On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 09:16:02 -0700 (PDT), Gautam Mukunda wrote > My worry is that when you "speak to the values [you] > hold" you're just asserting something. Since you root > all of these in religion,
I root all my values in religion? On this list? Does it really seem that way from out there? > you're asserting the > unprovable and unfalsifiable. You may be right or > wrong, but it's essentially impossible to debate. What sort of values *are* provable or falsifiable? I can't prove that it is right to feed hungry people and make health care available to all of our citizens, eventually to all people, but those are values-based statements, I think. Is the "just war" principle provable? > Nick > thinks God tells him what to do in Iraq and that since > I disagree with him, I'm disagreeing with God. Maybe > that's not what you mean to say, but it's certainly > what you _seem_ to say. Sounds like exactly what a lot of people say they're hearing from the White House. As for criticism, I don't object to helpful criticism. But I don't think that's the spirit of most criticism from the left these days, or more generally, of most of the criticism in mass media these days. And those who offer nothing but criticism, as I'm wont to do, are failing to offer alternate vision, which makes their criticism useless. For example, it seems useless to me to say, "Bring the troops home now," without a vision for how to achieve peace in Iraq. It seems useless to insist on a pacifist response to terrorism without a vision of how to reduce or eliminate it in non-violent ways. I don't want to play the game of defining myself by what I'm against. > In Wallis's case, it seems to me that all he's really > saying is "God agrees with me". Sorry, but that is utterly the opposite of what he has written -- that's the very sort of attitude he rejects. And so do I. Have you read anything he's written? > - and he pairs that > with a pathetic anti-Americanism Again, that's completely wrong. He addresses that very issue quite clearly. It is not anti-American to disagree. > that goes down fine > on the left, but that the other ~90% of the American > population Cite? > Preening seems like a big part of what > he does. How much do you actually know about Jim Wallis? I ask because that is so far off the mark, from my perspective. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
