Blogging Among the LandminesOne of the fun things about blogging is that you simply never know how people will respond to what you take to be an obvious point. The fracas resulting from my little squib about consequentialism is a good example. You're saying one thing (albeit delphically and with the assumption people will connect the dots you are connecting), but people hear something very different.
In addition, there's the pleasure of being serious when people think you are kidding and kidding when people think you are serious. Also, there's the weird notion that some readers have that every action you take, every word you write is specifically targeted at them. And there's the happiness that comes when somebody in your comboxes writes comment #102 in a thread that began a week ago, and another outraged commenter writes demanding to know why I haven't swooped in to silence "your little friend". Of course, the only possible reason is that the offending commenter and I are engaged in a conspiracy against the outraged commenter. It couldn't be that I have a life and don't read all comments and don't know the offender from a hole in the ground.
And, finally, there's the joy that comes when somebody sends you a link to something or somebody that somebody else declares to be ritually impure. For instance, I get link to a piece on, say, problems with reconciling Hiroshima and Just War doctrine. Seems interesting and makes a couple of good points, so I post it. But it's on the Lew Rockwell site! Therefore the arguments in the article are beneath consideration, because the source is ritually impure. Or, likewise, I post a piece on some gay brownshirts doing their gay brownshirt thing stamping out free speech, intimidating, and threatening bodily harm to those with Incorrect thoughts--but the source is the Family Research Council, scream my gay readers! Again, the taint of ritual impurity means that we don't have to actually pay any attention to the documented facts in the piece, nor to the soundness of the argument.
Now the delightful thing about ritual impurity is that it of course stigmatizes, not just the argument, but me. What other motivation could I possibly have for posting from a ritually impure source than the desire to poison all future discourse with everything that site has to say about everything? I am obviously *signaling* something--something dark and dreadful about my True Self--if I say "The Family Research Council, though I often disagree with it, seems to me to make a sound point here" or "I hate agreeing with Hillary, but I do think our troops deserve the best protection in battle we can give them."
I mention all this because another thing that happens is that people send me links which are germane to one thread, but people often take them as sinister suggestions about my opinion on other threads.
Case in point: We've been having a fair amount of discussion about the neo-Darwinian philosophical project of saying that the universe is "purposeless". Some of my readers insist that this is not intrinsic to neo-Darwinism. Maybe they're right. Nonetheless, I think only a fool will deny that the leading voices in the field keep insisting on making these grand metaphysical claims and seem to be more than unusually hostile to those who believe God created man in his image and likeness or who insist that God is knowable by reason from his works of creation. One reader, following this conversation, sends me a rather beautiful piece on one person's escape from the metaphysical prison Darwin had created for him.
The problem: the author is (cue "Imperial March" from Star Wars)
Joseph Sobran.
Just what do I *mean* by linking Sobran? Especially since I am already
guilty of linking Pat Buchanan a couple of days ago. And it's obvious that the only reason I could link Buchanan is that, though I *claim* not to be an anti-semite... well, is it really a coincidence that I link Buchanan *and* Sobran? And besides, I've allowed my "
pal" c.matt to... argue about something or other (I haven't followed that thread carefully). So all in all, things look pretty grim for me because I have cited the Wrong People and haven't ridden herd on readers in threads I haven't read. The inference is obvious to anyone with eyes.
Nonetheless, to set the record straight. I'm still not an anti-semite.
Citing Buchanan to point out that blog rhetoric tends to be two-dimensional and more a form of cheer-leading than actual discourse ("He's a Hero!" when somebody trashes bishops. "He's a Villain!" when somebody points out inconsistencies in our foreign policy) is not co-terminous with anti-semitism. Neither is citing Sobran, particularly when he's not talking about Jews.
As to c.matt, he's not my "pal" and I would not know the guy from Adam. I'm not quite sure what he's driving at in some of his remarks, but I can reiterate my own basic views for the record:
A) Anti-semitism and hatred of Jews is "foreign to the mind of Christ" as is all racism.
B) Our first duty as Christians is gratitude toward the people of Israel since Israel is the Olive Tree and we Gentile Christians are the grafted branches.
C) Failure to believe in the Immaculate Conception of the State of Israel and its preservation from all sin original and actual is not anti-semitic.
D) Acknowledging those sins is not excusing the butchering thugocracy that leads the Palestinians. Likewise, condemning the butchering thugocracy is not tantamount to saying that the State of Israel's treatment of Palestinians is a model of statecraft.
E) Affirming Israel's right to exist is not hatred of Palestinians.
F) Pointing out, as Sharon realized and as
Christopher Hitchens points out, that demographics (Israelis aborting themselves out of existence as Palestinians multiply) make the establishment of a Palestinian state inevitable is not a manifestation of a desire for "the continuation of the Holocaust by other means" but a cold facing of facts.
G) Despite demands to the contrary, I see no difference between the State of Israel's interests and the interests of any other sovereign secular state. I don't regard the founding of Israel as a divine act, any more than I see the founding of the US as a divine act.
G) I don't think America owes the Palestinians anything, but then I also don't think we owe the State of Israel anything, except in the sense that we are (usually) friends (with allowances for the casual and small-scale sorts of political cynicism and insults to friendship that characterizes the relationships of all nation-states: i.e. them spying on us from time to time, or us spying on them).
Apart from my failure to regard Israel as a state fundamentally different from Belgium or Canada, there is the other question c.matt seemed to be raising: namely, Holocaust denial. Here, he is ambiguous and I would ask him to explain himself. If he is suggesting that Holocaust denial is a legitimate subject for serious exploration (as the nutjobs in Iran are doing) then I would ask him to leave my blog and never return. The Holocaust is a fact of history and only a pernicious agenda seeks to deny that.
If, however, he is merely suggesting that that there is something weird about having *laws* against Holocaust denial, I have to say I share that opinion, for the same reason I would find it weird to have Congress pass a law demanding I believe in the Indusrial Revolution or the Civil War. I can understand such laws being passed in places like Germany, where the spectre of Nazism Redivivus can move the state to take extreme measures to scotch the snake in the egg. For the same reason, I can see why Germany forbids the sale of
Mein Kampf. In the grand scheme of things, the Germans prefer a little trampling of free speech to the possibility that some new generation of monsters arise. I can't say I blame them.
Mein Kampf is, on the whole, a book we can do without that never would be missed.
But laws like this have a downside too. Legislating stuff like this, rather than teaching people how to do history or discern a crappy, evil book from a good one can result in rebellion from illiterates who will take Holocaust Denial as "courageously standing against State Thought Control" in *exactly* the way illiterates take the Da Vinci Code as a "daring" re-thinking of Received Wisdom. Jonah Goldberg speaks of the "unwritten law" and says there are all sorts of social norms that work better if they are *not* legislated and which, in fact, start to break down the moment we make them matters of law and not matters of culture, memory, and tradition handed on by other means than the main force of the State.
A person who denies the Holocaust is, I think, morally filthy. I find it hard to even credit the possibility they are innocently ignorant (though that possibility will have to be granted more as the event fades into history and all the witnesses to it die out). If somebody denies the Holocaust on my blog, that's a one way ticket to banishment. But to pass laws against such idiocy seems to me to be wrong-headed. Such laws will only encourage people to say, "Why am I not allowed Freedom of Thought?" and plant the idea that such denial of historical fact is a bold challenge to the Official Story. There are more effective ways of countering this pernicious lie of Holocaust denial than to call the cops. Truth defeats lies better than jails defeat lies.
Well, enough meandering. I have a feeling this post will also make a lot of people mad at me, but there it is. You can't please everyone. Heck! Some days you can't please anyone.
