hall, 322 Mass. 523, 528, 78 N.E.2d 644, 647 (1948) (collecting cases); F. Wharton, Law of Homicide §§ 134-135, 304 (2d ed. 1875); 2 J. Bishop, Commentaries on Criminal Law § 686 (5th ed. 1872); J. Hawley & M. McGregor, Criminal Law 152 (3d ed. 1899). A physician, moreover, could be criminally liable for failure to provide care that could have extended the patient's life, even if death was immediately caused by the underlying disease that the physician failed to treat. Barrow v. State, 17 Okla. Crim. 340, 188 P. 351 (1920); People v. Phillips, 64 Cal. 2d 574, 414 P.2d 353, 51 Cal. Rptr. 225 (1966).

It is not surprising, therefore, that the early cases considering the claimed right to refuse medical treatment dismissed as specious the nice distinction between "passively submitting to death and actively seeking it. The distinction may be merely verbal, as it would be if an adult sought death by starvation instead of a drug. If the State may interrupt one mode of self-destruction, it may with equal authority interfere with the other." John F. Kennedy Memorial Hosp. v. Heston, 58 N.J. 576, 581-582, 279 A.2d 670, 672-673 (1971); see also Application of President & Directors of Georgetown College, Inc., 118 U.S. App. D.C. 80, 88-89, 331 F.2d 1000, 1008-1009 (Wright, J., in chambers), cert. denied, 377 U.S. 978, 12 L. Ed. 2d 746, 84 S. Ct. 1883 (1964).

The active/inactive distinction is spurious. Is it active or inactive not to change the patient's diaper in the expectation that the patient will die from some disease? Would opening the windows in a frigid winter climate be passive? What about hermetically sealing all the air sources to the patient's room?

It seems that what is being willed in all of these cases is the death of the patient. If that - the intent (the mens rea) and the action or inaction (actus rea) - is morally acceptable what's wrong with the pillow over the face technique?

Incidentally, the left is getting in on the act, but sadly sliding into its typical "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" trope, under which the left, sadly, directs its hatred against the most pitiable. Check out this "humor" site, which provides "66 uses for persistent vegtards." [via Relapsed Catholic.] What a laugh riot.

Relapsed Catholic also points out that the Catholic blogger at Beliefnet has discovered her liberal counterpart charitably describing Terry Schiavo as a "total gorp." Well there you have it; if you can't function as a human being, you are not a human being.

Mark Kleiman takes a more substantial and reflective approach from the left. He points out two unpublicized instances where hospitals have disregarded the relevant families' desires and removed feeding tubes. Kleiman has a fair point that these cases have been ignored, but he spins it into the typical leftist banality of "right wing hypocrisy." This misses the point that these kinds of things are going on all the time and they're wrong. I know of two instances where the family of functioning but aged patients were heavily coerced by Catholic hospitals, including administrators and bioethicists, to suspend medical treatment. In one case, the person was told that it was the hospital's decision, not that of the family. I was shocked when I heard this, but like Rip Van Winkle, I'm behind the times and haven't been following the developments in this area over the last 20 years. Apparently the hospitals were totally accurate in their amazing claim that they were no longer fiduciaries to their patients.

Kleiman also draws the line between sentience and incapacity as being the morally correct line. There is something intuitively persuasive about that line, and I feel it in my gut. But the problem is that the actual practice blurs the line. The instances that Kleiman cites may not have involved non-sentient patients, or they may have, but the instances I know of definitely involved mentally functioning patients, albeit elderly people who suffered from Alzheimers from which they would not recover. The Kleiman examples are simply the next logical step in what has become accepted practice.

The next cases will involve... what? Last weekend I assisted in a bowling tournament put on by the local ARC (Aid to Retarded Citizens) program. The mental and social abilities of the bowlers varied from withdrawn and barely fuctioning to highly functioning. I wouldn't want to live with the mental state of any one of them. I thank heaven that I am not one of their parents. But every one of them celebrated making pin contact and a few threw an occasional strike and their joy filled the room.

What principle do we frame that says they will not be the next logical step in the development of a prudential policy for the provision of medical services should they require medical treatment?

The Catholic Church as a force for the liberation of women.

The Anchoress exhaustively documents her thesis that "the Catholic church, more than any other institutional body in history, has uplifted women and encouraged them to live to their highest potential."

Counter-intuitive in a world that floods popular culture with the Magdalene Sisters and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it all for you but ignores the real histories of Katherine Drexel and Elizabeth Bailey Seton.

Who are Seton and Drexel?

