today, my last name is "petty", and my first name is "mean-spirited"

[rone]

Poor, poor Karol:

"It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if [the movement to allow gay marriage in Europe] is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man," he writes.

I guess Karol doesn't want a new ideology of evil to impinge on the Catholic Church's old ideology of evil.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's top doctrinal official... said the Pope "was not trying to put the Holocaust and abortion on the same plane" but only warning that evil lurked everywhere, "even in liberal political systems."

GADZOOKS!  NOT LIBERAL POLITICAL SYSTEMS!  Will our children only be safe in a political system that resists change??

Comments

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

Completely off topic, this is the first time I've seen Adrian's name spelled out. Somehow in my head, I always spelled it "Baloo", like the Jungle Book bear. Can't you just see him singing "Bear Necessities"?

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

Ratzinger's one of the people that makes me ashamed be be born in Austria. But we seem to have quite a history of such lunatics: Metternich, Hitler...

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

Until the RCs, and the pope in particular, admit to and apologize and make recompense for their systematic coverups and putting pedophile priests in positions where they could victimize again and again, nothing these people say about "evil" can have any moral weight. They are the epitome of evil.

[vspope.livejournal.com]

It's not every day that I feel the need to say this, but:

Fuck the Pope.

Not that I couldn't find a _reason_ to say it on any given day...

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Will our children only be safe in a political system that resists change??

Well, yes, actually. Political systems should resist change. "Not resistant to change" is another way of saying "wildly unstable".

Any system that instantly and effortlessly adapts to accommodate Liberal Cause A can just as instantly and effortlessly adapt to accommodate Right Wing Cause B.

Perhaps you meant "prohibits change"?

[samantha2074.livejournal.com]

Ah, so Human Rights = Evil. Good to know.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yes, i especially appreciated that little dichotomic nugget.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

A government should be willing to change what needs to be changed and stick with what shouldn't need to be changed. This includes tearing down outdated laws and such, as well as not passing laws that are unenforceable, unconstitutional, etc.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I love a man who knows how to say "gadzooks."

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

Some kinds of change are necessary, especially if you're referring to the U.S. government. It changes all the time, for good reason. How can you say a system that replaces leaders every 2, 4, or 6 years (depending on office) doesn't embrace change? However, there are facets of the U.S. government that were never intended to change. The Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the general layout of the three branches, that kind of thing. And no one has been asking for an instant, effortless change. It's waaaay too late to even try and call the gay marriage issue "instant" or "effortless".

That said, I am not really sure why the Pope's opinion on gay marriage has anything to do with any government's laws on the same. Der Popenmeister should not have any influence on any government. Religious unions are not the same as civil/government unions. Unless you answer to the Pope, why would anyone care what he thinks?

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Of course. And one of the ways a government figures out what needs to be changed is to see what changes have sufficient momentum to overcome its resistance to needless change.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Ha. The only way to figure out what needed to be changed is to take a look to see what managed to change! You are ready to run for office.

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Well, no, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution should change, and can be changed, when they need it; the Bill of Rights, after all, was simply the first set of changes to a Constitution that needed changing right from the start.

I did not call the gay marriage issue "instant" or "effortless", and I never would. What I said was, if the system permitted an instant and effortless change to accommodate gay marriage, that same malleability would be a two-edged sword. (Give us gay marriage today, and we might find we have a state-sponsored Christian church tomorrow: the possibility of easy change one way implies the possibility of easy change the other way.) If anything, I sometimes suspect the US is closer to having that defect than the defect of being too hidebound. The same electorate that put Clinton into office, twice, turned around and elected Dubya, twice.

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Rone, you're ready to run. Only in Washington rhetoric does "one of the way" equate to "the only way".

[jwgh]

Little-known fact: I have an uncle who works as a lobbyist for the Vatican in Washington, D.C.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

OK, fair cop. Still, "one of the ways to figure out what needed to be changed is to take a look to see what managed to change" is still pretty damn comical.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

This still doesn't address the FUD in Ratzinger's "liberal political systems" warning. What exactly did he mean by that?

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Christ, Rone. You have a brain. Use it.

For one thing, a citizen is not a political system How do you or I decide what needs to be changed? We make value judgments. We weigh our ideals against our pragmatism, we see what offends us most, we contemplate what evils will accompany what good intentions, and then we act in such a way as to bring about the changes we desire.

A political system cannot make value judgments; a government is a thing, not a person, and has no capability of its own to make value judgments. A political system that contains no mechanism to resist change fluctuates wildly. Clinton gets elected and we have gays in the military, gay marriage, socialized medicine, hefty taxes on the wealthy, yadda yadda yadda. Four years later Dubya gets elected and we have state-sponsored Christianity, detention camps for gays, taxes on the wealthy eliminated, yadda yadda yadda. Or we would if the system did not resist change.

