Hillary Clinton wants us to stand up to extremists in the U.S. The Catholic bishops in the U.S. are extremists -- religious zealots. But standing up to their religious zealotry will require both courage and skill in pro-and-con debate to counter their claims regarding contraception and religious freedom. In the presidential election of 2012, the extremists will work against President Obama's re-election. The stakes are high.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) March 15, 2012: Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke on March 10, 2012, at Lincoln Center in New York City at the third Women in the World Summit, organized by Tina Brown and Diane von Furstenberg.

Among other things, Secretary of State Clinton makes the following observations: "Now, we know that young woman in Tunisia [mentioned previously] and her peers across the region already are facing extremists who will try to strip their rights, curb their participation, limit their ability to make choices for themselves. Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn't matter what country they're in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies. (Applause.) Yes, it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women's rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world. (Applause.) And it seems to me that to do that, we have to live our own values and we have to defend our own values. We need to respect each other, empower all our citizens, and find common ground."

The full text of Secretary Clinton's presentation is posted at the U.S. Department of State website, along with the text of Meryl Streep's introduction of her, here.

I want to comment on Secretary Clinton's statement that it is a mystery to her why extremists always focus on women. As men, extremists suffer from male insecurity. To be sure, boys and men who are not extremists also suffer from male insecurity. However, in the psyches of extremists such as the Catholic bishops, male insecurity poses a much more imposing threat to their admittedly fragile ego-consciousness. No doubt it takes enormous work for extremist males to learn how to ratchet down their male insecurity enough that they stop being extremists. In the meantime, it is important not only for girls and women, but also for boys and men who are not themselves extremists to stand up to the extremist males -- and to the female collaborators of the extremist males. The extremist Catholic bishops, for example, have numerous female as well as male collaborators in maintaining and advancing their extremist views regarding artificial contraception and legalized abortion in the first trimester.

Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), called attention to male insecurity in his short book FIGHTING FOR LIFE: CONTEST, SEXUALITY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS (1981; paperback 2011), the published version of Ong's 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University. Granted, Ong does not explicitly discuss extremist males of the sort that Secretary Clinton discusses. Besides that, this book by Ong has not received the kind of attention that it deserves. To paraphrase Secretary Clinton, it remains a mystery to me why it has not received the kind of attention it deserves.

I know, I know, women could easily find something to criticize in Ong's discussion of women. However, to spell out the obvious, Ong's discussion of women is not the central focus of his book.

The central focus of Ong's book is male agonistic behavior. The Greek root-word "agon" means contest, struggle. So male agonistic behavior is contesting behavior -- in a word, male competitiveness with other males. Ong sees male agonistic behavior with other males as the way in which boys and men work out a specifically masculine sense of personal identity. For the sake of discussion, let's just say that Ong is probably right in claiming that boys and men work out a specifically masculine sense of identity mostly, but not usually exclusively, in relationship to other boys and men. To spell out the obvious, a specifically masculine sense of identity is also culture-bound, as it were. In other words, cultural contexts undoubtedly influence how boys and men think of a specifically masculine identity. For example, in his book MANLINESS (2006), Harvey C. Mansfield makes the following observation about the enormous historical shift from pre-modern to modern cultures: "The entire enterprise of modernity . . . could be understood as a project to keep manliness unemployed" (page 230). By manliness here, Mansfield means courage, especially martially ordered courage such as the courage or manliness of the trained warrior Othello. As Mansfield know, the ancient Greek word "andreia" means both courage and manliness. To be sure, in modernity, men and women will still need the warrior's energy for discipline and dedicated effort. But in modernity, Othello will be unemployed. In modernity, Othello is an outdated cultural hero. Modernity gives rise to the antihero such as Falstaff. Nevertheless, thanks in large measure to portrayals of Jesus as a non-violent hero, non-violent heroic expressions of warrior courage have remained as a cultural hero ideal in Western culture to this day.

Incidentally, because Hillary Rodham Clinton was trained as a lawyer at Yale, she is formally trained in pro-and-con legal debate, and as a U.S. Senator, she has practiced pro-and-con debate in the legislative assembly. These and other forms of pro-and-con debate are examples of what Ong means by agonistic structures, structures built around contesting behavior. Even though males may have pioneered these and other forms of pro-and-con debate, women can obviously learn the forms of pro-and-con debate, which they will need to learn in order to stand up to and debate extremist men such as the Catholic bishops.

