Both ways

Early post this week. I will be spending the next two days on a school retreat which probably also shapes todays post which is somewhat theoretical and academic in nature. In preparation for the retreat I have been reading severeal legal journal papers and the Compendium of Catholic Social Thought (which I highly recommend).

Early this week I read the NY Times review of Al Gore's new book. The reviewer indicates that in the book he argues that in America we no longer use reason appropriately. Without having read it, I hate to take my argument too far, because on the basis of it I agree with him. As an orthodox Christian (my new term) I would say that the modern era is defined by style or substance. However, Al Gore definetely has a problem with that position unless he is willing to take a hard look at the Clinton presidency and how it furthered the careless use of rhetoric to get where it wanted to go. Bill Clinton was not a great leader, but he was a great communicator and they are not the same thing. It appears to me that Al Gore is accusing the Bush administration of many of the same things that went on during the Clinton administration.

I have posted about this before, but there are a lot of things in society that we can't seem to have both ways, and we have gotten so afraid of definitions that the language is becoming more and more vilified. You are either right or left, and to go further and try to explain some incongruity within that it is very difficult. I think this is the problem faced by Republican candidates like Rudy and McCain but is also faced by a number of Democrats who are either pro-life or pro-death penalty or pro-war. Our rhetoric is very fast and very careless. As a society we paint with broad brushes.

In the end we have far too much information and far too little knowledge.