St. Andrew the Apostle from CCTNtv

Eli Manning and Why I Care Less and Less about Pro Sports

Professional sports is a business, first and foremost. It's difficult for hard core fans to remember sometimes, but it's the truth. It's hard for fans to accept because we believe in the nobility of fair play and teamwork. We see honest, hard fought competition as character building, as well as being a sign of intestinal fortitude. We watch because we are awed by seeing the best athletes in the world perform at the highest level. Shrines are built for the athletes of various sports who have stood out above the rest. The records compiled by hall of fame players are the impeachable witnesses that vouch for their secular canonization. Extreme fans will pour over players’ statistics like an economist analyzing financial trends. They will argue over who the best quarterback or pitcher in the league is as if world peace depended on the answer. All this belies the fact that pro sports is a business. Even the players themselves aren't immune from this peculiar naïveté. In 1965 Joe Namath was scandalized when Leah Ray Werblin, wife of then Jets owner Sonny, who had been a professional singer, welcomed the rookie sensation to "show business.” He still held to the ideal that this was about athletic excellence, but in a few short years Broadway Joe came to realize that she was right. 

Because pro sports is both business and entertainment, we shouldn't be surprised when teams make decisions for financial or marketing reasons. The desire to put a competitive team on the field certainly underlies the vast majority of the decisions made, but there are quite often other considerations at work as well. In 1994 Phil Simms was coming off a bounce back season with the Giants, having made the Pro Bowl after a couple of inconsistent years, when he was unceremoniously cut by the team to make salary cap room. Wellington Mara, the team's legendary owner and father figure wept, but let it happen nonetheless. It's wasn't personal, as Michael Corleone might have said, it was strictly business. Simms retired rather than try to start over with another team. It would be a decade before the Giants developed another franchise QB, and his name was Eli Manning.

Twenty-three years later the New York Football Giants once again face a crossroads involving a long time starting quarterback. Eli Manning is 36 years old and on the back end of his career. The troubles of this dismal Giants 2017 season don't fall primarily on Manning's shoulders, not by a long shot, but most agree that he's not the player he once was. The press was already formulating potential Manning exit strategies the organization might take, since a high draft choice, with the promise of a blue chip QB, is in the offing. Of all the possibilities, benching Eli, after 210 consecutive starts (2nd all time) with five games left in a lost season, and no heir apparent on the roster, wasn't one of them. This makes no sense from a sports, business or entertainment stand point. 

Eli Manning won two Super Bowl titles, and was named the game's MVP both times. In both cases he beat the best organization with the best quarterback of this or possibly any era, The Bill Belichick-Tom Brady New England Patriots, while demonstrating in both games why he was one of the best two minute drill QBs around. Eli was never the best quarterback in the league. He always lived in the shadow of the likes of Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rogers and his own brother Payton. What made Eli special was that he thrived under pressure on the biggest stages, and rarely disappointed. In those championship runs he led the team to road victories in frozen Green Bay (twice), Dallas, and San Francisco, before earning the right to face the Patriots - not a task for the faint of heart. But this is strictly business; it's all about what have you done for me lately. Those accomplishments don't matter when evaluating the state of the team now and into the future. I actually agree with this. But the past should dictate how the transfer of power behind center happens for the man who led those teams. This was the wrong way to say goodbye.

It makes no sense from a sports standpoint because the Giants have no heir waiting in the wings to take over. Neither Geno Smith nor Davis Webb are the QBs of the future. Smith, a five year vet, is a known quantity. Webb, a rookie, could come in and surprise people, but a few garbage time snaps would have been sufficient to get a head start on training camp. Even if you thought either one was a possible long term replacement for Manning, do you really want them to try to prove themselves behind this questionable offensive line, throwing to this injury depleted receiver corps? If you really thought one of these guys was the answer to what's ailing the Giants you might have tried the switch when the team was still 0-3 or 0-4, with a chance to salvage the season. I'm not sure that would have been the right move, but at least it would have made some sense. This is just baffling.

