From ‘Spousal Abuse’ to ‘Domestic Violence’

From “Spousal Abuse” to “Domestic Violence”
Dr. Mark S. Latkovic
September 14, 2014

We’ve gone from speaking of “spousal abuse” to the generic term “domestic violence” (Houses fighting each other?).  This, it seems, reflects the move away from stable institutions such as marriage and even traditional dating practices (“going steady,” courtship) to being simply “in a relationship,” i.e., living together, or what used to be called, “living in sin.”  Although men – suspended NFL star Ray Rice being the poster boy – are the prime perpetrators of domestic violence (but in Rice’s and his then fiancé’s case, the despicable attack occurred in an elevator not a domicile, as it did in the latter with South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius and his girlfriend, who he killed), the way the term “domestic violence” is used today often implies men can never be victims of it themselves.  Ironically, of course, the term “wife beater” (rarely was it “husband beater”) made it clear that it was usually the man/husband not the woman/wife doing the hitting.  But if, for instance, you watch true crime shows such as Dateline, 48 Hours, and the programs on the Investigation Discovery channel, it’s hard not to realize that women are not only victims of domestic violence but offenders as well – even if not as violent as men.  Clear cases all of the continuing, since the fall of Adam and Eve, and one of its tragic consequences, “war of the sexes.”  Let’s be clear: Domestic violence or abuse of any sort by any one is an evil.  But the flimsy terms we use to describe it, reflect a troubling social reality of marital and family breakdown that may in turn result in making the problem worse.

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“Miscellaneous Meanderings on the signs of the times” (September 1, 2014)

Miscellaneous Meanderings on the signs of the times
Dr. Mark S. Latkovic
September 1, 2014
Labor Day Edition

{Some of these “Miscellaneous Meanderings” appeared on my Facebook status updates and on Twitter in August 2014, but appear here often in a slightly revised form.  For this issue, I have kept the three longer items that appeared originally as separate posts on my blog.}

~Legendary music producer Brian Eno, in a fascinating 2010 lecture in Russia on the relationship of painting to music, speaks of the need to “Surrender” (Not as in “giving up,” but in letting ourselves “go out of control”).  He says we do this in four areas: “Sex, Drugs, Art, [and] Religion.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAXs5qqIxqs).  And, he comments, he’s waiting for a culture (and a religion) that combines all four.  But too often, Eno argues, we dichotomize: “Artist vs. Public, Individual vs. Collective, Mind vs. Body, [and] Control vs. Surrender.”  So he wants a “Both” option rather than an “Either-Or” option.  I think Catholic Christianity has this “Both” – in fact, a “Both-And.”

~When liberal politicians begin showing signs of declining health and/or senility (I think of Congressman Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid as two obvious cases), they are not seen by the mainstream media as over-the-hill politicians who badly need to retire, but rather as the “conscience” or the “voice” of the Senate or even an “institution” or an “icon.”

~Our government are utilitarians when it comes to social issues like abortion, but often absolutists when it comes to certain issues involving such matters as national security & public health, where you’d think, to be consistent, they’d invoke the principle of the so-called “greater good.”  Trading Sgt. Bo Bergdahl for five hardcore Taliban prisoners and bringing home the two Ebola-infected health care workers are two such recent examples – with the safety and well-being of the homeland put in potential jeopardy.

~It often takes years, decades, or even centuries before texts or events are fully understood.  Take Vatican Council II.  From the time now St. Pope John XXIII announced the Council in January 1959, until the Council actually began and concluded its work (October 1962-December 1965), up until today, five decades later, discerning the question of what the Council taught has been hotly disputed.  This process of exegesis is not unlike what we find with other historical documents – the Bible and the U.S. Constitution being two notable examples (See e.g., Jeroslav Pelikan, Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution, 2004).  Of course, it’s not only a question of whether the interpretation is correct theoretically speaking, but then also, whether our actions are faithful to the original texts (or at least our interpretation of those texts).

