The post-Sandy Hook conversation we should be having

How long after release of the news of the tragedy in Newtown did it take the Usual Suspects to start arguing about gun control?  Was it more than thirty-six hours?  Had the names of any of the children been released?

It’s the same bloody non-conversation we’ve been having since I wrote my first “letter to the editor” thirty years ago, the same tug-o’-war between those who want to give teachers permits to carry Uzis and those who want to register anyone who buys so much as a Super Soaker.  [Case in point: this loony screed on The Slate.  But then, this equally nutty proposal from the NRA's Wayne LaPierre didn't help either.]  A Boise writer named Liza Long did write a thought-provoking piece for The Blue Review; outlets like HuffPo, TIME, MSN and Yahoo all reprinted it, paused for a breath … and resumed the non-conversation.  (Although HuffPo for some reason wasted two or three posts on Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder which they finally admitted has no causal connection to violent behavior.  Typical — shoot first, do the research later.  If necessary.)

On the liberal side, the major failing is that the tragedy in se hasn’t inspired any policy suggestions that really, specifically address such mass murders … except for reinstating the ban on assault rifles.  On the conservative side, the major failing is the tendency to engage in amateur psychology: the Adam Lanzas all hit soft targets, like schools and malls, because no one is likely to shoot back at them and they can get their fifteen minutes of fame with no real risk, don’cha know. 

(Hitting vulnerable, low-risk targets for the sake of fame may be a motive for a certain kind of serial killer … but for a mass murderer who ends his rampage by blowing his brains out?  Bah-loney.)

God and the Holocaust

I tried writing a new post to capture my thoughts on the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut.  It was, after two days' work, completely inadequate ... I wasn't saying anything new. This post, from August 17, 2010, comes closest to what I was trying to say.

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I just recently re-read Salvation is from the Jews: The Role of Judaism in Salvation History from Abraham to the Second Coming, by Roy H. Schoeman (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003).  Schoeman, a convert to Catholicism, spends a good portion of the book analyzing the religious and philosophic roots of the German cultural anti-Semitism which Adolph Hitler and the Nazis manipulated and magnified with such malignant, satanic genius.  (This in turn led me to start re-reading William L. Shirer’s classic opus The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to see how that background mixed with the political and social semi-anarchy that characterized the Weimar Republic.)

It’s difficult to overstate the impact the Holocaust has had on both Jewish and Christian theology … but it can be done.  The philosophical influences responsible for the domination of secularism among the intellectual elite were making themselves felt among theologians even before Hitler rose to power, challenging the orthodox understanding of human suffering and the God who allows it to exist.  David Hume, the grandfather of modern secularism, made a stunning indictment of God’s mercy and benevolence in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:

[God’s] power we allow [is] infinite: Whatever he wills is executed: But neither man nor any other animal are happy: Therefore he does not will their happiness.  His wisdom is infinite: He is never mistaken in choosing the means to any end: But the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity: Therefore it is not established for that purpose.  Through the whole compass of human knowledge, there are no inferences more certain and infallible than these.  In what respect, then, do his benevolence and mercy resemble the benevolence and mercy of men?

Why the rich should pay more taxes

The annual budget irresolution is getting to be like an ABC Family Channel Christmas special: You don’t want to watch because, no matter how it turns out, you know it’s gonna be bad. This year is even worse than the last two years because both the White House and House Republicans are playing chicken at the edge of the fiscal cliff.

Republicans have now pretty much conceded that nothing will be resolved without tax hikes of some sort and that the extra tax burden will have to fall upon the rich. So they’re willing to accept a deal that leaves the Bush cuts in place for families under $250k while allowing the Clinton levels to come back on everyone above that mark. This concession isn’t coming for free, though: they want entitlement cuts to be part of the bargain.

How likely are the Republicans to get what they want? Not very likely. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, writing in Politico, notes sardonically, “At present, any reading of the headlines over the past week indicates that Republicans are fighting to protect the rich and cut benefits for seniors. It may be possible to have worse political positioning than that, but I’m not sure how.”

Defense (blue) and Transfer Payments (red) as Percentage of GDP

This is something of an exaggeration … but not by much. Transfer payments by themselves consume 89% of federal receipts, and of that remarkable number about 74% is composed of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid payments.[1] However, these three programs alone contribute 11.11% to our gross domestic product, while federal transfer payments overall contribute 15.12% to our GDP. (By contrast, defense spending is only about 5.44%.) Granting that these three programs have been extended far beyond their original parameters, they’re still entitlements to which — having paid into them for so long — the people really are entitled.

The fallacy of the “‘Hitler card’ fallacy”

"One person with a hereditary disease costs the government 5.50 reichsmarks daily. RM 5.50 a day can support a whole genetically healthy family!"

“Death pathway”.  What an amazingly sterile, bureaucratic way to describe starving and dehydrating your loved one to death.

