The Case Against Pacifism

If we believe that if Britain had only been fortunate enough to have produced 30% instead of 2% of conscientious objectors to military service, Hitler's heart would have been softened and he would not have dared attack Poland, we hold a faith which no historic reality justifies

Yet most modern forms of Christian pacifism are heretical. Presumably inspired by the Christian Gospel, they have really absorbed the Renaissance faith in the goodness of man, rejected the Christian doctrine of Original Sin as an outmoded bit of pessimism, have reïnterpreted the Cross so that it is made to stand for the absurd idea that perfect love is guaranteed a simple victory over the world, and have rejected all other profound elements of the Christian Gospel …
This form of pacifism is not only heretical when judged by the standards of the total Gospel. It is equally heretical when judged by the facts of human existence. There are no historical realities which remotely conform to it. It is important to recognize this lack of conformity to the facts of experience as a criterion of heresy.

— Reinhold Niebuhr

Down with Bourgeois Atheists!

I've been reading "I Don't Believe in Atheists" by Chris Hedges and it is really good!

Those who believe in collective moral progress define this progress by their own narrow historical, cultural, linguistic and social experience. They see "the other" as equal only when the other is identical to themselves. They project their own values on the rest of the human race. These secular and religious fundamentalists are egocentrics unable to accept human difference. Those who are different do not need to be investigated, understood or tolerated, for they are intellectually and morally inferior. Those who are different are imperfect versions of themselves.

These secular utopians, like Christian fundamentalists, are stunted products of a self-satisfied, materialistic middle class. They seek in their philosophical systems a moral justification for their own comfort, self-absorption and power. They do not question the imperial projects of the nation, globalization or the vast disparities in wealth and security between themselves, as members of the world's industrialized elite, and the rest of the human race. Philosophy, like theology, is often in the service of power. This creed is no exception.

True in Politix and Relegion

"The fundamentalist mind … looks upon the world as an arena for conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, and accordingly it scorns compromises (who would compromise with Satan?) and can tolerate no ambiguities. It cannot find serious importance in what it believes to be trifling degrees of difference: liberals support measures that are for all practical purposes socialistic, and socialism is nothing more than a variation of Communism, which everyone knows is atheism."

— Richard Hofstadter
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Sounds About Right ...

From Indexed

Socialistes Pour la Vie!

French Socialists march for Life!

Slogans include:

• Right to housing, right to work, right to life!
  
• Capitalism is death, revolution is life!
• Our lives are worth more than their profits!
  

Check out their blog if you speak French!

Pro-Life Message?

Or an expression of grief?



This was posted on the Ugliest Tattoos Website without any explanation of who it is, where it is from, or what its intention was, but I find the imagery both touching and disturbing at the same time.

What Color is Heaven?

At the Battle of Lepanto (1571), the navies of the Holy League (consisting of the Papal States, the Habsburg possessions of Spain, Naples and Sicily, the Republics of Venice and Genoa, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchies of Savoy, Parma and Urbino and the Knights of Malta) faced off against the fleet of the Ottoman Turk. Both sides were backed by their religious leaders, Pope St. Pius V being the sponsor of the Holy League, and both the religious and political authority of the Ottoman Empire resting in the hands of Selim who was both Caliph and Sultan. And so the flag-ships of both armadas flew religious banners, both of which were understood to be the "color of Heaven."

The banner supplied by the Pope consisted of a golden crucifix upon a field of blue, and that makes sense because to a European, the clear blue of the sky would be the "color of Heaven."

The banner supplied by the Caliph consisted of the names of God stitched in golden embroidery upon a field of green, and that too makes sense because to Muhammad, a son of the desert, the verdant green of vegetation would be the "color of Heaven."

This is an important and telling cultural difference. We might further extrapolate that the "cultural characters" of Europe and the Muslim world now reflect these colors, the affluent West being blue with melancholy (or perhaps more accurately "acedia") while the stagnant East is green with envy and resentment.

Of course, these are generalizations, for every person has their own "color of Heaven." My Heaven is gray: the color of Chicago skies, the color of practicality, the color of contentment.