Exactly, which is one reason the Anchoress' post is worth reading.

The Evangelical Counsels.

The Communio article for last week was J?örg Splett's
Evangelical Counsels in Marriage? The article was fairly typical for Communio; it never explains what the "evangelical counsels" and finally gets around to discussing their application to marriage within the last two pages.

Fortunately, the Catechism can make up for a lifetime deficiency in institutionally-based catechization. Section 915 explains:

Christ proposes the evangelical counsels, in their great variety, to every disciple. The perfection of charity, to which all the faithful are called, entails for those who freely follow the call to consecrated life the obligation of practicing chastity in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom, poverty and obedience. It is the profession of these counsels, within a permanent state of life recognized by the Church, that characterizes the life consecrated to God.

In other words, the "evangelical counsels" are the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience which defines a consecrated life.

This information allows some discernment of the article. The basic thrust of the aritcle appears to be nothing more than the observation that the holiness of consecrated life can be found within marriage, which is not without its own call to chastity, poverty and obedience.

The discussion of the article into a discussion of Christ's temptations in the desert. The temptations are often suggested to model the "evangelical counsels" in that the temptations are said to reflect an overcoming of bodily temptations (in Christ's rejection of the invitation to turn stone into bread), spiritual temptations (in refusing to tempt God through attempted suicide) and social temptations (in refusing to accept the Kingdoms of the world.) The metaphor appears to be forced, but as the grid at the bottom of this ecological approach to the temptations indicates, it's quite common.

This brought up the question of "what was sinful about turning stones into bread?" It doesn't seem to violate any taboo, although it does seem to be a showy display of power and not necessarily consistent with a 40 day fast.

Edmund offered a solution to the problem by focusing on motivation, which I really want to preserve. Edmund noted that the precise temptation is explained at Luke 4:3 as follows:

3 And the devil said to him: If thou be the Son of God, say to this stone that it be made bread.

In other words, the devil is not simply suggesting that Jesus feed Himself by turning stones to bread, he's suggesting that Jesus prove that He is the Son of God. But the event that prompted Jesus' retreat into the desert was His baptism, which was described by Luke 3:21-22 as follows:

21 Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptized, that Jesus also being baptized and praying, heaven was opened; 22 And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape, as a dove upon him; and a voice came from heaven: Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.

So, by Luke 4:3, Jesus already had His proof of His divine Sonship from the best possible source and shouldn't have required further proof through parlor tricks. This, of course, neatly counterposes Adam's initial lack of faith with the Second Adam's total faith and trust.

Very neat.

And while we're on the subject of the "evangelical counsels," please read this amazing story of redemption about a murderer who became a Capuchin monk. Brother Townsend reduces the "evangelical counsels" to "no money, no honey and I've got a boss upstairs."

To repeat, very neat.

[Via Lane Core.]

Beware the Ides of March.

March 15 is an auspicious date. As Jimmy Akins recollects, March 15 was the day that a small group of reactionaries attempted to stand athwart the tide of history by yelling "stop" and knifing Julius Caesar. Someone is trying to promote this fictional holiday as the day to remember and celebrate William Shakespeare by reading "Julius Caesar" or one of his other plays. The Ides have a kind of reputation as an extreme version of Friday the Thirteenth. The word "ides" comes the Latin root meaning "to divide", which makes sense since the Ides comes in the middle of the month. The famous warning is given by a soothsayer in Act 1, scene 2, which is pretty early in the play, but not early enough for Julius to follow.

The Ides of March is also my father's birthday, who is still going strong at 78 years of age. You'd think with such a memorable birthdate, I'd remember to get a birthday present. But, like Julius, I never really pay enough attention to the calendar, which is why I'm checking out of here early to go shopping before the family birthday celebration.

The Blood Libel.

[Via Bill Cork.]

History is a tricky thing. I have unconsciously accepted the idea that the medieval church had some responsibility for the disgusting anti-semitic blood libel, under which Jews were massacred on the basis that they had murdered Christian children for Passover rituals. This article in Zenit points out the contrary:

Introvigne: As opposed to what is believed, the Catholic Church not only is not at the origin of the "accusation of blood," but, on the contrary, the papal magisterium intervened in time to invite the Christian people and civil authorities not to believe these legends.

Less than 20 years after the first serious accusation of the use of blood, in England in 1247, Pope Innocent IV intervened, with a first bull of condemnation, followed by others, prohibiting that Jews be accused "of using human blood in their rites."

