From the right, George Will and Robert Novak weren't thrilled with Tuesday evening's SOTU:
Will:
The president's headline-grabbing assertion that America is "addicted" to oil is wonderfully useless. If it means only -- and what else can it mean? -- that in the near term we will urgently need a lot of oil, it is banal. The amusingly discordant word "addicted" couched censoriousness -- the president as national scold; our use of oil as somehow irresponsible -- in the vocabulary of addiction, which is the therapeutic language of Oprah Nation.
Not to worry. The president says that by 2025 America will "replace" -- a certain ambiguity there -- "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East." Replace with what? Other oil? Never mind. Such recurring goals, located safely over the horizon, resemble Soviet agricultural quotas, except that no one will be shot when they are not met.
Novak:
While jumping up on cue to cheer during the speech and delivering rave reviews afterward in the Capitol's Statuary Hall, conservative members of Congress were deeply disappointed by George W. Bush Tuesday night. It was not merely that the president abandoned past domestic goals. He appeared to be moving toward bigger government.
The consensus on the Right was that President Bush's fifth State of the Union Address was his worst.
(snip)
With polls showing the president's approval rating persistently anemic (as low as 39 percent), the speech aimed at a kinder, gentler Bush. But beyond atmospherics, the policy initiatives staked out new directions in the sixth year of his presidency that raised questions. Is this the real George W. Bush? Is he really his true father's son and not Ronald Reagan's?
(snip)
The president proposed that the government preside over a wide array of non-petroleum energy options. That has all the characteristics of an ''industrial policy,'' with the federal government picking winners and losers. While violating the Republican Party's free market philosophy, this is a course with a lengthy pedigree of failure all over the world.
The same State of the Union address that neglected the Republican goal of reforming the tax system called for an American Competitiveness Initiative that also promises an extension of growing, intrusive government. That would expand still more the federal role in education. Instead of shrinking the federal government, Bush wants to grow it.
From the left, PZ Myers explains what the president meant by "human/animal hybrids" while Michael Berube defends the rights of mermaids.
Meanwhile, DCMedia Girl reminds us that Bush's SOTU's are more memorable than Clinton's.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Today in Iraq, II
I'm sorry I missed Larry King Live! last night, as apparently, it was a serious show.
The Huffington Post links to Christine Amanpour's comments regarding Jill Carroll and the situation in Iraq, calling the country's condition a "black hole", but you should read the whole transcript. It packs quite a punch. I especially liked this exchange between a Bushie caller and Amanpour's response:
KING: We're back with our panel. Powell, Ohio, hello.
CALLER: Hello, my question is for the panel this evening. The first thing I want to say is I want to commend President Bush and all of the United States military on all of the hard work and success that we've had with the war against terrorism in Iraq.And my question is, why are the civilian reporters given more media attention than the American soldiers who are the everyday heroes that are wounded on a daily basis?
KING: You mean the media person who's wounded more attention than the soldier who's wounded? Is that what you mean?
CALLER: That's correct. It seems to me that the civilian media reporters are given more attention than the average, everyday American soldier.
KING: I'll have everybody answer it.
Bob Schieffer, what do you think?
SCHIEFFER: Well, I think, first of all, Bob Woodruff is someone that most Americans know. And when someone is known, they're going to get more publicity. But I think the caller makes a very good point, and this should be a reminder to all of us that every day there are military families who are going through just what Bob Woodruff's wife and his family are going through right now. This is not something that just happens once or twice. This is something that's happening every single day of our lives. And it just underscores the terrible things that are happening in this war. And so by focusing attention on one person, perhaps the caller would be reassured to know that it is causing other people to think about what is happening to these military families.
KING: Christiane?
AMANPOUR: Well, I think it's an incredibly good question. The caller is absolutely right. And, as Bob Schieffer has just said, of course we focus on very well known people and members of our own community. But the reason that the deaths and injuries of the American soldiers don't get as much publicity is because we are by and large banned from seeing it. The United States government has made a decision that we are not allowed to see the coffins, that we're not allowed to see the burials, that we're generally not allowed to go to any of the areas where there are wounded, U.S. military hospitals. Perhaps you can see a little bit more in Landstuhl in Germany. Perhaps when we go to the hospitals in the United States. But it's very, very difficult to get close to that kind of real tragedy that the American servicemen and women are going through as well.
KING: Why, Lara, can't you see them?
LOGAN: Well, I just want to say that Christiane is absolutely right, and on top of that there's a real irony in that caller's question. Because it's the military themselves that pressure us not to keep reporting the deaths of soldiers, not to focus on the deaths of soldiers and Iraqis ever single day in this conflict. They tell us you don't tell the good news, you don't show the schools that are opening, you don't do this, you don't do that, why are you always focusing on the death? And you try and say to them, it's because as a reporter I just feel like every time somebody else dies, I have a responsibility to make sure that death wasn't in vain. That somehow, in some way, it's acknowledged.
KING: So the lady from Ohio should take it up with the Pentagon.
LOGAN: Absolutely.
Bwwaaahhh!
Hey Bushie caller: nice try. You got smoked. How did you not see that one coming? Did the Republican Party propaganda jabberwockies have you call up with THAT question? Maybe they're not as bright as we've all been led to believe.
Tell your CiC and his posse to let the media do their jobs. You want to see and hear about the American military's every death and injury? Than don't bitch when the news out of Iraq is bad.
The Huffington Post links to Christine Amanpour's comments regarding Jill Carroll and the situation in Iraq, calling the country's condition a "black hole", but you should read the whole transcript. It packs quite a punch. I especially liked this exchange between a Bushie caller and Amanpour's response:
KING: We're back with our panel. Powell, Ohio, hello.
CALLER: Hello, my question is for the panel this evening. The first thing I want to say is I want to commend President Bush and all of the United States military on all of the hard work and success that we've had with the war against terrorism in Iraq.And my question is, why are the civilian reporters given more media attention than the American soldiers who are the everyday heroes that are wounded on a daily basis?
KING: You mean the media person who's wounded more attention than the soldier who's wounded? Is that what you mean?
CALLER: That's correct. It seems to me that the civilian media reporters are given more attention than the average, everyday American soldier.
KING: I'll have everybody answer it.
Bob Schieffer, what do you think?
SCHIEFFER: Well, I think, first of all, Bob Woodruff is someone that most Americans know. And when someone is known, they're going to get more publicity. But I think the caller makes a very good point, and this should be a reminder to all of us that every day there are military families who are going through just what Bob Woodruff's wife and his family are going through right now. This is not something that just happens once or twice. This is something that's happening every single day of our lives. And it just underscores the terrible things that are happening in this war. And so by focusing attention on one person, perhaps the caller would be reassured to know that it is causing other people to think about what is happening to these military families.
KING: Christiane?
AMANPOUR: Well, I think it's an incredibly good question. The caller is absolutely right. And, as Bob Schieffer has just said, of course we focus on very well known people and members of our own community. But the reason that the deaths and injuries of the American soldiers don't get as much publicity is because we are by and large banned from seeing it. The United States government has made a decision that we are not allowed to see the coffins, that we're not allowed to see the burials, that we're generally not allowed to go to any of the areas where there are wounded, U.S. military hospitals. Perhaps you can see a little bit more in Landstuhl in Germany. Perhaps when we go to the hospitals in the United States. But it's very, very difficult to get close to that kind of real tragedy that the American servicemen and women are going through as well.
KING: Why, Lara, can't you see them?
LOGAN: Well, I just want to say that Christiane is absolutely right, and on top of that there's a real irony in that caller's question. Because it's the military themselves that pressure us not to keep reporting the deaths of soldiers, not to focus on the deaths of soldiers and Iraqis ever single day in this conflict. They tell us you don't tell the good news, you don't show the schools that are opening, you don't do this, you don't do that, why are you always focusing on the death? And you try and say to them, it's because as a reporter I just feel like every time somebody else dies, I have a responsibility to make sure that death wasn't in vain. That somehow, in some way, it's acknowledged.
