Evil Christians
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a fight.
— Robert Frost.
Sen. Dave Schultheis, of Colorado Springs, on Wednesday opposed a bill requiring pregnant women to be tested for HIV so that if they are infected their babies can be treated to prevent the virus’s transfer.
“This stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part, and I just can’t go there,” he said.
“We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly. I’m not convinced that part of the role of government should be to protect individuals from the negative consequences of their actions.”
This is the kind of cruelty and meanness that we have come to expect from the Christians claiming the high moral ground in today’s political debates. It obviously makes no sense whatsoever: the bill isn’t about “protecting individuals from the negative consequences of their actions” at all; it’s about protecting children from the consequences of their mother’s actions (which are assumed to have been sinful, on the ignorant assumption that only bad people get AIDS.)
Schultheis went on:
“What I’m hoping is that yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that. The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years … begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior. We can’t keep people from being raped. We can’t keep people from shooting each other. We can’t keep people from jumping off bridges. People drink and drive, and they crash and kill people. Poor behavior has its consequences.”
According to his site, Schultheis is member of the conservative Presbyterian Church in America. He has merged vengeful Christianity with social Darwinism to produce a weird and toxic stew of punitive meanness. When he wished AIDS on an unborn child, that was just more evidence (as if we needed it) that Right-to-Lifers don’t care about “saving preborn children”, but only want to punish lewd women.
The liberal argument against Schultheis normally deadends at this point in singularly unconvincing assertions that religion has no place in politics and that moral judgments are purely personal and should never be imposed on others.
But why? Why not just say that Schultheis is not good at all, but instead evil, and that his gross errors of logic are not innocent, but are motivated by self-serving meanness, and that he is using his supposed religious beliefs to defend his selfishness and to justify his vicious cruelty? Why should we not just say that Schultheis is a moral leper and that no decent person should associate him ever again?
Schultheis has his scripture:
The LORD is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.
but I have mine:
In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.
But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.
In the days of the patriarchs the Hebrews were a tribal people and believed that collective guilt was passed from father to son and from mother to daughter — a belief that still motivates honor killings and blood feuds in the more backward areas of the Middle East. The first Bible reading above expresses the archaic and horrible view that Schultheis still holds, but (as seen in the second reading), this belief was rejected by the prophets already in Old Testament times. Schultheis’s viciousness does not come from religion at all: he uses the Bible as a shield to protect his own meanness.
As far as I know no Christian denomination explicitly holds that an evildoer can escape punishment for his evil deeds by professing Christianity. However, Christian evildoers inevitably hope for that, and not all churches are scrupulous about telling their parishioners that belief is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. In fact, many sin-and-repent churches actively recruit evildoers to mobilize them against unbelievers and “lax” Christians — not merely forgiving the Christian evildoers their past sins, but also egging them on to further cruelty in the name of the Lord.
Schultheis is only one such person, a thug of God and bullyboy of holiness. Men of God are reluctant to admit that virtuous unbelievers are more blessed than evil Christians, and too many men of the cloth turn a blind eye to the evils and cruelties for which their brutish Christian soldiers are responsible.
But American liberals have committed themselves so completely to technical solutions, value-neutrality, relativism, laxness, personal liberation, and non-judgmentality that they are unable to call evil Christians evil. Only a few politically-committed Christian groups are willing to do so, and the secular world, which believes that only right-wing Christians are real Christians, will not listen to them.
Many secular liberals, God bless their hearts, think that all Christians are (not evil, obviously, but…) wrong and harmful. The problem with this view is that it’s only convincing to other secular liberals, and besides that, doesn’t pick out the evil Christians from the others. Other secular liberals try to argue against evil Christians from a practical, prudential, consequentialist point of view, as though they were dealing with a rational disagreement about policy, but this isn’t really strong enough when you’re talking about someone like Schultheis — it’s like someone telling Hitler about the economic costs of genocide. (And then, some secular liberals and secular moderates are squishy, and think that we should try to understand evil Christians, and try to dialogue with them….)
If you talk about Schuldheit from within a moral framework, rather than talking about church and state, or about “What works?”, or about tolerance and open-mindedness, you’ll be talking about the main thing wrong with what Schuldheit said, and you might also be able to convince people that Schuldheit is not just mistaken, but unforgivably vicious, and you will be able to do this without having to convert them entirely to the secular liberal point of view.
