My two cents on the state of argument

From an original essay with Princess Bride overtones published this weekend by American Spectator Online:

"As a few commentators on the left and right have both noticed, liberals embrace the smug life. People who remember how to make an argument tend to be the ones whose speeches provoke 'trigger warnings' among sheltered college students, presumably because moving coherently from a premise to a conclusion can intimidate anyone trapped in a 'safe' space."

Note:  American Spectator Online has been redesigned since that essay was originally published. As a result, the essay has been re-titled and re-filed.

A hint for CBS News

Web site elves at CBS News appear to be deaf to irony.

Each of the following screenshots was taken today:

Just below the video window under the Watch Now site banner asking the question about how terrorists are "able to hide in plain sight" was this howler of a story:

Short answer to the question in that headline: None. That's a stupid "blame the victim" question, and a failed attempt to relieve terrorists of moral culpability for their actions. It would make as much sense to imply that sunspot activity plays a role in terrorism. I hope the investigative team figured at least that much out, although I have my doubts.

Fortunately, some readers did not miss the irony that CBS employees did:

"Jimbob" is exactly right.

To tie a ribbon around the bias for which old-line mass media outlets in the United States are notorious: As some of the reporting after the San Bernardino shootings of December 2, 2015 made clear, terrorists are able to "hide in plain sight" wherever the dominant cultural narrative shames their potential victims into silence by accusing those potential victims of bigotry, racism, or, yes, "Islamophobia." 

It also helps to have a through-the-looking-glass notion of victimhood, as so many in the media do. Bookworm explains that at her blog, while David Harsanyi has some related thoughts.

Amusingly, the media does not even try for consistency. Screenshots in this post were prompted by "analysis" of the terrorist attacks in Belgium, but the false compassion and Potemkin investigation inherent in a search for something other than warped ideology that might plausibly provoke the murder of innocents does not square with what we were told about the husband-and-wife San Bernardino terrorists four months earlier. Those two were not lashing out in response to other people's Islamophobia, according to reports at the time. They were allegedly "self-radicalized." Homeland Security spokespeople apparently hoped that the rest of us would accept that finding as a reassuring alternative to being radicalized by others, but why it ought to be reassuring was never explained. Perhaps the people pushing that theory hoped that the rest of us would accept self-radicalization as a "one off" peculiar to the San Bernardino shooters and a handful of extremists like them.

Sadly, nobody in mainstream media seems to read Eric Hoffer anymore, or ask why Islam lends itself to "radicalization" with such discomfiting ease.

A phobia, as you probably know, is an irrational fear. But the dignity once ascribed to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is not in play here. Even the much-misused term "homophobia" has a better record than "Islamophobia," which is a fake medical term of art (rhetorical cudgel, really) used by the progressive movement to explain its own failure to heed dissent from or by people whom they dismiss as narrow-minded mono-cultural "cisnormatives" (Because they are acutely sensitive to "thoughtcrime," leftists always play the long game starting with vocabulary, as witness words like "microagression" and "cisgender." When the Left cannot yet appropriate a word in common use, it makes one up instead).

UPDATE: Accepting the premise that Islamophobia might help provoke Islamist terrorist attacks does Islam no favors, either, because it reeks of condescension. If irrational fear of Methodists made Methodists violent, for example, then it would be fair to ask whether something was askew in the lives of John and Charles Wesley, who founded Methodism as a movement within the Church of England. Yet people are scorned or worse for trying to apply any scrutiny to the founder of Islam.

If you remember Bored of the Rings

The early Seventies parody of the Lord of the Rings by writers from the Harvard Lampoon has at least one fun scene applicable to current events:

As Goodgulf stepped onto the bridge the passage echoed with an ominous dribble, dribble, and a great crowd of narcs burst forth. In their midst was a towering dark shadow too terrible to describe. In its hand it held a huge black globe and on its chest was written in cruel runes, "Villanova." 

"Aiyee," shouted Legolam. "A ballhog!" 

Goodgulf turned to face the dread shadow, and as he did, it slowly circled toward the bridge, bouncing the grim sphere as it came. The Wizard reeled back and, clutching at the ropes, raised his wand. "Back, vile hoopster," he cried. 

At this the ballhog strode forward onto the bridge, and stepping back, the wizard drew himself up to his full height and said, "Avaunt, thin-clad one!" 

Arrowroot waved Krona. "He cannot hold the bridge," he shouted and rushed forward. 

