Sunday, August 29, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Islamophobia... and the stifling of debate
by ANDREW KLAVAN
Name-Calling
“Islamophobia”: the latest charge to try to stifle legitimate debate
27 August 2010
One of the cleverest tricks of the cultural Left is demonizing perfectly reasonable actions and opinions by giving them sinister names. It is the logical go-to technique for those whose ideas have failed in every practical application but who nonetheless still dominate the media by which ideas are spread.
A favorite example of mine is the old feminist declaration that men “objectify” women when they respond to female beauty as nature decrees. This particular reframing was not successful over the long term for the same reason that health scares involving coffee have never caught on: no one was willing to give up the stimulant. A more tenacious variation of the same approach is the accusation that law enforcement officers practice “racial profiling,” which sounds as though police center their suspicions on one race over another out of simple bigotry or meanness. In fact, if criminals of a certain type or in a certain neighborhood tend to be of a specific race, then the proper term for “racial profiling” would be “good police work.” And though, fortunately for liberals and conservatives alike, police continue to do that good work, the evil-sounding sobriquet has forced them to waste a lot of time, effort, and money pretending they don’t.
Recently, in defending an imam’s proposal to build a triumphalist “Muslim Cultural Center” near Manhattan’s Ground Zero—where, we may remember, so many innocents were slaughtered in the name of Allah—the Left has outdone itself. Rather than engage in serious debate with the vast majority of New Yorkers and Americans who oppose the project, the mosque’s defenders have simply dubbed the opposing viewpoint “Islamophobia.” As ever when this naming device is used, the left-wing media seem to rally as one. Within the space of a single week, Time put the word on its cover, Maureen Dowd accused the entire nation of it in her column, and CBS News trotted out the charge in reporting on mosque opposition.
For anyone born with the gift of laughter, the term is absurd to the point of hilarity. A phobia, after all, is an irrational fear. Given that Islam is cancerous with violence in virtually every corner of the globe, given the oppressive and exclusionary nature of many Islamic governments, given the insidious Islamist inroads against long-held freedoms in western Europe, and given those aspects of sharia that seem, to an outsider at least, to prohibit democracy, free speech, and the fair treatment of the female half of our species, those who love peace and liberty would, in fact, be irrational not to harbor at least a measure of concern.
A religion is only a system of beliefs, and to say that all beliefs deserve equal respect or acceptance is to say that ideas have no moral weight, a patent absurdity. Because the human soul thirsts so for God, the sacred principle of individual liberty demands that religion be given wide latitude when it comes to internal mind-states, modes of worship, and the description of the metaphysical. But when it comes to the practical affairs of humankind, humankind may judge—and Islam, as the world stands now, has a lot to answer for. Whether radical Islamic violence, sexism, religious bigotry, and triumphalism are the natural outgrowths of its dogma or a series of aberrations is a perfectly valid question. Likewise the question of Islamic intentions toward Western culture in general and, by extension, the intentions of those behind the Ground Zero Mosque proposal. By what outlandish moral logic does Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf call America an “accomplice to the crime” of 9/11? From whom will he acquire the $100 million required to build his center, and what will they receive in return? None of these questions will be answered by simply condemning as phobic those who bring them to the fore.
With a hostility toward Christianity second only to Dracula’s, the Left has no credibility on the subject of freedom of religion. In a representative moment in February 2006, liberalism’s flagship paper, the New York Times, refused to publish the controversial Danish cartoons of Mohammed in order to “refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols.” The next day, it famously illustrated a story on the cartoons with an offensive image of the Virgin Mary smeared with dung. One wonders, therefore: Does the Left really cherish the rights of Islam, or is theirs but a short-sighted alliance with the enemy of their enemies?
Which is to say that perhaps opponents of the mosque should question the motives of those who question their motives. In any case, they should greet the designation of Islamophobia with the derision that it deserves.
Andrew Klavan is a contributing editor to City Journal.
Name-Calling
“Islamophobia”: the latest charge to try to stifle legitimate debate
27 August 2010
One of the cleverest tricks of the cultural Left is demonizing perfectly reasonable actions and opinions by giving them sinister names. It is the logical go-to technique for those whose ideas have failed in every practical application but who nonetheless still dominate the media by which ideas are spread.
A favorite example of mine is the old feminist declaration that men “objectify” women when they respond to female beauty as nature decrees. This particular reframing was not successful over the long term for the same reason that health scares involving coffee have never caught on: no one was willing to give up the stimulant. A more tenacious variation of the same approach is the accusation that law enforcement officers practice “racial profiling,” which sounds as though police center their suspicions on one race over another out of simple bigotry or meanness. In fact, if criminals of a certain type or in a certain neighborhood tend to be of a specific race, then the proper term for “racial profiling” would be “good police work.” And though, fortunately for liberals and conservatives alike, police continue to do that good work, the evil-sounding sobriquet has forced them to waste a lot of time, effort, and money pretending they don’t.
