Relatively speaking

While I respect Tricia Anderson’s newfound fulfillment in Christianity, I found a couple of her points puzzling. She suggests that Christianity is not a religion since it does not involve “following a prescription of rules, prayers and meditations.” While it is true that Christianity is more than such practices, so are all other major religions. Further, Anderson should know that for many Christians their religious practices do indeed involve such actions. Liturgy is vital to many Christians, even to those denominations that are more loosely structured.

The other problem I see with her criticism of “spiritual relativism” is that she restricts the meaning of the term to personal relativism. That is, religion as commonly understood is usually never relative to the individual alone, unless we are referring to a personal mystical experience. Instead it seems that religion is always relative to a community of believers. Surely Anderson does not believe that there is only one legitimate religious option for every person and every community. Perhaps she is right that at one point every person must decide to believe or not. But she erroneously assumes that the only option is the belief that Jesus is God, a belief that rests on faith not fact. The religious impulse of people of various faiths is no less legitimate than the will to believe in Christianity. To think otherwise is to denigrate people of faith who are no less spiritual than yourself. 

 Scott Bartlett
Adjunct philosophy professor

Responding to Jingoism

In a letter to the Daily Campus on September 27th, Taylor Gist shamelessly tries to paint himself as some sort of discriminated minority, silenced by the “liberal media” he and his ilk waste no breath in deprecating.  Not only is his posturing completely inappropriate, his actual arguments hold little fact, let alone merit.

The Daily Campus is anything but left wing.  The day before Mr. Gist’s letter appeared, this paper ran a commentary by William Baldwin, a self-described reactionary and Neo-Confederate.  That doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of column a liberal publication would run, does it?  Progressives like myself (and there are precious few among the SMU student body) are the real persecuted minority on this university campus, which is a fairly perverse situation when compared to universities worldwide.

Mr. Gist gives the standard flag-waver line of questioning:  “Where would you rather live?”  In doing so, he assumes that no satisfactory response other than “nowhere” will be forthcoming.  Unfortunately for such national chauvinists, a truthful counter to their question is now available.  According to a report released by the UN (who measure such things) last summer, the United States ranks sixth in the world in terms of standard of living, behind Norway, Sweden, Canada, Belgium, and Australia.  I’d rather live in any of those countries, and may feel compelled to do so some day.  As for criticizing patriotism, I’ll do it any day of the week.  Patriotism is the same silly nonsense that compelled millions of Europeans to throw away their lives for no good reason in World War 1, and in countless conflicts before that.  Patriotism is the pack of lies that enabled the American government to launch aggressive, imperialist wars against Canada, Mexico, Spain, Vietnam, countless smaller nations, and the indigenous people of North America.  There is no such thing as fighting for a country.  People fight for their governments, and most of the time they have no reason to do so other than the interests of their rulers.

Last but not least, a few things need to be said about the Cold War and Mr. Gist’s hero thereof, Ronald Reagan.  The Soviet Union was no doubt a brutal dictatorship (more of an oligarchy, really,) but taking over the world was never one of the Soviet government’s goals.  In the Second World War, over ten million Soviet citizens perished, most of them civilians.  Accordingly, the USSR was collectively paranoid of further invasion, and thus most of their “interventions” occurred along the invasion route that was used to nearly demolish Russia multiple times in the past.  The United States began the arms race by continuing to build nuclear weapons after their use on Japan, compelling the Soviets (who had none) to try and keep up, out of fear.  The arrangement actually worked well for the ruling classes of both countries.  The Communist party bosses were kept securely in power and could oppress their population at will, and the American ruling class compelled their population to subsidize high-tech industry that would otherwise not be competitive in the “free market.”  In the end, the Soviet economy (predictably) collapsed first.  Both sides had come close to waging nuclear war on several occasions, and both sides armed the world and justified their foreign aggression through fear of the other.  None of it was necessary.

Ronald Reagan called American-sponsored terrorists in Central America “freedom fighters,” he referred to the Vietnam war as “That Noble Cause,” and he once claimed that my heroes, the Americans of the Abraham Lincoln brigade, fought on the wrong side in their brave quest to stop Fascism from taking root in Spain prior to the Second World War.  At the same time, his toxic domestic policies damaged the American public to a degree unseen for decades.  He embodies the worst attributes the Cold War produced in the American public, and it would be good news for the world if such an individual never sat in the Oval Office ever again.  It may or may not be too late.

Scott Charney
Junior English and history major

The “liberal” DC

I know I have my own column, but I feel almost obligated to respond to Taylor Gist’s Letter to the Editor from Friday.

Taylor, as much as the Ed Board supposedly “imitates”liberal politicians, you aren’t much better spouting your conservative rhetoric. You say that “columnists like Scott Moses” are exploiting of their freedoms.

Well, with legislation like the USA PATRIOT act (thank you so very little President Bush and Mr. Ashcroft), you’d better take advantage of those freedoms, because they might be gone soon.

And here are a few more things I want to ask you. What makes the “Axis of Evil” so evil? What makes the United States, a country that meddles in the affairs of other countries regardless of whether or not its presence is needed or desired, “good”? (Would you want some other country sending troops and officials over

here? I know I don’t – and no matter how much better I might think we are than some other country, I respect their sovereignty.) And since when did patriotism include standing behind a government that makes decisions you don’t like? Attacking Iraq was a bad decision when the elder Bush was in office, it was bad when Clinton was in office, and it’s bad now.

The fall of the Soviet Union under Reagan does not necessarily mean that those who criticized him were wrong. Was it hastened by the actions of Reagan? Surely. But the Soviet Union would have fell anyway — as you should well know as a conservative, communism doesn’t work. Leave Saddam’s Iraq be, and it’ll fall without our “help” as well.

We surely need rational people for our country. I agree that the liberals can’t be trusted for that job. But if you mean to tell me that you can’t see that maybe, just maybe, that our interference in the Middle East might be offensive and insulting those who live there as well as a conceivable motive for retaliation, well, then conservatives might not be the right people, either.

(Oh, and by the way, I don’t know if you have been reading the paper on a regular basis, but there is a regular column “The Reactionary” by William Baldwin, who seems pretty conservative. But I could be wrong.)

Marcus Walker

Senior psychology and religious studies major