But in order to do this, you’d need to be willing to speak judgmentally about cruelty and evil.
Update (edited comment response)
What I’m trying to do is to deny evil Christians the moral high ground, rather than treating this as a secular-religious dispute, or as a dispute between moralism and tolerance.
It’s not true that non-evil Christians do not speak up against these things; it’s just that the media doesn’t find a story there, so no one hears about it.
Treating this as a secular-religious dispute or as a dispute between moralism and tolerance leaves the battle lines right where they’ve been for decades, whereas I’m proposing that we attack evil Christians at their supposed strong point — their morality.
Historically, almost everyone during almost all of history have been religious to some degree, so the assertion that almost all evil has been done by believers is probably mostly true. But an investigation of the irreligious exceptions does not fail to find irreligious monsters.
If you want to attack evil Christians as such, you have to grant the validity of moralizing, but because of their commitments to freedom, personal liberation, or objective science, many liberals and radicals deny its validity.
[The earlier defective and unfinished ending of this piece has been revised and expanded .]
APPENDIX
“One who calls himself a liberal is nowadays diversely called by others a traitor, coward, parlor-pink, eclectic, jelly-fish, a selfish or muddy thinker who wants both to have his cake and eat it, rationalist, skeptic, conservative, radical…. But there is unanimity of opinion on one thing, namely, that liberalism is essentially negative, paralytic, and disintegrative. It’s boasted open-mindedness is nothing more than axiological anemia.”
— Leslie Page, “Liberalism, Dogmatism and Negativism”, Journal of Social Philosophy, 5 (1940), p. 346. (Cited in John Gunnell, The Descent of Political Theory, Chicago, 1993, p. 136.)
Trollblog 
March 1, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Strongly agree.
March 1, 2009 at 9:00 pm
No, wait, I only sort of agree. Actual existing liberals aren’t unwilling to condemn this specific dude, or want to understand him, which you imply. They are unwilling to argue the way you want to.
March 1, 2009 at 9:02 pm
That Old Testament tribalist view isn’t as uniform as all that, either: the bit you cite (Numbers, I think) appears in several formulations throughout the Torah; the one considered most important by Jews is the one in Exodus which includes remembering the good deeds of ancestors for a thousand generations — outweighing considerably the 3-4 generation inheritance of evil deeds.
March 1, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Some exaggeration was used in the preparation of my post. This is a first for me.
But one large bunch of liberals is willing to let the right control the ethical-religious space while opposing them only on grounds of tolerance and technocratic detachment. Another smaller bunch of liberals rack their brains trying to find some halfway point or compromise. Many liberals have well-earned reputations laxity, cynicism, and amorality. And finally, many liberals are so opposed to moralistic language that they are incapable of sympathy with political leaders who say the right things, but for wrong (moralistic) reasons.
March 1, 2009 at 9:21 pm
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/johnson-city-tn/TDIN5C7R8CVEGF2V0/p2
Here is my “post” on Topix, on the topic of “Phelps Smokes Weed.” You might like it. A secondary motif to my post is poking fun at the “you think that you are better than me” paranoia in my small town. Enjoy…:
I can smell the stench of immorality on this thread. You weak, dirty people.
Just like many things, drugs are an opportunity to show you how God has put ME in charge. I don’t like it anymore than the rest of you, but someone has to be doing something wrong, so that I can have someone to point at and to look down on.
How else could I experience my blessed righteousness? How else could others know that I am the one to be elected as “Elder” in my church, unless I have a few trophies on my wall?
Of course, I also bought stock in Wellmont Health Systems, 30 years ago. Addiction bring many people to the hospital, so I make more money.
I know what you are thinking about now:
“I wish that I was ” DUKE OF JOHNSON CITY!”
March 1, 2009 at 10:01 pm
You are about as fed-up with these “Christians” as I am. I was raised a missionary kid in South America. Man, I was/am so screwed.
It is a bunch of bs, every bit of it. It is really all about doing anything to avoid feeling one’s own self-hatred. If I can identify with God, then I can take-on God’s self-esteem (of course, that means that there have to be plenty of dirty, immoral people against, whom, to define myself).
Once you realize that it is all just sorry, psychodrama, then you see what hell this world is in, BECAUSE of religion.
