An academic i know of recently penned a lecture in which he argued that the gridlock in Washington was the result of politicians having lost the "art of conversation." Part of the loosing, he wrote, was entailed in the common but falsely tolerant statement that someone disagreed with was "entitled to his own opinion." Not only did such statements debase the other person as not worthy of the time to be convinced, it negated the possibility of contending together toward a reasoned conclusion.
I have my doubts as to whether Congress was designed as some sort of political seminar hall. It was never intended to be a forum for "reasoned dialogue" but rather the counting house for the numerical valuation of interests -- plain ol' filthy lucri causa. But as to whether people are entitled to their opinions, that is a different and more general matter.
el martillo de los herejes, la luz de España, el salvador de su paÃs, el honor de su orden
As a teenager, i was never entirely at ease with the hackneyed saw that everyone is entitled to their own opinions. What if one's opinion was ignorant and stupid? What sense did it make to say that one was "entitled" to be ignorant and stupid?
Nor did it make much sense to me to hold that while Jesus was the very Son of the Almighty God who madeth and ruleth everything that was, is and will be, seen and unseen, he could still be denied or denigrated.
Think about it; if God is not only "great" but also necessary, how can we allow his necessity to be disparaged? A part of me intuitively sympathised with the ancient Aztecs. If heart ripping were a necessity to keep the cosmos afloat, how could one refuse? One the other hand, if, as we conquistadores knew, heart ripping was a mortal error, how could it be allowed?
Unlike my more "American" compatriots, i was never discomfited by Aristotle's theory of the "naturally stupid" or by Plato's outlawing of musical modes which were "inherently destructive" of all good order and virtue. I mean... the mixolydian mode is clearly depraved.
It isn't also called the Moloch Mode for nuthin,
But over time, i lost my vehemence and came to accept the relativity and indifference of liberal axioms. All men were endowed by their Creator to be as stupid as their happiness allowed. Who was I to criticise them? After all, what is truth anyways? Some great man said that, i forget who.
But i was never entirely convinced, just as i never accepted the equally stupid saw that "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me." Odd how most people actually do feel really hurt by names; and when you think about it, it is not hard to figure out why.
People, especially academics of a certain sort, speak of reason as some sort of supra-physical thing that is at once loftier than mere flesh and at the same time incapable of injuring you... really. Huh? Who said?
Words are sounds. Sounds are physical phenomena. They actually do penetrate into the aural canal as much as other things penetrate into other canals. The sounds get inside the head where they "agitate" those "irritations" we call "thought." This is palpable.
And when those agitations change the manner and pattern of our thoughts (and from our thoughts our actual emotional and physical behaviours) they have effectively penetrated and punched us up with the "force" of their logic or rhetoric. Sounds like a kind of intercourse to me; and of course the Great Plato was not so stupid as to think that any dialogue did not have its accompanying ergon which might be manifested by blushes or getting into lovely Theaetetus' pants or skirt or whatever it was.
So the notions of a "Platonic Relationship" and a "harmless" or "non-violent" discussion never made much sense to me. Nor the notion that being homonoumenal was somehow morally superior or less offensive or less intimate than being homosexual.
After all, none other than the great but too little known Aelred of Rievaulx (A.D. 1110-1167) argued that "carnal friendships" among his monks even if they might be considered vicious often ripened into truer more virtuous spiritual friendships which mirrored that greatest friendship of all and should therefore be accepted with patience rather than excoriated with violence. Who said we had to wait for Tannhauser to get notions of "ascending love"?
But I digress. If opinions have all this capacity for affective intimacy, we ought not to take them lightly or think we can be impervious to their ill effects. We ought at least to accord the Index Librorum the respect it is due. The Bible was high on that list, and for good reason, as the wretched "Reformation" aptly proved.
After a lifetime of languor, such thoughts were recently revived in me by a lecture i came across on You Tube given by one of the French priests at the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) -- the ultra irredentist, semi-schismatic Catholic society which hews strictly to the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent.
"Of course, we do not ascribe to religious liberty. The very idea is anathema. We accept religious toleration; mais -- but that is a different matter."
Ahhh... such a refreshing voice from the past of my youth!
I understood him to be saying that, up to a point, we should not fry our opponents at the stake of their petards. But neither should we so disrespect our enemies as to treat them either indifferently or lightly.
It was rather like the two GO masters who met on a road and recognising one another sat down off to the side with the board between them. The first master place a single black chip on the board. The second looked and paused, then stood up and bowed, after which both went on their way.
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