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You Can't Become Rich In Your Pocket Until You Become Rich In Your Mind | ||||
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Humanism is endangered by these word gamesHUMANISM THE PROPRIETY OF HUMANISM Although controversial, humanism is an appropriate guide to values. Admittedly, humanism has a questionable reputation — as atheistic, antireligious, anti-individualist, and even amoral. For many, the term “humanist” is an insult. But humanism has been unfairly maligned and careful consideration will show its value. Indeed, the tactics used to besmirch humanism have been used in other contexts as well. It is wise to be aware of these tactics and to reject them. It is common to play a game with labels, for they can have emotive power even if they have been drained of their cognitive value. Politicians, in particular, find such tactics useful, for labeling can be effective with an audience that desires to reduce a difficult world to simple terms. The desire is understandable. But reality is too complex, and the process leaves the audience open to manipulation. Even familiar categories such as liberal and conservative cannot be applied across the board. For there are many dimensions — defense, economics, education, the environment, equal opportunity, morality, the prison system… It is rare that a person is liberal (or conservative) on all issues. And these notions change over time. In the days of Adam Smith, laissez faire represented a liberal economic position. Today it is a highly conservative position. Even more difficult for a simplistic position, it is impossible to consistently be a liberal (or conservative) on all issues. There is a valuable conservative tradition that regards the appreciation of great literature as an essential part of education and would recommend the formal study of “Great Books.” Yet these wreak havoc on conservative morality. The silliest way to defend the Western Canon is to insist that it incarnates all of the seven deadly virtues that make up our supposed range of normative values and democratic principles. That is palpably untrue. The Iliad teaches the surpassing glory of armed victory, while Dante rejoices in the eternal torments he visits upon his very personal enemies. Tolstoy’s private version of Christianity throws aside nearly everything that anyone among us retains, and Dostoevsky preaches anti-Semitism, obscurantism, and the necessity of human bondage. Shakespeare’s politics, insofar as we can pin them down, do not appear to be very different from those of his Coriolanus, and Milton’s ideas of free speech and free press do not preclude the imposition of all manner of societal restraints. Spenser rejoices in the massacre of Irish rebels, while the egomania of Wordsworth exalts his own poetic mind over any other source of splendor. The West’s greatest writers are subversive of all values, both ours and their own…” (Bloom, The Western Canon, p. 29.) Given the different dimensions in which one can be conservative or liberal, and given that one can be both liberal and conservative on the same issues at the same time (despite the ranting of some politicians, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive), the reduction of “liberal” to a blanket term of scandal may appear surprising. This is especially so given that our country fared better under the liberal economic policies of the New Deal and its successors than under the more right-wing economic policies of the past two decades (or those of the 1920s). Throughout the entire spectrum of society, not just its upper crust, people increased their wealth and led better lives. We have forgotten this track record of economic liberalism. In our new use of “liberal” as a pejorative, the most derogatory epithet in either political party, we have also forgotten the positive things previous thinkers had to say about liberalism. Liberalism — it is well to recall this today — is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak. It was incredible that the human species should have arrived at so noble an attitude, so paradoxical, so refined, so acrobatic, so antinatural. Hence it is not to be wondered at that this same humanity should soon appear anxious to get rid of it. (Ortega y Gassett, The Revolt of the Masses). Humanism (This is not to deny that some liberal thinkers have advocated stupid and pernicious policies. So have some conservative thinkers. It is instead to deny the propriety of treating their positions as expressing the core of liberalism - or conservatism. It would be more intellectually honest, and more accurate, to simply describe, as Spiro Agnew had done, those liberal patronizing academicians who saw themselves as the new elite as “effete pointy-headed intellectual snobs.”) Even though our redefinition of “liberal” has failed to improve the quality of government, it has simplified political discussion. Rather than having to analyze a candidate or political platform, we have only to decide whether he, she or it can be labeled “liberal.” This game has zero content. It is a dangerous game because it appears to have content. Merely calling one’s government a “Peoples’ Republic” does not give citizens a greater voice in government; nor does it lessen its exploitation of citizens. Yet, it would appear that, if a republic is responsive to the needs of its people, then a Peoples’ Republic must be even more responsive. It is not. Arbitrary definitions or labels cannot change reality. They just delude people as to the nature of reality. (Lincoln once asked how many legs a horse would have if you called its tail a leg. He reminded his audience that “four” is the correct answer. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.) Playing with words distracts from substantive issues. Is government responsive to the needs of all citizens, as opposed to just those of big business or big labor or special interest groups? What modifications to its institutions (or personnel) would make it more responsive to citizens? Do government policies sacrifice the long-term health of the polity to the short term? All governments redistribute income by collecting taxes and providing services. Is our income redistribution fair? Does it achieve an appropriate purpose? By focusing on labels we avoid the real issues. Humanism is endangered by these word games, threatened with being redefined by the religious right and reduced to a label of opprobrium. This would be a shame, for it is one of the finest traditions of Western civilization. Before characterizing humanism, consider the alternatives. Deism? But which Deus? Is Allah the same as Adonai the same as Jesus Christ the same as the Holy Spirit? Within Christianity, is the Unitarian God the same as the Greek Orthodox God the same as the Roman Catholic God the same as the God of the Church of the Latter Day Saints? Within Islam is the God of the Sunnis the same as the God of the Shi’ites the same as the God of the Sufis? What about the Baha’i? Is the Buddhist notion of dharma the same? Is this important? Unfortunately, it is. The exclusive nature of Western religions has long fostered contentious animosity. Time and again the violent fruits of this animosity have stained Western history. Violent religious strife has an unpleasant history that extends back to the Old Testament narrative of the Israelites’ conflict with the tribes of Canaan. The religious zeal of the fourth crusade expressed itself in sacking Christian Constantinople and enthroning a harlot on the patriarch’s seat of St. Sophia’s church. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation spawned some of the bloodiest wars on record. Within Islam Sunnis and Shi’ites have been persecuting each other for centuries. Both have persecuted the Baha’i (whom they regard as non-Muslim, despite the fact that the religious matrix of Baha’i is clearly Islam). Many of the early European settlers in the New World were Christians fleeing religious persecution by other Christians. The Common Protestantism that developed in the early nineteenth century was both anti-Catholic and antiSemitic. Anti-Catholic societies, the Know Nothings, fomented riots and burned Catholic churches and convents. In 1838, Lilburn Boggs, the Governor of Missouri, issued the order: “The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary, for the public peace.” As late as 1893 the mayor of Toledo, Ohio called out the National Guard to protect local Protestants from a rumored Catholic murder plot. Despite our supposed progress toward a more civilized world, religious intolerance has not yet been eliminated, as painfully witnessed by the conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, and the former Yugoslavia. Even in the U.S. deep animosities still lie close to the surface, especially among fundamentalists, for whom denomination is important. In 1983 the leadership of the World Congress of Fundamentalists expressed its feelings toward ecumenism by describing the Roman Catholic Church as “the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” One of the few elements Louis Farrakhan and Pat Robertson have in common is their anti-Semitism. Our long history of bitter religious strife shows how easily denominational orthodoxy can lead to conflict and violence, for people have proffered different and conflicting notions of God and God’s laws. How do we decide which of these to accept? Through divine revelation? But few have experienced divine revelation, and those who claim revelation provide accounts that often differ from one another. (Also, how does one prove a revelation was divine?) Humanism Should we decide which notion of God and God’s laws to accept through the literal interpretation of scripture? But which scripture? The Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, the Qur’an, the Vedic Scriptures, the sutras of Shakyamuni? Suppose there were agreement on a particular scripture, say, the Bible. But which version of the Bible should it be? In the early nineteenth century public schools required the Protestant King James Bible, rather than the Douay Bible, a translation of the Latin Vulgate. Roman Catholics protested in vain. Suppose, further, there were agreement on a particular version of a particular scripture. But how should that scripture be interpreted? The claim that the King James Version of the Bible is literally true still fails to fix a particular interpretation. Does Joshua commanding the sun to stand still imply a geocentric universe? Does the passage in Genesis: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” imply that a fetus becomes a living person when it first breathes? Does Abraham having had two wives and Jacob having had four support polygamy? Does the institution of slavery in the Bible mean we should likewise condone slavery? (Martin Luther appeared to suggest this in his Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia. “Did not Abraham and other patriarchs and prophets have slaves?… For a slave can be a Christian, and have Christian liberty, in the same way that a prisoner or a sick man is a Christian, and yet not free.”) Thus, substituting Deism for humanism would fail to solve the problem. We would still have to specify which Deus, which scripture, which version, and which interpretation. At each step the same sort of disagreement would recur. And at each step an answer would vindicate an ever-decreasing minority of “true believers” at everyone else’s expense. “STRICT CONSTRUCTIONIST” AS A LABEL The problem with labels, positive or negative, is that they are used to obscure or distort reality, to sell a position based on an emotionally appealing misrepresentation. A striking contemporary example, “strict constructionist,” is a pleasant-sounding euphemism that has been used to disguise views many find unpalatable. Initially a term of conservative reaction against the liberal civil rights activism of the Earl Warren (President Eisenhower) Supreme Court and implying that a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is incompatible with judicial activism, ”strict constructionist” justices and courts have been far more activist than the Warren Court. It is just that theirs has been a right-wing judicial activism. It has not been how judges interpret the Constitutional propriety of judicial activism. Rather, it has been how right wing they are. But “strict constructionist” sounds better. Contrary to the picture of an excessively liberal Supreme Court painted by the far right, the Supreme Court was designed to be a conservative institution and has generally filled that role. The appointment of long-time judges tends to select wealthy conservative individuals. Lifetime appointment insulates justices from political controversy and may make them unsympathetic to new social and political trends. The Supreme Court ruled that slavery was protected by the Constitution and that the Missouri Compromise was invalid because Congress did not have the right to prohibit slavery. It struck down the federal income tax; it repeatedly applied the Sherman Antitrust Act to unions but refused to apply it to corporations; it struck down child labor laws and state laws limiting the work week, as well as minimum wage laws; it struck down laws that prohibited racial discrimination by private individuals and upheld state laws requiring segregation; it upheld state laws permitting the forced sterilization of the “congenitally unfit”; and until Roosevelt threatened to expand the court with his own nominees it struck down all the major New Deal programs. Hardly liberal! Despite this history and the often deeply conservative tenor of our highest court, our far right insists a major problem with our government has been our excessively liberal, coddling, Supreme Court. They have fought to replace liberal activism with “strict constructionism,” which appears to imply fidelity to the principles of our founding fathers. The appearance is misleading. The rulings of our present Supreme Court, with a majority of “strict constructionist” justices, belie any such fidelity. Since the days of our independence both conservatives and liberals have accepted the principle of “a wall of separation between church and state” (a phrase coined by Thomas Jefferson). The present Court, ruling in favor of a law granting tax exemptions to individuals who send their children to parochial schools, has compromised that principle. |
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