March 1, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Wow!: Remember, though, that I’m not saying that all Christians or all moralists are wrong. I’m talking about Schuldheit, based on the specific things he said. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t talk at all about immoral people, I’m just saying that we should identify them more accurately, and that Schuldheit is one of the worst.
I think that the liberal / liberated hostility to all moral language (“Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics”), whether it comes from personal liberation radicalism or from secular agnosticism or from technocratic pragmatism, has really crippled liberals and Democrats.
David: I have greatly revised my ending, which looked good at the moment I posted it but was really unfinished, and pretty crappy too.
Ahistoricality: The thousand generations of remembrance of ancestors’ good deeds still sounds like praise-songs for clan heroes, which were the way clans established bragging rights.
To me the Hebrew tribe was intrinsically no better and no worse than the various Polynesian or African or Turkish or Chinese or Scandinavian tribes. It’s OK with me if Jews or Christians want to interpret the books of Moses far differently than I would, but they shouldn’t hope for me to believe them.
March 2, 2009 at 12:26 am
Hi. First time visiting Trollblog — looks like a good read. (No, this is not the part where I start hawking Viagra or WoW gold.)
I’m thinking that if we’re going to clean up our banking sector, we might take that approach to religions as well. Religions could be subjected a stress test — put all of the moral behavior promoted, all of the charity done, etc, on the “asset” side of the ledger, and put all of the immorality, cruelty, etc, promoted on the “liability” side. Then, if the total balance is negative, nationalize them, clean out the toxic doctrines, then reprivatize them.
Alternatively, we could consolidate all of the toxic beliefs into a single “Bad Religion,” but I’m not sure we’d want to have a religion that combines misogyny and homophobia from Taliban-style Islam, the Varna caste system from the Laws of Manu, human sacrifice from the worship of Huitzilopochtli and Baal, the anti-condom obsession of Catholicism, etc. I’m afraid that a single religion combining every noxious belief of all of them into one might have too much appeal to the Palin fanbase and become a widespread movement.
March 2, 2009 at 4:15 am
“Bad Religion,”
Duuude, that would so make a kickass name for a band. I’m surprised nobody’s thought of it.
John says: The liberal argument against Schultheis normally deadends at this point in singularly unconvincing assertions that religion has no place in politics and that moral judgments are purely personal and should never be imposed on others.
That strikes me as sort of an outdated stereotype of the liberal position. Maybe it’s not as outdated as I’d like.
Why should we not just say that Schultheis is a moral leper and that no decent person should associate him ever again?
I don’t know, other than Scultheis and his defenders will make it about their religion and our hatred and oppression thereof; what’s the heat vs. light ratio in the prosecution of the argument?
American liberals have committed themselves so completely to technical solutions, value-neutrality, relativism, laxness, personal liberation, and non-judgmentality that they are unable to call evil Christians evil.
I’d like to think that springs, at least in part, from respect for the constitution. We’re all old enough to remember when separation of church and state used to be one of the features of American exceptionalism, right? That ground was ceded to the Christians, et alia because it wasn’t the technocrat’s job to tell the loonies how to live, amirite? First Amendment is pretty unambiguous on that point. The problem is, one side has quit playing by the rules. What do we do now?
Many secular liberals, God bless their hearts, think that all Christians are … wrong and harmful.
I’m proud not to be a member of that club, in so far as I believe ALL religions are more-or-less perversions of the human instincts to seek explanation and avoid death. That does not leave me incapable of calling Scheisskopf (or whatever his name was) an evil, incomprehensibly vile human being. He’s actively wishing disease and death on innocents. We generally call those people monsters, right?
I guess all that comes down to agreeing with you. Your argument is sound, if a little broad. I can only hope that all liberals (and rational humans) would quickly identify and condemn whatever the fuck is wrong with this guy. Whatever happened to people resigning in shame? Speaking of which, we shouldn’t have to impale the bankers; they should be ritually disemboweling themselves.
Sorry for rambling. Stoned.
March 2, 2009 at 4:39 am
The constitution never forbade the intrusion either of ethics or of religion into politics, just the establishment of a state religion. Liberals read it that way, thought, partly because many of them were neutral technocratic administrators or devout positivists who regarded moralistic language as unscientific, distracting and wrong, and partly because liberationist groups found it harder to say “There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing” than it was to attack ethics itself (“Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics”) and insist that ethical convictions should be regarded as a dirty little personal secret never to be shown in public.