It makes no sense from a marketing or entertainment standpoint. Eli is still popular with fans, who do remember his accomplishments. New York fans are also smart fans. They know the deficiencies of this team and that, while Manning isn't the player he once was, he isn't the main reason the team is 2-9. I know people who already gave up on the Giants or the NFL in general because of this dismal season and the other controversies that the league has suffered lately. This move is only alienating fans even further. It will be very interesting to see how ratings in the New York market will be this weekend. 

It doesn't even make sense from a business standpoint. If they wanted to save money they could have traded Manning, making a deal with another team on how much salary they would have to eat. As it is they still still have to pay Eli for holding a clipboard. Short of trading him now, it would have made more sense to wait and see what the draft produces, then either cut or trade him in '18. You might have him stick around next year to break in the newbie, letting him go after that. It all could have been done in a far more dignified way that would have also made business sense.

In the end this move is simply perplexing. If anything, it looks like a beleaguered coach and front office trying to deflect blame for a cluster bomb of a season. I made the joke to a friend that the coach is coming off like a disgruntled employee who knows his days at the company are numbered, so he's breaking the furniture and stealing the staplers on the way out the door. 

Over the last few years I'll been less and less interested in pro sports. I still keep one eye on the standings, but in general I'm caring less and less. It's just not a diversion anymore when all the talk is about PEDs, collective bargaining agreements and domestic violence reports. I believe in the First Amendment, and players are citizens too, but I pay plenty of attention to politics. I don't watch sports to keep up on whats happening in the world. Little escapes are healthy, and sports is one that's little by little being taken way from us. 

I like the live experience of going to the stadium, but the cost is incredible. An NFL game has for a long time been out of reach for the working person (at least in big markets like New York or Washington), but all the major sports feature overpriced tickets and jacked up concessions. So I stay home, except for the periodic freebee that lands in my lap via a generous benefactor.

Then there is the constant marketing. When I watch on TV they're constantly trying to sell me jackets and hats I don't need. There was a commercial that ran incessantly during the baseball playoffs of tweens talking about what great fans they are. They then looked in the camera, striking an intimidating pose, challenging the viewer to prove their fan cred by buying a T-shirt. There was a time when a fan proved himself by knowing his team's lineup, and who the backup shortstop that just got called up from Pawtucket was. And what his AAA batting average was. The kids who wore shirts were posers if they didn't know the stats. The fancier the jersey, the phonier the pose. 

I could go on, but I'll only sound more like an old man. I'll finish up with saying that pro sports has always been about business and entertainment. Eli Manning isn't the first superstar to be rudely treated when his usefulness to the organization was over. Babe Ruth finished up with the Boston Braves. Joe Montana went out with the Chiefs. Both of them were worn-out legends riding into the sunset. Tom Sever, known to Met fans simply as The Franchise, was traded to the Reds when he still had good seasons and a no hitter left in his arm, over a salary dispute (the hurt was felt so deep in New York that even Yankee fans were appalled). 

So if these hall of famers could be pushed aside, anything is possible. But there is a way to do these things, which usually involves giving the player a chance to bow out gracefully, or the opportunity to play out the string in another town. The thanks Eli is getting is the chance to stand on the sidelines with a headset and clipboard waiting for the hatchet to fall once the season is over: a shabby way to go out. I've already thought that pro-sports had become overly commercialized and greedy. Now the masters of the athletic universe are proving themselves clueless on top of it all. 

No, this isn't the reason I'm slowly walking away from pro sports, but its one more straw applied to the camel's already straining back. 

My Arm Shall Judge the Nations: a Reflection on Christ the King

What struck me about the passage we hear from Matthew 25:31-46 at Mass today is that when the Son of Man returns in his glory "all the nations will be assembles before him" for judgment (v. 32). We often think of the God's judgment, if we think of it at all, as an individual thing, which isn't wrong. Last week we heard the parable of the talents, in which Jesus tells us that we will be questioned about how we used, or failed to use, the natural abilities and graces we were given in life in service of the Lord (vs. 14-30). But there is this other dimension, the communitarian, which is also involved. We are members of families, civic and parish communities and well as citizens of nations. There is an individual call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked, but also a public responsibility to seek the common good, and we can't hide behind our relative lack of power if the government isn't fulfilling its responsibilities, especially we who live in representative democracies.

