Year: 2004

The Cause of Terrorism Revisited

You know how you hear a lot of people, especially in the wake of a terrorist attack, saying that the root causes of terrorism must be addressed and that these causes have to do with poverty and lack of economic development (which is another way of saying . . . well, poverty)?

Here’s a fascinating article that contents the situation is far more complex. In particular, the author suggests that religious ideology has much more to do with the spawning of terrorists than is generally recognized.

Excerpt:

Thirty years ago, when the terrorism debate got underway, it was widely asserted that terrorism was basically a left-wing revolutionary movement caused by oppression and exploitation. Hence the conclusion: Find a political and social solution, remedy the underlying evil — no oppression, no terrorism. The argument about the left-wing character of terrorism is no longer frequently heard, but the belief in a fatal link between poverty and violence has persisted. Whenever a major terrorist attack has taken place, one has heard appeals from high and low to provide credits and loans, to deal at long last with the deeper, true causes of terrorism, the roots rather than the symptoms and outward manifestations. And these roots are believed to be poverty, unemployment, backwardness, and inequality.

It is not too difficult to examine whether there is such a correlation between poverty and terrorism, and all the investigations have shown that this is not the case. The experts have maintained for a long time that poverty does not cause terrorism and prosperity does not cure it. In the world’s 50 poorest countries there is little or no terrorism. A study by scholars Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova reached the conclusion that the terrorists are not poor people and do not come from poor societies. A Harvard economist has shown that economic growth is closely related to a society’s ability to manage conflicts. More recently, a study of India has demonstrated that terrorism in the subcontinent has occurred in the most prosperous (Punjab) and most egalitarian (Kashmir, with a poverty ratio of 3.5 compared with the national average of 26 percent) regions and that, on the other hand, the poorest regions such as North Bihar have been free of terrorism. In the Arab countries (such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also in North Africa), the terrorists originated not in the poorest and most neglected districts but hailed from places with concentrations of radical preachers. The backwardness, if any, was intellectual and cultural — not economic and social.

These findings, however, have had little impact on public opinion (or on many politicians), and it is not difficult to see why. There is the general feeling that poverty and backwardness with all their concomitants are bad — and that there is an urgent need to do much more about these problems. Hence the inclination to couple the two issues and the belief that if the (comparatively) wealthy Western nations would contribute much more to the development and welfare of the less fortunate, in cooperation with their governments, this would be in a long-term perspective the best, perhaps the only, effective way to solve the terrorist problem.

Reducing poverty in the Third World is a moral as well as a political and economic imperative, but to expect from it a decisive change in the foreseeable future as far as terrorism is concerned is unrealistic, to say the least. It ignores both the causes of backwardness and poverty and the motives for terrorism.

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Notes on the gay "marriage" debate

SDG here with some (lengthy) excerpts from a recent correspondence on gay “marriage.”

Q. Gay marriage is one area where I, as a non-Catholic, would begin to wonder if Catholic politicians who were supposed to represent me were actually trying to impose their religious hierarchs’ beliefs on me and my fellow citizens instead. The state must NOT take sides in religious disputes of this sort.

A. Religion is not the point. From a civil point of view, this is a socio-anthropological issue. To describe marriage as the union of man and woman as a “sectarian” issue or “religious dispute” is as nonsensical as defining sex or pregnancy as patriarchal inventions.

Marriage, i.e., the union of man and woman, is a fundamental cornerstone of human society as such, the common heritage of every society, every culture, every civilization. No religion invented marriage; religions, like states, merely regulate it. The universal recognition of this institution across cultural, social, community, and religious borders strongly indicates that the marriage of man and woman is irreducibly rooted in human nature and in the interest of the state and the common good.

Q. How? How is this institution “rooted in human nature and in the interest of the state and the common good”?

A. Because the union of man and woman tends to produce, and indeed is ordered toward producing, offspring; and human offspring require a high level of nurture for a long period of time; and a stable household with father and mother provides for that need better than other arrangements. Children raised in this way tend on average to be better cared for, and thus tend to be physically and emotionally healthier, more productive, and better educated than children raised in other ways, and less likely to become dependents of the state, or delinquents and criminals, etc.

Society thus has, and has always had, a vested interest in supporting the stable union of man and woman in a way that it does not have, and has never had, a vested interest in other domestic arrangements. And that is what marriage as a basic human social phonemonon IS, and has always been. That is what the word refers to.

Q. Would you be equally opposed to a politician who advocated “civil unions” for same-sex and opposite-sex couples, with all the same benefits and responsibilities that presently come with “marriage”? Or are you merely haggling over who gets to own and define a single word?

