normblog

Cajun Moon

In the days before YouTube I once mentioned this, but I didn't have the means to back up my recommendation. Now I do. Take four minutes of your day and listen to Ricky Skaggs singing 'Cajun Moon'. It's a great song, generally, but you should pay particular attention from just before 3 minutes in, when the fiddles get to be upfront and lead things out, gloriously. Yaay-yeee. If it don't set you up a treat, I'm a bricolated branflake.

Affiliation and belief

Josh Marshall begins a post by asking:

Do our beliefs form the basis of our partisan and ideological affiliations? Or is it vice versa?

As the rest of the post shows, he's interested in emphasizing the sociological influences on belief, the way in which group associations affect our openness to evidence and argument that might tell against the viewpoints we favour. That there are these influences is not to be doubted; but they don't answer his own questions, those with which he begins: how strong is the influence from belief to affiliation, and how strong is the influence the other way?

There surely cannot be a general answer to this question, one that is valid for all individuals. You may be a Democrat and sign up to more or less the whole package of beliefs associated with voting that way, he a Republican and with more or less the profile one would expect but for his dissent on climate change issues, she a British leftist but out of tune with much of the rest of left on quite a number of issues, though most of them associated with foreign policy. Even in these cases, we don't know without further investigation which of these individuals is most carefully thinking things out for him or herself. It could be the last of the three, but it needn't be. She might just be falling in with a group of like-minded friends and, under their influence, going against a wider trend. The most independently-minded might be the Republican - his basic allegiance and his one area of dissent based on having pondered things on his own account.

Looking at the same thing in more social terms, in any political coalition (speaking loosely) there will be some who belong heart and soul and profess most of the relevant beliefs and commitments, others who come close to the same overall indentification but differ on some particulars of a more or less important kind, others again who are 'signed up' because of one or two central commitments but are not bothered about much else in the package, or have all sorts of differences with it. How do they all get where they are, by way of what balance between group influences and independent-minded reflection? Why does one person leave an organization over a particular disagreement he has with it, and another not, though she has the same disagreement?

Perhaps there is research answering Josh Marshall's opening questions, but in view of the situation I've sketched - inadequately - here, I wonder if such research could establish decisively that the direction is more from belief to political affiliation or more from political affiliation to belief. (Via.)

Frozen mistake?

An email from a reader, posted with permission:

I am afraid I think you are wrong about the settlement freeze issue. This is not about what is reasonable but about what works. Such a freeze has never been a precondition for holding talks - not under Rabin, Barak, Sharon or Netanyahu. The route to peace requires Israeli public opinion to back a peace agreement which will leave the settlers isolated, making it possible to deal with them. In the absence of an actual agreement it is not possible to really confront the settlement issue. This is particularly true for Netanyahu who cannot be expected to negotiate a peace agreement while at the same time having to wage a war against the right wing of his own government. Furthermore part of the negotiation is about where the border should be - it is not something that can be assumed prior to an agreement. Nobody suggests that the Palestinians should halt building in (say) Jericho because perhaps the Israelis will claim it in negotiations. The basic problem here is that Obama created this expectation of a settlement freeze as part of his grandstanding in Cairo. It was aimed at showing the Arab and Islamic world that he is prepared to get tough with Israel. It turns out to have been a tactical, if not a strategic, blunder because the Palestinians cannot settle for less than what Obama then demanded - a complete freeze in all disputed territories. Netanyahu has said he is ready for talks without preconditions and instead of testing what these talks might lead to the Palestinians insist on totally fulfilling the precondition which Obama put in their heads. This is convenient for them - because they can demonstrate their steadfastness in their propaganda war against Hamas - and it is also convenient for Netanyahu as he is not pressed to make real concessions in a real peace process. Hilary Clinton understands this mistake but it seems Obama is less ready to concede that he made a mistake, which in any case he probably cannot now correct.

To end an epidemic of violence

Here's an initiative to 'make ending violence against women a high priority and an integral component of American foreign policy'.

Grounding moral value

James Garvey offers two views - presented to him in the pub - about the basis of moral judgement. One is that...