Recently, in defending an imam’s proposal to build a triumphalist “Muslim Cultural Center” near Manhattan’s Ground Zero—where, we may remember, so many innocents were slaughtered in the name of Allah—the Left has outdone itself. Rather than engage in serious debate with the vast majority of New Yorkers and Americans who oppose the project, the mosque’s defenders have simply dubbed the opposing viewpoint “Islamophobia.” As ever when this naming device is used, the left-wing media seem to rally as one. Within the space of a single week, Time put the word on its cover, Maureen Dowd accused the entire nation of it in her column, and CBS News trotted out the charge in reporting on mosque opposition.
For anyone born with the gift of laughter, the term is absurd to the point of hilarity. A phobia, after all, is an irrational fear. Given that Islam is cancerous with violence in virtually every corner of the globe, given the oppressive and exclusionary nature of many Islamic governments, given the insidious Islamist inroads against long-held freedoms in western Europe, and given those aspects of sharia that seem, to an outsider at least, to prohibit democracy, free speech, and the fair treatment of the female half of our species, those who love peace and liberty would, in fact, be irrational not to harbor at least a measure of concern.
A religion is only a system of beliefs, and to say that all beliefs deserve equal respect or acceptance is to say that ideas have no moral weight, a patent absurdity. Because the human soul thirsts so for God, the sacred principle of individual liberty demands that religion be given wide latitude when it comes to internal mind-states, modes of worship, and the description of the metaphysical. But when it comes to the practical affairs of humankind, humankind may judge—and Islam, as the world stands now, has a lot to answer for. Whether radical Islamic violence, sexism, religious bigotry, and triumphalism are the natural outgrowths of its dogma or a series of aberrations is a perfectly valid question. Likewise the question of Islamic intentions toward Western culture in general and, by extension, the intentions of those behind the Ground Zero Mosque proposal. By what outlandish moral logic does Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf call America an “accomplice to the crime” of 9/11? From whom will he acquire the $100 million required to build his center, and what will they receive in return? None of these questions will be answered by simply condemning as phobic those who bring them to the fore.
With a hostility toward Christianity second only to Dracula’s, the Left has no credibility on the subject of freedom of religion. In a representative moment in February 2006, liberalism’s flagship paper, the New York Times, refused to publish the controversial Danish cartoons of Mohammed in order to “refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols.” The next day, it famously illustrated a story on the cartoons with an offensive image of the Virgin Mary smeared with dung. One wonders, therefore: Does the Left really cherish the rights of Islam, or is theirs but a short-sighted alliance with the enemy of their enemies?
Which is to say that perhaps opponents of the mosque should question the motives of those who question their motives. In any case, they should greet the designation of Islamophobia with the derision that it deserves.
Andrew Klavan is a contributing editor to City Journal.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Necessary for Life
POINT OF VIEW
Necessary for Life
August 27, 2010 - Ray Pennings
In public conversation, death is usually a "no-go zone." Dealing with this subject flippantly is irreverent and disrespectful. Dealing with it respectfully exposes profound and deeply held differences. Talking about a world without "me" in it requires some skill in mental gymnastics—like imagining attending your own funeral. Yet the effort is deserved, since talking about death also changes our life priorities.
Last year, the British think tank Theos issued a report which suggested that discussing death more would decrease people's fear of death. The Humanist Association cried foul, suggesting the study was a ruse that "invented a cultural problem which only religion could solve" in order to advance a religious agenda. Sociologist Reginald Bibby has been asking young Canadians their views on various matters, including death, since 1975. In Restless Gods, he observes that "it may well be that people are not taking the time to reflect on 'life's big questions' to the extent they did three decades ago."
Although fear of death can hardly be a recently-invented cultural problem, measuring how different people deal with this fear seems to be subjective. My nineteen-year-old son has attended one funeral: an aged great-grandparent. When I was his age, I had been to five funerals, two of them after sudden and tragic deaths. We recently talked about our first direct exposures to death and we each had vivid, emotional memories. I asked my father about his teenaged memories of dealing with death. He recalls attending half a dozen or so funerals, mostly of older folk but also one of a teenaged neighbour. Interestingly, however, it was the much more involved engagement in the grieving process which distinguished his experience from ours. In the rural Dutch village where he was raised, what we typically contract to professionals was cared for by the entire community. The deceased's closest neighbour was responsible for overseeing the funeral arrangements, which included constructing a casket. The wake was held in the home with defined roles for neighbours, family members, and clergy. The town bells tolled during the entire funeral procession, and most of the community walked behind the horse-drawn cortege as it made its way from the home of the deceased to the cemetery. It was a communal event.