I don’t know, other than Scultheis and his defenders will make it about their religion and our hatred and oppression thereof; what’s the heat vs. light ratio in the prosecution of the argument?
Why should we surrender at the outset? My guess is pointing out the ethical hideousness of this guy would be a lot more effective with most people than just repeating the same old secularist, pragmatist, consequentialist slogans to people who make a point of not accepting them.
March 2, 2009 at 4:42 am
Seems to me that the onus of calling out Evil Christians is on the Non-Evil Christians. I have no religion, so when I get wind of Christian evil and i fail to see rapid and loud condemnation of it from others professing to be Christian, I just figure that it is part and parcel of Christianity.
Policing Christianity is the responsibility of Christians, not liberals or anyone but Christians. If they’re your bad children, you spank ’em.
March 2, 2009 at 8:56 am
Lumping Christians that way may make you feel good about yourself, but I’m not trying to enhance self-esteem. What I’m trying to do was to deny evil Christians the moral high ground, rather than treating this as a secular-religious dispute, or as a dispute between moralism and tolerance.
A big part of the problem is exactly what you just did — our blessed media (mostly secular, and mostly socially liberal: see Alterman’s book) treats the more fanatical and more vicious Christians as the exemplary, real Christians, and allows them to represent all Christians while denigrating non-evil Christians, whom the media ignores. It is not true that non-evil Christians do not speak up against these things; it’s just that the media doesn’t find a story there.
Treating this as a secular-religious dispute or as a dispute between moralism and tolerance leaves the battle lines right where they’ve been for decades, whereas I’m proposing attacking the dominant evil Christians at their supposed strong point — their morality.
Historically, almost all peoples during almost all of history have been religious to some degree, so the assertion that almost all evil has been done by the religious is probably mostly true. An investigation of the non-religious exceptions does not fail to find horrible irreligious evildoers.
If you want to attack this sort of evil, though, you have to theoretically grant the validity of moralizing, and in the pursuit of freedom and liberation, people slip into the rejection moralizing as such.
March 2, 2009 at 9:34 am
You make it far more complex than it really is. Christianity is psychodrama. There is no God. There is no invisible realm. Unless, you accept that, then your position will remain a weak compromise, a partial solution. You may get listeners, but you will always be subject to the old’e broadside.
And people are moral WITHOUT God, too, unless Christians are moral, only because they fear hell, which is ridiculous. The solution to moral or immoral Christians, is moral people, period. There are no “atheist,” because all religion is only a distant memory.
Bush killed the Republican AND the Christian brand for a generation. There is no need to compromise liberals with the likes of Christianity. I suggest leaving it like a flattened can on the asphalt.
Christians know that their religion has failed – that they are the other side of the equation, that is, the suicide bomber equation. Why do you suppose the wingnuts are now stealing the show on the right? It is because they are dead meat suiciding.
I would just let them die in peace.
March 2, 2009 at 10:05 am
Anyone who wears their religion on their sleeve, on the left, or the right, deserves to be attacked, relentlessly.
If you advertise that you are a Christian, or spiritual, then you are not, period.
If God were on Earth, the last think He would say is, “hey, guess what?..I’m divine-like,” unless He were making a power play.
That is why I say that Christians are just out to bump up their self-esteem. I come to know that, because it makes me feel bad, not because it makes me feel good. It is as plain as the nose on your face. Of course, if you suddenly stopped talking about God to everybody, you would go into depression as your self-esteem deflated.
Aren’t you still looking to feel good with all this talk of Christianity – defending it from the evil owners, a defense waged by you, for the rightful owners?
Read Alice Miller’s, “Drama of the Gifted Child.” God-identification is just another strategy for avoiding our horrible feelings. Another is, “I’m a great artist,” which may, in fact, be true. Of course, the original is, “my mom and dad really love me.”
I would really love to hear you throw your shoe at Alice Miller. That would be priceless.
http://www.amazon.com/phrase/grandiose-person/ref=sip_top_0
March 2, 2009 at 10:25 am
Ah, this reminds me of something I read just a few days ago. Herbert Marcuse, The End of Utopia, 1967. Emphasis mine:
(second try)
March 2, 2009 at 10:56 am
Wow!: Much of what you say is untrue or otherwise unconvincing, and little of it addresses what I was saying. The flattened can on the asphalt exists only in your mind.
