On evidence for demons

Over at Russel and Duenes Blog, I have commented on an intriguing discussion about demon possession. Check it out!

Nationalism v. Patriotism

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Professor Ilya Somin has posted a response to Jonah Goldberg’s Thanksgiving post at National Review Online. Goldberg’s post reads,

[I love Thanksgiving because it is] America’s only nationalist holiday. The Fourth of July, President’s Day, and even Veterans’ and Memorial Day are celebrations of the nation-state created by the American founding. In short, our other holidays are about patriotism, not nationalism. Thanksgiving meanwhile celebrates a pre-constitutional relationship with the Almighty. I wouldn’t quite say it’s a pre-modern or blood-and-soil holiday, but it is about Providence and the great gift being here, in this place, is. A little mystic nationalism is a good and healthy thing because it provides the emotional sinew that helps us hold onto our patriotism. This country is great and good for many reasons. But one reason for its greatness, too often forgotten, is that it is ours.

Professor Somin responds to Mr. Goldberg by criticizing nationalism in typical libertarian fashion. In short, he says that nationalism is not only unnecessary but also often leads to repression, economic protectionism, and irrational politics.

Rather than offer my own thoughts on nationalism (though I should say that I tend to agree with Professor Somin more than I do with Mr. Goldberg), I want to examine a common problem with this debate. Mr. Goldberg hints at the issue in his statement; the problem is that there is a blurry line between patriotism and nationalism. I often say that most arguments in the world would be immediately solved if people were using the same words to describe the same things. I feel that this is yet another disagreement exacerbated by a definitional mismatch.

First, notice that Mr. Goldberg distinguishes nationalism and patriotism by saying that “celebrations of the nation-state” are patriotic, not nationalistic. It seems likely that Mr. Goldberg thinks that celebrations of the nation, i.e. the people or ethnicity, are nationalistic, while celebrations of the state, at least when tied to the nation, are patriotic. Conversely, Professor Somin defines nationalism as “loyalty to one’s own nation-state based on ties of language, culture, or ethnicity”. We can immediately perceive that Professor Somin’s definition, while including the concepts of language, culture, and ethnicity referred to by Mr. Goldberg, is drastically different because it includes the nation-state.

I think that Professor Somin’s more political concerns (economic/policy-related) are not relevant to Mr. Goldberg’s discussion. Mr. Goldberg is not talking about loyalty to a political entity but rather to a nation or people. However, Professor Somin’s concerns regarding ethnic and cultural bigotry are certainly still pertinent.

Next, I would like to present my own views on the distinction between nationalism and patriotism.

From a purely etymological standpoint, nationalism seems to more accurately refer to loyalty to the nation-state, a political entity with a relatively homogenous culture or ethnicity. The root ‘nation’ is derived from the Latin ‘natio’ which means ‘to be born’. Therefore, a nation is a people with common ancestry. Ties to a nation are based on birth. ‘National’ means ‘of, or relating to, a nation’. Nationalism is a movement or school of thought that a political entity or state should be defined by relations to a nation. Thus, nationalism refers to loyalty to a nation-state, or perhaps loyalty to any state, based on ties of ethnicity or culture.

On the other hand, patriotism can exist, at least in its classical definition, without a state. Patriot is derived from the Latin ‘patriota’, meaning ‘fellow countryman’. ‘Patriota’ was originally derived from the Greek ‘patrios’, which means ‘of one’s fathers’. It follows that one can define patriotism in two ways: Either it is a movement completely based on ties of ethnicity or culture and is a synonym for ‘nation-ism’ or it is a movement based on some kind of figurative meaning of being ‘of one’s fathers’. The first meaning is common usage in our vernacular, while the latter is popular among those who wish to avoid association with a government’s actions.

I tend to agree with the latter, not only because it provides the closest description of my own sentiments, but also because it seems to be the definition the Greek philosophers and poets used. In his Funeral Oration, Pericles (the famous Athenian politician) speaks of the pride of the patriots of Athens. Such patriotism is based on the ideals of justice, law, open foreign policy, and equality of opportunity. Patriotism, in this sense, is related to loyalty to a philosophy and conception of the good, not a state. Thusly, our society developed the idea that a patriot can exist even if he is civilly disobedient (civil disobedience, coincidentally, also has roots in Greece via Socrates).

In sum, the nationalist supports America because it is America and he is American, while the patriot supports America because he agrees with its founding fathers’ goals and ideals. The patriot supports the American state only if it continues in the same traditions proclaimed by its fathers and he has no need to do so, indeed might be required not to, if it were to stray from the ideals of its founding. What those ideals are is an entirely separate debate.

Does humanity teach us something?

Do we all instinctively know something about the universe or each other simply by being human?

The ultimate competition of ideas, if there indeed exists one, is between existentialism (previously called irrational skepticism) and positivism (of the universalist tradition). The first says that, even if objective truth exists, our humanity cannot know it fully; the latter suggests that, because we are all human and universally share the same ability, or lack thereof, to perceive truth, there are some universals knowable to all. The conflict between these two is one everybody experiences, most of the time without awareness.