KING: So the lady from Ohio should take it up with the Pentagon.
LOGAN: Absolutely.
Bwwaaahhh!
Hey Bushie caller: nice try. You got smoked. How did you not see that one coming? Did the Republican Party propaganda jabberwockies have you call up with THAT question? Maybe they're not as bright as we've all been led to believe.
Tell your CiC and his posse to let the media do their jobs. You want to see and hear about the American military's every death and injury? Than don't bitch when the news out of Iraq is bad.
Meanwhile, Today in Iraq
Gilliard is right. While we on the web have been focused on the Scalito vote, things in Iraq continue to get more human. I'll admit I've grown a bit hardened or immune to the carnage continuing to take place there, largely because as much as we may know of the consequences of U.S. policy there, media coverage doesn't do the country's condition justice. And this is partly because most of the media doesn't go any further than its barracaded hotel rooms.
And those media members who have gone out into the country to try real journalism, have been meeting with disaster.
We know about the attack on the vehicle carrying Bob Woodruff of ABC News. But these pictures of Jill Carroll have struck a different cord in me, a sickening one. The "contorted anguish" on her face is unbearable to look at.
And those media members who have gone out into the country to try real journalism, have been meeting with disaster.
We know about the attack on the vehicle carrying Bob Woodruff of ABC News. But these pictures of Jill Carroll have struck a different cord in me, a sickening one. The "contorted anguish" on her face is unbearable to look at.
The Long Road Ahead
So the Scalito filibuster went down in flames, 72-25. Every Republican* voted "yes" on cloture; 18 Democrats joined them.
So the lefty blogosphere is awash in post-loss analysis. Digby is rather sanguine about it, thinks the 25** "no" votes were actually just as good if not better than we could have expected.
Kevin Drum is curious, and I detect, somewhat mocking of the lefty blogosphere's efforts and influence.
Jane, who did so much to inspire the effort, is grateful to those who supported the filibuster, thinks this effort was a shot across the bow of the Democratic establishment, and that we'll do better next time.
Amanda is pissed. So am I. And embarassed; 19 "yes" votes on cloture from the Democratic Party is an embarassment. Unlike Kevin Drum, I don't think this reflects badly on the lefty blogosphere, which, the last time I looked, wasn't running the country. But it does say something, loudly, about the distribution of power in the country and the nature of political debate. What it says is, we have a long way to go. It says that the progressive margin for error in Congress is much smaller than the nominal divide represented by the parties. While it's convenient to think the party only trails 55-44 in the Senate, the truth is the gap between conservatives and progressives is much wider than that. As we saw with the Bankruptcy "reform" votes, many Democratic Senators are not just from conservative states, they are in fact, conservative voters themselves.
Several of the Democratic "yes" votes on cloture were somewhat expected; Conrad, Dorgan, Johnson, Baucus, Landrieu, Ben Nelson. But I have trouble figuring many of the others; Lieberman, Cantwell, Bingaman, Carper, the two from Alaska, Bill Nelson, Byrd, Rockefeller, Kohl, Salazar, Lincoln and Pryor. Lieberman, Cantwell, Carper, the Alaska Two, and Kohl come from states that voted for Kerry; in Carper and Lieberman's cases, by a lot. Byrd and Bill Nelson are running for re-election, but Florida has only been a marginal Republican presidential state in recent years, while West Virginia, which has swung more dramatically to the Republican column in recent years, has just experienced 14 mining deaths, partly attributable to the lack of oversight, which someone of Alito's persuasion is not likely to rectify. Whose side are these guys on? And while Arkansas has also been more conservative of late, Bush's margin there was not significant. So what're Lincoln and Pryor afraid of?
In any event, as we look ahead to 2006 and beyond, how does Bob Casey in the Senate sound to you now? Not all that thrilling to me. What do you think his presence would bring us? Probably not much. How are we doing with other candidates?
Yes, Jane is correct to be gladdened by the outpouring of support from most of the lefty blogosphere on this, and for the Senate actions of Kerry and Kennedy in particular--Kennedy in particular showed the kind of passion and issue orientation we need in our future Senate and Presidential candidates (oh yeah, we had one before, Dean, but the media tore him down). Oh well.
But there's a long way to go, and the results in 2006 and 2008 are not likely to reverse the current trends in any significant way.
But while the road is long, we aren't going away either. We have just begun to fight.
*Nevada Senator John Ensign wasn't present to vote due to an auto accident.
**Tom Harkin abstained, Independent Jeffords voted "no".
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Pro-Life or Anti-Abortion?
A couple of things have occured to me over the past several days, and while I'm sure they're not original to me, I hope you'll indulge me by letting me state them anyway.
The first is this use of the label "pro-life" rather than "anti-abortion" by those opposed to abortion rights. Now, most political strategists, and arm-chair quarterbacks would probably say that the use of the term "pro-life" is much more palatable to the masses than "anti-abortion"; "pro" is much more positive than "anti". And "life" is more positive than "abortion".
But it occurs to me that there is a secondary basis for using the term "pro-life", aside from its immediate better sounding quality. This secondary basis is the need or desire to give the impression that the anti-abortionists are not only concerned about abortion, but are in fact concerned about any and all policies and behaviors that thwart the "culture of life". And the term "abortion" in particular is especially problematic because since abortions can only be performed on women, it makes the whole anti-abortion crusade seem like a crusade against women's right. Which it is. So, by shifting to the label "pro-life", the anti-choicers can make it seem they're really crusading on behalf of all life, and not "just" against women's reproductive rights. And so this results in other causes being superficially brought under the anti-abortion umbrella, like "assisted suicide" and "right to die" policies. But it seems to me that these additional concerns are really just a sideshow, a fig leaf for the overall cause, which remains abortion laws, and the rights of women. And if you turn into a "pro-life show on TV, like EWTN's "Defending Life" you see that every episode is about abortion. Not the death penalty. Not war or genocidal slaughter (at least when the offending country is at least nominally Christian). And for the most part, assisted suicide rarely makes the cut either. So long story short, when we hear "pro-life" we almost are always concerned just about abortion laws.
My second brilliant observation flows from the first. It is the seeming confusion presented by the "right to life" crowd's abhorence for Roe V. Wade and other abortion rights rulings and statutes, contrasted with their relative lack of focus on the people actually getting abortions--women. Specifically, Roe V. Wade could be the law of the land, but if every woman considering an abortion this year, chose not to have one, there would, obviously, be no abortions this year, Roe V. Wade or no Roe V. Wade. Roe V. Wade is in some ways, irrelevant to the problem at hand for "pro-lifers". Roe V. Wade isn't making women do anything. It isn't even providing much of an incentive. The responsibility is on the woman herself. But the anti-abortionists seem to ignore this. They'd rather angrily denounce Roe V. Wade, "liberals", Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court, this or that SC Justice, certain abortion procedures, the "culture of death", "feminist abortionists", and so on, rather than those directly responsible for the act.
Again, like the substitution of "pro-life" for "anti-abortion", I suspect this is a politically calculated strategy. Attacking women in general and women who've had abortions in particular might not be a wise strategy, one designed to win friends or influence people.
But there is undoubtedly a second point to consider. And that is, for the "anti-abortionists", women are not really people. They don't, or shouldn't have legal or political standing. So in a way, women aren't really responsible. Lauren from Feministe touched on this in her comments section sometime last week. Anti-abortionists act as if the women themselves are not really part of the equation when it comes to abortion. This can be seen in their apparent disinterest in subjecting women who've undergone abortions in a hypothetical regime where abortion is illegal, to any sort of criminal penalties, especially the most applicable one, murder, which is the only penalty one could reasonably assumes applies in circumstances where abortion is "murder" and the act of abortion, the continuance of a "holocaust" tatamount to the days of Hitler. Again, openly declaring that they're ready to hold women accountable for murder reflects a conscious political strategy, to make people think the rolling back of Roe V. Wade would not be that significant, would not be a horrible transgression of individual liberties. But it also no doubt reflects the underlying assumption that women are not really people, responsible for their own decisions.