All earthly power has its origins in God. In a way the old Divine Right of Kings wasn't as crazy as we may think. Today we look at the abuses of such a claim. We might point to instances of a tyrant justifying injustices by claiming it was God's will. Since he or she was God's "chosen" ruler all their decrees needed to be followed, no questions asked. But it's better to think of it as a responsibility that a king or queen had as opposed to a privilege. A given king may or may not have been "God's candidate,", but as soon as they took the royal oath they were charged with governing conscious of their responsibility before God: their very souls were at stake. Built into this system was the idea that God was the ruler and the king or queen wasn't God, but a placeholder exercising vicarial power.

This Solemnity of Christ the King was instituted in the 20th century, at a time after many royal houses had been deposed, and whatever kings and queens remaining were reduced to figureheads. The levers of government were in the hands of secular functionaries. In the extreme there were dictators who were claiming all power and authority independent of God. In fascist nations God was an afterthought and in communist states God was proclaimed a superstitious fantasy. All power was held by the leader, and any pretense of divine sanction or responsibility were done away with. The body count that such "unaccountable" governments piled up is in the hundreds of millions. How much the citizens of the individual nations will be held accountable for their governments' actions will vary, I would suppose, on a number of factors. How much control did they have over these governments assuming power? Did they know what was going on and cooperated, and was the cooperation coerced or willing? Just as circumstances can mitigate individual guilt, the same applies to nations.

But what of those of us who live in liberal democracies? The United States Constitution says that ours is a government of, by and, for the people. The leaders we elect are proxies for the will of the governed. We can argue that senators and congressmen have the right, even the responsibility, to vote their conscience when they believe that their constituency is wrong. Ours is a republic, after all and not a direct democracy. In the end the ballot box will win the day, and the continued bucking the popular will eventually lead to unfavorable consequences for the office holder. The main point is that We the People claim sovereignty over the government. Do we understand that we then assume the judgment of God when we elect immoral and corrupt leaders? We can no longer hide behind the king or the dictator, claiming cohesion or impotence, allowing him to take the blame. 

We long ago declared that character doesn't matter when evaluating candidates for public office. It's all about the economy or else national security. What we want is competence, and if the president is a moral disaster we compartmentalize it. It's his private life, we say, and it has nothing to do with keeping the economy booming and the nation safe. Things have gotten so bad that we aren't simply judging between who is decent and who is corrupt. We're left now playing the lesser of two evils game, and we lose every time. We are not electing saints or pastors, this is true. No one is perfect, without sin. And we need competent people running the government. But if we entrust our government to low character individuals we shouldn't be surprised if we have a corrupt system. If an office holder doesn't respect the laws of God, what are the chances that he will respect the laws of men?

In all this we are complicit. We can't hide behind claims that we were following orders or helpless serfs under the tsar's thumb. We have grasped at the royal prerogative, assuming the responsibility for a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Our presidents aren't the first born of a previous sovereign, the congress isn't made up of princes and princesses who gained their title by the accident of birth. We gave them the authority to rule. If the poor go hungry, if the prisoner is abused, if he unborn are treated like medical waste, if the migrant is harassed it falls on us. We need to ask ourselves, when the Son of Man comes in his glory where will we be, both individually, but also as a nation: on His left or on his right? Are we a nation of sheep or goats?

