In his book Culture Wars, James Davison Hunter argues that the two sides (he calls them “progressive” and “orthodox”) competing in the cultural struggle to define America involves both a positive and a negative “face” of discourse.  The positive face of the discourse is expressed through constructive moral reasoning and debate.  This “face” of discourse grounds the legitimacy of its claims in logic, science, humanitarian concern, or in an appeal to tradition or God.  In such positive discourse, each side endeavors to persuade its opponents, as well as others who might listen, of the superiority of its claims.  It is a civil, reasoned discourse that appeals to the mind.  The other “face” of discourse is negative.  Its goal is to systematically discredit the opposition.  This “face” seeks to discredit the opposing position through a strategy of public ridicule, derision and insult.  It is often characterized by name calling, denunciation and intolerance of the other position.  Whether there is a positive or a negative “face” to the discourse, the goal is to institutionalize achieve legitimacy for one’s position.

There are so many examples of the negative “face” of discourse in our culture today; but  few examples of the positive “face.”  When I try and envision the positive “face” in the national media, I can only think of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS, where usually both sides of a particular position are given the opportunity to present their respective positions.   “Nightline” might be another example of the positive “face.”

However, the negative “face” predominates.  Consider the following:  “Kill Bush” T-shirts are being offered on the Internet for sale.  In Chicago, a college art show featured a series of mock postage stamps showing Bush with a gun to his head.  Other anti-Bush slogans include, “We support our troops, when they shoot their officers.”  Or, “Bush is the disease, Death is the cure.”  Victor Davis Hanson writes that if you type “Bush + Hitler” into a Google search, the result is 1,350,000 hits.  Virtually every major figure in the Bush administration has been compared to some Nazi official or other.  Bush has been likened to Hannibal Lecter, Ted Bundy, Mussolini, Napoleon, Nero, Caligula, and the Japanese warlords of World War II.  Howard Dean, the new head of the Democratic Party, charges that the Republicans “are essentially the best propaganda machine since Lenin.” 

On the conservative side, Tom DeLay has called the various judicial rulings on the Terri Schiavo case an act of “medical terrorism.”  Pat Robertson has commented as well using the theme of “judicial murder.”  Rev. Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue, has argued that the courts have become a “tool of the devil.”  I could go on in terms of both sides. 

But listen to columnist John Leo:  “We have reached the point where much political debate consists of insults and name-calling, every attack is likely to be called a ‘lynching,’ and tired expressions such as ‘institutional terrorism,’ ‘institutional racism,’ and ‘intellectual McCarthyism’ are supposed to be taken as real arguments.  Political polarization is an obvious cause.  But so is the democratization of the media, particularly the arrival of the Internet and big-time talk radio, which allow us to say whatever we like, no matter how crude. . .  Inarticulate people, many of them celebrities, are finding it hard to make their cases without lapsing into abuse.  So political discussion more and more consists of angry feelings instead of rational argument.  Our political rhetoric is routinely awful.” 

The end result of all this is superficiality and shallowness.  There is not an in-depth analysis of a given issue with both sides presenting reasoned and balanced arguments.  Instead, there is inflammatory rhetoric, name-calling and hate-filled speech.  The result is not understanding, but superficiality among the populace.  Our Founders understood that if this Republic were to survive there needed to be a culture of civic virtue where issues could be discussed reasonably among the citizens.  (But even they had trouble doing this: Witness the rhetoric between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.)  Today, with talk radio, cable television and the Internet, we are on the verge of totally institutionalizing superficiality.  This is not a positive development.  It is one we should lament, and, I believe, one day will deeply regret.

See pp. 135-158 in Hunter’s book and see John Leo’s editorial in US News and World Report (25 April 2005), p. 67.

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SYRIA AND LEBANON

As I am writing this, Syria has withdrawn its troops from Lebanon, a country it has occupied since 1976—an extraordinary development indeed!  Why is this significant?  Why is it so important?  What does it portend for the future?  Several thoughts:

• First some background.  This withdrawal was done not by military force, but by a nonviolent Lebanese independence movement, a UN diplomatic effort and by the combined pressure of the United States and France.  There is no question that the 140,000 American troops in nearby Iraq obviously added much-needed leverage to the diplomatic effort.  The Lebanese independence movement was galvanized by the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and the staying power of the Lebanese people for political independence from Syria.  Last June, the US and France began working together against Syria when it was discovered that Syria was seeking a change in the Lebanese Constitution which would allow Syria’s hand-picked president to remain in power.  The US and France agreed to draft a UN resolution calling for Syrian withdrawal.  That Resolution (1559) was adopted by the Security Council.  Then on 14 February a massive car bomb in the center of the new downtown Beirut killed Hariri.  It was a classic Syrian move (direct or indirect), designed to silence the opposition.  The Lebanese people then poured into the streets, demanding an international investigation and the withdrawal of the Syrian army.  This past week the Syrians finally complied with Resolution 1559. 