This is a refutation of Reagan era conservatism, which holds that individuals, and not the government or the person's environment, are responsible for a person's actions.
So either modern anti-abortionism is not conservative in the modern or Reagan era definition of the term, or else that conservatism is continuing to mutate into something else.
The first is this use of the label "pro-life" rather than "anti-abortion" by those opposed to abortion rights. Now, most political strategists, and arm-chair quarterbacks would probably say that the use of the term "pro-life" is much more palatable to the masses than "anti-abortion"; "pro" is much more positive than "anti". And "life" is more positive than "abortion".
But it occurs to me that there is a secondary basis for using the term "pro-life", aside from its immediate better sounding quality. This secondary basis is the need or desire to give the impression that the anti-abortionists are not only concerned about abortion, but are in fact concerned about any and all policies and behaviors that thwart the "culture of life". And the term "abortion" in particular is especially problematic because since abortions can only be performed on women, it makes the whole anti-abortion crusade seem like a crusade against women's right. Which it is. So, by shifting to the label "pro-life", the anti-choicers can make it seem they're really crusading on behalf of all life, and not "just" against women's reproductive rights. And so this results in other causes being superficially brought under the anti-abortion umbrella, like "assisted suicide" and "right to die" policies. But it seems to me that these additional concerns are really just a sideshow, a fig leaf for the overall cause, which remains abortion laws, and the rights of women. And if you turn into a "pro-life show on TV, like EWTN's "Defending Life" you see that every episode is about abortion. Not the death penalty. Not war or genocidal slaughter (at least when the offending country is at least nominally Christian). And for the most part, assisted suicide rarely makes the cut either. So long story short, when we hear "pro-life" we almost are always concerned just about abortion laws.
My second brilliant observation flows from the first. It is the seeming confusion presented by the "right to life" crowd's abhorence for Roe V. Wade and other abortion rights rulings and statutes, contrasted with their relative lack of focus on the people actually getting abortions--women. Specifically, Roe V. Wade could be the law of the land, but if every woman considering an abortion this year, chose not to have one, there would, obviously, be no abortions this year, Roe V. Wade or no Roe V. Wade. Roe V. Wade is in some ways, irrelevant to the problem at hand for "pro-lifers". Roe V. Wade isn't making women do anything. It isn't even providing much of an incentive. The responsibility is on the woman herself. But the anti-abortionists seem to ignore this. They'd rather angrily denounce Roe V. Wade, "liberals", Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court, this or that SC Justice, certain abortion procedures, the "culture of death", "feminist abortionists", and so on, rather than those directly responsible for the act.
Again, like the substitution of "pro-life" for "anti-abortion", I suspect this is a politically calculated strategy. Attacking women in general and women who've had abortions in particular might not be a wise strategy, one designed to win friends or influence people.
But there is undoubtedly a second point to consider. And that is, for the "anti-abortionists", women are not really people. They don't, or shouldn't have legal or political standing. So in a way, women aren't really responsible. Lauren from Feministe touched on this in her comments section sometime last week. Anti-abortionists act as if the women themselves are not really part of the equation when it comes to abortion. This can be seen in their apparent disinterest in subjecting women who've undergone abortions in a hypothetical regime where abortion is illegal, to any sort of criminal penalties, especially the most applicable one, murder, which is the only penalty one could reasonably assumes applies in circumstances where abortion is "murder" and the act of abortion, the continuance of a "holocaust" tatamount to the days of Hitler. Again, openly declaring that they're ready to hold women accountable for murder reflects a conscious political strategy, to make people think the rolling back of Roe V. Wade would not be that significant, would not be a horrible transgression of individual liberties. But it also no doubt reflects the underlying assumption that women are not really people, responsible for their own decisions.
This is a refutation of Reagan era conservatism, which holds that individuals, and not the government or the person's environment, are responsible for a person's actions.
So either modern anti-abortionism is not conservative in the modern or Reagan era definition of the term, or else that conservatism is continuing to mutate into something else.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Byrd Caves
Kos just put this up.
What got me was this line about Byrd's opponent's campaign rationale:
A multimillionaire businessman entered the GOP race to challenge Sen. Robert C. Byrd on Wednesday, hoping to deny the 88-year-old incumbent Democrat a record ninth term.
John Raese, 55, said he would campaign on a platform touting free enterprise and reduced regulation, among other issues. "What I'm going to run on is a rebirth of capitalism," he said.
Yeah, in a month where 14 WV miners lost their lives, due in large part to inadequate mine oversight, sure, let's go no regulation. Makes perfect sense to me. At least in this world.
What got me was this line about Byrd's opponent's campaign rationale:
A multimillionaire businessman entered the GOP race to challenge Sen. Robert C. Byrd on Wednesday, hoping to deny the 88-year-old incumbent Democrat a record ninth term.
John Raese, 55, said he would campaign on a platform touting free enterprise and reduced regulation, among other issues. "What I'm going to run on is a rebirth of capitalism," he said.
Yeah, in a month where 14 WV miners lost their lives, due in large part to inadequate mine oversight, sure, let's go no regulation. Makes perfect sense to me. At least in this world.
"There is no 'Center' " and other Dispatches from Bizarro World
So, let me get this straight. A "Democratic" U.S. Senate candidate from PA, who presumably could pass on the question at the very least, comes out and says that Alito deserves to be confirmed.
Meanwhile, at least one sitting "Democratic" U.S. Senator has already indicated his support for the nominee, while another insists that should it come to a filibuster, she will vote for cloture, presumably along with all the other members of the opposition party, just so all the other fun stuff U.S. Senators get to work on can procede and the majority members won't be mad at her.
At the same time, for the sake of balance, you might think that that extinct species, known as the "moderate" Republican, might arise from the muck and declare their opposition to the nominee, based on the nominee's pretty clear unmoderateness. Just so things can be balanced, you know.
Well, so far, no "moderate" Republicans, or any GOP'ers for that matter, have come out against the nominee (and I suspect, just suspect, that they won't).
But undoubtedly, once Scalito is confirmed, the Chris Matthews media will declare that the "bipartisan" support for the nominee was a joy to behold, and that if only the other members of the Democratic U.S. Senate caucus hadn't been threatened and intimidated by the Uncivil Far Left blogosphere, that the vote could have been near unanimous, making the popular president Bush's life, and the media's, so much more enjoyable and peaceful.
Because, after all, we KNOW, just KNOW, that the Far Left is Very Uncivil, and that the Mainstream, jolly right is a happy, smiling, Christian-kindness-like presence on the Cable TV "news" circuit. And conservative bloggers on the Internets are only really, very nice, too. Sure, sure, they may have made jokes about American citizen Rachel Corrie being flattened like a pancake when she got squashed by that Israeli tank a few years back, but that wasn't really the right wing bloggers, it was just their commenters. And if only those Far Left bloggers would just be nice, and only if the Far Left would stop being treasonous, and soft on national security issues, and would stop pointing out that the architect of 911 is still alive and issuing threats for which the country needs to once again submit itself to the dictatorship of the cabal, and would recognize that although the head of the Democratic Party, Michael Moore, and its financial chairman and funder of the Far Left Internets, George Soros (I got my check from him yesterday, so don't act like he isn't paying us) are not religious, they're exactly like that religious fundamentalist, Osama bin Laden, and that the Far Left should not make waves about the important "domestic surveillance" needed to fight the Global War on Terrorism, than the almighty US of A can win the GWOT, or at the very least, maintain the spirit of fear needed to ensure continued Republican Party control of government, which is fighting tooth and nail to ensure that the Democrats and their K Street Project are not able to keep bribing government officials and restricting jobs for K Street lobbyists to members of the ruling Democratic Party only. Because the Jack Abramoff scandal is NOT a bipartisan scandal, it is a Democratic Party scandal, because although no members of the Democratic Party received any money from Abramoff, they DID receive money from taxpayers in the form of salaries, and Abramoff is a taxpayer, proving definitively that the Democrats are at fault and vulnerable to charges of corruption stemming from the Abramoff scandal.
