[Industrialblog,
February 28, 2007]
Excommunicated
Dean's World has pronounced a writ of excommunication.
In this post, Dean Esmay compares Dean's World to National Review and Dean Esmay to Bill Buckley's throwing the anti-semites and McCarthyites out of the conservative movement in the 50s. Then Dean demands all commenters and posters affirm the following precepts or be labelled beyond the pale of respectability, to be cast into the outer darkness beyond Dean's World and beyond decent discourse, where there is no doubt wailing and gnashing of teeth:
This raises three questions:
1. Are any/all of the above statements true?
2. Are any/all of the above statements so self-evidently true that all reasonable people will hold them?
3. Is questioning or holding differing opinions on any of the above statements analogous to being an anti-semite or McCarthyite?
I think the answer to first question is arguable, and the answer's self-evidently "no" to the latter two questions.
I used to comment a lot on Dean's World, back in the day. Then Dean's take on several issues got me wondering about the guy. I was far from alone on this one. Still, I liked Dean Esmay and used to drop by and put in a humorous comment from time to time. Of course, Dean's World is Dean's blog, and he can do what he wants. No problem. But I'm not one for swearing doctrinal oaths unless you have a pointy hat and an office in Rome, and were elected by a group of folks in red hats.
I hereby surrender my password and comment account, my keys to the Dean's World Secret Treehouse and Go-Go Club, my membership card (good for discounts at your favorite stores) in the Dean's World "100 Comment" Club, and my Dean's World decoder ring. I promise not to show anyone the secret handshake.
BTW, Dean's wife has welcomed those banned from Dean's World. Cool.
UPDATE: Paul Burgess has a funny take here.
In this post, Dean Esmay compares Dean's World to National Review and Dean Esmay to Bill Buckley's throwing the anti-semites and McCarthyites out of the conservative movement in the 50s. Then Dean demands all commenters and posters affirm the following precepts or be labelled beyond the pale of respectability, to be cast into the outer darkness beyond Dean's World and beyond decent discourse, where there is no doubt wailing and gnashing of teeth:
1) Islam does not represent the forces of Satan or the Anti-Christ bent on destruction of the Christian world.
2) There is no 1,400 year old "war with the West/Christianity" being waged by Muslims or anyone else.
3) Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women's rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.
4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like "dhimmitude" or "taqiyya" are suitable for polite intellectual discussion. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends.
5) Muslims have no more need to prove that they can be good Americans, loyal citizens, decent people, or enemies of terrorism than anyone else does.
This raises three questions:
1. Are any/all of the above statements true?
2. Are any/all of the above statements so self-evidently true that all reasonable people will hold them?
3. Is questioning or holding differing opinions on any of the above statements analogous to being an anti-semite or McCarthyite?
I think the answer to first question is arguable, and the answer's self-evidently "no" to the latter two questions.
I used to comment a lot on Dean's World, back in the day. Then Dean's take on several issues got me wondering about the guy. I was far from alone on this one. Still, I liked Dean Esmay and used to drop by and put in a humorous comment from time to time. Of course, Dean's World is Dean's blog, and he can do what he wants. No problem. But I'm not one for swearing doctrinal oaths unless you have a pointy hat and an office in Rome, and were elected by a group of folks in red hats.
I hereby surrender my password and comment account, my keys to the Dean's World Secret Treehouse and Go-Go Club, my membership card (good for discounts at your favorite stores) in the Dean's World "100 Comment" Club, and my Dean's World decoder ring. I promise not to show anyone the secret handshake.
BTW, Dean's wife has welcomed those banned from Dean's World. Cool.
UPDATE: Paul Burgess has a funny take here.
Cheers, Ron.
The problem with all of them, though, is that there's no such thing as Islam. There are only a lot of Islams. Islam is kind of in the state of protestant christianity, without ever having had a unified church beforehand. You can make some arguments about the lifetime of mohamed and the short time after his death in which there was a clear lineage, but they never really formed an organization which lasted. So the state that we have it is that no one can really claim to be any more authoritative than anyone else; there's nothing which coheres which we can actually give a name to.
Islam not being a meaningful term, it's pretty impossible for anyone to give their assent to statements which involve it.
One of the big problems in trying to do what you describe is that most people, if left to themselves, always conflate their culture with their religion. The catholic church combats this; very few other religions have any body which combats the human impulse to mistake culture for religion. (christian fundamentalism as we have it here in America is a protestant phenomenon because it's almost entirely a cultural phenomenon garbed in the clothes of religion; protestants have nothing to guard them from this sort of mistake.)
How do you make a statement like "Rosemary appears to be a better person than Dean" without worrying that you're engaging in judging? I've generally sided with C.S. Lewis in figuring that the commandment not to judge more or less means that we're not required to form an opinion of the hierarchy of the world as far as other people go (and humility means that we're not required to place ourselves in it either).
I'm very interested in your thoughts on this, if you have the time to spare them. I may simply, of course, be misunderstanding what you mean by "better".
"Oh dear" is right. ;-)
I used to comment a lot on Dean's World, back in the day. Then Dean's take on several issues got me wondering about the guy. I was far from alone on this one. Still, I liked Dean Esmay and used to drop by and put in a humorous comment from time to time.
Welcome to the club.
Though in my case it wasn't Dean's take on several issues, much as I might disagree with him there. Rather it was a burgeoning mix of two factors:
(1) I wearied of aiding and abetting an extreme rationalism and an extreme emotionalism which somehow coexisted, incommunicado to each other, within the same "split brain." ("You mean the two hemispheres of my brain are... competing?" "Yes.")
(2) I came to see that the DW "universe of discourse" is so constructed that, in religious discussions, there is really room for only two broad categories of commenters: (a) nonbelievers and (b) fundamentalists. Anyone who falls in neither of these two categories will have a hard time even gaining a seat at the table in DW religious discussions. I grew tired of being (as a Mainline Protestant traditionalist) the "invisible man" in these discussions, at best largely ignored and at worst treated as if people with beliefs like mine don't really exist.
Dean is well aware of my nonrationalism and non-splitbrainism, and also of my long-standing frustration with being "the man on the stair who wasn't really there." I dunno, I like Dean. A lot. I think he's a good fellow at heart. But I've just had to distance myself somewhat from that scene.
And you know, Bill Buckley's excommunication of the John Birch Society— which was precisely the right move for the good of conservatism— worked because Buckley himself remained the genteel and urbane man that he is, and he didn't lose his cool. It would have been a Pyrrhic victory had Buckley triumphed over the Birchers only at the cost of become as spittle-flecked as they.