Year: 2017

I had an argument with a Christian last night in which I was told that my reference to Hell, which I regard to be one of the worst features of Christianity, was an “interpretation,” and, moreover, that I can’t know what Christians think. Let me take up the second claim first, a claims sometimes rendered, “You don’t know what’s in my heart.” This is a favorite argument of racists, as if being a racist is determined by what one thinks of himself and not what he believes and how he acts. The same applies to being a Christian but in reverse: with racism, you don’t get to deny you’re a racist while embracing racist beliefs and practices; with Christianity, you don’t get to say, “I’m a Christian” and then deny the core elements of your faith. I’m not giving anybody the wriggle room to escape their responsibility in these matters.

The fact is that the New Testament is full of references to Hell. In 2 Thessalonians 1:9, which has historically been considered to be one of Paul’s epistles, in which case it was written some three generations after the alleged birth of Jesus and therefore represents the earliest Christian writings (Paul’s epistles), putting the notion of everlasting destruction and eternal alienation from God at the beginning of Christian thinking. The verse: “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” It has been supposed more recently that 2 Thessalonians was probably written four to six generations after the alleged birth of the Christian messiah. If you are among those who put distance and authors between 2 Thessalonians from 1 Thessalonians, then Mark, widely believed to be the earliest gospel (probably written four to five generations after the alleged birth of the Christian messiah, and forming, along with perhaps a second common source, the basis of the gospels of Matthew and Luke), gives us chapter and verse 9:43: “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.”

Hell is discussed elsewhere in the New Testament, as well. For example, in Revelations 21:8, the author writes, “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” (This book was probably written approximately four to five generations after the alleged birth of the Christian messiah.) Then there’s Matthew, who seems particularly keen on scaring the crap out of people with the idea of Hell. Matthew 10:28: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 13:42: “They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:50: “and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 25:41: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” Matthew 25:46: “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew was probably written four to six generations after the alleged birth of the Christian messiah.)

One does not get to say that Hell is a product of my interpretation of the Christian scriptures. Hell is a central construct in Christian theology and appears in the earliest Christian literature, the very text deemed canonical and divinely inspired. If you believe the authors of the gospels had access to Jesus’s words, or were inspired to accurately reflect his views, then the fact that Matthew 10:28 is directly attributed to Jesus himself gives you no room for interpretation. If you believe you can be a Christian simply by saying you are, well, then have fun with your own self-satisfaction. But it doesn’t impress me at all.

Sure, you can rationalize Hell. You can say that it is not there to scare us into loving God, but that salvation is a gift from loving God to provide a way to escape Hell. There’s a downside to this view. It means that Hell is a place that exists independently of God – not a place created by him to scare you – and that, while God does not have the power to make Hell go away, he does have the power to save you from going there if an only if you sign your life over to him. God says, “I will save you from eternal torment if you love me.,” God says “If you don’t love me, sorry, there’s nothing I can do. You will burn.” Some all-powerful deity you got there. So full of love for his creatures. And if you object to me quoting God, remember, I have as much authority to do so as anybody else.

UW-River Falls is pursuing a “Check Yourself” campaign. Its purpose is to teach faculty and students proper etiquette surrounding talk about sex, race, immigration, and so on. It’s a speech code designed to impose terms of political correctness by those who have appointed themselves bearers of truth on the matter. 

One of the things its audience is warned about is the claim that all human beings are bisexual. The reason for this prohibition is because the claim denies bisexuality’s unique identity, as well as undermines the identity of those who do not believe they are bisexual. Everybody has a right, the campaign tells us, to their own identity. (Right, tell that to Rachel Dolezal.)

There are many problems with etiquette campaigns. But I find this item about bisexuality particularly troubling and representative of the problem of wide-ranging speech codes. There is a position, articulated for example by Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey, albeit in different ways, that homo sapiens are, as are many other species of mammal, innately bisexual. We are born without a sexual orientation (or a race, religion, gender, etc.) but experience socialization in heterosexuality as an social and cultural imposition, albeit a process that is never completely effective – nor should it be. However much our homosexual tendencies are repressed, our bisexuality is not erased, but lies in a latent, or unconscious state in our psyche. We remain, somewhere in the layers of our mind, sexually attracted to members of our designated and acquired gender.

Acknowledging the possibility of this basic reality provides important insights into human attitudes and behaviors. For example, because a heterosexual man finds other men sexually attractive, even if he is not directly conscious of this attraction, he escapes into rituals that sublimate his sexual desire as higher-order asexual relations and activities. The structure of masculinity can be explained in part as a bulwark against culturally disapproved sexual feelings towards other men. Compulsory heterosexuality thus comes with a complex symbolic system of ritual self-denial, which, without being able to posit innate bisexuality, is mysterious. In other words, homophobia exists in part because heterosexuality is an imposition – we fear ourselves. Repressive sexuality is a source of self-loathing.

If we are told that we cannot argue that all human beings are bisexual, then what we are being told is that Freud and his ilk are wrong. An official, or at least official sounding position, has thus been taken on a contested matter. UW-River Falls is telling faculty and students that this is a settled matter. Why else would there be a speech code?

