The Self-Mutilation of Angelina Jolie

In the news recently has been an example of moral exhibitionism by Angelina Jolie.  This famous movie actress announced to the world that she has had her breasts removed as a preventative against cancer.  It has now been revealed that she will also have her ovaries removed.

The announcement of her prophylactic double mastectomy was greeted as a brave example to follow for other women who might also be threatened by breast cancer.  One fellow has had his testes removed because he carried the same gene that Jolie carries.

It seems to have occurred to no one that these may be only the latest examples of self-mutilation that Angelina Jolie has put herself through in the last fifteen years.  She may not be so much brave, as having a few screws loose.

Comparing pictures of her when she was a teenage model with those of her in her twenties make it obvious that she has had facial reconstruction, or plastic, surgery in her early twenties.  That freakishly sharp jawline and her famous puffy lips were not so straight or so puffy in her teenage years.

She became notorious in her twenties for her numerous tattoos and body piercings, as well as a bizarre marriage to Billy Bob Thornton.  She later became a lesbian.

Her marriage to Brad Pitt may have put her more self-destructive tendencies into abeyance for a while, but they seem to have broken out anew.

With the removal of her perfectly healthy breasts and ovaries, the substance of her womanhood - what made her famous on the screen - has been destroyed.

The doctor who recommended she mutilate herself in that manner must have something of the sadist in him.

Rather than marveling at the courage of Angelina Jolie, we ought to be wondering at the bizarre psychological needs she carries that has led her over the last fifteen years to a series of self-mutilations.

Facts, faith, and religion: a Response to T. David Marshall

RE:  Fact: Faith is not reasonable by T. David Marshall, The Spectator May 8^th, 2013

 

This is in response to an Op-Ed article published in the Hamilton Spectator on 8 May 2013.

 

 

While I generally agree with the conclusions of Mr. Marshall, the process by which he reaches those conclusions is full of error.

 

Mr. Marshall does not know what science is.  He does not understand the difference between rational science and empirical science.  He does not understand what reason is.  He does not understand the difference between faith and reason, or between faith and knowledge.  His definition of religious observance betrays a sense of contempt.  Yet he reaches the correct conclusion that a religion ought to be held accountable for what it professes.

 

Science is not, as Marshall says, a “mode of thinking and method of inquiry.”  Scientific method is a method of inquiry.  Science is an organized body of knowledge.

 

Prior to Sir Isaac Newton, all sciences were rational sciences - branches of philosophy like philosophical theology; or, like geometry, branches of mathematics.  Only since the 17^th century has empirical science, the kind of science Mr. Marshall actually means, been in existence.

 

Mr. Marshall, as a former lecturer in ethics, might be horrified to learn that ethics is a rational science, one founded upon a self-evident truth and which, like religion, offers propositions that are prescriptively true.  In contradistinction, chemistry is a both a rational and an empirical science that offers propositions that are descriptively true.

 

The difference between ethics and religion is that the prescriptively true propositions of ethics are those founded upon a self-evident truth, while those of religion are founded upon propositions dogmatically asserted to be true.  The difference between ethics and religion on one hand, and chemistry and physics on the other, is the difference between prescriptive and descriptive.

 

Reasoning is the process by which both ethics and religion create their bodies of doctrine, though they begin from differing basis sets of starting propositions.  Reasoning is also employed in the empirical sciences, and the conclusions of the reasoning process in empirical science can be confirmed by scientific experiment.

 

Religion is not unreasonable.  The Christian faith came to be what it is today because it passed through the filter of Greek philosophy during the early years of its existence, as the best minds of their time grappled with the meaning of Christ and God.

 

It is not unreasonable to assert the existence of God.  Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, first proposed the existence of a Prime Mover, an Uncaused Cause.  Today, the God of philosophical enquiry is understood to be the creator ex nihilo of the universe and the efficient cause of its continued existence.  One can understand this notwithstanding belief in any particular religion, or in no religion.  Religion adds understanding of God to the bare-bones understanding of the God philosophical enquiry.  This is where faith comes into play in religion – you either believe in the dogmatically asserted propositions of the faith or you do not.

