Urgelles: wanderring writings

Progress and Pessimism in Tolstoy's words

2012-01-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

After two years since their last meeting, Prince Andrey Bolkonsky and Pierre, now Count Bezukhov, good friends from childhood, meet again in Andrey's estate. Both are very wealthy and noble. But a lot has changed since their casual encounter at Anna Pavlovna's soiree two years before, that takes place at the opening of War and Peace.

Prince Andrey's 1805 war experience, especially at Austerlitz, left a deep scar in his soul, not only by the realization of his self-delusions regarding his personal battle against Napoleon Bonaparte, and his quest for worldly glory, but by the lost of a loved one when he returned home; an event that touched him deeply. Whereas Pierre, after the inheriting his father's immense fortune, went through a living of excessive luxury that made his life boring and without meaning. Profoundly depressed he led a failed marriage that ended in a duel. In a crisis of faith and values he found in Freemasonry a new start, and the foundations for the moral quest he was seeking from the novel's very beginning. Both experiences are radically different, but both face the same challenge: Nihilism. The ambitions of the Great Revolution that began in France was already creating chaos and confusion in the souls of learned men as far a Russia. This is one of the main topics of Tolstoy's masterwork.

Two years have passed; many things occurred to both of them. The conversation between the two friends, cold and distant at first, eventually becomes warmer and confident. The contrast between their ideas and world outlooks is the main ideological struggle opened by the Revolution, and that the society of Europeans would have to face. It all begins by Andrey's claim "Nothing's for ever... Killing a vicious dog is a good thing," a claim that rather shocks Pierre who answers "Killing is wrong. It's bad... Anything that harms someone else is wrong." Maybe without being conscious of it (after all Pierre is not a philosopher), Pierre is defending first a Kantian reasoning in the form of a categorical imperative, and after being pushed harder by Andrey, he reaches Mill's harm principle. Andrey is unconvinced. His argument is that "what's right and what's wrong is something we can't decide. People keep making mistakes and they always will, especially when it comes to right and wrong... remorse and illness. There is never any good unless these two things are absent. Living for myself and avoiding these two evils - that's my philosophy now." Andrey, who sounds depressed, found in self-centered egoism the only warranted ethics, because of its simple minimalism. Relativism spreads beyond that main assumption and makes him skeptic of any other kind of normative claim. By assuming this posture, he renounced reason and progress.

Pierre stands on the opposite and fervently claims: "What about loving your neighbour, and sacrificing yourself? No I can't agree with you! Living your life with the sole object of avoiding evil just so you won't regret anything afterwards - it's not enough." Pierre is very demanding. He trusts man's rational capacities, and the commitment to improve man's conditions in a profoundly Christian way. We know this stance very well. It is the fundamental principle from which any kind of progressive thinking emerges. Later on, when talking with the old Prince Bolkonsky he would argue "that a time would come where there would be no more wars." Pierre is a Kantian, a son of the Enlightenment. On the contrary, Andrey is a pessimist. He challenges Pierre with one of the most uncomfortable arguments for any progressive: "You talk about schools, education and all that. In other words, you want to bring him' (he pointed to a passing peasant who was doffing his cap) 'out of his animal condition and give him spiritual needs. Well, as I see it, the only form of happiness is animal happiness, and you want to take that away from him. I envy him, while you're trying to turn him into me, but without giving him my mind, my feelings and my money."

Andrey's position is not to be discarded lightly. Pierre finds himself against the wall, and claiming categorically that his friend is simply wrong. One of the faults of rationalists is that once they face the irrationalist challenge, they have few arguments left. Andrey's claim is that happiness is relative to your consciousness; i.e. the more you have it, the more the requirements of happiness become unreachable. Money becomes a problem, and the self-conscious poor is even more miserable by virtue of his self-consciousness, out of which he develops envy. Rationalized envy creates highly comprehensive doctrines of society that call for revolution. Sound familiar? On the contrary, simple life, the life of the ignorant peasant, has the virtue of modest and reachable happiness. However pessimist, there is something truly Christian in Andrey's thought. And Pierre's ideas have something self-defeating; the pride of the ambition to change the world.

To Pierre's invitation to join the Freemasonry organization Andrey answers: "You say, come into our brotherhood and we'll shows you the meaning of life and the destiny of man, and the laws that govern the universe. But who are we? Just people. How do you come to know it all? Why am I the only one who can't see what you see? You see the earth as a kingdom of goodness and truth. I don't." Andrey unmasks Pierre's unconscious and naive pride (the pride typical of self-righteous progressives). The type of pride that says we know better than you do, because we have thought it through and we have seen the truth while you remain in shadows. What Andrey sees that Pierre cannot is that such a vantage point, such self-righteousness, is already ideology and shadows disguised as light, wisdom and good. This is the ideological malady of all progressive thinking from Liberalism to Marxism.

But Pierre, who is as smart as his friend reaches a very interesting synthesis: "Here on earth, this earth here' (Pierre pointed to the open country) 'there is no righteousness - it's all false and wicked. But in the universe, the whole vast universe, there is a kingdom of truth, and we are two things - children of earth here and now, and children of the universe in eternity." Interestingly from being a Kantian, Pierre becomes a Hegelian. In order to defeat Andrey's challenge, he realizes that some type of denial of the world is required, and a truth beyond it must be acknowledged. The history of men becomes, then, a quest to fulfill this truth. Men as an animal, subject to the animal happiness Andrey speaks about, has the capacity to elevate his existence to a higher truth. He grants that the animal happiness is the here and now, but he denies it as false and wicked. This denial of the world and its conditions lies in the heart of all type of progressive thinking.

Pierre concludes in totally Hegelian terms: "If there is a God and an after-life, then there is truth and there is goodness; and man's greatest happiness lies in struggling to achieve them. We must live, love and believe, believe that our life is not only here and now on this little patch of earth, but we have lived before and shall live for ever out there in the wholeness of things." I agree with him so far as that from God's presence in the universe it follows absolute truth and goodness, and that man's happiness has something to do with it. I disagree with Pierre's optimist in our capacities to understand fully the wholeness of things, the reason of why I have rejected progressive thinking.

Andrey concludes in totally Nietzschean terms: "My point is - you might be persuaded there is an afterlife not by arguments, but by going through life hand-in-hand with somebody, and all at once that somebody vanishes there, into nowhere, and you are left standing over the abyss, staring down into it. And I have stared down into it..." The abyss presented by nihilism, which becomes so overwhelming when acknowledging death, becomes the urgent problem once we open the Pandora box of rationalism by casting doubt on the simple happiness of the ignorant peasant living by colorful traditions. On this I must agree with him.

(The texts were extracted from Tolstoy, War and Peace, volume II, part II, chapters 11 and 12)

A comment on the opening of War and Peace

2011-12-24T08:12:00.000-08:00

This is going to be, probably, the first of various comments I will be writing about Tolstoy's masterwork War and Peace. Of the many things that can be said of the hardly first one hundred pages, I will focus on one of the elements that I found strikingly interesting; the social stratification within the Russian nobility. But before moving on, a note for those that have not read the novel is warranted: I will abstain from spoilers that might ruin the story.

The first paragraph already hints the historical background of the entire novel: Bonaparte's threat to the European society of absolute monarchies. The first events take place in a social gathering at one of the Empress' favorites, and we already feel the meaning of the novel's title; the frivolities of the nobility's daily life, with their gossiping and mundane chatter, mingled with the ever present long of some to fall in politics and war. We can tell that the Russian high society is between the denial of events, and stupefied by the terror coming from the West. But the two topics stand in parallel, isolated from each other. Mundane chatter becomes almost like a refuge from the discomfort caused by the threat of war. In this, almost superficial, shift from gossip to fear, the first pages of the novel fill us with both the lightness of good life, and the burdensome weight of serious matters. The environment of private relations, with their characteristic touch of pretense and socially enforced good manners, is where our main and second characters are introduced. All of them are noble by birth; but sooner than later we realize that they are not of the same status.

The novel begins as Prince Vasily Kuragin enters Anna Pavlovna's (the Empress favorite) soiree at her mansion. She greets him by chiding him for not taking actions against Bonaparte's France. Tolstoy makes the reader feel just like Prince Vasily when entering the house; surprised by an unexpected attack! (An amazing beginning by the way) The first paragraph hasn't finish and the reader (just as Prince Vasily) is already at war, not wit Napoleon, but with the warmongers. Peace is being threatened from the first sentence of the more than one thousand pages novel. Quickly, and almost like a slap, Anna Pavlovna changes the subject to mere gossiping. The main topic is, naturally, marriages and families, one of the main social institutions that work specifically for the purpose of asking and paying favors in high society. Both of these characters stand as the highest of nobility; i.e. both are extremely rich, and both have influence with the throne. Prince Vasily as a high officer to the Tzar, and Anna Pavlovna with the Tzarina, of whom she speaks with the greatest veneration (I will get back to this topic).

Soon we get introduced to more obscure members of the high society. Princess Anna Drubetskoy attends Anna Pavlovna's soiree uninvited (already a sign of social disgrace), for the specific purpose of talking with Prince Vasily into pulling the strings for her son Boris into getting a higher post in the armed forces. The princess is poor (interesting, isn't it?) and after the death of her husband, she lost most of his connections in St. Petersburg. Prince Vasily acknowledges in order to get rid of her (the reader realizes that this princess is irrelevant). But, contrary to modern plebeian civil servants whose words must be bought with money or influence, Prince Vasily is a noble; and honor is one of the nobility's central virtues. He gave his word, and even though he can lie to her, he would never do so. This nobility's honor is one of the many things at stake in the war against Napoleon's progressive ideas. As a matter of fact, this honor was lost with the revolution. In its place, the substituting bourgeoisie's ethics that rests on hard work and money, looks more like a caricature.

The first thing to note in this conversation at Anna Pavlovna's soiree is that, Prince Vasily and Princess Drubetskoy, belonging to the same superior caste, stand at different levels. The prince, powerful and rich, treats the poor and unknown princess with contempt; however not without courtesy, something that a nobleman can never avoid from doing! Courtesy for the sake of it doesn't seem to be widely practice by the plebeian castes in the courts of the bourgeoisie and the working class. But Princess Drubetskoy doesn't lack friends either. At Moscow, the Rostovs are a prosperous and happy family of counts. The countess is the princess best friend, and helps her out with some money. But the Rostovs are nothing else but rich; they don't seem to be particularly influential in the high politics of St. Petersburg (after all, they live in Moscow).

Another character that plays an important role in the first chapters without actually participating in any action is the old and dying Count Kirill Bezukhov, who is immensely rich. He has no immediate inheritors except his favorite bastard son, the young and impetuous Pierre (the character with which I feel identified so far). The inheritance is in dispute, and all the gossip and chatting gathers around this fact. Prince Vasily has also rights to claim the inheritance, and Princess Drubetskoy is trying to get a peace of the action by the fact that her son Boris is the Count's godson (one of many, one presumes). But the most interesting aspect of the dying Count is the heroic aura that surrounds him; he was among the most powerful men during Catherine the Great's reign. To his wealth, this heroic aura accompanies him. Tolstoy divides Russian nobility into the following:

a) Count Bezukhov with his immense wealth, accompanied with the tales of his life during the reign of Catherine the Great, which makes him highest among the highest.
b) Prince Vasily, who is rich and very influential in the court.
c) The Rostovs, who are rich but have no important influence in the court.
d) Princess Drubetzkoy who is not even rich, and has no influence in court, and who depends on the sense of honor of those above her.

I cannot finish this brief survey of Tolstoy's picture without addressing the crowning figures of this entire society. The Tzars do not show their faces in the first chapters, but are addressed by the different characters as the source of all nobility. Theirs is an omnipresence in the minds of the main characters. The veneration to these figures of such a high birth, imagined almost like demigods or saints, owners of the highest virtues, is almost alien to the Western mind, who always took the monarchs' absolute power with a touch of skepticism. This aura of supreme sanctity that surrounds the Tzars is one that must be taken to heart when understanding the Russian spirit, that Tolstoy so masterly portrays.

As a conclusion it is not spurious to talk about the mujiks; i.e. the Russian peasants, who have such a minor, if not negligible role in the early pages. However, we see them in their anonymous roles as waiters, maids, messengers, carriage drivers, etc. The nobility's power rests on these men and women that obediently carry on their orders. But their presence goes almost unnoticed. Maybe the biggest and most important difference between noble and low birth lies in this noticing-ness of the nobility and the anonymity of the private life of the peasant, the workers and the bourgeois. One hundred years ahead of our story, they become the tragedy's main characters during revolutionary times.

The Russian nobility, at the down of the 19th century, stood between invisible forces. From above, the sainthood of the Tzars, the source of all their glory. From below, the anonymity of the populace, the base of all their real power and dominance. From outside, the threatening West with its ideas and technologies. This, almost neurotic, historical and social place, is the background of Tolstoy's novel War and Peace.

Thesis on Marx

2011-11-24T17:29:00.000-08:00

Everything begins with arms. Even the ownership of the means of production requires the material means to enforce such ownership. And this enforcement dependts on the relations that spring from the distribution of the means of coersion. The accumulation of the means of production is absolutely spurious if it is not backed by the appropriate means of coersion. The form of government emerges out of the social relations produced by the distribution of the means of coersion available in a society. In politics it is of little relevance who is rich and who is poor, but who wields the weapons. Even if we acknowledge that the means of coersion are produced in the realm of the economic, the one that ultimately controls, holds and wields them is the one who is politically dominant.

Response paper to Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom, Ch. 1

2011-11-22T15:58:00.000-08:00

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Wittgenstein

I want to make some remarks on Amartya Sen’s notion of freedom, i.e. what he calls “substantive freedom.” The purpose is to demonstrate how easily his notion can be proved to be fallacious and nonsensical. Independently of the good intentions of a theory, if the logical structure of what is being uttered makes absolutely no sense, the truth is that what is happening is that nothing is being actually said. In this sense Amartya Sen thinks he is saying something important about freedom when in fact he is just uttering senseless noise.

He says of “freedom: the ability to survive rather than succumb to premature mortality. This is obviously a significant freedom, but there are many others that are also important. Indeed, the range of relevant freedoms can be very wide.” (p. 24) In few words, there are many freedoms that are not the same thing, so freedom is not equal to freedom, which of course, makes no sense. If there is freedom it must have a core meaning to which everything else converges. If not, the concept is meaningless. Here Sen says that freedom is survival, as opposed to death. Interestingly enough we are all condemn to die some way or the other, so freedom has become an impossible enterprise. Moreover, no one can predict if by chance tomorrow I am going to be stroke by a lightning bolt and die, so there must be a freedom not to be killed prematurely by lightning bolts. Otherwise, what is the difference between dying prematurely by starvation, by being murdered in the middle of the night, by an unpredictable flood, by the explosion of a gas leak in your kitchen, by slipping on the floor and breaking your neck; all of them are premature deaths (and that is assuming that we can have an intelligible meaning for the adjective "premature"). This is a reductio ad absurdum.

When talking about quality of life, (Ibid) (a notion that is linked to historical and cultural contexts, and cannot be detached from them without losing any tangible meaning) Sen uses Aristotle, and his famous ethical theory of eudaimonia (good life). Interestingly enough Aristotle never speaks about freedom, or never makes his ethical life a function of freedom. Freedom and liberty are notions developed by the later Roman republican tradition, and especially among historians and not philosophers, at least not in Ancient times. Sen’s use of Aristotle’s ethics to make a defense of individual freedom strikes us as alien. The latter Aristotelian tradition of freedom was interpreted by the late Romans, and especially in the early Modern Europe as self-government. Never as the freedom of personal fulfillment, and especially never as individual freedom that, after Locke, is tantamount of the sovereignty of the individual over his own body. Sen’s reading of Aristotle is outrageous.

Then Sen addresses the notion of market freedom (p. 26) that, somehow, is the inheritance from the Hobbesian notion of negative liberty. So far so good, until he makes the connection between this logically coherent concept with the Aristotelian idea of personal self-fulfillment that not only Hobbes, by recently Berlin, considered to be contrary to what they were talking about when uttering the word freedom. He actually goes as far as to criticize economists that have moved from this notion of development as linked to freedom and prefer talking about utilities (p.27) when in fact this move is logical; because consumption is a different act than the phenomenon we call freedom. They might be related, but they cannot be considered to be the same without making both concepts nonsense.

He also addresses the problem of dictatorship and slavery as a problem for freedom, which is completely reasonable. However these are the problem addressed by the Neo-Roman/Republican notion of freedom as absence from a relation of servitude. Sen doesn’t seem to tell the difference, nor understand why these different notions are logically incompatible. Three concepts of liberty: (a) the Hobbesian negative liberty of non interference, (b) the Aristotelian-inspired positive liberty of self mastery and, (c) the Machiavellian liberty of non domination. Logically speaking one of them is correct, or all are incorrect, but the three of them in conjunction cannot be correct without rendering all of them nonsensical. Sen is not a logician, but the field considers his opinion to be one of high standing, when in fact , in this case, is corrosive of the academic debate. He is concerned about economic development, which is one of the original concerns of economists. But he takes concepts from the fields of ethics, political science and history in a way that destroys their intelligibility; an approach that is offensive for the scholars in these respective fields.

A praise of Political Severity

2011-11-07T10:02:00.001-08:00

I've added to the list of prominent men that I admire the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Many might know by now that when regarding to Rome I focus on the republic, and by the name Rome I always mean the republic. Consistent with this vision I consider everything that happened after Julius Caesar to be a tragic story of tyranny and slavery. I do not depart from this vision, but my recent immersion into Machiavelli's thought has given me the extraordinary tool to twist and change my vantage point according to necessity and fortune, something that is essential, if not mandatory, to understand anything that has to do with politics. In this new approach, now that I'm rereading the Prince, I've been impressed by Machiavelli's high praise of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, a man famously recognized for his unscrupulous political actions. Like any other emperor, he was a tyrant. But when we leave the republic and its freedom behind, and we set our play in the realm of absolute and long-lasting tyranny, our value judgments and normative claims must shift, something in which Machiavelli was extraordinarily skillful at.

Machiavelli writes that "because of what Severus did was remarkable and outstanding for a new prince, I want to show briefly how well he knew how to act the part of both a fox and a lion, whose natures, as I say above, must be imitated by a new prince" (P XIX). Interestingly enough the nature of both the fox and the lion were the beastly natures that the humanist tradition, the inheritance of Cicero, would condemn as unworthy. Machiavelli would turn this tradition upside down, being his praise of Severus one of the turning points of this break with the humanists (Skinner, 1981, 40). This led me to Herodian of Antioch, the source from which Machiavelli draws his portrayal of the Roman Emperors in chapter 19 of the Prince.

Of Severus Herodian says that "he was surely the most accomplished of all men in pretending to pledge his good will, but he never kept his sworn word if it proved necessary for him to break it; he lied whenever it was advantageous to him, and his tongue said many things which his heart did not mean" (History of the Roman Empire, II). He ruled for almost eighteen years, his son Caracalla succeeded to the throne successfully and he brought peace and stability in a moment in which the empire's structure of political authority was about to collapse after Commodus deserved death. What does this say about the ancient Ciceronian and today's Kant/Mill-liberal moralities and their relations to politics? Maybe that they don't worth a penny when the chips are down, and that the true nature of political power is tested precisely in these moments of emergency. Recently this vision of politics was exposed by Carl Schmitt, who might be blameworthy of his Nazi allegiance, but whose political insight and sincerity cannot be denied. So with Machiavelli.

Reading about how Severus managed to take over the empire by using the cunning of the fox in bamboozling everyone into his own scheme, and then defeating his enemies with the ferocious strength of the lion, produces nothing but awe and admiration (the charm of evil). But the most interesting contrast regards the unsuccessful attempt by the previous Pertinax to establish his imperial authority by the "strength" of moral convictions and reasonable arguments, in a lame attempt to imitate Marcus Aurelius, which led him to be butchered by his own praetorian bodyguards, thereby ending his less-than-three-months rule. His incompetence to understand politics could have sunk the Roman Empire into long-lasting anarchy, if it weren't because of the skillful and vigorous intervention of Severus. Which lead me to my conclusion: those that want to hold their moral integrity at all cost in the face of impelling necessity, at least in the realm politics, can be the most irresponsible actors of all; because instead of weighting the good of the community as the main reason of their historical position, they prefer the maintain their conscience clean, i.e. the paradoxical conclusion that acting morally can be utterly selfish.

This is so obvious, so common sense, that hearing the self-righteous liberals and left-wing socialists speak about justice, fairness, equality and progress makes so much noise in a world of wretched human beings. John Stuart Mill praised Marcus Aurelius as the most glorious and virtuous Roman Emperor. And he is right in doing so, because under his rule the Empire enjoyed the peak of its accomplishments. But he is deceived in believing that Marcus Aurelius example can be taken to be a fixed rule in a world of ever-changing conditions, not to speak of the almost silly discourse of modern Kantianism.
Septimius Severus, 21st Emperor of the Roman Empire (14 April 193 – 4 February 211)

Machiavelli will prevail

2011-10-31T10:11:00.000-07:00

And in the end, when all the self-righteous moralists, when all talks of justice and fairness, of universal rights, peace and progress, meet their doom, when we reach the final moments of the Western civilization, Machiavelli will prevail.

"I conclude, therefore, that as fortune is changeable whereas men are obstinate in their ways, men prosper so long as fortune and policy are accord, and when there is a clash they fail." (The Prince, XXV)

Beyond Good and Evil: Aphorism 14

2011-10-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

Returning to old debates (but on the opposite side of the isle) rereading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil I cannot but to quote in its entirety the 14th aphorism of the book. This I dedicate to all my friends and acquaintances that still believe in progress and in the inglorious and pitiful virtues of our times. This was published in 1886, which shows unsurprisingly the almost sibylline nature of Nietzsche's thought.

"14. It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics too is only an interpretation and arrangement of the world (according to our own requirements, if I may say so!) and not an explanation of the world; but in so far as it is founded on belief in the senses it passes for more than that and must continue to do so for a long time to come. It has the eyes and the hands on its side, it has ocular evidence and palpability on its side: and this has the effect of fascinating, persuading, convincing an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes — for it instinctively follows the canon of eternal, popular sensualism. What is obvious, what has been 'explained'? Only that which can be seen and felt — thus far has every problem to be scrutinized. Obversely: it was precisely in opposition to palpability that the charm of the Platonic mode of thinking, which was a noble [aristocratic] mode of thinking, consisted — on the part of men who perhaps rejoiced in even stronger and more exacting senses than our contemporaries possess, but who knew how to experience a greater triumph in mastering them: which they did by means of pale, cold, grey conceptual nets thrown over the motley whirl of the senses — the mob of the senses as Plato called them. This overcoming and interpretation of the world in the manner of Plato involved a kind of enjoyment different from that which the physicists of today offer us, or from that offered us by the Darwinists and anti-teleologists among the labourers in physiology, with their principle of the 'smallest possible effort' and the greatest possible stupidity. 'Where man has nothing more to see or grasp he has nothing more to do' — that is certainly a different imperative from the Platonic, but for an uncouth industrious race of machinists and bridge-builders of the future, which has nothing but course work to get through, it may well be the right one."

This is pretty much a complete statement of the industrial and post-industrial world and all its obsession with technology, the economy, its heroes and its geniuses; the result of which is nothing but crude mediocrity. When are our liberals (and conservatives) in the academia of today going to start reading Nietzsche?

Why I support "Occupy Wall Street"

2011-10-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

A recent friendly discussion has left me startled. I think this is the reason: I not only like, but support and defend the American form of government as it is established by the US Constitution. That is, I believe in the spirit and principles that it contains, and I do not think that the constitution is just a function of any capitalist/bourgeoisie dominating class. One of the virtues of the US Constitution is that it has given the populace-citizens the opportunity to actively interfere in the affairs of government and letting their voices be heard. Agreed, it is not always effective and economic elites, the American bourgeois, have been historically privileged in their access to representation in the government (especially at the Federal level, whilst at the local level the populace seems to have more control). But it cannot be denied that since Jeffersonian republicanism, Jacksonian democracy, Lincoln's republicanism and the 20th century civil rights movement, democracy (the rule of the populace) has always remain a part of the American form of government. And as a consistent follower of Machiavelli, I do not think that a republic without elites on one side and the populace on the other can remain free. The communist dream of a classless society has been proved to be tantamount to totalitarianism. The republic is formed by upper and lower classes and the chances of both segments to participate and check on each other. This philosophy is alive in the US Constitution thanks to different mechanisms.

The interesting thing is that, according to inherited rigid concepts from the 20th century Cold War, if you are not a left-wing revolutionary, you must be a right-wing reactionary that stands on the side of the bourgeoisie. Well, I disagree with such generalization, not only because it is updated, but because it has always been inaccurate. Not because we defend the American form of government we are friends and allies of big business and corporate interests. Wall Street today has become almost like the ideological headquarters of the American oligarchy that has been trying to take over the republic for decades. And not because one opposes them one must be a communist, not to say a Marxist. I would go even further and say that a person that truly stands for traditions (a true conservative) is an obstacle to the development of capital in the form of big business; because it is that same big business the one that is destroying traditional lifestyles and grassroots movements that are so important for a healthy republican form of government. Democracy requires the populace-citizens fighting on the public space against the pretensions of the economic elites to overrun their political rights, and extort them through unemployment, lower wages and overworking; the same maladies that destroy traditional lifestyles in America.

I support "Occupy Wall Street" because, even though there is no clear cut agenda, it is proving a point: America is going in the wrong direction. And what is this direction? An economic system that excessively favors the rich by giving them the chance to become richer, while leaving the populace-citizens on its own to deal with a market that is destroying their lifestyles and future prospects. This undermines the populace-citizens capacity to participate in politics and check on their representatives, while giving the rich the upper hand in having access to representation and forcing their interests in the legislatures and the different levels of civil bureaucracy. The maladies of America are both represented by Washington's labyrinthine bureaucracy and Wall Street pervasive economic predominance. The so called libertarians, in their naive approach, do not realize that when they sacrifice only government, they heed big business and help the development of an oligarchic form of government which can be more repressive than an all expanded civil bureaucracy, precisely because it hurts the populace-citizens private lives.

