When your lover makes a recess appointment - its time to court their allies.

In addition to the routine name-calling and exposures of incompetence, political debate has recently escalated to accusations of treason and spitting. These in turn, are being countered with the more civil, but more dangerous, use of constitutional loopholes like "recess appointments" in the US and "proroguing Parliament" in Canada.

This week President Obama shocked the Republican Party for bypassing Senate consent of 15 appointees by waiting for Congress to recess, in order to make "recess appointments". Republicans had been refusing to vote on Obama's recommendations holding up the appointment of 15 positions for an average of seven months. While used in the past by President Bush, this time it was used for a controversial appointment that did not even have unanimous Democratic support.

In Canada, at the end of December 2009, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper "prorogued Parliament" - closing it down for two months, until March 3, 2010. The Conservative government's move was labelled as "almost despotic" by some because the government's record was being challenged by new evidence regarding for their complicity in the Afghan detainees affair.

When commitment to civil dialogue and the spirit of the constitution are abandoned, what's the point of talking anymore? When distrust threatens a country's constitution, it's time to take a lesson from the book of love.

The American constitution was formed at the height of the Romantic Movement. As such it hailed the "common sense" of the people as the new moral authority replacing King George's divine right to rule. The "common sense" of the small, but heavily persecuted Baptist Church and Jefferson's secular rationalists, was their wall of separation. Once America appreciates that their constitutional wall of separation is actually the love-child of today's arch enemies--the same ones currently at each other's throats fighting before the Supreme Court over custody of the constitution--romance will return.

Like everyone in relationship free-fall, each side will desperately court the favour of their lover's allies and new alliances will break ground like daffodils in spring. As Oscar Wilde put it "The proper basis for a marriage is mutual misunderstanding."

Does this mean that America's founding relationship meant nothing? No, it effectively broke up the Anthony and Cleopatra love affair between the institutional churches and the monarchs. Cleopatra's absolute monarchies are gone for good. Consequently, each American subject was elevated to status of philosopher king, free to choose both their God and their political ruler. The Jefferson/Baptist union produced many beautiful children. Reason and religion both flourished.

Today's problem is that half of their offspring are courting science, the other half religion. The Union stays unhappily married only because both assume there are no other suitors and there is no common ground between them. Cynicism has finally broken America's founding relationship. But assumptions of no common ground are based on outdated information. The Catholic Church forgave Galileo in December 2008. And some philosophers, like Jurgen Habermas, are actually acknowledging the wisdom of religion over science. The Baptists just might get tired of fighting with the scientists and start hanging out with the philosophy majors.

When your lover spits in your face, prorogues Parliament, or makes recess appointments, it’s time to open up your dance card and court their allies. You would be surprised who might be interested and what beautiful children you might create.

What Fundamentalists and Atheists have in common

Secularization was defined first by a Dutch theologian C.A. Peursen as the deliverance of man “first from religious and then from metaphysical control over his reason and his language.” This is where extremists on both sides of the wall of separation focus – on the phrase “control over his reason”. Both atheists and religious fundamentalists share a fear of having their thinking controlled – because they both want to rely on one form of knowledge exclusively, reason or revelation.

Atheists object to voters using their religion as a factor in deciding their preferred candidates or voting in referendums, although this is clearly within the parameters of a liberal, democratic society protecting freedom of conscience. Fundamentalists want to separate the education of their children because they do not want science to challenge their children’s faith in religious doctrine. Extremists on both sides of the wall would like truth to be as simple their single-sided analysis because they share the fearful assumption that reason and revelation are incompatible.

At the moment they are to a certain degree, but it is only through honest public conversations between individuals that they can be reconciled. Secularization, as opposed to secularism, is a process that assumes that there is ultimate compatibility between reason and faith that will one day be revealed. Secularism, on the other hand, excludes this possibility hence in secular ideologies like communism, faith is something to be controlled if not extinguished.
 
Today’s populist conflicts are the due to the fact that for some the wall represents the position that faith and reason cannot be reconciled and therefore must be a permanent part of any “modern” or “post-modern” state until religion dies. This secularist belief then stimulates reactive and dangerous win/lose thinking.
 
Secularization is merely a political commitment to separate the institutions of church and state, which only requires that public laws be limited to those that are “rationally justifiable in a free and democratic society” as we say in Canada. Secularization is the political process of transferring of responsibility to resolve any conflicts between reason and faith to individual citizens.

Remembrance Day 2009

Because today is Remembrance Day, I was trying to recollect memories of my Grandfather, Andrew Brass. He signed up for both WWI and WWII but did not discuss much, indeed it was only after that my grandfather passed away that we learned of the following war-time relationship that obviously meant a lot to him.