Instead, the system makes change difficult, and the changes that happen are the ones that have enough momentum behind them to overcome that resistance. You don't get what you wanted as fast as you wanted it, but neither do you get screwed as fast as Dubya wants you to get screwed.

Now what, really, is so comical about that?

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

The charitable answer is, he meant, "Evil lurks everywhere, even in political systems, even in the best political systems, namely, liberal ones."

The uncharitable answer is, he meant, "Evil lurks everywhere, even in places some people think are good, but are really cesspits of evil, like liberal political systems."

I would not put money on the charitable answer.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

You said, verbatim, "And one of the ways a government figures out what needs to be changed is to see what changes have sufficient momentum to overcome its resistance to needless change."

You're basically saying that the government is deciding which stones to push downhill based on which ones are already rolling. If the momentum is already there, then the government is essentially doing nothing useful; it exists as a purely bureaucratic gate, a massive and wasteful rubber-stamper. OK, so that, effectively, is what it is. But it damn well shouldn't be. The somewhat popular view of government as effective through self-obstructionism is something that even on my pessimist days i do not care to consider; the idea that it's better for government officials to spend their days mud-wrestling with each other in lieu of passing law assumes the worst from our government. And it should NOT be that way, even if we get that impression all the time (and with good cause). If that is what government has become, it must be removed and replaced with something better.

Fuck the Pope?

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

I just today said that late Russian Communism wasn't any more dictatorial than the Catholic Church. I may owe late Russian Communism an apology.

The Pope is against sexual Fucking. I suspect though that you were thinking of the metaphorical kind and without affection or desire.

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on. This is basic middle school social studies stuff. I am astonished you're having so much trouble with it.

Perhaps the problem is the word "government", which I used as more or less a synonym for "political system" and you seem to be interpreting as a synonym for "politicians". (Mis)Interpreted that way, I can see how you'd react negatively.

So let me give you the classic concrete example. Open up your copy of the US Constitution and see what it says about amendment. Does it say, "This Constitution shall be amended whenever a good idea comes along, but may not be amended by a bad idea"? No; nor does it say, "Amendments shall be passed whenever there is a moral imperative to make changes, and may not be passed whenever there is a moral imperative not to change". Political systems -- as opposed to people who live in and/or implement those systems -- know nothing of "good idea" or "moral imperative".

Instead, the Constitution says, "You can amend me any damn way you want, any time you want, as long as you jump through some hoops. First you have to get both houses of Congress to approve. By a two thirds vote. And then you have to get three quarters of the state legislatures to sign on. If you can pull that off, you probably have a worthwhile idea on your hands, so consider it implemented."

There you have it: a political system (a system of government) that resists change, because it cannot in itself evaluate change directly. You and I filter ideas through value judgments. (Well, that's the theory. In the real world, Sheer Greed, The Pastor Said So, and Because Everyone Else Thinks So are depressingly common filters.) Our political system filters ideas by sending them on a quest. It puts up barriers -- two thirds vote of Congress, three quarters of the state legislatures -- and the ideas that have enough support behind them to get past those barriers get implemented.

That's all I meant. Have I made myself a lot more clear than I evidently did previously?

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, don't let the fact that I chose the constitutional amendment process as an illustration of a more general principle lead you into any inference that I believe a constitutional amendment regarding gay marriage is necessary or desireable. I don't, as it happens. I was talking above about political processes, not about gay marriage.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yes, that much has been understood.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

This is basic middle school social studies stuff.

Well, leaving aside the fact that i wasn't raised in this country... But never mind that. I fully grasp how constitutional amendments work. But the merit of a political system such as ours that you claim resists change by design falls flat when we have people bent on using it to further their petty and narrow moralism, such as banning gay marriage and flag desecration. That these things are not immediately laughed at and dismissed is worrisome.

More so, to return to your "the same electorate that elected Clinton for eight years also voted for eight years of Dumbya" example, the same Congress and states that passed Prohibition also voted for its repeal. Is this only an exception, or is it a notorious symptom that the system that you say discourages change is still as much a victim of public whim as any other part of our republican democracy?

[doctroid.livejournal.com]

But the merit of a political system such as ours that you claim resists change by design falls flat when we have people bent on using it to further their petty and narrow moralism, such as banning gay marriage and flag desecration.

Such people cannot be blamed on the political system's resistance to change; indeed, the political system's resistance to change is one thing that keeps such people from doing more damage than they do.

Prohibition is an illustration that the system's filter against bad ideas is imperfect. Its repeal is an illustration that, contrary to all appearances, the body politic is capable of recognizing its own mistakes once in a while.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I don't see it that way. The fact that the system allowed such a clearly idiotic idea to become canon, only to be quickly reversed later, speaks that if the goal is to resist change, it didn't happen. However, to quickly contradict myself, the next time something harebrained passes as an amendment, i am less hopeful that it will be as easily reversed.

[paracelsvs.livejournal.com]

This is what the common abbrevation "FTP" is short for, actually.