Reflections From a Murky Pond

Because of the latest outrage from the Liberals – the one’s who want the entire Bush administration tried by foreign or extra-national courts for war crimes – over the CIA’s destroying a bunch of interrogation videos the whole issue of President George W. Bush’s handling of the War on Terror in a post 9/11 world is back – yet again – in the limelight.

As expected, people’s responses to the situation break along ideological lines. The Liberals are calling for blood and vengeance and the Conservative are claiming that there was no wrongdoing at all. So, the hatred and polarity of the two sides increases to little purpose and the moderates are forced to choose a side or be reviled by both.

As is also expected – at least by my few regular readers 😉 – my opinion is somewhat skewed from the normative values of Liberal, Conservative or Moderate.

Did the Bush administration violate US law during the War on Terror? In the case of the warrantless wire-taps, I would say “Yes.” In their handling of the various illegal combatants and terrorists, I would say “No.” Bush’s people were very careful to stay outside  – as opposed to either within or in violation – of the letter of the law in those matters.

Did the Bush Administration violate the US Constitution? My answer is forced to be “Maybe.” The sworn duty of the President to defend the American people in times of strife may or may not trump the other rules set forth in that document. It could certainly be argued that it trumps other lesser laws. Indeed, it could reasonably be argued that President Bush was required to act as he did by our Constitution itself.

Please remember that our Constitution was written in a totally different age and doesn’t direct address a great deal of the things that happen with disturbing frequency in these sadder days.

A large part of what concerns me is the total vilification of President Bush by the Liberals and their propaganda machine, more commonly referred to as the ‘Main Stream Media.” The only motive ever ascribed to President Bush has been variations on the the theme of abject evil. This seems very wrong to me.

Let’s look at this from a very fundamentally American perspective for a moment. What viable seeming choices did President Bush have in the wake of the Islamist-wreaked terrorism of 9/11? What is a POTUS expected to do when presented with an extreme circumstance that pits our own Declaration of Independence against itself.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

What is the President of the United States, sworn to defend our people, to do when the precepts of Life and Liberty are in conflict? When he is faced with the proven risk to an unknown number American lives, is it intrinsically evil to abrogate the Liberty in some measure of a few?

Understand – I am not saying that President Bush made the right decisions in every case, but is it right to decide that he made those decision do to some evil motive?

Across the seas of history despotism has risen time and time again. Tyrants have ruled many lands in many times, more often than not to the great detriment of their peoples. But it is not the selfish and evil despot that does the greatest harm; it is the tyrant who enforces his rule for what he sees as the good of his people that does the longest lasting and most grievous harm, and is the one most to be feared.

The groundwork of mischief is this. A man fancies that he knows what is best for other men; that he is better acquainted with their sources of happiness than they can be; that he has more appropriate knowledge, and having more power, that he can turn his knowledge to good account on their behalf. He has formed his own estimate of good he is thoroughly persuaded that such and such a thing is good, and being good, he will compel others to receive and to adopt it, because it is good, and because he knows, from experience, it is so.

Yet despotism never takes a worse shape than when it comes in the guise of benevolence; and is never more dangerous than when it acts under the impression that it represents beneficence.

— Jeremy Bentham
Deontology; or, The Science of Morality

Benevolence may be nothing but the pale and impotent shadow of virtue when it does not lead to pragmatic beneficence, but this benevolence can also lead to the worst sort of tyranny when one man or an oligarchy decides that they know what is best for society.

One can look back and see that some of this happened under the Bush administration. A certain pragmatic despotism was enacted for the sake of what they thought was the greater good of America.

One must also look forward though. The Liberals are now in power and they have a long history of personally invasive legislation, all or most of which is meant to be for our own good. It would be best if America kept itself wary, lest these Liberals enact a “nanny state” who despotism will wear a kindly face, but whose iron fist will strike as hard as any other tyrant’s.

In America Baptists – especially Southern Baptists with their evangelical traditions – have gotten a bad name among many religions and even other sects of Christianity. While much of this dislike is well-deserved, the Baptists have had amongst their number some great and wise theologians and philosophers. Below are some words of wisdom from one of them:

There is a certain view of God and nature and man and the world in the background of our faith. But Christianity is a historical religion, and a religion of experience. It is grounded in facts. The Christian worldview rests upon these facts.

