Check out this column by Camile Paglia who has been commentating for years, and is currently a contributor to Salon.com which leans somewhat left. She definitely is a lefty and has always been very open about that. The thing I've always liked about her is that she is very fair to the other side of the argument. She doesn't get into all of the personal mischaracterizations based on politics. She openly criticizes her own side and praises the opposition when she sees it that way. I guess you could say she is consistent in applying praise or criticism across the board -- at least way more than any other journalist or commentator I've read or listened to.
The article is too long to post here, but I hope you'll read it. She has some interesting views on Obama and McCain and you might be surprised on her take on Palin. You may find yourself agreeing with her on many points as I did. She does just what I've been lamenting a lack of in the coverage of Palin -- disagrees with her on certain policy issues while genuinely celebrating her feminism and likability as a person! Even though I disagree with much of what Paglia believes (some of which is not discussed in this particular article), there is some common ground between us and she seems like the type of person you could sit down to lunch with and have a great discussion that actually helps you to more fully understand another's perspective clearly without having one of those exhaustingly frustrating grudge matches where very little real communication takes place. Camille Paglia is a breath of fresh air.
Click on this link below. Enjoy.
Fresh Blood for the Vampire by Camille Paglia
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Objectivity from a Liberal?
Posted by Spencer at 2:14 PM
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5 comments:
Good article Spence, thanks for sharing.
Camille Paglia who described herself as an "atheist and libertarian", sounds like quite the interesting person from an idealogical perspective. On the wikipedia page I linked her name to above, it describes her as "a feminist and as a Democrat who campaigned for John F. Kennedy as an adolescent and later voted for Bill Clinton and Ralph Nader. She has broken with liberal orthodoxy by taking controversial stances such as rejecting the idea that homosexuality is an inborn trait and being skeptical about global warming. Her views on issues such as date rape, pornography, gay rights and educational reform have led to accusations of misogyny, homophobia and neoconservatism. Paglia's embrace of fetishism, pornography, prostitution and male homosexuality puts her at odds with American social conservatives. Her views on recreational drugs, prostitution and sexual consent laws tend to be libertarian. She has expressed her admiration for U.S. Presidential candidate John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin." Wow, that's quite the collection of ideologies.
Here is my take on her article now, while it's fresh on my mind.
1. From the bottom of page 2, "I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin's boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention..."
Just as it should be said that a black person should not vote for Obama simply based on their shared heritage, so should a woman not vote for Palin based on their shared gender. Paglia supports Palin's persona of strong American female, but is not awarding Palin her vote (at least for now), which is how it should be since their views are polar opposites. A vote should be given for the candidate who represents the social and economical views most in line with that of the voter, not for the person whose physical appearance is most stereotypically compatible to their's.
2. Second to bottom paragraph, page 3, "To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright."
Although I agree with her point, it is a poor comparison. She is comparing Palin's own words up on a church stage, to Jeremiah Wright's. Last time I checked, Wright wasn't in the Presidential race. Obama was merely a member of the congregation. I don't think any of you as my family members can say that in your recollection, you have always agreed with what has been said at the pulpit on Sunday in your church, can you? That's kind of a no-brainer.
3. Bottom paragraph, page 3, "Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil."
This is the problem with our two party system. Each not only demonizes the other, but it is a widely held assumption that most Americans are either with one party or the other. Another fallacy is assuming that a liberal is a Democrat and a conservative is Republican. And yet another is assuming that a non-religious person sides with the Democratic party and a religious person is obviously Republican. These are all false and misleading stereotypes that are far from the actual social environment.
This comment also reminds me of the ever popular battle of insults that rage between the religious and their converse. My favorite is, "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist." Of course, this is an obvious attempt to insult by associating an atheist with the very thing they disagree with. The simple fact is, the prefix "a" is of Greek origin and means "no, absence of, without, lack of, not". So the basic rules of English language refute this statement. Religious people like to think that an atheist claims a perfect knowledge of a godless universe. The name for this person is not "atheist", it's "idiot". The same applies to one who claims a perfect knowledge of the existence of deity.
