Herr Doktor Krauthammer praises "certainty"

[BurtWorm]

"The Op-Ed pages are filled with jeremiads about believers--principally evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics--bent on turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong--indeed, deeply un-American--about fearing people simply because they believe. It seems perfectly O.K. for secularists to impose their secular views on America, such as, say, legalized abortion or gay marriage. But when someone takes the contrary view, all of a sudden he is trying to impose his view on you. And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order."


http://www.time.com/time/columnist/krauthammer/article/0,9565,1067816,00.html


Well, yes, herr psychiatrist. Because the evangelical Christians and "traditional" Catholics whose certainty you're praising are not content to float their views. They want to control the behavior of their fellow Americans' life, liberty and pursuit of happiness--who they marry, what they do with their bodies, and what their children learn about the world in school at taxpayer's expense.

[BurtWorm]

1. Krauthammer is certain everyone was Krauthammerized on 9./11

"Do you remember 9/11? How you felt? The moral clarity of that day and the days thereafter? Just days after 9/11, on this very page, Lance Morrow wrote a brilliant, searing affirmation of right against wrong, good against evil.

"A few years of that near papal certainty is more than any self-respecting intelligentsia can take. The overwhelmingly secular intellectuals are embarrassed that they once nodded in assent to Morrow-like certainty, an affront to their self-flattering pose as skeptics."

:eyes:

And he thinks it feels *good* to be Krauthammerized?

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. I remember the certainty I felt on 9/11.

I was certain that someone was about to have his ass handed to him. When that someone was identified as Bin Laden, I was certain that the old guy was toast. I was certain that the 101st and the 82nd and a couple battalions of marines would be on his ass within two weeks.

Where did that certainty go?

[Mz Pip]

2. You can be certain

and still be wrong.

I don't know of any secular person who advocates forcing anyone to have an abortion. Nor are they advocating forcing people of faith to stop practicing their religion.

It's not the beliefs I fear, it's what some of these people want to do with their beliefs. When they want to turn what is a matter of faith for them into public poliy for me, then I have every reason to be concerned.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[alphafemale]

3. No one's proposing to force heterosexuals into same-sex unions or

forcing employees to denounce God before work...

Not that I've heard of anyway.

[BurtWorm]

5. Interesting dissection of herr doktor's argument

at http://lawandpolitics.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_lawandpolitics_archive.html#111777361389686715

...

Andrew Sullivan beat me to the punch on this one, but he’s right on. Krauthammer is basically arguing that there are no neutral baselines. As Sullivan explained, “Charles posits two forms of ‘imposition of values’ on society. One is by secularists; and one by Christians.” To Krauthammer, secularism is merely a different type of certainty that is masquerading as neutrality. He seems to think that the culture wars are not about whether beliefs will be imposed but whose. Viewed from an economic perspective, this argument suggests that you can’t really reduce the amount of certainty imposed on people, you can only reallocate it.

It’s an interesting argument, but I disagree. I think that secularism is a reflection not of certainty or imposed beliefs, but of uncertainty – just as Western liberal democracy is, at its essence, a reflection of skepticism and an affirmation of human fallibility.

What we’re really talking about here is how much faith we should have in human reason. More precisely, we’re talking about how much faith we should have in humans’ ability to know what is good for others. In The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand explains why Civil War veteran, Supreme Court Justice, and cold-hearted dick Oliver Wendell Holmes was so skeptical of those who “know that they know”:


<Holmes> had a knee-jerk suspicion of causes. He regarded them as attempts to compel one group of human beings to conform to some other group’s idea of the good, and he could see no authority for such attempts greater than the other group’s certainty that it knew what was best. (p.62)

Indeed, mankind has a truly miserable record of compelling other humans to conform to their notion of the good, whether we’re talking about the old Catholic Church, Communist China, the French Revolution, Nazi Germany, the new Coca-Cola, or the Iranian Revolution....

[Dr.Phool]

6. I'm certain of one thing

Krauthammer has always been, and always will be, an asshole.

[justgamma]

7. Don't ever forget to mention that he is a PNAC'er. n/t