Charles Manson (1934-2017)

Those who have been reading this blog for a while know that I have a strong interest in 1960's pop culture, especially in regards to that era's popular music. It should come as no surprise then that I can't help but comment on the passing of Charles Manson, one of the most notorious criminals of the last century, who became a symbol for the dark side of the 1960's Dionysian dream. It isn't clear if he ever killed anyone with his own hands, but upon his orders at least nine people were murdered by members of his "family." The most infamous of these killings happened over two nights in August 1969. The most famous victim was actress Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, who was eight months pregnant at the time. Beyond the killings themselves, the most shocking part of the story is that this malevolent figure indeed became associated with '60's pop culture, along side lava lamps and the Beatles. The fact that Manson claimed to be inspired by songs from the White Album didn't help the association. Elements of the underground press at the time championed him as an avatar of the antiestablishment counter culture. It seems funny now that the radical left that once embraced him is now trying to distance itself from his legacy, as we shall see. 

After he and his followers were convicted and sent to prison for good a morbid fascination with Manson persisted over the decades that followed. It seemed like every few years some TV news show would feature a ratings grab interview of Manson, as if he had anything to really say. Along with a life of crime, he had been an aspiring singer-songwriter, who associated with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. He even got some studio time to cut a couple of demos. Some of these recordings have circulated as bootlegs, and Guns N' Roses and (not coincidentally) Marilyn Manson have recorded his songs. His image has appeared on T-shirts, and he's been the inspiration for fictional, as well non-fictional TV shows, movies and books.

But there is nothing inspirational about Charles Manson's story; nothing romantic or profound. Born in Cincinnati, growing up for a time in nearby Norwood, his birth certificate read "no name Maddox." Eventually his 16 year old mother Kathleen replaced the "no name" with Charles Milles, then later married the man who would adopt the child, giving him the moniker he would be known by the rest of his life. Following her lead (Kathleen may or may not have been a prostitute, but did get in some scrapes for stealing) he picked up cash here and there by robbing stores and stealing cars. When not in reform schools or juvenile halls he bounced between relatives in various states because of his mother's similar stints behind bars. He spent most of his adolescence and young adulthood in and out of prison. Once, when he was 32, he begged not to released, since incarceration was the only stability he'd known in his life up to then. By 1967 Manson found himself in San Francisco taking advantage of the free love and readily available drugs. By 1968 he was in the L.A. area, bouncing between remote locations, forming a commune of sorts that he called the Family, by attracting runaway girls and drifters. 

Some are now arguing that Manson wasn't a product of the 1960's counterculture, but was a backlash to it, and that he had more in common with today's alt-right than with the hippies of yesteryear. The first part of this thesis is plausible, the second two parts are a product of liberal wishful thinking. He may not have been a hippie, but he and his Family were certainly the products of a time and a place. In Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion offers an image of the Haight in 1967 that is far from idealistic. We see kids, some as young as 15, run away from home, from parents who are just as happy that they were gone, experienced beyond their years but with none of the wisdom of age. It was from among these lost boys and, especially, girls that Manson drew his followers. He was a racist, yes. But his motivation for killing had as much to do with revenge for the record deal that never materialized as it did with wanting to start some kind of apocalyptic race war. He was a psychologically broken man who never knew a real home life, and was now forming one from the remnants of people more shattered than himself. He may not have been a hippie, but he sure was taking advantage of a world falling apart, and it's arguable that he could have only gathered his Family and mesmerized them in that particular time and place. 

That said, I would agree that he wasn't the product of the Counterculture, but he was the product of a counterculture. He was the product of neglect and dislocation. He was the product of what happens when the family structure breaks down and the state tries to fill the gap. He was the product of a criminal justice system that takes troubled kids and makes them monsters. He was already in his thirties when he hit Haight - Ashbury and the Summer of Love, so no, the 1960's Counterculture didn't produce him per se, but it was made for him. Take a relatively young man who had experienced too much too soon, and as a result had also acquired a peculiar, twisted wisdom, and release him into a pool of other, weaker, lost souls he could manipulate to his ends. Then throw in the drugs, and the sex and the crazy, half literate philosophy of the hippies, and you get Charles Manson.

No, there is nothing romantic about him. Nothing profound. He was neither a counterculture messiah nor a crypto Nazi. He was a twisted soul who had it just together enough to manipulate other twisted souls. He isn't a cultural icon, but a prophetic warning of what can happen when the traditional social guardrails, particularly the familial ones, fail. Don't misunderstand me. He was responsible for his actions: many go through the things he did in his life and don't end up murderers. But few end up stable productive citizens either.  