Paglia kills two birds with one stone by combining these two social fallacies: All Democrats are non-religious and will be insulted if compared to organized religion themselves.
Believe it or not, there are non-religious conservative Republicans and devoutly religious Democrats. The political climate in America is so polarized and confused, it is reliant upon sheer falsehood and urban myth. It depends on citizens making broad and stereotypical assumptions on demographic models of American society which are in large part spread by irresponsible and corporate-sponsored media.
4. Third paragraph, page 4, "Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship."
Murder is defined as the killing of another "human being". Just as we've been saying all along during our discussion about abortion, it is all about defining when a "potential human being" becomes an actual "human being". If we define murder to mean killing "life", then you'd commit murder by swatting a fly. So she errs by calling abortion murder. She grossly errs to say that liberals "embrace" abortion. This is a product of the pro-life propaganda machine. A liberal (and probably not all liberals) embraces choice. That's it. To say otherwise is an effort to negatively stereotype an opposing viewpoint.
I personally cannot understand the mindset of someone who chooses abortion, but I don't have the right, legally or ethically, to force that person into my paradigm. Paglia then comes back to sanity with her last sentence.
Andy,
Sounds like you weren't too familiar with Paglia before you did that research. I've been reading her just a little here and there for several years now -- even though her worldview is much different than mine.
I'm glad you read the article. I thought you'd find it interesting. Like I said in my post, I probably disagree more than I agree with Paglia, but I found myself more in an analytical mode than in a debating/defensive mode when I read her article.
A couple of thoughts on some of the comments you made.
1. Although I know that there are some out there, I don't know really anyone who claims to have a PERFECT knowledge of deity or of no deity. Rather, what I think is probably very common is for one to claim to have seen or experienced enough evidence (that's subjective for everyone - either for or against deity) for one to either believe that there is enough partial knowledge, based on that, to draw conclusions that there is NO Supreme Being or that there IS a Supreme Being. This forms a basis for that worldview and helps that person believe one way or the other.
I also don't know anyone who claims to have a perfect knowledge that there is no God. I think that if we could accurately survey the world's population we would find that this "absolute" mindset, in either direction would be a very small percentage of humankind.
2. Like you , I have also seen both Republicans and Democrats who hang their hat on the party but much of their lifestyle or ideology is not part of the conventional party platform. Andrew Sullivan is a good example. He is a well known and respected openly homosexual conservative and a regular columnist/blogger. I'm not sure if he believes in God or not. Anyway, I'm acknowledging your observation.
3. You usually call me on it when I seem to be missing the trees for the forest in front of me, so when you make the comment equating the ending of human life with swatting a fly, I have to say something. In order to make your point, which believe it or not, I can understand, you're making a silly comparison which you don't need to use to make your point.
You don't have to have a religious ideology to acknowledge that human life is somehow superior (that may not be the best word but I think you know what I mean) to other life forms. Otherwise why aren't insects buidling skyscrapers and becoming engineers or fixing the economy or performing heart surgery? Yes, that is just as silly.
4. "Change" is an interesting word. Like most words it can have many meanings as we've seen in this campagin.
The word "choice" is another word that is often used only in one context -- the choice of a woman has to continue or not with a pregnancy. You say that even though you don't agree with that mindset, that you don't have the right to force that paradigm on someone else. Generally I agree that it's a good thing to not force people to do what you want them to do. We agree on that. However, the very fact that we have laws in this country, and short of having outright anarchy, we restrict people's rights everyday -- and in ways that I think both conservatives and liberals would agree are not a big deal -- even very necessary.
First of all, the word choice can credibly be applied to almost everything in the political arena, not just the pregnancy/abortion issue. Just because conservatives are at odds with liberals when it comes to the right to have an abortion, it doesn't mean that conservatives aren't champions of preserving the right for people to make their own choices. In many ways conservatives are MORE pro-choice than liberals when you look at the wider array of political and economic issues.
