On Charity (from Wikipedia)
In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity requires interpreting a speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation. In its narrowest sense, the goal of this methodological principle is to avoid attributing irrationality, logical fallacies or falsehoods to the others' statements, when a coherent, rational interpretation of the statements is available. According to Simon Blackburn "it constrains the interpreter to maximize the truth or rationality in the subject's sayings."When was the last time you gave your political opponent the benefit of the doubt and did not attribute ill intentions as to his possible motives?
Neil L. Wilson gave the principle its name in 1958–59. Willard Van Orman Quine and Donald Davidson provide other formulations of the principle of charity. Davidson sometimes referred to it as the principle of rational accommodation. He summarized it: We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimises agreement. The principle may be invoked to make sense of a speaker's utterances when one is unsure of their meaning. In particular, Quine's use of the principle gives it this latter, wide domain.
Since the time of Quine et al., other philosophers have formulated at least four versions of the principle of charity. These alternatives may conflict with one another, so that charity becomes a matter of taste. The four principles are:
1. The other uses words in the ordinary way;
2. The other makes true statements;
3. The other makes valid arguments;
4. The other says something interesting.
A related principle is the principle of humanity, which states that we must assume that another speaker's beliefs and desires are connected to each other and to reality in some way, and attribute to him or her "the propositional attitudes one supposes one would have oneself in those circumstances" (Daniel Dennett, "Mid-Term Examination," in The Intentional Stance, p. 343).
Madison spoke of the need to separate Church and State, but who today speaks of the need to separate "charity" and State? Charity/Love has long been presumed by the universal Catholic Church to be the "highest" of all theological/religious virtues. And in our government today, do not our politicians also preach of the need to tax the more prosperous and redistribute that wealth in the interest of "charity" and the well-being of the less fortunate, much as one might hear typically preached on Sunday morning from a church pulpit? From Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments":
Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entagled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?No wonder American politics has gotten so bitter and ugly. No wonder the electorate is so divided. The secular humanists elected to government office have used the force and expediency of government to perform "charitable" acts, acts more suited to and in which "virtue" still exists through voluntarily performance by religious and/or non-governmental institutions. And in so doing, have these government politicians not created a de facto "secular religion" in direct contravention to the First Amendment's "Establishment Clause" whose highest "civic" virtue" is ow a formerly "religious" Catholic one?
Because the Bill violates the equality which ought to be the basis of every law, and which is more indispensible, in proportion as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be impeached. If "all men are by nature equally free and independent," all men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an "equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of Conscience." Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered. As the Bill violates equality by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle, by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the quakers and Menonists the only sects who think a compulsive support of their Religions unnecessary and unwarrantable? can their piety alone be entrusted with the care of public worship? Ought their Religions to be endowed above all others with extraordinary privileges by which proselytes may be enticed from all others? We think too favorably of the justice and good sense of these demoninations to believe that they either covet pre-eminences over their fellow citizens or that they will be seduced by them from the common opposition to the measure.
And what of the electorate that has now lost all feelings of "charity" towards one another and clamor for ever greater acts of similar so-called charity on the part of government? Are they not attempting to force an ever more powerful secular religion down the rest of our throats? Yet every time we open our mouths to object, we are accused of being racists with naught but ill intent and violent tendencies that need be checked.
So where is your "charity", my progressive liberal friend? Is your "charity" reserved only for upon whom you might bestow some other forcefully derived, and therefore stolen, governmental distributed benefit? What became of your once much vaunted fraternite towards your fellow citizens? Perhaps like all forcibly extracted government distributed benefits, the "virtue" inherent in the act has been lost. And with it, perhaps, all honestly bestowed feelings of humanity and charity towards your fellow man are lost as well.
