Pagan Practices

No Place For Torture In a Just War

We have the rather unusual situation where a sitting US president publicly claims that torture is ethical, whilst his Secretary of Defense says it is counter-productive and of no use.  James "Mad Dog" Mattis is reported as adopting a pragmatic position (implying that if were to work, he would endorse torture).  President Trump says he will abide by Mad Dog's greater experience and wisdom in matters military and engaging in war.  

This is hardly a satisfactory position.  One can easily foresee a particularly gruesome terrorist attack on US soil with many deaths and casualties (think Twin Towers) and with evident extensive conspiracies attached (think 1605 Gunpowder Plot in England).  Expect Donald Trump in fear and anger and frustration to order the use of torture out of retaliation and anger more than anything else, whilst justifying it by the supposed information it would reap.

The sad and unacceptable thing is that both Trump and Mattis appear to base their moral position on pragmatism, or, to put it in a wider philosophical context, on utilitarianism.  It has long been a fatal flaw of that particular philosophy that the end most certainly does not justify the means.  The Christian position is clear: both ends sought and means employed must be holy, just, and good.  The West--particularly the Anglo-Saxon West--has suffered under the barren amoral wasteland of utilitarianism far too long.

The Suicide of the Human Mind

The Suicide of Thought

G. K. Chesterton ran the numbers on how the modern world has sought to dance with numerous partners--all of which have destroyed the dance itself.  There are hypotheses which end up destroying the very possibility of thought and reason.  Here is Chesterton's list of rationalist suicides, destroying the very possibility of thought:

Pragmatism Under Christian Veneer

Insult to Injury

In the Wild West the legend has it that tough sheriffs demanded folk check in their guns before going into town.  There are some who argue that Christians should do the same when they come into that great metropolis called the "Public Square".  This would seem to be a view shared by two Christians, Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner who have argued a case for Christian involvement in politics.

Here is the heart of their argument:

The Perpetual Ignorance of Pragmatism

The Greatest Confidence Trick of the Age

Pragmatism is one of the great intellectual cons of the modern world.  The fact that it can still fool lots of "educated" people is testament to the paucity of modern education, which pragmatism has largely shaped.  The idea that all dogma and received wisdom can and should be discarded as useless and should be replaced by a study of "what works" might appeal to an engineer in a superficial kind of sense.  If, however, it is to be taken seriously, pragmatism consigns an individual and a culture to perpetual ignorance and the crassly superficial. 

Here is Jonah Goldberg's summation of pragmatism:

Taken on its own terms, pragmatism's folly is that it separates intelligence from wisdom.  Its greatest sins are arrogance and deceit, including self-deceit.  It is arrogant because it assumes the individual--particularly the expert--can know everything he needs to know without reference to received wisdom, historical precedent, tradition, dogma, etc.  The pragmatists particularly loathed history, because it was a storehouse of old thinking with no relevance for the new age of science, slide rules, and data.  Tricked by what they saw out their windows, they assumed that human nature had an expiration date--and that date was yesterday.

Perpetual War

The Desolations of Smaug

The United States has a fascination with war--of two kinds.  The first is the traditional kind--namely, armed conflict.  There has been scarcely a single year in the last half-century when the US has not been involved in armed conflict somewhere on the globe.  This global warfare is underpinned by the crass and wicked idolatries of notions such as "American exceptionalism", America as the city of light on a hill bring truth, justice and the American way to all peoples on earth, and America as the defender of the oppressed, the weak, and the downtrodden, and so forth. 

The end of the Cold War was supposed to result in a Peace Dividend--which was a coy way of saying that military spending could wane, and tax monies could be put towards social services.  Actually, military spending continued to ratchet up.  Being the world's policeman has perpetual and escalating costs, which currently are being funded by borrowing.  Good luck with that.  Idols of all kinds eventually become a crushing weight upon a people: morally, spiritually, and fiscally.  (During the period of decline of the Roman Empire, for example, about the only sector of commerce that was vibrantly growing was that associated with the various cults of the pantheon of idols.)  If the US military were ever to retrench back to being an ordinary, national defensive enterprise, the negative impact upon US economic growth would be considerable. Idols are expensive to erect, maintain, and worship.  National idols even more so. 

But the second kind of war is also costly and equally vain.

Deceptions

The Dishonesty of Pragmatism

Whenever a public spokesman or talking head decry ideology in favour of (open-minded) pragmatic solutions, beware.  Lurking behind the statement is always a particular ideology, all the more destructive because hidden.  The appeal to pragmatics over ideology is a subterfuge, a deceit.

The common stereotype is that someone who is ideological in his approach to matter of justice or equity or the role of the state is blinkered, myopic and empty headed.  The pragmatic man, however, comes forth without preconceptions, focusing only upon the facts and realities.  The pragmatic man is subtle, clever, open minded, scientific, rational and so forth.  There is, of course, a natural fit between pragmatism and evolutionism.  Under the latter, things emerge.  New entities come into existence.  Conditions change permanently (or at least for a time).  Ideology tries to prevent all this, locking man into ancient rules and formulae which bear no relationship to the complexities of our modern world. 

Consider how "reasonable" John Kenneth Galbraith sounds to our modern ears:

Progressive Enlightenment

Faux Pragmatism

This snippet from Karl, writing at Patterico's blog:

As Jonah Goldberg points out in The Tyranny of Cliches, one of the fundamental cliches of the progressive left is pragmatism, i.e., that they are simply doing “what works.”  It is also one of the progressive left’s fundamental falsehoods.

The past century has been one in which progressives have put forth the idea that Soviet communism is what works,