This is the part of the obit where I ask you to pray for the deceased. I wasn't sure how I was going to handle it. While I understand the sentiment, I don't like headlines or articles that proclaim that Charles Manson is in hell. That's God's prerogative, and we should never try to grasp at it, even in what may seem like open and shut cases, even if we're being rhetorical. But after reading the news getting myself to pray for him was impossible. All I could think of was Sharon Tate begging for the life of her unborn child, and my blood went hot with rage. Then I saw something about Tates sister, Debra, who "said a prayer, shed a tear, stuck a flower under my cross" when she heard the news. Make no mistake, she has practically made it her life's mission to keep  Manson and the other Family members responsible for the murders incarcerated when they come up for parol. But she also knows that hate is useless, and forgiveness the only path to true freedom. I thought, "if she could pray for him, I can too." And I went ahead and prayed three Hail Mary's for the repose of his soul. 

I ask you to do the same, and to also pray for his victims.

Abigail Folger
Voytek Frykowski
Gary Hinman
Leno LaBianca
Rosemary LaBianca
Stephen Parent
Jay Sebring
Donald Shea
Sharon Tate

Eternal rest grant unto them o Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls, and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. AMEN

Do Catholics Worship Saints? from Ascension Presents

Father Mike Schmitz is a fast taking, charismatic preacher, with a lot of down to earth insights into the Faith. He's one of his video's on why we venerate the saints.

Staying Irrelevant: More on Harvey, Wicca a Go-Go and Postmodernist Blues

I've definitely found keeping The AX relevant in the Age of Trump harder than normal. It's always been a challenge for me to stay on top the news, and write on events in real time, which is part of what a blog is all about. If journalism is literature in a hurry, than blogs are journalism on methedrine. At their best they walk in the footsteps of gonzos like Hunter Thompson, or better "New Journalist" like Tom Wolfe, who put themselves in the middle of the story. Thompson was more imaginative, blurring the line between fact and fiction, while Wolfe stuck to what he saw, but with a decidedly subjective glance. Things are moving so fast right now that it's hard to process events quickly, then write about them before they disappear from our collective consciousness. 

I could site my work load, but then I see Msgr. Charles Pope, a pastor of a busy parish in D.C., with all sorts of other important positions inside his archdiocese and his prolific output. Don Bosco used to stay up nights writing drafts of the Salesian Constitutions, text books of all sorts and articles for the Salesian Bulletin. Then he would still go all day running the Oratory. I may have a loaded plate similar to Msgr. Pope's, but I am not nearly a occupied as Don Bosco, so find a way I must.

I can hope for increased output, but relevancy will never be my thing. It just takes me too long to think things through, and I lack the gift of brevity. But I'm introducing a new feature called "Staying Irrelevant." About once or twice a month I'll write on several current topics briefly, whether they happen to be in the latest news cycle or not, as well as set up longer posts that are in process.  

One Last Thing About Harvey Weinstein and the Latest Hollywood Sex Scandals  

David Cole over at Taki's Mag wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago basically saying that there are too many self proclaimed experts who've never stepped foot in a movie studio who are talking all sorts of trash about the Weinstein scandal and the proverbial casting couch who have no idea what they're talking about. He doesn't deny Weinstein's actions, but contends that he represents the crudest of Hollywood's crude fringe. Most actors get their roles through a professional process involving casting directors and assistant directors, with not sexual quid pro quo's involved. When it's employed, the real casting couch, Cole continues, is a much more subtle affair allowing for both informed consent and plausible deniability on behalf of the respective parties. The Weinstein's of the industry are a sad, repulsive aberration from the norm.