The word IS of great importance, as indicated by the refusal of determined gay activists themselves to settle for a separate-but-equal civil-union arrangement.

Having said that, the legal benefits and responsibilities of marriage are predicated on the historical socio-anthropological basis for marriage as a civil institution, relating to the procreation and adequate nurturing and rearing of children.

Same-sex unions not being ordered toward this end, I would say that society has no stake in supporting the stability of such arrangements, and would be opposed to any privileging of same-sex living arrangements that happen to be conjugal over other living arrangements that happen not to be conjugal, such as two siblings of same or mixed gender living together, a parent and child, platonic roommates, etc.

Q. Ah, but gay couples rear children, too. Why would we NOT encourage the stability of THOSE couples, too?

A. By the same token, there might be a child being raised within the context of any of the other domestic arrangements I mentioned. And certainly we aren’t going to stipulate the ACTUAL presence or absence of a child as the basis for whether or not to grant marital privileges and rights. So I see no conceivable reason (pun intended) to privilege gay couples above other domestic arrangements.

Q. People marry for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with children, and they often marry in circumstances where the procreation of children is impossible (e.g. where one partner is sterilized, where the female partner has already experienced menopause, etc.).

A. True, but the larger point is that if the union of man and woman were not where babies come from, and if babies didn’t require such intensive nurture for such a long period of time, marriage would not exist, either as a socio-anthropological category or as a religious institution.

In specific cases there may for one reason or another be no actual possibility of offspring, or very little possibility of offspring, or no intention of producing offspring, etc., but it is not society’s job to make such distinctions or to inquire into the likelihood, ability, and interest of this man and this woman in reproduction.

This is completely different from the case of two individuals of the same sex, which is NOT where babies come from, is not in any way ordered toward engendering and nurturing them.

Q. In what way will having two gay men down the street who are married undermine your marriage or your children growing up to get decent jobs and pay taxes?

A. For one thing, because society supports marriage as an investment, with a cost. By privileging married couples in certain legal and financial ways in order to support their stable union and potentially benefit any offspring that may result, society makes an investment in us as a couple on the understanding that we are participating in an institution that exists for the good of society, through the engendering and long-term nurture of children.

By definition, two gay men down the street cannot participate in the reality of that institution. However, it is true that society can privilege them in the same way as it does us.

This benefit to them, though, will come at an additional cost to society, and by substantially expanding the pool of living arrangements considered as “marriage,” society will have fewer resources to benefit each family individually.

Secondly, “marriages” in the gay community, because they are by definition not ordered toward the engendering and long-term nurture of children, will never offer society the same benefits and return on the social investment as true marriages of men and women.

Sociologically, too, civil acceptance of gay unions probably has deleterious consequences for marriage and family. Legal recognition of gay “marriage” further erodes the connection between marriage and child-rearing, thus creating less impetus for heterosexual couples to marry simply because they want to live together and possibly to procreate. This will lead to children being raised by couples who never bothered to marry, which will lead to more separations and more harm to the children.

Notes on the gay “marriage” debate

SDG here with some (lengthy) excerpts from a recent correspondence on gay “marriage.”

Q. Gay marriage is one area where I, as a non-Catholic, would begin to wonder if Catholic politicians who were supposed to represent me were actually trying to impose their religious hierarchs’ beliefs on me and my fellow citizens instead. The state must NOT take sides in religious disputes of this sort.

A. Religion is not the point. From a civil point of view, this is a socio-anthropological issue. To describe marriage as the union of man and woman as a “sectarian” issue or “religious dispute” is as nonsensical as defining sex or pregnancy as patriarchal inventions.

Marriage, i.e., the union of man and woman, is a fundamental cornerstone of human society as such, the common heritage of every society, every culture, every civilization. No religion invented marriage; religions, like states, merely regulate it. The universal recognition of this institution across cultural, social, community, and religious borders strongly indicates that the marriage of man and woman is irreducibly rooted in human nature and in the interest of the state and the common good.

Q. How? How is this institution “rooted in human nature and in the interest of the state and the common good”?

A. Because the union of man and woman tends to produce, and indeed is ordered toward producing, offspring; and human offspring require a high level of nurture for a long period of time; and a stable household with father and mother provides for that need better than other arrangements. Children raised in this way tend on average to be better cared for, and thus tend to be physically and emotionally healthier, more productive, and better educated than children raised in other ways, and less likely to become dependents of the state, or delinquents and criminals, etc.

