All Nighter

2:57 a.m.-Having weighed my options...the only one i find credible is that of an all nighter. I did not delay on writing my philosophy paper. O.k., that was a lie. But i did try. Philosophy papers have always hurt me in ways that not even words can express. So this three page paper packs a bit more punch than a similar length paper in a different class would. Come on! Let me write about terrorists. I could quote psychological profiles of different terrorists from memory. But I have, now at 2:55pm 2 full pages of my paper. The paper is actually 2-4 pages long, but mine will probably be a little over 3 pages. I also have a test in Chemistry for our Lives, granted an easy class but the amount of work has given me no time to study at all. So at this time i feel like i have lots of energy, i'm focused but a little lost in my paper. I will check back throughout this night so i can give a record of my activities. God grant me strength.

3:29 - Well i read all of my Chemistry stuff and there are a few things i have to look at again. Now time to get back to the paper. God help me.

4:02 - Well i wrote some profound things and i found a nice passage in C. S. Lewis to use, but the organization of the paper still is elusive to me. There is a cohesiveness to the piece but not enough. I talk more about what i can than what i need to. Started friending people and adding screennames to aim. Now reflecting and hoping that blogging will get my brain going. Oh yeah, already feeling a little more sleepy. Want to lay in bed. But i have the feeling that that could be bad. Like paper not done bad.

9:15: Well i got a lot done but not everything, and then i decided to take a short nap. Haha...goo morning children. But I am still so fucking tired. And i have work study after class.

Book Review

You know I don't have much to say (writing a philosophy paper), so on the words of one Patrick Cavanaugh i looked at a revew of a book by James Carroll called An American Requiem. This is what a book revew should be.

One of the worst qualities of the Baby-Boom generation is their propensity to view their own personal concerns and desires as if they were universal moral imperatives. The most notorious
example of this was their opposition to the Vietnam War, during which they turned a perfectly typical lack of enthusiasm for warfare on the part of those who will actually have to do the fighting, into a sweeping judgment that the war was itself immoral.

This annoying trait has never been put on more ostentatious display than here in James Carroll's memoir about his tortured relationship with his father during the war years. Joe Carroll, who had quit the seminary just before his ordination as a priest, went on to become a lawyer, an FBI agent, an Air Force General, and the first director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Having judged himself unworthy to be a priest, he and his devout wife Mary placed their hopes in their sons, with James, after his older brother Joe contracted polio, becoming the natural choice to become a priest. James did go through the motions of joining the priesthood, though it's never clear from his narrative that he held any genuine religious beliefs, but as he became increasingly involved in the Catholic Left anti-War movement of the 60's & 70's, he eventually quit the Church. He has since become a bestselling novelist, a Boston Globe columnist, written this prize-winning memoir and has just written Constantine's Sword, a "historical" account of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church (see Orrin's review).

These are the bare bones of the story and they suggest a young man whose opposition to the immorality of the Vietnam War causes a crisis of faith. In point of fact, the War seems to have had little to do with Carroll's personal crisis, certainly its morality had nothing to do with it, instead the story he has to tell is that age old tale of youth rebelling against authority. I'm loathe to engage in psychoanalysis, being both unqualified and not much of a believer in its efficacy, but Carroll uses the term Oedipal so often and the book is cast so clearly in the form of an Oedipal drama that it's hard to avoid doing so. Start with the fact that he outdoes his father by actually becoming a priest, where Joe fell short; continue with the way that this profession figuratively wed him to his pious mother, whose entry to Heaven would be virtually guaranteed by virtue of having borne a priest; move along to his utter rejection of his father's profession and an eventual adoption of complete pacifism; then conclude with his decision to leave the priesthood after his father had been forced out of government and crippled by disease. It's hard to see how Vietnam actually matters to any of this psychodrama : had his Dad been a butcher, Carroll would have become a vegetarian, had he been a fireman, Carroll would have been an arsonist. This is a mere story of generational tension dressed up in the ennobling guise of a great moral struggle.

The most revealing aspect of Carroll's self-portrait and the account of the moral dilemma he supposedly faced as a result of the War is his complete failure to consider the consequences of peace on the Vietnamese people. His opposition to the War, as he himself depicts it, is almost exclusively a function of the fact that he's made uncomfortable by the means that were being used to conduct it. There is not a single word of consideration here of what would, and did, happen to the people of Vietnam once America withdrew. The moral calculus at work seems to be that it is better that Vietnam be destroyed by Communism than that a single American have to commit an act which will trouble his conscience. That is a perfectly honorable argument to make, and a necessary corollary of pacifism.

Even this shortcoming would not be so bad were it not for the impact it has on the rest of the book. But one result of his failure to treat this issue is that he ignores what was certainly a central motivation of Cold Warriors like his father. They certainly prosecuted the War because they had considered the consequences of not doing so and found these consequences unacceptable. While it is possible, perhaps even accurate, to argue that they were wrong in their determination, simple fairness requires that Carroll give them their due and look at their legitimate motivations. Deprived, by the author, of the beliefs that drove them, they are presented as one-dimensional characters whose sole purpose is to stand as convenient villains in Carroll's little morality play.