It is extremely important that "Occupy Wall Street" does not become a monopoly of left-wing radicals, something that would automatically kill its prospects of being an authentic and positive movement. It must be a front of average citizens that, struggling with such an unfair economic system, make the government understand a sensible point: that reform in both the political and the economic system is required in order to enhance democracy, i.e. empower institution that would allow the populace-citizens to have more control over governmental decisions and legislation, as well as severely punishing the rich in their stubborn quest to impoverish the rest of the country. The rich are no "job creators"; that concept is the paramount ideological sham of our generation. The rich are wealthy bank account accumulators. What they want is to be more rich at all cost, even if it will send honest and hard working citizens into unemployment. Wall Street is incredibly skilled at doing that. The rich is the embodiment of avarice, a capital sin in Christian theology. If "Occupy Wall Street" is a spontaneous movement of disenfranchised young against the unchecked avarice of the rich, then I strongly support it.

NOTE: I wonder why in America banks get bailed out while universities get cut down.

Faith, Knowledge and Ideology

2011-10-02T21:21:00.001-07:00

This was written as a note in my Blackberry phone in a lonely and long travel inside the New York subway; they are only sketchy ideas based on reflections caused by a recent argument I had with a professor in class. As such not much can be demanded from them.

The problem of ideology is urgent in social sciences. What we take to be ideological will set the limits and boundaries for the possibility of truthful knowledge. We assume that "ideological knowledge" is contrary to our idea of what knowledge is. Knowledge aims at truth while ideology is the mask of falsehood. But, is this true? Hasn't recent philosophy challenged the assumption that links knowledge with truth? I think us to be deceived if we don't agree with Nietzsche in his rejection of modern rationalist philosophy's pretensions. This leads us straight the dead end of yielding to the pessimist conclusion that any kind of knowledge must be ideological. But hasn't modern sciences proved many facts of the natural and social worlds to be true? So, there must be a connection between scientific knowledge and facts known to be true. These facts cannot vanish as fantastic representations just because we become skeptics of man's rational capacities.

What I conclude from this (which is, by no means, a novel conclusion at all) is that scientific knowledge only deals with truthful facts; that can only be its object. This calls for a statement of humility, because it implies that knowledge cannot grasp the Truth in its universal significance. Such thing as the Truth cannot be fully rationally apprehended. Because a thing like the Truth demands full knowledge of the totality of the object, and this cannot be reached, then we have to adjust to concrete and limited truthful facts. Ideology becomes the boundary of knowledge when we recognize that any rational knowledge that aims or pretends in reaching a final and absolute truth must be ideological and must be betraying the initial quest for truthful knowledge. This have been the pervasive spirit of many modern theories, particularly in social sciences; however not infrequently natural scientist fall in the same error.

Here faith comes into our problem. The object of faith is the Truth in its whole meaning. Whatever aims at reaching a discourse that deals with the totality of the whole truth must be an act of faith. Here we must attempt the next set of boundaries: the difference between faith and ideology, or if there is no difference at all.

The problem with faith is that it cannot be rationally explained without losing the inherent meaning of what it is, i.e. rational knowledge cannot know faith. One of the problems of many intelligent men that lack any sense of faith is that they cannot understand it without attaching to it an ideological origin. This was the problems men like Voltaire, Feuerbach, Marx, Einstein, Russell (however not Nietzsche) were condemn to have. Because the object and content of faith is the absolute Truth, whatever it might be, and because knowledge cannot reach that level of understanding under any circumstance, they use different rational explanations to give content and reason to what really is an abyss of in-comprehension and ignorance on their part. The knowledgeable atheist man doesn't have the experience of faith (I will later explain how I think they do but under ideological forms); ergo for them it is as hard and insufferable to give it credit just as it is hard and insufferable for the brutish and ignorant man to understand knowledge and coherent reason, or for the born blind the concept of color.

The relation between faith and knowledge is analogous to the relation between knowledge and ideology. Faith sets boundaries for knowledge, as knowledge sets boundaries for faith. In this sense it is naïve, or awkward to have a faith that challenges well known truthful facts, just as it is naïve and arrogant to deny the human experience of faith in a universal Truth using limited, concrete and short-sided truthful facts. This division was already exposed by St. Paul in theology and explored by Kant in philosophy. In this sense faith and knowledge can be both allies, or at least respectful opponents in man's heart and mind. By understanding that factual knowledge is limited, however truthful, and that faith does not have to disclaim factual knowledge but give meaning and sense to human life, a man can both have faith and respect reason's discoveries, as the 17th century European scientists and philosophers seem to have done.

However we cannot be over optimistic; faith, just as knowledge, has a relation to ideology, and in the past it has been the source for a lot of ideology. But the boundaries between these two cannot be clearly seen. To what extend faith in an omnipotent God does not derive in submission to an absolute monarch, or in a vicious devotion to a priestly caste? The problem is not easy to solve, because at first sight it appears to give knowledge the upper hand in claiming that faith is ideological by necessity. A first good approximation to such a complex subject might be through St. Paul in Hebrews 11. There, a radical schism is posed between things of God and things of this world, because everything that pertains to God is not seen (that is, never perceived through the body senses); hence it can never fit as a truthful fact, nor subject to knowledge. But the many examples of prophets given by St. Paul show one thing: trust. Man's capacity to trust, to accept something without proofs of it (as when a man accepts a promise from a friend) lies in the heart of the matter. If we take our relation to God to be a friendly relation (even more, the ultimate friendly relation), then we trust in his promise, and because of this we have faith, i.e. without knowledge. We take this promise to be the supreme Truth, without which the truthful facts would seem like ghosts and shades in a world without purpose. In this particular sense faith gives food for knowledge, as it makes the absolute Truth the spring of all other factual truths. So that when Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth?" (John 18:38), Jesus silence makes sense out of the impossibility of proving with rational speech what can only be grasped by faith. Jesus had already given the answer before Pilate asked him: "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice" (John 18:37); Jesus is the truthful fact of the universal Truth, and only faith can grasp that apparently incoherent notion. This explains Jesus' silence. Pilate's business was administering justice according to the Roman law; that is, according to the most rationally codified legal system of the times in the Mediterranean. Precisely because Jesus truth was a universal statement, it did not deal with the truthful facts that a judge like Pilate can accept in a court; the reason of why he says to the Jews "I find no guilt in him" (John 18:38).

But the answer of the Jews headed by the priests is also enlightening; their religion did not allow them to crucify or execute Jesus, but they found a loop in their beliefs by pressing the Roman law to kill him. Jesus had been preaching against some prominent "interests groups" in Judea, and they wanted to eliminate him from the scene, however unjust. The Jews were being subject to ideology. So what can be the difference between ideology and faith if the Jews' actions were moved by religious devotion? The truth is that religious devotion can turn into ideology when it is used to back particular worldly interests of powerful groups. Faith is the authentic and deeply personal experience of a metaphysical connection with God. This escapes reason, but it cannot be considered ideology because it also escapes ideological worldly purposes.

Just as faith can become the base for ideology, so the same with knowledge. Philosophical and scientific systems that aim at explaining the totality of the human condition are very well used for repressive reasons when it is taken to be the Truth, of which the Marxist ideology seems the most prominent recent case (but also the European divine right of the kings), as well as when it tries to erase man's inclination for faith. The boundaries between the three are never well fixed, because knowledge is always unstable and fallible, faith cannot be apprehended by the pure mind, and ideology hides in its most obscure and mendacious forms.

But what also seems to be true is that men, as long as they live in this world, cannot depart from any of them, because on ideology social and political stability is built, from knowledge every technique and technology is constructed, and only through faith men can have the hope they need to bear the miseries of worldly existence.

The Democratic Tyrant

2011-09-13T06:38:00.000-07:00

"...when a people is induced to make the mistake of holding someone in high esteem because he is down on those whom they hold in detestation, and that someone has his wits about him, it will always happen that tyranny will arise in that city. For he will wait until, with the support of the populace, he has got rid of the nobility, and will not begin to oppress the people until he has got rid of it, by which time the populace will have come to realize that it is a slave and will have no way to escape" (Machiavelli, Discourses, I 40).

A quick look at the last twelve years of Chavez regime in Venezuela will show a strikingly similar relation with this statement made by Machiavelli almost five hundred years ago. Venezuela didn't have a nobility but it did have a political party and economic elite. For the most part of his presidency, not to say all, Chavez has moved a strategy to reduce these elites to their minimum expression. Contrary to more autocratic dictators, he hasn't killed his opponents, but limits himself to wield the power he has backed by his popularity to break asunder and isolate "those whom they [the people that holds him in high esteem] hold in detestation".

But again because Chavez is not a prince, but a soft democratic tyrant, the opposition still exists, however negligible and mediocre. This has given his opponents the opportunity to rise a little bit in esteem every once in a while (especially during elections). But Machiavelli's conclusion still applies; once his opponents were reduced to nothingness, the people that had him on such a high esteem are reduced to slavery, for they have no one else to go for succor. Police repression is always stronger when it is used against the poor and the traditional strongholds of the president's popularity. The middle class in Venezuela has a wider freedom to protest, because their actions are made inconsequential by the manoeuvrings of the government. But the real threat to Chavez regime comes from the base of the people, whom loved him for years, that today have little choice but to keep loving him, even though his government is absolutely incompetent in tackling their needs: housing, personal security, water and electricity supply, etc.

Today Venezuelans have no way to escape from him, except by the miraculous act of a sickness. Machiavelli's other overwhelming force in politics, fortune, might be ending, sooner than expected by anyone, the long and exhaustive efforts made by the tyrant to rule for decades.

Open Conservatism

2011-08-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

Having the experience of living in the United States, and hearing daily where the conservative grass-root movements stand on issues, has led me to question my identity as a conservative. The first thing that I have discovered is that conservatism is anything but an homogeneous group, or set of political convictions. Starting with me I realized that I can't agree with most of the cantankerous rhetoric coming from the right of the Republican Party. Most of what they say is not possible, showing only political naivete and complete lack of understanding of where we are historically. But also, of most of what is being said on the right I feel almost like an instinctive revulsion. The reason for this is because they show a stubborn and relentless intolerance toward what any other person might say; and that is not how you play the game of democracy.

My first complete divergence with contemporary conservatism lies mostly in their position on economics and fiscal policy. Yes, I agree that a balanced budget and a controlled-size of government bureaucracy are good goals; that rampant spending and growing centralized government might cripple the economy and eventually threaten the republican freedoms. But then, I don't understand why is it that this is called conservatism. What is it to be preserved? A balanced budget and controlled debt has no moral meaning or significance at all. I haven't heard that these can be morally problematic in the texts of any of the classical moral philosophers since Plato. For practical and utilitarian reasons I might agree with the idea of a balanced budget; but why is this conservative? Where is the moral value behind this idea? What original society is being preserved? These questions led me to the conclusion that what they call "fiscal conservatism" is nothing but an euphemism. Sometimes we have to spend, and sometimes we have to safe, depending on the historical context, the need of society and the level of antagonisms of the social classes. Of course we don't want a broke republic; not even liberals want that. So why on Earth calling it conservatism?

There is an answer to this questions: that the idea of a "small government" dates back from an idyllic pass in the development of capitalism in which every individual was unhindered to pursue their businesses freely and without government intervention, and that this was a free and happy society. A first look at those years shows that this idea is a fantasy; capitalism grew out of the misery of a lot of people (and it is my impression that misery undermines freedom and human happiness). But it couldn't have been the other way around; wealth on one side and misery on the other is the only way the first accumulation of capital is possible for the next generations to make it grow more. A second and more scientific look: the growth of capital has been parallel with a growth of the government's size, because the amount of wealth created every generation over the previous one is reflected on the augmentation of the government's resources to increase its strength; and also because the government has been the way in which many in the proletariat lines have found the means to avoid utter and humiliating exploitation. As capitalism makes the proletariat grow, the state grows with it.

So far the "fiscal conservative" rests on generalizations and a misconceived look toward history. If we are to defend a balanced budget it is for strict reasons of utility; there is no moral principle behind it. As I said before: sometimes we spend, and sometimes we safe; there is nothing conservative about it.

The real reason why I claim to be a conservative is because I have a somehow romanticized vision of traditions. This is linked with my religious faith expressed through the Catholic Church. In this sense there are traditions that I think are better to be preserved and that the government has a duty to protect and promote, because whether we like it or not, peaceful social interaction between human beings rests more on traditions than on the coercive strength of the state. The latter usually kicks in when the former is disintegrating. And what the "fiscal conservatives" don't understand, and don't want to see, is that it was the growth of capitalism and its method of accumulation which has led to a vast disintegration of traditional life. The growth of government is nothing but a compensation in a society that no longer finds itself in the middle of big business. Both big business and its pursuit of wealth as well as big government and its pursuit of power are nothing but the consequence of that "idyllic small government society" the libertarians are trying to defend. So their position is utterly paradoxical.

There is another problem with what we call social conservatism (which I think is the only legitimate conservatism whatsoever). Capitalism, by destroying traditional life, especially in big urban areas, renders much of what is defended by religious faith as obsolete and inconvenient to the growth of capital. Capital doesn't care about sexual orientation, religious beliefs, family background, virtues or vices; it only cares about you doing your job in the time and the fashion expected. But this practical reality has its ideological face in liberalism and its quest to erase inherited traditions that bind the individual.

But then social conservatives have also a taste for the intolerant. They have interpreted their beliefs in moral virtue as the position of those that cast stones on the sinful one, and become nothing but pharisees. But I don't think it has to be that way.

This is the reason why I am defending something that I like to call "open conservatism": that is following and defending policies that aim at preserving and promoting the ancient traditions from which we've come, but never in a way that you should cast moral judgments on those particulars that do not follow our beliefs. This second clause is inherited from Christianity, and the idea that all human beings (individually and not in the enlightened abstraction called humanity) must be loved as you love yourself. The central idea is that we shall cast charity and not judgment on everyone, even those that pursue a life that according to our beliefs is questionable. In many passages of the Holy Scripture this philosophy is expressed. But I shall limit myself to quote John 8:7 in which Jesus prevents a mob from killing a prostitute and says to them "Let whoever is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone on her". The catch is that because none of us is free of sin, none has the legitimate authority to cast the stone of moral judgment on others. Jesus himself teaches how to be an open conservative, first by never denying the Laws of Moses (Matthew 5:17), and second by offering his hand and his love to the sinful (which are, basically, all of us).

Open conservatism can be a polite way of defending tradition by never pretending to trample over the inclinations of others. Our attitude toward the most radical of liberals and anarchists must be that of intellectual disagreement, but also of sincere love for them. If we have to cast our votes, we rather do it for tradition; if we have to claim the truth of Jesus, we will do it without pride; if we have to face another person that thinks and acts contrary to our beliefs, we shall embrace that person as a brother or sister in life. But the contemptuous conservatism that aims at rejecting other people's lifestyles is contrary to the spirit of the teachings of Christianity, and is built on the false assumption that we are the ultimate owners of the truth from which we can judge. Only God has the entire truth and hence just capacity to judge; precisely because we don't have it, we can't make a science out of morality, but simply to have faith in it.

My central point is that we can be conservatives without being pharisees. We can make friendship with those that oppose our ideas radically. We can even spend and enjoy time with them. In this sense tolerance is not enough; tolerance is just polite contempt. What we need is to improve our capacity to love and care about everyone we meet; to debate with them honestly, sincerely, and without traces of hatred and remorse for their different world outlook. And also to invite them to approach our differences in the same way. Conservatism can do this without betraying its convictions and its faith; we just have to take the word of Jesus seriously.

The Iliad and human destiny

2011-07-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

I'm rereading the Iliad. The first time I came upon this marvelous poem I was fourteen years old. Eleven years have passed since that great moment where I picked, without knowledge of anything, to read the most human and spectacular work offered by the Ancient world. I did not understand most of it, but I remember that I felt in love with its content. Today I picked it again and now, that I have a deeper understanding of the poem, I cannot help but be touched and inspired by this tragedy.

Many things we can learn from the Iliad, but I would like to focus on one of them which I consider to be essential: destiny. The Ancient world had a deeper and more inwardly felt understanding of that thing called destiny which terrifies the Western mind. The Iliad opens like this:

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Zeus fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

"And which of the gods was it that set them on to quarrel? It was the son of Zeus and Leto; for he was angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people..."

It is a God, Apollo, who initiates the chain of events that leads toward the end of the whole tragedy, and the Gods presence is prominent from beginning to end. Every time the heroes try to free themselves from their destiny, the Gods bring them back to the course they cannot avoid. In Shakespeare's brilliant words; "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport" (King Lear, 4.1.36). The Ancients had a profound faith in destiny, the reason of why oracles where so important in their cults. The idea of deciphering what the Gods had prepared for men was pervasive in their culture, and key to understand their role, not only in society, but in the cosmos as a whole. The Iliad is the greatest achievement, I believe, in this world-feeling.

The West, however, and since the discovery of free will by St. Paul, resists the idea of a destiny. It is unbearable for a Western to admit that his future is sealed by doom. There must be a way out of it, or otherwise he would not deal with the tragic reality of the human condition. He must believe that he is in control of his own destiny. I think that this world-feeling is stronger than anything else in the United States, with its creed of the American Dream. But it took a more radical form in Europe, where Communism (and Hegelianism) became the banner of a promised realm where human individuals will free themselves, at last, from the curse of historical determinism. Liberals from the other side (from Kant and Mill to recently Rawls) want to settle the conditions from which then individuals will become self-fulfilled. The Western project and its progress is a restless struggle to free itself from the unbearable burden of doom.

I must admit that in this particular world-outlook of the Western mind I have departed to rest in the tragic interpretation of the Ancients, at least as well as I remain alive in this world. It is my impression that destiny is a reality that transcends human endeavors. But destiny must be understood properly and we must avoid the simplistic understanding that most people have of it. Destiny is not about a pre-written book that says that you are going to take a step toward the left instead than toward the right on a particular moment. First of all destiny is impossible to defeat in the reality of death. This is the reason why the Ancients cared so much about glory and transcendence in a world of terrifying oblivion; the reason of why the heroes of the Iliad don't fight for mere power and wealth, but for glory and honor, the only possible way to stay alive. In this sense the Ancients can be considered to be much more individualistic than their Western counterparts.

Christianity offered a way out: the Kingdom of God, the prize gained by those that set in the journey to follow Jesus. The only way death can be defeated is by faith in the Kingdom of God and the Final Judgement. Because of that any attempt to transcend death in this life became folly and stupid. The doom of death was inevitable, but the possibility of eternal life was offered; hence the individual can be free in choosing the path toward that eternal life, and finally having control of his destiny at least after the time of its death. But Modernity and its obsession to take charge of human destiny became so ambitious that denied the promise offered by Jesus, and set on the quest to find freedom and salvation on this earth. The consequence was the greatest defeat our civilization had received. However the dream remains alive in pop culture, when we see all these movies and read all these bestsellers where the heroes manage to triumph over the forces of their environment, and rebel against the Gods in the most contemptuous way without fear of retribution. It is then when I realize how naive and arrogant our society is. The delusion of the man that controls its destiny is one of our greatest weakness, and now that Communism and Capitalism have failed in delivering the promised freedom to us all, we have turn toward technology, a destiny controlled by machines that are dead as rocks; that impress us with their fancy shapes and glittering lights, so that we remain in a state of sopor at our tragic ending: that we never had control of our lives and destinies, and we are already in a world where machines control our movements and our interaction with other human beings, without possibility of return but through holocaust/Apocalypse.

In this future visage of desolation where humans become an appendage of technology I have returned to the Iliad as my personal retirement to find repose in times of heroes and conquerors when I'm surrounded by noise, concrete, metal, electricity and waves.

My Statement on Gay Marriage

2011-07-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

The law by virtue of being it I must respect. And it is expected from everyone else in a free society to do the same; because only the law has supreme earthly authority. Even in autocratic regimes the figure of the autocrat is the origin of the law. I will skip the problem of what would be a legitimate origin of the law, and just state as principle that the law, whatever it happened to exist according to the common consent of those being subject to it, remains the supreme earthly authority. But the Church (of Rome) has the monopoly of my conscience, the place where only God reaches. The law can only ask from me to obey it, but it cannot claim my conscience, my self. Recently gay marriage was approved in the State of New York, the place where I presently reside. And for the previous mentioned reasons I respect gay marriage by being sanctioned according to the law of this land, and having supreme earthly authority. But I cannot concede in favoring it in my conscience, because that part of my self belongs to my devoted faith in the Church; and the Church does not recognize as warranted the union of same-gender couples.

However I cannot judge others' love. Doing that is always deeply unchristian. The authority to judge others' love, and weather it is right or wrong, belongs only to God. That is why the inclination of gays is not my concern nor does it demands my opinion on the subject, because simply I cannot know better, because I am no better. My opinion only rests in regarding the institution of gay marriage and it is guided by the Holy Doctrine of the Catholic Church. For that reason I don't support with my conscience what the law forces me to respect nonetheless (and I willfully do respect it): the institution of gay marriage. But the judgment of others' love goes beyond my reach, as it is well explained by the Pauline theology from the teachings of Jesus.

The difficulty in explaining this is that our society has become to fond of judging others, coming from every orientation in politics, ethics and religion. The difference between the judgment of a court of law is that it rests upon the earthly authority of the law. If the law has a moral content, it is not morality which makes the law binding, but the law which makes morality binding. In itself the only moral court where the individual stands is that upon God. But this difference goes completely unnoticed by many who think that an opinion regarding a subject of ethics or morality, almost like by necessity, implies a judgment on those others that break what we consider to be the moral norms. This must be rejected, because there is a difference between a statement of morality, where basically the subject states what he believes to be the frontier between right and wrong, and another one is having the authority to point at some other person and rightfully say "you did wrong". Morality is a claim of the self in the his relation to God, but never to other men. To other men only law and conventions are binding, but the deep meaning of human morality lies hidden inside the conscience to a level that only God can pierce.

To put it more simply; when a person breaches the law, he goes to court. The law is recited to the person, but the person still remains innocent. In order for any judgment to be imposed on the person, it must be shown that the person actually broke the law. The sole speaking of the law does not make the person guilty. What makes the person guilty is the judgment based on the law. As it stands the law is just a statement of will (general will if you may) but it does not finger any guilty. It just creates the possibility and basis for the guilty. But the actual materialization of the guilty emerges from the judgment. And the judgment is only warranted when it has been proven that the person did break the law somehow (if there are enough doubts, it will always be better for the person to walk free). But with morality we face an insolvable problem: it is impossible to prove that inside another person's conscience there has been a real breach in the moral norms. A breach in convention can be proven, as well as with the law; but never a fault in morality, because we have no way of knowing what happens inside the depth of another human's mind (heart, soul, conscience). That is why blaming another for hypocrisy is most of the time a very bold judgment.

Morality does no warrant anyone to judge other people. Christianity teaches so, and the philosophical basis were built by St. Paul already a long time ago. When I state what I think to be right or wrong is a moral statement, but it does not imply a judgment (however many do that, and others interpret it that way). A true Christian morality will always point the difference between right and wrong, but stay there as when the courts of law have still not passed a judgment on a defendant. Because the only and truly possible authority in morality is God, the only force in the universe conceivable to penetrate inside the human heart and know their deepest truths. I think this more than enough to justify and explain my previous statement in gay marriage: why is it possible for me to oppose gay marriage and gay love as concepts contrary to Christian morality and still welcome any person without distinction of sexual inclination, without remorse or judgment upon them. Morality cannot be used as a weapon to judge without losing completely its true meaning, but as the relation between our individual consciences and God. The Church states the maxims of Christian morality, but it has no authority to produce any particular judgment on anyone. So the same with all of us.

1 Corinthians 4

2011-06-19T10:58:00.000-07:00

In order to show that Christian religion is not about judging and chastising people for their actions; that the idea of guilt is not a tool to influence and dominate the weak willed by some corrupt priests; and that corrupt priests and clergy as well as hypocrite believers are not inherent of the Christian faith, but part of the sinful nature of the human condition (that is shared by every human being with the only exception of the Virgin Mary), St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians says:

"(1) This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. (2) Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. (3) I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. (4) My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. (5) Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God."

"(6) Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, 'Do not go beyond what is written.' Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other. (7) For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?"

Guilt has no meaning in Christianity without forgiveness and redemption. It is not about a faith of self-flagellating people but of humble acceptance of our wrongs and hope in forgiveness through God's (and human) love. Those that believe that they can use Christian faith to judge and chastise others are deeply flawed in their interpretation of the message of Christ, and only give a weapon for those that attack our faith in the name of misconceived ideas of progress and freedom. Christianity is a faith of love and hope, that can only be achieved when we admit and start by our humble position in this life and not boasting at gifts that are given to us by God. St. Paul, with his respective coherence, tells us that even judging ourselves is flawed because only God can penetrate fully within the dark purposes of our spirit. If we don't even know ourselves fully, how do we expect to judge others that we are so far from knowing to heart? Christianity demands full tolerance to the wrongs of others; an extremely difficult feat to achieve; sainthood is the quality of those that reach it.

Luzardo and Barquero: the mirrors of our generation

2011-05-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

Reading Doña Bárbara (1929), probably the most acclaimed Venezuelan novel by Rómulo Gallegos, I was touched by a conversation that so vividly portrayed the deep rooted feelings of the Venezuelan spirit. The story takes place in the Venezuelan llanos (or Great Plains): an endless expanse of flat grassland, scorched by the sun in the dry season, and in the wet turned by torrential into fever-ridden swamps and lakes; it is the home of a wild and warlike breed, a racial mixture from Indian, white and black stock, hardened by their savage surroundings and capable of great endurance on horseback. Santos Luzardo (the hero), returns home after years spent in Caracas pursuing his university studies. He has become an urbane man and his ways totally contrast with the wild ways of the llanos. He has a conversation with his elder and only cousin left. His name is Lorenzo Barquero, who also did his studies in Caracas years before, when he was the most promising member of the family; but now he is a drunk, useless and decrepit man living in a tiny, stinking and dirty hut, after losing all his properties to the dangerous woman known as Doña Bárbara. Santos Luzardo is coming back (as his cousin Lorenzo did before him), and is determined to change the savage and semi-barbaric ways of the llanos, with the optimist view of a man of progress. However Lorenzo's state is absolutely disencouraging. Here is part of the conversation between both [the translation is mine]:

Santos: ..."It is necessary to kill the centaur", you said. I, of course, didn't know what a centaur could be and not even could I explain myself why the llaneros carried it inside them... Years after, in Caracas, a handout reached my hands of a speech you had delivered in I don't know what patriotic meeting, and imagine my impression when I found the famous phrase there. Do you remember that speech? The topic was: the centaur is barbarism and, therefore, it must be done with...
Lorenzo: ...Look at me carefully, Santos Luzardo! This specter of a man that was, this human wreck, this carrion that speaks to you, was your ideal. I was that which you said previously, and now I am this that you see. Aren't you afraid, Santos Luzardo?
Santos: Afraid, why?
Lorenzo: No! I'm not asking you for you to answer me! But for you to hear this instead: that Lorenzo Barquero who you have spoken of was nothing but a lie; the truth is this that you see now. You are also a lie that will banish soon. This land does not forgive... I started to realize that my intelligence, that which everyone called my great talent, did not work but while I was talking; as soon as I fell silent the mirage would also banish and I couldn't understand absolutely nothing. I felt the lie of my intelligence and my sincerity. Do you realize? The lie of your own sincerity, which is the worse that can happen to a man... To kill the centaur! He! He! Don't be an idiot, Santos Luzardo! Do you think that that of killing the centaur was pure rhetoric? I assure you that it exists. I've heard it neighing. Every single night it passes by here. And not only here; there, in Caracas, also. And far beyond too. Wherever one of us is... he hears the centaur's neighing. You've heard it too and that's why you are here. Who has said that it is possible to kill the centaur? Me? Spit on my face, Santos Luzardo. The centaur is an entelechy. A hundred years it has galloped over this land and another hundred will pass still. I thought myself civilized, my family's first civilized, but it was enough to be told: "come and avenge your father", for the barbarian inside me to emerge. The same has happened to you... Santos Luzardo! Look yourself in me! This land does not forgive!