The post made me stop short, because I qualify as one of those would be movie industry experts Cole calls out. True, the closest I've ever come to a Hollywood sound stage is when I was a member of the studio audience for a taping of Jeopardy twenty-five years ago. But I've been haunting movie theaters and multiplexes since 1974, and have observed a lot just by watching, as Yogi would have said. And what I've noticed is that filmmakers like to preach, quite a lot. And as a priest, I know when I'm being preached to. They also take a great deal of pride in it. You could make a killing betting on the Oscar winners each year based on the social causes the nominated films are championing or marginalized minorities the actors are playing. You don't even have to see the movies in question, reading a synopsis will do. I'm not saying the winners are unworthy (I subscribe to the Katherine Hepburn principle that all Oscar winners are deserving, just not necessarily for the part or movie they won for), but I have the creeping feeling that political correctness trumps art, or even commerce, in the minds of the Academy voters.

What the Weinstein, and now Kevin Spacey scandals have exposed is that show business is exactly that, a business run by human beings who can get just as drunk on power and greed as are members of any other large corporation. There are sincere filmmakers who want to use art to make a difference, but mostly its about profits and image, with a smattering moral posing thrown in to fain social credibility. 

Rumors, long circulating just under the radar, of the abuse of minors are also surfacing. There was a story last week about a possible bombshell exploding over at Nickelodeon, which has yet to ignite. Jim McDermott over at America Magazine offers some sensible advise to the folks in Tinsel Town based on the Church's experiences with the child sex abuse scandal. I'm not sure they're going to take it, though. The Church has a built in moral center that she can recalibrate to when her institutional members go off the right path. What is the film industry's moral true north, especially when so many of its products promote the idea of moral relativism? Also, there was a free and independent press to follow the story up. There are now 6 major conglomerates that control 90% of media outlets in the country. The same corporations that make the movies also run several major newspapers and control network news departments. You might believe that his may not be such a big deal when the target of an investigation is an oil company, the government or the Church. But when it comes to the mass media policing it's own, how does that work? Personally, I'm surprised this much has gotten out at all (I have my own, inexpert opinions on this, that I'll keep to myself). How deep will the reporting be allowed to go if things prove to be really ugly, and big profits are at risk? And did I mention there are journalists getting caught up in the scandals too?

No, I'm not an expert. But I have two eyeballs, two ears and a brain, and I know when I'm being preached to by a flagrant hypocrite, and I hope the film industry is humble enough now to stop.

Wicca a Go-Go

I've stockpiled some articles on the latest trend among millennials: the abandonment of traditional religion in favor paganism and the occult. I'm still sifting through them, and plan a longer post, but just a few thoughts for now. 

With the rise of the New Atheists after 9/11 the thinking was that young people in the West were abandoning Christianity because they could see now that religion breeds fanaticism and violence. Along with the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamic extremists, we had the priest child sex abuse scandals that erupted at the beginning of 2002, further eroding confidence in traditional religious institutions, the Catholic Church in particular. The alternative to religion being offered was atheism rooted in scientific rationalism. Once and for all the medieval superstitions of the past were going to be put to rest since the "God delusion" had been exposed by savage Muslim terrorists and lecherous priests.

While these evangelists of nihilism use philosophical and scientific arguments, in reality they rely on the sins of religious people to make their case. As horrible as a religious person using their faith to justify mass murder or a clergyman abusing children are, they do not prove one way or the other the existence of God. It's just simply a non sequitur. It can be emotionally stirring, and people do lose their faith as a result of scandals, but the connection is logically vacant.

What might seem logical is the assertion that a rejection of God equals a rejection the spiritual. The New Atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins aren't proposing a "spiritual but not religious" option, though Harris believes in using meditative techniques, which makes some of his fellow travelers uneasy. They don't believe in a spiritual realm at all. Reality is simply what can be observed and measured. But this won't do for many people, because even though they may not trust religious institutions, there is something innate in all of us that seeks the transcendent, and this is where the new fascination with the occult comes in.

