[Peace-discuss] Bellicose rhetoric???

[Bob Illyes]

Neil and Laurie-

I should clarify that, as you are probably beginning to suspect, there 
really is a consensus position in AWARE, but it is pretty minimal. A rough 
list would be.

1) War is almost always a bad idea.
2) The invasion and occupation of Iraq was an incredibly bad idea.
3) The attacks on free speech and freedom of assembly that are ongoing 
strike at the heart of any sort of valid democratic process.

Some members might say that war is always a bad idea, but not all would (I 
do not think that the American Revolution was a bad idea, for example), so 
we don't have consensus on this.

Beyond the above points, we disagree in so many ways that we don't even 
break up into anything resembling factions. It follows that particular 
ideologies, economic analyses, and party politics do not belong in our 
AWARE-labeled literature.

I'm pleased to see that Carl has declared his general position, writing 
"I'd prefer to identify myself with Aristotelian, Thomist, and Marxist 
materialism (which I think by the way are more compatible with Christianity 
than the Idealisms; announcing the resurrection is asserting a materialism 
over against Pharisaic idealism..."

I go a different route, preferring science to religion in political 
thought, though not dismissing all religious contributions. I'm basically 
Aristotelian in my outlook. I subscribe to classical liberalism (a balance 
between individual rights and democratic rule) as not a compromise, but as 
optimal in the sense of Aristotle's application of the mean. I consider 
classical liberalism to be a more useful approach than Aristotle's polity, 
which addresses the conflict between classes rather than between the 
individual and the state. This puts me in the Locke-Jefferson camp,

Aristotle in the above makes me think of something funny from years ago. I 
was waylaid by what was then called a "Jesus Freak", who wanted me to read 
a tract he was handing out. I asked if I could see the tract, and it 
contained the usual snippets of John, Romans, and Isaiah promoted by folks 
who can't be bothered to read the rest of the Bible. He didn't want to take 
it back, insisting that I read it. I said "I'll tell you what, I'll read 
this if you'll read the same number of words of Aristotle." He said that he 
had nothing by Aristotle, so I suggested that he check something out of the 
library. He refused, saying that he knew the truth but I didn't, and that 
there was no point in his reading Aristotle! Decades later, I still smile 
when I remember that goofy conversation.

At the heart of a valid political science is an understanding of human 
nature, of the inherent characteristics of people. Opinions on this are the 
subtext of many of our differences on this list, as witnessed by the 
ongoing "Joe six-pack" debate. Ethology is a fairly new science as sciences 
go, but we are now making substantial progress. I do not fault Marx or 
Locke or Jefferson or ...(the list could go on for pages) for their errors. 
A political science that is a true science is still a work in progress.

Bob