I edited the conversation so as to show what I think is more interesting in it. It speaks, I think, about the deepest reality in Venezuelan society (I'm tempted to say Latin America, but it might be too bold). I am of those that think that not infrequently poets and novelists portray the human condition in a more acute and spiritual way than any philosopher or scientist. Rómulo Gallegos might have interpreted the tragedy/comedy of our national experience in the best way possible, in the dialectics between our will to progress (in Santos Luzardo) individually and collectively, and our inclination toward barbarism (in Lorenzo Barquero). Venezuelan history is a constant tension between these two forces; when we seem to be on the right track of what we think (what we like to think) is the road toward perfection, the internal forces of our turbulent and wild spirit, deeply rooted in the memory of our war of Independence, emerges as a destructive force that, cloaked in the disguise of justice and fairness, it immerses us in backwardness. Lorenzo Barquero is a metaphor of all of us, the man that tasted both worlds, that personifies both tendencies.

Our national history is filled with centaurs. The war of Independence produced tons of them. Bolivar was the first one (and also the one that combined Santos and Lorenzo in its greatest expression); Boves, not being a Venezuelan born, was also possessed by it in its most barbaric form. Páez was the first one to carry the name explicitly, and that by the end of his life tried to tame it (successfully as an individual and failing absolutely as the nation's leader). Both 19th and 20th century Venezuela has centaurs ruling and being ruled (in the bodies of the leaders, and the bodies of their followers and enemies alike). The 20th century has the more technocratic expressions. And when we seemed to have taken our leave from this tragic/comedy tradition, the centaur revived again, now in its most gruesome form. All Venezuelans know (once again) how is it like.

The figure of the progressive man in Santos is extremely interesting: a man deceived by the taste of modernity. He is our traditionally tragic hero, whereas Lorenzo has reached the level of our comedy hero. "Wherever one of us is... he hears the centaur's neighing". I can't but totally agree with this statement. I that know the country in which I was raised, and the symbols and feelings that it has produced in my being, I hear the centaur's neighing. And this last lines I write for all of my friends and the Venezuelan youth that today study abroad, many of whom were forced by the circumstances. Santos Luzardo is our mirror. And Lorenzo Barquero might be our destiny. The former we already are; the latter is a matter of choice. I don't believe in progress; everything is in eternal return. Venezuelan history: the eternal return of the centaur. Who wants to be part of this play? And what would be your role in it? Ask yourself these questions and choose. Lorenzo asks "Aren't you afraid, Santos Luzardo?" I would say yes.

"Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible! - Supposing we could judge value, what follows? The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength (And barbarism!!)" Nietzsche.

A good letter to the bishops and its shameful response

2011-05-16T10:15:00.000-07:00

Today the Vatican released a letter with its new guidelines in order to combat the cancer of child abuse by priests. It is part of the Church's response to the wave of accusations that has been taking place for years. No one can legitimately say that the Vatican is ignoring the issue, unless a deep rooted liberal hatred for everything sacred and holy is at place. And, sadly enough one more time, that is the case. Critics are disappointed with the Vatican's letter to the bishops. But it couldn't be the other way around. For them the Catholic Church is an ideological enemy. They want to see us finished. Today it becomes clearer to me that even if tomorrow the Vatican centralizes all the power possible to impose a solution from above, they would find any other argument, however unfair and contrary to common sense, and wield it against us one more time. In their hearts they don't care about the concrete cases of child abuse! That's just part of a discourse of discrediting the Church and its influence in the world, because of all their atheist ideology and secularist programme. Here there is the news in its more neutral content: http://www.monstersandcritics.

com/news/europe/news/article_1639478.php/Critics-dismiss-Vatican-guidlines-on-sex-abuse-by-clergy

For liberals it's not a matter of child abuse. They just simply hate the Church, and it happens that this is the most powerful discourse against it. That's all. All the liberal speech, unproductive as it is, is hypocritical ideology. They fill their mouths with fairness and justice, and when the Church tries to improve and move into that direction, they answer contemptuously to this improvement. If the Pope addresses the issue, they say it is not enough. If the Vatican appoints some people to draft a document to move forward a policy, they say it's ineffective and useless. Now the Church is telling the bishops to cooperate with the civil authorities, and they argue that it is all a cover up. Here there is a better account of the criticism: http://www.washingtontimes

.com/news/2011/may/16/vatican-suggests-bishops-report-abuse-police/?page=3

I will tell you what I think is behind the critics argument. The liberals solution is centralizing power! They want the Vatican to become some kind of modern big government to command directly the bishops in their tasks! Unbelievable isn't it?! Do they really think that the Pope is some kind of President or Prime Minister? A guy that just simply expands the Vatican's bureaucracy so that it acts as they want it to act? It doesn't work that way. The church is a federated body. It is the same argument all over again: in order to improve civil rights, give more power to the central authority. And if they do, then of course the Vatican's spendings will go up, and it will require more money, and then they will wield the old tautological argument that the Church only wants to take away your money from you, because in the end it's a business and not a honest religion, like if everything could be reduced to a merchant's ethos, or utilitarian morality. Here is an additional source in order to create more perspective: http://www.nytimes.com/201

1/05/17/world/europe/17vat ican.html

Conclusion: so anywhere we see it, it will always be the same: (a) the Church is not doing enough with its "unbinding" rules, they say; ergo they must create binding rules. (b) But to have binding rules you need the bureaucratic apparatus to enforce the rules (basic common sense political knowledge); ergo you need to expand the central bureaucracy to reach the periphery of the Church in order to make sure that the bishops are obeying you. (c) So in order to make the rules binding, you need to spend more on your new expanded bureaucratic apparatus of regulation; ergo the Church need more resources and its gonna look for them. (d) The Church's expansion is a proof that the only thing they want is money from you! They are all fat hypocrites that don't care about your soul but about your pocket! Their presence is not only spurious (because Jesus story is a lie to manipulate the ignorant masses from which you form a part of, after all), but also costly and uneconomical; ergo, we should get rid of the Church! (An argument that has been stressed for a long time now, since the most infamous and shameful writer in the history of the West wrote; namely Voltaire). Better have that money in the pocket of the bourgeoisie that is giving you a job at least!!!

It all comes to the same thing, so it seems. Liberals, their secular programme and their atheist ideology want to see us all, the Catholic Church of God, extinguished. We shouldn't care about their argument; what matters to us is their final malignant goal.

A note on Internal Relations

2011-05-07T16:09:00.000-07:00

Writing a paper for my class of dialectics, I've come up with this quick explanation of what the philosophy of internal relations mean. It is extremely short, but I offer it to my readers, especially to those closer to philosophy, to know their position regarding this controversial school of thought initiated by Hegel. Let it be known that many of the things said following I consider them correct, contrary to what analytical philosophy claims. It says:

Internal relations cannot see the world as a sum of objects. The word “object” implies that there is a finished unit that is separable from the rest. This is not the case. Internal relations assume that any object is not an object proper, but a thing that is determined by all the relations this thing has with the things that it is not; that is, with its environment. For example: a chair is not in itself a unit, because a chair needs space to exists; however space is not a part of what the chair is, but is an indispensable environmental condition without which the chair cannot exist. In this sense the chair’s actual existence is determined by the space in which it is. It means that in the real existence of the chair by necessity there must be the existence of space. This relation of the chair with space (that the chair cannot be understood without the space in which it remains, but acknowledging that the space does not form part of the chair itself) is an internal relation. Basically no-thing stands by itself without the use of abstraction. That a thing exists implies everything that that thing is not, but without which it cannot exist. The thing is by virtue of everything that it is not. Because every thing has a relation to all the rest that it is not, then its determination in the real world takes the form of relations and not of objects. An object would imply that the thing can be taken outside all its external determinations without ceasing to exist.

The relation is internal because things and facts are not seen as objects but as relations. A chair stands in opposition to everything the chair is not. This that the chair is not forces the chair to have boundaries, and hence the chair is intelligible and can exist. If the chair is not related to everything it is not, then it would have no boundaries because it stands in isolation from the rest (it would be a thing by itself without needing anything else), and the chair would become universal; that is everything, which is, of course, nonsense. It is implicit in the bodily existence of the chair everything that the chair negates by virtue of not being it.

As an external relation we take the chair as given in its objective condition, and then relating itself to other things in a mechanic-like structure, like crashing or forcing themselves. This is the path of physics. The chair does not need the rest to be understood, and the rest only plays a role of modifying the chair by having contact with it. External relations are those that take place between finished objects in their physical contacts. In the philosophy of internal relations what the chair is not is part of the structure of being of the chair itself. The chair cannot be understood without its environment. Its environment also determines what the chair is.

A coarse example: A chair is a chair as long as it is used as a chair. Why? Because what makes a chair what it is is its relation to its environment by virtue of having a particular use. If we take the chair and use it to beat someone, the relation with its environment has completely changed. Now it is not being used as a chair but as a blunt weapon. Dialectically it means that the thing in question is no longer a chair but a chair-shaped blunt weapon. The thing changed in being by virtue of a change in its relations to the environment without any actual change in its physical shape. What make a thing what it is, then, is the sum of its relations to its environment. Because of this reason, nothing can be taken as an object in itself, because nothing stands objectively in itself, but in relation to what it is not (its environment).

An elegant example: if we take the Latin alphabet, we have certain units we call letters. If we take A, we can say that in itself it stands as an A: that is A=A, which is a basic proposition of formal logic. However if we want to see A as an internal relation we can also say that: A=-B,-C,-D…-Z. This is saying exactly the same thing but not from the vantage point of A as an object and finished unit in contrast with the rest, but A being part of an environment of letters as the structure of its being. The other letters, by virtue of their negative value, set the boundaries for each positive unit. So if we take a set of letter in this way “-B…-Z” the only possible solution is “A”, because the only one thing excluded from the set of negative determination is precisely the positivity of A.

We can go further in proving the negative quality of everything when seen as internally related with its environment. Let us not take any thing in particular but every thing except the thing that we are not taking. By taking everything except the one thing, this one thing is already implicit in everything taken, because is the only thing that remains missing. We can say that B…Z=-A. The letter “A” becomes a negative determination of the whole when seen from the vantage point of the whole minus what we are not taking. This negative value or determination is what we call contradiction in dialectics. And it is because of this reason that dialectics is a logic of contradictions.

The important thing to understand is that a thing never stands in isolation as an object. The mentioning of anything has implicitly everything else that it is not, because the thing itself excludes the rest. So we can see the thing from the vantage point of the rest, from the negation of the rest. Take something as everything that it is not and we will, by necessity, have what the thing is because it is the remaining from everything that a thing is not. Conclusion: everything includes within its structure of being everything that it is not, because its concrete existence depends on negating the concrete existence of everything else. The structure of being of any thing and fact is determined by contradictions between it and the rest.

In this sense a thing can be abstractly divided in infinite parts. If any thing stands in relation to a whole that remains its environment, also the thing stands as a whole in relation to its parts. The conclusion of this analysis is that the most important hypotheses of dialectics is that the development process of every thing consists in the contradictory relations of its internal parts, not external influences. There are no external influences in dialectics because they are taken to be also part of a bigger whole. This is the inevitable result of an analysis that insists in taking things not as objects but as relations. This is probably the most important aspect of dialectics, and I am going to explain it further ahead. Now I move to explain what dialectics means by the word contradiction.

What is Truth?

2011-04-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

I'm going to honor this special day by quoting one of the most interesting and enlightening dialogues in recorded history and the Holy Scripture:

‎33 Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" 34 Jesus answered, "Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?" 35 Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me; what have you done?" 36 Jesus answered, "My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world." 37 Pilate said to him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice."

‎38 Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" (John 18:33-38).

This conversation takes place just before Christ punishment and execution. But its enlightening by the fact that it takes place between an elevated man from a particular culture at that time, and a pagan man from the prevailing civilization. Pilate has more reasons to doubt that the Jews, because he is totally out of context. However contrary to the Jews he gives Jesus the benefit of doubt. Maybe this man is not a criminal after all, and what he has to say may be important. The priests on the contrary are totally in context, they are partials in the debate and want Jesus dead because he is saying things contrary to their privileged status quo. Pilate has no reason to think this way and asks him honestly "Are you the King of the Jews", and then he points out that he is not a Jew, he has no reason to believe or disbelieve him. For him is almost a matter of indifference. For the Jewish priests it is not. There is no crime in Jesus words and Pilate is more driven by an intellectual interest of discovering what is so annoying for the Jews. His final decision of executing Jesus is only based on political reasons: preserving the peaceful status quo of a very turbulent province of the Roman Empire. He does never believe that Jesus is guilty; he washes his hands for he is not committing the crime of injustice. Pilate's decision is driven by the reason of state.

Finally he asks "What is truth?" His scepticism is the beginning from which faith can spring. He is not denying Jesus. Only the religious bigotry of the priests gave no space for Jesus argument. Their status and wealth depends on not understanding Jesus words. Even if they believe them to be true, it is a inconvenient truth. The debate between the pagan Roman and Jesus is the first encounter between Christian faith and the breakdown of the pagan world. Pontius Pilate is the first Roman to face Jesus, but his circumstances don't allow him to take him seriously. He follows political needs completely unaware of the historical consequences of his decision. That this execution would change the face of the Earth he is completely ignorant of.

A very curious character Pontius Pilate is. How many men find themselves in the precise place and precise moment where history is about to take a radical shift, and are totally unaware of it?

A reflection, a poem and an unusual story

2011-04-16T13:42:00.000-07:00

On this rainy morning Phoebus visited me, I think. I'm going to post three different texts out of this single post: One reflection, one poem that hopefully is going to be well received (even though I'm aware that it can be really bad. I'm no professional poet) and finally an unusual short story. They are not related so you can go straight to the reading that calls more your attention.

Nostalgia or Pessimism
There are minds that look for something beyond what the world of senses can offer us. Minds that are so empowered by imagination that find in the world insufficient intellectual stimulation and they look in ideas, forms and symbols that which can't be given by the spirit of our times. I'm not saying anything profound here, and I will explain why. I still remember the fantasies I used to play with when I was a kid: first it was the dinosaurs in my earliest infancy; for a time I feed from Star Wars until I converted into a trekker in my teenage hood. Later on I found feed for my imagination in The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons, the world of magicians and monsters. I was always desperately looking for these treasures of creativity in which I could play in my mind and rest from the humdrum spirit of modern times. Once I've exploited enough of them, I would usually move away into another world of discovery. Realism can be very tiresome for some people, and we find in fiction what materialism lacks in essence (matter itself has no essence, but the thought we have about it, making thinking essential and experience vacuous) My point is, I'm still that imaginative mind that flies into distant worlds. I've come to realize that in those moments of realist disenchantment with the world, today I go back in time into ancient societies. Or as Machiavelli once beautifully put it:

"When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that food that alone is mine and for which I was born; where I am unashamed to converse with them and to question them about the motives for their actions, and they, out of their human kindness, answer me. And for four hours at a time I feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles, I do not dread poverty, and I am not terrified by death. I absorb myself into them completely".

My nostalgia consists in this longing for a world that no longer exists and lies far away, lost in time. The magic springs from their reality: they existed (and this is a strength that no fictional creation can match). They were real once. Today we (I) recreate their life in our (my) minds when this world of us become too absorbing. I share with Machiavelli this playground. Our creativity looks back what we know can't be found forward. This is the reason why I can't be a progressive or a liberal; nostalgia can turn into pessimism; longing for the past is contempt toward the future. My vantage point is not human rights, nor the proletariat. My vantage point is not the economy, climate change or the bourgeoisie. My vantage point is, my friends, Ancient Greece.

A poem without a name
The train moves, it does not stop.
The spirit of our times, driven like a train,
aiming forward, without restraint.
A moment still, a beautiful moment,
gone forever, nothing stays here,
everything moves, just like the train,
without rest, without refrain.

It slows down, it speeds up, it does not stop.
What do I see? Workers making it real,
making it move, like history, like our times,
moving forward, you can't deceive.
Board the train, it's called life,
the moment still, when it was here, it seemed too real,
then the train arrives, and you have no option,
you board to survive.

Station, next station, industrialization moving you forward,
from birth to youth, to bloom and with luck, to old age.
A love I had, a love that was real,
and like reality, a train also came,
with its moment of depart one day at Union Square,
a love that was real, it came to go, not to stay,
we boarded our different trains,
survival made its claim.

That beautiful moment, it didn't survive;
that still, that was never real.
This wind, that blooming tree, those clouds,
those mating pigeons, my breath and my mouth;
this rain, that bulb, my pain.
Beautiful moment, you are gone.
The train came, and I departed.
I'll never see you again, driven by industrialization,
survival made its claim.

An Unusual Short Story
One day a man was teleported from distant past into Grand Central Terminal. That man was Aristotle. Nothing physically impossible happened. Matter was not added to our time. Like scientist and science fiction authors claim, matter just changed, like is happening right now as the reader reads these lines. This time it turned out to be Aristotle to which matter changed. A very curious man indeed, right there, but the New Yorker couldn't care less, living as she does in a city filled with curiosities. What an unfortunate man indeed he was, brought from the polis to the nation times. In sooth, everyone thought he was a homeless, and an eccentric one, like many others, with a long white beard and a queer colorful robe. He thought he was in Olympus, with all this electric lights, with the high blue ceiling picturing the stars, the golden clock in the middle and the huge foreign flag. Everything too alien for a man of his intelligence. Then he thought that that might be the Tartarus. Everyone was dressing like barbarians; this couldn't be the Olympus or the Elysium. Or can the Gods look so differently to us the Hellenes? Almost like a boy, he seated on the stairs, lost as he was, wondering as he is, lost in his thoughts. "Where am I? What is this incredible place? What kind of illusion I'm suffering from?" Those were the questions that he was trying to figure out when a policeman forced him to stand up. It is not allowed to sit on Gran Central's stairs. Aristotle might have felt more at home if he would have teleported into the Metropolitan, not a train station! So he came out into the streets, where the tall buildings, the yellow cabs and the horrible weather made their effects. "This must be a dream! This is not possible!" Some people thought he must have been some kind of drug addict. He definitively looked so, staring as he was, at all the world around him, people pushing him aside and one or two yelling at him "move out of the way!" He walked down 42nd street, not even the numbers could be recognized. And the Chrysler building, high above ground, resembled a spectacular marvel. Everything was marvelous. Everything was out of proportion. Everything was horrible to this man's eyes. Like all stories without endings, this one will stop here for lack of development, and just add that Aristotle, in all his wisdom, was last seen sleeping on a bench in Bryan Park, totally alone, speaking a foreign language no one could understand, reading from letters no news paper would print, thinking in ideas no one could imagine in modern times.

On the Dentist Chair

2011-04-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

Time for a casual tale. I just came from the dentist, and up to now I can officially consider myself an experienced patient with these people. Normally you wouldn't think about this, and drop the memory once you are out, but the difference between how they proceed here in New York from home has kept me wondering.

Today I was received by an Indian woman, who had the particular feat of being butterfingered. And as a native from India, she also had this way of speaking that makes all Indians have the most hilarious accent of the English language. But she was really sweet, I give her that. Every once in a while (every 30 seconds or so) she would keep asking "are you okay?", non stop till the end of the one hour consultation. She would even give me a summary of all the possible courses of action and ask me what I would like to do first, which is a very curious question because I had no idea what she was talking about. Then something happened twice that as far as I remember never happened to me back home: she would call a supervisor, like a senior dentist, in order to check her work on me. The old man was a Chinese (naturally). I mean, he could be from Japan or Vietnam, but for the sake of convenience let us assume he was a Han from Taiwan. In all my dentist consultations here, this senior dentist would come, take a second look and give the seal of approval. I thought maybe because they are students, but I'm not so sure. They don't look THAT young.

All this seems common ground. But it occurred to me to assume the position of the patient as a vantage point, and not simply dismiss it as an uncomfortable experience. Here you are, lying on this burdensome couch (if it can benignly be called a couch), with your mouth open, and some unknown person sticking metallic objects into your mouth for an hour or more. In the case of the sweet Indian woman, her clumsy style made water spill all over my face all over again. But the truth is that we are in a highly vulnerable position here! If the mafia is looking to kill you, definitively doing it at the dentist chair would be the way to go!! With all this piercing objects, miniature drills and plastic cables there are many options that can come to my mind, and it wouldn't even take a minute. But then the sweet Indian woman with her insistent and comically pronounced "are you okay?" couldn't have been a hitman. We haven't got to that level yet.

Then the supervisor would come in, take a look, and then they would start a discussion of whatever was going on (in both their not-so-unusual-anymore accents). Surrounded by all this objects and technology, with lights aiming at your face like if you were in an interrogation room, these doctors over you speaking this unintelligible language with all its codes and meanings, you start to realize that you are in a laboratory, and you are the subject of investigation. The difference is that they don't ask a rat for permission to do anything with it, and the rat cannot sue for malpractice (and, of course, the rat doesn't get charged). But the truth is that you are being investigated, inspected, studied; and technology is being applied to you, knowledge is being used over you, methods are being tested and practiced through you. No one likes to be subject of scientific experimentation, but this is what we do for the sake of health; and a very important aspect of health with sensible aesthetical repercussion: our teeth. A woman can live proudly with small breasts. But can we proudly live without teeth?

And this brings me to my conclusion. I have, what I think, is a very plausible hypotheses. The reason why we start seeing people smiling with their teeth out in the open, that we trace as far back as middle 20th century, and not before, it's because of the invention of dentistry. Let's be serious, I don't remember any important picture, painting or sculpture of any important or unimportant person portraying an open smile. And I don't think it would be because of Benedictine bias against laughing. Make the test, google for the pictures of all the famous people previous to middle 20th century. No one is showing their teeth. Was it because those were less happy times then? I don't think so. The most reasonable answer is because they had no teeth.

Picture Immanuel Kant, in all his wisdom, without teeth in his mouth. Why would he smile for the painter? How about Mary Antoinette who must have lost some teeth before losing her head? We can bear Julius Caesar's baldness, but we don't like to imagine him conquering Gaul with a black whole on his front denture. That would make him look like a redneck. Queen Victoria, Empress of the Universe, or Elizabeth I Queen of heretic England, not so charming anymore. Maybe Wagner was not so ireful as he looks in his picture, but was simply hiding his lack of teeth, so as everyone else. And maybe an enlightened mind like Nietzsche discovered the all too obvious solution of letting his mustache grow insanely, and now he wouldn't look so insane himself but a practical man hiding his horrid denture.

Anyways, we have something to thank to dentistry, and not only avoiding the hellish toothache. Today we are compensating for all the millenia of humans representations without open smiles by exploiting our current photograph technology like if there were no tomorrow; a compliment for progress.

Pessimist Aphorisms of an Industrial Mind

2011-04-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

Dialectics: incessant move. Result: eventual depletion. Fulfillment: Self-consciousness? On the contrary, eventual loss of creativity. Progress to: the end of history? On the contrary, toward death. Nothing lasts forever in a world determined by matter. Change in matter is both birth and death of life. Civilization is also made of matter.

The Spirit of our Time: Selfishness? Maybe. Addresses to nations no longer matter. That time is gone; industrial capitalism has eaten it all. The global is the only thing that remains. And the only thing I know about globes is that they are ruled by Caesars. It is only a matter of time. As I said before, everything determined by matter is doomed to die: even freedom. Like Oedipus, we will also take out our eyes. Like Electra, we will also kill our mother(land).

Matter of time is a curious expression. It speaks that matter in the context spoken is time, not matter itself. But time is not matter, is it? Matter is linked through time, because through time matter changes, and changes dialectically (or mechanically, that is irrelevant) so as to reach fulfillment in its current form and pass away. This is not good. This is tragic. Conservatism is the really tragic ideology.

Dialectics is nothing but mechanics integrating life and death. The latter is for physicists, the former is for philosophers. Only through Jesus is this tragedy broken.

The Spirit of our Times is the Decline of the West, because selfishness never stopped being at its core. Existentialism became the prime philosophy, because in modern times, with its pipelines, its underground trains and its smoke pumping into the sky, the death of creativity brought the dominium of that dreadful God called Bore. Its realm’s name: Boredom. Like all of you, I’m also its subject, its slave.

We are slaves; he is the dominus, our master. Is it the Modern Age the dominium of Bore? Is it the spiritual God and Master? The mind, like sleeping, in torpor, looks desperately for Fun, that minor deity. Fun takes us out of Boredom… of the realm of Bore… for a while. Do we go to Fun-dom? As with all minor deities, when Fun ceases to be present, Bore reclaims its dominium. No rest. Seeking fun and thrill without rest: that is the Spirit of our Times.

But the higher mind asks for more. Bore, that dreadful tyrant, like Caesar, must be killed. Is this possible in our times? From Boredom we can escape for a while; but is there a guillotine for this sovereign? Venus is gone, and we are left alone with Eros. Like a servant without his domina, he is the kindred of Fun. Ask yourself these questions, and you’ll realize how tragic our times look like.