Society thus has, and has always had, a vested interest in supporting the stable union of man and woman in a way that it does not have, and has never had, a vested interest in other domestic arrangements. And that is what marriage as a basic human social phonemonon IS, and has always been. That is what the word refers to.

Q. Would you be equally opposed to a politician who advocated “civil unions” for same-sex and opposite-sex couples, with all the same benefits and responsibilities that presently come with “marriage”? Or are you merely haggling over who gets to own and define a single word?

The word IS of great importance, as indicated by the refusal of determined gay activists themselves to settle for a separate-but-equal civil-union arrangement.

Having said that, the legal benefits and responsibilities of marriage are predicated on the historical socio-anthropological basis for marriage as a civil institution, relating to the procreation and adequate nurturing and rearing of children.

Same-sex unions not being ordered toward this end, I would say that society has no stake in supporting the stability of such arrangements, and would be opposed to any privileging of same-sex living arrangements that happen to be conjugal over other living arrangements that happen not to be conjugal, such as two siblings of same or mixed gender living together, a parent and child, platonic roommates, etc.

Q. Ah, but gay couples rear children, too. Why would we NOT encourage the stability of THOSE couples, too?

A. By the same token, there might be a child being raised within the context of any of the other domestic arrangements I mentioned. And certainly we aren’t going to stipulate the ACTUAL presence or absence of a child as the basis for whether or not to grant marital privileges and rights. So I see no conceivable reason (pun intended) to privilege gay couples above other domestic arrangements.

Q. People marry for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with children, and they often marry in circumstances where the procreation of children is impossible (e.g. where one partner is sterilized, where the female partner has already experienced menopause, etc.).

A. True, but the larger point is that if the union of man and woman were not where babies come from, and if babies didn’t require such intensive nurture for such a long period of time, marriage would not exist, either as a socio-anthropological category or as a religious institution.

In specific cases there may for one reason or another be no actual possibility of offspring, or very little possibility of offspring, or no intention of producing offspring, etc., but it is not society’s job to make such distinctions or to inquire into the likelihood, ability, and interest of this man and this woman in reproduction.

This is completely different from the case of two individuals of the same sex, which is NOT where babies come from, is not in any way ordered toward engendering and nurturing them.

Q. In what way will having two gay men down the street who are married undermine your marriage or your children growing up to get decent jobs and pay taxes?

A. For one thing, because society supports marriage as an investment, with a cost. By privileging married couples in certain legal and financial ways in order to support their stable union and potentially benefit any offspring that may result, society makes an investment in us as a couple on the understanding that we are participating in an institution that exists for the good of society, through the engendering and long-term nurture of children.

By definition, two gay men down the street cannot participate in the reality of that institution. However, it is true that society can privilege them in the same way as it does us.

This benefit to them, though, will come at an additional cost to society, and by substantially expanding the pool of living arrangements considered as “marriage,” society will have fewer resources to benefit each family individually.

Secondly, “marriages” in the gay community, because they are by definition not ordered toward the engendering and long-term nurture of children, will never offer society the same benefits and return on the social investment as true marriages of men and women.

Sociologically, too, civil acceptance of gay unions probably has deleterious consequences for marriage and family. Legal recognition of gay “marriage” further erodes the connection between marriage and child-rearing, thus creating less impetus for heterosexual couples to marry simply because they want to live together and possibly to procreate. This will lead to children being raised by couples who never bothered to marry, which will lead to more separations and more harm to the children.

Death of the Welfare State?

In 1991 Pope John Paul II wrote the encylical Centissimus Annus, in which he dealt with economic and workers’ rights themes following the collapse of Soviet Communism and the seeming triumph of capitalism as an economic system. While noting that capitalism unrestrained by moral values was a Bad Thing, he nevertheless notes its practical success. He went on to say this regarding the kind of welfare states that exist in much of the developed world, and particularly in Europe:

In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called “Welfare State”. This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the “Social Assistance State”. Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need [Centissimus Annus 48].

Unfortuantely, with the exception of Britain, Europe has been slow to wean itself away from welfare state ideology. Fortunately, there are now signs that Europeans are beginning to realize that the kin of welfare state utopia they hoped to build is unsustainable and must be abandoned.

This blog entry contains some fascinating analysis.

Where was the press?

SDG here. As details about the McGreevey scandal continue to emerge, it becomes abundantly obvious that much more is and has been at stake than one man’s family, administration, or notions of his sexual identity.