... atheists have no way to ground moral value. Something transcendental is required - a plan or purpose or creator of objective value - if we are to have good reasons to help one another. You can go on about the good will or pleasure or happiness, but there's no reason to prefer one or the other of these. Only with religion do you get a proper moral code.

This is not persuasive - not if what you want are actually good reasons to do what you do. A course of action said to be backed by that transcendental something will either be defensible, as well, in the light of mundane moral reasons or it won't. If it is then you have your reasons already; if it isn't you're left merely with an unbacked command or something similar - a given based only on faith and not on reasons.

The second view is 'that human beings are bound by the "tie of common doom", and if we get the chance to help each other, to do something about unhappiness, we have to do it'. I don't deny that this is an (important) moral reason to be considered in ethical deliberation. But it is not of such a kind as to 'ground moral value'; it is, rather, one kind of specific moral consideration amongst others. How should we weigh a duty to help unhappy others against duties of care towards those closest to us? How much time should we give to helping others, relative to time looking after ourselves? May we pursue creative ends of our own and if so to what extent? These questions demonstrate, I think, that more general principles are needed than the 'tie of common doom' if we are to be able to adjudicate between different moral demands.

Spin for pace

Australia has awarded Brian Lara, one of the great cricketers of his generation, an honorary Order of Australia. Accepting the award, Lara said:

I am sure you know the Australians copied our style of cricket to get to be the best in the world.

Yes and no. Australia didn't hunt with a pack of four fast bowlers. They didn't need to. They had a genius called Shane Warne.

Unsettling advice

A leader in The New York Times admonishes Barack Obama for his approach to the Middle East peace process - for the demand, in particular, that Israel should freeze all settlement activity, a demand pressed by his administration without any assurance in advance that the Israeli government would agree to it. I think, to the contrary, that the demand was entirely reasonable. Just as Israel is entitled to look to the renunciation of terrorist violence against its citizens and a willingness to acknowledge the legitimacy of its existence as tokens of Palestianian seriousness in wanting peace, so it should be ready for its part to demonstrate that it has no designs on territory occupied after 1967, as a sign of its own commitment to peace (rather than to expansion - as is the repeated charge of those hostile to it). A peace deal that isn't simply going to unravel somewhere down the line has to pay attention to the legitimate concerns of both sides.

Minaret ban

There's been a referendum in Switzerland today to stop the building of minarets. According to early reports, exit poll projections show that the initiative may have succeeded. Whether or not the projections are confirmed, this would be a grossly illiberal measure, a piece of rank religious discrimination, and I'm surprised that there are not entrenched clauses in the Swiss Constitution to prevent it. Amnesty International has said that a minaret ban would 'breach Switzerland's obligations to uphold freedom of religion'. Argument to the effect that the ban is justified because of the subordinate position of women within Islam is misguided. It uses opposition to one form of unjustified discrimination to uphold another. Discrimination against women should be opposed with the full force of the law and by every other legitimate means; but discrimination against one religion - its beliefs, its symbols, or its buildings - isn't one of these.

A Watershed for Irish Catholicism (by Sean Coleman)

Friday's Irish Times featured on its front page an odd photograph, framed as a kind of Usual Suspects-type line-up: a lugubrious collection of four ecclesiastical over-achievers, men known for decades throughout Ireland as secretive and influential, inscrutable figures garbed in the gilt and gold of sacerdotal robes, collectively the very personification of Catholic power in the republic. The four men – John Charles McQuaid, Dermot Ryan, Kevin McNamara, and Desmond Connell – were the successive holders of the office of the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Dublin; and, for over 50 years, they were at the head of what was, in effect, the largest and most disgraceful criminal conspiracy in the history of the independent Irish state.