Does the realm of Bore looks more dreadful the more conscious of it we are? Is it self-consciousness what makes Boredom so difficult a rule to bear? The need to erase the image of this yoke from our mind; the most desperate quest of the citizen of Cosmopolis. But boredom is not an idea; it is not abstraction, speaking beyond the content of the word.

I see a bridge. It’s massive; it’s the product of modern labor: the alienated product of hundreds of 19^th century workers, all now dead. It bridges all ghettos, it reaches Cosmopolis. It is the Brooklyn Bridge. Like him, like this massive structure whose weigh was so heavy for the hands and backs of those workers, my body is as heavy to my mind. My mind looks at it, relates to it, as a responsibility. Are all High Minds looking for the universal while their bodies force them to remain a thing-for-other, a particular? Who was right on this? Plato or Nietzsche? If my body is the realm for my pain and my mind is the realm for my boredom; between the Philosopher King and the Übermensch, I’m not sure who will give me the answer to this concern. Is there a synthesis between both? That would be a question worth answering.

Is my mind the dominium and realm of Bore, and Bore is its master, its sovereign? Where is Reason left? It seems now gone, like a bad dream. If Reason was the Goddess to which the West looked for a guide, it turned out to be all a lie, a false deity, a charlatan. Bore is more real, more powerful than Reason. That’s why Reason is invoked today to protect nothing else but those two minor shallow deities: Fun and Eros.

Goddess Reason was nothing but a madman’s dream: Robespierre’s dream. That Goddess never conquered anything in humanity, but the outer worldliness for humanity. That Goddess is claimed by those that call themselves liberals, in their idealist quest for that other Goddess, so much praised but so much unknown, Lady Justice: a Goddess that takes biased forms everywhere, deformed. Those liberals that desperately look for her, only find her partially, and those above, in their skyscrapers, are the ones that monopolize her. Hence, she only defends the product of the God Money, profit. Jesus is not their God. Justice is like a gendarme, with her sword driven by Money. The poor veteran, he who is asking for money in the train, Justice does not work for him. And she never will. For him only the God of Faith, Hope and Charity works; Jesus is his only God.

Goddess Justice and her sister Reason; both servants of this sovereign God of worldliness Money. Money allied with Fun and Eros to fight the inner tyrants Bore and Hunger. No my friends, Reason is a charlatan, and Justice is unknown! Bore and Hunger are the true masters of this world!

Dialectics of the 20th Century

2011-03-28T18:29:00.001-07:00

A Social Life

2011-03-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

Chopin is my psychologist, with him I talk my issues.
Rembrandt is my mystic, he pictures the human soul.
Dostoyevsky is my best friend, he understands me entirely.
With Wagner it is all drinks, and we drink it strong!
Tolstoy is my master, he teaches me to stare and hear.
Whereas with Victor Hugo it's just fighting,
sometimes with arguments, sometimes with fists.
Marx is a teacher I admire and hear, but only sometimes.
Beethoven, he is my best friend, my councilor, my redeemer!
Hegel became my intellectual guide, casting shadows away,
but more shadows took their place.
Rachmaninoff is my confessor, he knows my darkest secrets.
David shows me glory, that which I will never see.
Tchaikovsky, with him it is all drinks,
sometimes vodka! and sometimes tea.
Kant convinced me for a while, now I admire him as opponent.
Voltaire is my enemy, Rousseau is hard to find.
Machiavelli is my best friend, with whom I share the same passion:
our love and admiration for distant past.
Goya is like my mirror, he tells me how I am.
Nietzsche showed me the truth,
now I don't know how to do without it.
And Hanna Arendt?
Well gentlemen, she's unavailable,
because she is my girlfriend!

Why Liberals don't understand

2011-03-01T06:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was puzzled by a short, casual conversation I had with a class colleague. It has occurred to me that the republican tradition of thought and speech is so forgotten, and contemporary debate has departed so much from it, that people actually can't understand, and usually misunderstand when one speaks of republicanism. It seems to me like if we were talking two different languages, where the notions of one translate into the complete opposite in the mind of the other. This difference must be mended, and some common ground must be built from the classical republican tradition for liberals to ever start to understand what we are saying in the first place, which doesn't seem to be the case most of the time.

First of all I would like to explain from where my inspiration in republicanism comes from. I think this is something shared between intellectuals and academics in this tradition, but it is a feature that seems to be left aside. Republicans are deeply influenced by the Roman experience. Rome is a symbol of the highest degree in our thought and ideas (even more than Sparta and Athens, Venice or Florence). However I've realized that common-sense thought has a completely different understanding by the symbol Rome, and from here springs the most radical of contradictions.

It took me some time to realize this, but when I speak Rome, I've noticed that almost everyone thinks and remembers the experience of the Roman Empire, the period of the Caesars, the longest tyranny known so far. The great abyss between me and most liberal interlocutors starts here. When I speak Rome, it seems self-evident to me that I'm referring to the Roman Republic, its institutions, its laws, its traditions, its multiple inter-generational heroes and their political virtues and prudence. The Rome of the Scipios, of Fabio Maximus and Marcellus, Titus Flaminius, Aemilio Paulus, Cato the Older and even up to the decadent times of Cicero and Cato the Younger, Brutus and Cassius. The Rome that defeated Pirrus and Carthage, and that put the Macedonian dynasties to their knees. This Rome is so different, and contrasts so much with the Rome enslaved by Octavius, that the sole names Imperator and Caesar should strike republicans with obnoxious feelings. This is the first thing that people must understand when we speak the name of Rome, and not the nefarious names of Caligula and Nero. Not only is it Caesarism reason of repugnance in itself as a tyranny, as Tacitus well portrays, but also for the reason it was Caesarism that violently killed the republican dream, as we read in Sallust.

Another name that strikes liberals in a totally alienated way is that of Machiavelli. The Florentine writer is probably one of the most influential and venerated thinkers in Western republican tradition. Most people would be surprised by this, and it is because most people associate Machiavelli with The Prince, the most insightful treaty on tyrannical rule. They forget that more than The Prince, it is in The Discourses that we read the sincere and honest Machiavelli. A treatise based on comments on Titus Livy's History of Rome, The Discourses are a profound explanation of the classical republican creed previous to liberal ideas, and its respective abhorrence toward tyranny (In The History of Florence there is also a wealthy account of Machiavelli's republicanism as opposed to tyranny). People, in a curious parallel of thinking in Rome as the Empire instead of as the Republic, hear and think of Machiavelli as The Prince, instead of as The Discourses. Of course popular culture is partly to blame. The Prince is so much more famous, just as Ceasars are so much more portrayed in movies and literature than the ancient patriots. No wonder why people get so surprised when you tell them that your examples and highest symbols are Rome and Machiavelli, names that common-sense remembers with dread instead of admiration. This memory of only part of the story (the ugly part), plays a role in what makes the republican tradition so alien in our liberal-dominated times.

These misconceptions, errors in communication, make liberal and republican tradition seem so exclusive, whereas in sooth it's not the case. Common ground between both is not scarce, especially because liberalism first emerged as a branch of classical republicanism. But today's liberal confusion of portraying republicanism as an authoritarian ideology kindred in spirit to fascism is nothing but a blatant calumny, demonstrating nothing but short-sightedness and ignorance. However it is true that republicanism in its classical form is a-liberal, which is not the same as to say anty-liberal! A-liberal in the sense that its political values are previous to liberalism, and somehow lack many of its features, and for good reasons. While liberals are so concerned about the danger of coercing the individual, republicans are deeply disturbed by the potentiality of the tyrant, historically embodied by Julius Caesar. Liberals don't care much about who's in power and how, as long as he behaves and respects individual rights; republicans can't understand this respect for citizens without addressing the structure of political institutions in relation to citizenship itself.

Probably the most contrasting difference between liberals and republicans is that they focus, give priority and value different things. Tyranny, that is, uni-personal arbitrary and illegitimate rule is the most obnoxious possibility for republican tradition; considered the ultimate state of political slavery. Whereas for liberals individual rights and entitlements are universal, and any violation of what they interpret as these rights is illegitimate (Even the tyrant has rights). For republican thought this might be nothing more than absolute naivete, because the most important value is patriotism, the love for your country, its institutions and its liberty. This could contradict what liberals consider individual universal rights, especially if it implies making war against another country, where the most human of rights, life, is systematically alienated. This might be true also for republicans, but from our perspective it's a price we have to pay in the service of our country. Individual rights are just simply not that relevant when the safety and liberty of your country is at stake (Lincoln proved it). This is a statement of facts that usually liberals are not willing to acknowledge. Differences of this short are those that would permit, for example, discrepancy regarding Israel. Whereas I as a republican admire the strength and courage of Israel's republic, a liberal would focus on its terrible human rights record. It's not that I deny this record to be condemnable, which it is; it's just that I don't consider it politically relevant. The same happens when liberals are willing to negotiate with a mild dictator (as it happens so often when they use the fetish concept self-determination), whereas republican thought finds them obnoxious and worthy of intervention and replacement (let us say, a nefarious tyrant like Saddam Hussein, or today's Gaddafi!).

In conclusion, something that liberals are inclined to do: they confuse patriotism with nationalism, which would make republicanism side by side with a regime of a man like Mussolini, for example. Under republican standards, any regime like those of Bonaparte, Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Peron, Castro, Chavez, etc., stand in the hall of the Caesars; of Tiberius, Caligula, Neron, Commodus, etc. A liberal could like Marcus Aurelius (like J. S. Mill did), but a republican would always repudiate its regime as a matter of political principles. Republicanism demands republic, and it's logically irreconcilable with any style of tyrant. Hobbes is a correct example that liberals wouldn't necessarily pass this test.

The Idiot's Wisdom

2011-02-14T21:08:00.001-08:00

We can approach God in many ways. We can understand Jesus message and mission from many sources. We can grasp Him in our thoughts. We can have the feeling since we are born. We can get inspired by the martyrs. And we can get in touch by the Bible, or be enlightened by a miracle. God speaks to us in the most unexpected fashions, and it is up to us if we are willing to hear His voice or not. One man that I think understood the Gospels of the Lord more than anyone else in his time was the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. With "guilt" in Crime and Punishment, "nihilism" in The Damned, "sanctity" and "greed" in The Brothers Karamazov, and surprisingly with "naivety" in The Idiot, this Russian novelists grasps in very simple and unexpected moments what seems to be the whole message of the Gospels of Christianity. What do we do when the most impressive religious revelations take form through art, and literature? In a civilization that turn its back on God, and no longer has the force to hope, Dostoyevsky seems to me the author of a rebirth of Christianity. I live you with the particular passage that caught my attention this time:

"There is joy for a mother in her child's first smile, just as God rejoices when from heaven he sees a sinner praying to Him with his whole heart. (...) The essence of religious feeling doesn't depend on reasoning, and it has nothing to do with wrongdoing or crime or atheism. There is something else there and there always will be, and atheists will always pass over it and will never be talking about that" (1969: 240).

Being a New Yorker

2011-02-12T16:44:00.000-08:00

I must confess something. Sometimes New York appears to me as a very strange city. This is not bad nor good. It is something beyond good and evil. I'm talking about a subjective experience, a perception of the society around you, and the internal feeling that it produces. How after a night of drinks and laugh turns next day as an ephemeral moment without consequence. It appears in my imagination and memory as a dream. The sense of reality, of here and now, is blurred with this apparent sensation of alienation. This nihilistic state of the mind and the soul is frequent in New York after a very emotional and self-rewarding experience. Or at least it is how I perceive it.

I think this strange spiritual tension between I as a subject, and the world that surrounds me has something to do with the speed of time and the enormous and complex amount of diversity present in New York. Maybe it's common to other people in other cities, but I can only speak it from the place where I live. Diversity in a city like New York overwhelms you. First it is extremely charming. The impressions that leave in the mind are of excitement and discovery. Every person is like an ambassador from distant lands. It's a place where you get into context with the rest of the world. My conclusion is that for the subject, the I, is an overreaching society that remembers you that you are an individual. Even more, it's a society that makes you individual. Whereas in other societies, smaller, less diverse, the sense of community, the sharing of symbols and a common feeling gives you a strong identity. In New York you are forced to be the author of your identity, or fall into an immense loneliness. The charm of diversity gives you food for adventure, and a quest to embrace the world in every single person you meet. It's a universal place where humanity as an amorphous body meets, which means that there is no community at all. No holding from an ancestry or a culture. When something embraces everything, it excludes nothing, and the unity of identity is lost when finding yourself unopposed by nothing. Identity depends also on identifying what you are not. In New York you could be anything, there is no possibility of exclusion. You must determine yourself, which somehow speaks of freedom, but it also requires strength and character. Otherwise you are lost.

In a city where you are exclusively an individual, where you can't hold yourself to a community, the danger of falling into nihilism and loneliness is high. Sometimes I move between both, between the strength of character to form my identity independent from anything else, and the strange feeling of losing yourself in an unstoppable flux of events and people. In New York everything goes fast, time is filled with emotions, experiences and persons. When you turn your attention to your past, the collection of events is so big that you realize how fast you must move in order to survive. This survival is not a matter of life and death. It's a survival of remaining in the unity of your identity, and not dismembering it into unintelligible pieces. The speed of time is enhanced by the number of experiences and people you get in contact with. Overcoming the danger of being lost is the daily experience that forms the New Yorker. If there is unity in the identity of the New Yorker, it's his capacity to form himself everyday in a society which diversity breaks any possible sense of community. The device many of us use is distinguishing ourselves by reflecting on our background, by remembering where we or our family came from (another country or another State). Even a born New Yorker reflects on this family background.

The point is, the danger of diversity for the subject is his weakness in failing to determine himself in the most complex way almost every single day. Otherwise loneliness is a punishment for those that are too nostalgic. Never mind why New York is a city of eight millions of individual persons.

God, Jesus and Logic

2011-02-07T09:31:00.000-08:00

It is common to hear atheists defend their unbelief in God by bringing logic or reason, and similar vaguely used terms brought up in a conversation. It happened to me recently and I tried to explain what I usually think about this use of logic rules to try to unprove God. I'm aware that such conversations and use of logic is a thing of amateurs, because the notion of logic itself breaks the head of the most prominent philosophers. That is, not even the great names in the subject agree on everything. However I don't want to make this note on a debate of logic, but on certain remarks on the possible understanding of God. For this reason I'm going to use logical thinking to demonstrate why logic cannot be used to test God.

God is broadly believed to be the Creator of the world. Plenty of metaphors are used to describe this role He plays in the existence of all things, by portraying Him as the Architect of the Universe, the Consciousness of the World, the Universal Legislator, etc. The prime element is that, if we admit that he is the Creator, then he drafted the rules of the world he created and which existence comes only after His act. This argument goes for the atheists, so follow me closely. Independently of your faith or lack of it, if we reasonable accept as an intellectual experiment, that something like God is the only thing from which the Universe could have spring from, then He is previous to the rules that determine the world He created. These rules are a posteriori in existence. They didn't play any role in God's presence itself. This, my friends, includes logic. The order of the Universe is determined by many laws, and some of them are formal rules of logic. Because we are beings necessarily bound to the rules of this world in which we live in, it is impossible for us to think outside the most basic notions that structure it. That which transcends the world, that lies beyond its rules, that's precisely God. Then how can we even conceive an explanation of the nature of that that is totally outside our sphere of reference? Thinking otherwise is the biggest of illusions brought about by that callous sin called pride.

God as a concept cannot be debated. It is a naive discussion. However, the experience of Jesus Christ can. Why? Because he walked this Earth and his life was bound to its rules... to a certain extend. There are only two assumptions that we have to use in discussing Jesus Christ. Or we acknowledge that he is the son of God, or we don't. If we don't, then we can legitimately debate Jesus Christ on strictly historical and rational terms. But if we do, then we have before us a dilemma. Jesus is both a man, so we can judge him as such, but he also shares with God in His universal nature, so there is something that runs away from our limited understanding. So in Jesus the limitations of the particular man are overcome by the universality of God. As human beings all of us are particulars, fragments of the universe, and we cannot but see the universe from our fragmented peace of the world, whereas God is universal and eternal. Put it from this perspective human beings as particulars are totally alienated from the eternal. But if we acknowledge Jesus divine background, then God as a universal an eternal being becomes part of the human experience. Human beings and God's being become united, linked, in the body of Jesus Christ, and that's the whole point of his mission: the final union between men and the Lord. And last but not less important, if Jesus as a man shares also the nature of the eternal in his same body, then as such, as God-made-man, there is nothing that he could not have done. The only way of debating Jesus' miracles, and Jesus infinite love for humanity, is by stating a priori a totally human nature, and putting aside any divine background.

Jesus Christ is a synthesis between the universal and eternal of God, that embodies and fills the whole universe and beyond (because He is previous to the existence of the universe itself), and the particular condition of human beings in their subjective experience. Only as such he can be our savior. Only as such his message can be understood. If we deny this, Jesus' mission and teachings become blurred and historically inconsistent. It is up to you, as a person, to choose which side of the story you believe in.

Some notes on Aristotle, Hobbes and Locke

2011-01-30T10:01:00.001-08:00

There seems to be a radical antagonism between the ideas of men and society of Aristotle and Hobbes. Both seem to represent two contradictory interpretations of why men gather in society and constitute government. This difference springs from their radical opposite conceptions of what the nature of man is. However I find interesting that Locke in his Second Treatise of Government seems to be in a middle point between the two.

This is nothing but a mere sketch of an idea I developed some months ago reading Locke. It might be read as a temporary hypotheses. The premises are:

i. While Hobbes interprets man's nature from his strictly emotional self-centered condition, he underlines an antisocial tendency of man's individuality that is deduced from the apparently constant competitive behavior between, among and of each other. Because all men praise their safety above all else, there is a natural tendency to distrust and fear others as potential threats to his life and welfare. So man's first goal in life is security.

ii. Aristotle on the other hand interprets man's nature from his ethical inclination towards happiness and friendliness, which he deduces from the fact that all men live in society and none is known to be born and raised in solitude. Because all men seem to aim at happiness as the goal of life, and friendship is among the most praised goods from where happiness springs, men cultivate friendship, which in the aggregate forms society.

iii. However Locke agrees with Aristotle that there is a natural tendency given by God in man's nature which makes him sociable. But contrary to Aristotle and in agreement with Hobbes (and all Modern tradition in this sense), he considers that government is a rationally created institution for the preservation of all against each, as if the possibility of aggression is enough to distrust each other, but no so much as to render society impossible.

Conclusions: For Aristotle government springs naturally from the human condition of sociability. Man as the political animal lives under government in his natural self, whereas for Hobbes government and society are rationally established by individuals by their natural tendency to fear and distrust each other, but for the purpose of permitting civil life in tranquility. In Hobbes, society and government is built against nature, whilst in Aristotle it springs from human nature itself. For Locke society springs from human nature, but not government. Locke's State of Nature is a society without government. It is implicit in Locke that men can live without the need of government. The emergence of it is a rationally deduced mutual conclusion based on the utility of its existence. Therefore, the Minimal State is really justified by this idea that men can actually live in society without the help of government.

Secondary conclusions: in Antiquity, political man interpreted as natural, the vision of politics is somehow seen in an organic form. Government and politics, all its changes and eventualities are by nature, and hence by necessity. Liberty cannot be conceived in this way as the capacity of man to take control of his actions. In Christian and Western thought the notion is different. Human rational capacities are seen as superior to nature. So man makes himself the master of his nature and not his product. Therefore unless he is the rational author of government and his political condition, no notion of liberty can be imagined. This is the most profound and radical difference between all Ancient and Modern thought regarding politics and the human condition. The brilliant mind of Hanna Arendt traces the birth of this difference in St. Paul's discovery of the human will.

A defence on the Right to bear and keep Arms

2011-01-28T07:38:00.000-08:00

In the United States there is a long debate regarding the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Personally, I'm a strong advocate of the rights established in it. The amendment as it is written in the Bill of Rights reads:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

There are plenty of arguments used in favor of regulating the right to bear and keep arms. These arguments take actual relevance in the aftermath of massacres, like the resent one in Tucson, Arizona. Many say that this right only endangers the life and security of average Americans, as mentally unhealthy persons carry, and sometimes use arms to perpetrate massacres. The anxiety caused by this right is intensified by school shootings, like Columbine (1999) and Virginia Tech (2007), which takes the life of youth and children. Especially for mothers, the right to bear and keep arms usually represents a threat to their children. Another current argument is the regulation of this right in order to combat crime, particularly gangs in big cities. Usually violence caused by firearms is the main reason used by liberals to regulate them. Recently I even heard the argument that the Second Amendment should be repelled by another amendment, so to end the debate in favor of disarmament.

Now, I'm not gonna follow the recurrent conservative answer "guns don't kill people; people kill people", because it has almost turn into a fetish; a pill argument to simply end the conversation. Instead of trying to convince the liberal, or making her understand the reasons for it, we just simply alienate ourselves from the other. And democracy cannot survive without debate and a level of agreement between the parts. Such a defense is mediocre, and it doesn't even tackle the real and valuable reasons why the Second Amendment should and must prevail.

Let us start by analyzing the content of the written text and its meaning. The first part of the amendment reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...". The reason is already given. It implies that the survival of the freedom of the political community, the people composing it must be minimally organized in order to defend it. The goal is preserving freedom. It also implies aggression: external or internal threats to the constitution of freedom. We are before the most republicanist of arguments; freedom demands from its citizens the duty to defend it. Militia is the technique. This means that the United States cannot solely depend on a standing professional army to defend it. The citizen must also be engaged in the defense of their country and its institutions. How could he ever do this, fulfill this duty, if his right to bear and keep arms is infringed?

It is warranted to ask, why would the citizens have to engage themselves in the defense of their country if a standing professional army is already in place? To know the answer to this question we must go back to the times of the Founding Fathers. The American Revolution must also be understood as a rebellion against European power and ideas. But in this amendment we see a rebellion against one of the core characteristics of the European Modern State that was developing since the 17th century, but that was theoretically explained by 20th century German sociologist Max Weber: the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence. Weber discovered that the European State in its modern form expropriates all its individual and grouped members from any kind of use of violence, and by creating a monopoly of its means it claimed legitimacy over them. This policy was advanced by both monarchical governments, as by latter parliaments and republics in Europe. The result was an all powerful State that claimed the right to declare war and suppress sedition without opposition. Only the State would guarantee the defense of its citizens, leaving them defenseless from the State itself. The virtual link between people and democratized State helped hide this charade; because, if the State was the political abstraction that represented the people, the State would be the people, and the individual and grouped citizens wouldn't have to be armed without being defended.

The Americans thought differently. Their experience showed that the republic, and the liberty that springs from it, cannot be preserved without its citizens being actively engaged in certain duties. Among them the duty to defend the constitution against aggressors. One thing that the Europeans neglected, and that, thank God, Americans still preserve, is the common wisdom that the State is also a potential threat to the freedoms established in the republican constitution. State and Republic are not the same. Republic is freedom, State is planing and organizing. Republic is an idea of free community, State is a human machine of administering public policies. If the State claims a monopoly of the means of violence (of the means of self-defense), not always, but usually, it can use that monopoly to end the Republic; especially and mostly if the State has at its disposal a professional standing army. Quoting European, Hispanic-American, Asian and the Russian examples of this phenomenon are so abundant that it would be sterile trying to. How defenseless Americans would be if one day, and let us pray that day may never come, a tyrant usurps the power of the State and the citizens lack the weapons to defend the Republic against him. That would be a certain tragedy!

Today Americans rest comfortably on the security of their constitution. More than two centuries of the republic's success have blind them of the ever existing dangers against freedom. Many still carry this wisdom within their hearts. But an increasing minority has lost perspective of the value of the Second Amendment. Recent tragedies expressed by the shootings of civilians have turned their attention toward a social problem (which is reasonable and warranted), but they forget the political meaning of the right to bear and keep arms, without which no free State can be secured, and which infringement puts its survival at jeopardy.

The Wisdom

2011-01-22T12:28:00.001-08:00

While reading the Bible earlier today, I caught a beautiful passage from The Book of Wisdom, also called The Wisdom of Salomon. It is one of the deuterocanonical book of the Bible, which means that it is strictly Christian canon, and it is not included in the Jewish Torah. The passage is the first chapter of the book and goes as follows, and then I will make a comment:

"Love righteousness, you rulers of the earth, think of the lord with uprightness, and seek him with sincerity of heart; because he is found by those who do not put him to test, and manifests himself to those who do not distrust him. For perverse thoughts separate men from God, and when his power is tested, it convicts the foolish; because wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul, nor dwell in a body enslaved to sin. For a holy and disciplined spirit will flee from deceit, and will rise and depart from foolish thoughts, and will be ashamed at the approach of unrighteousness.

"For wisdom is kindly spirit and will not free a blasphemer from the guilt of his words; because God is witness of his inmost feelings, and a true observer of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue. Because the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together knows what is said; therefore no one who utters unrighteous things will escape notice, and justice, when it punishes, will not pass him by. For inquiry will be made into the counsels of an ungodly man, and a report of his words will come to the Lord, to convict him of his lawless deeds; because a jealous ear hears all things, and the sound of murmuring does not go unheard. Beware then of useless murmuring, and keep your tongue from slander; because no secret word is without result, and a lying mouth destroys the soul.

"Do not invite death by the error of your life, not bring on destruction by the works of your hands; because God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist, and the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them; and the dominion of Hades is not on earth. For righteousness is immortal.

"But ungodly men by their words and deed summon death; considering him a friend they pined away, and they made a covenant with him, because they are fit to belong to his party" (Wisdom 1:1-16).

The first thing that this passage presents us is the problem of faith. God cannot be put to test. Such pretension inevitably brings the mark of unrighteousness, because implicitly we put ourselves above God, and him below as an object of study. It cannot but be called pride. Those that stubbornly believe in science, and deny God because of lack of proofs are these, that trusting too much in their bodily senses, deny what can only bee seen with the eyes of the soul; and instead of admitting humbly the limits of their capacity, assume the most foolish of behaviors. Hence, they are unwise, and unfit for the knowledge of God. This seems almost like a curse to me.

The second paragraph tells us something of the "nature" of God. He is aware of everything that happens inside our consciousness. If he is the Creator and the Force from where everything living springs, he is the consciousness of the world, which means that our individual's consciousness are in His. Whatever we do, whatever we say and think, our relation with God is so intimate, that only he can trace the origin of our actions, emotions and thoughts, so as to judge their righteousness. So as to know if we are blamable or forgivable for what we do and say. The fragment shows God as a perfect universal judge of all that is human. At the end of our lives we stand trial, not so much for our concrete actions, but for the internal state of our soul from which those actions sprang. In more philosophical terminology, of the principles of our will. Only because of this the Lord can understand us, even more than we understand ourselves. This is what makes the Lord all forgiving, for the Lord recognizes our falls and separates them from real unrighteousness, which here is characteristic of atheists. This last point is what connects with the first paragraph.