Lastly, let's consider this situation: what about someone who has a paradigm that it's ok to take something from a store without paying for it because they don't have money to pay for it and God (or whoever) want's everyone to have what they need? They are being forced to live by our worldview -- that taking something without paying for it is wrong or at least we've decided in our society that we are not willing to live with that. So we've legislated accordingly and restricted the right of EVERYONE to steal. The same with killing another already-living humnan being. And there are many other examples. So, we have already restricted the rights of many people for the supposed greater good as defined by the majority.
Obviously this can be taken to extremes which is not good and which I don't think anyone wants... but that's just it.... everyone defines what is "extreme" differently. Anyway, I think this is an important distinction to make.
Now lastly (I know I already said that) ---
I agree that Paglia made sense on her last statement, "But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide."
The only thing I would change about that statement is to take out the word 'Democrats' in the first sentence. I would replace it with the word 'Americans'. I know she was trying to apply this concept to the party of the candidate she wants to win, but really everyone should live by that principle.
Yeah, I'd never heard of her before. I was commenting on her article though, not your opinions. Your comment sounded as if you felt like I was analyzing your article, not hers.
But anyway, obviously the fly scenario is ridiculous. But let's stay consistent with the definitions of the terms we use in our discussions.
If "murder" is "the killing of another human being", then in order to call abortion murder, then you are required to define human life as beginning at conception. Since this is an unprovable assertion, largely based in superstition, it has no leg to stand on in a free, unbiased society.
I'll again quote from an opinion from Roe v Wade:
"When weighing the competing interests that the Court had identified, Blackmun also asserted that if the fetus was defined as a person for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment then the fetus would have a specific right to life under that Amendment. The Court majority determined that the original intent of the Constitution (up to the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868) did not include the unborn. However, the Court did not specifically determine the question of whether or not a fetus is a person, noting that the matter remains undecided.
The Court's determination of whether a fetus can enjoy constitutional protection was separate from the notion of when life begins: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." The Court only believed itself positioned to resolve the question of when a right to abortion ends."
You are guilty of telling me not to give sarcastic or exaggerated examples to make my points, and then you do the same thing.
You use an example of thievery to represent an argument why people cannot be completely free to choose. Talk about apples to oranges! My whole point in this is like Paglia said, it is about a woman deciding what she can or cannot do with her own body.
Every example you and Nate throw at me in this regard does not equate the same. You talk about anarchy. I'm talking about a citizen choosing what do to with their own body. It doesn't get more personal than that. You can't compare that to being given the freedom to destroy the personal property of others. Like Nate pointed out, " I do not support government intrusion into privacy matters unless it prohibits the rights of others." That's fine, neither do I. Again, it comes back to defining when a human becomes a human and is afforded those rights.
And I do agree with her final statement in her article (and with your clarifying amendment to it), but I was actually talking about the last sentence in the quote of hers I pointed out in reference to the abortion issue:
"The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship."
(Change of subject)
If you are going to stick with the perception that most religious people don't believe in the authenticity of their own religion, you will need to change the way you communicate.
A rationalist such as myself (and I can only speak for myself) says "I think the probability of there being no supreme, omnipotent deity living out in space is pretty strong based on what we have learned about our universe up to this point."
But I personally used to say as a religious person, "I know my church is true. I know God lives. I know God speaks to a prophet on earth. I know God loves us." And the list of "I knows" goes on and on.
Maybe you don't say those things, but when I did, I meant it. I "knew". I didn't play with semantics. I didn't assert to "know" in the sense of probabilities. But that was just me. Perhaps all other religious people on earth perceive the word "know" differently than I. I realize I said "perfect knowledge" in my last comment, so I guess I was being sarcastic.
Perhaps it would be a better sell if people said, "I believe my church is true", or "I believe that God lives", etc. Words that imply "knowledge", which in turn also implies "fact", should be left out of religious conversation.
Freak, maybe if I had the time to read the novels you two write, I'd be qualified to add my two cents as well. In fact, I don't even have to time to write this useless comment...
Chris, you have to make the time. (Stated sarcastically with a wry smile on my face)
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