But it is not a settled matter. Indeed, we should be encouraging students to consider whether human beings are innately bisexual. It is an open question. Being able to make this claim is not only important for scientific reasons. It is also part of a political argument that faculty and students should be allowed to make. If we are all innately bisexual, then the justifications for compulsory heterosexuality, for example the notion that we are born with a sexual orientation, becomes problematic. The ideology of heterosexuality loses its naturalist appeal. The deconstruction of the normalcy of compulsory heterosexuality is accomplished, not with revised etiquette pamphlets, but rather through dialectal engagement.

At its core, liberalism upholds two contradictory rights. The first is the right of private property, most importantly exclusive control over the means of profit making. This is the essence of liberalism: an ideology justifying class society based on property rights with an emphasis on markets. If a person does not believe in private property and capitalism, then he is not a liberal in an important sense.

The second right liberalism upholds is free speech and free thought. Opposition to free speech and free thought makes the supporter of private property and capitalism something other than a liberal. A fascist advocates capitalist arrangements, but does not preserve the right to free speech. Thus we say that fascism is illiberal, an authoritarian form of capitalism. On the other hand, free speech and other civil liberties can be present without a right to private property. 

Modern conservatives share with liberals the core principle of private property and the justness of capitalism as a social system. However, conservatives and liberals disagree on the importance of the rights of speech and expression, including religious liberty. Thus capitalism slides along a continuum of liberal to authoritarian. At the extreme conservative end is fascism. But authoritarian capitalism does not necessarily present as fascism. Neoliberalism is authoritarian capitalism with a liberal façade.

While liberals and democrats share a commitment to the rights of speech and expression, democrats do not share with liberals their commitment to private property and capitalism. Democrats (and I do not mean here the Democratic Party) recognize and seek to resolve the contradiction between free speech and private control over the means of communication. The economic system democrats seek is socialism; only by guaranteeing public access to the means of communication can everybody be assured venues in which opinions and information are maximally freely expressed and received by the population.

Democratic socialism is therefore the realization of the free speech ideals of liberalism. Liberalism cannot make fully substantive the free speech right because of its commitment to capitalism, an exploitative system resting on exclusive control over economic activity, thus restricting access to the means of communication. Liberalism will always be compromised by its commitment to property and the perpetuation of social class. This is why I reject liberalism in its totality as an adequate political and moral philosophy.

From the beginning, I have opposed Western military involvement in the Syrian conflict. I have argued against providing any material support to Islamist fighters in Syria. Liberals and conservatives alike who support the goal of toppling Assad do not grasp the threat Islamism poses to humanity. As we saw with al Qaeda, moral men do not use these people as a means of achieving ideological ends. They are not to be played with. The Islamists represent an existential threat to human freedom, and feeding this monster only makes the likelihood of their success greater. I also opposed military action in Iraq and all of the other countries the US has invaded, occupied, and bombed, as well as military and material support to insurgents in every situation. I am anti-imperialist. If you know me and read my work this should come as no surprise.

I have expressed support for refugees and argued that the nations of the world that can should take them and provide for them, especially those countries whose actions created the refugee crisis. The United States has taken refugees from Iraq, Syria, and many other places and I have supported this. I have also expressed the opinion that it is appropriate for countries to set limits on the number of persons coming across their borders, but if no evidence can be presented indicating that the person is a danger to others (criminal background, involvement in terrorism, carrier of a communicable and deadly disease), they should not be prevented from entering merely on the basis of point of origin. There are exceptions to many of these cases obviously. I am working from principle.

I remind people of these points because there should be no confusion concerning the intent of my argument about the legality of Donald Trump’s executive order. My observation that the administration devised the order to avoid the charge of religious discrimination is based on my interpretation of the text and analysis of the context and represents my thinking about how this order will fair in the courts. It is no way an expression of support for Trump or his order.

Some might be confused because I pushed back on the claim that it was a “Muslim ban.” I strive to make judgments independent of partisanship or ideology. Opposition to Donald Trump should not cause anyone to ignore or misrepresent facts. If distortion in pursuit of political goals is what makes the political right so contemptible, then the left needs to take special care to avoid distorted communication. We need to speak truthfully, and when I see people marching out with a particular (mis)characterization in tow, one that the other side can easily push back on, I thought something needed to be said.

Nothing I am saying here is meant to suggest that anybody be apolitical. I highly recommend you study the difference between neutrality and objectivity. They are not synonyms. What I argue for is objectivity. Reluctantly go beyond the facts you have. And when you have more facts, and your assumptions and interpretation appear wrong, be sure to correct them.

I followed the Quebec shooting in real. The initial sense was that it was a hate crime. I was unsure. When the first police reports came out claiming that the gun man suggesting the gun man was an Islamist, I finally posted about it and noted the troubling fact that victims of Islamic terrorism are often Muslims themselves. When later facts showed that it was a right-wing white nationalist, I made sure to correct the record. This is how one works in an objective fashion.