Ladies and gentleman there is one public occurrence that Public Occurrences has neglected even to mention in I don't know how long: Syria. It must be a year since the word has been mentioned here. You know better than I what is going on: hundreds perhaps over 1,000 have been murdered, most recently yesterday and today, by government attacks on civilian populations using chemical and nerve agents. You have seen the many videos of the victims of these attacks, which the BBC describes as "shocking," "disturbing," "horrific." That's good enough for me, I will not watch them. The consensus, it appears to be overwhelming, is that there was previous proof of government use of unconventional wmd and the recent developments are beyond any reasonable doubt.
United States Senator John McCain has labeled Obama's hesitancy to call a chemical attack a chemical attack in Syria as of a piece with Obama's pusillanimity to call a coup a coup in Egypt. My inclination is to agree with McCain on Obama. He says Obama drew a "red line" at Syrian use of chemical wmd and now he won't call a red line a red line. Obama has no credibility in the Middle East generally, says McCain. I agree with that.
If I recall, the last time I opined on Syria was to urge that the US stay out. That is my general inclination on US involvement most everyplace in the world. That's my general inclination with Syria. To the Obamas, where the only homegrown American philosophy, pragmatism, is doctrine, there is no US national interest at stake in Syria. The Obamas do not know what they are talking about when they invoke the pragmatism of William James, John Dewey, Wendell Holmes and Richard Rorty. That pragmatism did not counsel inaction, paralysis by analysis, it urged a questioning of action that would lead to loss of life for the principal of the thing, for "causes." Holmes came to question the American Civil War for godssake on the basis that hundreds of thousands of American dead and wounded were not justified by the causes of abolition and the forced re-Union of the anti-bellum nation. That is to harbor serious misgivings for causes. Captain Holmes himself was thrice wounded in the Civil War. Richard Rorty got his tit in a ringer when a century later he seemed to excuse slavery as a pragmatic response to the times, not as inherently immoral then, now and for all time. Rorty had to beat a hasty retreat on that one. There is then in the Obamas hesitancy to the Syrian atrocities a distinct whiff of this flaw of amorality or relativistic morality in true American philosophical pragmatism for as Louis Menand wrote pragmatism explains everything except what a man should die for.
In my neglect of this subject, even with my belief that the Obamas, like the pragmatists, do not sufficiently believe in moral absolutes I do not believe sufficiently that American military intervention is pragmatic. Like a good pragmatist however I am open to opposing views and may change my mind.
United States Senator John McCain has labeled Obama's hesitancy to call a chemical attack a chemical attack in Syria as of a piece with Obama's pusillanimity to call a coup a coup in Egypt. My inclination is to agree with McCain on Obama. He says Obama drew a "red line" at Syrian use of chemical wmd and now he won't call a red line a red line. Obama has no credibility in the Middle East generally, says McCain. I agree with that.
If I recall, the last time I opined on Syria was to urge that the US stay out. That is my general inclination on US involvement most everyplace in the world. That's my general inclination with Syria. To the Obamas, where the only homegrown American philosophy, pragmatism, is doctrine, there is no US national interest at stake in Syria. The Obamas do not know what they are talking about when they invoke the pragmatism of William James, John Dewey, Wendell Holmes and Richard Rorty. That pragmatism did not counsel inaction, paralysis by analysis, it urged a questioning of action that would lead to loss of life for the principal of the thing, for "causes." Holmes came to question the American Civil War for godssake on the basis that hundreds of thousands of American dead and wounded were not justified by the causes of abolition and the forced re-Union of the anti-bellum nation. That is to harbor serious misgivings for causes. Captain Holmes himself was thrice wounded in the Civil War. Richard Rorty got his tit in a ringer when a century later he seemed to excuse slavery as a pragmatic response to the times, not as inherently immoral then, now and for all time. Rorty had to beat a hasty retreat on that one. There is then in the Obamas hesitancy to the Syrian atrocities a distinct whiff of this flaw of amorality or relativistic morality in true American philosophical pragmatism for as Louis Menand wrote pragmatism explains everything except what a man should die for.
In my neglect of this subject, even with my belief that the Obamas, like the pragmatists, do not sufficiently believe in moral absolutes I do not believe sufficiently that American military intervention is pragmatic. Like a good pragmatist however I am open to opposing views and may change my mind.