The third paragraph explains why God is all forgiving. Here death is not seen as the departure of soul and body. The promise of eternal life for all living things explains death not as the end, but as a turning point between bodily life on earth and eternal life in Heaven. Because he hears and knows everything that takes place within our soul, and because he loves life and wants to make it eternal, God's judgment of a rightful soul is immortality. Curious enough the mention of the realm of Hades, a pagan deity, is seen as an end. This end, which is identified by not being from this world, precisely by the lack of world at all, is the result of an unrighteous life. Again, only an end is reserved for those that deny God, the most unrighteous of all.

And why are they unrighteous? Last paragraph explains: because their pride, as represented in the first paragraph, has clouded their souls, and they no longer distinguish what is right, precisely because what is right is and springs from the Lord. Because they are ungodly, they are unrighteous, and the promise of eternal life is denied to them. Precisely because they are condemning themselves to extinction, to real infinite death, they are absolutely unwise.

However, and this is the Good News of Jesus coming, as long as we are living, there is always a chance to convert into the righteous, and be saved.

United States Form of Government

2011-01-17T09:49:00.000-08:00

If we approach the History of the United States of America from the perspective of forms of government, first we can trace its beginnings to the year of the foundation of Jamestown in Virginia (1607). It is true that the colonies of North America came from many European countries and not only from England. There were colonies from France, Spain and the Netherlands. But what later became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is, on the aggregate, the form of government of the colonial times in what later became the United States. So we can plausibly proceed from the general assumption that the United States emerged as an independent free republic from the Monarchy of Great Britain, and from nowhere else.

What later became the free republic of the United States was first under a monarchical constitution; and the monarchs can be listed as follows:
1) King James I, 1607-1625 (from the foundation of Jamestown);
2) King Charles I, 1625-1649;
3) King Charles II, 1649-1685;
4) King James II, 1685-1688;
5) King William III, 1689-1702;
6) Queen Anne, 1702-1714;
7) King George I, 1714-1727;
8) King George II, 1727-1760;
9) King George III, 1760-1776 (until the Declaration of Independence).

The Declaration of Independence marks the overthrow of the monarchy and the constitution of a free republic: The United States of America under The Articles of Confederation. The final establishment of the republic came under the ratification of the United States Constitution (1789), and the inauguration of its first Congress and President. However, what could have been a free republic, came more in the form of an oligarchical constitution. Most of the Union had by that time property qualifications for voting right. That is common ground in the institutions of oligarchy since the political philosophy of Aristotle.

The prudence of the Founding Fathers was their capacity to understand the limits of their victory. A complete democratic revolution in 1776 (that of course would have included the African American population) would have caused civil war and total division, making the republican project a complete failure, and would have resulted in a dictatorship, most probably of George Washington, the strong man of the time. It happened in France after a so radical democratic revolution that began in 1789, that resulted in Bonaparte's dictatorship under the name of Emperor (The mirror revolution of 1848 also ended with another dictatorship by a Bonaparte). In Russia, the radicalism of the revolution of 1917 brought about a civil war and eventually Stalin's dictatorship under the name of General Secretary of the Communist Party. Not to go far from Anglophone experience, the English republicanist revolution of 1649 executed King Charles I, and its religious and political radicalism resulted in Cromwell's dictatorship under the name of Lord Protector. History of Hispanic American republics is filled with examples of the same phenomenon. What made the Founding Fathers so successful was their prudence to administer their victory according to the possibilities of the times. Hence, the first decades of the United States were more similar to an oligarchical constitution, with slavery included.

The impressive nature of the United States Constitution is its ability to adapt and evolve through time. No wonder why they call it a "living constitution". After the generation of the Founding Fathers finished their administrations in the White House and Congress, the next generation of politicians took charge. By the times of the revolutionary war, Clay, Calhoun, Quincy Adams and Jackson were children or unborn. When they took charge of the country, the next step in American Democracy took place: Jacksonian Democracy and the end of property qualifications made the United States a white male democratic republic. Lincoln was a mere teenager. When his republican movement (the generation after the Jacksonian, the founders of the GOP) took charge, they defeated the most dangerous rebellion against the Constitution, ended slavery and moved forward toward universal male democracy. Women had to wait till the 19th Amendment (1920) that ended the long road toward universal suffrage, the peak of Modern Democracy. However true republicanism, equal protection of the law, came during the 60's with the Civil Rights Movement.

My point is, just as in Rome, the United States began its history under a monarchical form of government, and through the abolition of that constitution it advanced toward a republic. First it came in the form of an oligarchy and later, with constant civil action, it democratized itself slowly. Also as in Rome, the United States has never turned into a full time generalized democracy, and nothing similar to it. It has preserved republican principles of mixed government that do not deny the elites their space for ruling, nor excludes the people from some engagement in political power, and always holding the creed that the law is the only legitimate way of making any reform.

The question now goes, is the United States heading on the same road that led Rome to universal empire and ultimately to slavery?

In a World of Uncertainty only Doubt is Warranted

2011-01-15T12:07:00.000-08:00

I doubt magic, I doubt fairies, I doubt dragons, I doubt warlocks. I doubt the media, I doubt reporters, I doubt progress, I even doubt Human Rights. I doubt economics, I doubt free market, I doubt science, I doubt Einstein, I doubt socialism, I doubt the State, I doubt liberalism, I even doubt social conservatism. I doubt Bush, I doubt Obama, I doubt New York, I doubt Berlin, I doubt Paris, I doubt Beijing, I doubt philosophy, I doubt Kant, I doubt materialism, and I even doubt family.

Of the many things that I seem to doubt, of all this world filled with uncertainties, only one thing, and one thing only seems uncontroversially true for me, and it is this:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the begotten of God the Father, the Only-begotten, that is of the essence of the Father.

God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten and not made; of the very same nature of the Father, by Whom all things came into being, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

Who for us humanity and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate, was made human, was born perfectly of the holy virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.

By whom He took body, soul, and mind, and everything that is in man, truly and not in semblance.

He suffered, was crucified, was buried, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven with the same body, and sat at the right hand of the Father.

He is to come with the same body and with the glory of the Father, to judge the living and the dead; of His kingdom there is no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the uncreated and the perfect; Who spoke through the Law, prophets, and Gospels; Who came down upon the Jordan, preached through the apostles, and lived in the saints.

I believe also in only One, Universal, Apostolic, and Holy Church; in one baptism in repentance, for the remission, and forgiveness of sins; and in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgment of souls and bodies, and the Kingdom of Heaven and in the everlasting life. Amen

This I don't doubt, and it seems the only thing worthy of not doubting in this life, for the rest is opinion and uncertainty, not worthy of giving credit or paying too much heed.
There is something else that I don't doubt. I don't doubt history, and I don't doubt the existence of evil.

Words of Prudence

2011-01-13T09:29:00.000-08:00

Some great words from Pericles:

"For a private man, though in good estate, if his country comes to ruin, must of necessity be ruined with it; whereas he that miscarries in a flourishing commonwealth shall much more easily preserved" (Ch.60).

"Men do no less condemn those that through cowardice lose the glory they have, than hate those that through imprudence arrogate the glory they have not" (Ch.61).

"The quiet life can never be preserved if it be not ranged with the active life, nor is it a life conductible to a city that reigns but to a subject city that it may safely serve" (Ch.63).

"Evils that come from heaven you must bear necessarily, and such as proceed from your enemies, valiantly" (Ch.64).

"To be hated and to displease is a thing that happens for the time to whosoever he be that hath the command of others; and he does well, that undergoes the hatred for matters of great consequence" (Ch.64).

"They whose minds least feel and whose actions most oppose a calamity both among states and private persons are the best" (Ch.64)

(Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War: Book II)

The loss of Depravation (I NO LONGER HOLD MANY OF THE THINGS SAID HERE)

2011-01-11T19:30:00.000-08:00

The sense of depravation is an experience that every decade after another has been lost in our current culture. What first started as a war against the corrupted and tyrannical Catholic clergy in Europe, turned into a war against the principles of its faith. Trying to be more rational we end up becoming nihilistic. No longer the war was against the bishops, but it was against God. By the turn of the 20th century we inherited two thousand years of Christian morality and tradition, but no longer with the hopeful belief in Christ. Curiously enough this loss of our moral standards came with the final triumph of democracy, and the first thing that comes to my mind is what Plato wrote in Book VIII of The Republic. However, let us remain in our monotheistic times.

Our loss was not only in the field of morality. No longer able to distinguish clearly between good and evil, we also lost our capacity to distinguish between the beauty and the ugly. Our sense of aesthetics was also gone. In a culture that gave birth to Rembrandt, we now enlighten ourselves with "conceptual art". In a society that gave birth to Beethoven, we now enjoy the talent of Britney Spears and Daddy Yankee. In a civilization that gave birth to Shakespeare, we now sit and watch the Jersey Shore. For me the difference is anything but problematical, if not self-evident. However not everyone sees it that way. What once was the line between the genius, the mediocre and the vulgar, today is a matter of taste. Is it because we are now more enlightened, because progress has made us better men, more tolerant and free-minded? Or is it because the state of our current culture is so wasted, so broken, that no longer can we recognize ourselves and we have given license to our most depraved senses?

I started this comment with the word depravation. I would like to return to the original meaning of this post by pointing out the squalid, if not crippled, state of our contemporary culture, the Western civilization. To remind us the loss of our aesthetical values is nothing but a way of remembering the loss of our moral values. As this goes on, our actions and practices as a society and the individuals living in it grow more depraved. We cannot stop it because we are handicapped of our sense to perceive and experience depravation as what it is in itself. Again, today is only a matter of taste. The peak, or the crown of this phenomenon is our stance regarding homosexuality.

Beware of what I'm about to say: our human soul is morally base, we incline toward corruption very easily, and I advance that almost all individuals, excepting perhaps the Saints, have and withhold a kind of depravation. To state a very usual example, pornography. A person that has lost the sense that pornography is a depraved cultural phenomenon has lost any sense of moral conduct whatsoever. He cannot even think morally. Morality as such is seen incomprehensibly. But still, pornography is widely watched even by persons with moral understanding. The difference is, while some admit their depravity with humility and probably guilt, others deny the notion of depravity itself, and engage in it without any experience of remorse at all. What I want to stress here is the inevitable depravation of our base instincts and our impossibility to eradicate them from our spirit. What we do, instead, is behave in society, we try to conceal it or to moderate it somehow not to insult or offend others around us, as a matter of education and respect.

Now I make my stance on homosexuality. Only a person that has lost a sense of morality would deny the experience of depravation. This has happened to a vast portion of the Western population. Because of this, homosexuality, which beyond personal opinion is a moral depravation wherever it is placed in any fragment of our Christian inheritance, is today seen by many as something completely casual and even legitimate. What a person does and thinks in his private sphere is not of my business. As I have stated previously, we all share a kind of depravation. Homosexuals have theirs; in this case the condition of homosexuality itself. I find that normal.

What I don't find normal, nor legitimate, is that motto that runs "Gay Pride". However something is true about it. Pride is one of the capital sins in Christian theology. It's precisely the moral baseness that prevents us from acting with humility and admitting that we might be wrong. Pride is equal to arrogance and haughtiness. I'm twisting the real meaning of "Gay Pride" on purpose for the sake of the argument. I'm not against individuals' depravations. That's up to everyone individually and their relation to God enjoyed in their private spheres. I'm talking about this pride of showing off to the world their depravation, and trying to force us to admit it as something casual and natural in the public sphere. The loss of our sense of depravation has made one of the most depraved behaviors, only surpassed because pederasty exists, a thing of common speech. Homosexuality, and what they call gay rights, is make public what should be private. Forcing everyone to bare the depravations of others in public, in the squares, in the parks, on the streets, in the supermarket, and even inside the churches.

I don't deny that depravation might be natural within our souls. It can't be purged. Such pretension can even be monstrous. But I think that our depravations should be keep up to ourselves. "Gay rights" and homosexuality has turned into an issue in which living a respectful, moral and conscious public life is impossible if not even a motive of derision. The cause of liberty, by being wrongly used against morality, is turning virtuous republicanism into a depraved ochlocracy; especially in the last country of the Western civilization that preserves barely what we once used to be as a culture: the United States.

Liberty in pills

2011-01-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

"I shall not be very desirous of living in a city in which individuals are more powerful than laws; for that country alone is desirable in which property and friends may be safely enjoyed, not one where they me easily be taken from us, and where friends, from fear of losing their property, are compelled to abandon each other in their greatest need. Besides, it has always been less painful to good men to hear of the misfortunes of their country than to witness them; and an honorable exile is always held in greater esteem than slavery at home" (Machiavelli; History of Florence; Book IV, Ch. 7).

Any coincidence? Sounds familiar?

Opening the year with Machiavelli

2011-01-06T11:35:00.000-08:00

What is a freedom and free government? Let his authority speak for itself:

"Republican governments, more especially those imperfectly organized, frequently change their rules and the form of their institutions; not by the influence of liberty and subjection, as many suppose, but by that of slavery and license; for with the nobility or the people, the ministers respectively of slavery or licentiousness, only the name or liberty is in estimation, neither of them choosing to be subject either to magistrates or laws. When, however, a good, wise, and powerful citizen appears (which is but seldom), who established ordinances capable of appeasing or restraining these contending dispositions, so as to prevent them from doing mischief, then the government may be called free, and its institutions firm and secure; for having good laws for its basis, and good regulations for carrying them into effect, it needs not, like others, the virtue of one man for its maintenance. With such excellent laws and institutions, many of those ancient republics, which were of long duration, were endowed. But these advantages are, and always have been, denied to those which frequently change from tyranny to license, or the reverse; because, from the powerful enemies which each condition creates itself, they neither have, nor can possess any stability; for tyranny cannot please the good, and license is offensive to the wise: the former may easily be productive of mischief, while the latter can scarcely be beneficial; in the former, the insolent have too much authority, and in the latter, the foolish; so that each requires for their welfare the virtue and the good fortune of some individual who may be removed by death, or become unserviceable by misfortune" (Machiavelli: History of Florence: IV: Ch.1).

Closing the year with Machiavelli

2010-12-31T13:36:00.000-08:00

I don't have to come up with new arguments, because all of them are already written. I don't have to use new words to explain what takes place in Venezuela, as it takes place in all Hispanic-American republics, regarding political parties, avarice and ambition. What today happens in Caracas, happened centuries ago in Florence and ages ago in Athens. I would like to say that it is art and philosophy, but I'm talking about faction and corruption. I would like to say that is only the government, but it is the same with the opposition parties and factions.

For the sake of the argument, just read city as country, liberty as democracy, and Italy as Venezuela.

"Certainly in the cities of Italy all that is corruptible and corrupting is assembled. The young are idle, the old lascivious, and each sex and every age abounds with debasing habits, which the good laws, by misapplication, have lost the power to correct. Hence arises the avarice so observable among the citizens, and the greediness, not for true glory, but for unworthy honors; from which follows hatred, animosities, quarrels, and factions; resulting in deaths, banishments, affliction to all good men, and the advancement of the most unprincipled; for the good, confiding in their innocence, seek neither safety nor advancement by illegal methods as the wicked do, and thus unhonored and undefended they sink into oblivion.

From proceedings such as these, arise at once the attachment for and influence of parties; bad men follow them through ambition and avarice, and necessity compels the good to pursue the same course. And most lamentable is it to observe how the leaders and movers of parties sanctify their base designs with words that are all piety and virtue; they have the name of liberty constantly in their mouths, though their actions prove them her greatest enemies. The reward which they desire from victory is not the glory of having given liberty to the city, but the satisfaction of having vanquished the others, and of making themselves rulers; and to attain the end, there is nothing too unjust, too cruel, too avaricious for them to attempt. Thus laws and ordinances, peace, wars, and treaties are adopted and pursued, not for the public good, not for the common glory of the state, but for the convenience and advantage of a few individuals.

And if other cities abound in these disorders, ours is more than any infected with them; for her laws, statutes, and civil ordinances are not, nor have they ever been, established for the benefit of men in a state of freedom, but according to the wish of the faction that has been uppermost at the time. Hence it follows that, when one party is expelled, or faction extinguished, another immediately arises; for, in a city that is governed by parties rather than by laws, as soon as one becomes dominant and unopposed, it must of necessity soon divide against itself; for the private methods at first adapted for its defense will now no longer keep it united. The truth of this, both the ancient and modern dissensions of our city prove." (Machiavelli; History of Florence: III; Ch. 1).

Pessimism from Exile

2010-12-23T09:31:00.000-08:00

Now that Chavez is, again, moving forward his dictatorial agenda with the recent set of measures regarding the University, freedom of speech through the internet and more measures to reduce private property to nothing more than a concession of his goodwill, I need to express some things.

He is waging the same strategy he uses every single year since the students fully enrolled in the struggle against his tyrannical rule; he is advancing his plans during holidays, where most of the people is interested in having a good time with their families than risking their lives participating in politics. However, today, the 23rd of December a group of students gathered at our Alma Mater (I recently graduated from this University, the main University in our country) to make a protests against Chavez's law of universities that would practically end its existence as such.

The truth is, I'm writing from outside my homeland. I no longer share the danger of fighting for Venezuelan freedom, and I ask my people to continue the fighting whilst I'm comfortably sitting on a couch in North Miami. Why do I keep insisting in Venezuelan freedom if I have already deserted it? It's so easy that I actually feel it's shameful.

However I have my reasons. First, my ties to my country remain strong, even though I have been trying to remain away. But most importantly, I have given enough and taken enough risks in fighting for Venezuelan freedom. As an average person, I grew tired. Call me a coward, but I also have other goals in life that I'm no willing to sacrifice.

Freedom is the most important good for a free spirit and mind. We Westerns lean toward the free spirit. I am no exception. Back home I participated in the common struggle against Chavez tyrannical regime. We all faced the police, the national guard, the regime's gangs, even the military. We faced them, and many times it turned violent; and many times, even though fear sprang strongly in our hearts, we kept on going. As with faith, freedom might be among the only goods worth dying for. We tried to trigger the revolution that would topple the government. We conspired, we tried to organize. We, those that do not believe in the hypocritical and mediocrity of political parties and opposition leaders tried our own way. We failed. We tried to create a third way to oppose the tyranny. The parties and their imbecility poisoned our leadership and excluded those that dissented from them.

We were faced with a dilemma; continuing the struggle led by the most short-sighted mediocre leadership, or give up, which means two things: join the regime or fly out. I chose the latter.

Today I see these students that adamantly keep on fighting the tyranny on a 23rd of December. Somehow I envy them, but I also feel pity for them. On the one hand, having hopes to make freedom prevail by turning martyrs is something praiseworthy. On the other, it seems nothing more than a silly insistence to save a people that does not worth the effort. Nonetheless, my hopes are to see the rising dictatorship of Chavez overthrown by whoever have the strength to do so. One of the few things that I have learned from both books and our personal experience is that revolution for freedom is never achieved without violence, blood and death. Only an extraordinarily civil unrest would trigger any of both a capitulation of the regime, or its final triumph over liberty. No one can deny it, we gave it a try. But life goes on, and people have other goals, other wishes for the future. As most of my friends I am exhausted of trying to trigger Chavez's overthrow. Venezuelan people doesn't seem to be prepared for freedom. Those that do want it and do appreciate it might have to go look somewhere else.

A comment on Machiavelli's Florence

2010-12-22T09:29:00.000-08:00

"Wars abroad and peace within the city had caused the Guelph and Ghibelline factions to become almost extinct; and the only party feeling which seemed occasionally to glow, was that which naturally exists in all cities between the higher classes and the people; for the latter, wishing to live in conformity with the laws, and the former to be themselves the rulers of the people, it was not possible for them to abide in perfect amity together" (Machiavelli: History of Florence: II: ch.3)

The enlightening thing about reading Machiavelli is the depth and complexity of content we find commonly in so small fragments. By the end of the 13th century AC, Florence had experience a series of revolutions and counterrevolutions that sprang by the division between Guelph and Ghibelline, the main political line of cleavage in Italian Middle Ages. Nobility was divided between the parties of the Pope and the Emperor, a contradiction that caused war, revenge and hostility within almost all Italian Cities (with the extraordinary exception of Venice). Such an ideological antitheses prevented any kind of patriotic feeling from emerging between Italians, as Imperial armies and the Church's excommunication decrees spread all around the peninsula. The critical vision of Machiavelli regarding the Italy of his time is the reason many consider him one of the fathers of European nationalism, starting the 16th century AC.

But once this line of cleavage started to blur, as Emperors couldn't control the Popes' capacity to incite division, the difference among the nobility also lost meaning. Machiavelli shows an early understanding of class division in society that closely resembles later historic materialism. The natural struggle in any society, our Florentine author is well aware of, consists of social class division, and consecutive party allegiances and revolutions will bear this powerful mark. The materialistic division of society is today difficult to deny, as continually it repeats itself in every case,and somehow Marxism doesn't seem so novel after all.

But what is even more interesting is Machiavelli's final statement. The people is interested in the rule of the law, whilst nobility is interested in power. The class struggles assumes a particularly political nature. It is not about welfare or liberty from the world of needs, but we are in the realm of political freedom. The assumption is that democratic forces in society are inclined toward what the Greeks called isonomia, and we translate as equality before the law. As Marxism, Liberalism doesn't seem that extraordinary. The party of the people sees in the rule of self-imposed law the only guard for freedom, whereas nobility is only concerned with imposing its regime of privileges. The aim is not possessing the means of production, which are only but means to become influential. Controlling political power which is what gives food for pride and glory is the real aim of ambitious domination.

This is a general review of a single fragment in one of Machiavelli's most important works, however not so widely famous. My share with you is just part of our entire reflection of politics and the nature of liberty in the republic.

Why being a Republican?

2010-12-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

Recent reflexions have led me to think about the current relevance of being a republican. And by this label let it be know that I talk about the comprehensive political ideology that supports a specific form of government as opposed to all the others, as well as the ethical requirements and consequences of such form of government. This said, for now I'm not talking about the republican party of the United States.

I was rethinking about the relevance of being republican because of the fact that the republic as a political program of form of government has triumphed in the Western world. After centuries of struggles, wars and revolutions, at last republican institutions are predominant in our civilization. We don't have to fight the evils of tyrannical monarchs anymore. All those tyrants are defeated. Here in the United States everyone is republican, in the sense that much more than the average citizen acknowledges, defends and admires the republican constitution of their country. Being a republican, as well as believing in its freedom is something "everyone" honestly claims. There is no need to stress its values against its enemies, all of whom seem to be defeated. Why insisting in defending some principles that are apparently redundant in our times?

The difference between parties is less of a dichotomy of republican against democratic principles. Both parties have lost connection to the real meaning of their names, and they serve now only as labels in the day to day public debate. I insist, both democratic and republican parties are republican in the sense that I explained. And they are because both defend the principles expressed in the constitution of the American form of government. None is supporting the establishment of a monarchy or anything closely resembled. Both are sincerely patriotic. Both defend what is commonly referred as the Democratic Creed. What is their difference then? Not a small one I would say. More accurate names for what they really stand for would be: conservative party for republicans, and liberal-progressive party for democrats. And the difference does not lie in opposed conceptions of the republic. On the contrary, both deeply committed to its creed, in what they really differ is in how the republican form of government should be administered. But the republic itself is never into question. In this sense both are republicans as a matter of principle.

Why insisting today in being a republican then? What difference does it makes? If we are republicans, independently of being conservatives or liberal-progressives, why labeling us with a name that does no say anything peculiar of us? It seems to me that the defense of republican values is never outdated, for thinking so is nothing but the naive idea that the achievements that we conquered are eternal. As time goes by the republican institutions corrode themselves, and windows for new threads open. One of them is the standing professional army, probably the latent and most dangerous force in overthrowing republics. Another is the increase of public apathy or malcontent. A third one is the politicians tendency for corruption. A convinced republican must know that freedom is never fully secured and a committed citizen is always on the watch for potential tyrants and foreign enemies. In this sense republicanism makes a call for constant militancy in the ideas and values expressed in the constitution of our republic.

The democratic party had a name with meaning when it got Andrew Jackson to the presidency, and the vote franchise was extended to all adult males without distinction in property nor class placing them all as equals. The republican party had a name with meaning when it got Abraham Lincoln to the presidency, and the emancipation reform that put an end to the existing dominion of some men over others setting them all free. Democratic equality and republican freedom where both accomplished at the birth of their respective parties. But today it seems that both stand for things totally different. Time made common and usual what once was extraordinary and novel. The meaning of being a republican today lies more in the preservation of that conviction in the values expressed in the constitution of the form of government. But also awareness of the future dangers that the republic's freedom will face, and be ready to stand against them with courage and patriotism. Tyrants are murderers of republics, and there is at least one born every new generation of citizens. It is against that possibility that modern republicanism must stand for, and cut and destroy the possible weapons that might be used against its freedom.

The Issue is Marriage

2010-11-18T06:13:00.000-08:00

In the United States there are two main ideological division that group citizens between conservatives and liberals. The economic issues and the social issues. The combination of both divisions give fours possibilities: Socially liberals, federalists (social democrats); socially liberals, anti-federalists (libertarians); socially conservatives, federalists (neoconservatives); socially conservatives, anti-federalists (paleoconservatives). Of course this is a coarse division based on generalities that does not contemplate regional differences, but as political scientist try to do, at least it helps picturing the broad sample of all American citizens. I don't even picture myself easily in this lines of cleavage, but I would say I move between paleoconservatives to neoconservatives. Why? Because more than the economy, the issue for me is social values. And I want to talk about what I consider is the center of the debate between social conservatives and social liberals: the issue of marriage. Every specific issue of the broad debate can be traced back to marriage, and from it it springs to all other branches and specific questions. Marriage can be smelled in abortion, stem cell research, gay rights, education, feminism, religion and secularization, etc.