Thinking about our own death is obviously a very personal and spiritual matter and grieving the death of someone close to us is clearly experienced differently by those who knew the deceased in an intimate and personal way. As often as not, I attend a viewing or funeral today to express condolences and show support for people I know who are related to the deceased. My time and presence are all that is required. Increasingly of late, it seems that this communal participation in the funeral process is being separated from reality of death as funeral services have transformed into memorial services celebrating life and a private service is held for the internment or cremation. The community involvement in customary grieving processes generally requires much less direct exposure to the realty of death than it once did.
We deal with death less directly, but also less frequently. The advances of medicine have increased the average life expectancy, and the distance many of us live from our families means that we attend fewer funerals. A card or phone call becomes our expression of grief for the passing of an uncle, schoolmate, or former colleague. Unless we were close, no one expects us to purchase an airplane ticket to attend a wake or funeral.
I wonder what the impact of this less frequent and direct brush with death might be. Personally, I feel the pain of sin more than at any other time when I stand by an open grave. My theology teaches me that the wages of sin is death. I hate death. Never is it more real to me than when a casket is laid on a grave and the mourners have to turn to leave it behind. I see its coldness and cruelty in the faces and tears of those most intimately affected and I intensely realize just how serious sin really is.
Thankfully, my Christian theology provides me more. Services conducted in a Christian tradition provide a message of hope and triumph in the face of sin and death. Even as we prepare to leave the body behind, we recite the Apostles Creed, in which we declare that "Christ was crucified dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead . . . I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." Christ rose from the grave—a miraculous historical truth, which if not affirmed as such renders our faith as vanity (I Corinthians 15.17).
I know these things to be true. My faith is tested when I try to understand how dust and ashes will be raised into a glorious body, just as I don't fully understand how an acorn becomes an oak. But I know it does, and that gives me hope and reason to live on.
The impact of this truth is more than personal. What we think about death also shapes how we approach life. If there is no life beyond the grave, then whatever meaning one ascribes to life on earth is, by definition, limited. Logic dictates that we should live for the moment and enjoy life. Saving for the future, having concern for a legacy, participating in projects that are multi-generational in nature—few compelling arguments can really be mustered to support these activities. By the time the impacts of these activities are realized, we are not even there to observe. If it makes you feel good to give something to future generations, or if you want to be remembered, then do it; but beyond that, why bother?
Short-term horizons affect everything from our bank accounts to our construction projects. When things break down and decay, it will be someone else's problem. We stand and marvel at the cathedrals that took centuries and generations to build, but we hardly stop to reflect on what it says about us that we cannot muster the vision to undertake these sorts of projects. Most fundamentally, not thinking beyond ourselves deprives us of our sense of purpose and hope.
I have no embarrassment in admitting to the humanists that encouraging people to think about death will encourage them to think about spiritual questions. In fact, that is a good thing, even if it causes discomfort. But, I would argue, it impacts more than spiritual questions. It will shape their priorities and attitudes about what is good and true and beautiful, what is worth saving for, and how much they are prepared to sacrifice for social goods that they may not participate in. It gives my work a purpose beyond my own satisfaction and short-term benefit, and provides a perspective that will define my citizenship and neighbourliness.
I don't enjoy discussing death. It evokes uncomfortable emotions and painful memories. But I recognize its importance. It is part of the process of creation-fall-redemption-restoration, and puts what I do and who I am into a perspective beyond what I can touch and measure. That in turn gives what I can touch and measure greater texture and value. Ultimately, it helps me to truly live.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Cardus - Necessary for Life
Necessary for Life
August 27, 2010 - Ray Pennings
In public conversation, death is usually a "no-go zone." Dealing with this subject flippantly is irreverent and disrespectful. Dealing with it respectfully exposes profound and deeply held differences. Talking about a world without "me" in it requires some skill in mental gymnastics—like imagining attending your own funeral. Yet the effort is deserved, since talking about death also changes our life priorities.
Last year, the British think tank Theos issued a report which suggested that discussing death more would decrease people's fear of death. The Humanist Association cried foul, suggesting the study was a ruse that "invented a cultural problem which only religion could solve" in order to advance a religious agenda. Sociologist Reginald Bibby has been asking young Canadians their views on various matters, including death, since 1975. In Restless Gods, he observes that "it may well be that people are not taking the time to reflect on 'life's big questions' to the extent they did three decades ago."
Although fear of death can hardly be a recently-invented cultural problem, measuring how different people deal with this fear seems to be subjective. My nineteen-year-old son has attended one funeral: an aged great-grandparent. When I was his age, I had been to five funerals, two of them after sudden and tragic deaths. We recently talked about our first direct exposures to death and we each had vivid, emotional memories. I asked my father about his teenaged memories of dealing with death. He recalls attending half a dozen or so funerals, mostly of older folk but also one of a teenaged neighbour. Interestingly, however, it was the much more involved engagement in the grieving process which distinguished his experience from ours. In the rural Dutch village where he was raised, what we typically contract to professionals was cared for by the entire community. The deceased's closest neighbour was responsible for overseeing the funeral arrangements, which included constructing a casket. The wake was held in the home with defined roles for neighbours, family members, and clergy. The town bells tolled during the entire funeral procession, and most of the community walked behind the horse-drawn cortege as it made its way from the home of the deceased to the cemetery. It was a communal event.
