Diogenes redux

Diogenes is the Greek philosopher who searched the streets of Athens with an oil lamp looking for an honest man. He was famous in his time for his great disdain for what he perceived as the folly, vanity, pretense, self-deception, social climbing, and artificiality of much human conduct. His worldview can be summarized in this pithy comment: for the conduct of life we need right reason or a halter.

I would like to bring him here to Canada in the 21st century A.D. (one that he would no doubt deplore as much as he did 4th century B.C. Athens). But rather than task him with looking for honesty (not that the real Diogenes would give a hoot what I wanted him to do), I would send him out with a searchlight into the world of the columnists and bloggers on life issues, looking for a person who could reason and research with integrity and thoroughness.

The more I read the writings of those most active in the pro-life/pro-choice debate, and listen to their clones in Parliament, the more discouraged I get. I just spent a few minutes looking at a recent article by Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias called Low Blows. My goodness, she's pathetic. Does the Star actually pay her to write the drivel she serves up? She's entitled to her basic assumptions, of course, however unfounded or unexamined. But the way that she presents her arguments that come out of these assumptions and beliefs is so lacking in historical research or logical inference that she would fail any first-year university writing assignment.

I could say much the same thing for writers such as Joyce Arthur and Heather Mallick. Arthur seems to be driven by a profound emotional reaction to her upbringing in a Christian denomination that I don't particularly like myself. If they're for it, she's agin' it. I, too, had a fundamentalist and closed-minded religious upbringing, but I don't let it be the main driver in forming my worldview. As for Mallick, she appears to be incapable of an original thought, simply delivering whatever the politically correct chattering classes believe at the moment.

Regrettably, much of the pro-life writing is similarly sloppy, vitriolic and poorly researched. Spend a half hour looking at the Shotgun Blog section of the Western Standard on-line magazine. While some of the articles and opinions are at least consistently reasoned, the many regular participants in the Response section must represent 90% of Canada's grade 8 dropouts.

Feminists for Life and ProWomanProLife are actually quite good. Suzanne Fortin certainly attempts to be consistent with her presuppositions when she argues her points, although they are heavily informed by Roman Catholic teaching, making them fairly predictable. She reads widely and has an interest in what various sides are saying. But many of the bloggers she tracks in her Big Blue Wave site are embarrassing. I'm not sure why she quotes them as they take away from what she is trying to do; i.e., to feature articles and commentary of interest to social conservatives. Social conservatives have nothing to learn from some of these benighted commentators.

Where are the well-researched, rational, persuasive debaters? Dr. Somerville certainly wants to be, but nobody seems to want to really address her in the same thorough academic manner that she so wonderfully employs. Rather she is either ignored (including by the Order of Canada people who find her "too controversial") or dissed from afar with the usual tired arguments.

[Note: I say this while also admitting that I don't always agree with the good professor. I don't accept all her conclusions but I appreciate and respect her approach.]

As my year of employment in the right to life world winds down (sixteen days to go), I hope that I will still discover those who are doing what our society very much needs--taking reason and research seriously in presenting arguments. Enough of the drivel. Life is way too important to waste with badly argued opinions.