I'm going to call the institution at hand in the United States (and the rest of the Western Civilization if that's the case) Christian Marriage. This is an institution that we have inherited for thousands of years now. The debate is if it must be preserved as originally was given to us, or the movement of history forces us to change it. The problem of why marriage is so important is that it's the institution we have for the preservation of the species in a general sense, and the continuation of the citizenry in a narrower sense. Through it we defeat death and we engender life. Such an important goal always produces debate in a society as free as ours, as to how should we interpret marriage, its purpose and the role it plays in our society. Naturally the defenders of Christian Marriage, acknowledging its importance for the healthy survival of our society, gather around its defense. The perception that one of the holiest of institutions is in danger of being overrun can even turn them irrational contenders, as it usually happens. For a defender of Christian Marriage, the perspective of losing it to liberal forces seems as monstrous as communism itself, because he/she conceives that institution as the spring of everything beautiful and worth living in life and freedom, and the expectation of losing it produces a profound sadness and anxiety.

On the other side, the opponents of Christian Marriage see in it an institution of repression, first of the woman, but ultimately of the individual. Because Christian Marriage demands a level of abdication of the individual's will, and the effort of working together in an almost compulsory way, liberal individualists see in it the embodiment of intransigence. Because what is more intransigent than an ancient tradition that does not answer back with arguments, but with the immense strength of its ancestral authority? Let us remember that the real individualist distrusts any kind of authority, and only justify it in the extremest of cases. The authority of Christian Marriage is not that clear today. Ergo they see it with contempt and move forward an agenda to undermine it.

In what sense the entire debate of social values move around the issue of marriage? Some common cases will illustrate my point, abortion being the most dramatic one. Marriage as the institution that creates family, the ancestral mean of engendering new life and preserve the species and citizenry of a country, is completely annihilated by the idea of abortion. Abortion is the strongest way out of marriage, for it facilitates premarital sex and takes away the goal for what marriage exists. If the engendering of life can be kept away, why marrying? The modern answer is that the goal of marriage is love. Love is a strictly subjective experience, fundamentally necessary for a happy marriage, but not a strong groundwork for marrying, because we can actually fall in love and love another person in the most extraordinary way without ever marrying. As all subjective experiences, love can fade away as it happens all the time, and then the main column of a happy union collapses, from which what springs is divorce. Even more, love as the goal of marriage is a perfect justification for same-sex couples. The idea that love is not the means for preserving marriage but the goal of it turns the relation upside down in favor of the individual and opposed to the union. Its consequences are seen clearly; that interpretation of marriage is one of the main principles that threaten Christian Marriage in the United States.

The same applies to stem cell research, which is an issue close to abortion. But the strongest advocacy against Christian Marriage resides in the feminist movement. It is true that marriage has a long history of male domination and female repression. But I don't think that such a history justify the war feminism has waged against the institution. Instead of destroying marriage, the promotion of more happy unions might be the most reasonable solutions. Male domination must be eradicated, that is true, but the destruction of Christian Marriage is not a mandatory requirement for that goal. With feminism stands secularization, a very controversial theme these days. The case for the secularization of political institutions is clear, but, in the case of marriage? The belief that God is the supremest authority in sanctioning the union of a man and a woman is very important for a lot of people. It is the strongest argument against divorce, and also the strongest argument in favor of making an effort to fix a demoralized marriage. It takes away from the individual the capacity to choose, because God is a judge no one can get away from. Usually secularization comes together with atheism (not always and not necessarily, but usually).

Education, is it in the hands of the State or is it in the hands of family? If marriage is a holy institution as Christians are led to believe, then the strongest argument goes for family. No better judge and better educator of their child's good than their parents. Secularization thinks otherwise. The State as the supreme regulator of social life chooses what is better to be imparted to the new generations. Christian Marriage as the institution that engenders life loses another space of action (and justification to continue existing) when the State kicks in.

Everywhere I see, the debate between social conservatives and liberals reaches its ultimate consequence in the nature, principles and purpose of marriage in society. The line of cleavage here is strongest than anywhere else, and the ability to reach agreement is close to impossible. The good thing is that in the United States this issue has been discussed by parts, in the different segments of the topic, and not as the center of the whole, which has given some space for compromise.

Live as Seasons in Spengler's words

2010-11-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

One of the most beautiful, and also real metaphors that explain all living experiences, from the most basic unit which is the individual life, to the broadest bodies of civilizations, was given to us by the German philosopher Oswald Spengler. A man today forgotten by contemporary thinking and academics, and relegated to the field of history of philosophy as a tangent thinker. I think nothing could be more unfair. The metaphor consist in interpreting every living phenomena with the four calendar seasons. There is in everything that has to do with living things a spring, a summer, an autumn and a winter, that embodies all life since its birth till its death. This metaphor is explicitly in thought as old Goethe (as far as I know. I might be wrong), but the first, and apparently until now the only philosopher that has taken it seriously is Spengler.

The Spring signals everything that comes after birth. Even a human person, when it is born, its first three decades (more or less) are dedicated to learning. And the form and content of this learning determines the shape of the entire life. Whether a person dedicates to sciences, to arts, to business, to politics, to humanities, or whatever; these first years are the moment when all the creative production takes place. It also happens to cultures and civilizations, when a new principle of collective self-consciousness appears in a body of pre-cultured people (what is more commonly, and usually contemptibly called barbarians or savages). What I also called the heroic moment: the stage of culture where polities are still primitive, but a new ethic and aesthetic standard is raised, and a caste of warriors is actively pursuing honor, glory and adventure (the times of the War of Troy for ancient Greece and Rome, the time of Moses and King David for Jews and Semites, the time of the Martyrs for Greek Christianity, the times of Mohamed for Islam, the times of the Crusades for Western Europe, etc.). Spring is where the groundwork for individual and cultural life takes place, and honest religious piety.

The Summer is the moment of plenitude, the period where all the wealth grows, spiritually, intellectually and materially. As it is the warmest moment of the year, it is the period of life with more energy, with more heat. Where the individual develops his/her career to his fullest, and the respective culture gives birth to its greatest artists and thinkers, and usually a moment of religious dogma. Victory and defeat can be definitive in this stage, for, contrary to spring which is the moment of trial and error, a mistake can be devastating. But definitively is a moment of much activity and intensity. All the possibilities laid down at the spring are fully developed at the summer. This is so actual, that even in love relationships and marriages it takes place; the moment when passion is more present and sex is more common. Depending on how well the energies of the period are used, the reserve for autumn and winter will make life, creativity and love prevail. If they are depleted, autumn and winter might be a fast and certain death. If they are wasted, all those energies rotten, and autumn and winter are long, sad, cold and foul smelling.

The Autumn is a moment of soft decline. If all energies weren't depleted in summer, autumn might last. Otherwise winter will be longer. This is the period where a person is getting old, and is enjoying the fruits of his/her life, but with little creative energies to continue to grow. Some new things might be worked, but usually are repetitions or footnotes. Happiness might be more identifiable in autumn, for is the moment where all the efforts of youth are clearly visible. The success of a career, or of a political movement, or of a cultural endeavor, or of a marriage, is visible in autumn. But what seems the pinnacle of life is precisely the signal of the decline. The philosophy of Aristotle for Antiquity or of Kant for Modernity show the ultimate effort of a culture to grow, but it only leads to decay, for all creativity is gone, and only systematic and humdrum thinking is left (Stoicism, Marxism, Positivism, etc.). Not a Plato, but an Archimedes, not a Newton but an Einstein. Autumn, as it signals old age, it also means a lose of faith and hope.

The Winter is nothing more than cold and sour old age. If life was vastly productive, old age might be livable. But in itself, is a lack of life, for it is a lack for energy and productivity. Is nothing but a waiting time for death. Like waiting by the fireplace, not venturing outside, winter is nothing but wait. And it that process we feel lost, because we don't know what to do; because actually there is nothing else to do. Cultures that reach winter are stroke by skepticism. Religion and great ideas no longer convince nobody. And those that still believe do it with a glimpse of fear, not of God, but of the lack of God. Cynicism, crude realism or simply giving up are the typical behaviors of cultures in winter. Marriage or love relationships, when they reach winter, there is a taste of unpleasantness but conformity. Those famous couples that are to used to themselves and don't risk a break up, even though they don't love themselves anymore. That is winter. Those civilizations that indulge in nihilism, because pleasures or suicide are the only things left. That is winter. And for those that want to remain alive, nothing but power and money substitute vaguely the vacuum of the absence of faith, hope and love leave.

I find Spengler's philosophy absolutely compelling, and empirically demonstrable by actual historical and contemporary facts. The problem is that his philosophy is too strong to bear, and even though its exposition seems so reasonable, people usually are too afraid to face the facts. Westerns are too focused on making things work, when actually there is nothing less to work on. Spengler told them that, and they stand in negation. Naive ideas of progress and absolute happiness or freedom are nothing but a long for immortality. In the end life and history is but pure tragedy, and destiny is something that cannot be stopped.

Thucydides and Republicanism

2010-11-10T06:59:00.000-08:00

"For though it be the part of discreet men to be quiet unless they have wrong, yet it is the part of valiant men, when they receive injury, to pass from peace to war, and after success, from war to come again to composition, and neither to swell with the good success of war nor to suffer injury through pleasure taken in the ease of peace. For him whom pleasure makes a coward, if he sit still, shall quickly lose the sweetness of the ease that made him so" (Thucydides: I: 120).

This might sound an ethic of an eye for an eye, but real political wisdom is at place here. Liberal pacifist ideas are so common these days, and especially among educated middle class young people, that what seems to be the most basic common sense is underestimated as simple chauvinism. War is never good from a moral standing point. But then, politics and morality depart when the most extreme circumstances come at play. When a country is attacked, or humiliated, or some external aggression is inflicted upon it, how can we expect it to lay down? As Thucydides accurately points out, that would be nothing but a cowardly behavior.

Another thing is at play. Peace and prosperity bring pleasure and laziness. Liberal thinking, again, at defending the individual's choice at all cost, render any kind of personal sacrifice (either for country or religion) as irrational, unnecessary or crude fanaticism. The problem of the ease of peace is that, by making men lazy, it makes them cowards; it softens their characters, making them fall in love with their pleasures; and when the time comes that their liberty to be lazy is threatened and the risk of being taken away by tyrants or conquerors, they are overthrown by panic or indolence, which result in crude slavery. Today's liberal ideas (and particularly libertarians'), are nothing but a very complicated set of political and ethical beliefs that are the truest road toward losing any liberty at all and falling into the longest period of slavery.

"And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" John F. Kennedy, presidential inaugural address, January 20, 1961.

A return to Ludwig Van Beethoven

2010-11-08T06:20:00.000-08:00

Last time, I spoke about my favorite writer; a Russian. Now it is the time for me to remember the musician that has kept me in awe since I was a child; a German. I have so long since I heard the 5th symphony, that now that I have retaken it, I cannot but remember clearly the impact that the 1st movement had on me for many years. For my readers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4IRMYuE1hI

Beethoven marks a moment in the history of Western music. It puts away all the cute melodies of the Baroque and Classical music, and it sets forth the foundation for a real music of the human spirit. No longer tones for the courts of kings and aristocrats, but a music for human kind. And that specific moment I trace it back to that 1st movement of the 5th symphony that resonates and will resonate through the ages.

Every time I'm hurt, every time I feel with deep emotion, moved by despair, anger or tears, I return to Beethoven. For all passions, all longing and all love, everything is there. All possible nihilism is banished and life acquires a spiritual dimension that can only be surpassed by reading the Bible. I invite every Western soul that ignores this magnificent spectacle of universal music to know Beethoven; to overcome all that shadow of mediocrity and vulgarity that is so characteristic of pop culture and admits the place where we all come from. Beethoven, like Cervantes, is at the opening of our spiritual consciousness. Western man, return to your origins. There is nothing for you in the future but death and decay.

My feelings through Dostoyevsky's words

2010-11-05T19:13:00.000-07:00

"To love someone means to see him as God intended him" Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Every time I read something new from Dostoyevsky I can't but feel touched. Even loose quotes like this one speak the most uncontroversial truth, and any one who both believes in God and has been in love can understand at first glance what this words are all about. And here I speak with the most personal tone; I find in this author food for my own personality, and through his characters I feel myself represented. With all their vices, all their defects, all their profound feelings, me, a Western without hope in our lost civilization, cannot but feel touched. Only love can displace and set apart all traces of bias and ignorance from our eyes when contemplating the work of God in another person.

I read Dostoyevsky over and over again, and I feel pleased. If being in love is our perception of the work of God in a specific person, I tell with utmost certainty that I have seen. And I still see what is part of God in a specific woman today. Among all the millions of souls and minds that walk the populous city of New York, she knows that I'm talking about her.

Modern thinking or Eternal Return?

2010-10-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

"In the State of Nature we are free animals but enslaved human beings; in the State of Society we are enslaved animals but free human beings. Christianity has conquered freedom for Mankind; and now Mankind uses that freedom to destroy Christianity." (Winter-Spring 2008).

I wrote this phrases some years ago, and in retrospective I find them very interesting. I was reading Hegel at that moment, who I think inspired me to reach this conclusion. But now I discover that the first part of the statement is absolutely modern in principle. The idea that nature is previous and contrary to human enterprise and that our reason is our spiritual endowment to conquer beastly nature is so a modern idea that we can find it widespread from Descartes to Marx and beyond. There is implicitly a progressive approach of human nature. On the contrary, for ancient thinkers, and especially for Aristotle, nature is not contrary to human industry, but is the foundation of it. We use our rational endowments like language and labor by nature and not contrary to it, as if to conquer it.

But then, to understand the first part of the statement; that humanity and its reason is somehow superior to the State of Nature; we must pay heed to the second part. That the conquest of nature by our human endowments was facilitated by Christianity in particular, and by our Jude moral backgrounds in general, is an idea that I drew from Hegel's historical philosophy, and that is determinant to understand Modern political and ethical thinking. Nietzsche might be the genius in discovering the injustice underlying the Christian struggle against our bodily nature, and the motive why he rises against all Modern thinking. But I think that he might have committed and injustice against Ancient philosophy, and especially against Aristotle if he includes, as I think he actually does, Ancient thought with Christian and Modern thought. His statement in the The Will to Power that Plato is the first Christian might sound plausible, but I think he is wrong. In order to prove this, I would need more than a blog article, but an academic thesis, which is not proper here.

The interesting thing to point out is that it was historically impossible, if not absolutely absurd, for Ancient thought to reach the conclusion that human reason and its endowments were contrary to nature and bound to conquer it, as Modern thinking does. Christianity was missing. Hence, we find no progressive thinking in the Ancients, but cyclical accounts of history. Isn't it the Eternal Return of Nietzsche a very Ancient idea contrary to Modern thought? I think it is. Nietzsche gives us the clue to understand the departure of Modern and Ancient thought that we can trace back to Christianity. Now my question goes: Can we, contemporary minds find a synthesis between Ancient cyclical thought and Christian morality? That, I think, is the challenge posted by today's Postmodernism.

Million faces

2010-09-29T18:14:00.000-07:00

This poem is not final, but is the product of a sudden inspiration while thinking on a train. It requires final touches, but it has now the virtue of spontaneity.

Eighteen millions,
the train here comes,
million faces,
the train then goes.
One face there shone,
but the train was gone,
between million faces,
to never return.

Eighteen millions,
how many more?
Shine there I saw,
standing alone,
saw her just once,
but the train was gone,
between million faces,
forever begone.

Eighteen millions,
I was one more,
She goes to Brooklyn,
I to the Bronx.
Saw her at Union,
but the train was gone,
between million faces,
I was just one more.

Eighteen millions,
hours on board,
some on the N,
some on the Four.
I glared her,
but her train was gone.
She goes to Brooklyn,
and I to the Bronx.

Short dialogue on liberal contractualism

2010-09-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

The question: How can a political society emerge from a convention like a contract between individuals, if all conventions emerge from a political society in the first place?

Myself: The answer is that there is no such contract, and that human individuals are gregarious by nature, from which, then, conventions as contracts start to exist. Which also lead us to the conclusion that individuals are inasmuch there is a society to live in; hence they must adapt to the conventions and traditions from that society in the first place in order to rationally change them if they want to, always bearing in mind that society stands above the individuals. Contrary to this basic statement of common sense, liberal contractual thinking, in its individualistic fanaticism, is destroying the only base from where any rational human individual can live with dignity: society; by destroying its symbols of community. Examples: family, country and religion through feminism, pacifism and atheism.

Wise opponent: Feminism destroys families? Are you suggesting that misogyny fosters societal feelings?

Myself: That is not what I'm implying with my example. Family as a social value of good is between radical feminism and irrational misogyny. Feminism today is an attempt to destroy any kind of manly behavior and value (like honor, for example), also as a complete denationalization of femininity. By alienating persons from their gender background, destroying any truthful and sincere possibility of love between a man and a woman, the emotional base for a healthy marriage. In America feminism is against marriage, which is the same as to say, being against family. I'm not talking about feminism theory, but about main street feminism.
In any case, the examples above are only useful in my comment in order to show the consequences of thinking about society in a contractual way between individuals, instead of the real natural inclination toward living in community that all humans share from birth, with community values before and above individual values.
Again thinking in individual as opposed to community is a misleading assumption. Community values always have a certain level of individual values, depending on the case. But the important thing to point out is the prevalence of communion over ego. The other way around risks destruction. No Leviathan can pull it together without real and spontaneous communion.

On Justice as Patriotism

2010-09-08T18:58:00.001-07:00

"To have family or a city that is one's own implies the distinction between insiders and outsiders; and the outsiders are the potential enemies. Justice as helping friends and harming enemies is a peculiarly political definition of justice, and its dignity stands or falls with the dignity of political life. Every nation has wars and must defend itself; it can only do so if it has citizens who care for it and are willing to kill the citizens of the other nations. If the distinction between friends and enemies, and the inclination to help the former and harm the latter, were obliterated from the heart and mind of man, political life would be impossible" (Bloom, "Interpretive Essay" in The Republic of Plato, p. 318).

Reading Plato will never be out of date. What makes him a classic is the fact that in his work, particularly in his Republic, he tackles most of the issues regarding the problematical nature of politics. The first book of this work opens with a dialogue between Socrates and three other interlocutors discussing the notion of Justice, which will be the object that the entire work will aim at. For Justice seems, at least in Ancient times, the political good par excellence. The three other main characters of this first book are Cephalus, his son Polemarchus and the irate Thrasymachus.

The quoted text refers to Polemarchus argument on what justice means. He arrives at the conclusion (no without being insistently questioned by Socrates) that Justice as the virtue of making good to your friends, and doing wrong to your enemies. Now, independently of Socrates final arguments, I would like to wonder around this notion, because it seems to be the central argument of patriotism. Starting, this concept may strike us as irrational and cruel, because our Western christianized culture of universal peace and fraternity completely contradict such statement. But let us not be misguided by our liberal illusions of how the would ought to be from our moral view, and lets pay attention to what it says about the nature of politics.

It came to my mind that the contemporary political thinker that defend such an argument in similar language is the German jurist Carl Schmitt. He argues that the relation that determines political phenomena is the friend and enemy relationship. That to presume sovereignty from a political community, it must be capable to delimit who are their friends, either by referring by friends the citizens that form the political body or the external allies, and separates them from a common enemy, which for sure refers to other threatening political communities or internal sentiment of treachery. When a polity is unable to define by itself from any other compelling polity, perhaps would that means that the former enjoys no freedom at all and cannot be really called sovereign state. This ideas, summed with the accidental condition that Schmitt belonged to the Nazi Party in Germany, is viewed today with much precaution or skepticism. Apart from all of that, I do think there is something to be concluded from Schmitt's account of the political, as from Polemarchus' argument on Justice. There is something here that is real, and that all ways has been.

The interesting thing about the entire debate of Justice in Plato is that it appears to be totally detached from the notion of Freedom. A feature that today we Westerns consider quintessential, that Freedom is a necessary precondition for any kind of substantive Justice. Justice, in the Classical tradition, doesn't seems to come by the side of Freedom. Maybe because the state of freedom and slavery for the Ancients was more of an accidental condition than the Modern concept of inherent rights.

In any case, a profound lecture of Plato is all ways a good start to think about our conceptions and ideas from a critical perspective; specially when it appears that all that seems to be debatable about politics was already treated somehow by the Ancient Greeks.

Heródoto y la Libertad

2010-08-25T09:12:00.000-07:00

Un famoso pasaje de Heródoto me dejó cautivado anoche. Digo que es famoso, porque en el se explica sucintamente la superioridad moral de las comunidades libres frente a las sometidas. Este es otro de los temas que para los antiguos es axiomático, cuya prueba más espectacular es el resultado final de la guerras entre la confederación de ciudades griegas independientes contra el gigantesco Imperio Persa. El pasaje de Heródoto sigue a continuación del relato de la revolución democrática en Atenas, y de las reformas de Clístenes que llevaron a la abolición de la oligarquía, durante la última década del siglo VI a. C. El pasaje sigue:

"Entonces Atenas avanzó de fortaleza en fortaleza, y probó, si las pruebas fueren necesarias, qué cosa más noble es la igualdad ante la ley [ἰσονομία], no sólo en un respecto, pero en todos; pues mientras fueron oprimidos bajo tiranos, no tuvieron ningún éxito en la guerra como ningún otro de sus vecinos, más, una vez el yugo fue lanzado, probaron ser lo mejores guerreros en el mundo. Esto muestra claramente que, mientras estuvieron reducidos por la autoridad, ellos deliberadamente esquivaban el deber en el campo, como los esclavos esquivan el trabajo ante sus amos; pero cuando la libertad fue ganada, entonces cada hombre entre ellos estaba interesado por la propia causa" (Heródoto: Historias: V: 78).

Este hermoso pasaje es una demostración temprana de la magnífica sabiduría política de los Antiguos. Como la molicie de la paz desencadena debilidad o la fortuna que gira ante los más inesperados acontecimientos, la idea de ciudadanos libres en armas es una idea fija en el pensamiento democrático (y republicano), en la tradición clásica. El sentido del deber inspirado en la libertad de la igualdad (la igualdad ante la ley, la verdadera y única igualdad sustancial) hace de los comunes transeúntes en temibles patriotas. El sentimiento que llevó a las colonias inglesas de Norteamérica a derrotar definitivamente a los ejércitos profesionales de la Corona, o los ciudadanos franceses que marcharon por toda Europa bajo el mando de Napoleón, o el patriotismo inagotable de los soldados de Bolívar que, provincia tras provincia, iban destruyendo los residuos del tiránico Imperio Español, el valor y la convicción de un ejército de ciudadanos orgullosos de su país y de su libertad es una fuente de victoria que no tiene hasta ahora comparación.

Es por ello que yo insisto cada vez que se toca el tema: países como China no representan un peligro real a la supervivencia de Occidente. Un crecimiento abrumador del PIB, si no viene acompañado de una fiebre por la libertad, no se traduce en grandes victorias ni magistrales generales. Como Leónidas en las Termópilas, con un puñado de griegos detuvo por días a cientos de miles de persas, los Chinos y su nación de esclavos no tiene las condiciones espirituales para amenazar la existencia de nuestra cultura amante de la libertad. Un ejemplo de ello es el resultado de la Guerra de Vietnam, conflicto armado que para los Estados Unidos representaba una estricta lucha de intereses contra la Unión Soviética, mientras que para los vietnamitas representaba una guerra a muerte por la libertad. La desproporcionada superioridad de la gran potencia de poco valió contra un pueblo que lo dio todo por ser libre.

Amigos, la verdadera amenaza de Occidente, el motivo de su aparentemente inevitable disolución, es por causas internas. Porque ese amor por la libertad, ese orgullo en el patriotismo, esa convicción de superioridad, están dejando de existir. La desmoralización en tiempos de paz y su consecuente molicie, como tan tristemente lo demuestra el continente europeo, es el estado de cosas que está matando a nuestra civilización en un lento sueño aletargado.

La segunda tentación de Cristo.

2010-08-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

Estando en el desierto, en la segunda tentación el Diablo transporta a Cristo a la cima del templo de Jerusalém, y reta a Jesús a brincar sobre el vacío, citando como argumento el Salmo 91:11: "Pues El a sus ángeles mandará cerca de ti, para que te guarden en todos tus caminos. En las manos te llevarán para que tus pies no tropiecen contra piedra". De esta manera pone a prueba a Cristo, pues, si es éste el verdadero hijo de Dios, su padre no permitirá que se mate en la caida. Jesús le responde citando al libro Deuteronomo 6:16 diciendo: "No pondrás al Señor, tu Dios, a prueba". Una interpretación de este suceso sigue así:

"El Diablo prueba ser un experto en la Biblia que puede citar el salmo a la perfección. Toda la conversación de la segunda tentación toma la forma de una disputa entre dos eruditos de la Biblia" (p. 35).

"La práctica común hoy en día es medir la Biblia contra la llamada visión moderna del mundo, cuyo dogma fundamental es que Dios no puede actuar en la historia- que todo lo referente a Dios debe ser relegado al dominio de la subjetividad. Entonces la Biblia ya no habla de Dios, el Dios vivo; no, ahora sólo nosotros hablamos y decidimos lo que Dios puede hacer y lo que nosotros haremos y debemos hacer. Y el Anticristo, con un aire de excelencia erudita, nos dice que cualquier exégesis que lea a la Biblia desde la perspectiva de la fe en el Dios viviente, en orden para poder escuchar lo que Dios tiene que decir, es fundamentalismo; el quiere convencernos de que sólo su tipo de exégesis, la supuesta puramente de tipo científico, en la que Dios no dice nada y no tiene nada que decir, es capáz de mantenerse al corriente de los tiempos" (p. 35-36).

"El asunto en juego en esta segunda tentación ha sido recolectada en el motivo de 'pan y circo'. La idea es la de que una vez proporcionado el pan, también un espectáculo debe ser ofrecido. En vista de que la satisfacción corporal obviamente no es suficiente para el hombre, entonces ésta interpretación sigue; aquellos que se niegan a permitir a Dios tener algo que ver con el mundo y con el hombre están forzados a proporcionar la energía de exitar los estímulos, la emoción que reemplaza la admiración religiosa, y la aparta del camino" (p. 36).

La respuesta de Cristo "No pondrás al Señor, tu Dios, a prueba" (Deut 6:16) "alude a la historia de cómo Israel casi perece de sed en el desierto. Israel se rebela contra Moisés, y haciéndolo se rebela contra Dios. Dios tiene que probar que él es Dios. La Biblia describe esta rebelión como sigue: 'Ellos pusiéron al Señor a prueba diciéndo, <¿Está el Señor entre nosotros o no?>" (Exodo 17:7). El asunto, entonces, es el que ya hemos encontrado: Dios tiene que someterse a experimento. El es 'probado', justo como los productos son probados. El debe someterse a las condiciónes que nosotros decimos que son necesarias si es que vamos a alcanzar certeza. Si no nos ofrece ahora la protección que nos promete en el Salmo 91, entonces simplemente el no es Dios. El habrá mostrado que su propia palabra, tanto como él mismo, es falsa" (p. 37).