I had planned to write a third post tying up the loose ends in my previous two posts about the roles of science and philosophy in the “God debate”.  And I may yet write a reflection for tomorrow, the First Sunday of Advent.  But this story in the London Daily Mail’s MailOnline has left me sick with disbelief and disgust:  As part of an ongoing independent investigation into the so-called Liverpool Care Pathway, the ministers of Britain’s National Health System are learning that young people and newborns are also being “placed on the death pathway”.  Part of the “death pathway” is the stoppage not only of certain medications but also of food and fluids. 

NHS is investigating whether cash payments to hospitals for meeting “death pathway targets” influenced doctors’ decisions.  I don’t know if it’s occurred to them that  setting targets was bad enough, never mind creating a monetary incentive to meet them. 

But even when a prognosis of “no hope of recovery” is — you’ll pardon the phrase — a dead certainty, starvation and dehydration multiply the suffering.  Bernadette Lloyd, a hospice pediatric nurse, recounts: “I witnessed a 14 year-old boy with cancer die with his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth when doctors refused to give him liquids by tube.  His death was agonizing for him, and for us nurses to watch.  This is euthanasia by the back door.”

Lloyd is too kind.  I’d call it medical murder.

Presumptions and the first law of general ignorance

As I sit here typing on my computer, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the wealth of knowledge and benefits science has brought us.  In fact, it’s so easy that we have to a great extent forgotten the appalling depths of our ignorance.

How can I say that?  Very simple: the quantity of unknowns in the universe is by definition unknowable.  This gives us Layne’s First Law of General Ignorance: We don’t know how much we don’t know.  If we know, then, that the extent of our ignorance is unknowable, we know that at least one thing is unknowable.  But we don’t know if there’s anything else that Man cannot comprehend or will not be able to comprehend at some future date.  Therefore, the corollary to the First Law: We don’t know how much we can’t know.

Got a headache yet?

Most thought systems have to start with at least some assumptions that neither need nor admit of proof.  For instance, you can’t get anywhere in plane geometry if you don’t accept that “a line is the shortest distance between two points”, or in algebra if a² = b² + c² is merely an opinion.  Likewise, reason has a fundamental assumption that “a thing cannot both be and not-be at the same time and in the same manner”.

Why can’t we take atheism as self-evidential?  This seems to be the answer the New Atheist prefers, given that philosophers since Socrates have known that it’s impossible to prove that something does not exist.  In law, we take it as a necessary presumption of justice that a person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty.  Are there not situations in which we can safely presume that a theory is false until proven true?

C. S. Lewis, memes and logical positivism

Liturgically, the Christmas season is still five weeks and change away; we’re not even into Advent yet.  Alas, we’re governed by the marketing calendar, which begins to push us to buy for one holiday before the previous holiday is spent.  The leaves down here in north-central Texas just turned to fall colors yesterday, and the Muzak is already cranking out “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”

This is also the time of year when American Atheists begin grunting out steaming mounds of “Bah! Humbug!” on the seemingly forgotten religious aspect of the season. 

I’ve written before on some of the problems the atheist must overcome before he can truly claim his position is rational, let alone based on scientific fact.  Largely the problems are philosophical in nature; the error lies not in the structure of the argument but in the initial assumptions.  Ultimately, if your foundation is nothing but sand, it doesn’t matter how well you build the superstructure — it will fall, and great will be the fall of it (cf. Mt 7:26-27).

But the New Atheist is, for the most part, not a philosopher.  In fact, more often than not he rejects formal philosophy, as it seemingly consists of people speculating without adequate basis in verifiable fact; as one person put it to me, it’s “just a bunch of people’s subjective opinions”.  That this demand for verifiable fact is itself a philosophical position — logical positivism — and as such suffers from self-referential incoherence[1] is an irony that passes him by.

How soon we forget

French military cemetery at Douaumont (via Wikimedia).

I’ve already passed along this story on The ImpracticalCatholic.  But there’s another topic it fits, and “waste not, want not”:

The British Airways flight had just landed at Orly[1] and pulled up to the terminal.  Amidst the usual arrival bustle, an aged British gentleman was searching his carry-on bag for his passport.

A fellow passenger, a stern French woman, noticed his search, and asked, “Have you been to France before?”

The man, still searching, quietly replied, “I have.”

“Well, then,” the woman sniffed with stereotypical Gallic hauteur, “you should know to have your passport out and waiting, sir.”

“The last time I was here,” the Brit shrugged, “I didn't have to show my passport.”

“Impossible!” the woman snapped.  “You British have always had to show your passports to come in to France!”

Whereupon the Englishman stopped his search, stepped close to the lady, and whispered to her, “Well, when I landed on the beach in Normandy in June of 1944, I couldn’t find any f***ing Frenchman to show it to!”

