I've been sitting back and reading, and occasionally participating in, some of the innumerable threads and debates that have been generated over the course of the last few days with repect to the Pope and his legacy. This afternoon I decided it was time to offer a sort of meta-analysis and intervention of my own on the subject of the practical, political significance and implications of all this cacophanous caterwauling for the cause of progressivism.
Basically, what's happening here is absolute idiocy. Here we go again. Conservatives in the US are going to successfuly misappropriate the legacy (good and bad) of this Pope and point to sites like this one in order to demonstrate, rightly in this case, how much more tolerant and open-minded the Republican party is while lambasting the hypocrisy and hate-mongering of so-called liberals and progressives.
If we want to keep being potrayed as the movement that claims to represent tolerance and open-mindedness and then turns around and torches...literally commits acts of moral nuclear annihilation against those who don't share,
in every single detail, our weltanshauung, then let's keep on following the current path toward self-effacement. Just don't forget that some of us warned you: hatred and venom-spewing do not make for successful politics
or policy, especially when it comes from liberals and progressives who preach tolerance and forgiveness. It smacks of the most profound and putrid hypocrisy. But go ahead and commit suicide. I'll be sitting over here in Italy watching you lose election after election after election. And, then, when you eventually do win one,you won't be able to govern because you've spent such an extraordinary amount of time and energy tearing down, ripping apart and shredding to pieces, not just your ideological adversies ideas and construction, but even your potential allies and eventaully your very own houses and contructions that you''ve had no time to start imagining let along buiding anything to offer the American people as a meaningful positive alternative to what they already have.
Some of you might try to read into what I'm saying here a condemnation of your right to self-expression and criticism. On the contrary, I'm very grateful to those who have expressed themselves so veehemetly
and ferociously on this issue of the Pope'e alleged evil legacy. For as J.S. Mill put it, "the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation" of the opportunity of debunking a falsehood and thereby coming to learn the truth by way of its collison with such a falsehood. But the danger I want to point to is the confusion that apparently exists in some minds between differences of opinion and ideology and just plain ordinary hatred and hositility to those who adhere to opinions and ideas with which we disagree. Disagreement, especially in the realm of politics---which is so far from being a hard science and so vulnerable to the contingenies and vicissitudes of the changing external world that one might well wonder if the concept truth has any application to this realm of discourse whatsoever---, is an inevitable and ultimately desirable state of affairs. For it is only through the clash of different, sometimes radically different, ideas based upon enormously different experiences and interests that we can arrive at anything even remotely resembling a comprehensively representative democratic polity. Those who would castigate and
and demonize the people who happen not to share all of their ideas are therefore 1) undermining the fundamnetal principles of a fair, honest and rationally rewarding clash of ideas that underpin democracy and 2) acting againts their own self-interest, for instead of offering persuasive arguments and evidence to support their own, perhaps worthy, ideas and countering altrenative ideas with ideas, they make themselves look like dangerous and destructive fools who wish to dominate others by engaging in personal invective and bombastic rhetoric which diminishes their own and others discourse by reducing the general level of democratic discourse.
So how should the left deal with a Pope who shared some of their ideas while obstinately contradicting others. They should point out constantly the substantial differences that existed bewteeen this Pope and the neo-conservative movement which is trying desperately to postumously appropriate him to their side.
As Justin Raimondo writes:
In this Pope, however, the War Party faced a formidable foe. While they could always ridicule, smear, and otherwise demonize their more secular enemies, such a strategy would be far more problematic with a man like John Paul. In a somewhat lame attempt at humor, Globalvision's Ian William pretended to complain:
"Isn't it time to put up the shutters on the Vatican windows and recognize that this oldest part of old Europe is no longer with the program? It was enemy territory in World War II and now it still is firmly in the camp of Germany and France. It is no surprise that the Pope opposes bold American leadership in the war on Terror and Iraq: he is living in jealous memories of the days when the Church was major power and when Rome was more important than Washington."
I have news for those who actually believe this: Rome is still more important than Washington. If history is any guide, the papacy will endure long after American power is but a bittersweet memory to the world's peoples. The satire continues:
"So why do we read the columns of vitriol printed about Germany and France, and nothing about John Paul and his undemocratic little autocracy tainted with anti-Semitism and anti-Militarism? Where is the New York Post dispatch from St Peter's Square? Why doesn't a Post reporter stand where Galileo was arraigned and say "It still sucks! Vivat wimpi!" Where are the cartoons showing white mushroom clouds coming from the Vatican chimney to symbolize the need for a new, young, vigorous and compliant Bishop of Rome?"