And the Far Left Internets people need to stop posting hate-filled, uninformed, biased reviews to patriotic, family oriented books on Amazon.com because patriotic, family oriented bloggers have never done this and did not, in fact, start the practice.
Meanwhile, at least one sitting "Democratic" U.S. Senator has already indicated his support for the nominee, while another insists that should it come to a filibuster, she will vote for cloture, presumably along with all the other members of the opposition party, just so all the other fun stuff U.S. Senators get to work on can procede and the majority members won't be mad at her.
At the same time, for the sake of balance, you might think that that extinct species, known as the "moderate" Republican, might arise from the muck and declare their opposition to the nominee, based on the nominee's pretty clear unmoderateness. Just so things can be balanced, you know.
Well, so far, no "moderate" Republicans, or any GOP'ers for that matter, have come out against the nominee (and I suspect, just suspect, that they won't).
But undoubtedly, once Scalito is confirmed, the Chris Matthews media will declare that the "bipartisan" support for the nominee was a joy to behold, and that if only the other members of the Democratic U.S. Senate caucus hadn't been threatened and intimidated by the Uncivil Far Left blogosphere, that the vote could have been near unanimous, making the popular president Bush's life, and the media's, so much more enjoyable and peaceful.
Because, after all, we KNOW, just KNOW, that the Far Left is Very Uncivil, and that the Mainstream, jolly right is a happy, smiling, Christian-kindness-like presence on the Cable TV "news" circuit. And conservative bloggers on the Internets are only really, very nice, too. Sure, sure, they may have made jokes about American citizen Rachel Corrie being flattened like a pancake when she got squashed by that Israeli tank a few years back, but that wasn't really the right wing bloggers, it was just their commenters. And if only those Far Left bloggers would just be nice, and only if the Far Left would stop being treasonous, and soft on national security issues, and would stop pointing out that the architect of 911 is still alive and issuing threats for which the country needs to once again submit itself to the dictatorship of the cabal, and would recognize that although the head of the Democratic Party, Michael Moore, and its financial chairman and funder of the Far Left Internets, George Soros (I got my check from him yesterday, so don't act like he isn't paying us) are not religious, they're exactly like that religious fundamentalist, Osama bin Laden, and that the Far Left should not make waves about the important "domestic surveillance" needed to fight the Global War on Terrorism, than the almighty US of A can win the GWOT, or at the very least, maintain the spirit of fear needed to ensure continued Republican Party control of government, which is fighting tooth and nail to ensure that the Democrats and their K Street Project are not able to keep bribing government officials and restricting jobs for K Street lobbyists to members of the ruling Democratic Party only. Because the Jack Abramoff scandal is NOT a bipartisan scandal, it is a Democratic Party scandal, because although no members of the Democratic Party received any money from Abramoff, they DID receive money from taxpayers in the form of salaries, and Abramoff is a taxpayer, proving definitively that the Democrats are at fault and vulnerable to charges of corruption stemming from the Abramoff scandal.
And the Far Left Internets people need to stop posting hate-filled, uninformed, biased reviews to patriotic, family oriented books on Amazon.com because patriotic, family oriented bloggers have never done this and did not, in fact, start the practice.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
John Shelby Spong on "Limbo"
As was reported some time ago, the Roman Catholic Church is dispensing with the notion of "limbo", a sort of place between heaven and hell where unbaptized infants and worthy non-Christians could be assigned to spend eternity.
John Shelby Spong is a former Bishop of the Episcopal Church who has written widely on the problems of Christian fundamentalism and the need for new Christian based thinking in a modern society.
I get Spong's weekly newletter/column and am reproducing his column on the subject of "limbo" here:
To Hell with Limbo
The Newest Act of an Irrelevant Christianity
Perhaps the second silliest thing that religious institutions and its leaders can do is to pretend that they know what will happen after one dies and then to be delusional enough to think that they can actually describe it. This ranks as number two on the silliness list only because the one thing sillier than that absurdity is to announce that perhaps you did not get it right the first time, so you offer an amendment to previous thinking. Yet that is exactly what we have witnessed from the Ratzinger Vatican in recent days. Limbo, as they say, is now in Limbo!
This teaching about Limbo, a top commission of Roman Catholic scholars now assures us, has never been an official part of the doctrine of the church. That will come as a great surprise, I will wager, to those parents who have over the centuries, been frightened out of their wits by the threats emanating from that church about what will befall their unbaptized children if they did not rush to baptism. The existence of a place called Limbo has had a very long history. Since at least the 4th Century of this Common Era it has been a part of the package of the afterlife doctrines of western Catholic Christianity. This package was not designed primarily to inform the faithful about what waited for them when they died but rather to aid in the task of controlling with the weapons of fear and guilt every aspect of life from birth to death. While Limbo never had real credibility among thinking people, it nonetheless possessed enormous power and was indelibly planted into the consciences of many.
Tracing the history of the concept of Limbo is itself a fascinating study. It appears to have emerged in Catholic teaching near the end of the 4th century through the work of Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, a man of enormous intellect but whose theology was significantly driven by the concept of original sin. So deeply was Augustine convinced that all human life had been permanently stained by the sin of Adam's disobedience, that for a child to die unbaptized was to be doomed to hell. Baptism, in Augustine's mind, was thus the necessary act that broke the power of that original sin and therefore was the essential step in the drama of salvation. Heaven was reserved only for the saved, for whom baptism was the visible symbol of their redemption. The unbaptized were inevitably, to put it bluntly, bound for hell. It was a harsh argument in which grieving parents, who gave birth to stillborn fetuses or whose babies had died in childbirth, were left without consolation. Sometimes, circumstances over which parents had no control would require the postponement of a baptism and, in a day of rampant infant mortality, it meant that some children died unbaptized. The specter of a burning hell for those regarded as not yet at the age of reason seemed harsh and unfeeling. Even Augustine felt this incongruity and he sought to address it by postulating that some regions of hell might contain a special room where the temperature was not as hot as it was in the other regions. It was an ingenious suggestion. In that 'special room,' we now believe, Limbo made its entry into Christian thinking.
In the 13th century, primarily under the influence of another brilliant theologian, Thomas Aquinas, this 'special room' got the name 'Limbus,' which means a boundary, as it took another step in doctrinal development. Aquinas also felt the need for a concept that was more palatable and sensitive and not quite as grotesque as the image advanced by Augustine. Children, innocent at least in the sense that they were too young to choose to do evil deeds, were nonetheless stained by that universal human corruption. He declared, however, if they died without baptism they were assigned forever to live in this bounded place, this Limbus, which Aquinas called, a state of 'natural happiness.' While not ultimately fulfilling like the 'Beatific vision," it was not unpleasant. A conscience-healing act of compromise thus brought modern Limbo into being.
In time, this Limbo of natural happiness was expanded from being simply the abode of unbaptized babies into a place where good pagans might also go. It was thought to house ancient people who had lived before the saving grace of Christ had become available to them. This meant that Limbo counted among its residents such people as Moses, Virgil and Socrates. Later, in the centuries that came after Christ, there were some other obviously holy lives who had died without becoming Christian and thus without being baptized, but exemplary in all other ways. One thinks of holy Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Jews and, most spectacularly, one thinks of Mahatma Gandhi. It just violated too much to consign these good people to the eternal punishment of hell. Limbo was once again a convenient compromise between Christian judgment and Christian sensitivity. The church could not, however, become so loose and sentimental that it lost its power to control people's lives. That required an ultimate threat to keep order in the ranks of believers. Limbo served both needs. It was unfulfilling enough to be punishment. It was kind enough to allow the church's judgment to be tolerated.