This fact has been made conclusively clear by the publication this week of the Murphy Report, which marks – after the Ferns Report in 2005, and the Ryan Report earlier this year – another watershed in the history of modern Irish Catholicism. The Commission of Investigation into the Dublin Archdiocese relates the by now familiar catalogue of horrendous obscenities – abuse, molestation, rape, violence, neglect – committed by priests against children. Yet this latest report differs from its predecessors in that it focuses not on the initial offences, but on the subsequent cover-ups, evasions and subterfuge that allowed the Church to escape embarrassment, and enabled the abuse to continue unabated for decades. The report is unequivocal:

As can be seen clearly from the case histories, there is no doubt that the reaction of Church authorities to reports of clerical child sexual abuse in the early years of the Commission's remit was to ensure that as few people as possible knew of the individual priest's problem. There was little or no concern for the welfare of the abused child or for the welfare of other children who might come into contact with the priest. Complainants were often met with denial, arrogance and cover-up and with incompetence and incomprehension in some cases. Suspicions were rarely acted on. Typically complainants were not told that other instances of child sexual abuse by their abuser had been proved or admitted. The attitude to individual complainants was overbearing and in some cases underhanded. (p. 10)

The practice of the Church was permeated with secrecy, occlusion, lies, 'a cult of loyal obedience': the 'vast majority [of priests] simply chose to turn a blind eye' to the abuse; those who were blatantly guilty were shifted around from parish to parish to avoid problems; several bishops 'heard suspicions and concerns but they did not take the obvious steps of asking precisely what was involved or challenging the priest concerned'.

Consider the activities of Father Thomas Naughton (p. 455), against whom there were 20 documented complaints of abuse. The Commission found that the Archdiocese did 'everything in its power to protect him', and 'ignored his victims' until the story became too big to ignore. 'As a result, he was left to continue his abuse for many years.' This was not a million years ago: he was active in the parish of Donnycarney in north Dublin in 1984 when I was baptised there, and was, following incidents of abuse, moved to the Ringsend parish, where he was active in schools when many of my friends would have been entering education. All the while, the hierarchy was aware of what he had been doing, and what he was capable of. Their response was to smother accusations in denial, and to send him for sessions of psychiatric treatment.

These things are, largely, not news to the Irish people. It has long been known that the Church in Ireland acted as a kind of imperium in imperio, a state within a state (not unlike, say, the Vatican itself), subject to its own laws and legal framework, dismissive of the meddling of outsiders, and fiercely and demonstratively protective of its own sovereignty and prerogatives. Yet it is striking how this notion – so imaginatively apt, so metaphorically neat – is revealed to be precisely what was going on, and was often simply assumed as the status quo by all concerned. The law seemingly stopped at the borders of the Church, and Gardaí (policemen) in Dublin were uneasy about investigating - and were unwilling to take enforcement measures – inside what were, in effect, Church grounds.

The report found 'a number of inappropriate contacts between the Gardaí and the Archdiocese', and that 'very senior members of the Gardaí, including the Commissioner in 1960, clearly regarded priests as being outside their remit'. Law enforcement 'actually report[ed] complaints to the Archdiocese instead of investigating them', and was often content to draw a veil over the whole grisly issue, and to let their counterparts in the hierarchy deal with the matter themselves. In one particularly egregious instance, police even connived in allowing a serial abuser to flee the country.

Reading through the report is a disquieting and, frankly, gruelling experience; Lord Acton's famous and lapidary formulation of Catholic autocracy – 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely' - is obviously and immediately called to mind. Yet even more relevant are the words that Acton employed next: 'Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it.'

This was, surely, what was at work in the Dublin Archdiocese, and in Ireland at large, across five terrible decades of abuse and impunity. The office was seen to sanctify the holder of it; priests were beyond sanction simply because they were priests; and the Church was raised above the law simply because it was the Church. The Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, adequately refuted these notions this week when he declared, upon the report's publication, that 'a collar will protect no criminal': 'This is a republic – the people are sovereign – and no institution, no agency, no church can be immune from that fact'. Nearly 90 years after the foundation of the state, it is both heartening and dispiriting that, at long last, these words are becoming a reality. (Sean Coleman)

The good that people do

Here's a story about one man's deeds: Denis Avey, a British soldier and p.o.w., who smuggled himself into Auschwitz to see for himself what was going on there. His help to the Jewish prisoner Ernst Lobethall saved the latter's life. Two short videos accompany the article.