May 8, 2012

In their recent Post article, Mann and Ornstein noted that one of the problems in dealing with Republican extremism is that the media are reluctant to expose it, and instead play the blame-both-sides game.

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

That’s good advice, but will it be taken? Not by the Post, which felt compelled to achieve "balance" by tacking on at the end of the article a link to a comment by one of its pundits, the ubiquitous Jennifer Rubin. Although the title of her column is "Right Turn," which exposes its bias, she had the chutzpah to describe Mann and Ornstein as "Democratic hacks." For good measure, she declared that they are "shopworn founts of conventional wisdom, . . not serious pundits, let alone scholars."

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein are scholars, and are especially interested in the function, performance and problems of Congress, as shown by their book The Broken Branch. Glancing at the introduction to that book would have revealed to Ms. Rubin the truth of this statement in their article: "In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted." Paying attention to current events would have shown her the truth of this one: "Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party."

May 7, 2012

A recent article in The Washington Post by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein made this observation:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of

compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges. . .

To put the matter in less scholarly terms, it’s difficult to have a debate, and to hold open the possibility of compromise or a change in one’s opinion, when the other guy lives on a different planet. If he has different goals or beliefs or priorities, there still is the possibility of a constructive conversation. However, when perception is radically different, when one person’s fact is another’s fantasy, debate is impossible and even basic communication is difficult.

Take, for example, Newt Gingrich who, in his enthusiasm for colonizing the moon, almost literally fits the other-world model. In his formal "suspension" announcement, he offered qualified, grudging support for his rival: "As for the presidency, I'm asked sometimes, is Mitt Romney conservative? And my answer is simple. Compared to Barack Obama? You know, this is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan." In other words, Mitt isn’t as conservative as Republicans like to think the Gipper was, but the Reagan option isn’t open. We must accept Mitt, but only as the lesser evil, the alternative being really evil: "This is a choice between Mitt Romney and the most radical leftist president in American history." Radical leftist? It’s difficult to remember that Obama is a Democrat, let alone a liberal, still less a leftist, "radical" or otherwise.

Then we have Michael Gerson, one of the Post’s stable of conservatives (and by no means the most detached from reality). He started out a recent column with a partially accurate comment: "The past few years have been the most decisive and divisive ideological period since the early 1980s, perhaps since the late 1960s." Let’s hope that the politics of this decade has not been decisive as to our common future, but certainly Republicans have been divisively ideological. Oh, that’s not what he meant: "Barack Obama has pursued Keynesian economics on a breathtaking scale, racking up three years of deficits in excess of a trillion dollars and presiding over a national credit downgrade." A necessary and inadequate stimulus during a recession somehow qualifies as breathtaking Keynesianism. The current deficits are huge, but Mr. Gerson neglects to note that 1) his former employer, G.W. Bush, inherited a surplus, which turned into a deficit in his first full fiscal year; 2) every subsequent Bush year ran a deficit; 3) the huge deficits we now face are the result of a recession which began on Mr. Bush’s watch; and 4) the largest deficit to date was in fiscal 2009, which began in the last Bush year. The credit downgrade was a non-event; the government still can borrow at very low rates. Gerson also managed to detect in the reactionary Ryan budget something called "Reform Conservatism."

Nitwits like Allen West think that progressives are, by definition, communists. Even common words have, for the right, sinister connotations: the Obama campaign slogan, "Forward," is, according to Breitbart.com, The Washington Times and William Kristol, a communist term.⁴⁰

In his book Anti-intellectualism in American Life , Richard Hofstadter treated such a charge as already quaint because "Communism has been reduced to a negligible quantity in American domestic life . . . ." That was in 1963. There was, however, a reason for the witch hunt of the Fifties, the same reason for such accusations today: "The truth is that the right-winger needs his Communists badly, and is pathetically reluctant to give them up." Senator Joseph McCarthy’s ranting "satisfied a craving for revenge and a desire to discredit the type of leadership the New Deal had made prominent." Then, as now, one tactic of the right was "obscuring as completely as possible the differences between liberals and Communists."