A consistent and constant magisterium continues with Gregory X, Martin V, Nicholas V and Paul III, from the 13th to the 16th centuries. If there are no 16th-century pronouncements of the papal magisterium, it is because there were no cases of accusation of blood in Western Europe.

The epidemic resumed in Poland, and the Church reacted by requesting Franciscan Bishop Lorenzo Ganganelli, who would later be cardinal and Pope Clement XIV, to prepare a documented opinion, approved by the Holy Office on the eve of Christmas of 1759 -- one month more or less after Ganganelli received the cardinal's hat.

I hadn't known about any of that, because apparently that history is not outlined in any of the many history book I've read. On the other hand, I must have read about the beatification of the "child martyrs" in a variety of places. Zenit points out:

It is true that, with the granting of a Mass and its own Office, the Church authorized the devotion of children, alleged martyrs of Jewish ritual homicides, such as Simon and Simonino of Trento.

However, as specified in a lucid decree of May 4, 1965, of the Congregation of Rites, which vetoes all acts of devotion to this "Blessed Simon" of Trento, such recognition of devotion is not in opposition with the constant line of the magisterium, which denies the reality of ritual homicide.

Insofar as the granting of the Mass and Office are concerned, the congregation commented that, before, "the institution of the beatification did not exist. Only canonization existed and, in some cases, while awaiting the same, without prejudging it, it was usual to grant the Mass or the Office to a church or a restricted territory. If there had been an intention to proceed later to canonization, a thorough examination of the life and virtues, or of the martyrdom, was always necessary. Little Simon was granted only the Mass and Office: the Sacred Congregation of Rites never pronounced itself on his alleged martyrdom."

This decree will serve as basis and model for the gradual suppression of all devotions to alleged victims of ritual homicide for which Masses and Offices were granted, in a period that ranges from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

So, these masses were essentially local affairs, which didn't involve the official thorough examination which would have occurred in the event of canonization. Not exactly a complete denunciation of such nonsense, but not exactly an official imprimateur either.

Making the break into the big time.

Kevin Holtsberry has an article on Tiger Woods published in National Review Online.

End Irish Terrorism.

Mark Steyn has a column celebrating the fact that IRA has been excluded from the White House.

The Waste Land.

"April is the cruelest month," T.S. Eliot observed in the line most quoted from his celebrated poem, The Waste Land, and from there it's a quick descent into incoherence.

I'm going through one of those periodic bouts of self-improvement, inspired in part from listening to a CD on the history of English literature and in other parts by the sad awareness that I went to college after liberal arts education had entered a Dark Age, a result of the heroic efforts of the Visigoths who blew through higher education during the 60's and 70's. Consequently, I've picked up Paradise Lost by John Milton and this weekend I decided to apply myself to Eliot's The Waste Land, which is considered by some to be the pinnacle of 20th Century English poetry. I've been interested in the Waste Land ever since learning that it was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's "The Fisher King," which starred Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges. (As a matter of fact, here is the review by Richard Grenier at Commentary magazine that provided that insight.)

Also, ideas from the Waste Land were apparently worked into Tim Powers' "Last Call", which in many ways was only slight less confusing and cloudy as Eliot's poem. On the other hand, while Powers' book was tough sledding, i.e., dull, at the outset, I eventually became fascinated by the plot and was satisfied that I had received my money's worth by the end of Last Call.

Pop cultural references aside, I found Eliot's poem disappointing. It stitches together oblique references to what was trendy anthropologological insights as of 1922. Eliot wrote that his primary inspiration was "Miss Jessie L. Weston's book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance (Macmillan)," and while his notes make reference to the "Fisher King," such a character doesn't make any kind of explicit appearance in the poem. Apparently, the reader is supposed to assimilate references to death, fishing and water into the anthropological tradition of a king who dies to revitalize the land.

Beyind the putative Arthuran references, Eliot also makes allusions to texts ranging from Ezekiel to the Upanishads. But even with one of the primary sources - the Bible - I couldn't unravel the clues. However, the attraction of of the poem for literary types seems clear; it's a kind of "The Da Vinci Code" for the hyper-erudite.

The Waste Land reminds me of Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" and "Ulysses," both of which are considered as one of the masterpieces of Twentieth Century prose. (In fact, "Ulysses" was selected as the greatest novel of the Twentieth Century.) I may not be alone, as this revew of Ulysses," observes:

I recently purchased a copy of James Joyce's Ulysses. I don't particularly enjoy reading James Joyce nor do I care much for his style. I am convinced that his writing is so ambiguous that anyone can interpret it in anyway and be completely correct. Thus, anybody that takes the time to sift through dozens of pages of stream-of-consciousness narrative without any punctuation can say whatever they please about it and be absolutely right. This would explain why English professors and critics love Joyce--he permits them to seem intelligent for trying to make sense of the unintelligible.