The Church of the Middle Ages filled its rhetoric with such phrases as 'there is no salvation outside the Church' and 'baptism is necessary to salvation.' Later this stark religious division between the saved and the unsaved spurred the great missionary fervor of the 19th century that was historically the century of the fastest growth of the Christian faith in all of western history. Few people stopped to notice that it was also the century of the western empires and colonial domination of the third world. If a Christian nation's aggression against and conquest of primitive societies could be justified on the basis of 'bringing salvation to the heathen,' then it became a sacred duty, rather than religious imperialism, effectively perfuming the evil of war. If one was convinced that salvation for all people was accomplished only in Christ and that baptism was the only sure sign of that salvation, then the horror of a God who would condemn unbaptized children to an eternity of second-class citizenship was a small price to pay to keep the institutional power of the Church intact. The enhancement of the idea of Limbo continued in 1905, when Pope Pius 10th stated clearly, and I'm sure he thought pastorally, that "children, who die without baptism, go into Limbo where they do not enjoy God but they do not suffer either." One wonders why Pius 10th thought he was competent to know. However, that was where Limbo was in the teaching of the Catholic Church when the 20th century dawned.
In the 1960s at the II Vatican Council, the modern spirit of Pope John 23rd brought fresh air into this musty institution. That Council stated that "everyone, baptized Christian or not, could be eligible for salvation through the mystery of Christ's redemptive power." With that understanding beginning to emerge, Limbo began its slow but inevitable decline.
The final blow to this presumptuous teaching occurred when the Vatican raised the issue of abortion to a new level of intensity. In the abortion battle they desired to portray abortion as murder, so their assertion that life begins at conception was crucial to their argument. There had been a time when the Church taught that life began at the moment of "quickening" that occurs normally in the second trimester. With this new definition, necessary to keeping the debate emotional, the aborted fetuses began to be counted as unbaptized babies destined for an eternity in Limbo, however Limbo was defined. That was even more than the hierarchy itself could swallow. The justice of God collided with the tactics of control. The justice of God won and when it did Limbo was doomed. Now the Vatican Commission has begun the process of removing Limbo from the consciousness of believers. It will take a while, perhaps a century or two, but Limbo will finally disappear.
Two insights need to be understood here. One is that most of the church's talk about life after death is not about life after death at all. It is about controlling the behavior of human beings in the here and now. Fear, combined with the power of guilt, is the ultimate ecclesiastical weapon of control. If you are afraid that violating the Church's teaching or its practice will result in an eternity of punishment in the after life, you are likely to be motivated to be a good little boy or girl. If you are made to feel so guilty about your own shortcomings that you seek to expiate that guilt with confession and attendance at services of worship, you are more likely to be faithful. Salvation thus rests more on what you believe than it does on how you act. The quality of your life, living for others, serving the needs of the poor and dispossessed counts for little without proper believing and the act of being baptized is what separates you from Limbo and assures you of heaven. That is a great motivator.
The second observation is that whatever occurs after death is not something that any of us can know. We can dream or fantasize but there is no way that human knowledge can penetrate this ultimate mystery. Only religious arrogance, buttressed by claims to possess revealed truth, could suggest otherwise. What the Church has never understood is that if a person's primary motivation in life is to win an eternal reward of bliss, then each act of that person, including acts of kindness and generosity, is an act of egocentricity. If the ultimate task of the Christian Church is to help to create whole, non-self-centered lives then all control tactics, including heaven as a place of reward and hell as a place of punishment to say nothing of limbo and purgatory will have to be jettisoned. At that point the Church might finally be ready to talk about the meaning of our hope of life after death with integrity. That would be a welcome new point of departure.
— John Shelby Spong
I reproduced the entire article here because there is no place on the web where it is posted; I subscribe to his weekly columns, so it comes to me by email.
In any event, I think the kicker in this column is what I highlighted in the final paragraph: The problem of Christian morality and behavior is essentially that it is dialectic and self-defeating. It aims to produce better people of purer motivation and action, but because the necessity of this changed, improved thinking and behavior is to enjoy an eternal life of heavenly bliss, in which, we're told, there will be no more tears and no more sorrow, the Christian's unescapable motivation is selfish. This is especially true in the conservative corners of my denomination, Seventh Day Adventism, which contends that since 1844, Jesus Christ has been engaged in the work of judging Christians, pouring over the "record books" of heaven, making his list and checking it twice, to ensure we're worthy of entering the pearly gates. Now, many evangelical Christians, including many SDA's, would disagree with this conception of judgment (a fact that has generated a schism within the church between "historic" and evangelical SDA's). But the chasm between conservative SDAism and evangelical Christianity is not particularly deep on this matter, as both acknowledge an end-time judgment, separating the true believers from the nominal and admitted non-believers. Hense, the motivation for Christian service becomes strained by the view of one's own eternal destiny, rather than the lives of others. Additionally, judgment thinking tends to result in a certain "narrowing" of sin by many Christians, to "overt" acts of sin (like sexual immorality), rather than the underlying motives and the more covert acts of kindness Jesus and the Old Testament prophets tended to emphasize (for example, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, feeding the hungry, etc in Matthew 25).
Nonetheless, I suspect that due to the fragility of life, and the desire for justice amid oppression, kindness amid cruelty, human interest in eternity and utopia will continue to perpetuate a desire for heaven. I hope there is such a life, but wish that instead of using it to exclude those of unlike belief or culture, that as many as can be will be found there with me. If not, let us live to do good, because it is good. That was how Jesus lived and taught, with no eye towards a reward, either material or supernatural.
John Shelby Spong is a former Bishop of the Episcopal Church who has written widely on the problems of Christian fundamentalism and the need for new Christian based thinking in a modern society.
I get Spong's weekly newletter/column and am reproducing his column on the subject of "limbo" here:
To Hell with Limbo
The Newest Act of an Irrelevant Christianity
Perhaps the second silliest thing that religious institutions and its leaders can do is to pretend that they know what will happen after one dies and then to be delusional enough to think that they can actually describe it. This ranks as number two on the silliness list only because the one thing sillier than that absurdity is to announce that perhaps you did not get it right the first time, so you offer an amendment to previous thinking. Yet that is exactly what we have witnessed from the Ratzinger Vatican in recent days. Limbo, as they say, is now in Limbo!
This teaching about Limbo, a top commission of Roman Catholic scholars now assures us, has never been an official part of the doctrine of the church. That will come as a great surprise, I will wager, to those parents who have over the centuries, been frightened out of their wits by the threats emanating from that church about what will befall their unbaptized children if they did not rush to baptism. The existence of a place called Limbo has had a very long history. Since at least the 4th Century of this Common Era it has been a part of the package of the afterlife doctrines of western Catholic Christianity. This package was not designed primarily to inform the faithful about what waited for them when they died but rather to aid in the task of controlling with the weapons of fear and guilt every aspect of life from birth to death. While Limbo never had real credibility among thinking people, it nonetheless possessed enormous power and was indelibly planted into the consciences of many.
Tracing the history of the concept of Limbo is itself a fascinating study. It appears to have emerged in Catholic teaching near the end of the 4th century through the work of Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, a man of enormous intellect but whose theology was significantly driven by the concept of original sin. So deeply was Augustine convinced that all human life had been permanently stained by the sin of Adam's disobedience, that for a child to die unbaptized was to be doomed to hell. Baptism, in Augustine's mind, was thus the necessary act that broke the power of that original sin and therefore was the essential step in the drama of salvation. Heaven was reserved only for the saved, for whom baptism was the visible symbol of their redemption. The unbaptized were inevitably, to put it bluntly, bound for hell. It was a harsh argument in which grieving parents, who gave birth to stillborn fetuses or whose babies had died in childbirth, were left without consolation. Sometimes, circumstances over which parents had no control would require the postponement of a baptism and, in a day of rampant infant mortality, it meant that some children died unbaptized. The specter of a burning hell for those regarded as not yet at the age of reason seemed harsh and unfeeling. Even Augustine felt this incongruity and he sought to address it by postulating that some regions of hell might contain a special room where the temperature was not as hot as it was in the other regions. It was an ingenious suggestion. In that 'special room,' we now believe, Limbo made its entry into Christian thinking.