Conservatives still are arguing about the New Deal, even after the failure of conservative economics has provided additional proof of the truth of Keynesianism. As in the Fifties, they also are debating matters settled even longer ago. "McCarthy's own expression, ‘twenty years of treason,’ suggested the long-standing grievances that were nursed by the crusaders, though the right-wing spokesman, Frank Chodorov, put it in better perspective when he said that the betrayal of the United States had really begun in 1913 with the passage of the income-tax amendment." Ron Paul, still a candidate for the GOP nomination, also wants to repeal that amendment.

The ideologues on the right fit this definition: "the essence of a doctrinaire is not that he does not read newspapers or collect facts: it consists in adhering to a system of interpretation that is impervious to empirical data, or is so nebulous that any and every fact can be used to confirm it.” Ironically, that was used to describe Trotsky.⁴¹

________________________


40. There are links to the various sources at http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/05/01/474507/right-wing-claims-obamas-new-campaign-slogan-reveals-his-secret-communist-andor-fascist-allegiances/
41. Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, p. 958

April 12, 2012

On Monday I referred to the tendency of some on the right to call President Obama a communist. On Tuesday, Rep. Allen West expanded the field. He was asked at a town-hall event, "What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists . . . ?" West replied, as if reciting an accepted fact, "I believe there is [sic] about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party." After a long pause, during which he stood quietly, apparently expecting another question, he added that he referred to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of liberal Democrats in the U.S. House.³⁷

Given an opportunity to rescue the Congressman, his campaign manager doubled down: "He stands by the comments. Call them what you want; they’re clearly people who oppose capitalism and free markets and individual economic freedom. So, if the shot [sic] fits. . . ." Are they really communists? "We can quibble about the terminology used to describe them, but it’s clear. Whatever you call people that oppose capitalism and free markets and individual economic freedom — maybe it’s ‘socialist,’ maybe it’s ‘Communist’ — but that’s the point the congressman was making, and he stands by the words."³⁸

His equation is similar to that on the "Commieblaster" web site: "PROGRESSIVES = SOCIALISTS = COMMUNISTS = LEFT-WING RADICALS = ANTI-CAPITALISTS = UNAMERICAN." ³⁹ That site finds virtually everyone in the administration, including the President, to be a communist, and claims that George Soros, another communist, is Mr. Obama’s "boss." I suppose that one might take heart from the fact that all of this is so inane, but it rattles around the internet, so many others probably believe it.

Rep. West is known for foolish and offensive comments, but he must be running out of material if he must fall back on slurs of the 1950s.

____________________________

37. West’s own video of the event is at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/12/ allen-west-communist-video_n_1420919.html. Senator Sanders, an Independent, also is a member of the CPC.
38. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/republican-rep-allen-west-suggests-many- congressional-democrats-are-communists/2012/04/11/gIQApbZiAT_blog.html
39. http://commieblaster.com/

April 9, 2012

What do you read, my lord?
Words, words, words.
Hamlet, Act II Scene II

With nothing better to do with my time and having a tendency toward masochism, I read a number of books and articles (dare I say texts?) recently on the sort of literary criticism which held sway for many years and perhaps still does. Here’s the inventory:

Birns, Theory after Theory (2010);

Bryant, "Speculative Realist Literary Criticism," December 23, 2011
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/speculative-realist-literary-criticism/

Compagnon, Literature, Theory, and Common Sense (2004) (reread);

Jameson, The Ideologies of Theory (1988);

Joy, "Notes Toward a Speculative Realist Literary Criticism," December 21, 2011  http://svtwuni.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/eileen-a-joy-stu09/

Kirby, "The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond," in Philosophy Now , Nov/Dec 2011;

Leitch et al., The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2010);

Patai and Corral, Theory’s Empire (2005);

Sokal and Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures (2003).

The quote above occurred to me while reading these works. They, or the postmodern sources they collect, are abstract, verbose, laden with jargon and pretentiously obscure. In a way the obscurity is fitting, as a recurrent theme is that literature is nothing but language, and language floats free of an anchor in the real world. "Words take on a life of their own, losing their referential grasp and their power to communicate something precise and concrete."¹⁶ I can’t say that this project was the result of a strong intrinsic interest in the subject; instead it grew out of an impression that the detachment of rhetoric from empirical fact — to say nothing of sheer blather — which characterizes literary theory resembles that of right-wing politics. ¹⁷ Any connection would be ironic, as the former, at least in its American manifestation, is strongly associated with politics on the left. However, it’s tempting to think that there is a connection, if only because the relativism of postmodern literary theory — and much of analytic philosophy — and the vaporousness of the former, seem to have crept from the academy into the mainstream.

As is evident from the titles, the sources cited are about something called "theory." It’s less than clear what that means, which is puzzling, especially as it often is called "Theory;" converting it into a proper noun seems to suggest that it is discrete and identifiable. A good example of the vagueness of the concept is Birns’ Theory after Theory. What does that title mean? Does it refer to some new sort of theory after the decline of Theory?; — to theory 2 after the demise of theory 1?; — one theory after another (literally or sarcastically)? The word is not defined. In places the author apparently intends to refer to something specific, in others to use the term generically (as in this theory or that theory), and in still others to refer to the use of a theory as opposed to doing without one. This lack of clarity is typical and, although some, including Birns, apparently think postmodernism has had its day, the jargon, abstraction, and need for "theory" seem to persist.

Several aspects of postmodernism are significant.

Language and reality

Here is a description of the postmodernist attitude:

Language is thus, to employ technical deconstructive terms, text or textuality , meaning a complex interweaving of self-referential, undecidable relationships. In extreme forms, this challenging theory of literature as textuality views language as thoroughly divorced from reality; in more moderate forms, language maintains a relation to reality, albeit a highly unstable one.^{1 18}

This is the result of a (possibly misused) theory of semantics adopted by the postmodernists, which held that the relationship between a signifier (word) and a signified (concept) was arbitrary, e. g., that there is no logical relationship between "dog" and the notion of a dog; we simply have chosen that word. This was interpreted by such postmodernists as Jacques Derrida to mean that the relationship between words and the world is equally arbitrary, that words refer only to other words, or texts to other texts, or signs to other signs, leading to a "process of infinite referral, of never arriving at meaning itself."¹⁹ "Because the signifier (word) is disconnected from the signified (concept) and the referent (thing), language floats or slides in relation to reality. . . ."²⁰

Collaboration by philosophy

Analytic philosophy, which intended to clarify concepts by examining language, ended up in many instances reenforcing tendencies toward obscurity and relativism. Simon Blackburn, in numerous books and articles, has attempted to put it back on the straight path. He noted that "Modern philosophy has been dominated by a concern with language. But modern philosophy of language is highly inaccessible,"²¹ i.e., most of us can’t understand it. "In general, analytical philosophy has had rather an unsatisfactory relationship with the topic of truth."²² Philosophers have "attacked the idea of anything being simply given in experience, . . . the objectivity of any scientific theorizing we might do on the basis of experience [and]. . . the idea of determinate meanings."²³ Wittgenstein contributed the subversive notion of the language game.

Movement between disciplines

Influence has moved back and forth between literary studies and philosophy, and beyond; philosopher Richard Rorty was one conduit. Rorty was a pragmatist, which is to say a sort of relativist in that he thought the test for anything was whether it worked; never mind "truth." His view of language resembled Derrida’s:

. . . Once the philosophy of language was freed from what Quine and Davidson call "the dogmas of empiricism" . . . sentences were no longer thought of as expressions of experience nor as representations of extra-experiential reality. Rather, they were thought of as strings of marks and noises used by human beings in the development and pursuit of social practices— practices which enabled people to achieve their ends, ends which do not include "representing reality as it is in itself."²⁴

The application of this doctrine isn’t limited to literature and philosophy; as Blackburn put it,

The best way to understand Rorty is simply to see him as generalising this view of literary criticism across the board. In science or history, law or psychology, politics or ethics the same model applies. . . . But just as a text allows for multiple readings, so does the world. Truth, and reason as the anointed method of sifting it, disappear. . . .²⁵

One the more unfortunate secondary effects has been on the writing of history. Once facts become unimportant, and the past becomes just another text, history can be rewritten to suit any ideological end.²⁶ Science, too, is undermined: "No research, whether on the natural or the social world, can progress on a basis that is both conceptually confused and radically detached from empirical evidence."²⁷

Empiricism

Leaving dogmas aside, empiricism in some sense remains central to any thinking connected to the real world. Theory challenges even that: "The empiricism that stands in some jeopardy today is simply a regard for evidence — a disposition to consult ascertainable facts when choosing between rival ideas."²⁸

Anti-rationalism

The disregard for evidence is part of a larger problem, a disdain for rationalism. The postmodern tendency toward obfuscation prompted Alan Sokal to submit a spoof on scientific relativism to a self-important journal which, impressed by the jargon, published it. He and Jean Bricmont later wrote Intellectual Impostures , which expanded on the theme of the misuse of language and noted the anti-rationalist aspect:

Vast sectors of the humanities and the social sciences seem to have adopted a philosophy that we shall call, for want of a better term, "postmodernism": an intellectual current characterized by the more-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment, by theoretical discourses disconnected from any empirical test, and by a cognitive and cultural relativism that regards science as nothing more than a 'narration', a 'myth' or a social construction among many others.²⁹

Numerous other books have noted this tendency to retreat from the rationalist foundations of the Enlightenment, although not always linking that development to postmodernism.³⁰

Politics becomes infected.

" ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather
scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean —
neither more nor less.’
Through the Looking Glass, Chap. VI

Right-wing politics shares several tendencies with postmodernism: a flight from reality, relativism in the sense of beliefs based on usefulness, and language freed from the need to communicate something concrete. Consider this reaction to the 1996 Republican Convention: "So many words! . . . So little meaning!"³¹ or this description of contemporary right–wing populism: "Even if we leave aside the off-the-wall paranoid projections, the detailed policy claims made by Tea Partiers are, to put it politely, often not in touch with factual reality." ³²

Of course, the present state of conservative political discourse in this country cannot be attributed entirely, or even mainly, to the influence of postmodernism; there is nothing new about about the slippery use of words in politics, nor about an anti-Enlightenment attitude on the right, but the latter once was confined to the fringe; now it is in the mainstream. It is no exaggeration to say that conservative politics has an unsatisfactory relationship with the topic of truth. Postmodernism may have contributed to, and has helped to legitimize, that development.

Whether or not there is causal connection, politics on the right displays a disdain for empiricism, rationality and facts, and a penchant for vague and obfuscating language and outright misuse of terms. As to the former, a Bush aide famously summed up the situation by referring derisively to people in the reality-based community, i.e., those who believe that solutions emerge from a study of reality. As to the latter, it is fitting that Newt Gingrich is running this year, as he is an originator of the GOP’s use of language as a means of preventing thought. When in Congress he published a list of words to use to discredit the opposition,³³ including betray, cheat, coercion, corrupt, decay, endanger, radical, sick, and traitors. Do they describe reality? Who cares?

If words have at best an unstable relation to reality, they can be twisted to mean whatever the speaker wants. Hence President Obama is alleged to be either a communist or a fascist, sometimes both, and a Muslim, and a foreigner, with no concern for anything as trivial as evidence or even definitions.

The disdain for facts infects right-wing attitudes toward science, for example rejecting evidence of evolution and climate change: "if anything, or almost anything, can be read into the content of scientific discourse, then why should anyone take science seriously as an objective account of the world? Conversely, if one adopts a relativist philosophy, then arbitrary comments on scientific theories become legitimate."³⁴

Other examples of the decoupling of words from facts involve either ignoring history or rewriting it. This allows Republicans to advocate austerity during a recession, claiming that it will cause the economy to improve; to assert that tax cuts always increase revenue and automatically create jobs; and (burying the very recent past) to reiterate the claim that the market always produces the best possible results and, therefore, any form of regulation is a negative influence.

Religious fundamentalism often is a source of irrationalism. Consider the citation by Senator Inhofe and Representative Shimkus of Genesis 8:21-22 as proof that we shouldn’t worry about global warming. Again, there is a parallel: in 1995, participants at a meeting captioned "The Flight from Science and Reason," at the New York Academy of Sciences, expressed concern over the effects both of religious fundamentalism and post-modernist critics of science. One speaker noted that "post-modernists of both the political left and right" denied that scientific knowledge was possible. ³⁵

Although the Bible, employed selectively and imaginatively, is a source of conservative political doctrine, it is, paradoxically, just another text to be deconstructed: available translations allegedly have a liberal bias. That will be purged in a proposed new translation using "powerful new conservative terms" and "free market parables."³⁶

Even if the similarity is accidental, it is ironic, and it is more than an intellectual curiosity. Those two streams, postmodernism and "conservatism,"one running on the far left, the other spread across the right, have undermined what remains, which is liberalism. That is so whether one defines liberalism in terms of the political spectrum, i.e., the near and mid-left, or whether it is defined historically and intellectually as that set of beliefs, practices and values — including rationalism — which supports all of modern democratic politics and culture, including the parts commonly (or previously) termed conservative.

____________________________.

16.Theory’s Empire , pp. 64-65
17. I’ve already rambled on about the rhetorical similarities between right-wing politics, postmodern literary theory, arts reviews and analytic philosophy. See notes of 4/27/2007 and 4/26/2011. This comment grew out of an effort better to understand the second.
18. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism , p. 6
19. "Jacques Derrida," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/derrida/
20. The Norton Anthology , p. 21
21. Blackburn, Spreading the Word , p.1
22. Blackburn, review of Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness, http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/reviews/Williams1.htm
23. Ibid.
24. Rorty, The Linguistic Turn , p. 373
25. Blackburn, "Portrait: Richard Rorty," Prospect Magazine , April 2003; http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=5545
26. The tendency has been criticized in several books: Evans, In Defense of History ; Wood, The Purpose of the Past ; Himmelfarb, "Postmodern History," in On Looking into the Abyss .
27. Intellectual Impostures , p. 193
28. Theory’s Empire , p. 222
29. Intellectual Impostures , p. 1
30. See, e.g., Gore, The Assault on Reason ; Jacoby, American Unreason ; Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason .
31. Hendick Hertzberg, Politics , p. 127
32. Skocpol and Williamson, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism , p. 199
33. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/27/us/politics/27gingrich-text.html
34. Intellectual Impostures , p. 194
35. The New York Times , 6/6/95
36. http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project  See my note of 10/26/09.

March 17, 2012
The Catholic Bishops of the United States have entered the political arena again. Their recent reaction to the administration’s directive on contraception insurance unavoidably raises questions regarding the wisdom and propriety of such involvement.

On March 6, on behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Chairman of its Committee on Domestic Justice and the Chairman of its Committee on International Justice sent a letter to members of Congress addressing "the moral and human dimensions of the federal budget." The letter began with a description of the political situation:

In the past year, Congress and the Administration have taken significant action to reduce the federal deficit, while attempting to protect programs that serve poor and vulnerable people. Congress will continue to face difficult choices about how to allocate burdens and sacrifices and balance resources and needs. We fear the pressure to cut vital programs that protect the lives and dignity of the poor and vulnerable will increase.

That led to a statement of criteria for budgetary policy:

1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.

2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.

3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times.

The first and third go a step beyond the more general statement in that each lays down a political principle, and the former carries a hint of doctrine.

As a transition to more detailed comments, the letter made a more explicit reference to Catholic policy:

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church teaches: “Just, efficient and effective public financing will … encourage employment growth, … sustain business and non-profit activities” and help guarantee “systems of social insurance and protection that are designed above all to protect the weakest members of society.”

This comes closer still to political commentary, as it refers to government expenditures. The Bishops added, "We do not offer a detailed critique of entire budget proposals, but we ask you to consider the human and moral dimensions of these choices." That is a little disingenuous, as the letter eventually addresses individual programs. First, however, it takes yet another intermediate step, referring to broad categories of policy:

. . . A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons; it requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs fairly.

Then came the specifics:

. . . We support proposals in the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget to strengthen programs that serve poor and vulnerable people, such as Pell Grants and improved workforce training and development. We also support proposals to restore cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as well as efforts to make permanent recent expansions of low-income tax credits.

. . . We do not support the Administration’s proposal to increase the minimum amount of rent that can be charged to families receiving housing assistance. Minimum rent provisions affect the poorest and most vulnerable families--they already struggle to live in dignity. We strongly oppose the Administration’s proposal to eliminate funding for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides vital assistance to poor families in the nation’s capital in seeking out high-quality education for their children.

The Conference does not support the entire foreign operations budget, but we strongly support poverty-focused international assistance. The Administration proposes to increase State and Foreign Operations funding by 2.4 percent, but cut lifesaving, poverty-focused programs by over one percent. Cuts may be necessary within the broader foreign operations budget, but they should not reduce poverty-focused international assistance. . . .

We are also very concerned with proposals to eliminate the “firewall” that currently exists between defense and nondefense spending. Elimination of this firewall would mean that poverty-related domestic and international programs would compete with other more powerful interests and less essential priorities. Likewise, reverting to a “security/non-security” distinction for Fiscal Year 2013 would threaten international development assistance.

With a nod to the earlier controversy, the letter also took a position on health care:

Access to affordable, life-affirming health care that respects religious freedom remains an urgent national priority. Rising health care costs contribute in major ways to increased government spending. We warn against shifting rising health care costs to vulnerable seniors, people with disabilities, and those who are poor, without controlling these costs.

It ended with a return to general principles but included a reference to the plutocratization of our politics:

The moral measure of this budget debate is not which party wins or which powerful interests prevail, but rather how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated. Their voices are too often missing in these debates, but they have the most compelling moral claim on our consciences and our common resources.

Partisans could find the Bishops’ policy positions insufficiently liberal, too liberal, or whatever, but leaving that aside, what are we to make of the stance? The letter ended by stating that "The Catholic bishops of the United States stand ready to work with leaders of both parties for a budget that reduces future deficits, protects poor and vulnerable people, advances the common good, and promotes human life and dignity." However, it goes beyond that and takes positions on specific legislative items. Is that a good idea?

It is very difficult, in evaluating an intersection between religion and politics, to avoid the temptation to approve it when the religious sentiment is congenial and deprecate it when not. If we resist that and try to maintain objectivity, where do we draw the line? As I’ve said before, I don’t know, but I continue to think that there is some realm of general moral principle in which a statement of religious belief is powerful enough to mean something, but avoids the introduction of specific doctrine or, worse yet, the implication that a policy or political tendency is God’s will. In general, I think that this letter stays within bounds.

_________________

15. http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/federal-budget/  upload/Letter-to-Congress-Federal-Budget-2012-03-06.pdf   

February 27, 2012

Fox News has amused us with its self-mocking slogan "We report, you decide." Some news media, however, take it to heart, and extend it, following a practice of "we report, superficially, you draw any conclusions." I’ve mentioned stories on extreme weather which manage not to refer to climate change. The local media provided another example on the 22nd.

A nine year old boy took a loaded gun to school, where it went off, apparently while in his backpack. An eight year old girl was seriously wounded. KING-TV reported on the incident, on two successive evenings, without any comment on the absurdly easy access to firearms and without even asking how the boy got hold of the gun. The problem wasn’t lack of time. It’s true that KING has reduced most news reports to a few seconds, consisting of badly written summaries badly read. However, when it wants to — and it always wants to when there is a disaster — the program can allocate a longer segment to a story; it did so with the shooting.

Tonight NBC News reported on another school shooting, again without comment or question as to our oversupply of deadly weapons, and aired a report on rising gas prices without asking why they are going up.

This is carrying "just the facts" a bit far.

February 26, 2012

In several columns and articles the authors have seen the recent directive concerning contraception as a political loss for President Obama. It’s true enough that announcing a policy and then modifying it in response to criticism was clumsy, and it reenforced Obama’s reputation for backing down. However, on the merits, the new policy, as modified, may work to his political advantage, as well as being right. A principle, that all women should have access to birth control, has been established. It offends Catholic Bishops,⁷ who have opposed it ⁸ and have asked the Senate to intervene, ⁹ but it has wide support among the public, including a majority of Catholics.¹⁰ Republicans have assailed the policy, but they will attack anything Obama does, so no matter.