At one point in the book Carroll places the "blame" for American involvement in Vietnam on the Catholic Church and the advocacy for intervention of folks like Cardinal Spellman. Though delusional, this assertion is of a piece with his blaming the Holocaust on the Catholic Church, as he does in the aforementioned Constantine's Sword. One has, first of all, to be troubled by a man who attributes such power to an institution which after all represents a minority of the citizens of Germany and the United States and which has proven incapable of influencing those nations on such issues as birth control, and the like. Secondly, one can't help noticing that there's an element here of reenacting the Oedipal drama with his biological father, his rebellion now directed towards the figurative father, the Church, perhaps even God. The cumulative effect of these two books is to suggest that the greater problem lies not in the sins, real or imagined, of Joe Carroll and the Catholic Church but in the psychological conflicts of James Carroll.

Finally, Carroll claims to have arrived at the viewpoint that war is always unjust. How then would he square his concern over the Holocaust with this position ? He makes much over his obsession with the threat of nuclear war : but if we'd had the bomb in the late 30's or early 40's, or better yet, if Churchill had it, would Carroll really oppose dropping it on Hitler and the high command of the Nazi Party, no matter how many innocent civilian lives it would have claimed ? Would he really be unwilling to sacrifice 30,000 or 40,000 or however many in order to save the tens of millions who ended up dying during the War ? For an author who writes with such smug self-certainty about the purity of his own moral vision, and who is so eager to judge the moral failings of others, he somehow manages to avoid the really hard questions that his newfound philosophy raises. For all that these books are about the author himself, they ultimately reflect fairly little deliberation over the ramifications of the moral choices that he's made.

Which brings us to the final legacy of the Baby-Boom generation. They have succeeded brilliantly in rebellion, in rejecting the institutions, the morals, and the beliefs of their parents and the other generations that came before them. The problem they have left behind is what should replace the Judeo-Christian culture which they've done their best to destroy. Perhaps in this sense James Carroll's book is a signal text for his generation : just as he speaks eloquently about rejecting the faith of his fathers but falls silent about what has replaced it, his generation stands amidst the rubble they have created and have no idea what to erect in its place.

GRADE : D-

Addendum

Addendum to last post:
Oh and i am sick of hearing about how Christians used to use religion for war. That was the past. At the time so did Muslims. Actually they used the sword to convert a lot more than the Christians. This PC bull has to stop. The only thing that matters is now. At this moment those charges don't hold. Get over the past.

The Religion of Peace

This is just rich. Pope Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor in a speech as saying, "He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."' Obviously this is a reason for the Muslim's to riot. I would like to have that statement disproved. If we relied only on what happens everyday in the Muslim world, this statement would be proved. Maybe the statement was said in bad taste, but the idea of the Pope was not for the statement. I am listening to the BBC as I write this and a Muslim is saying that we should not have freedom of speech--that those who are form Nazi ideals should be silenced. That we don't understand Islam. Well teach me. Make me understand. Make me understand why the Muslim countries in the Middle East and elsewhere are so violent. Make me understand why so much is done in the name of God by Muslims that is evil and base. The argument that there are Christians who use religion for violence isn't a real argument. Have they killed thousands for the cause of God? Why can the west not even have intellectual arguments while the middle east can decend into violence and we are at fault. Riots over comments by the Pope and over cartoons show that the Middle East is heading to a fork in the road. Will they choose total destruction or will they pull from the edge. Eventually the world's patience with these "Muslims" who pervert religion in favor of violence will run out and the real action will start. Not the small attacks that the United States has made, but the fight for their own survival. This rant is from a man who is sick of having his country's hands tied while the Muslim world tears itself apart. This from a man who wonders when western moral restrain ends and the real fighting begins. May the force be with us all.

September 11th, 2006

Today we remeber all we lost.
And we will never forget.
We will finish the fight.

Weekend

Ok..so i haven't posted in a while. Memboku it isn't really that i am busy (even though i am crazy busy), it is more that I am feeling lazy. Side effect of too much Plato.

Anyways I have had a very interesting weekend. On Saturday, I went to spend time on the National Mall for one of my friend's birthday. As we were walking up to the Lincoln Memorial, we stumbled on to a taping session for a movie. We found out that the movie is called The Kingdom and that the stars are Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner. And there they were. The movie itself is about Garner and Foxx who are FBI agents trying to unravel the mystery of who bombed an American building in the Middle East. My friends and I were actually in the movie because we were asked to walk in front of the camera as if we were tourists (I go to college here...i am no tourist!). So we may be in the movie if they take that shot.


I also happened upon (thanks sean) a post on the Cornell Society for Having a Good Time about woman ordinations. It seems some German bishop has started ordaining women in the US and even has a woman bishop. They still claim to be "Roman Catholic". Here is the video.



So anyways, it has been an interesting weekend. I promise i will be more regular in posting from now on. But damn do i get lazy. May the force be with you.