 

Physics cannot touch this understanding of God, Stephen Hawking notwithstanding.  The laws of physics came into existence after the universe was born, and physics has no explanation for the continued existence of the universe.  The particular beliefs of this religion or that cannot impugn the existence of the God of philosophical inquiry.

 

Consequently, one can reach the conclusion Mr. Marshall reached - that a religion is accountable for what it professes to be true - without making all the errors Mr. Marshall made.  That some people shrink from the full conclusions of their professed religion is a statement about the condition of man not unknown to any religion.  It is as much a lack of rigor in reasoning – a failure to act on a philosophical imperative by the individual – that leads people to act in a manner inconsistent with religious beliefs.  It is not an act of reason, as Mr. Marshall asserts, to refrain from acting on religious beliefs, but a failure of reason.

 

Faith and reason are not at odds with each other; reason is a means by which the consequences of faith become known.  And if those consequences are discovered, empirically, to be in error, then fault lies in the propositions of the faith.

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Why Can’t Our Malians Fight Like Their Malians?

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


18 March 2013

  

Publisher Scott Taylor has been sounding the tocsin over Canada’s deployment of a C-17 Globemaster aircraft to Mali in aid of the French effort there.

 

As a result of the collapse of the Gadhafi in Libya, for part of which Canada bears responsibility, militarily proficient Tuareg tribesmen returned to their native Mali and nearly destroyed the country.  Troops from mainland France deployed to Mali and restored the situation, and for the sustainment of these forces France asked Canada for the assistance of one of her strategic lift aircraft.  Canada’s commitment has lasted longer than the government projected, and our commitment will likely persist for as long as French combat troops are in theatre.

 

That Mali collapsed ought to give pause to westerners.  Mali was created out of French West Africa in 1960.  It was seen as a stable country in the Treaty of Westphalia sense.  It had borders, a government, and a sense of nationality - leavened and weakened by powerful cross-currents of tribalism and race.  The relationship of tribe, religion, race and nation were supposed to have been settled, and all that remained was for Mali to develop economically and to expand and raise the level of education for it to ripen into a liberal democracy with African roots.

 

The overthrow of the Gadhafi regime disrupted Malian equilibrium with unsettling ease.  Freebooting Tuareg tribesmen, thrown out of work in Libya through the fall of Gadhafi, joined with elements of al-Qaeda, and tried to found a separate country upon the desert wastelands of Northern Mali.  What is worrisome to westerners is the ease with which an African country organized on western lines collapsed in the face of weak tribal forces motivated by grievance and fired by religious zeal.  Malian military forces, trained by western countries, ought to have given a good account of themselves.  In the event, large numbers of these military forces changed sides.

 

The French military theoretician Colonel Ardant Du Picq would account for the collapse of Malian forces before the Tuaregs to differences in morale.  The tribesmen had a cause, while the trained military force did not.  They did not even have professional pride, apparently, despite western training.

 

After an independent Azawad was declared, France deployed its military.  The French military provided the air power and the corseting on the ground that enabled fresh Malian forces to drive out the al Qaeda forces who had hijacked the rebellion.  The appearance of western civilization was thus restored, but France has more mopping up to do.

 

After sixty-five years of French governance followed by another sixty as an independent country, showing all the signs that a civilized political culture had taken root, Mali in this crisis reverted to the kind of Africa that the Saracens overran in the seventh century.  The larger question that Mali raises is when NATO partners should serve as fire brigades for liberal democracy.

 

After Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and now Mali, western countries ought to become alive to the differences between western civilization and other civilizations in the rest of the world.  It may rankle some to hear it said, but the wondrous beliefs of liberty, equality, justice for all before the law, and respect for human rights which were born of the Western experience, are not the cultural inheritance of large portions of the world.  Even the experience of these values for a long time seems to make no lasting impression in the Middle East and in large parts of Africa.

 

Those of the third world who speak in terms of western values talk in a learned language.  The collapse of Mali shows that there is little cultural basis for them.  Western values are forms to be observed until something thrusting comes along, such as a return to tribalism.