And there's much, much more where that came from:
"Apparently, John Paul II is on a personal crusade to destroy the Roman Catholic Church in America. He's still allowing cardinals like Roger Mahoney in Los Angeles to stonewall priest sex abuse allegations. Then the Pontiff has the chutzpah to call the Iraq war 'immoral.' A miracle is needed. "
This theme of pedophilia as somehow entwined with Roman Catholic opposition to the war permeated the War Party's propaganda: the idea was to get the phrase "sex abuse" in the same sentence as "John Paul II" whenever they dared to attack the Church's position on the war. A similar theme suffused the remarks of warblogger Glenn Reynolds, whose Instapundit site was heavily promoted by right-wing outlets like the Wall Street Journal and National Review. Complaining about the Vatican's condemnation of the revenge killing of Hamas leader Abdelaziz Rantissi, and the unwillingness of the Church to countenance Israeli military incursions around the Church of the Nativity, Reynolds wrote:
"Rod Dreher notes over at The Corner that the Vatican just issued a statement condemning Israel for 'revenge attacks,' which Dreher points out is an odd term for self-defense. You know, I've been reluctant to draw larger lessons from the whole priest-sex-scandal things, but it seems to me that the Vatican is having severe problems in the moral judgment department. Covering up for pedophiles, blasting people for self-defense - this is moral leadership?"
And this from the Weekly Standard:
"The Bush Administration should consider placing the Vatican on the list of rogue states that support terrorism. Such a modest proposal might arouse Rome from the esoteric philosophizing, latent anti-Americanism and attitude of appeasement that characterizes the Holy See's response to jihadism and Islam."
"What of the wailing prophets? Susan Thistlethwaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary, warned that if America attacked Iraq, 'then it is Americans who have become the barbarians.' Catholic Bishop John Michael Botean called the war an 'objectively grave evil.' Any killing associated with the conflict, he intoned, is 'unequivocally murder.' Even Pope John Paul II, no pacifist, declared it 'a defeat for humanity.' Compare all this with the cries of joy from Iraqis after Saddam's 40-foot statue was toppled in Baghdad: 'We are still scared but we are happy,' said Maysoun Raheem. 'Thank God this has happened and the Americans have come.' For them, this was indeed a war of liberation. 'I am 50 years old,' said Kareem Mohammad Kareem, 'but my life just started today.'
"The victims of tyranny always seem to understand the implacable nature of its evil better than anyone - better than those who safely hurl jeremiads at the world's injustices as their bread and butter. The clerics were wrong about this war, wrong about the despicable regime it toppled, wrong about nearly everything. And yet they remain unrepentant: 'Prophetic voices are always way out ahead of the congregation,' boasted the NCC's Bob Edgar. 'None of the Old Testament prophets had a majority.'
For the Weekly Standard to lecture this Pope about the special moral authority of "victims of tyranny" has got to be the most brazen act of intellectual hooliganism since editor Bill Kristol was last hit in the face with a cream pie. After all, we are talking about a man, Karol Wojtyla, who lived under the Nazis and the Commies, hounded, persecuted, and enslaved by both. What were the editors of the Standard thinking? A more inapplicable critique of this Pope could hardly be imagined.
On the other hand, it's also important to point out the commonalities that this Pope shared with US progressives, as in this post by Juan Cole:
That is, the Pope's message sometimes had a strong progressive content, and he was in some important ways on our side. That progressives might have had differences with him on some issues should not forestall our celebrating his progressive legacy. The American Right appropriates shamelessly anyone who even halfway agrees with them. We on the left must learn to make sectional alliances and commemorate those areas of agreement we have with people like John Paul II.
Then there is his position on the death penalty, from a 1995 encyclical. He did not shrink from openly intervening in Irish, Filipino and other national politics to push for an abolition of the death penalty.
In sum, either we can stop demonizing the late Pope and start assimilating this man's positive messaage which in mny areas coincides with our own aganda or we can sit back and see the right continue to portray the Pope as one of their own and given then an enromous boost in doing so, while
we lock ourselves out of the discussion altogether.