• Second, what does this mean for Syria?  Analysts are not certain whether this indicates that Syria’s leader, Bashar Assad, is “an inept bungler or really had a plan for change in Syria” and is using the Lebanese crisis to effect that change.  There is a major conference of the Baath Party scheduled for June, and some Syrians are arguing that Assad will use this conference to end one-party rule and thereby allow greater freedom.  What we do know is that Lebanon now has the potential to once again become a beacon of multi-ethnic democracy in the Middle East.  The effect of this would be enormous, buttressing what is already occurring in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The winds of democratic change are seemingly blowing in the Middle East.  This is even more potentially significant because of the historic role Syria has played as a trouble maker in the Middle East.  It has recently cuddled up to Iran.  It has actively supported Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, all bent on destabilizing Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and historically destroying Lebanese independence and the current Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement.  If there is real change in Syria, that change will no doubt negatively impact these other terrorist organizations.  That would be an extremely positive development.  In Charles Krauthammer’s words, Syria “is vulnerable and critical, the geographic center of the [terrorist] axis, the transshipment point for weapons, and the territorial haven for Iranian and regional terrorists.”  If Syria changes, the axis of terrorist evil in the Middle East is thereby broken.  What has occurred in Lebanon with Syrian’s military withdrawal is profound and could be a watershed in Middle Eastern history.  The potential change in Syria could affect the rest of the world.

See David Ignatius in the Washington Post (27 April 2005) and Krauthammer’s editorial in the Washington Post (1 April 2005).

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THE DEMISE OF CHRISTIAN EUROPE

For years we have heard of the decline of Christianity in Europe.  The great religious centers of both Catholicism and Protestantism are now shells, museum pieces of a civilization long dead.  Consider the great Gothic Cathedral at Amiens, France.  One of the grandest and most fantastic of the gothic cathedrals, on Sundays this grand edifice to Christianity stands virtually empty.  Brian M. Carney reports that on a typical Sunday, “Mass [is] being conducted in a side chapel fit for the couple dozen worshippers who showed up for it. . . .”  Carney made this statement in a review he wrote of the book, The Cube and the Cathedral by George Weigel.  Weigel describes in his book a European culture that has become not only increasingly secular but in many cases downright hostile to Christianity.  Weigel chose his title referring to the grand cathedral in Paris, Notre Dame, and the ultramodernist “cube” that dominates an office complex outside Paris.  He writes, “European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular.  That conviction and its public consequences are at the root of Europe’s contemporary crisis of civilizational morale.”  Several thoughts about this tragic development.

• First, many Christians in Europe, even Catholics, give only superficial acknowledgment to their faith.  One thinks of the huge throngs of people who participated in the funeral and accompanying services surrounding the death of Pope John Paul II.  Yet, Socialists and Green Party members decried the French government’s decision to fly the flag at half-mast in his honor.  How did the French government respond to this?  The government stepped back and claimed that flying the flag at half-mast had nothing to do with John Paul being head of the church; rather, the government was acknowledging that he was head of the Vatican state.  He was not a religious leader!  Also consider the debate last year over the language of the Constitution that would govern the new European Union.  Weigel writes, “By the time the draft constitution was completed in June 2004, a grudging reference to the ‘cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe’ had been shoehorned into the preamble’s first clause.”  The new Europe could not even acknowledge that through their history as a continent Christianity had played a decisive and determinative role.  By the new Constitution, you would never know that.  Carney argues additionally, “Christianity [in Europe] is considered retrograde and atavistic in a ‘progressive’ society devoted to the good life—long holidays, short work hours and generous government benefits.” 

• Second, Weigel shows that Europe long ago gave up the idea that truths are absolute and universal.  “If there are no universal moral truths, then religion, positing them, is merely a form of oppression or myth, one from which Europe’s elites sees themselves as liberated.”  Added to this theological vacuum is the reality of a changing continent.  Weigel reviews a Europe of low birth rates, heavy debts, increased Muslim immigration and a rejection of patriotic and nationalist sentiments.  In an astonishing passage, Weigel envisions the future in Paris:  “The muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St. Peter’s in Rome, while Notre Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the Seine—a great Christian church had become an Islamic museum.”  The great centers of Christendom are now being used for the worship of Allah!! 

Europe as a continent is deeply committed to the core value of freedom.  But that same Europe sees freedom as license.  Freedom is the good life, and the continent is unwilling to set aside that good life to fight for the civilization that produced it.  Freedom is not a transcendent ideal rooted in a grand set of absolutes that make it work.  Rather, freedom is license with no sacrifice.  Complacency, apathy and degradation now characterize western Europe.  It has no base, no foundation.  Before the eyes of this complacent continent, life is radically changing, and those very eyes do not even notice!  Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

See Carney’s review of Weigel’s book in the Wall Street Journal (14 April 2005).

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