Obama, hardly a flaming liberal and apparently devout, defeated McCain 53-47. Bush beat Gore something like 50.1-49.9. (These are highly arbitrary for point of comparison.) This means that 8 years of Bush moved approximately 3% of the voters from the hard right to the center. It’s not like we just had a crushing victory.
March 2, 2009 at 3:09 pm
it’s like someone telling Hitler about the economic costs of genocide.
I suppose you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that such conversations did, in fact, take place. The movie “Conspiracy” does a fine job depicting the Wannsee Conference.
March 2, 2009 at 3:32 pm
The linked AP article illuminates your point in a couple of interesting ways. The reporter and the quoted Democrats in the story assume that it’s up to the Republicans (as the guardians of morality?) to denounce this stuff. Here’s the headline:
And a Democrat says:
But not all the Democrats are afraid to confront this outrage:
So you see, the problem with Schulteis is that he’s mistaken. He seems to think that everybody with AIDS deserves it, but it turns out that at least some of the babies with AIDS didn’t get it through sexual contact.
There’s apparently a general consensus in Colorado that baby sluts deserve whatever they get.
Now I’d agree with DocAmazing and the Democrat in this story that it’s up to Christians and Republicans to denounce bad Christians and bad Republicans. But it’s the responsibility of human beings to denounce bad human beings.
March 2, 2009 at 4:32 pm
“Exist only in your mind..” Yes! You get it.
March 3, 2009 at 8:26 am
“Why do you call me good? Only the Father is good.”
The problem with anathemizing anyone, even someone very cruel and malicious, which Schultheis plainly is, is it is too much like trying to wield the One Ring for a “good” purpose.
Krawk!
March 3, 2009 at 2:45 pm
That’s pretty much exactly the dogmatically anti-judgmental view that I’m rejecting, Nevermore.
Judgmentalism is something that you can have too much of (Schultheis) or not enough of (kumbaya liberals, amoral technocrats). Having a few strong anti-judgmentalists around is helpful in societies tortured and suffocated by an excess of moralistic judgments, but as a foundational social principle, anti-judgmentalism is significantly inferior even to strange women lying in ponds distributing swords.
March 3, 2009 at 4:36 pm
amoral technocrats
Hmmm. I’m still not sure where I fall on this issue. I’m generally in favor of judgmentalism. I have no problem arguing, for example, that malefactors of great wealth (among other modern malefactors) belong in jail. I don’t suppose I’d spit on John Yoo if I saw him, but I wouldn’t boohoo about it if I heard someone else did.
But as far as public policy goes, I’m still inclined to defend this position on instrumental grounds. Knock off a few heads pour encourager les autres, as they say – not just because the fuckers deserve it. The rhetoric and practical application of judgementalism is useful (says I).
Obama, on the other hand, seems to be employing nonjudgmental “bipartisanship” as a tactic, and he seems to be moving the ball forward. More power to him, I say,
March 3, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I’ll add, to The Raven, that Emerson is certainly correct to reject your formulation of the nonjudgmental view. As you express it, you come waaay too close to saying: “We can’t go after Bush’s people for war crimes because such prosecutions would be political, and it’d come back to bite us the next time the Republicans are in power.”
To invoke a different myth: Pandora’s box is already open. The Republicans are going to bring the crazy regardless. This shouldn’t even be a factor in considering whether or not harsh justice should be done on these matters, and shouldn’t be a factor in considering whether people like Yoo should be regarded as anathema.
March 3, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Obama may have read the tea leaves correctly. A lot of the Blue Dogs are (in effect, not in personal history necessarily) center-right Republicans driven out by the crazies. Much of Obama’s House majority, maybe all of it, is DLC + Blue Dogs.
He also may have succeeded in making the Republicans look silly, stupid, and fanatical.
I concede Obama everything on electioneering and campaigning questions. But if electioneering and campaigning realities preclude good policy decisions, then we’re fucked, partly because the electoral system (and media) are pathological, and possibly simply because the electorate is pathological. If something that’s obviously the best or only electoral choice is a disastrous policy choice, goodbye folks. That’s how disasters happen.
I also worry that on civil liberties, military policy, and finance questions Obama will pull us halfway back from where Bush left us and call that victory. He’s way too close to finance and seems very squishy on the other two questions.
March 3, 2009 at 7:51 pm
The view I’ve espoused at times is that we should regard religions are being morally in the same ballpark as other human institutions and practices, such as governments, corporations, political ideologies, etc.