Occult practices are perfect for today, because they combine two innate desires that we all have - one is our desire for the transcendent, the other is our desire to control. Belief in Jesus means surrender, and in the relinquishing of our will we become truly free and united with God. But this goes against our desire to control outcomes. This is where the occult comes in. The witch or the shaman is trying to manipulate spiritual forces to achieve a desired end. God asks us to be patient and possibly endure trials on the road to salvation. We are probably not going to get what we want when we pray, but are asked to trust that God knows better than we do about what we really need. The occult offers us spells, potions and incantations that will get us what we want when we want it. In the occult we can get everything we want - to touch the transcendent and satisfy our will, and don't have to worship God. I am now my own god who controls the very spiritual realms. Of course, this is a dead end. Those who try to manipulate "spirits" find our that they are the ones who wind up manipulated, but more on that later. 

This move to the occult is perfect for today because it fits our post modern sensibilities, which far from embracing science and reason, is a trip down the rabbit hole of self centered subjectivity and the will to power.

Postmodernist Blues

I have a big blind spot in my philosophical education. Dr. George Pepper, one of my philosophy professors at Iona College, may he rest in peace, had a penchant for switching course topics on a whim. For instance, once I'd signed up for medical ethics - a requirement, and when I showed up he decided that he didn't want to teach that. So we spent the next 15 weeks on political philosophy instead. This was ok as far as I was concerned, I shared Dr. Pepper's interest in the topic. The only problem is that my transcript reflects the course I never took, which caused some confusion when I was trying to get into Seton Hall. I don't remember the particulars, but I had to convince some registrar that I couldn't go on to a second level medical ethics class since I never took the first one. The other quick switch was when we got to contemporary philosophy. This time he didn't want to be bored teaching a survey course, so we did a semester of Hegel. "Hegel is all you really need," he told us, "Everybody since, from Marx to Nietzsche, are simply answering him." As true as this may be, I still feel like there is a big drop off in my comfort level when dealing with latter day thinkers like Nietzsche, or the French existentialist of the 20th century, let alone the fathers of postmodernism like Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida. 

To fill this gap I'm reading Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition) by Stephen R.C. Hicks. I'm early on, but Hicks sets things up in a rather concise way. He reviews Medieval and Enlightenment philosophies, presenting them as a progression from a faith, mysticism based philosophy to the supremacy of reason that led the way for the scientific revolution and modern conceptions of political and economic liberty. 

Postmodernism discards both, but most troubling for Hicks is the rejection of the Enlightenment. Rather than pure reason being the guiding principle, postmodernists take the old Marxist analysis, but in place class conflict, people are divided by race, gender and sexual orientation into oppressed and oppressors: dominant groups against the subjugated. Rather than people possessing individual rights, they have rights insofar as they are a member of an oppressed or marginalized group. Logic and reason are rejected as tools used by the oppressors to keep the oppressed in their place. Contradictory opinions can be kept with no problem, even if they are contradicted by the physical reality, because what matters is the protection of oppressed groups and, ironically, the radical right of the individual to define "reality" as they see fit without reference to any exterior, empirical supporting evidence. 

My only critique of Hicks is that he clearly doesn't understand Medieval thought. He makes the classic mistake of missing the Medieval synthesis of faith and reason. He blames Immanuel Kant for separating faith and reason so that he could preserve both, but most especially his faith. This rending actually happened back during the Reformation, when Luther rejected philosophical thought as having any place in religious discussions. Kant, over two hundred years later, was trying to show that you could have both, but just in separate compartments. The Catholic world view is that there is no conflict between faith and reason. If revelation and science seem to contradict, then we have either done the science wrong, or else we've interpreted revelation the wrong way.  

Otherwise, the book has been pretty eye opening so far, and I'm looking forward to finishing it. The only way to understand political correctness and what is controversially called Cultural Marxism is to understand postmodernism.

I owe many debts of gratitude to Dr. Pepper. He was patient with a block head like me during an independent study on Thomas Aquinas that he didn't have to do. I also really don't mind the switcheroo on the medical ethics class (I dig politics much more). But I do wish he had stuck with he contemporary philosophy survey. It might have saved me from having to read this book now.