Sounds to me like you have little patience for Christians of any stripe. David Warren is one, and it colors his arguments.
I have no problem with Christians, or Muslims, or Wiccans, or Hindus, or devotees of any religion. I may privately think they’re a bit addled, but they think the same of me, so that’s fair enough. When people start trying to use the machinery of the state to impose their religious beliefs on others, I object. My objection to Warren’s essay is that he treats his social/religious convictions as revealed truths, not requiring logical or factual support. That leaves the arguments very vulnerable. If he were to argue the point from that perspective with anybody half smart, he’d get shredded.
So far as that, it's hard to argue the point.
I won’t argue the point here; it’s too wildly OT. I assure you, though, that arguing the point would be about as hard as smacking a one-winged fly.
It’s always amusing to watch social conservatives get hung up on the contradictions inherent in their positions. I wonder if Mr. Warren believes that the right to pursue happiness is inalienable, or if he believes that the state should see to it that his neighbors pursue their happiness solely in directions compatible with his personal religious convictions.
Have you read the essay titled "Flypaper"? I'd be interested in your opinion on that one.
I agree with him that the “roadmap” leads only in a tight little circle. For the rest of it, I find the arguments unimpressive and the conclusion preposterous. He might be right about what Bush is thinking – I claim no insight on that matter, and it’s not something that can be determined by logical process – but if he is, we’re in worse shape than I thought.
Warren actually has a lot in common with den Beste. Both put style above content. Warren wallows in pomposity, affecting the manner of the Last Philosopher, bowed but unflinching before the weighty task of preserving Western Civilization. Den Beste wants to be the brash, irreverent, enfant terrible. Unfortunately, the quality of thinking and argument just doesn’t measure up to the image. I’ve met a number of conservatives on SI who had more capacity for discourse in their little fingers than Warren and den Beste have in their combined (and apparently considerable) physical bulk.
I find the bloggers you're trashing more intelligent than 90% of the newspaper articles out there -- how do you feel about the BBC's output?
It’s hard to compare news with commentary, and I don’t read newspaper commentary, so it’s difficult to make a relevant comparison. I don’t watch BBC news, or any TV news. I’ve found that the BBC world news service sometimes gives good reporting on items that get little reporting elsewhere. They had the best stuff going on East Timor, for example.
It's very hard to compare the intelligence of such reports with that of a blog devoted entirely to opinion.
There’s more stuff out there than any of us can read. We choose what we want to read, and our choice says a lot about us. |
