Well, at least for this one: our Catholic and Protestant brethren celebrated Easter today, but the Orthodox faithful will tune in for theirs on May 1. But today seemed a good day to remind Anger of Compassion readers of two little items, what with (among other things) all the news about Congressional interest in a dying Florida woman, an ailing Pope, and FCC attempts to regulate "decency" and its first cousin, the FEC, trying to regulate political speech on the internet. So, without further ado:
1. The United States is not -- really is not -- a Christian nation. Sorry, but I don't give a damn whether 80 per cent of Americans believe in the Christian God or not: and that is a stupid, unprincipled argument from the get-go. Think, people: we either have a government of laws and not men, or we don't. Period. Readers might be well served by taking a gander at Brooke Allen's article in the 21 February 2005 issue of The Nation:
Our Constitution makes no mention whatever of God. The omission was too obvious to have been anything but deliberate, in spite of Alexander Hamilton's flippant responses when asked about it: According to one account, he said that the new nation was not in need of "foreign aid"; according to another, he simply said "we forgot." But as Hamilton's biographer Ron Chernow points out, Hamilton never forgot anything important.
Just so, every word of it.
Actually, I think Brooke Allen (not that I know anything about Brooke Allen) is a bit tepid in this article, and yes, The Nation provides sanctuary for far too much of the barking moonbat Left, but you still should read the whole thing. Not enough others are saying this kind of thing in public.
2. In light of the above, consider that Ayn Rand wrote, in 1960's "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," that "The 'middle-of-the-road' is like an unstable, radioactive element that can last only so long -- and its time is running out. There is no more chance for a middle-of-the-road." Quite true, I think, and this would be an appropriate weekend in which to consider the stakes:
If all the manufacturers of railroad engines suddenly went irrational and began to manufacture covered wagons instead, nobody would accept the claim that this is a progressive innovation or that the iron horse has failed; and many men would step into the industrial vacuum to start manufacturing railroad engines. But when this happens in philosophy -- when we are offered Zen Buddhism and its equivalents as the latest word in human thought -- nobody, so far, has chosen to step into the intellectual vacuum to carry on the work of man's mind.Thus our great industrial civilization is now expected to run railroads, air lines, intercontinental missiles and H-bomb stock piles by the guidance of philosophical doctrines created by and for barefoot savages who lived in mudholes, scratched the soil for a handful of grain and gave thanks to the statues of distorted animals whom they worshipped as superior to man.
Gentle readers, are we not there, now?
In the same essay (the title essay of her 1961 volume, For the New Intellectual, Rand continues, after referring again to the issues of faith and force, and introducing the archtypes of those two values -- Attila and the Witch Doctor -- by pointing to what a conceptual level of consciousness can make possible:
Man is the only living species which has to perceive reality -- which means: to be conscious -- by choice. But he shares with other species the penalty of unconsciousness: destruction. For an animal, the question of survival is primarily physical; for man, primarily epistemological.Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself. If a drought strikes them, animals perish -- man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish -- man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish -- man writes the Constitution of the United States. But one does not obtain food, safety or freedom -- by instinct.
It is against this faculty, the faculty of reason, that Attila and the Witch Doctor rebel. The key to both their souls is their longing for the effortless, irresponsible, automatic consciousness of an animal. Both dread the necessity, the risk and the responsibility of rational cognition. Both dread the fact that "nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." Both seek to exist, not by conquering nature, but by adjusting to the given, the immediate, the known. There is only one means of survival for those who do not choose to conquer nature: to conquer those who do.
Meditate on this and grow wise, Grasshopper, for she was scorned in her day and is now gone, whereas Attila and the Witch Doctor we have always with us.
And if you find the archetypes of Attila and the Witch Doctor to be an oversimplification, take a look at the United States Congress and the White House.
Posted by Craig Ceely at March 27, 2005 09:46 PM