Neither Doug nor Dan has responded to my last post, so I'm going to call that a victory for my thesis...which when I originally started was only as strong as "The Religious Right is bad for the country". I have no idea how I let myself get pulled into trying to argue that it's a threat to the existence of America as we know it. I mean, the case can be made, and I'm willing to try to make it, but it really wasn't my original thought.
My original thought was more on the lines of "The Religious Right promulgates ideas that are bad for America (frankly, for the very concepts of reason and rationality), and that they have become sufficiently politically strong that active steps need to be taken to resist them".
Whatever. I win until I hear different.
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Well I think that Heidegger fellow was way off base, too, and if he doesn't come here to redeem himself, I consider it a victory!!!
ReplyDeleteI wish we had had more time to discuss the issue on Sunday. I'm still not comfortable with the term the religious right, which you claim has a specific meaning and refers to a specific group of people. I would need to understand this more before I could either defend them or join in your attack.
Right, there is an exact analogy between you not responding to a blog entry aimed directly at you and a long-dead philosopher not returning from the dead to defend his ideas. How do you even sleep at night, Sophist?
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you what: this here internet thing will respond to "the Religious Right". You could try to educate yourself on the matter...
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ReplyDeleteWell, okay, then, given your revised thesis, I agree: the ideas and program of the Religious Right should be resisted. It was indeed all that "threat" talk that got things muddy, inasmuch as it involves magnitude (initially the apparent claim of destruction of America in some sense, thus begging definitions of "America") and likelihood (arguably including imminence). There is still some space between us because you are claiming "The Religious Right _is_ bad for the country," whereas I am unconvinced that it _is_. I am, however, in agreement with you that "they have become sufficiently politically strong that active steps need to be taken to resist them." So maybe that is a distinction without much difference.
ReplyDelete(One could say that, innoculation-like, the existence of the Religious Right might be arguably a good thing, in that its likelihood of ultimate success is slight, and yet it summons forces to oppose it--which forces shall almost certainly prevail--that redound to the benefit of the country. This is a flimsy, difficult to prove argument, admittedly, but I think it might be true.)
I do not object as Doug does to "Religious Right."
I did object to the contention in your previous post about the arrow of progress, which seemed to conflate "individual liberty" with "social justice," both being advanced by the arrow of progress. These two values have in fact often been at poles on issues of the day. For example increase in taxation to address social ills. Or SEC regulation. Or FDA regulation. Prior to 1937, a prescription was purely informational: any drug that you could purchase with a doctor's prescription, you could also purchase without a one, if you knew the drug's name to tell the pharmacist. Campaigns for censorship almost invariably invoke a claim to increasing social justice. People who aim (at least rhetorically) to reinstate the draft invoke social justice. You can be sure that the Religious Right believes (or at least proclaims) that it is championing social justice--the restoration of the family and community. So, anyway, we have an argument here, it looks like, if you want one.
I don't object to the term religious right, I simply don't understand it. Even after using the Internet to find a working definition, I'm still at a loss.
ReplyDeleteEven given my general sense of the term, I'm uncomfortable with the argument on a number of grounds. One is that I believe that human groups function pragmatically, even if they are ideologically or idealistically driven. One of the ramifications of this is that you can end up framing the discourse in a way that sets up a permanent division between us and them. Rush Limbaugh, to me, isn't foolish because he's conservative, he's foolish because of his reasoning, his cynical populism, and his willingness to disregard ambiguities or complexity. Is there any real way to engage on this debate without ourselves doing much of the same while at the same time keeping our eye on what is both effective and driven by principle?
What's more, in the particular, many who consider themselves either Evangelical Christians or members of the religious right gain a great deal of their political power by the appearance of being under attack or marginal, even as they assume greater political power. One might suggest that, historically, this is a characteristic of Christianity in general. By demonizing instead of seeking common cause, not only do you end up mirroring less than savory aspects of extremist positions in general, you also give credence to the myth and paradoxically give power to what is in your case, the other side.