But how do girls and women work out a specifically feminine sense of identity?

On the one hand, as I say, they can become collaborators with extremist males such as the Catholic bishops. As collaborators with the extremist Catholic bishops, Catholic girls and women, for example, can work out a specifically feminine sense of personal identity as non-violent heroic female warriors working in subordination in the Catholic Church to non-violent heroic male warriors. (Not all practicing Catholics are collaborators with the extremist Catholic bishops. For example, many practicing Catholics reject the church's opposition to artificial contraception. Some practicing Catholics even endorse legalized abortion in the first trimester.)

On the other hand, girls and women can work for liberation from subordination to male extremists such as the Catholic bishops. But if girls and women were to work for liberation from subordination to male extremists such as the Catholic bishops, girls and women would need to cultivate their own personal courage to carry out such efforts.

Not surprisingly, Secretary Clinton highlights examples of non-violent courageous women. The women she mentions represent extraordinary examples of non-violent courage. It will undoubtedly require courage to stand up to extremists such as the Catholic bishops and their collaborators. The extremist Catholic bishops can use a vast network of Catholic churches to broadcast their views. In short, the extremist Catholic bishops are far better organized than any organized opposition against their views regarding artificial contraception and legalized abortion in the first trimester.

The extremist Catholic bishops most likely think that they are showing great courage in their efforts to denounce artificial contraception and legalized abortion in the first trimester. Indeed, the extremist Catholic bishops are showing a certain brashness in their efforts. The extremist Catholic bishops and their collaborators, male and female, are religious zealots. In their religious zealotry, they are in effect defending male patriarchy and male dominance. They are not going to go down without a fight.

For this reason, Americans of good will will need to have courage to fight the good fight against the extremist Catholic bishops and their extremist collaborators, male and female, not just brashness and bluster.

As paradoxical as it may sound, the liberation of girls and women from extremist males such as the Catholic bishops is a fundamental step for the liberation of boys and men from outdated cultural models of feminine and masculine behavior.

But how exactly do we go about fighting the good fight against the extremist Catholic bishops? No doubt the good fight against the extremist Catholic bishops and their collaborators, male and female, will have many fronts, as it were.

The extremist Catholic bishops make the mistake of believing their own propaganda about the Catholic tradition of so-called "natural law" moral theory. Their propaganda refers to their moral theory as the "natural law." Next, the extremist Catholic bishops believe their propaganda -- they believe that the Catholic tradition of moral theory really truly is THE natural law. Get it?

Through fallible human reason, aided presumably by the grace of God, the Roman Catholic Church is the custodian of the natural law regarding sexual morality such as the morality that forbids artificial contraception and legalized abortion in the first trimester. And the extremist Catholic bishops will be happy to explain their church's teachings regarding these matters to anybody who is willing to listen to them. And because the extremist Catholic bishops are motivated by religious zealotry, they are prepared to die as martyrs, as witnesses to their religious faith in their church's teachings regarding artificial contraception and legalized abortion in the first trimester.

So the culture war with the extremist Catholic bishops in the United States will probably not come to an end soon. Because they are motivate by their religious zealotry, their opponents and critics will have to muster their own courage to stand against the extremist Catholic bishops.

Secretary Clinton has in effect issued a ringing call to arms for people of good will to fight the good fight against extremists such as the Catholic bishops. Fighting the good fight against religious extremists such as the Catholic bishops will be denounced by their collaborators as an alleged war on religion. But it is not a war of religion as such. Instead, fighting the good fight against religious extremists is a war against male patriarchy and male dominance as advanced by certain religious traditions of thought. When religions have purged themselves of the cultural baggage of male patriarchy and male dominance from the past, those religions will probably emerge in a more purified form of religion for the future.

In any event, in light of the recent provocations by the extremist Catholic bishops, it looks like the extremists will work against the re-election of President Obama in 2012 and for the election of the Republican presidential candidate, whoever that turns out to be. It remains to be seen if Secretary Clinton's call for people to stand up to the extremists in the United States will lead to President Obama's re-election, or not.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview