This post is in response to both Noam Chomsky's essay on the decline of America, the first part of which is posted on Al Jazeera's opinion section, and Paul Rosenberg's essay on the shortcomings of the Republican party's failed case.
On Chomsky... I might agree with the headline that there may be some
observable "Decline of America", but in a very qualified way - I think
that as a living body of people with values and principles by which we
instinctively live and find various policies appealing or repulsive, we
are far from a severe decline that would result in a dramatic change of
those values and principles (or their priorities) - I think that the
"thinking public" as such is more stable than that.
However, the
political arena sees wildly different cases day by day that stack votes
on both sides - indeed on three sides: decline, stability, and progress.
Note that departures from stability (or stagnation?) could be either
decline or progress, and both admit of degrees. Note also that progress
can only be made from a point of stability, wherever that resting place
is. Policies lean now this way and now the other; Obama's change
doctrine is devoid of real significance at face value, and actually
cashes in with real injustice (called "justice" by its proponents).
I was getting a bit confused reading both articles and crossing their opinions. I attempt to merge the two critics in my own response here.
Rosenberg's understanding of Catholic Social Doctrine (not teaching, as he
casually states it) is shallow at best... his reliance on
another commentator's analysis
of Rick Santorum's deviance from actual Catholic teaching is
dangerously analytical and abuses terminology in several cases. In
listening to Santorum speak in response to the healthcare and
contraception issues, I find him a strong supporter of the Church's
position, which includes the interests of religious liberty, protection
of conscience of individual Americans (esp. those adherents of Christian
faith), and the interest of God's law as evident in nature and open to
the human intellect to discover (simply, natural law). On the
contraception issue (and several related issues), check out this concise counterpoint. In the Whitehouse's press concerning the contraception mandate,
now pushed to insurance companies without any real change in the burden
on employers compared to the previous version of the policy, the
alleged position of the Catholic church is painfully inaccurate. The
statements made by the Catholic Health Association and Catholics United
are accurate enough not to bring condemnation from Church leaders, but
also politically crafted to render a favorable disposition toward what
they keep calling a "step in the right direction," euphemistically
settling for baby steps when in reality it's such a small step it's
hardly more than a leaning of the foot over the line of scrimmage.
Archbishop Dolan's (now Cardinal, as of today in Rome) remarks after the first news broke are harshly critical of Obama's action, and Obama's press conference
(along with a very nervous Secretary of HHS and including his
far-from-genuine story of working for the Church with the poor of
Chicago) is so hard to watch on account of his manner of delivery and
the structure (?) of his argument. His appeal to the American people's
desire for urgency in the matter might have been laudable for many other
issues, but I sincerely think he projected far too much - he claimed to
answer a need that really was not there, and the terribly weak
statistical foundation he established was so crafted it makes us sick.
Enough on that issue.
On Chomksy's assertion that "American
decline is real, though the apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar
ruling class perception that anything short of total control amounts to
total disaster." Philosophically and psychologically, the need for
control among the ruling class is ideally minimized in authentically
leading (presiding over) the people governed by their principles and
values and the particular policies that they agree to be workable in
executing those principles and values, together with their relative
priorities. Chomsky seems to be saying that we should realize that
American decline does not mean American destruction and that something
short of total control amounts to something short of total disaster,
concisely, that the well or ill-being of a nation is proportional to the
quality and accomplishments of its leadership. With this graduated
view, I could not agree more - but we need be careful in positing the
existence of degrees where the subject does not admit of degrees at all
but stands on its own as absolute. Primarily, and most grievously in
today's society, we need to recognize that there is absolute truth.
Aristotle and so many after him have rightly asserted in both logic and
metaphysics that truth is singular, but error admits of degrees - that
is, there is one right answer and a boundless accumulation of wrong
answers that might be given. This, too, is limited to certain areas, and
philosophers distinguish kinds of certitude. There are utterly absolute
metaphysical truths, the contraries of which yield an incompatible
contradiction. There are physical truths, the contraries of which could
only be accomplished by a miracle (understood as divine intercession
defying the customary laws of nature [as we have observed and recognize
them]). And then there are moral certitudes, about which we may be
sufficiently committed to one position or another in order to carry on
with our lives, but which do not present the same necessity as the prior
two classes. Without these valuable distinctions, clarified and named
from ancient times, we still have a sense that we do not cease to exist
for having chosen wrongly an apple over an orange or crossing the street
now or a second later... some things simply have a lesser importance.
And yet this common-sense (intuitions or notions seemingly shared by so
many) seems to be nearly lost in contemporary politics.
To return to where we began with my statement of "control" as a more
authentic leadership, the real addition that need be made (lest we fall
into the heresy of John Rawls, which I studied carefully last semester)
is that the people's principles and values and their priorities thereof
ultimately come from a divinely-infused sense of right and wrong - of
what is constructive and destructive - of what leads to happiness
(though possibly through suffering) and what is pain for the sake of
some vice. Good leadership should take the power granted it by the
people who appointed such a leader precisely to protect against fallible
man's deviance from his own ideals, promoting the good and positively
discouraging and preventing evil.
To return briefly to the issue of contraception - the president employed
the use of some power granted his own office, in the regulatory power
of the executive branch, to achieve an end he thought necessary to
advance more quickly than legislative process and effective dialogue
with stakeholders would afford. This is precisely what he says in his video address
(also linked above). This circumvention of the ordinary mechanism in
the name of urgency, as an exception to the rule, should be with good
reason, interpreting powers narrowly, to avoid the very corruption of
the leadership that leadership is designed to avoid for the masses. For
the case in point, the reason given is that women are going without
so-called reproductive healthcare (especially possibly abortifacient
contraceptive means and services, all told).
If this "care" is being withheld from women and it is something which
our guiding principles and values dictate they are entitled to receive,
then such executive prerogative might be in order. But the new policy
seems to prove far too much in making this "care" a mandatory offering
of all medical insurance providers (in the present formulation) at no
("additional") cost to the insured. And as a fellow blogger
points out, contraception also involves male sexual partners both
medically and psychologically. In most other areas of health care, what
is meant is a professional service seeking to combat various bodily
maladies. Whether this is correction of vision, repairing broken bones,
diagnosing and removing cancerous tissue, reconstructing tissues after
some accident, or otherwise promoting what is seen by medicine as the
normal functioning of the human body. The very term contraception
expresses a negative notion of a real condition. The real condition is
conception ("receiving with"), its contrary, contraception ("against
receiving"). The real condition of sight has as its contrary, blindness,
which medicine never seeks to achieve. Medicine never seeks to prevent
someone from walking, talking, being able to write, digest food, etc.
But the legal permission for medicine to kill someone (as in abortion, abortifacient contraceptives and euthanasia) or tamper with the
natural functioning of bodily organs is what is in question.
So what do we desire for our governing principles, which the "ruling class" will uphold? And will we charge the three branches of our government with supporting each other where they agree with these principles and holding each other accountable where they do not? Is this not what is in our very Constitution? Let's hope and pray for more principled politics in the very near future, and do what we can to raise awareness of the dilution of the truth that so challenges us all today.
Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca
No comments:
Post a Comment