Sunday night I watched this televised debate between John Kerry and John O'Neill from 1971! (Not the John O'Neil of recent FBI or CIA leadership resignation fame) They were on this TV talk show with some dude named Dick Cavett or something like that, and they were talking about the US's role in Vietnam at the end of the war and how we should go about withdrawing ourselves from the conflict. But John O'Neill, who I'm sure could have been the most annoying and successful parliamentary debater of all time (had he been born 25 years later) pretty much only wanted to talk about Kerry's implication that all Vietnam vets had commited war crimes.
O'Neill was 25 at this point (apparently he is now a Houston lawyer) and had recently come back from 18 months of service in Vietnam. He was eloquent, well prepared, and kept the points and questions coming at a rapid-fire pace. His hair was cut short, parted, and was shellacked against his head with some sort of hair gel. He looked like he'd walked straight out of an independent Baptist church and into the Dick Cavett Show.
Kerry was 27 at the time and had already been to Vietnam for (I think) a four month stint. At the time of this debate, I believe he was preparing to run for senate or congress for Massachusetts. His hair was thick, wavy, and luxurious, wrapping around his head like a shiny helmet. He looked very strange to my 21st century eyes. He was less well prepared than O'Neill, but he spoke in a more contemplative, extemporaneous manner, and probably presented himself better than O'Neill. Unfortunately, for Kerry, O'Neill was very well prepared.
At the end of the debate, I think Kerry may have had the better position on what to do in Vietnam, but I think he was kind of disingenuous--I got the feeling that he held his position mainly to boost his political career. O'Neill, while a little fundy to my tastes (with a really weird accent), was obviously unalloyed with personal power plays.
This was on C-Span from like 12:00am to 1:00am. It's worth watching, if only to see Kerry's hair.
This debate gave me a lot of food for thought that I hope to comment on later...
For the duration of my time at Covenant, the legend of Chris McCartney hung over the philosophy department like a slowly dissolving halo of glory. I didn't know who he was--apparently he had left before I had arrived--so everything I know about him I learned from the brief references made by professors in class, or by other philosophy students in passing. People said things like:
"McCartney was a polymath."
"McCartney mathematically proved that 1 = 0"
"McCartney diagnosed me as a Platonist before I knew what that was."
My first encounter with the mythic McCartney came before I went to Covenant. While researching the school online in early 2001, I stumbled across this website. Apparently designed by some zealous Covenant philosophy students circa 2000, the site yielded a paper written by McCartney and a lone photograph of the man himself.
As the legend goes, McCartney eventually left Covenant and made his exodus to graduate school at Fordham University. In recent years, he has re-established a link with Covenant via his blog, Credo Ut Intelligam.
Here's to you, Chris McCartney, the man whose intellectual shadow still looms over Covenant's philosophy department--even though you're 800 miles away.
Today the graduate admissions committee is supposed to meet at UMass, which means I'll be emailing the coolest grad coordinator I've communicated with yet this afternoon/Monday to see what I can find out about my application status. My hope is to make the waiting list, in which case I might get in if enough of the top picks go somewhere else.
I'm currently wait listed at UVa--I might know something determinate by the end of this month.
I've been accepted at U. of Florida and UGa, with a sweet financial aid package at UF. UF is looking good, mainly because they just hired Michael Jubien from UC Davis. Jubien's a fairly big-wig in the world of ontology/modality/metaphysics-type stuff, so I'm pumped about the prospects of studying with him.
Notre Dame slapped me down, as did UNC. There were 244 applicants to ND's philosophy grad program this year, for an entering class of 10, so that's some consolation. UNC sent me the Dear John letter within a couple weeks of applying, which means I was probably one of the preliminary, "cursory-glance-at-the-app-tells-us-all-we-need-to-know" cuts. One day, when I'm guest lecturing at UNC, I'm going to bring this up (heh, heh).
Rutgers remains impassive, ranked #1 in the country, spurning my phone calls and emails, and probably just doing whatever the hello they want.
Right now, Kenny G is playing in the cubical next to me. It's been a long time...
...but Orlando still sucks.
I've been saying Tracy's the best player in the NBA for three years now, but maybe he's just the best scorer in the NBA. I've also been saying he's 6'10'', despite his continued listing at 6'8". He may have been 6'8" his senior year in high school, but I'm pretty sure he's been taller than that for a while now. If anybody has anything to confirm or deny his listed height, I'd be interested.