"La arrogancia que haría de Dios un objeto, e impone nuestras condiciones de laboratorio sobre él, es incapáz de encontrarlo. Pues ya implica que negamos a Dios en tanto Dios al ponernos a nosotros mismos por encima de él, al descartar la dimensión total del amo, del escuchar internamente; al no aceptar nada más como real mas que lo que podemos probar y agarrar experimentalmente. Pensar así es hacerse uno mismo Dios. Y hacer esto no es sólamente desarraigar a Dios, sino también al mundo y a uno mismo" (p. 37).

"El Reino de Cristo es diferente a los reinos de la tierra y su esplendor, que Satanás desfila ante él [Jesús]. Este esplendor, como indica la palabra griega doxa, es una apariencia ilusoria que se desintegra. Este no es el tipo de esplendor que pertenece al Reino de Cristo. Su Reino crece desde la humildad de la proclamación de aquéllos que acuerdan convertirse en sus dicípulos, que son bautizados en el nombre del Dios trinitario, y que mantienen sus mandamientos" (p. 39).

Nuevamente los pasajes citados con del libro del Papa Benedicto XVI, publicado en su versión traducida al inglés en 2007. La segunda tentación queda como demostración de la arrogancia de cualquier forma de aproximación cientificista al problema de Dios y de la fe. En tanto que somos seres humanos, terrestres, atados a nuestras condiciones, no podemos explorar con la ciencia, ni ningún método racionalista, la realidad del Dios viviente, ni legítimamente cuestionar la fe de sus creyentes. Repito, expongo estos párrafos como parte de mi cruzada personal para luchar contra los oponentes del Cristainismo y su Iglesia, que tanto abundan hoy en día y que disfrutan de una publicidad abrumadora.

La Primera Tentación de Cristo

2010-08-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

En los evangelios de Mateo, Marcos y Lucas nos es transmitido el momento de las tentaciones. Cristo, luego de ser bautizado en el Jordán por San Juan Bautista, y ser proclamado por el Espíritu Santo como Hijo de Dios, se aparta por cuarenta días y cuarenta noches en el desierto para ayunar y meditar. El Diablo se le aparece y lo provoca con tres discursos. En el primero el Diablo le propone que, en vista de que está padeciendo de hambre y de que es Hijo de Dios, convierta las piedras del desierto en panes para saciar su hambre. He aquí una reflexión sobre este momento:

"Jesús tiene que entrar en el drama de la existencia humana, pues eso pertenece al núcleo de su misión; tiene que penetrarlo completamente, hasta lo más hondo de su profundidad, para así poder encontrar 'la oveja perdida', para así cargarla sobre sus hombros, y traerla a casa" (p. 26)

Pablo en su carta a los Hebreos: "Pues porque él mismo ha sufrido y ha sido tentado, él es capaz de ayudar a aquéllos que son tentados" (Hebreos 2:18). "Pues porque nosotros no tenemos un sumo sacerdote que sea incapaz de simpatizar con nuestras debilidades, pero uno que en todo respecto ha sido tentado como nosotros, sin embargo sin pecado" (Hebreos 4:15).

"En el corazón de todas las tentaciones, como vemos aquí, está el acto de empujar a un lado a Dios porque lo percibimos como secundario, si no realmente superfluo y molesto, en comparación con todos los asuntos aparentemente mucho más urgentes que llenan nuestra vida. Crear un mundo por nuestra propia luz, sin referencia a Dios, construyendo sobre nuestras propias bases; reusando reconocer la realidad de cualquier cosa más allá de lo político y material, mientras ponemos a Dios a un lado como una ilusión- esa es la tentación que nos amenaza en muchas formas variadas. (...) [La tentación] pretenden mostrarnos un mejor camino, donde nosotros finalmente abandonamos nuestras ilusiones y nos aboquemos al trabajo de hacer verdaderamente al mundo un mejor lugar. Reclama, aún más, de hablar de verdadero realismo: lo que es real es lo que está justo en frente de nosotros- poder y pan. En comparación, las cosas de Dios se funden en la irrealidad, en un mundo secundario que nadie realmente necesita" (p. 28-29).

"Dios es el asunto: Es él real, la realidad misma, o no lo es? Es él bueno, o tenemos que inventarnos al bien nosotros mismos? La cuestión de Dios es la cuestión fundamental, y nos pone justo en la encrucijada de la existencia humana" (p. 29).

"El Marxismo- bastante comprensiblemente- hizo este punto específico [la conversión de las piedras en panes] el núcleo de su promesa de salvación: procuraría el que nadie más pasaría hambre más nunca y que 'el desierto se convertiría en pan'" (p.31).

"Cuando Dios es considerado como un asunto secundario que se puede apartar temporalmente o permanentemente sobre la base de cosas más importantes, es precisamente éstas supuestas cosas más importantes las que terminan siendo nada. No es sólo el advenimiento negativo del experimento marxista lo que prueba esto.
La ayuda ofrecida por el Occidente a países en desarrollo ha sido puramente técnica y materialmente basada, y no sólo ha dejado a Dios fuera de la pintura, pero ha apartado a los hombres de Dios. Y esta ayuda, proclamando orgullosamente 'saber mejor', es en sí misma lo que primero volvió al 'Tercer Mundo' en lo que hoy significa para nosotros ese término. Ha apartado a un lado las estructuras religiosas indígenas, éticas y sociales y ha llenado el vacío con su mentalidad tecnocrática. La idea era que podríamos convertir las piedras en panes; en cambio, nuestra 'ayuda' sólo ha dado piedras en lugar de los panes. El asunto es la primacía de Dios. El asunto es reconocer que él es una realidad, que él es la realidad sin la cual nada más puede ser bueno. La historia no se puede desprender de Dios y entonces correr sobre líneas suaves y puramente materiales. Si el corazón del hombre no es bueno, entonces nada más puede tornarse bueno tampoco. Y el bien del corazón humano puede al final venir sólo de Aquél que es El Bien, quien es Dios mismo" (p. 33-34)

"Es en éste mundo que estamos obligados a resistir los engaños de filosofías falsas y reconocer que nosotros no vivimos sólo de pan, pero primero y por sobre todo por la obediencia de la palabra de Dios. Sólo cuando esta obediencia es puesta en práctica se desarrolla la aptitud que también es capaz de proveer pan para todos" (p. 34).

Los anteriores pasajes los he sacado del libro Jesús de Nazaret, publicado por el Papa Benedicto XVI en el año 2007, en su versión en inglés de la editorial Doubleday en Nueva York.

Traigo a colación estos fragmentos ubicados en el segundo capítulo del libro, dedicado a las Tentaciones de Jesús, como parte de mi cruzada personal para propagar el mensaje actual de la Iglesia frente a sus múltiples y expandidos detractores. La necesidad de volver a Dios a través del mensaje de Cristo es apremiante en un mundo que cada vez se desvía más hacia su propia disolución. No es casualidad el aumento del pesimismo en la mente de los Occidentales de hoy. Luego del fracaso del proyecto Ilustrado en su culminación definitiva luego de la caída del muro de Berlín, el mensaje del progreso ha quedado totalmente desacreditado. Con ello el mensaje del Cristianismo nos queda como el único apelativo al sentido común en un mundo sin Dios y que pareciera avanzar a la deriva, sin rumbo y a la espectativa de una tragedia todavía por continuar.

La sabiduría de los Antiguos y la estupidez de los Modernos

2010-07-31T08:06:00.000-07:00

Tucídides, Polibio, Tácito: la demostración de que, fuera de lo tecnológico y estético, los Modernos no tenemos nada de novedoso. Al final somos la versión cristianizada de la experiencia política de los Antiguos. O al menos a esta conclusión he llegado con frecuencia cada vez que leo a los historiadores clásicos, lo cual me ha llevado a desarrollar la siguiente juicio: los Antiguos tenían una sabiduría política que nosotros los Modernos estamos muy lejos de poseer. Repito que hablo de sabiduría y no de conocimiento. Es decir, que sus nociones espontáneas y basadas en la experiencia histórica de cómo funciona la política y las formas de gobierno es en los autores clásicos mucho más desarrollada que los intentos ambiciosos y artificiales de la Modernidad de racionalizar la política, siempre con resultados parciales. Esto nos ha llevado a ignorar grandes temas, o incluso a descartarlos, que son determinantes en la política, y que para los Antiguos eran axiomáticos.

Para dar algunos ejemplos: un tema muy recurrente en la historiografía clásica es la Fortuna. Nosotros tenemos siglos ya, más o menos desde Hobbes, pero con insistencia incluso en Locke, Voltaire, Smith, y ni se diga de Marx y descendientes, etc., en la que nuestro pensamiento político se orienta exclusivamente en construir modelos racionales de justicia y estabilidad. Y es que todas las formas de progresismo han demostrado ser una falta de sabiduría verdaderamente vergonzosa. Creer que tenemos el control total de los factores que determinan la vida política de un pueblo y comunidad política es sencillamente ingenuo. Nunco lo hemos tenido, y la historia es una demostración de ello. Para los que lo siguen creyendo, todos nuestros sueños poshistóricos parecían estarse cumpliendo luego de la caída del muro de Berlín, hasta que dos aviones chocaron contra los edificios principales del World Trade Center en Nueva York, y la historia volvió a comenzar. Y los que hoy todavía creen que el mundo sigue un curso directo al desarrollo, se verán horrorizados ante la tragedia del oscuro y caótico futuro que espera a la civilización Occidental y sus dependencias asiáticas.

En cambio, los Antigüos estaban tan claros en el factor suerte, en el poder de la Fortuna, en su capacidad para doblar los acontecimientos, en imponer los giros más impredecibles en el desarrollo de las comunidades políticas, que un proyecto tan ambicioso y racional como el de la República de Platón concluye el libro X con Sócrates afirmando que tal forma de gobierno sólo es posible en el cielo y las ideas. Pero lo que para mí es el momento más sublime de la sabiduría de los Antiguos con respecto a la Fortuna de la política está relatado por Polibio. Dice el autor que, estando presente ante la destrucción de Cartago, nota que Escipión el Menor, el artífice de la destrucción de la archienemiga de Roma, está llorando. Polibio, siendo amigo personal de Escipión, le pregunta confundido cómo es que puede llorar en el momento en que le ha dado a su país la gloria y la victoria más grande de todas, y Escipión responde que llora por Roma, pues de la misma manera como Cartago en un tiempo dominó el mundo con su poder y hoy arde en las llamas, sufre por el día futuro en el que su ciudad también arderá. ¿Sueño de progreso y desarrollo universal? Jamás. Por el contrario, entendimiento profundo y realista de la historia y la política. Prueba de ello es que los romanos hayan deidificado a la Fortuna y pagado sus respetos a la que consideraban la fuerza más determinante del universo.

Otro tema que para los autores clásicos era prácticamente axiomático: el vicio y la degeneración que causan los períodos demasiado largos de paz, estabilidad y riqueza. Vemos este tema recurrir en buena parte de la literatura greco-romana y que para nuestras tradiciones de pensamiento político, tal idea resulta simplemente aberrante. ¿Por qué? Porque los Occidentales hemos estado soñando con un futuro de mentira. Hemos llegado a creer que el fin único y justificación última de la política es la construcción y preservación de un orden de estabilidad, prosperidad económica, fraternidad universal, donde las preocupaciones de la vida diaria se reducen a una escogencia entre placeres y diversiones. Qué pobres hemos sido. Precisamente para lo que nosotros hemos estado apuntando desde Hobbes es para los Antiguos el principio del vicio y la degradación, preludio de los peores desastres y las más grandes injusticias, como lo demuestra su historia una y otra vez, y la nuestra también; sólo que nosotros no queremos terminar de convencernos, por más evidente y aplastante que resulte esta realidad, de que todo aquello que creímo y añoramos no ha sido más que un sueño. El reino de Dios sólo existe después de la muerte (al menos eso si lo hemos entendido, aunque lamentablemente ha estado siendo desmentido los últimos trecientos años). Lo demuestra el hecho de que hayamos creado toda una corriente que no cree en el vicio, que lo desmiente, que relativiza toda realidad ética y atomiza en el individuo todo el poder soberano. Ideas superfluas que sólo han ayudado a esconder la cruel verdad: que el vicio es germen de la destrucción de la libertad y la degeneración de las formas de gobierno; que es el principio que nos hace escuálidos y ciegos ante las realidades políticas, algo que para los autores clásicos era mero sentido común. Eso está pasando hoy, y quienes lo advierten son señalados de reaccionarios y atacados de fascistas. Por favor... El vicio: toda degeneración de las costumbres que fortalecen las instituciones, y la consecutiva pérdida de la capacidad física y moral que nos permite defender y preservar las virtudes de nuestra forma de gobierno; entiéndase la libertad. Esto implica la incapacidad para identificar a los enemigos de nuestra forma de vida, y la ficción en la que usualmente vivimos de que la tolerancia de toda diferencia es justa y buena. Amenazas que incluyen un set de ideas que descompone esa misma forma de vida, para deformarla y hacerla irreconocible. Esto sucede en esos momentos de larga paz y prosperidad. Para los Antiguos era una tragedia clara y evidente. Para nosotros es el ideal último. Al final no va a hacer ninguna diferencia. Sólo quedarán los rastros de toda una civilización tonta que no identificó el germen interno de su propia desaparición. Y así concluirá nuestro papel en la tragedia.

La purga de americanos

2010-07-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

El aborto: uno de los temas de actualidad que más me angustia. Admito que cuando al aborto se refiere, mis niveles de tolerancia en la discusión, que siempre considero moderados y prudentes, se reducen a su mínima expresión. Los siguientes números se refieren sólo a las estadísticas de abortos legales en los Estados Unidos sacados de la Wikipedia:

Desde el año 80 hasta el 2005 las cifras de abortos legales en Estados Unidos son de 29.529.920 personas. Eso quiere decir que mucho más de treinta millones de estadounidenses, y sus hijos, podrían hoy estar vivos. Esta cifra supera de manera abrumadora el total de las bajas estadounidenses en todas las guerras luchadas por ese país combinadas. Todas las guerras en los doscientos veinte y cuatro años de historia republicana que Estados Unidos ha luchado no han cobrado ni la veinteava parte de la cantidad de abortos que se han cometido en los últimos treinta años. ¿Cuánta fuerza productiva no perdió los Estados Unidos en semejante cifra? ¿Cuántos de esos millones no pudieron haber sido grandes científicos, descubridores de vacunas o de nuevas tecnologías? ¿Cuántos empresarios emprendedores y toda la riqueza potencial que pudieron haber generado se ha perdido? ¿Cuántos de esos millones pudieron haber sido reformadores, luchadores sociales, académicos, escritores? ¿Cuántos de ellos estarían ofreciendo hoy su servicio como soldados? ¿Cuántos no fueron talentosos oficiales? ¿Cuántos de ellos pudieron haber sido grandes y galardonados artistas? ¿Cuántos pudieron haber sido presidente de los Estados Unidos, gobernadores o senadores?

Más de treinta millones de muertes es una cifra comparable a las purgas de Stalin.

¿Valen la pena?

Lectura del Sermón de la Montaña

2010-07-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

Mateo 5:3-12

3 Bienaventurados los pobres
en espíritu: porque de ellos es el
reino de los cielos.
4 Bienaventurados los que lloran:
porque ellos recibirán consolación.
5 Bienaventurados los mansos:
porque ellos recibirán la tierra
por heredar.
6 Bienaventurados los que
tienen hambre y sed de justicia:
porque ellos serán hartos.
7 Bienaventurados los misericor-
diosos: porque ellos alcanzarán
misericordia.
8 Bienaventurados los limpios
de corazón: porque ellos verán
a Dios.
9 Bienaventurados los pacifica-
dores: porque ellos serán llama-
dos hijos de Dios.
10 Bienaventurados los que
sufren persecusión por causa de
la justicia: porque de ellos es el
reino de los cielos.
11 Bienaventurados sois cuan-
do os vituperen y os persiguie-
ren, y dijeren de vosotros todo
mal por mi causa, mintiendo.
12 Gozaos y alegraos; porque
vuestra merced es grande en
los cielos: que así persiguieron
a los profetas que fueron antes
de vosotros.

Así concluye la primera parte del Sermón de la Montaña, la promesa del Cristianismo a la humanidad. Sus enemigos lo han interpretado maliciosamente, como una declaración de conformismo y opresión. Los progresistas, desde Voltaire hasta hoy, sueñan con un mundo sin oprimidos, sin injusticia, sin diferencias, sin dolor. Por ello desprecian la promesa del Cristianismo como vana, irreal, ilusoria, embustera; mientras que prometen un mundo de paz y concordia que nunca vino, que se convirtió en argumento pero las peores tiranías, y sólo ha logrado incrementar el dolor y el error. Fueron ingénuos en su arrogancia. No comprendieron que el mensaje de Cristo es un mensaje a todo individuo que algún dolor o aflicción padece, y que siendo absolutamente imposible erradicar la injusticia del mundo, el reino de Dios es un reino donde todas esas ofensas y marcas de la vida son compensadas en un equilibrio perfecto. El deseo de vengar las aflicciones sólo lleva a la perdición, a mayor injusticia en la tierra, y a la condena definitiva de nuestras almas. ¿Por qué? Porque fuimos demasiado arrogantes; creímos que podíamos hacer el trabajo de Dios en un mundo imperfecto con nuestras conciencias imperfectas. No se trata de padecer a drede, no se trata de imponerse una vida de miseria; se trata de preservar la convicción de que sea cual fuere la injusticia que hemos sufrido en este mundo, por ellas seremos recompensados en el reino de Dios. Tal justicia no puede ser engañada con triquiñuelas e hipocrecía. El compromiso de la fe debe ser verdadero o no ser. He allí el dilema.

Reflexiones finales sobre Avatar

2010-07-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

Pues vi Avatar una vez más, esta vez en 3D. Sinceramente me parece que la tercera dimensión no le agrega nada demasiado extraordinario a excepción de un par de tomas. Dentro de todo me gustó más en dos dimensiones, como se ven las películas tradicionalmente.

Pero no es eso exactamente de lo que quiero hablar. La película ha sido controversial, y críticas de todo tipo han salido a relucir. Todo el mundo está de acuerdo en que es la famosa historia de Pocahontas pero en el futuro y en otro planeta. Y es que el talento de Cameron consiste en contarnos historias tradicionales pero de maneras extraordinarias y excepcionalmente emocionantes. Es buen cuenta cuentos, además de un tremendo director de cine. Sin embargo, no fue sino hasta esta última vez que capté por completo la injusticia que subyace en la historia de Avatar, y el motivo por el cual a muchas personas esta película les pudo haber resultado desagradable.

Aquí en Estados Unidos muchos dijeron que la película tenía un mensaje antiamericano; que había una agenda liberal detrás de sus grandiosos efectos especiales; que criticaba descaradamente a la administración Bush, y otra cantidad de sandeces que se dijo al respecto. Sin embargo, no se puede negar, existe un mensaje explícito en la película, en las múltiples referencias al planeta Tierra como un planeta muerto, sin vida, destruido. El mensaje ecologista de la película es bastante evidente. Yo no tengo problema con ese mensaje, aunque no lo comparta del todo.

A lo que voy: esta película trata una historia que se ha repetido centenares de veces desde que el hombre es hombre. El encuentro entre una cultura altamente desarrollada y otra en un estado de primitivismo tecnológico. El resultado siempre es igual: la cultura más desarrollada aplasta a la más primitiva, dejando pocos o ningún rastro de ella. Avatar trata específicamente de la aniquilación de las tribus indígenas de América del Norte (con la excepción de que en la película ganan los aborígenes), a través de la muy conocida historia de Pocahontas. Sin embargo, la película contruye una historia a partir de elementos históricamente disconexos, pero que todos hacen referencia a los Estados Unidos. En una sola frase, Avatar es el siguiente escenario: la destrucción de los indios norteamericanos por tropas mercenarias de estadounidenses como Blackwaters, en búsqueda de un recurso energético muy valioso como el petróleo, cuyo resultado final es una derrota en escenario selvático como en Vietnam. ¿Suena absurdo? Es que es absurdo.

Los indios norteamericanos fueron aniquilados entre los siglos XVIII y XIX, pero por oleadas de colonos, familias armadas, muchas de ellas inmigrantes europeos, que a la caza de nuevas oportunidades iban masivamente en busca de tierras sin dueño. No fueron mercenarios pagados por ninguna compañía trasnacional los que eliminaron a los indios. Por su parte, los mercenarios de Avatar se parecen más a organizaciones como Blackwater, grupo de mercenarios privados que han tenido una participación más o menos condenable en la actual ocupación norteamericana de Irak. En Avatar, la teoría que sostiene que los Estados Unidos invadió a Irak para asegurarse el petróleo se parece mucho más al motivo por el cual estas tropas de mercenarios viajan a Pandora en búsqueda de unobtanium. Esto sumado a un par de comentarios que refieren a la guerra contra el terror, vocabulario de la administración Bush, nos da a entender que Cameron está asumiendo una postura claramente política ante el tema. Y por último, una guerra asimétrica en escenario selvático en el que la población indígena, con una moral superior y un espíritu de sacrificio inquebrantable derrotan a los más avanzados terrestres, resultado que se parece mucho a la derrota de los Estados Unidos en la Guerra de Vietnam.

Mi punto es, James Cameron es un tremendo director, pero también es un vivo. En Avatar se hace con todas las historias negras de los Estados Unidos y las unifica de manera coherente en una sóla película de ciencia ficción, con efectos especiales de última tecnología y con un guión maravillosamente construido. El resultado, una visión parcializada y anti-americana que resulta altamente sospechoza, por más que la película, en tanto obra de arte, sea espectacular.

La Tragedia de los Cuatro Emperadores

2010-06-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

Hay veces en que la historia resulta mucho más trágica que el teatro y la poesía. Uno de esos momentos es el año 69 d. C. Luego de la conspiración contra Nerón que se urdió para sustituir al tirano hedonista por un emperador anticuado, Galba, el Imperio Romano colapsa en guerra civil por un plazo de un año. La muerte de Nerón trajo consigo un acontecimiento nuevo para el imperio: si bien ya había un precedente en Calígula de que los Césares podían ser sustituidos, hasta ahora sólo se había demostrado que en la dinastía Julio-Claudia, descendientes de Octavio, el pueblo y las legiones encontraban una legítima fuente de autoridad. La muerte de Nerón y su sustitución por Galba, de la familia Sulpicio, presentó un fenómeno político característico: la quiebra de la unidad de la legitimidad de la autoridad. En consecuencia la siguiente pregunta hecha por otros hombres poderosos del imperio, "¿Si Galba puede ser emperador, por qué no yo?" Esta pregunta no se la podían hacer en la época de la dinastía Julio-Claudia. Había un motivo por el cuál en esa familia residía el poder de los Césares: eran descendientes del divino Augusto. Con Galba ese argumento, punto fundamental donde se sostenía la autoridad legítima de los emperadores, desaparece.

En pocos meses un noble relativamente desconocido empieza a conspirar para arrebatarle el trono al envejecido emperador. Utiliza el poder corruptor del dinero para ganarse la lealtad de los soldados y centuriones emplazados en Roma, contrarrestándo el nuevo régimen de austeridad y "virtud" que la administración de Galba estaba tratando de imponer, política muy impopular entre una soldadesca acostumbrada a los lujos y licencias de los años de Nerón. El nombre de este ambicioso conspirador es Otón. Mientras tanto las provincias altamente militarizadas de Germania proclaman a su gobernador como verdadero y legítimo emperador: Vitelio. En las provincias de oriente el rumor del liderazgo de un general muy popular, Vespasiano, comienza a recorrer el mundo helénico.

El inicio de la tragedia: pocos días después de que la noticia de la rebelión de las legiones de Germania llega a Roma, Otón orquesta un golpe de estado magistral, en el que, con la ayuda de un grupo de sediciosos centuriones, se hace con el campamento militar en las afueras de la ciudad, y gracias a la confusión producida en el bando imperial, los conspiradores atrapan a Galba y a toda su corte en el Foro, y en una demostración de impiedad no antes vista en la ciudad, son asesinados por los soldados ante la mirada de los ciudadanos y de los templos de Roma. El Senado, aterrado (como siempre), proclama a Otón como nuevo emperador, y declaran la guerra a Vitelio, cuyas legiones marchan hacia el sur, dirección a Italia. El resultado en los próximos meses se ve venir. La superioridad moral y material de las legiones germánicas se imponen sobre las suavizadas tropas de Italia, y en una campaña que se desarrolla en el valle del Po, los generales de Vitelio derrotan aplastantemente a los ejércitos oficiales. Otón, aunque su causa no está del todo perdida, en un ataque desgarrador de desesperanza se suicida en contra del clamor de sus soldados, clavándose en el pecho una espada. La corte hedonista de lo que parece ser un nuevo Nerón, Vitelio, se traslada lentamente hacia Roma, entre espectáculos de gladiadores y desfiles militares a medida que transitan por cada ciudad del norte de Italia.

La administración de Vitelio sólo demuestra ser una serie consecutiva de errores y negligencia. En el Este la indignación entre los cuadros altos y medios de las legiones se hace sentir. Vespasiano, el héroe de las guerras en Britania, y ahora en Judea, es proclamado Emperador, primero en Alejandría, luego en el resto de las ciudades del oriente helénico. Una guerra aún mayor es preparada, con el uso masivo de los recursos de Oriente para dirigir una flota que monte un cerco a la península italiana. Y aunque caudillos y reyesuelos de frontera, como los dacios, el reino del Ponto y algunas tribus germánicas, aprovechan para rebelarse contra el dominio de Roma, en poco tiempo son reducidos. Vespasiano moviliza todas las fuerzas desde Iliria (actual Dalmacia), hasta Siria, y prepara una invasión de Italia desde el noreste. La indolencia de Vitelio es difícil de creer, utilizando de su prestigio como emperador (curiosamente se niega a recibir el título de César), vive en banquetes y orgías, alimentando sus vicios, entre los cuales está el de una gula incontrolada (Vitelio sufría de obesidad). Sin duda el más patético de los personajes de esta historia, un emperador sin experiencia militar, que asumía la autoridad suprema del imperio más grande habido en el Mediterráneo para disfrutar como un esteta decadente. Sordo a las advertencias más prudentes y abierto a los elogios más arrastrados, Vitelio no sabe cómo detener la marcha de las tropas de Vespasiano. De tal manera es traicionado hasta por sus más cercanos colaboradores, que al cambiarse de bando lo dejan abandonado en la inmensidad de un palacio de los placeres. Su general de mayor confianza, Valens, hace todos los esfuerzos, pero en definitiva es derrotado, capturado y ejecutado.