In the 13th century, primarily under the influence of another brilliant theologian, Thomas Aquinas, this 'special room' got the name 'Limbus,' which means a boundary, as it took another step in doctrinal development. Aquinas also felt the need for a concept that was more palatable and sensitive and not quite as grotesque as the image advanced by Augustine. Children, innocent at least in the sense that they were too young to choose to do evil deeds, were nonetheless stained by that universal human corruption. He declared, however, if they died without baptism they were assigned forever to live in this bounded place, this Limbus, which Aquinas called, a state of 'natural happiness.' While not ultimately fulfilling like the 'Beatific vision," it was not unpleasant. A conscience-healing act of compromise thus brought modern Limbo into being.
In time, this Limbo of natural happiness was expanded from being simply the abode of unbaptized babies into a place where good pagans might also go. It was thought to house ancient people who had lived before the saving grace of Christ had become available to them. This meant that Limbo counted among its residents such people as Moses, Virgil and Socrates. Later, in the centuries that came after Christ, there were some other obviously holy lives who had died without becoming Christian and thus without being baptized, but exemplary in all other ways. One thinks of holy Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Jews and, most spectacularly, one thinks of Mahatma Gandhi. It just violated too much to consign these good people to the eternal punishment of hell. Limbo was once again a convenient compromise between Christian judgment and Christian sensitivity. The church could not, however, become so loose and sentimental that it lost its power to control people's lives. That required an ultimate threat to keep order in the ranks of believers. Limbo served both needs. It was unfulfilling enough to be punishment. It was kind enough to allow the church's judgment to be tolerated.
The Church of the Middle Ages filled its rhetoric with such phrases as 'there is no salvation outside the Church' and 'baptism is necessary to salvation.' Later this stark religious division between the saved and the unsaved spurred the great missionary fervor of the 19th century that was historically the century of the fastest growth of the Christian faith in all of western history. Few people stopped to notice that it was also the century of the western empires and colonial domination of the third world. If a Christian nation's aggression against and conquest of primitive societies could be justified on the basis of 'bringing salvation to the heathen,' then it became a sacred duty, rather than religious imperialism, effectively perfuming the evil of war. If one was convinced that salvation for all people was accomplished only in Christ and that baptism was the only sure sign of that salvation, then the horror of a God who would condemn unbaptized children to an eternity of second-class citizenship was a small price to pay to keep the institutional power of the Church intact. The enhancement of the idea of Limbo continued in 1905, when Pope Pius 10th stated clearly, and I'm sure he thought pastorally, that "children, who die without baptism, go into Limbo where they do not enjoy God but they do not suffer either." One wonders why Pius 10th thought he was competent to know. However, that was where Limbo was in the teaching of the Catholic Church when the 20th century dawned.
In the 1960s at the II Vatican Council, the modern spirit of Pope John 23rd brought fresh air into this musty institution. That Council stated that "everyone, baptized Christian or not, could be eligible for salvation through the mystery of Christ's redemptive power." With that understanding beginning to emerge, Limbo began its slow but inevitable decline.
The final blow to this presumptuous teaching occurred when the Vatican raised the issue of abortion to a new level of intensity. In the abortion battle they desired to portray abortion as murder, so their assertion that life begins at conception was crucial to their argument. There had been a time when the Church taught that life began at the moment of "quickening" that occurs normally in the second trimester. With this new definition, necessary to keeping the debate emotional, the aborted fetuses began to be counted as unbaptized babies destined for an eternity in Limbo, however Limbo was defined. That was even more than the hierarchy itself could swallow. The justice of God collided with the tactics of control. The justice of God won and when it did Limbo was doomed. Now the Vatican Commission has begun the process of removing Limbo from the consciousness of believers. It will take a while, perhaps a century or two, but Limbo will finally disappear.
Two insights need to be understood here. One is that most of the church's talk about life after death is not about life after death at all. It is about controlling the behavior of human beings in the here and now. Fear, combined with the power of guilt, is the ultimate ecclesiastical weapon of control. If you are afraid that violating the Church's teaching or its practice will result in an eternity of punishment in the after life, you are likely to be motivated to be a good little boy or girl. If you are made to feel so guilty about your own shortcomings that you seek to expiate that guilt with confession and attendance at services of worship, you are more likely to be faithful. Salvation thus rests more on what you believe than it does on how you act. The quality of your life, living for others, serving the needs of the poor and dispossessed counts for little without proper believing and the act of being baptized is what separates you from Limbo and assures you of heaven. That is a great motivator.
The second observation is that whatever occurs after death is not something that any of us can know. We can dream or fantasize but there is no way that human knowledge can penetrate this ultimate mystery. Only religious arrogance, buttressed by claims to possess revealed truth, could suggest otherwise. What the Church has never understood is that if a person's primary motivation in life is to win an eternal reward of bliss, then each act of that person, including acts of kindness and generosity, is an act of egocentricity. If the ultimate task of the Christian Church is to help to create whole, non-self-centered lives then all control tactics, including heaven as a place of reward and hell as a place of punishment to say nothing of limbo and purgatory will have to be jettisoned. At that point the Church might finally be ready to talk about the meaning of our hope of life after death with integrity. That would be a welcome new point of departure.
— John Shelby Spong
I reproduced the entire article here because there is no place on the web where it is posted; I subscribe to his weekly columns, so it comes to me by email.
In any event, I think the kicker in this column is what I highlighted in the final paragraph: The problem of Christian morality and behavior is essentially that it is dialectic and self-defeating. It aims to produce better people of purer motivation and action, but because the necessity of this changed, improved thinking and behavior is to enjoy an eternal life of heavenly bliss, in which, we're told, there will be no more tears and no more sorrow, the Christian's unescapable motivation is selfish. This is especially true in the conservative corners of my denomination, Seventh Day Adventism, which contends that since 1844, Jesus Christ has been engaged in the work of judging Christians, pouring over the "record books" of heaven, making his list and checking it twice, to ensure we're worthy of entering the pearly gates. Now, many evangelical Christians, including many SDA's, would disagree with this conception of judgment (a fact that has generated a schism within the church between "historic" and evangelical SDA's). But the chasm between conservative SDAism and evangelical Christianity is not particularly deep on this matter, as both acknowledge an end-time judgment, separating the true believers from the nominal and admitted non-believers. Hense, the motivation for Christian service becomes strained by the view of one's own eternal destiny, rather than the lives of others. Additionally, judgment thinking tends to result in a certain "narrowing" of sin by many Christians, to "overt" acts of sin (like sexual immorality), rather than the underlying motives and the more covert acts of kindness Jesus and the Old Testament prophets tended to emphasize (for example, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, feeding the hungry, etc in Matthew 25).
Nonetheless, I suspect that due to the fragility of life, and the desire for justice amid oppression, kindness amid cruelty, human interest in eternity and utopia will continue to perpetuate a desire for heaven. I hope there is such a life, but wish that instead of using it to exclude those of unlike belief or culture, that as many as can be will be found there with me. If not, let us live to do good, because it is good. That was how Jesus lived and taught, with no eye towards a reward, either material or supernatural.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
This is what they really want
At yesterday's March for Death "rally":
Nellie Gray, the president of March for Life, the group that organized the rally, said reversing Roe was this year's theme. Speaking to the crowd in fiery tones, Ms. Gray predicted that the United States would hold the equivalent of Nuremburg trials for "feminist abortionists," calling support for a woman's right to choose "crimes against humanity."
