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This article is a very interesting attempt to associate the GOP with the old Confederacy.
What was to me the most interesting pair of paragraphs were:
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For the pragmatic and progressive America that grew out of secularized higher education, truth has a provisional, this-worldly orientation. It’s more evolutionary than eternal in character—a fluid body of knowledge and interpretation, subject to revision and expansion.
For the Confederacy that now dominates the GOP, truth is solid and fixed and divinely embedded in the structure of the universe. Humanity’s responsibility is to accept and believe the truth rather than test ideas against actual experience. The Confederacy’s obsession with “originalist” interpretations of the Constitution—a twin of biblical literalism—is the classic example: truth must be eternal, universal.
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I find this very interesting but I have to dwell on it a bit before I comment on it beyond asking: Is searching for truth in the sense of the scientific enterprise the same kind of endeavor as interpreting a legal document such as the Constitution? I think not.
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13 hours ago
Well, that is an article of very heavy duty proportions. Where to start. Perhaps this will get some discussion started.
ReplyDelete1. I like the 2 paragraphs that YA referenced and they would be good fodder for a philosophical discussion of what “truth” is, particularly after about 3 beers.
2. Like Mr. Anderson, I too get a little uneasy when politicians conflate religion and policy.
3. Regarding the division of thought in America - Everything Mr. Anderson said about the right he could, using the same rationale, say about the left.
4. While I lean strongly toward secular thought and institutions I don’t think all secular thoughts and institutions are necessarily better because they are secular.
5. To use the concept of “secession” as a bridge to attach the label “Confederacy” to those on the right is disingenuous in the extreme.