The emerging picture is one of significant institutional corruption in the Trenton Democratic machine — and astonishing complicity from the press, self-appointed guardians of the public’s “right to know,” which failed to press the questions, pursue the issues, make public what was, so we are now being told over and over, widely known.

In fact, it now seems “everybody” knew about McGreevey’s extramarital romantic interest — that is, everybody who is anybody, though not necessarily anybody who is nobody.

“Everybody” knew that the New Jersey Homeland Security Adviser was a non-U.S. citizen with no evident qualifications for his post other than McGreevey’s personal interest in him — an arrangement that has been likened to President Clinton putting Monica Lewinsky in charge of the CIA. “Everybody” knew, though of course I never heard.

While it is not yet clear whether “everybody” knew or knows if the relationship was “consensual,” as McGreevey claims, or if as Golan Cipel claims McGreevey used his authority to intimidate and harass him as a subordinate. (On the surface, Cipel’s claim seems problematic: After all, Cipel only got the job in the first place because of McGreevey’s interest. At least Monica Lewinsky was actually qualified to be an intern.)

I now read on Drudge that reporters questioned McGreevey on several occasions whether he was gay and whether he was having an affair with Golan Cipel — questions he dismissed as “ridiculous.” Apparently, the reporters let him get away with that dismissive answer. No reporting McGreevey’s denials, no reporting on the information that led them to ask the questions in the first place. No stories printed, no items broadcast.

Apparently, the possibility that New Jersey taxpayers were bankrolling the governor’s sexual identity experimentation — and that the security of the state was being looked after by a poet and former lieutenant in the Israeli Navy with no security experience — was not deemed worth reporting. Eventually Cipel’s lack of qualifications did become an issue — but only because the FBI cited his problematic status as the basis for their refusal to share information with him.

The American press may be biased, but it’s supposed to love a good scandal, and its distinct lack of interest in pursuing this one is disheartening, to say the least. (I heard one reporter in an interview comment that he along with other members of the press had been slow to tackle the story for fear of accusations of homophobia.) And of course the Democratic machine in Trenton had more than suspicions. They had to know.

So, once again, New Jersey, the home of the Sopranos and Frank Torricelli, makes headlines for its culture of corruption.

It would have been nice if someone in a position to let us know before now had done something about it.

The Death Of The West Revisited

Here’s the story: Westerners aren’t replacing themselves poplation-wise because they’re having too few children. Meanwhile, Muslims are experiencing unrestrained population growth. Soon the West will have effectively depopulated itself (at least until there aren’t any folks left except high-birthrate groups like highly conservative members of the Catholic, Evangelical, and Mormon communities, who will launch the next phrase of Western civilization), and Muslims will be encroaching everywhere, leading to a global degeneration to third world status, exacerbated by Muslim fanatacism.

Right?

Well, not exactly.

The dire predictions of the death of the West may be a little premature.

Oh sure, some places–especially Europe–are depopulating themselves right on schedule. So is Japan.

But a new population study suggests the following items:

1) America isn’t radically depopulating itself. Americans are the exception among Westerners and, although their birthrate isn’t quite break even, it almost is, so we’re more or less holding our own.

2) The Muslim world isn’t having a sustainable population explosion. In fact, the urge to have fewer children is hitting the Muslim world hard, and some Muslim countries (Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey) are now sub-replacement level countries when it comes to birth. As modernization spreads in the Muslim world, birthrates fall there, too.

3) The death rate is going up in many places, and lifespans are shrinking. This is particularly true in Africa, where widespread HIV infection is leading to plummeting lifespans. It is also true in other areas, where the problem may not be AIDS. In Russia, for example, the average lifespan has shrunk by four years due to incresed cardiovascular disease and accidents, both of which are precipitated by increased alcohol abuse.

4) This one (like the last one) isn’t really a surprise, but there are many Asian countries where there are now sharp, unnatural imbalances between the number of males and females. The normal birthrate is about 104-105 males per 100 female babies, but in some places the ratio has gone up to 130:100. These imbalances are caused by sex-selection (i.e., aborting female babies) in cultures that have a strong preference for sons and now have ultrasound technologies that can detect the sex of the child before birth. The imbalances have appeared, as one would expect, in China (where couples are limited to having one child per couple), but also in other places, such as India. This will cause a huge problem in 20 years (or less), when the young men want to get married and there aren’t enough women their age.

So. An interesting time ahead, but one not quite so dire as some have forecast.

NJ Governor McGreevey resigns in scandal

SDG here. My state has just lost its governor.