Thinking about our own death is obviously a very personal and spiritual matter and grieving the death of someone close to us is clearly experienced differently by those who knew the deceased in an intimate and personal way. As often as not, I attend a viewing or funeral today to express condolences and show support for people I know who are related to the deceased. My time and presence are all that is required. Increasingly of late, it seems that this communal participation in the funeral process is being separated from reality of death as funeral services have transformed into memorial services celebrating life and a private service is held for the internment or cremation. The community involvement in customary grieving processes generally requires much less direct exposure to the realty of death than it once did.
We deal with death less directly, but also less frequently. The advances of medicine have increased the average life expectancy, and the distance many of us live from our families means that we attend fewer funerals. A card or phone call becomes our expression of grief for the passing of an uncle, schoolmate, or former colleague. Unless we were close, no one expects us to purchase an airplane ticket to attend a wake or funeral.
I wonder what the impact of this less frequent and direct brush with death might be. Personally, I feel the pain of sin more than at any other time when I stand by an open grave. My theology teaches me that the wages of sin is death. I hate death. Never is it more real to me than when a casket is laid on a grave and the mourners have to turn to leave it behind. I see its coldness and cruelty in the faces and tears of those most intimately affected and I intensely realize just how serious sin really is.
Thankfully, my Christian theology provides me more. Services conducted in a Christian tradition provide a message of hope and triumph in the face of sin and death. Even as we prepare to leave the body behind, we recite the Apostles Creed, in which we declare that "Christ was crucified dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead . . . I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." Christ rose from the grave—a miraculous historical truth, which if not affirmed as such renders our faith as vanity (I Corinthians 15.17).
I know these things to be true. My faith is tested when I try to understand how dust and ashes will be raised into a glorious body, just as I don't fully understand how an acorn becomes an oak. But I know it does, and that gives me hope and reason to live on.
The impact of this truth is more than personal. What we think about death also shapes how we approach life. If there is no life beyond the grave, then whatever meaning one ascribes to life on earth is, by definition, limited. Logic dictates that we should live for the moment and enjoy life. Saving for the future, having concern for a legacy, participating in projects that are multi-generational in nature—few compelling arguments can really be mustered to support these activities. By the time the impacts of these activities are realized, we are not even there to observe. If it makes you feel good to give something to future generations, or if you want to be remembered, then do it; but beyond that, why bother?
Short-term horizons affect everything from our bank accounts to our construction projects. When things break down and decay, it will be someone else's problem. We stand and marvel at the cathedrals that took centuries and generations to build, but we hardly stop to reflect on what it says about us that we cannot muster the vision to undertake these sorts of projects. Most fundamentally, not thinking beyond ourselves deprives us of our sense of purpose and hope.
I have no embarrassment in admitting to the humanists that encouraging people to think about death will encourage them to think about spiritual questions. In fact, that is a good thing, even if it causes discomfort. But, I would argue, it impacts more than spiritual questions. It will shape their priorities and attitudes about what is good and true and beautiful, what is worth saving for, and how much they are prepared to sacrifice for social goods that they may not participate in. It gives my work a purpose beyond my own satisfaction and short-term benefit, and provides a perspective that will define my citizenship and neighbourliness.
I don't enjoy discussing death. It evokes uncomfortable emotions and painful memories. But I recognize its importance. It is part of the process of creation-fall-redemption-restoration, and puts what I do and who I am into a perspective beyond what I can touch and measure. That in turn gives what I can touch and measure greater texture and value. Ultimately, it helps me to truly live.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Cardus - Necessary for Life
Friday, August 20, 2010
The "Oppressiveness" of Civil Society
The "Oppressiveness" of Civil Society
August 20, 2010 - David T. Koyzis
In 1962, Soviet authorities permitted Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to publish his first book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. More than two decades before Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was attempting to loosen the oppressive machinery that had systematically persecuted artists and writers who were not obviously toeing the party line.
Solzhenitsyn's groundbreaking novel told of an ordinary prisoner's single day in one of Stalin's oppressive forced labour camps, a story that grew out of the author's own dehumanizing experience in the Soviet Gulag. Here prisoners worked without pay for meager rations, living under harsh and hazardous conditions with inadequate clothing and shelter. The inmates were sent here for activities that would scarcely be regarded as criminal elsewhere. Ivan was unjustly imprisoned as a spy because the authorities refused to believe he had escaped from a German concentration camp.