In general, a religion will reflect the society in which it originates or is practiced. (If the society in which it originates and the society in which it is practiced are sufficiently different, there might be a compromise between the two: i.e. many (although not most) Jews follow Leviticus 11:7 and don’t eat pork, but not Deuteronomy 21:18-21 with regard to stoning your disobedient kids.)
The point about religion generally reflecting society as a whole, however, should not be interpretted more broadly as some sort of base-and-superstructure theory about how religion is really strictly derivative of something more fundamental like economics. Some religions are better than the society in which they originate; within Christianity, I think Friends/Quakers probably reflect better moral values than the society of George Fox’s England, or today’s USA. Correspondingly, some religions are worse: the original Mormons under Joseph Smith introduced a form of polygyny that was a step backward in the treatment of women, even by the not-spectacularly-enlightened standards of the mid-19th century USA.
March 5, 2009 at 7:27 am
May I just object to the pain, misery, and death they advocate and cause? I don’t need to sit in Odin’s judgment seat to do that. Much simpler than moralizing. Or maybe I should be pleased that they feed us corvids. Krawk!
March 6, 2009 at 5:32 am
it’s about protecting children from the consequences of their mother’s actions
Great! So you’ll now step up and, if you are consistent, demand that abortion on demand be ended as it is “EVIL”.*
*Of course I only expect some weird contortion of reason, angry denunciations, and irrational prattle from you.
March 6, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Raven, why not judge? Where’d that taboo come from? Why so jellified? The Norse pagans certainly weren’t soft-hearted or squishy.
It’s not the same case, quite, but the conventional wisdom today is that, yes, the Bush violations of the constitution and international law may indeed be deplorable, but the only thing worth getting really angry about is attempts to punish anyone for these violations.
Trollbob: I have no interest in taking a position pleasing to you . You may be less detestible and vicious tha Schultheis, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with you. You may even be a perfectly wonderful person, in no way detestible or vicious, but I still don’t have to agree with you.
Do you, in fact, disagree with Schultheis and find him loathesome? You didn’t say so. Are you just arguing hypothetically? Your loud tone suggests that we have nothing to talk about, in any case.
I’m not anti-abortion, but believe that born babies should be cared for and protected, for example by the medical procedure in question here. You might not like that position, but it’s not an impossible one.
March 6, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Quoth The Raven: “May I just object to the pain, misery, and death they advocate and cause? I don’t need to sit in Odin’s judgment seat to do that. Much simpler than moralizing. Or maybe I should be pleased that they feed us corvids. Krawk!”
Okay. On what grounds do you object to the pain, misery, and death they advocate and cause, if not moral ones? Do you find all of that pain, misery, and death aesthetically displeasing, and object on the basis that they are making the world less appealing to your senses? Do you object on the grounds of self-interest — objecting to the pain, misery, and death that they’ve caused to you personally?
March 6, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Note: I’m not claiming that aesthetics, morality, and self-interest are an exhaustive list of possible motives for objecting to pain, misery, and death, let alone all human action. Those are just the ones that came to my mind most easily.
March 7, 2009 at 1:37 am
Confused, righteously-indignant leftists create klansmen and nazis. Magic of the dialectic.
Non-judgementalism is the rule, except when things reach putsch or purge stage. That’s One reason I continued to read Christopher Hitchens (not always in agreement) when the bitches started to whine back in ’03-’04. Hitchens may be another glib, drunken british POS but does not lack a certain Humean perspective (Realpolitik, so-called) which allows him to perceive a situation clearly, and then tell some interesting lies about it. That said, I’m for sending the Bushco gang to the Hague: include the Clintons, Rice, Colin ibn Powell and DiDi Feinstein in the tumbrils (she and her hubby have made more than anyone from war profiteering scams). War keeps life interesting, anyway (as Nietzsche realized).
[If you were always this intelligible you would be deleted much less often, dude. However, your opening line is generic Hofstadter-Schlesinger-Bell post-ideological administrative liberalism.]
March 7, 2009 at 2:59 am
[…] (h/t: John Emerson) […]
March 7, 2009 at 3:00 am
[[many liberals are so opposed to moralistic language]]
Hey, John, this moralistic enough for ya? 🙂
March 7, 2009 at 3:43 am
Thanks Lex.