While Jim McGreevey supported some extremely evil policies, including NJ’s precedent-setting support for baby-killing fetal stem cell research, and while ordinarily I would be elated to see him go, the sordid circumstances behind his resignation and the domestic havoc it will entail for his wife and two daughters are so appalling that I can only express my sorrow at the tragedy he has made of his life.

I very briefly met McGreevey once, on Good Friday a couple of years ago, at the cathedral of my diocese, the Archdiocese of Newark. We were sitting in the second pew, and shortly after the liturgy began McGreevey was quietly ushered into the first pew, right in front of us.

Needless to say, it was a bit distracting to have my state’s top pro-death politician sitting in front of me on Good Friday in my diocese’s cathedral, although I was fairly confident that Archbishop Myers’ office would have made it clear to him that he would not be permitted to receive communion (this was before Archbishop Myers’ pastoral letter on pro-abortion politicians not receiving communion that some of you will remember Jimmy blogging at the time), and indeed that turned out to be the case.

While I was standing there, I gave a fair bit of thought to what I would say to McGreevey if I had the opportunity. I felt that a pro-death candidate in the cathedral of this archdiocese on this day should be under no illusions that he was among people who agreed with his policies, that he should not think he would not be confronted. But whatever I said, I knew it would have to be short, so that he couldn’t interrupt me or walk away, and I wanted it to have a prophetic force that might stay with him for awhile and perhaps bother him a bit from time to time.

So, after the liturgy ended, when he turned and held out his hand to shake mine, I leaned toward him and he inclined his ear to hear what I had to say. And I said, very quietly and calmly, “The Lord avenges the blood of the innocent.”

And he very calmly leaned back, looked at me, and said quietly, “Thank you.” A perfect political response, absolutely meaningless.

Much later, I learned that even though I only whispered the comment in his ear, word of the event somehow got back to someone in the archdiocese, and I later heard from Archbishop Myers himself that he was glad to hear that someone had said something to the governor that, in his words, he hoped might be an occasion of grace. (Archbishop Myers is the greatest.)

I have no idea if McGreevey ever again thought about what I said to him. And now, as his life dissolves, I find that I have nothing more to say.

the real McCoy?

SDG here. (I see there’s been some discussion about differentiating my posts from Jimmy’s; I thought of this yesterday and decided to begin my posts identifying myself.)

In my first post below I mentioned that I don’t share Jimmy’s active interest in language, but here’s a post about the one language I really do have a passion for: English.

I remember as a boy hearing the expression “K.O.” (or “kayo”) for the first time and not knowing what it meant. My mother had said something about plans being “kayoed” by some circumstance, and when I asked her about it she could tell me what the term meant but not what it stood for, what the origin was.

Turning the expression over in my mind a few times, I came to a crashingly obvious hypothesis: “Maybe it’s ‘O.K.’ backwards,” I suggested.

Startled by this insight, my mother felt sure that I was right — until my father appeared and we put the matter to him, and were informed that “K.O.” stands for “knock-out,” as in boxing. My mother was a bit disappointed that my plausible guess had been wrong, but I wasn’t finished yet: Perhaps “okay” was “K.O.” backwards? However, both my parents immediately intuited that this couldn’t possibly be right, even though neither was sure what “O.K.” did stand for.

As it turns out, though, no one else is really totally sure what “O.K.” stands for either. Many dictionaries give “Oll Korrect,” a Germanic expression associated with President Andrew Johnson, as the etymology, but this derivation is uncertain. Other possible eytmologies include “Old Kinderhook” (a nickname of President Martin van Buren), “Aux quais” (a mark on bales of cotton in Mississippi river ports), and “0 Killed” (a negative nightly death toll report in WWI).

There are also many other common expressions in English the actual origins of which are as murky as “okay,” but that have very plausible explanations — as plausible my idea about “kayo” seemed to my mother and me — that are widely believed by many people, but are either actually wrong or else at least only possible, not certain.

For example, many people are certain they know the origin of the phrase “the whole nine yards.” It refers to nine cubic yards of concrete carried by concrete trucks. Or it refers to nine square yards of material used to make a high-quality suit (thus also the phrase “dressed to the nines”). Or it is related to some aspect of WW2 aircraft, or to sailing-ship yardarms rather than yards.

The fact is, no one knows exactly where “the whole nine yards” comes from. Other familiar phrases with similarly uncertain origins include “the real McCoy,” “posh,” and “scot free.”

To read about various proposed or popular explanations for these terms — as well as accepted derivations of phrases such as “high on the hog,” “ringing the changes,” and “willy-nilly” — visit this website!