~On the heated question of legal and illegal immigration, almost everyone agrees on two broad basic principles: the dignity of the human person migrating and the right of the host country to control its borders.  But between these two general principles positions widely diverge, especially when it comes to the prudential application of these principles.  Because there are so many aspects to the issue – national security, humanitarian relief, border control, work and welfare, politics, and so on – you find various special interests to protect each of those aspects.  These interests sometimes overlap, but they are not predicted by political party or political philosophy.  You will find positions all over the map, so to speak.  Part of the difficulty with this issue is whose facts to believe?  But we must first control our own nation’s border, otherwise we’ll be no good to anyone – citizens or immigrants.

~August 6^th marked the 69^th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  Three days later, another A-bomb would be dropped on Nagasaki.  Japan’s emperor Hirohito (1901-1989) would finally surrender unconditionally on August 15^th.  To this day, debate rages on over the morality of using the bomb on these two Japanese cities during World War II.  One view argues that by dropping these powerful bombs, we ended the war much sooner than would have been the case, thus saving millions of lives, including innocent Japanese lives; Japan would never have surrendered without this show of force (see e.g., Michael Burleigh, Moral Combat; Wilson D. Miscamble C.S.C., The Most Controversial Decision).  The other view holds that by dropping the bomb, we not only committed a war crime by directly killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, but we set a terrible precedent for the use of weapons of mass destruction in conventional war or in terrorism (see e.g., Elizabeth Anscombe, “Mr. Truman’s Degree,”; John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, & Germain Grisez, Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism; cf. Vatican Council II, Gaudium et spes, no. 80).  This view also maintains that it is always immoral to even directly target innocent people – whether with nuclear or conventional weapons.  Thus, accordingly, our present nuclear deterrence policy is morally bad in this view.  While the former view is based on consequentialist calculations, the latter position rests on the idea that some actions are intrinsically evil and prohibited by moral absolutes [Also published as a separate bog here: https://mlatkovic.wordpress.com/2014/08/09/reflections-on-the-69th-anniversary-of-the-atomic-bombing-of-hiroshima-nagasaki/].

~Amanda Bennett takes issue (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/whats-love-got-to-do-with-it/2014/08/04/2bc50bf4-1b18-11e4-82f9-2cd6fa8da5c4_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opin&wpmm=1) with Judge Paul Niemeyer’s dissenting opinion in a 2-1 panel decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4^th District that overturned Virginia’s voter-approved ban on gay marriage.  “If, as Niemeyer says, the whole point of marriage is not the mere parenting of kids but actual biological reproduction, it is clear to me that he believes that my [heterosexual] marriage is invalid.  To opponents of gay marriage, marriage is all about breeding.  Since my breeding days are over, it looks like, marriage-wise, I should be, too.”  No, Ms. Bennett, marriage isn’t “all about breeding.”  Nor is it only about the “mere parenting of kids.”  One gets the idea that the author has neither read nor studied any of the arguments put forth by gay marriage opponents.  She simply rehearses the old canard that supporters of traditional marriage equate it with “biological reproduction,” but in doing so, they leave themselves vulnerable to the argument that since many heterosexual marriages are sterile, gay marriage should, in fairness, be permitted.  But, pace Bennett, it’s one thing to say that a (heterosexual) marriage is sterile; it’s quite another thing altogether to say that it’s impotent, as Robert R. Reilly (http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/reil/reil_08infertilecouples.html) and others have noted.  While gay partners are incapable of having children (except via adoption or artificial means), heterosexual partners are by nature (as complementary male and female persons) capable, but may be incapacitated for some reason.  Sterility and/or childlessness are not the same thing as the utter incapability of engaging in the acts apt for procreating children.  The biological orientation that marriage has to children then – or better, the sexual acts potentially leading to children – does not mean that a childless marriage is no marriage at all.  It’s simply the way in which marriage is objectively defined and distinguished from all other friendships. [Also published as a separate blog here: https://mlatkovic.wordpress.com/2014/08/09/to-amanda-bennett-traditional-marriage-is-not-about-breeding/]

~The debate over the HHS mandate isn’t entirely about contraception; it’s more about the progressive agenda.