Born in 1900, my grandfather had to lie about his age in order to be accepted into the army in 1915. In addition to being so young, he was only 5'4" so someone must have turned a blind eye. He was on his way to France, waiting in the Moncton train station having travelled from Duffield Alberta, when a little boy of only four years was walking with his father who when he spied my grandfather said "I'm going to give that fellow my box".

The little boy was Harry Stoyles and my grandfather wrote him letters as Harry was "crazy about the soldiers" and would send him treats. Harry continued to correspond with my grandfather for twenty years, when he last wrote to say that he was planning to marry that year.

We found one letter from December 12, 1916 in my grandfather's very small box of personal mementos after he passed away in 1985. I miss my grandfather; he was the strong silent type, but obviously had a soft spot to bother writing to a four year-old when he was only fifteen himself.

How different things are now. During my grandfather's time there was no need for conscription; today it would not be politically possible. It makes the sacrifices of today's military families especially heroic. I, like four-year old Harry, honor their courage with a heart full of admiration.

Personal Experience

Human Rights ensure every citizen is guaranteed educational, economic and political participation and freedom in their private and social lives. While very important because they affirm the value of life and personal dignity, human rights also support a profound philosophical assumption which is that individual experiences are the means by which we test the truth in our rational and religious imperatives.

This point is made in the parable of the Prodigal Son; who needed to test through personal experience, and indeed validated, the wisdom in his father's religous way of life. Placing the greatest reliance on our own personal experiences as the means of determining truth, is akin to attending the school of hardknocks. This is where we keep testing inherited truths until we get hurt or uncover a faulty assumption.

Often enrollment in the school of hardknocks isn't voluntary, like the story of the Prodigal daughter. Her story began, like her brothers, when she felt that reason and religion offered her no relevant or meaningful guidance. So she sought to challenge, through experience, the accepted wisdom of patriarchal privledge that she was intellectually and morally inferior. She did just that and when she returned home, her father legally changed her status from chattel to person.

The logical trajectory of these parables is that ultimate truth lies in our individual experiences - that no one can tell us who we are, how we feel and what we believe. While this is true, when taken to the extreme of moral relativism, that we each have our own truths and therefore cannot be judged by others, it is ultimately limiting because humans are social beings. We crave recognition of our uniqueness, which necessarily involves judgment.

To balance the critical premise for human rights with the social and political need to have rules that apply to all, it is important to try to understand what differences in personal experiences may lead to different politics. This is not usually done because religion and politics is a very effective means by which we assert our interests without having to discuss our rationale. The courage to solve our political problems lies in our willingness to reflect upon how our religous and political views may be informed by legitimately different experiences.

Truth is a trinity - reconciling the incredible diversity of personal experiences with religion and reason, into one absolute truth. We are not there yet, but belief in this goal is the foundation of peace, hope and charity.

Cynicism - Enemy of Civilization

Kenneth Clarke in his 1966 BBC television series on Civilization said that lack of confidence, more than anything else, is what kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs he warned.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines cynics as those showing "a disposition to disbelieve in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions" and a tendency "to express this by sneers and sarcasms".

It is often very hard to see what might be the legitimate positive motivations for religious extremists, but to conclude there is none is to be a cynic and an enemy of civilization. Its one of those catch 22s - you need faith in the goodness of humankind in order to persevere and eventually rationally understand the legitimate humane motivations of the religiously fanatic. This is because the religious fanatic is not a true believer but is really just a cynic himself. Anyone who oppresses voices of reason fears his religion cannot stand up to the scrutiny of reason and is therefore not a true believer.

For those who prefer a scholarly explanation Clark also pointed out that Western civilization is a series of rebirths, which means that history has shown that we should never lose hope when things look bad.

All fail but all are necessary

Philosophy has been barren so long, says Bacon, because she needed a new method to make her fertile. The great mistake of the Greek philosophers was that they spent so much time in theory, so little in observation. But thought should be the aide of observation, not its substitute. Will Durant - The Story of Philosophy.

We are victims today much like the Greeks 2400 years ago. Our dogmatic adherence to worshipping freedom and liberty in an age in gross excess suggests that our theories on human nature need some refinement. Rousseau promoted human instincts as the purest, most reliable form of truth and hence liberalism - because he convinced the revolutionaries that without the confines of aristocratic society, man was naturally moderate. I don't advocate a return to aristocracy but perhaps a revision on our idea of human nature or moderation is in order.

Lets look at the evidence - has the Internet - the great enemy of culture - made us more moderate? Has the deregulation of gambling made us more moderate gamblers? Have 24 hour drive thrus made us more moderate eaters?

The only thing that I know of that reliably makes man more moderate is education. Rousseau anticipating my response and helpfully provided a retort "Education does not make a man good; it only makes him clever - usually for mischief. "It was even a saying among the philosophers themselves that since learned men had appeared, honest men were nowhere to be found."