"Roe v. Wade has brutalized our country," she said. "The feminist abortionists, look at the evil they are doing. From that will come an accountability." Her words were met with strong applause, and more than a few supporters held high signs that compared abortions in the United States to "Hitler's Holocaust."
Women's right to choose = crimes against humanity...Hitler's Holocaust...Nuremburg Trials...feminist abortionists (women who have had or are planning to get an abortion, men or women who advocate the right to choose, doctors/medical persons assisting with abortions??)
From Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" (1986)
On the way home, they stop at an old Puritan church. The government "[has not] fiddled with the gravestones, or the church either. It's only the more recent history that offends them." Chapter 6, pg. 31 Ofglen bows her head in prayer, and Offred assumes her piety is a show. They then head to the Wall, which is the face of Gilead's prison. Six male corpses are hanging by their necks on the Wall from a Men's Salvaging earlier that morning. The men are identified as former abortionists by signs hung around their necks bearing images of fetuses. The men's heads are covered in white bags. One has a bloodstain like a mouth. Ofglen trembles, but Offred is not tempted to inquire or even look at her. "Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary." Chapter 6, pg.33
Saturday, January 21, 2006
The Senator and Abortion
This weekend is the anti-abortionists's Woodstock, the anarchists's Annual World Bank meeting--the National Right to Life March in/on Washington, commemorating the now 33rd year since the arguing of Roe V. Wade.
The Senator is a pro-choicer of long-standing. He got his political start escorting female patients safely to clinic entries on Saturday mornings and working against his local, anti-abortionist blowhard congressman. But he recognizes the problem many well-meaning, thoughtful people have regarding the practice. The availability of ultrasound technology makes clear that even at very early stages in the fetus' life, that there is in fact, a life there. So regardless of how hypocritical the Senator believes the anti-abortion movement is, he concedes that abortion is and will remain a troubling issue of public policy, the flashpoint in the continual tiring culture war, for valid reasons. I know my feminist web-pals like Lauren at Feministe and Amanda at Pandagon hate liberal ambivalence like this, but the matter is what it is.
So if there's a life there, why isn't the Senator anti-abortion?
Because life's complicated.
For one thing, how do we agree about what constitutes the start of this life? At the point of sex, where the male sperm enters the woman's vagina? Um, no. Most if not all anti-abortion groups, especially those taking the Roman Vatican's position, are against the use of contraception, not just abortion. So the so-called "morning after" pills, which prevent ovulation or fertilization, are out, even though they don't come close to mimicking the destruction of the embryo as happens in abortions. No infant being stuck with scissors at birth here. So the anti-abortionists are not consistent or sensible on this point. Anybody ready to eliminate the use of contraception? So most anti-abortionists are really against sex, not abortion.
The Senator is also aware that the anti-abortionists, most of the prominent ones anyway, don't care about the "life of the unborn child". If they did, they'd care about people who are, you know, actually alive. I realize that those anti-abortionists who kill doctors and or patients represent a fringe component of all anti-abortionists. Nonetheless, anti-abortion killers have a lot of sympathy in the anti abortion movement. And its plain that from most of their public stances, leading anti-abortionists are more than willing to let the rest of the world burn from America's shocking and aweful war machine, having no objection to the taking of thousands of civilian lives for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. When was the last time you heard James Dobson condemn America's "War on Terror", prisoner torture, and the "collateral damage" from our air raids, like the one last weekend against Pakistan? And as for Americans outside the womb, many anti-abortionists are decidedly in the anti-gay following. If the idea is to be pro-life, why not celebrate these lives as well? If there's no good reason to be against gay people, and I've not heard a good reason, than why not apply the same if not greater value to the lives of gay Americans who are actually alive, outside the womb? We could go on here, death penalty (which the Senator supports), welfare reform, Medicare-Medicaid spending, etc. The fact is, the anti-abortionists's pseudo concern for the "culture of life" is bupkis, a smokescreen designed to obscure their real ambition, the roll-back of women's rights (and everyone else's).
Finally, perhaps the most severe and illogical implication of making abortion illegal concerns the treatment of women who undergo the procedure. What do the anti-abortionists want to do with them? Well, many anti-abortionists, at least publicly, take a benign stance to these women, preferring to label them as fellow victims in the relativistic left's "culture of death". But this won't wash. Anti-abortionists can't simultaneously claim, as one anti-abortion marcher today did on one of the national networks, that they opposed abortion because of its effects on the women getting them, while also claiming that abortion is "murder" and calling the number of abortions obtained since 1973 a "holocaust". If abortion is murder, than women getting abortions are murderers. There can't be a middle ground here. Women getting abortions would be subject to the same criminal charges as any other killer. I'm sure many anti-abortionists haven't thought this through to its logical conclusion. Maybe they imagine that if abortion was made illegal, that no attempts would be made to obtain one. The "problem" of abortion would then "go away".
I doubt it.
The Senator thinks that if abortion is finally made illegal, at either the state or federal level, that the stated concern so many anti-abortionist spokespeople now make on behalf of women who've had an abortion would evaporate as fast as you could say Phyllis Shlafly. Women who've had abortions, or who have been caught planning to have them, would be paraded across Faux Noose as betrayers of their sex and their nation. Wouldn't be long before they'd join the ranks of death row inmates awaiting execution.
Or maybe they'd be hung in public on the streets of Gilead.
So, in short, the Senator is pro-choice but wishes the practice would be "safe but rare".
As for the so-called "moralists" among the religious elite, hey, when you apologize completely for burning people at the stake for "heresy", when you confess you were wrong to support slavery, wrong to oppose the right to vote for women, African Americans, and working slobs who didn't own property, that you are and were wrong to oppose allowing workers to unionize, that you were wrong to oppose Martin Luther King Jr and desegregation, that you were wrong to oppose the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts of 1964-1965 (hey, Jerry Falwell, I'm talking to you), that you were wrong to oppose the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, then maybe the "secular relativistic left" will give you and your ideas a hearing.
Until then, take your moral absolution and shove it.
The Senator is a pro-choicer of long-standing. He got his political start escorting female patients safely to clinic entries on Saturday mornings and working against his local, anti-abortionist blowhard congressman. But he recognizes the problem many well-meaning, thoughtful people have regarding the practice. The availability of ultrasound technology makes clear that even at very early stages in the fetus' life, that there is in fact, a life there. So regardless of how hypocritical the Senator believes the anti-abortion movement is, he concedes that abortion is and will remain a troubling issue of public policy, the flashpoint in the continual tiring culture war, for valid reasons. I know my feminist web-pals like Lauren at Feministe and Amanda at Pandagon hate liberal ambivalence like this, but the matter is what it is.
So if there's a life there, why isn't the Senator anti-abortion?
Because life's complicated.
For one thing, how do we agree about what constitutes the start of this life? At the point of sex, where the male sperm enters the woman's vagina? Um, no. Most if not all anti-abortion groups, especially those taking the Roman Vatican's position, are against the use of contraception, not just abortion. So the so-called "morning after" pills, which prevent ovulation or fertilization, are out, even though they don't come close to mimicking the destruction of the embryo as happens in abortions. No infant being stuck with scissors at birth here. So the anti-abortionists are not consistent or sensible on this point. Anybody ready to eliminate the use of contraception? So most anti-abortionists are really against sex, not abortion.