~Contraception is not very expensive and if it is too expensive for you, then don’t have sex.

~A weak president, especially today in the age of the Internet and social media, can invite enemies to threaten because they can see all too clearly the president talk and act, well…weakly (Cf. Charles C.W. Cooke, “Hashtag Wars,” http://www.nationalreview.com/article/385117/hashtag-wars-charles-c-w-cooke).

~Greg Gutfeld of Fox News’ The Five suggested sarcastically on August 13’s show that we would be able to get the Left to care about ISIS if we blamed global warming on them, saying that even John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono would lead the charge.  On second thought, given her horrendous singing voice, maybe we should send her records over there as a WMD.

~Here’s a true “compromise,” rather than a bogus “comprehensive” immigration reform proposal (See http://www.nationalreview.com/article/385258/immigration-middle-ground-yuval-levin-reihan-salam).

~It’s interesting that looters (see Ferguson, MO for only the latest example), in their outrage at “injustice,” rarely loot businesses and shops that only sell such mundane products as toilet paper.  I just usually see a lot of guys with masks on carrying big screen TVs.

~The Feast of the Assumption of Mary (August 15) reminds us, among other religious truths, that no matter how feeble our bodies (and minds) may be, they – as in each of us, body and soul together – are called to have an everlasting future with God.

~Christina Van Dyke, reviewing (http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/48981-aquinas-on-the-beginning-and-end-of-human-life/) a new book by Fabrizio Amerini, Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life (Harvard University Press, 2013) writes: “… the Catholic Church teaches that human life begins at conception (a position referred to as ‘immediate hominization’).”  No, not exactly.  The reviewer confuses conception (a biological concept) with hominization (a theological/philosophical one).  Yes, the Church holds that human life begins at conception, but she does not take a definite position on when precisely hominization (= ensoulment) occurs, even though she leans in the direction of teaching it’s at fertilization (cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitas personae, #5, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html).

~How might the human face look – besides a bit weird – in 100,000 years?  Here’s an interesting article, but one with morally problematic elements that involve bioengineering (http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/06/07/how-the-human-face-might-look-in-100000-years/).

~Carter Eskew feels “it’s time for a new dialogue on abortion” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/08/19/its-time-for-a-new-dialogue-on-abortion/).  When I see the word “dialogue” used in the same sentence with the word “abortion,” I think, “uh-oh,” here comes a pile of crap.

~One of the more pleasant reads I’ve had this summer is Lynne Cheney’s splendid new biography of James Madison: A Life Reconsidered (Viking, 2014).  I highly recommend it!

~I love the 4^th of July.  But doing the math, I realized that I will have to live about 4 months shy of my 112^th birthday to be able to celebrate the tri-centennial of our nation’s birth.   

~Transgenderism, says John Hopkins University psychiatrist Dr. Paul McHugh, is a “mental illness.”  You always knew that, but now you have an expert’s confirmation (http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcnsnews.com%2Fnews%2Farticle%2Fmichael-w-chapman%2Fjohns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change&h=_AQGkmUEJ&s=1).