He has a point - there is ample evidence to support this allegation too. Did the lawyers deliver justice in the OJ trial with their commitment to truth? Why is so little of the medical profession devoted to the prevention of cancer instead of the cure? Is it their higher allegiance to truth? What about the accountants and their ability to identify and report on fraudulent books?

Self governing professions need to be held accountable to their communities that they serve. Can we call the medical, legal and accounting professions to be pillars of our communities - shielding the lay people from disease, injustice and corruption? Reason without allegiance to some higher standard than oneself - God, King or country - or just plain old fashioned truth. It is not that doctors, lawyers and accountants intend to mislead - its that they get so good at considering all perspectives and they become equal valid. The result in a capitalist system that rewards research grants, winning cases and satisfying customers means that the small voice of the public interest is seldom heard until tragedy falls. Calls for the end of predatory lending were made in the US for many years and were still not negotiated with the handing out of the corporate bailouts.

Unfortunately, religion provides not much hope for being the champion of truth either. All Christian churches have been ridiculously recalcitrant in admitting to the reality of the sexual abuse occurring under their steeples for centuries, never mind contemplating how they may be inadvertently contributing to such colossal failures in the spiritual well-being of their employees.

From all this pessimism you likely think I believe that humans are naturally evil but I don't. I conclude that we need a new philosophical paradigm - the trinity of truth - trump to none!

Remembering all Veterans November 11, 2008

Today I wish to pay respect to our war heroes who fought against tyrants. Trinity of Truth is a political philosophy that claims that truth can only be found by balancing the different truths offered by religion, reason and personal experience and anyone who discredits one of the three ways of knowing truth is dogmatic at best, a tyrant at worst.

I have come to see religious faith, reason and my own personal experiences, as three different sources of knowledge that reliably contribute to what is true and right (an adolescence properly lived eliminates parental authority). The three sources interact much like the game of rock, paper, scissors. Experience, faith and reason can go on endlessly trumping each other because each offers a different, but reliable version of truth.

While many can point to the horrors of religion and therefore want to throw the baby out with the bathwater - it is wise to remember that when one overreacts a counter-reaction is guaranteed.

Political philosophy is the study of how each of these three ways of knowing truth is given different priority. In liberal, freedom loving societies like America, experience is trump, reason is strong and religion is relegated to private sphere; in China reason is trump, but religion and personal freedoms are crushed; and in Taliban countries religion trumps, crushing personal experiences and reason.

As a wise Chilean refugee once told me at a cold bus stop in Edmonton in January 1982-beware of the politician with the simple message. In memory of all of those who have died fighting tyrants remember the trinity and try to fight your own moments of dogmatic indignation.

Separation of Church and State

Do we really want a permanent separation of reason and faith as different means of knowing truth? Is it not more in line with notions of progress to see the separation as a necessary step in which reason had the opportunity to catch with the wisdom of our religions and reason? And do religions not require a rational accounting for the violent acts they inspire?

What if it is possible to find a permanent way to address the conflicts between believers of different faiths or between believers and rationalists? Should we not intellectually pursue that possibility given the obvious stress the current model is causing?

As only Jack Nicholson can deliver with just the right combination of contempt and disappointment– Is this as good as it gets? The biggest problem with the concept of separating church and state is that we have assumed that there is no way to bridge the two worlds and it is time to discuss this assumption. We need to consider what we gain and what we lose by adhering to this constitutional ideal outside of any contentious issue.

New Political Choices

It is time for a new constitutional ideal in the US. Something that looks beyond truth as a battle between faith and reason. The Wall between church and state has become a wall between states.

Constitutional change is not an easy topic but it is time to start discussing some of the limitations that come with such a divisive view of the future. What if secularization is not possible as has been assumed since the enlightenment.

Harvey Cox after all predicted the demise of religion as the private fetishes in the 1960s. Clearly not the case. Reason must have missed something. Maybe reason is unable to know certain truths, maybe reason needs more time to catch up to the wisdom buried in our religious inheritance. Do we want to be limited to the truths that we can only know by reason? I think we should be but only so that it creates social pressure on those who know truth by another means to find the hard proof that their view of truth is right. They need to have more faith in their religions - that they can stand up to tests of reason.

It is time to consider the costs of the American constitutional ideal, not as a means of going backwards to the days of justifying patriarchal privilege but to consider if the neat separation of ourselves into public material beings and private spiritual beings is helpful. Are there not public spiritual issues? How do they get a place in American society?

It is a time of hope that I hope translates into some creative, progressive thinking as the world tackles a daunting set of problems. We need the faithful, the rational and the poet to unite their energies to tackle the political issues facing the US and the rest of the world.