Finally, I avoid the ad hominem in this instance for a reason, and part of this is because doing so leaves the table open for friendly and honest debate of the sort that become impossible once lines are drawn so clearly. My own vision of democracy encompasses people of all political and religious stripes, the question not being which one is right but how do we live in some sort of harmony and find ways to contribute to the greater good despite our various notions as to what that means.
I remember becoming good friends in France with a very conservative Evangelical Christianity. I was deeply impressed by his selflessness and his sincerity. He was much more willing to sacrifice his own pleasure than many of the smug do-gooders at liberal Goddard College and, frankly, if I found out that he was running for president, he would likely have my vote. There is no argument here: simply a statement based on experience. Don't accuse me of a reverse ad hominem: the point is not that he was right because he was a great guy, but sometimes it really does serve to grant some sort of inherent dignity to people whose political beliefs might differ from our own. He challenged some of my preconceived notions, I likely challenged his, and we left as friends in a way that would have been impossible we seen each other as possessing some sort of ontological threat to the nation or civility.
Doug, I may at some point engage more of what you said, but the one thing that sticks in my craw right now is your repeated use of "ad hominem" and its suggestion that I'm currently engaging in or at the very least on a "slippery slope" (a logical fallacy all its own) toward engaging in ad hominem attacks on the religious right. That is simply not the case. I am attacking, first, a set of ideas with which I disagree and, second, those who endorse and espouse those ideas. However, not once have I characterized the people based on anything other than their adherence to those beliefs with which I disagree.
ReplyDeleteAn ad hominem attack is a device used to avoid the force of the opponents argument by making a personal attack on them and side-stepping their argument. The next time I argue that sodomy between consenting adults should be legal because anyone who thinks otherwise is a fatso, then you can accuse me of ad hominem.
The only way you can even get within a light-year of having a case for ad hominem is by holding that the mere suggestion that the RR is intolerant counts as an ad hominem attack. However, intolerance is completely fair game, because the idea that intolerance is OK is one of the ideas I'm attacking. I mention the RR while attacking this idea, because they are the principal mechanism by which intolerance becomes legislation.
Further, you seem to think that my position is that, if one is Right-wing AND Religious, then one is a member of the The Religious Right. I never said that, nor would I. I'm obviously no fan of organized religion, but subscribing to one is not something that I would criticize.
If you think I'm engaging in an ad hominem attack, please explain how so. Otherwise, please stop mischaracterizing my argument.
It's becoming obvious that my contributions here are unwelcome -- I would hold that they are being misunderstood but at the very least we are attempting to get at the issue using apparently incompatible modes of discourse. Either way, I'll simply leave the comments to others from now on.
ReplyDeleteDoug,
ReplyDeleteYour comments are not unwelcome. I just find them mostly off-topic. You take what I said as a starting point, but then you tend to deviate onto some tangent that, while interesting, isn't strictly necessary to the conversation. Also, having had enough verbal conversations with you, I know how you operate: you find the journey more interesting than the destination, and as a result, you modify your position in real-time, so that you can continue to disagree slightly with the last thing that your opponent said.
I've seen you do this a number of times in conversation with me, to the point where you had circumlocuted so much that at the end of the conversation, in order to disagree with the last thing that I had said, you responded with a statement that totally agreed with my original thesis, and therefore, contradicted your own original challenge to that thesis.
Now, a dialectic workout is all well and good, and I'm happy to spar with you for the sake of keeping you sharp. However, I did't want to do that here. Here, I wanted to try to make a point, and I find your semantic tactics to be diversionary rather than substantial.
But that's fine. Let's have the conversation. But let's do it clearly and concisely. I will continue this conversation with you on the condition that we try to keep our responses to under 100 words for now; if we find that number too limiting, we will propose an increase.
Please respond if you accept those terms for now.