~History with a capital “H” has been in the news of late.  For instance, Obama likes to toss the word around while he’s talking about various persons (Putin), groups (Islamic State), or issues (same-sex marriage) being on either the “wrong” or “right” side of history.  I think he thinks it makes him look sophisticated.  It actually has the opposite effect.  Besides being ignorant, as well as quite simplistic and deterministic (cf. Victor Davis Hanson, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386498/obamas-hazy-sense-history-victor-davis-hanson), this view loses the moral focus precisely because it loses the notion of moral agency.  This weak understanding of history on the part of the president and his odd use of it as a moral argument, reminded me of what Forest McDonald, the esteemed emeritus historian at the University of Alabama and author of a great book on the presidency, said in his memoir, Recovering the Past (University Press of Kansas, 2004), when discussing Carl Becker’s and Charles A. Beard’s understanding of history (see Ch. 2, especially pp. 26-29).  Becker and Beard wrote in the first half of the 20^th century under the banner of the “New History” (McDonald, a famous and fierce critic of this view, speaks of it as “the subjective-relativist-presentist position” (p. 22).  Going “beyond Becker,” Beard, notes McDonald, “declared that historians must consider the totality of historical occurrences in one of three ways.  History is chaos, history moves in cycles, or history ‘is moving in some direction away from the low level of primitive beginnings, on an upward gradient toward a more ideal order.’  None of these is entirely satisfactory, but the historian must choose one as ‘an act of faith’ … Beard’s guess as to the desirable and probable movement of history was that it was toward ‘a collectivist democracy.’” (p. 29).  It’s clear, if we work with these three philosophical models, that Mr. Obama has chosen, naively and against all evidence to the contrary, the third: history for him is moving toward “a more ideal order.”  Or, to use two of the president’s favorite words, one that is more “fair” and “just” [Also published as a separate blog here: https://mlatkovic.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/obamas-naive-view-of-history/].

 ~At an August 28, 2014 press conference, Obama said he has “no strategy…yet” (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-strategy-fight-isis/story?id=25164105) for engaging militarily the Islamic State (unless, possibly, he means to rely, as he seems to prefer, on the impersonal force of “history” as a strategy?)

~President Obama’s wearing a taupe suit at his August 28, 2014 press conference creates “sartorial stir.”  For example: “‘I’m sorry but you can’t declare war in a suit like that,’ guffawed Wall Street Journal reporter @damianpaletta.” (See http://news.msn.com/offbeat/the-audacity-of-taupe-obama-suit-creates-sartorial-stir).  It’s too bad that Obama didn’t in fact declare war on the Islamic State.  Now that would have been real news!

~Peter J. Leithart’s misunderstanding of Patrick Lee’s and Robert P. George’s notion of “basic goods,” particularly the good of religion (http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2014/08/basic-goods) already has received a sound reply from George (http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/08/reply-to-leithart).  I simply want to add the point – moral rather than anthropological – that contrary to what Leithart implies, the “basic human goods” are not moral directives for choice.  This is why, according to the “new natural law” theory (of Grisez, Finnis, Boyle, W.E. May, George, and others), moral principles and moral norms are necessary to guide our free choices so that we choose the various basic goods wisely.  The latter are practical in nature, the former are moral in nature.  

~Ferguson, MO, we are told by the author of this op-ed, is really about “white rage at [black] progress.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ferguson-wasnt-black-rage-against-copsit-was-white-rage-against-progress/2014/08/29/3055e3f4-2d75-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html?wpisrc=nl-popns&wpmm=1).  It’s impossible to argue with this point of view.  So, I won’t try to refute it.  It is a view that sees racism at work in literally everything.

~Let’s drop the word “procedure” to describe abortion.  It really does conceal what an abortion actually is: the killing of an innocent human being.

~Stanford University historian David Kennedy is quoted by reporter David Balz: “It’s difficult virtually to the point of impossibility to have a grand strategy in a world that is so fluid and in which we no longer yield the power we once had.  In a sense that is Obama’s strategy, a recognition of that fact.  So that rhetorically as well as in reality, he’s trying to diminish the expectation that we can control events.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-sets-his-own-pace-in-a-world-whirling-with-crises/2014/08/30/3e4874da-304b-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html?wpisrc=nl%5Fhdtop).  Ah, now I get it.  You’re saying Obama’s foreign policy “strategy” is to have no strategy, but make it up as he goes along.

~The creator of Peter Pan, James Matthew Barrie said “God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December” (Unattributed quote in George F. Will, One Man’s America, p. 367).  I think God must have given us fools so that we might have humor in all twelve months of the year.

~Whether you work or not, Happy Labor Day!  But just don’t labor too hard this day!