The tales of oppression during the last century are countless, with the litany of oppressors familiar to most of us: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Pinochet, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin. Some were motivated by sheer hatred of others—perhaps a visible minority group. Others sought to implement a grand historical vision that would liberate their people—and perhaps all people everywhere—from the oppressions of the past. The sad irony, of course, is that many efforts to end oppression engendered even greater oppression on a larger scale and with more efficient means. During their heyday hundreds of millions lived under genuine oppression at the hands of the followers of totalitarian ideologies.
What is oppression? Thus far I have used this word (or a derivative) nine times, assuming readers know its meaning. According to the OED, to oppress means to "govern tyrannically, keep under by coercion, subject to continual cruelty or injustice." There is general agreement, at least in the English-speaking world, that it is unjust for a government to infringe on such fundamental freedoms as speech, press, assembly, and religion. If Aung San Suu Kyi is kept under house arrest by the Burmese government for expressing opposing political views, we properly conclude that she and her followers are being oppressed. When the former National Party government in South Africa deliberately followed a policy of systematic discrimination against the majority of its citizens, the rest of the world correctly identified this as oppression. And, in the case of the fictional Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, unjust incarceration, coupled with severity of treatment, definitely amounts to oppression.
But what if my church community disapproves of a choice I make? If my chosen course of action was perfectly legal, is my church's expression of disapproval oppressive? Under the reigning liberal worldview, North Americans increasingly tend to assume that the law should prohibit only that which obviously harms another and that individuals must be legally free to do as they please provided no one else is hurt in the process. If government, or any other community, sees fit to depart from this principle for whatever reason, it acts oppressively. If it officially favours some personal choices over others, it is guilty of oppressing those who choose differently. If it favours (heterosexual) marriage over other sexual or nonsexual relationships, it oppresses the unmarried or the polyamorous in so doing. More significantly, if some communities impose standards on their members that go beyond the public law of the state, some will argue that the individuals penalized for breaking these standards are being deprived of their rights and are thus oppressed.
Every so often we hear of a university refusing to approve a Christian student group because the latter requires its members to be believing Christians who support the group's mission. In a misguided effort to encourage inclusivity, such universities—or their student governments—effectively discriminate against overtly confessional groups. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has decided, in the case of the Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, that Hastings School of Law at the University of California may refuse to recognize any student group imposing standards of belief and conduct on its leaders. So who is oppressing whom? Is Hastings, backed by the U.S. judiciary, oppressing the CLS, or is the CLS oppressing aspiring leaders of the group?
In his defence of human rights, Michael Ignatieff, current leader of Canada's federal Liberal Party, goes so far as to argue that rights must always belong to individuals and not to groups. The very language of rights "cannot be translated into a nonindividualistic, communitarian framework. It presumes moral individualism and is nonsensical outside that assumption." Rights have meaning "only if they can be enforced against institutions like the family, the state, and the church." They function furthermore to defend the autonomy of the individual "against the oppression of religion, state, family, and group" (emphasis mine).
Of course, no one denies that members of a group can indeed suffer mistreatment at its hands. Nevertheless, there is more to Ignatieff's approach than meets the eye, as his use of the word oppression already indicates. Individuals must constantly be vigilant against the pretensions of the groups of which they are part, jealously guarding their personal freedom. Yet the word enforced necessarily implies an agent who can protect and advance this freedom over against threatened encroachment—and the only agent with this capacity is the state itself.
McGill University's Douglas Farrow notes the libertarian preference for John Stuart Mill's harm principle: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." Of course, no flesh-and-blood society has ever existed for which this harm principle forms the primary (much less the sole) basis for freedom. A mature, differentiated society includes multiple non-state communities, each of which has its own identity and standards for membership. These standards necessarily impose constraints on those subject to them. To belong to an Orthodox Jewish community requires one to follow Torah and, more specifically, centuries of rabbinic interpretation of its precepts. If one violates these, one can expect to face sanctions from the community.
Is there something intrinsically oppressive in communities imposing standards on individual members? Though few would go so far as to assert this overtly, the logic of the harm principle must eventually give a positive answer to this question. If so, the state must intervene to "protect" these individuals from having to submit to standards unrelated to this principle. As Farrow correctly understands, this formulation must cut out "the oppressive middle term between the individual and the state," that is, the nonstate communities that command the loyalties of ordinary persons, thereby narrowing the range of our legitimate obligations to only two: those owed to ourselves as individuals and those owed to the state. Farrow continues: "This begs the question, however, as to what does or does not harm another, and who will decide that." Again, the state must take on this role of liberating the individual from the supposed oppression of those institutions that have come collectively to be called civil society.
Although Mill's writings strongly appeal to libertarians, Farrow perceptively concludes that "Mill's ideas aren't really very libertarian after all." Although liberalism has claimed to expand the sphere of individual competence, it has done so by reducing the multiple communities of which we are part to mere voluntary associations, which, ironically, threatens the wellbeing of the individual herself. If every constraint on the individual is potentially oppressive, and if every community is a voluntary collection of individuals, those communities not obviously contractual in character, such as marriage, family, institutional church, and state, must be viewed with deep suspicion—indeed as downright oppressive. Yet we cannot live without them.