For example, when discerning others’ feelings after a tragedy and in attempting to figure out the best method to console them, we must decide between treating them as we would like to be treated or treating them in a way that society/common sense/scholarship dictates is the normal and best way to console.  The first is an existentialist outlook while the latter is a positivist one.

It might be that the conflict itself is the one truth we all experience – the single human universal.

Yes, I am still thinking.

You all might have expected that my blogging would temper off once law school started. The predictions were true, law school is sucking up my life. That being said, I am still philosophizing at lightning-speeds, as is evidenced by this weekend. You see, this weekend I finally outlined and began writing a work that has been in the making for about 2.5 years.

It all started with a fish my freshman-year college roommate brought home one day. He really, really loved his beta fish. Who would have thought that that fish would be the single most important inspiration in what really is the only large project I can claim to be working on (and have claimed to be doing so for like 2 years)?  Here is the basic theme to the beginning chapters of the work – it assumes a level of philosophical education, though I am not sure whether or not the final work will do so.

Teleology should not be limited to a consequentialist outlook. It is one thing to say that an action is justified because its end purpose is good (as in utilitarianism) and another to say that an action is good because it comports with the agent’s purpose. In the latter, I am not qualifying the purpose as good or bad; the purpose exists outside of the realm of “good and bad”. “Good” and “bad”, in this second form of teleology, are defined by whether or not either, in the form of actions, comports with a given purpose.

Fool or God?

Christ cannot be a good moral teacher. His teachings were so anti-religious that it cannot be said that he espoused good rules for the rest of us to abide by. No, in fact, Christ came preaching that he, not religion, saves. He came preaching that following the rules will get us nowhere. How, then, do those who claim he is only a good moral teacher, not God, resolve this contradiction? They cannot. Christ is either illogical, contradictory, and worthy of no moral merit; or he is Lord. Take your pick.

Salvation for the Gospel-less?

Over on “Russel and Duenes” podcast, I have done an obscene amount of commenting.  The podcast and ensuing discussion is definitely worth checking out!

Patriotism

I am not pro-America, I am pro-freedom. It just so happens that I see America as its greatest conduit.

Why can’t anyone see God?

There are countless times that I feel angry that I can’t see God. I resent the Creator for His supposed hiding. Of course, in doing this, I make two errors. First, and most obviously, I am forgetting all the ways in which He has revealed Himself to me. I am forgetting that I know His character through nature, through love, through revelation. Yet, there is another mistake I make in my resentment of God. It is not the “how dare you question God” sentiment shared by so many, though it may be thought of as a more in depth form of it. I make the mistake of forgetting the beauty of the human condition. There seems to be something beautiful in our lifelong journey to experience God; life is beautiful because we are searching. Much like a yin and yang principle, we can know God better because we lack so much of Him. We come to know the Creator through our journey in this world. Yes there is much pain and suffering, but we see the beauty in the sacrifice, love, and reconciliation that pain and suffering can produce. We yearn to experience the divine and part of that experience is searching for it.

I’m concerned about Obama, but not Democrats?

From the information in this Reuters story it would seem that Americans are very, very confused.

[A]ccording to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll… 58 percent of respondents said Obama and Congress should focus on keeping the budget deficit down, even if takes longer for the economy to recover… Nearly 70 percent said they had concerns about federal intervention in the economy, including Obama’s decision to take an ownership stake in General Motors and the prospect of more government involvement in healthcare… A CBS News/New York Times poll also released on Wednesday found the Republican Party viewed favorably by only 28 percent of Americans, the lowest rating ever in the poll.  In contrast, 57 percent had a favorable view of the Democratic Party.

It would seem to me that, if the public is as concerned about these economic issues as the polls indicate, then Americans are looking to the wrong party for answers.  Of course, there are plenty of reasons for this.  First and foremost, the last 8 years saw the unfortunate reign of a big-spending Republican.  Thus, Americans do not see Republicans as fiscally conservative.  Second, the Republicans have lumped themselves in with social conservatives.  Many people do not understand economic matters; most of them, however, can fully comprehend the injustice of government dictating who can marry, what foods/substances we intake, and how we can use electronics in the car.  Republicans are therefore the greater evil.  Third, the truth is that the Republican party is at a transitional point.  It needs to find a set of principles and stick to them.  It has historically been the Democratic Party that is very populist.  The Republican party needs to stick to firm principles so that people can accurately gauge what it stands for.  Without these three reforms, Republicans will remain at 27% approval.

On Health

One little accident. That’s all it takes. A life can be drastically cut short or changed by one chance mistake in DNA.
Chance, that is, if you don’t believe in God’s sovereignty. In fact, though every bone in my body wants to call it a tragedy that such events can occur, I know that the worship of God is not contingent upon the full health of every individual. Indeed, God can reveal himself in very uncommon ways through sickness and death. Still, it is humbling to think that one’s life could be changed forever tomorrow – that a mistake in one’s cell replication happening right now will alter the course of a life. It is also humbling to realize that God’s mechanism for world change may just be one we don’t prefer. It’s probably a good thing we aren’t omnipotent.