Sorry, can I get a bit more on this? Not sure what you mean, is all…
It means you’re oversimplifying to the point where your analysis ceases to be useful. If “everything” - even humanitarianism - can be reduced to self-interest, then what what does self-interest even mean anymore?
That’s a horrible misreading of what I wrote. You seem to think my meaning was: “progressive Protestant Churches of the past are the same as the Christian Right today”, which is almost the exact opposite of my meaning. Did you miss the words “even if…”?
Again, EVEN IF certain churches espoused liberalism in the past, THAT DOESN’T MEAN that the Christian Right espouses liberalism TODAY.
Of course there are and have been churches that embrace liberal ideas, but that doesn’t mean liberalism had its genesis in the church. I’m sure you could find a church that espouses just about any idea you care to think of - doesn’t mean they created the idea.
Then wouldn’t your reponse to my saying:
Be “yes” rather than “no”?
I disagree. Being religious does not make people more likely to have an interest in human rights. (If anything, it’s an inverse relationship). I’m not saying religious people don’t have an interest in human rights; I’m saying that religion isn’t the reason that people are interested in human rights. Lots of religious people have brown hair, but being religious isn’t the reason they have brown hair.
Didn’t mean to overstate your case. You said the Christian Right’s influence dovetailed with the left’s influence. Well the left definitely spearheaded a campaign to investigate Abu Ghraib, so I took your “dovetailing” comment to mean that the Christian Right did the same. I guess I’m using a different definition of dovetailing.
Heavens no - I never said they don’t find it heinous. But they certainly aren’t as proactive as the left in taking a stand on such things. For example, look at the date of your article and then look up the date that left-wing bloggers first started decrying such activities. There’s really no comparison.
You seem to be backpedalling somewhat. Your original statement that I disagreed with was:
Wouldn’t this simplify to : “Abu Ghraib was shut down because we have a religious population who doesn’t tolerate immorality”? If that wasn’t your meaning, then please tell me what you did mean.
It was no as in “no that wasn’t what I was saying.” But you’re right, the Christian Right does not espouse liberalism. I never said they did, so I don’t see why you’re trying to get me to recant a point I never made.
If you want to try and peg my argument as “morality is a product of religion” have at it, but we’re all just going to end up confused. Because I’m an atheist… so chances are really strong that wasn’t what I was saying. I’m just making a commonplace observation about U.S. politics. Which is that historically American churches have been a potent political organizing force focused on “values issues” (both left and right values). And therefore they present a tremendous obstacle to the practice of pure realpolitik.
BTW I don’t think you’d have quite as dim a view of the relationship between religion and liberal values if you were more aware of how important the churches were through much of the twentieth century in promoting progressive social causes. People like Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King are products of that old school liberal Protestant tradition.
Well if you define “dovetail” as indicating a moral equality between two sides, then you’d be right. Unfortunately few English speakers define it that way.
Sure every time you overstate my case I have to backpedal from what you said. What* I *said was: “*If nothing else *…” To put it back in context, I was arguing with what I suspected was Martin Hyde’s stereotypic view that morality is just being promoted by a bunch of naifs and crunchy tree-hugging liberals who really don’t have much influence on the world and don’t understand how it works. I was trying to point out…to be really blunt about it … forget the liberals… there’s no way that you can practice ruthless realpolitik just given the existence of our fundies alone. They’re not going to put up with it any more than the hippies.
Look, here’s all I’m saying. You want to practice a politics of naked self-interest in the U.S.? Good luck, because on one side you’ve got the tree-hugging hippies, on the other side you’ve got the people who think we’re the shining city on the hill. It’s not going to happen. And if you do try you’re going to have to spend all your time lying about what you’re doing. Which is exactly the situation Bush finds himself right now.
OK, then let me try again - I consider myself a nice guy. I try to do nice things for people less fortunate than me. I give money and my time to charity, I gave money to tsunami relief, I served in the military, and I pay my taxes like a good little boy. But if it comes down to me eating, or them eating, I’ll pick me.
Now apply the same thing to a global scale - we look to our own national interests first, and if helping another state helps us achieve our national interest, then we do it. If not, we won’t. It gets complex then, because sometimes we have to spend something (lives, money, treasure, whatever) to get something (security, feeling good about ourselves by stopping genocide, etc…) and you have to balance what we want versus what it costs. But I don’t delude myself that we’re some noble creature of a country that would sacrifice itself for the benefit of another nation. It just wouldn’t happen.
Simplified? Sure. Still true though. And that’s why self-interest is king in the world of international relations.