Solzhenitsyn once wrote that "a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either." Indeed, a genuinely human society is characterized by a plurality of social forms and obligations, the most crucial of which cannot be reduced to the individual will. Not only is such a pluriform society necessary for human flourishing, but it is a potent bulwark against genuine oppression by a totalistic individualism backed by a potentially expansive state.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Cardus - The "Oppressiveness" of Civil Society
August 20, 2010 - David T. Koyzis
In 1962, Soviet authorities permitted Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to publish his first book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. More than two decades before Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was attempting to loosen the oppressive machinery that had systematically persecuted artists and writers who were not obviously toeing the party line.
Solzhenitsyn's groundbreaking novel told of an ordinary prisoner's single day in one of Stalin's oppressive forced labour camps, a story that grew out of the author's own dehumanizing experience in the Soviet Gulag. Here prisoners worked without pay for meager rations, living under harsh and hazardous conditions with inadequate clothing and shelter. The inmates were sent here for activities that would scarcely be regarded as criminal elsewhere. Ivan was unjustly imprisoned as a spy because the authorities refused to believe he had escaped from a German concentration camp.
The tales of oppression during the last century are countless, with the litany of oppressors familiar to most of us: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Pinochet, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin. Some were motivated by sheer hatred of others—perhaps a visible minority group. Others sought to implement a grand historical vision that would liberate their people—and perhaps all people everywhere—from the oppressions of the past. The sad irony, of course, is that many efforts to end oppression engendered even greater oppression on a larger scale and with more efficient means. During their heyday hundreds of millions lived under genuine oppression at the hands of the followers of totalitarian ideologies.
What is oppression? Thus far I have used this word (or a derivative) nine times, assuming readers know its meaning. According to the OED, to oppress means to "govern tyrannically, keep under by coercion, subject to continual cruelty or injustice." There is general agreement, at least in the English-speaking world, that it is unjust for a government to infringe on such fundamental freedoms as speech, press, assembly, and religion. If Aung San Suu Kyi is kept under house arrest by the Burmese government for expressing opposing political views, we properly conclude that she and her followers are being oppressed. When the former National Party government in South Africa deliberately followed a policy of systematic discrimination against the majority of its citizens, the rest of the world correctly identified this as oppression. And, in the case of the fictional Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, unjust incarceration, coupled with severity of treatment, definitely amounts to oppression.
But what if my church community disapproves of a choice I make? If my chosen course of action was perfectly legal, is my church's expression of disapproval oppressive? Under the reigning liberal worldview, North Americans increasingly tend to assume that the law should prohibit only that which obviously harms another and that individuals must be legally free to do as they please provided no one else is hurt in the process. If government, or any other community, sees fit to depart from this principle for whatever reason, it acts oppressively. If it officially favours some personal choices over others, it is guilty of oppressing those who choose differently. If it favours (heterosexual) marriage over other sexual or nonsexual relationships, it oppresses the unmarried or the polyamorous in so doing. More significantly, if some communities impose standards on their members that go beyond the public law of the state, some will argue that the individuals penalized for breaking these standards are being deprived of their rights and are thus oppressed.
Every so often we hear of a university refusing to approve a Christian student group because the latter requires its members to be believing Christians who support the group's mission. In a misguided effort to encourage inclusivity, such universities—or their student governments—effectively discriminate against overtly confessional groups. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has decided, in the case of the Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, that Hastings School of Law at the University of California may refuse to recognize any student group imposing standards of belief and conduct on its leaders. So who is oppressing whom? Is Hastings, backed by the U.S. judiciary, oppressing the CLS, or is the CLS oppressing aspiring leaders of the group?
In his defence of human rights, Michael Ignatieff, current leader of Canada's federal Liberal Party, goes so far as to argue that rights must always belong to individuals and not to groups. The very language of rights "cannot be translated into a nonindividualistic, communitarian framework. It presumes moral individualism and is nonsensical outside that assumption." Rights have meaning "only if they can be enforced against institutions like the family, the state, and the church." They function furthermore to defend the autonomy of the individual "against the oppression of religion, state, family, and group" (emphasis mine).
Of course, no one denies that members of a group can indeed suffer mistreatment at its hands. Nevertheless, there is more to Ignatieff's approach than meets the eye, as his use of the word oppression already indicates. Individuals must constantly be vigilant against the pretensions of the groups of which they are part, jealously guarding their personal freedom. Yet the word enforced necessarily implies an agent who can protect and advance this freedom over against threatened encroachment—and the only agent with this capacity is the state itself.