Cuando las legiones de Vespasiano, comandadas por Antonio, montan cerco a Roma y la toman por la fuerza, Vitelio en su desesperación no sabe que hacer. Había intentado abdicar; sus tropas no se lo permitieron. Se había escondido en la casa de su esposa; el miedo lo llevó a regresar al palacio imperial. Cuando entra en los pasillos y salones de su antigua residencia, el hogar de los Césares, ésta ha sido abandonada por sus colaboradores, libertos y esclavos. Hayamos la figura trágica de un emperador obeso corriendo, y probablemente en llanto, pidiendo a gritos el auxilio de una corte que se había desvanecido de entre los lujos de un palacio abandonado, mientras las puertas de Roma están siendo derribadas por soldados romanos. En un escondite miserable, en una pequeña habitación sucia de algún sirviente, allí es encontrado Vitelio en lo más bajo de su conmiseración. Es arrastrado hacia afuera por un miembro de la guardia, enjuiciado publicamente y ejecutado. Dos son las versiones del final de su cadáver: arrojado a las aguas de Tíber o lanzado por las escaleras Gemonías del monte Capitolio.

Los despojos de la guerra incluyeron el saqueo y aniquilación de varias ciudades galas por la marcha de las tropas de Vitelio, la matanza de la corte de Galba en medio del Foro por los leales a Otón, la destrucción total de la ciudad de Cremona por las tropas de Vespasiano, y lo que parece más trágico a los ojos de Tácito, la quema total del templo de Júpiter en el Capitolio, el centro del culto más importante y antiguo de Roma, en medio del asedio de la fortaleza del Capitolio por tropas leales a Vitelio en contra de un grupo de nobles conspiradores liderizados por el hermano mayor de Vespasiano que se habían atrincherado en el monte. El año de los cuatro emperadores (69 d. C.) sorprende por su nivel de dramatismo y la repetición consecutiva de injusticias y violencias, y nos impacta como uno de los más trágicos de la historia de la Antiguedad: la masacre de Galba en el Foro, el suicidio de Otón en su tienda militar, la desgarramiento de Vitelio en el palacio vacío, y la definitiva victoria de Vespasiano sobre todos los demás. La guerra civil como el más trágico de los acontecimientos sobre un pueblo, y el pretorianismo cesarista como el fin lamentable de la libertad republicana.

Este texto está inspirado en mi reciente lectura de las Historias de Tácito.

Por qué no soy Demócrata

2010-06-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

Para responder esta pregunta voy a pedir, con su permiso, ayuda a una de las autoridades más formidables en materia de teoría democrática, cuyas palabras hablan por sí mismas. Alexis de Tocqueville escribe en Democracia en América:

"Se comprende que la centralización gubernamental adquiere una fuerza inmensa cuando se añade a la centralización administrativa. De esta manera acostumbra a los individuos a hacer abstracción completa y continua de su voluntad; a obedecer, no ya una vez y sobre un punto, sino en todo y todos los días. Entonces, no solamente los doma por la fuerza, sino que también los capta por sus costumbres; los aísla y se apodera de ellos uno por uno entre la masa común." (pg. 97)

"Pero creo que la centralización administrativa no es propia sino para enervar a los pueblos que se someten a ella, porque tiende sin cesar a disminuir entre ellos el espíritu de ciudad. La centralización administrativa logra, es verdad, reunir en una época dada, y en cierto lugar, todas las fuerzas disponibles de la nación, pero perjudica la reproducción de las fuerzas. La hace triunfar el día del combate, y disminuye a la larga su poder. Puede, pues, concurrir admirablemente a la grandeza pasajera de un hombre y no a la prosperidad durable de un pueblo." (pg. 98)

"Un poder central, por ilustrado y sabio que se le imagine, no puede abarcar por sí sólo todos los detalles de la vida de un gran pueblo. No lo puede, porque tal trabajo excede las fuerzas humanas. Cuando él quiere, por su solo cuidado, crea y hace funcionar tanto resortes diversos, se contenta con un resultado muy incompleto, o se agota en inputiles esfuerzos." (pg. 100)

"¿Cómo descansa la libertad de las cosas grandes en una multitud que no ha aprendido a servirse de ella en las pequeñas?
¿Cómo resistir a la tiranía en un país en que cada individuo es débil, y en donde los individuos no están reunidos por un interés común?" (pg. 104)

En este cuerpo pequeño de ideas está condensado el argumento central de por qué no soy demócrata en general, y de por qué no estuve de acuerdo con el programa de reforma de salud de Obama-Pelosi en particular. No niego que el sistema de salud norteamericano actual sufre de problemas considerables que deben ser atacados políticamente. El mercado actual se ha demostrado insuficiente. Pero reflexionemos un poco sobre la solución demócrata al problema. La legislación aprobada hace tan sólo unos meses centraliza en manos del Estado Federal la administración de los programas de seguro de salud de todos los Estados Unidos, incrementando en varios miles la cantidad de burócratas que tendrán que asumir tal responsabilidad, más el gasto público que lo acompaña. Gasto público de por sí no es necesariamente malo, a diferencia de como creen algunos economistas neoclásicos; pero el incremento excesivo de la burocracia si tiene consecuencias perjudiciales para el porvenir de cualquier república democrática.

La solución demócrata es centralizar, lo cual equivale a alejar aún más las decisiones de interés público de los primeros interesados: los ciudadanos norteamericanos. El fin último es asegurar la salud indispensable a todos los ciudadanos, y eliminar de una vez por todas la injusticia de una mala salud. Es decir, asegurar a los menos favorecidos por la suerte. Tal fin parece ser sin duda muy noble. ¿Pero a qué costo? ¿Estamos dispuesto a sacrificar el porvenir de toda una república para asegurar momentáneamente el bienestar de sólo algunos? ¿Es tal decisión racional y/o moral cómo se ha querido que creamos? Mi opinión ante tal cuestionamiento es clara: la libertad política de una república es un bien superior y trascendente, ante la salud de sus individuos particulares. El bien común se antepone al bien privado.

No soy demócrata porque temo que el Poder Federal, creciendo sin parar desde F. D. R., algún día sea indestructible, y abrume por completo las fuerzas conjuntas de los ciudadanos libres. No se equivoquen; la historia da giros repentinos, y el aparato burocrático de control centralizado que hoy en día se construye en los Estados Unidos puede muy bien servir los intereses de un futuro tirano. ¿Quién sabe? Los griegos y los romanos también tuvieron siglos de libertad, y el sueño concluyó con la tiranía de la monarquía macedónica primero y con la de los césares después. ¿Qué nos hace creer que nuestra cultura, o los Estados Unidos, son inmunes a los cambios repentinos de la historia? En Venezuela hace unas décadas se creía imposible una tiranía socialista: allí la vemos hoy.

El partido demócrata, tanto como el ala neoconservadora del partido republicano, ambos tienen una tendencia a centralizar funciones administrativas en el Poder Federal. Ambos quieren solucionar los problemas nacionales con grandes coluciones burocráticas. Tocqueville lo plantea muy bien "De esta manera acostumbra a los individuos a hacer abstracción completa y continua de su voluntad; a obedecer, no ya una vez y sobre un punto, sino en todo y todos los días." A medida que el Poder Federal se apropia de funciones administrativas, está quitando a la base de los ciudadanos la capacidad de, por ellos mismos, asumir tales responsabilidades. Si bien es verdad que la centralización resuelve el problema inmediato, también es una verdad histórica que "la centralización administrativa no es propia sino para enervar a los pueblos que se someten a ella, porque tiende sin cesar a disminuir entre ellos el espíritu de ciudad." Y ni siquiera el argumento utilitario vale la pena pues "un poder central, por ilustrado y sabio que se le imagine, no puede abarcar por sí sólo todos los detalles de la vida de un gran pueblo."

Nunca demos la libertad por dada. Siempre existen amenazas y enemigos, y siempre existirán. Resolver todo a la forma europea, concediéndole al Estado central la administración más amplia de la cosa pública, cediendo entonces nuestro poder de administrarnos a nivel local, es crear la estructura sobre la cual cualquier tirano del futuro puede sencillamente acabar con la libertad. El bienestar social no justifica jamás una disminución de la libertad. Al menos no en una república de ciudadanos libres. El absolutismo del bienestar social es para pueblos de súbditos, que sacrifican el valor trascendente de su libertad, a un poder extraño que le facilita todos los aspectos de su vida. Es un canje de libertad por seguridad. Los grandes pueblos son siempre libres, los pueblos pequeños disfrutan de los grandes monarcas y tiranos. En pocas palabras, los demócratas, con su ideología welferista, fundamentada en principios morales aparentemente justos, socavan la base sobre la cual toda la libertad estadounidense se construye: la autonomía de los Estados y el poder de los ciudadanos reunidos. Mejorar el bienestar general no es un objetivo lo suficientemente valeroso como para poner en riesgo la tradición de la libertad republicana. Por eso no puedo ser demócrata, y por ese mismo motivo no siento ningún aprecio por las tendencias centralizadoras de la pasada administración Bush. Es necesario un cambio de liderazgo en el partido republicano. Los demócratas no tienen solución.

Por qué soy Republicano

2010-06-04T10:40:00.001-07:00

Con un mes cumplido en la ciudad de Nueva York, siento que ya es buena hora para explicar los motivos por los cuales soy republicano. Esta es una ciudad muy liberal, y la etiqueta de republicano tiende a ser motivo para muchas confusiones. Explicaré un poco en qué consisten y los motivos por los cuales creo que la gente tiene esta opinión.

Existe una opinión más o menos difundida de que el partido republicano es un partido de oligarcas, de hombres de negocios, amigos de Wall Street, multimillonarios y petroleros. La experiencia de la administración Bush da mucho pie a esta creencia. Sin duda esa administración estuvo muy marcada por la presencia de hombres de los altos negocios del petróleo y otros amigos de la libertad de los Wall Street guys a hacerce millonarios. Pero no debemos olvidar que esto fue sólo una administración, un liderazgo históricamente concreto y delimitado; que no es motivo para universalizar sobre toda la base de principios republicanos del partido fundado por Abraham Lincoln e inspirado en el antiguo partido Demócrata-Republicano de Thomas Jefferson. A nadie le gustan los oligarcas. A mí tampoco me agradan en lo más mínimo. Pero he aquí los motivos por los cuáles yo soy republicano, motivos que representan mi convicción en valores que existen en el actual GOP, pero que han quedado apartados por esta visión neoconservadora de la política.

El primero y más importante de todos los principios, desde el cual parten todas las demás ideas republicanas: el patriotismo. En pocas palabras, la firme convicción de que mis intereses individuales, y los de mis allegados y partidarios, son necesariamente secundarios al lado del bien de la república. Todos somos naturalmente egoístas, pero el patriotismo es un llamado excepcional a sacrificar dicho egoísmo en el momento en el que el país al que uno pertenece exige un compromiso que nos puede incluso costar hasta lo más grande; la vida misma. Es la idea de que yo soy un ciudadano más, menos importante que el conjunto de toda la república, y más pequeño que toda su grandeza, por lo cual no está justificado de ninguna manera el sacrificar los interses de mí país por mis interses personales. En definitiva, creer que el bienestar de mí país está por encima de mí bienestar propio y del de cualquier otro pueblo, si llegasen a ser contradictorios (lo cual no pasa todo el tiempo).

Patriotismo viene del latín patria, la tierra donde naciéron mis antepasados; o lo que es similar, la tierra sobre la que yo un día seré el antepasado de mis descendientes. Es el sacrificio de uno mismo por la idea de la libertad que en el futuro disfrutarán mis descendientes y sus semejantes. Patriotismo sin libertad no existe, porque sólo la libertad nos hace iguales en tanto ciudadanos. La República exige la libertad y la igualdad entre los ciudadanos, porque sólo así yo puedo sacrificar mi bien individual por el bien que disfrutan todos mis semejantes; bien que vuelve a ser esa libertad e igualdad que me une al cuerpo civil entero. Ante todo la república, luego vengo yo. Ese es el principio republicano por excelencia y que es imposible en otras formas de gobierno donde algunos disfrutan de privilegios que a todos los demás le están excluídos.

El conservadurismo es el segundo principio que me lleva al republicanismo. Sin embargo, el conservadurismo no es más que una conclusión lógica del patriotismo. Porque si se trata de amar a la patria, se la ama tal cual es. El conservadurismo parte de la idea de que el país al cual amamos y del cual nos sentimos orgullosos, es un país que debemos cuidar con prudencia, y no dejarnos controlar por los deseos egoístas de seguridad personal que debilitan las bases de la república. La moral pública es la base espiritual más fuerte y profunda para la preservación de los valores de libertad e igualdad de la república. Sin esa moral, todo el sistema de derecho, todas las normas de convivencia, se quedan vacías de contenido, como un edificio abandonado y en ruinas que, al carecer de habitantes, podemos derrumbar sin muchos problemas. Nuevamente es el amor a nuestro país lo que nos lleva a conservar sus costumbres más antiguas, que no son necesariamente racionales. La moral privada es un problema del individuo con Dios; la moral pública es un problema mío entre mis semejantes con quienes comparto una vida y unos bienes en común: la república, su libertad y su igualdad expresadas en el derecho.

Soy republicano porque creo en el sacrificio del patriotismo, como una de las acciones más nobles y más engrandecedoras del espíritu humano. No me gustan los demócratas porque, por su ideología welferista, realzan y estimulan los deseos egoístas de los individuos por la seguridad personal y su voluntad de libertinaje por encima del bien de la república. El supuesto altruismo demócrata esconde un deseo profundo de asegurar mis deseos inmediatos del compromiso que me exige mi país. Al final no es más que hipotecar hoy, a través de la intervención del Estado, la libertad que nos va a ser necesaria en el mañana. Yo no estoy con el Estado, yo estoy con la República. El primero nos oferce seguridad, la segunda nos ofrece libertad. El primero nos cuida de todo daño, la segunda promueve nuestra grandeza espiritual. Y como dijo maravillosamente el presidente Kennedy, palabras que no deben ser olvidadas jamás: "No preguntes qué puede hacer tu país por ti; pregunta qué puedes hacer tú por tu país."

Jackson y el Republicanismo

2010-05-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

"El retiro a mi vida privada me ha sido, por algún tiempo, un evento muy deseable. Pero ustedes han dicho que mis consecutivos servicios como juez serían útiles. Cuándo mis servicios son de tal manera llamados, ellos pertenecen a mi país, y su voz es obedecida."

Estas inspiradoras palabras pertenecen al presidente de los Estados Unidos Andrew Jackson, cuando todavía tenía poco más que treinta y un años, no soñaba todavía con ser presidente, pero ejercía un digno cargo como gobernador del estado fronterizo de Tennessee. Al rededor de su figura se tejió toda una leyenda de patriotismo. Pero lo que no se puede dudar es que, el impetuoso y rebelde Jackson era un patriota y republicano de corazón. Lo que voy a decir a propósito de ésto, vale para la gran mayoría de los países de Occidente.
Ahora cito esta frase de Jackson no tanto por una admiración personal al personaje. Estoy leyendo una biografía sobre él, pero todavía no me ha cautivado tanto como para admirarlo. Traigo a colación sus palabras, porque en ellas está expresada de manera puntual y elegante, uno de los principios del republicanismo más fundamentales: el servicio público. Tal idea no descarta que los individios comprometidos en la política no lo hagan por ambición personal o vanidad. Tales emociones son naturales en el ser humano, y las manifestaciones más profundas del carácter de un individuo no son tan importantes para la política como lo es su expresión exterior. Lo que la persona manifieste en público es lo que tiene importancia política; su carácter moral es ha Dios.
Lo sobresaliente aquí es ver la prioridad que tiene el servicio público por encima del bien privado. Hoy en día estamos muy acostumbrados a exigir y disfrutar tranquilamente nuestro bien privado (seguridad laboral, seguro de salud, buenos salarios más jubilación, en una palabra: seguridad, seguridad, seguridad), y olvidamos la importancia de nuestro deber con la república. Precisamente, el modelo de Estado de Bienestar (Welfare), es la respuesta al deseo de seguridad de los individuos, al miedo a la incertidumbre, y la solución ha sido depositar en el Estado y su burocracia, los recursos, la disposición y la responsabilidad de "asegurarno"; la consecuencia ha sido una reglamentación excesiva de la política, lo cual la ha hecho una materia de mera administración pública. Tal fenómeno no puede menos que hacer de la política un asunto aburrido y sin trascendencia, de papeleo y listas de espera. Ya no es aquél ideal de participación y autogobierno.
Las palabras del todavía no presidente Andrew Jackson son esclarecedoras, que se complementan de manera hermosa con la famosa cita de J. F. Kennedy: "No preguntes qué puede hacer tu país por tí; pregunta qué puedes hacer tú por tu país." Es decir, lo que podemos hacer nosotros por nuestro país nos obliga, en calidad de deber, a salir de nuestro escondite en la vida privada, y a comprometernos con el servicio público, con el bien de nuestro país, el bien que nos es común a todos los ciudadanos de una república libre. De allí la palabra república del latín: res (asunto) pública (común). Es decir, los asuntos que nos conciernen a todos como miembros de una comunidad de iguales. Nuestro deseo de preservar a toda costa la seguridad de nuestra vida privada, depositando la responsabilidad de velar por esta seguridad nuestra en la burocracia de Estado, nos ha alienado del espacio público, nos ha separado de nuestro deber para con nuestro país, y sin darnos cuenta regresamos al modelo monárquico de Estado, donde todo queda subordinado a una jerarquía burocrática, pero que esta vez es dirigida por un presidente electo o por un parlamento. ¿Dónde queda nuestra libertad política originaria si ahora todo se resuelve con un sello o una firma de un funcionario que no conocemos y que nunca elegimos?

Las palabras de Jackson son un recordatorio de cuál debe ser nuestra disposición para con la política, y no dejarnos engañar por los partidos y sus idiologías partidocráticas, que sólo buscan intercambiar nuestra libertad a cambio de una seguridad hoy, pero una gran incertidumbre del mañana.

Kandinski el Preso y Matisse el Desaparecido

2010-05-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

A modo de nota, esta noticia que ya tiene años rodando, pero que es bueno recordar:

"De acuerdo al testimonio ofrecido por una importante autoridad del Museo del Louvre en París, años atrás conocidos personeros públicos venezolanos negociaron una pintura de Henry Matisse en la capital francesa, en donde trataban que una experta autenticara la obra.

Gracias a un video de seguridad de un banco, difundido luego por una cadena de televisión por suscripción mundialmente conocida, pudo ser identificada una dama de apellido Chacón (esposa de un entonces Alcalde caraqueño) o una hermana de ésta, como la persona que sacó el lienzo de la caja de seguridad de un banco parisino.

Las autoridades venezolanas no quisieron actuar. El cuadro se desapareció y se presume que habría ido a parar a México o Norteamérica. Pero hace poco supuestamente habría reaparecido en la mansión de Pedro Torres Ciliberto en la ciudad de Caracas.

No se descarta que un periodista y ex alto jerarca de la vida pública nacional venezolana y su hijo estén involucrados con la desaparición de “La Odalisca” de Matisse, que posiblemente no regrese al Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, de donde se desapareció, sino pase a decorar la pared de algún "boliburgués"."

Ahora imaginémonos nosotros lo que puede suceder si el gobierno logra centralizar todas las obras de arte del país, y almacenarlas en bodegas. El robo de un Matisse ya es un acto de corrupción miserable, como lo puede ser el enriquecimiento personal a través de robarle a la nación las obras del arte universal que tanto le han costado adquirir y que con tanto orgullo preservamos. Estamos ante Alarico, los Vándalos y Atila. El gobierno del tirano Hugo Chávez ya no se basta con los miles de millones de dólares del petróleo venezolano; su sed de riqueza y de desbancar al país alcanza el nivel insólito de robo de arte. Ahora imagínense que el gobierno centralice la administración de todos los museos públicos de la nación. ¿Podremos seguir confiando que aquellos maravillosos cuadros de Botero no pasen de la noche a la mañana a ser copias misteriosas? ¿La gran colección de grabados de Picasso irá a sobrevivir? Esto me hace recordar una anécdota que nos contaba un profesor (y padrino de nuestra promoción) en la escuela de estudios políticos: de cómo grandiosas obras de Kandinski pasaron décadas escondidas en las masmorras de la Unión Soviética, por representar un arte "burgués" en vez de expresar las "realidades objetivas del proletariado". Y es que el pensamiento comunista más perverso ha penetrado en las mentes de los oficiales de la tiranía. Pero no sólo pensamiento comunista. Esta serie de cosas me recuerda a la famosa colección de arte universal que tenía Goëring en su residencia, todos robados de los museos de toda Europa, y que no regresaron a sus lugares de origen sino hasta la caída del nazismo.

En definitiva, y reiterando ciertamente sobre el tema, Venezuela está viviendo una tiranía foragida, que en su sed de poder, riqueza, y de vengar todo su recentimiento, está "raspando la holla" en todos los sentidos. Los millones del petróleo no les son suficientes (asumiendo los 100.000 barriles de petróleo subsidiado que el tirano envía duariamente a Cuba). Esta gente no tiene límites a su bandalismo destructivo. Es imposible no preguntarse después de esto, ¿qué irá a quedar en Venezuela? Todo indica que nuestra ruta es Cartago.

Si quiere leer más: http://www.eluniversal.com.ve/2009/12/03/til_ava_un-libro-reconstruye_03A3144893.shtml

Venezuela y la muerte del poder judicial

2010-05-09T19:56:00.000-07:00

Venezuela se caracteriza por noticias insólitas, muchas de las cuales llenan de indignación. Si nos pusieramos a contar todas y cada una de ellas podríamos escribir libros enteros. Pero hoy quiero comentar uno de los casos más descarados de abuso de poder que el presidente Chávez ha desplegado en los ultimos meses: el caso de la juez María Lourdes Afiuni. Cuando esta emitió una sentencia de liberación del banquero Eligio Cedeño, quince minutos después se presentaron oficiales del gobierno y la pusideron bajo arresto. Se dice que contra éste señor Chávez tiene una rencilla personal. No me extrañaría si la decisión de arrestar a la juez por desacatar la voluntad del presidente fue tan rápida.

En todo caso, la noticia la pueden encontrar fácilmente en internet, y yo sugiero una versión reciente del Washington Post en: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/24/AR2010042401791.html

Ahora lo importante de este acontecimiento tan brutal es la demostración clara y a la luz del día de que la separación de poderes, principio universal de los sistemas republicanos libres, no existe en Venezuela. La presidenta del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, Luisa Estela Morales, ha tenido el descaro de decir poco antes del arresto de la juez Afiuni que "no podemos seguir pensando en una división de poderes porque eso es un principio que debilita al Estado". Este discurso entra perfecto dentro de la racionalidad tiránica del presidente Chávez. Y es que es cierto que debilita al Estado, pero debemos preguntarnos a qué forma de Estado.

De acuerdo con los principios constitucionales de Venezuela, la división de poderes es un principio fundamental de la república, porque, ya desde John Locke se sabe que, de concentrar todos los poderes del Estado en una sola magistratura, el depositario de tal poder tenderá a abusar de él y buscará eternizarse en el poder. Este es el principio de todas las dictaduras desde Julio César. Debilita al Estado en tanto aparato que sirve a los intereses de un tirano, y no a los de la libertad de los ciudadanos de una república de leyes. Es precisamente la división de poderes la que protege al ciudadano y sus derechos en contra de la arbitrariedad. Bueno, este principio tan ampliamente aceptado en Occidente está totalmente en cuestionamiento en Venezuela. Todo para servir a los intereses de Chávez de eternizarse en el poder. El momento cumbre de la demostración de que en Venezuela no existe ninguna forma de garantía legal ante el poder de un tirano es el encarcelamiento totalmente arbitrario de la juez Afiuni el diciembre pasado. No se puede seguir creyendo que Venezuela es una república democrática después de este acto. Quien lo crea cae en el descrédito: la hipocrecía o la ingenuidad más idiota. Y es que veámoslo desde esta perspectiva; los jueces son tales porque juzgan, y no se puede juzgar si el juicio propio no es independiente. De no serlo, no hay juicio y no hay juez. Sin jueces no hay poder judicial; tan sólo un teatro orquestado con el único propósito de engañar, de mantener un rostro de legalidad inexistente. En Venezuela el poder judicial murió hace mucho tiempo.

El gobierno ya lo acepta abiertamente: actúan contrarios al principio de la división de poderes. Es decir, actúan en contra de la constitución republicana per se; es decir, no sólo contra la constitución venezolana concretamente, sino en contra de la idea constitucional de la república como la entendemos idealmente. Con el aumento de los presos en Venezuela desde que comenzó este año, y con un poder judicial completamente subordinado a los intereses de la tiranía de Hugo Chávez, cómo alguien puede esperar tener las más mínimas garantías legales de libertad. Antes a los jueces los removían de sus cargos, lo cual era ya de por si un acto de arbitrariedad detestable, pues ahora los meten presos. ¿Qué clase de democracia hay en Venezuela? Tal idea es uno de los grandes oximorones de nuestra época. Hay que decirlo con toda claridad: Chávez es un tirano que busca destruir por completo los simientos de libertad de nuestra república fundados en la separación de poderes para poder gobernar de por vida y sin oposición alguna.

Sin autonomía del poder judicial es imposible el imperio de la ley y la libertad. La tiranía se combate allí donde esta nazca. Venezuela padece una tiranía que quiere jugar a ser democrática. No podemos dejarnos engañar por una triquiñuela tan antigua como Octavio. En un país donde mucho se ha impedido a través de la resistencia pacífica al régimen del tirano, pareciera que cada día más son necesarios los Brutus y los Casius, o los Pazzi, la solución irracional al drama nacional que vive Venezuela.

Amigos, la tiranía tiene dientes y muerde con furia. No podemos esperar que con buenas intenciones y palabras educadas esta retroceda ante nuestra demanda de libertad.