This looks like an argument about ‘Psychological Egotism’, elevated to a national scale - since the argument is circular, it is interesting to know it, but it then becomes boring.
I noticed a few references to Darfour, we need to be really careful there, it looks to me as if the ‘good guys’ are actually the ‘bad guys’ and the situation is further complicated because the Sudan government wrongly believes that the West is irrationally biased towards ‘Christians’.
Why do you crumpet eaters have to be so defensive? I’m not elevating the U.S. over other countries. I’m using the U.S. as a familiar example case. If you’d like me to talk about why realpolitik doesn’t neatly explain away British foreign policy I’d be happy to do so. Except I don’t pay any attention to your internal politics so I’d probably end up attributing it to your national obsession with the legend of King Arthur, the suave sophistication of your spies, or your collective experience with elves and leprechauns.
And I’m not saying that the U.S. behaves morally in absolute terms. In Darfur or anywhere else. Read a little Chomsky and you’ll get over that. Nor am I arguing that what passes for human rights policy in the U.S. is actually right for humans. Half the time it’s bass ackwards insane religious crap like…no we won’t support anything but abstinence education, or we’re going to support Israel no matter what and totally hamstrng our mideast policy because of our peculiar interpretation of Revelations. Nevertheless whatever you want to call it, it’s not a policy of ruthless self-interest.
Surely you can come up with a better insult for the Brits than crumpet eaters? They’ll just come back with ‘Two World Wars and One World Cup, do-dah, do-dah…’ and then we’ll be off to the races :dubious:
You’re defining anything short of self-destruction or suicidal charity as self interest. That’s marginally more meaningful than “everything is self-interest.” But not much. It’s a ridiculously high bar. No, no country is going to immolate itself on the public square to protest the killings in Darfur. But that doesn’t mean that everything a country does is in its own self interest.
I know all about the turn-of-the-century Progressive movement, in fact, my favorite American President is sometimes argued to have been the first Progressive President, Theodore Roosevelt.
Religious groups were definitely huge in the Progressive movement, but my confusion I guess came from associating the progressive movement with liberals. Theodore Roosevelt was an outspoken conservative but look at all the progressive ideas he implemented. He was a trust-buster, conservationist, and a strong advocate of Food & Drug Regulations. Before Roosevelt food producers could mislabel food or use dyes and etc. to hide material defect, they could sell drugs without even labeling what they were.
So while I’m well aware of the strong religious support for the Progressive movement, I’m not aware of how the Progressive movement is really linked to liberalism, there were prominent progressives on both sides of the aisle.
I’m not telling them anything they don’t already know about themselves.
You are mischaracterizing what I am saying and overblowing it yourself. My premise is that self-interest governs all other behavior, in states or in individuals. If there is no self interest, there is no action.
You’re interchanging the factors that make up national self-interest (i.e. humanitarian interests, oil, security, whatever the public wants of it’s leaders) with the fact that those factors in and of themselves do not make for true self-interest. Humanitarian reasons alone are not enough for the populace to wish war on another country; the population needs a better reason or the only justification for the war in Iraq would have been ‘Saddam’s a bad guy and treats his population horrifically’. It wasn’t enough justification, even for hawks and neocons, so additional justifications were required and those factors together (humanitarian intervention, protecting the US, securing Oil) all together became our course of action because together they made up enough valid self-interest for the US to get involved without a popular uprising by the people.
Make sense now?
I simply asked you to say “yes” when you agree with my statement rather than “no”. I didn’t think it was that big a deal.
Depends how you define “progressive social causes”, I guess. I don’t consider opposing the right to abortion as being “progressive”, nor championing school prayer and use of public land for Christian religious displays. Those are the kinds of issues the Christian Right seems most interested in. Christian churches are NOT the first to speak out against racism and human rights abuses. I’m sure they do speak about it, but they aren’t exactly on the front lines in the battle.
Some people are liberal, and some people go to church. Correllation does not equal causation. The liberal movement of the 1970s was anything but a church-sponsored affair.
Hmmm…have I been sarcastic in my responses to you? Is there some reason you feel the need to be condescending like that?
I don’t believe I defined “dovetail” as “morally equivalent”. I believe I characterized your statement as “The Christian Right’s influence dovetailed with the left’s influence”, and made an assumption that by that, you meant that the two entities had equal influence. Apparently that wasn’t what you meant. Apparently you in fact meant that the left had much much more influence. So again, I’m sorry I misinterpreted what you said, but I don’t think it was unreasonable of me to do so.