McGill University's Douglas Farrow notes the libertarian preference for John Stuart Mill's harm principle: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." Of course, no flesh-and-blood society has ever existed for which this harm principle forms the primary (much less the sole) basis for freedom. A mature, differentiated society includes multiple non-state communities, each of which has its own identity and standards for membership. These standards necessarily impose constraints on those subject to them. To belong to an Orthodox Jewish community requires one to follow Torah and, more specifically, centuries of rabbinic interpretation of its precepts. If one violates these, one can expect to face sanctions from the community.
Is there something intrinsically oppressive in communities imposing standards on individual members? Though few would go so far as to assert this overtly, the logic of the harm principle must eventually give a positive answer to this question. If so, the state must intervene to "protect" these individuals from having to submit to standards unrelated to this principle. As Farrow correctly understands, this formulation must cut out "the oppressive middle term between the individual and the state," that is, the nonstate communities that command the loyalties of ordinary persons, thereby narrowing the range of our legitimate obligations to only two: those owed to ourselves as individuals and those owed to the state. Farrow continues: "This begs the question, however, as to what does or does not harm another, and who will decide that." Again, the state must take on this role of liberating the individual from the supposed oppression of those institutions that have come collectively to be called civil society.
Although Mill's writings strongly appeal to libertarians, Farrow perceptively concludes that "Mill's ideas aren't really very libertarian after all." Although liberalism has claimed to expand the sphere of individual competence, it has done so by reducing the multiple communities of which we are part to mere voluntary associations, which, ironically, threatens the wellbeing of the individual herself. If every constraint on the individual is potentially oppressive, and if every community is a voluntary collection of individuals, those communities not obviously contractual in character, such as marriage, family, institutional church, and state, must be viewed with deep suspicion—indeed as downright oppressive. Yet we cannot live without them.
Solzhenitsyn once wrote that "a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either." Indeed, a genuinely human society is characterized by a plurality of social forms and obligations, the most crucial of which cannot be reduced to the individual will. Not only is such a pluriform society necessary for human flourishing, but it is a potent bulwark against genuine oppression by a totalistic individualism backed by a potentially expansive state.
Copyright © 1974-2010 Cardus. All Rights Reserved.
Cardus - The "Oppressiveness" of Civil Society
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
A Theology of Jiggly Thighs
A Theology of Jiggly Thighs
What a graying supermodel can teach Jesus' female followers.
Margot Starbuck, guest blogger
Splattered across the media this week is Kristen McMenamy, a supermodel and mother of three who was featured on the August cover of Italian Vogue. She appears inside in a striking (some say offensive) photo spread, lying on her back against jagged rocks, wearing a black feathered dress, in a way designed to mimic the aesthetic of the Gulf oil spill images. But I was more intrigued by the model’s hair: The 45-year-old boldly flaunts her naturally long gray locks, telling Vogue Daily, “You can get older and still be rock-’n’-roll. I thought all that gray hair would make a beautiful picture.
I’m a fan of embracing the way God made us, but I have to confess feeling a little conflicted about the hoopla. I suspect my reticence is not unrelated to the fact that McMenamy still has the body of a Barbie.
At age 41, I have most of my cranial pigment, but I see where things are headed. If I live enough years, if you live enough years, the physical downhill slide is inevitable. The pigment fails. Once-toned arms get flabby. Other things start to jiggle, sag, wrinkle. If all this weren’t insulting enough, physical losses give way to social losses as we lose the ability to turn heads with our beauty.
As is my way, I like to make issues like sagging breasts and jiggly thighs theological. Specifically, I’m dying to get a handle on the divine logic behind the aging situation. What holy madness drives wrinkles and age spots?
I humbly invite you to join me in considering one weird possibility: I wonder if this process that is clearly happening against our wills — as the volume of beauty products that promise to reverse aging’s attests — isn’t what Jesus has been inviting us to embrace, all along, with our wills.
“Hold on, Margot. Jesus never said anything about crows’ feet or yellowing teeth or declining breast altitude.” Not in so many words. But to those who want to gain their lives — and maybe the attention of others — Jesus instructs us to lose our lives. Those who want to be first — say, in the high-school homecoming court — should aim for last place. Those who want to increase — possibly in attractiveness — should decrease. Jesus even taught his friends that those who want to attract God’s good favor should give themselves in ways that don’t attract the good favor of others. Downward social mobility is exactly what Jesus has been inviting us to embrace, all along. Though the apostle Paul wasn’t thinking about eye circles or thinning scalps, he confirms, “We who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body” (2 Cor. 4:11).
According to this kingdom logic, if we want to be seen, we should purpose to really see others. If we want to be heard, we should listen, really listen, to those whose voices haven’t been heard. If we want to be loved, we should knock ourselves out loving the unlovable. Though Jesus placed no particular value on garnering the admiring eye of others, with our shimmering lips or blinding teeth or bouncy locks, he really did knock himself out reminding us to turn our young and middle-aged and old faces toward those whom his Father loves, especially those on the world’s so-called margins.