Yes, that's exactly the sense I was gesturing at two paragraphs ago.

Here is a hypertext treatment of the Waste Land which provides both Eliot's original notes and a more detailed analysis of the words and symbols that Eliot deploys.

Oddly, at the end of this post, I want to go back and try the Waste Land again. It seems to me that a poem that can provide inspiration for Powers and Gilliam must have something going for it. On the other hand, Joyce and Eliot might well be the strongest reasons for scrubbing the early Twentieth Century of literary history.

On the other hand, Paradise Lost promises to be a ripping good read.

For all of your Battlestar Galactica exegetical needs....

...the Battlestar Galactica blog.

Singer v. Posner - Utilitarianism and Common Sense.

[Via The Corner]

Jonah Goldberg points to this debate at Slate between Peter Singer and Richard Posner on animal rights.

My money is on Posner.

By the way, Posner is not a "Natural Lawyer." He's a "pragmatist" who clearly thinks that the human sentiments are part of the facts on the ground that we have to deal with. So his point in the portion that Goldberg excerpts that any philosophy which would allow a dog to bite an infant because that would maximize "utility" - because a dog's utility is fungible with an infant's utility - must be discarded is based on the pragmatic proposition that no one really believes such a thing.

In some ways, though, this pragmatic insight looks a lot like Natural Law. A Natural Law analysis looks at the "genus" and "species" to which things belong. Things in a "genus" are to be treated equally; things in different species may be treated differently. Humans belonging to the same species are entitled to similar rights. Dogs being a different "species" from human being are not entitled to the same treatment as human beings.

All of which undoubtedly deserves the sublime observation, "D'uh, no kidding." Or as Posner puts it:

If the moral irrelevance of humanity is what philosophy teaches, and so we have to choose between philosophy and the intuition that says that membership in the human species is morally relevant, then it is philosophy that will have to go.

Singer v. Posner - Utilitarianism and Common Sense.

[Via The Corner]

Jonah Goldberg points to this debate at Slate between Peter Singer and Richard Posner on animal rights.

My money is on Posner.

By the way, Posner is not a "Natural Lawyer." He's a "pragmatist" who clearly thinks that the human sentiments are part of the facts on the ground that we have to deal with. So his point in the portion that Goldberg excerpts that any philosophy which would allow a dog to bite an infant because that would maximize "utility" - because a dog's utility is fungible with an infant's utility - must be discarded is based on the pragmatic proposition that no one really believes such a thing.

In some ways, though, this pragmatic insight looks a lot like Natural Law. A Natural Law analysis looks at the "genus" and "species" to which things belong. Things in a "genus" are to be treated equally; things in different species may be treated differently. Humans belonging to the same species are entitled to similar rights. Dogs being a different "species" from human being are not entitled to the same treatment as human beings.

All of which undoubtedly deserves the sublime observation, "D'uh, no kidding." Or as Posner puts it:

If the moral irrelevance of humanity is what philosophy teaches, and so we have to choose between philosophy and the intuition that says that membership in the human species is morally relevant, then it is philosophy that will have to go.

New Philosophy Blog.

Lane Core points to a new blog - Right Reason: A Weblog for Philosophical Conservativism - which features a post by Roger Scruton.

Roger Scruton is a significant player in contemporary philosophy. His Modern Philosophy, is worth having in the home library for the way it breaks philosophy down into various salient topics and for providing an engaging study guide at the end of each chapter.

It's an awesome thing to see major thinkers interacting with a broad community on a real time basis. Previously, this kind of thing was limited to those who had the could afford the cost being able to travel to elite universities and engaging in uncompensated study.

Developments like this suggest that the internet may be living up to its hype.

Platonic Dialogues about Love and the Other.

Professor Budziszewski is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin. Professor Budziszewski has several books on Natural law, which I'm going to have to locate.

He also has a column where approaches various contemporary issues in a classically socratic manner, including the dry ironic wit that Plato deploye in his dialogues. In this one, his character, Professor Theophilus, is faced with a confrontation by a student about the professor's "hatred" for homosexuals. The column is a very neat exposition of what the classical understanding of "love" entails.

Incidentally, I stumbled on Professor Budziszewski's column after a visit to Chris Burgwald's site where he advises that Professor Budziszewski is a recent convert to Catholicism, so one can never underestimate the subversive quality of Natural Law.