 

The French are admirable for the way in which they tend to the countries born of their empire.  The front line of western civilization runs through Mali, and because of decisive French action al-Qaeda presently has no Treaty of Westphalia to hide behind like they had in Afghanistan.

 

But is rescuing Africa the best medium term strategy against Islamic extremism?  Should the west be on the offensive everywhere?  Would it not be better to wait and allow extremist anti-western forces to gain a foothold somewhere, the better for them to concentrate?  Islamic extremism is no more the cultural inheritance of sub-Sahara Africa than liberal democracy is.

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Bearding the Boss

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


11 Mar 13

 

 

Jim Lacey is not afraid to pull the beards of his bosses.

 

Jim Lacey is a professor of Strategic Studies at the United States Marine Corps War College.  In a recently published article he demolishes point by point the campaign of the Navy and Air Force chiefs of staff to grab a greater share of the defense budget.  Though he and I see eye to eye on this issue, we reach diametrically opposite conclusions regarding Canada.

 

Interservice rivalry in the United States is more obvious and bloody than here in nice, civilized Canada.  Entire political campaigns are launched from the Pentagon to gain the favor of important Senators and congressmen for one service project or another.  Together, the pentagon and congressional committees conspire against the unsuspecting taxpayer to put spending programs into particular congressional districts that favor the re-election of the congressman or Senator on the congressional committees.  The pentagon, in turn, gets a bigger empire.

 

It’s called “bringing home the bacon.”

 

Nothing like this happens in Canada because, for one thing, there is no bacon.

 

Jim Lacey is unconcerned with bringing home congressional bacon.  What he is concerned with an adjective often associated with victory, namely “decisive.”

 

Decisiveness is our mutual point of departure.

 

The US Navy and Air Force have put together a military doctrine which they call the Air-Sea Battle, appropriated from the now thirty year old Air-Land Battle concept.  The Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003 were applications of the Air-Land Battle concept.  The US Navy and Air Force believe the growing military threat from China requires the development of an air-sea battle concept for the United States to keep sea lanes open in the western Pacific and Indian oceans.  Of course, this requires money.

 

The US defense budget absorbed a self-imposed whack of a 10 % reduction in expenditures over the next ten years.  On top of this comes another 10 % reduction through a budget constraint known as “the sequester.”  While the US defense budget may see some funds restored, the long term prospect is for lower spending levels, smaller forces, less equipment, and lower readiness.

 

Some would say this is a good thing.  Unless you rely upon US military force for one’s protection.

 

Lacey attacks the new balance in lower spending among the services being proposed by the Navy and Air Force.  He argues forcefully that the true arm of decision are land forces, and therefore land forces are deserving of having its funding given preference over that of the other services.

 

He attacks the work of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, saying that Mahan argued only half the story.  Reading Mahan, Lacey says, one would never get the idea that armies had anything to do with the wars Mahan wrote about.  On account of British sea power, one would never get the impression from reading Mahan’s work that the Brits lost the American Revolutionary war, and that Napoleon hung around for another ten years after his fleet was destroyed by Nelson at Trafalgar in 1805.  The surface fleets of both Britain and Germany were reduced to near worthlessness in World War I, and neither were decisive in the outcome of the war.  The battle of Midway, Lacey concedes, turned the tide of the war in the Pacific, but three years of land battles lay ahead to destroy Japanese power.

 

In the air, despite years of bombing round the clock, German manufacturing escalated every year until reaching its peak in September, 1944, when loss of terrain caused a loss of essential supplies such as petrol.  The only truly decisive blow struck by air power alone was the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan in August, 1945.

 

Air power and naval power are great ancillaries to land power, Lacey says.  To what purpose, then, is enabling the opening of an air and sea corridor?  To enable the employment of land forces – whose power of rendering decision was deprived by diverting spending to air and sea power!

 

Canada is in a different strategic situation, and Canadian generals should take no comfort from Lacey’s case.  The US Army is capable of being an arm of decision; Canada’s army is not.  A Canadian expeditionary force will always be too small to achieve decisive results.

 

Surveying our possible enemies, Canadian peacetime expenditures preferentially belong on a navy that can strike a heavy blow at a particular center of gravity.

-          XXX –