In the end, the reality of the aging situation effectively dissolves any illusion that this life — or the next one, for that matter — is all about us. As we die to ourselves, whether purposefully or kicking and screaming, we relinquish whatever power we might have had to attract attention with our appearances. When we do it willingly, we live into Jesus’ good will for us. We make more room for others to be seen and heard and known and loved.
If you are young and gorgeous, and maybe have aspirations to be America’s Next Top Model, I completely understand that this whole set up seems unsavory. For those of us who want to age with grace, though, there’s real promise as we choose this Jesus-way. As we begin to embrace the inevitable losses inherent in aging we’re freed up, in a particular way, for the kind of self-giving love for which we were made.
As for Kristen McMenamy, even with the Barbie body she might have something important to teach Christian women.
Margot Starbuck is the author most recently of Unsqueezed: Springing Free from Skinny Jeans, Nose Jobs, Highlights and Stilettos (InterVarsity Press). Alicia Cohn has interviewed her for the women's blog.
Her.meneutics: A Theology of Jiggly Thighs
What a graying supermodel can teach Jesus' female followers.
Margot Starbuck, guest blogger
Splattered across the media this week is Kristen McMenamy, a supermodel and mother of three who was featured on the August cover of Italian Vogue. She appears inside in a striking (some say offensive) photo spread, lying on her back against jagged rocks, wearing a black feathered dress, in a way designed to mimic the aesthetic of the Gulf oil spill images. But I was more intrigued by the model’s hair: The 45-year-old boldly flaunts her naturally long gray locks, telling Vogue Daily, “You can get older and still be rock-’n’-roll. I thought all that gray hair would make a beautiful picture.
I’m a fan of embracing the way God made us, but I have to confess feeling a little conflicted about the hoopla. I suspect my reticence is not unrelated to the fact that McMenamy still has the body of a Barbie.
At age 41, I have most of my cranial pigment, but I see where things are headed. If I live enough years, if you live enough years, the physical downhill slide is inevitable. The pigment fails. Once-toned arms get flabby. Other things start to jiggle, sag, wrinkle. If all this weren’t insulting enough, physical losses give way to social losses as we lose the ability to turn heads with our beauty.
As is my way, I like to make issues like sagging breasts and jiggly thighs theological. Specifically, I’m dying to get a handle on the divine logic behind the aging situation. What holy madness drives wrinkles and age spots?
I humbly invite you to join me in considering one weird possibility: I wonder if this process that is clearly happening against our wills — as the volume of beauty products that promise to reverse aging’s attests — isn’t what Jesus has been inviting us to embrace, all along, with our wills.
“Hold on, Margot. Jesus never said anything about crows’ feet or yellowing teeth or declining breast altitude.” Not in so many words. But to those who want to gain their lives — and maybe the attention of others — Jesus instructs us to lose our lives. Those who want to be first — say, in the high-school homecoming court — should aim for last place. Those who want to increase — possibly in attractiveness — should decrease. Jesus even taught his friends that those who want to attract God’s good favor should give themselves in ways that don’t attract the good favor of others. Downward social mobility is exactly what Jesus has been inviting us to embrace, all along. Though the apostle Paul wasn’t thinking about eye circles or thinning scalps, he confirms, “We who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body” (2 Cor. 4:11).
According to this kingdom logic, if we want to be seen, we should purpose to really see others. If we want to be heard, we should listen, really listen, to those whose voices haven’t been heard. If we want to be loved, we should knock ourselves out loving the unlovable. Though Jesus placed no particular value on garnering the admiring eye of others, with our shimmering lips or blinding teeth or bouncy locks, he really did knock himself out reminding us to turn our young and middle-aged and old faces toward those whom his Father loves, especially those on the world’s so-called margins.
In the end, the reality of the aging situation effectively dissolves any illusion that this life — or the next one, for that matter — is all about us. As we die to ourselves, whether purposefully or kicking and screaming, we relinquish whatever power we might have had to attract attention with our appearances. When we do it willingly, we live into Jesus’ good will for us. We make more room for others to be seen and heard and known and loved.
If you are young and gorgeous, and maybe have aspirations to be America’s Next Top Model, I completely understand that this whole set up seems unsavory. For those of us who want to age with grace, though, there’s real promise as we choose this Jesus-way. As we begin to embrace the inevitable losses inherent in aging we’re freed up, in a particular way, for the kind of self-giving love for which we were made.
As for Kristen McMenamy, even with the Barbie body she might have something important to teach Christian women.
Margot Starbuck is the author most recently of Unsqueezed: Springing Free from Skinny Jeans, Nose Jobs, Highlights and Stilettos (InterVarsity Press). Alicia Cohn has interviewed her for the women's blog.
Her.meneutics: A Theology of Jiggly Thighs
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