"E pluribus unum," cried Bromosel and leaped after him. 

"Esso extra," said Legolam, jumping behind him. 

"Kaiser Frazer," shouted Gimlet, running up to join them. 

The ballhog sprang forward, and raising the dread globe over his head, uttered a triumphant cry. 

"Dulce et decorum," said Bromosel, hacking at the bridge. 

"Above and beyond," said Arrowroot, chopping a support. 

"A far, far better thing," said Legolam, slicing through the walkway. 

"Nearer my God to thee," hummed Gimlet, cutting the last stay with a quick ax stroke. 

'Nof said

(It's not every day a pun like that walks into a bar)

Go read Gerard Vanderleun, who doesn't have enough faith to be an atheist. He'll explain. 

A Florida State University professor of oceanography named Doron Nof tried to explain (or, more honestly, debunk), but Nof just confuses people.

Happy Easter

All the durable inspiration today (or any day, really) is in scripture and sacrament rather than in blog posts.

But I do think that some meditations are worth bookmarking. Myra Adams made her joy palpable in an Easter essay. And here is Gerard Vanderleun writing about what he calls his own "cut-rate resurrection," which he intuitively grasps is just an echo of the original (full price!) Resurrection:

“Still not satisfied” is not a good attitude to have if one has been resurrected. As they say in meetings, “The attitude is gratitude.” I had that for a long time. It slipped away. Maybe I should try to get it back.

Or maybe I should not.

Maybe I should just drop all that and drop the searching for the BIG MESSAGE. Maybe, just maybe, I should try to see again what we always forget: the Here and the Now of the Miracle. Maybe, just maybe, on this day, I should strive always to recall that Christ is not just the Resurrection, but “the Resurrection and the Life.”

Here is John C. Wright, novelist, in a more puckish mood:

"When you meet someone who says Easter eggs are a pagan holdover of a pagan symbol, you can remind him that during Lent the tradition was to give up eating meat and eggs, so that eating delicious, delicious eggs again after 40 [days] became a matter for ceremony. Our grandfathers lived in a more ceremonial hence more fun society, one more suited to human psychology, and so having the kids eat eggs again became kind of a game, a hide-and-seek, and the eggs were decorated, because in those days people loved kids, and were not told having children was a disease that overburdened the earth, and did not abort them in the womb."

Meanwhile, Fr. Dwight Longenecker wraps the whole Triduum up in this post:

"Christianity is the only religion that does not ignore or skirt the issue of suffering. Indeed terrible suffering is at the very heart of our religion. Our central icon is a crucifix. Our central act of worship is a commemoration and re-presentation of the execution of an innocent victim...Christianity is the one religion that plunges into the depth of the suffering [to] wrestle with the darkness and come out the other side, bloodied but triumphant."

It seems to me a double blessing that the Web makes edifying thoughts from people I have not met easy to find, even as active participation in a parish also assures me of support from people whom I do know, and people I might eventually meet.

The Holy Thursday hook

My (close) paraphrase of the beginning of the homily from Father Dan at tonight's Mass of the Lord's Supper:

"A few years back, there was a saying popular with our Protestant brothers and sisters that even made it into the rest of the culture after awhile. You probably remember that the initials 'WWJD' stood for 'What Would Jesus Do?' 

Well, I want to propose to you something much less popular, but much more useful. We are here tonight to celebrate not what Jesus would do, but what He actually did and does do. Moreover, He expects us to emulate His example."

Appreciating the pope emeritus

David Warren does appreciate Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), and in two different places.

I particularly like how Warren develops this thought:

"It is in Ratzinger’s nature to review events of the last fifty years in the light of the last five hundred: he cannot be satisfied with the immediate. Nor did he ever respond in the “media” way, to events of the last five hours or five days. First, he examines.

This is precisely the virtue — prudence in its essential form — that seems most absent from contemporary life...

We, today, as men in all ages, cannot do without the anchoring of faith, which begins in an attachment to the unchanging. The detachment from “breaking news” follows from this. I pass by the profound theological observation, that underlies all faith — that it originates in the grace of God, not in some human intention — only because I am giving an external description. A man of any culture — East or West — who is not by desire rooted in the unchanging, is not rooted at all."

Joseph Ratzinger's tenure as Pope Benedict XVI continues to influence even non-Catholics in good ways.

And as my friend John might put it, prudence is a prerequisite for thinking long-term.