Sphinx: "Paul--what is the most confusing thing in the world?"
Paul: "Politics."
Sphinx: "That's a pretty good guess...I'll let you have it"
I just don't understand politics. I see politics as the place where human values and interests vie with each other for acceptance and dominance over other values and interests. But what the issues are, and how they matter, tend to elude my grasp. Very few of the pivotal issues important in politics today mean anything to me. I am confident in my stance on a handful of issues, like that abortion is wrong, and that communist totalitarianism doesn't work, but the rest seem to me to be a matter of personal preference. I've been a conservative all my life, but issues like government spending, the invasion of Iraq, subsidized healthcare, etc. don't seem to have decisively compelling solutions.
For example: welfare. From my perspective, the positions seem to boil down to these--and I can't choose between them:
Conservative: "Everyone should be free to do as they please with their own money. Sure, there are poor, disadvantaged people that need our help, but
even so, the government shouldn't be the one to see that they are helped. After all, the government's just the middle man--if I give $100 to the poor family down the street, they have $100 to offset their poverty. But if Uncle Sam takes $100 from me to give to the poor family, he (at the very least) has to skim off some of it to pay his own workers, so the poor family ends up seeing only $60 or $70. To begin with, it's a financially unsound method.
"Most importantly, when we allow the government to distribute funds as they see fit, we give them an unacceptable level of power. Sure, it's seems hard to argue that giving money to poor people should be cause for concern, but who's to say that Uncle Sam will always be so altruistic? I don't have such a high view of human nature. You can't divorce the power of the government from the people who compose the government--and people are susceptible to corruption. If the government has the power to take our money and give it to the poor, then by the same token they have the power to take our money for other, less benevolent reasons. We've been spoiled by having a fairly munificent government for the last 225 years, but you'd be foolish not to realize that this has been an historical anomaly. Have you ever been to post-communist Russia, or eastern Europe? Have you seen what too much governmental authority can do to people, to entire nations of people? All individuality, all art, all personal joy for life was stripped away for two generations. Millions are left without hope for the future, and with a deep-seated mistrust for any kind of authority--even God's authority. They've been too deeply scarred and are left without tools or even a vision for rebuilding what's been destroyed. If you think that this future isn't possible for us also, then you're deliberately blind.
"The principle is, keep money and authority out of the hands of the government. They may seem philanthropic today, but tomorrow they'll be tyrants."
Liberal: "The people who live up on Lookout Mountain talk about the poor, and how it should be the responsibility of individuals to care for them--not the Federal government's. But then instead of actually doing anything for the poor, they come right back with justifications like 'the only way the poor can escape poverty is by getting jobs and getting out of their culture of poverty.' Conservatives want to remove the burden of caring for the poor from the government and take it themselves--or so they say. I don't have such a high view of human nature. I mean, the very reason the government seeks to help the poor is because the poor haven't been helped by the populace (or by the church). People say that we must keep power out of the hands of the government because they'll use it incorrectly when they become corrupt. It's sort of a first principle for conservatives. But they forget that the government--like themselves--is just people. We don't need to be involved in government or politics to become corrupt--we already are.
"The important point is this: conservatives forsake the poor because of their allegiance to a principle. The principle is basically that permitting government funded welfare (or any Federally direction of tax money) gives a dangerous level of power to the government, who then may use it for tyrrany in the future. But how does that hold up in the face of actual poverty? Would you defund millions of poor and dependent people and just hope that the benevolent populace will step in and pick up the tab? 'Well,' you might say, 'I'm helping them in the long run by insuring that they won't be screwed by an out-of-control government in the future.' Do you see what you're saying? You're choosing to mitigate against the possibility of future governmental tyrrany by excercising tyrrany against the real, live poor today. If you're a conservative on this issue, then you're improving odds on the future by letting people starve today. You've chosen a principle over the people."
See what I mean? How do you know what the right position is? Politics just confuses the heck out of me.
I'm just gonna tell you upfront: It's not a good idea to clean your monitor with spit.
I hope this isn't going to be a quick follow-up to LOTR--trying to strike while the griddle is hot.
I wonder if disappointment is avoidable. Some people have been upset by the textual infidelities in Peter Jackson's portrayal of the LOTR books. Since The Chronicles of Narnia are explicitly allegorical, I'm guessing that the movies' inevitable descrepancies from the books will be even more hotly protested. Especially by the Christian contingent.
Even so, I'm looking forward to it. The movies, that is.