March 7, 2009 at 4:57 am
“On what grounds do you object to the pain, misery, and death they advocate and cause, if not moral ones?”
I have a heart.
“The conventional wisdom today […]”
John, John, you’ve got to stop listening to the MSM. Me, I’ve been saying I want to send the top Bush administration officials, and half the Senate (only I now I’d rather it be 3/4s of the Senate) for war crimes trials for some time now. If war crimes trials are not politically possible, let us at least have an airing of truth.
It’s not judgment I object to–it’s claiming that one has authority to judge which comes from on high, which is what one does when one invokes “good” and “evil” without qualification. When I am tempted in that direction I have usually been wrong and the most judgmental people I know are without exception wrong-headed. They are often extremely destructive as well. I hope people I think well of will not go there.
March 7, 2009 at 2:32 pm
The MSM runs the show, dear Raven. It is people such as yourself who are right* who are insignificant. The MSM have pretty much ruled on what will happen and what won’t, so if they’re not beaten we all lose.
My perception is the opposite of yours. By defining cases such as this as bad moralists vs. good objective technocrats and men of law, you give away the game. Substantial proportions of the population don’t respond to that thinking, and they have some pretty good reasons.
*In your case, so right that you won’t let other people use bad words.
March 7, 2009 at 5:12 pm
🙂
March 8, 2009 at 3:19 am
Um, “good and objective technocrats?” Look back on what I wrote. Everything has been a critique of the idea of “objectivity” as applied to ethics.
You may use as many words I disagree with as you wish. But sometimes I will object. Seriously, I don’t want you–or anyone I like, even a little–as sounding like the James Dobson (or whoever) of the left.
March 8, 2009 at 4:44 am
I’m struck, thinking it over, by how strongly you cling to the language of absolute morality. What I find striking is that it’s the language of your–our–enemies. It’s only from the mouth of someone with real power that such language has any force–from the likes of you and me, we might as well shout into the wind.
In any event, I think I’ve done way too much croaking on this, and I’m going to let it rest. Krawk!
March 8, 2009 at 6:05 am
We’re going in circles, obviously. I’m struck by the stubbornness with which you taboo moralizing speech and identify it with Dobson, and the way you fail to notice that the topic of my original post is your attitude, which is quite pervasive in our world.
March 8, 2009 at 2:45 pm
In terms of global evil (like Sudanese government type Evil), Schultheis is not that evil. Schultheis does uphold the Prezbyterian creed, however, so he’s probably more stupid than sinister.
And stripped of your Ad Homs (and hysteria), his argument for testing mamacitas for STDs does not lack a certain plausibility, even from an administrative-liberal perspective. The State might have an interest in preventing diseased people from conceiving. Early notification, and we can abort that puppay.
That applies to testing pregnant mothers for drugs as well–a few glasses of wine, OK. A diet of meth and JD–not OK. With drug testing, the state Doc could step in, and terminate, and also prevent another SpecEd basketcase.
March 8, 2009 at 4:42 pm
OK, Horatio, now we can talk. But for Christ’s sake, you are one hell of a guy to be talking about ad homs.
Of course Schultheis isn’t as evil as the Sudanese government. Irrelevant. Red herring.
Administrative liberals and social engineers among the ethically disarmed liberals I’m criticizing, so the fact that some of them might support testing for different reasons than mine is also irrelevant.
Again, my point has been that liberal or radical disagreements with evil Christians should never be framed as moralism vs. tolerance or secularity vs. religion struggle. Many good, not-illiberal people no longer respond to to that kind of argument, if they ever did, and the obligatory use of value-neutral “pragmatist” arguments only prevents you from responding to what is really the worst thing about Schultheis’s outburst.
May 20, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Good Dy:
Mostly that’ s becauser most people don’ t realize how many skills they do have. If you have office skills, for example, you may be able to find work as a virtual assistant. If you have transpoortation you might try mystery shopping , although it can.
November 17, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Christians are busy killing of non-believers by putting bacteria in food, this is a fact they are doing this in africa as i am typing this. Are lot of people are being “drugged” this way be advised that when you by food from fast food outlets that you should use the following signs for them to think that you are one of them. Rub your nose or scratch you head or yawn loudly don’t forget to make eye contact with the person serving you. These people are evil be advised, be careful.
[This comment has been awarded the COMMENT OF THE YEAR award for 2009]
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