Richard Collins of Linen on the Hedgerow said I’d “lightened Remembrance Sunday” for him.  For my American readers, Remembrance Sunday, observed the second Sunday of November, is in some ways a more solemn event than our Veteran’s Day.  Throughout the United Kingdom red poppies, in wreaths and baskets and single flowers, decorate every monument and marker raised to those who died in the two great world wars (and by extension all who died for King/Queen and Country).  The red poppy recalls the poem “In Flanders Field” by Col. John McCrae.

The next four years

… I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever ….

—Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1782)

First published in 1969 ... coincidence?

Oddly enough, the sun came up Tuesday morning, and shone on a nation that hadn’t been blasted into oblivion by a wrath-ridden God.  Of course, Christ’s sacrifice changed the nature of our relationship to God, so we just can’t count on the unrighteous to get a good smiting, no matter how desperately they need it.

Yes, yes, I’m kidding.  To be sure, I did my share of moaning and kvetching (and drinking) Tuesday night.  But I wasn’t at the point of some of my Catholic blogger brethren, who were moaning that America is dead — done, finis, that’s a wrap folks.  Perhaps Karl Marx’s dead hand is leading us to the materialist workers’ paradise of the USSA, where the only purpose in human life is to work, party and screw, but we’re not there yet.

I really have no desire to engage in the usual “Monday morning quarterbacking” that traditionally follows an election.  Theories as to how and why Mitt Romney won’t be taking office this next January will be as abundant and variegated as a field of flowers, and many if not most of them will be true to various extents.  Perhaps the dissection will bear fruit someday … just probably not in 2016, when different candidates and different hot-button issues will obtain.

But as I was standing in line at a local Baptist church waiting to cast my ballot, I noticed a display stand the members had set up to advertise their mission efforts — was it Somalia?  China?  Senegal?  And I thought to myself, Why are these people sending evangelists halfway around the world when the most crucial mission territory is right outside their doors? To use a Lincolnism, it’s like letting out the front of the house when the back of the house is on fire.

The elephant in the wage-gap room

Is there a real “wage gap” problem?  Like so many other human issues, the answer is both “no” and “yes”.

The wage gap argument centers around the long-standing factoid that women make about three-quarters as much money as do men (in the third quarter of 2012, it was about 82.7%).  There is some variance according to race, with black women leading at 93.2%, Hispanic women at 87.5%, white women at 83.4% and Asian women at 73.1%.  Moreover, this disparity seems to hold across the various categories of jobs, whether we speak of “Management, professional and related occupations” (72.9%) or of “Transportation and material moving occupations” (76.5%).[1]

The best that can be said about the BLS statistics is that, if they don’t give us apples-to-apples comparisons, they at least give us fruit to fruit, root vegetable to root vegetable.  Nevertheless, for social science purposes, they’re more like meat saws and butcher’s cleavers than the precision instruments we want for exploratory surgery.  (Sorry for the mixed metaphors.)

Going apples-to-apples paints a different picture.  According to Diana Furchtgott-Roth, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, “if the male counterparts are in the same job with the same experience,” women actually make about 95 cents on the male dollar.[2]  Also, men who work full-time average about 8.3 hours a day, while women average about 7.21 hours — about 13.1% less;[3] even in salaried occupations, the person who puts more time in at the office will be paid more.  Carrie Lukas, writing in the Wall Street Journal, noted that this difference alone accounts for more than one-third of the wage gap.[4]

Come now, let us reason together

Kinda puts "combox martyrdom" into perspective, don't it?

Originally published on October 10, 2011, I may find myself re-posting this reflection every year or so.  Not because it's so gosh-darn well-written or witty, but to remind myself that those who won't be polite to others should not expect politeness for themselves.

 

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On October 1 on The Impractical Catholic I posted the news out of Rockford, Illinois that the state Department of Public Health had suspended the license of the Northern Illinois Women’s Center, an abortion mill most notable for the anti-Catholic antics of its owner and employees, and now established as completely uncaring of their patients’ health. After making some grimly celebratory remarks, especially on how access is far more important to the hard-core pro-aborts than is women’s health, I added a YouTube clip of Queen’s video “Another One Bites the Dust”.

The only comment I got was this piece of whiny snottiness:

I find it quite ironic that you use a song that was written and performed [by] a *gasp* HOMOSEXUAL to celebrate this.

Why do I even waste my time, we all know you are going to keep on trying to keep others down ....

I no longer make any attempts to prove I’m a nice guy with plenty of friends both straight and gay, conservative and liberal, Catholic and non-Catholic. For one thing, people like “Poosy” don’t listen, don’t care, and won’t believe me anyway. For another, it reminds me too much of the old Jewish joke about anti-Semites: “Some of my best friends are Jews.” So of course “Poosy” finds it ironic: in the cramped, angry little box of her ideology, I’m not allowed to have gay friends or to appreciate good music performed by homosexuals because it would detract from my all-encompassing homophobia.