I really don’t know what point you’re trying to make, and how adjectives like “fluffy” and “crunchy” help clarify that point. If you’re arguing against the notion that the progressive movement is populated entirely by hopelessly naive and ignorant people, I don’t think that’s the right tack to take. It’s already evident to me that such isn’t the case. All I can say is that if the left vanished tomorrow, and we had to rely on Christian fundamentalists to support progressive ideals and oppose the abuses of the Bush Administration, we’d be in trouble.
I guess I’m having trouble following you.
uglybeech said this:
To which you replied:
To which I replied:
I guess my issue is with the specific passage you were replying to and how you replied to it. I’m not sure how to read you response as anything other than equating “progressive Protestant Churches” of 100-150 years ago with the “Christian Right.”
They aren’t the same. The religious right is by and large Baptists, some Pentecostals, some branches of Methodism. Not all of Protestantism falls under the umbrella of the Christian Right, many branches of Methodism certainly do not, Quakers certainly do not, Lutherans certainly do not, Episcopalians certainly do not, and the list goes on.
Like I said, the reason for my post was simply that, uglybeech said something about progressive Protestant churches and you said, “interesting, but the Christian right isn’t like that today.” It’s my contention they weren’t like that back then, there’s a Christian right, middle, and center, and the progressive Churches by and large weren’t part of the Christian right in the 19th century anymore than the left-leaning Christian Churches are part of the right today.
From what I gathered from that it was like you saying to me, “the French were advocates of the death penalty in the 1790s” and me responding, “Yeah, the Chinese still advocate it today.”
This makes absolutely no sense. There is absolutely nothing in what I wrote that could possibly lead anyone to believe I was equating those two things. In fact, my point was specifically that they aren’t equivalent. I can’t imagine how you could read it that way. It’s like if I said “The sky is blue” and you said, “I’m not sure how to read your response as anything other than ‘the sky is red’”.
Perhaps you should read the whole exchange rather than starting in the middle. That may be the source of your confusion, although I still don’t see how you could misread what I wrote the way you did even then.
Yes, and?
No, it’s nothing like that at all.
If you want to use that strained analogy, it would be more like:
You: “The Chinese are responsible for the death penalty today”
Me: “Actually, more French people are in favor of the death penalty than Chinese people”
You: “Well, in the 1790’s, more Chinese people favored the death penalty”
Me: “Even if that were true then, it’s not true today”
You: “Why are you equating French people with Chinese people?”
Yes!!! It’s because you insist on starting arguments not against what I’m saying, but with phantom republican partisans in your head. I’m an atheist! I’m a liberal! And even in this last post you insist on starting four arguments that aren’t what I was saying at all.
- That religion causes people to be moral
- That the Christian Right champions progressive causes
- That the right was just as active as the left in abu ghraib
- That the left is naive.
You can argue against those statements all you want but you’ll be arguing with yourself because nobody’s on the other side.
If I hadn’t clarified to death what I meant I could see how you could misconstrue things here and there, but at this point, it’s like I’m talking to somebody who doesn’t know how to do anything but toss bombs at conservatives – even if they happen to be liberals – and is confused by nuanced arguments that don’t fit into his usual boxes of us vs. them.
Sheesh, calm the hell down, dude. If you want to accuse me of making strawman arguments, then please make an exact quote and explain what inference I made that was unreasonable. Or are insults all you do?
Look, I know you’re not a bad guy, and I know misinterpretation is one of the hazards of online communication. But I already did this on multiple occasions throughout this thread, and it just keeps on keeping on. Now I know I’m making some subtle points, and my writing isn’t always up to the task. But **Martin Hyde ** and I are on completely opposite sides, but at least I feel he’s grasping my arguments for what they are (or asks if I’m unclear). Even though he thinks I’m totally wrong. In your case I find myself in an endless loop of misunderstanding, clarification, misunderstanding, etc – which goes nowhere. And I’m not attributing this to stupidity or laziness or bad faith. I’m attributing it to your having preconceived ideas that you’re trying to fit my arguments into rather than really reading what I’m writing.
lowbrass,
Trust me if you’d like when I say I am not taking sides here. And if you do, you’ll find that uglybeech’s* points are really not that different from yours…if only you’d stop putting words in her mouth.
From my POV, I think that she’s been quite clear in conveying her opinions in so far as this media allows.
*Why do I feel like I’m insulting you every time I type your moniker? I realize the answer is rather self-explanatory due to the moniker itself, just don’t get why you’d want that bright as you are. No doubt the joke is on us but I just don’t get it.
Obviously, you need not answer as I’m prying into matters that are really none of my business. Curiosity killed the cat and I’m rather fond of dogs instead. 