From the fact that other religions, including Judaism, have in them the idea of sacrifice and propitiation, it is concluded by some that it must be a false idea. Fundamentally this assumes that everything in the non-Christian religions must be wholly false. Is it not far more likely that a universal religious idea has in it an element of truth than that its universality is a mark of its falsity? Christianity purified and fulfilled all religious ideas of human beings, emptied them of their transient and superficial meanings, and revealed their true inward meaning. The atonement of Christ in a very special manner does this. In it God appears in Christ, not as a distant, implacable and angry being, requiring a satisfaction for sin which humans cannot supply. Jesus himself, as holy and loving and yearning to save humanity, provides the satisfaction.

— E.Y. Mullins
4th President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Obviously as a Pagan I have a theological difference of opinion with Rev. Dr. E.Y. Mullins’ assertion that “Christianity purified and fulfilled all religious ideas of human beings, emptied them of their transient and superficial meanings, and revealed their true inward meaning,” but his wisdom in knowing and saying aloud that universally held religious and moral concepts are more likely to be true than false and that things outside of the Christian faith are not inherently wrong just for being outside the Christian faith is profound.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, is – perhaps in a fit of decompensation –  stridently and shamelessly demanding that a significant fraction of the proposed Stimulus Package be given over to abortion clinics run by population control organizations.

Don’t Let Them Breed

Rep. Pelosi says that it is necessary to subsidize these organizations with US tax dollars because  the US needs to rebuild its economy by limiting the population of those poor people who are a burden on the state.

There’s a word that defines this sort of social engineering, a word laden a great deal of evil  – eugenics.

Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

— Rep. Nancy Pelosi
This Week with George Stephanopoulos

“Family Planning” covers a bit more than just the contraception that Pelosi mentions though. It also covers abortion. And when you combine the two with subsidies based on social engineering principles, you are endorsing eugenics in America. Of course eugenics has a fairly long history America, and it has always been entangled with population control and family planning groups. In fact most of the modern family planning groups and abortion clinics derived from the American Eugenic Movement.

These groups are, of course, the ones that Pelosi is beholden to and the ones she demands that vast sums of US tax dollars be given to. This is unsurprising since Rep. Pelosi’s former Deputy Chief of Staff was none other than Cecile Richards, the current President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Planned Parenthood evolved out of the American Eugenics Movement as it was adhered to by its founder, Margaret Sanger. Both Sanger and her organization, Planned Parenthood, focus on Negative Eugenics. Negative eugenics is the attempt to improve society by lowering the fertility among the genetically disadvantaged. Methods for this include abortions, sterilization, and other methods of family planning.

So far, so good – or at least not entirely bad or evil. Encouraging or making it easier for people with severe genetic conditions not to pass those damaging traits to the next generation has a certain logic and benefit. Of course this wasn’t the sole focus of Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood and similar organizations, and apparently Rep. Pelosi. The focus is, and has always been, on reducing the number of “undesirables” in American society.

In Sanger’s own words:

Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.

~*~

It [charity] encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.

~*~

The most serious charge that can be brought against modern “benevolence” is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.

— Margaret Sanger,
The Pivot of Civilization

Reading Sanger’s writings and listening to Pelosi’s mouthings is enough to raise the hackles of any reasonable and right-thinking American, even those who follow the beliefs of the Pro-Choice / Pro-Abortion side of American reproductive politics.

Perhaps it’s past time to apply something akin to negative eugenics to the US House of Representatives. 😉

Euthyphro is one of the Greek philosopher Plato’s early dialogues, dated to around or soon after 399 BCE. In it the Greek philosopher Socrates and Euthyphro, a man known for being a theologian, attempt to arrive at an acceptable definition of piety.

One of the key points in the Euthyphro dialog is called the Euthyphro Dilemma:

Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?

For the followers of the Abrahamic Religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) this normally translates into – on the occasions when it is debated by the theologians – the question of whether something is commanded by their God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by their God.

Amongst polytheists – with the rare exception of myself – the question rarely arises do to our multiplicity of deities with possibly conflicting directives and our lack of requirement for- or belief in their omniscience or infallibility.

I can’t speak to whether or not the Sikhs have the Euthyphro Dilemma often or not. They’re monotheists, but their view of their God is vastly different from most other faiths.

In any case though, it’s an interesting debate. Is the God(s) the creator or legislator of morality, or is the God(s) the enforcer of a morality that originate from separately Divine will?