This is in part a religious issue, internal to the Catholic faith, but the Bishops have intervened in a debate on a government program, in effect making doctrine an adjunct to public policy, so examination and criticism of that doctrine is fair.
The principal source is the Papal Encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968),¹¹ which prohibits any non-natural form of birth control. It is tempting to conclude that the Church, ruled by a celibate male clergy, simply is unaware of the real-world implications of its policy. However, Humanae Vitae recited many of the practical considerations:

In the first place there is the rapid increase in population which has made many fear that world population is going to grow faster than available resources, with the consequence that many families and developing countries would be faced with greater hardships. . . . There is also the fact that not only working and housing conditions but the greater demands made both in the economic and educational field pose a living situation in which it is frequently difficult these days to provide properly for a large family.

Also noteworthy is a new understanding of the dignity of woman and her place in society . . . .

Given those considerations, the Encyclical asked, reasonably, "would it not be right to review the moral norms in force till now, especially when it is felt that these can be observed only with the gravest difficulty, sometimes only by heroic effort?" As a further inquiry, it posed this question:

Moreover, if one were to apply here the so called principle of totality, could it not be accepted that the intention to have a less prolific but more rationally planned family might transform an action which renders natural processes infertile into a licit and provident control of birth? Could it not be admitted, in other words, that procreative finality applies to the totality of married life rather than to each single act? A further question is whether, because people are more conscious today of their responsibilities, the time has not come when the transmission of life should be regulated by their intelligence and will rather than through the specific rhythms of their own bodies.

The answer, unfortunately, was negative: doctrine excludes "any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means." The Encyclical did not expressly recognize that the burden of pregnancy is on the woman but, given the doctrinaire solution, any greater awareness likely wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

The web site Catholic Answers ¹² implies that the Church always has opposed birth control, and cites several comments by early church fathers. However, it cites no Papal Encyclical earlier than Humanae Vitae of 1968. According to an article ¹³ in The Washington Post, the Church did not have an official doctrine opposing birth control until Casti Connubii, an Encyclical issued in 1930. The author also states that Humanae Vitae was opposed by a majority of the Church leaders on the commission Pope Paul appointed to advise him on the subject.

In any case, the 1968 Encyclical’s rationale for its contraception doctrine seems weak as a matter of theology. It is based on a vague concept of natural law. It cites no Biblical source on the point. (Catholic Answers cites two, Genesis 38:8-10 and Deuteronomy 25:7-10, the force and applicability of which are dubious, to say the least). The distinction drawn between natural and artificial birth control is declared rather than supported, and allowing the former seems inconsistent with the Church’s position on the purpose of sex: "each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life."

As a matter of doctrine, or of morality, the Bishops’ opposition to contraception is self-defeating. The Church opposes abortion, a position which certainly can be defended on non-doctrinaire grounds. One way — realistically the most effective way — to reduce the number of abortions is to make contraception readily available, but the Church’s edict on birth control stands in the way.

As the quotes make clear, the Church’s teaching about the function of sex is limited to the marital state. The Encyclical barely notes the possibility of any activity outside that relationship, and disapproves; contraception will lead to

marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law.

This is similar to the conservative attitude toward sex education and the availability of birth control to teenagers: it will encourage immorality. Unfortunately, withholding contraception is as likely to result in pregnancy and abortion as in chastity.

As the laity disagree with the Bishops’ stand on the policy, and a large number of them likely decline to follow the church’s teaching on birth control, the Bishops’ stance has little effect other than to introduce Catholic doctrine into a question of health care and to give aid and comfort to the political right wing. They are, in other words, playing politics, intentionally or not. ¹⁴

Religious belief obviously must be respected, and its free exercise protected, but allowing it a veto over secular policy is another matter.

 
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7.See the web site of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, http://usccbmedia.blogspot.com/ , postings of 2/6, 2/9 and 2/13.
8. http://usccb.org/news/2012/12-026.cfm
9. http://usccb.org/news/2012/12-029.cfm
10.http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/poll-americans-overwhelmingly-favor-contraception-coverage-mandate----including-catholics.php
11.http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968 _humanae-vitae_en.html
12. http://www.catholic.com/tracts/birth-control
13. "How the Catholic Church almost came to accept birth control," by Elaine Tyler May, 2/24.
14. The Bishops deny this; see item six of their supplemental statement: http://usccbmedia.blogspot.com/  (2/13/12)