San Diego to remove Mt. Soledad cross.

Prejudicial Effect reports that the San Diego City Council has decided that the Mt. Soledad cross, which has been in place since 1953, must be demolished. This decision comes after a 9th Circuit decision finding that a proposal to transfer the property on which the cross rests to a private entity was constitutionally. (It also comes after the defeat of a similar proposal by a referendum.)

Prejudicial Effects channels his sadness over the removal of this historic part of the San Diego skyline into some reasons for going to law school.

Excellent response; because despite what many people who go to law school think, and who thereafter spend the rest of their life hating their choice and telling their children never to become a lawyer, being a lawyer is not about the big money one can supposedly make.

It is, in truth, a vocation, like being a priest, a doctor or a teacher. (Or, for that matter, like a journalist, a dock worker, a garbage collector or whatever "calling or destiny" that a person has in this life.)

Hunter S. Thompson/John Paul II - compare and contrast.

Jimmy Akins dusts off the old Saturday Night Live skit and asks "Quien Es Mas Macho: Hunter S. Thompson or John Paul II. He also links to this essay at Lew Rockwell which raises some thoughtful insights. I liked this passage:

Grieving widows can say silly things, but it is hard to imagine Priscilla Presley making such a statement about her husband after he was found, disgraced, in that Memphis bathroom. People that go out like champions don’t have their blood and brains sponged up by county health workers following self-inflicted gunshots. Champions know that suffering is an essential element in living happy and accomplished lives. They know growing old is a gift that allows a fuller appreciation for better times and for the inherent goodness of life....

...[c]ontrast Thompson’s life example with that of John Paul II. The 84-year-old pontiff, whose hospital visits made front-page news the week of Thompson’s suicide, has Parkinson’s disease and severe arthritis. His hardships last week are the most recent manifestations of his difficulties. As long ago as 1998, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would write about him: "The pain is written on his face. His figure is bent, and he needs to support himself on his pastoral staff. He leans on the cross, on the crucifix...." By all accounts, he has embraced his suffering in ways that would baffle Thompson and his followers.

It's a good essay; check it out.

Jeff Jacoby expands on the repulsively narcissistic manner of Thompson's suicide, which involved ensuring that his wife listened to the gunshot over the phone. He also observes:

How striking is the contrast between Thompson’s tawdry death and the excruciating struggle of Pope John Paul II, whose passionate belief in the sanctity of life remains unwavering, even as Parkinson’s disease slowly ravages him. The pope’s example of courage and dignity sends a powerful message, but the chattering class would rather talk instead about why this stubborn man won’t resign. Meanwhile they extol Hunter Thompson and are itching to know — are his ashes really going to be fired from a cannon?

And on the subject of folks who want to shuffle the decaying elderly off the stage, Akins also links to a New York Press piece on "The 52 Funniest Things about the Pope's Death."

Update: The OmbudsGod has a working link to the New York Press' "THE 52 FUNNIEST THINGS ABOUT THE UPCOMING DEATH OF THE POPE ." The list is offensive and not even slightly funny, unless you have already bought into the idea that the leader of the Catholic church dying a long and painful death is a hoot all by itself.

Consider #45 - which is not offensive, but is simply not funny in any sense known to man:

45.Pope departs Earth at a time when Hitch is top-grossing movie in the world.

Huh?

For viciousness, though, check out the following sampler:

52.Pope pisses himself just before the end; gets all over nurse.

51.After death, saggy, furry tits of dead Pope begin inexorable process of melting away into nothingness, like coldest of Sno-cones under faintest of suns.

46.Beetles eating Pope's dead brains.

33.Silverfish pops out of dead Pope's vestment for a moment, immediately ducks back in.

27.We'll never get to hear his hilarious post-tracheotomy rendition of "Come on Eileen."

17.In his last days, the Pope was in tremendous pain.

2.This is what happens when weird old men in dresses communicate with the world with doors and chimneys.

1.Throw a marble at the dead Pope's head. Bonk!

Laugh riot.

Ah, but there is an agenda:

22.Mankind scrambles to choose new leader of inflexible, sexually morbid institutional anachronism; heretofore anonymous bureaucrat will instantly be celebrated as world's holiest man as he travels to AIDS-stricken Africa to denounce the use of condoms.

Thought so.

Of course, it's not like Catholics issue fatwas or anything.

However, we do vote, and we need to keep in mind that the clot that wrote this piece is the Political Editor for Rolling Stone magazine, and that this piece is simply what Blue State values look like in the light of day.