The Senator is also aware that the anti-abortionists, most of the prominent ones anyway, don't care about the "life of the unborn child". If they did, they'd care about people who are, you know, actually alive. I realize that those anti-abortionists who kill doctors and or patients represent a fringe component of all anti-abortionists. Nonetheless, anti-abortion killers have a lot of sympathy in the anti abortion movement. And its plain that from most of their public stances, leading anti-abortionists are more than willing to let the rest of the world burn from America's shocking and aweful war machine, having no objection to the taking of thousands of civilian lives for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. When was the last time you heard James Dobson condemn America's "War on Terror", prisoner torture, and the "collateral damage" from our air raids, like the one last weekend against Pakistan? And as for Americans outside the womb, many anti-abortionists are decidedly in the anti-gay following. If the idea is to be pro-life, why not celebrate these lives as well? If there's no good reason to be against gay people, and I've not heard a good reason, than why not apply the same if not greater value to the lives of gay Americans who are actually alive, outside the womb? We could go on here, death penalty (which the Senator supports), welfare reform, Medicare-Medicaid spending, etc. The fact is, the anti-abortionists's pseudo concern for the "culture of life" is bupkis, a smokescreen designed to obscure their real ambition, the roll-back of women's rights (and everyone else's).
Finally, perhaps the most severe and illogical implication of making abortion illegal concerns the treatment of women who undergo the procedure. What do the anti-abortionists want to do with them? Well, many anti-abortionists, at least publicly, take a benign stance to these women, preferring to label them as fellow victims in the relativistic left's "culture of death". But this won't wash. Anti-abortionists can't simultaneously claim, as one anti-abortion marcher today did on one of the national networks, that they opposed abortion because of its effects on the women getting them, while also claiming that abortion is "murder" and calling the number of abortions obtained since 1973 a "holocaust". If abortion is murder, than women getting abortions are murderers. There can't be a middle ground here. Women getting abortions would be subject to the same criminal charges as any other killer. I'm sure many anti-abortionists haven't thought this through to its logical conclusion. Maybe they imagine that if abortion was made illegal, that no attempts would be made to obtain one. The "problem" of abortion would then "go away".
I doubt it.
The Senator thinks that if abortion is finally made illegal, at either the state or federal level, that the stated concern so many anti-abortionist spokespeople now make on behalf of women who've had an abortion would evaporate as fast as you could say Phyllis Shlafly. Women who've had abortions, or who have been caught planning to have them, would be paraded across Faux Noose as betrayers of their sex and their nation. Wouldn't be long before they'd join the ranks of death row inmates awaiting execution.
Or maybe they'd be hung in public on the streets of Gilead.
So, in short, the Senator is pro-choice but wishes the practice would be "safe but rare".
As for the so-called "moralists" among the religious elite, hey, when you apologize completely for burning people at the stake for "heresy", when you confess you were wrong to support slavery, wrong to oppose the right to vote for women, African Americans, and working slobs who didn't own property, that you are and were wrong to oppose allowing workers to unionize, that you were wrong to oppose Martin Luther King Jr and desegregation, that you were wrong to oppose the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts of 1964-1965 (hey, Jerry Falwell, I'm talking to you), that you were wrong to oppose the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, then maybe the "secular relativistic left" will give you and your ideas a hearing.
Until then, take your moral absolution and shove it.
Market Based Reforms
Hmmm. Another mine tragedy. In West Virginia. Again. Two more dead.
Bet there's a dandy "market based reform" just waiting to be implemented here, to ensure greater mine safety.
Bet there's a dandy "market based reform" just waiting to be implemented here, to ensure greater mine safety.
Friday, January 20, 2006
God's Own Circus
Wayward Christian Soldiers
By CHARLES MARSH
Published: January 20, 2006
Charlottesville, Va.
IN the past several years, American evangelicals, and I am one of them, have amassed greater political power than at any time in our history. But at what cost to our witness and the integrity of our message?
Recently, I took a few days to reread the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war. That period, from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2003, is not one I will remember fondly. Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president's war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine.
Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta, whose weekly sermons are seen by millions of television viewers, led the charge with particular fervor. "We should offer to serve the war effort in any way possible," said Mr. Stanley, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. "God battles with people who oppose him, who fight against him and his followers." In an article carried by the convention's Baptist Press news service, a missionary wrote that "American foreign policy and military might have opened an opportunity for the Gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."
As if working from a slate of evangelical talking points, both Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of Billy Graham, and Marvin Olasky, the editor of the conservative World magazine and a former advisor to President Bush on faith-based policy, echoed these sentiments, claiming that the American invasion of Iraq would create exciting new prospects for proselytizing Muslims. Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the hugely popular "Left Behind" series, spoke of Iraq as "a focal point of end-time events," whose special role in the earth's final days will become clear after invasion, conquest and reconstruction. For his part, Jerry Falwell boasted that "God is pro-war" in the title of an essay he wrote in 2004.
The war sermons rallied the evangelical congregations behind the invasion of Iraq. An astonishing 87 percent of all white evangelical Christians in the United States supported the president's decision in April 2003. Recent polls indicate that 68 percent of white evangelicals continue to support the war. But what surprised me, looking at these sermons nearly three years later, was how little attention they paid to actual Christian moral doctrine. Some tried to square the American invasion with Christian "just war" theory, but such efforts could never quite reckon with the criterion that force must only be used as a last resort. As a result, many ministers dismissed the theory as no longer relevant.
Some preachers tried to link Saddam Hussein with wicked King Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical fame, but these arguments depended on esoteric interpretations of the Old Testament book of II Kings and could not easily be reduced to the kinds of catchy phrases that are projected onto video screens in vast evangelical churches. The single common theme among the war sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God's will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply.
Such sentiments are a far cry from those expressed in the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. More than 2,300 evangelical leaders from 150 countries signed that statement, the most significant milestone in the movement's history. Convened by Billy Graham and led by John Stott, the revered Anglican evangelical priest and writer, the signatories affirmed the global character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that "the church is the community of God's people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology."
On this page, David Brooks correctly noted that if evangelicals elected a pope, it would most likely be Mr. Stott, who is the author of more than 40 books on evangelical theology and Christian devotion. Unlike the Pope John Paul II, who said that invading Iraq would violate Catholic moral teaching and threaten "the fate of humanity," or even Pope Benedict XVI, who has said there were "not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq," Mr. Stott did not speak publicly on the war. But in a recent interview, he shared with me his abiding concerns.
"Privately, in the days preceding the invasion, I had hoped that no action would be taken without United Nations authorization," he told me. "I believed then and now that the American and British governments erred in proceeding without United Nations approval." Reverend Stott referred me to "War and Rumors of War, " a chapter from his 1999 book, "New Issues Facing Christians Today," as the best account of his position. In that essay he wrote that the Christian community's primary mission must be "to hunger for righteousness, to pursue peace, to forbear revenge, to love enemies, in other words, to be marked by the cross."
What will it take for evangelicals in the United States to recognize our mistaken loyalty? We have increasingly isolated ourselves from the shared faith of the global Church, and there is no denying that our Faustian bargain for access and power has undermined the credibility of our moral and evangelistic witness in the world. The Hebrew prophets might call us to repentance, but repentance is a tough demand for a people utterly convinced of their righteousness.
Charles Marsh, a professor of religion at the University of Virginia, is the author of "The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today."
From The Rainmaker:
Matt Damon's first year lawyer character, Rudy Baylor, to Jon Voight's slick, rich lawyer character, Leo F. Drummond:
"I'm just wondering, do you even remember when you first sold out?"
Stanley, Fallwell, Graham, Olasky and LaHaye are sell-outs. They're not Christians. They're conservative hacks, dressed up to look like Christians. Unfortunately, they come from a long, infamous lineage of pastoral elites who have always cowtowed to the conservative elite, embracing slavery, segregation, nationalism and homophobia as the situation has warranted. Now when they speak about matters of war, gay rights, and tax policy they expect to be taken seriously. By too many congregants I suspect they are.
But not by this Christian.
By CHARLES MARSH
Published: January 20, 2006
Charlottesville, Va.
IN the past several years, American evangelicals, and I am one of them, have amassed greater political power than at any time in our history. But at what cost to our witness and the integrity of our message?
Recently, I took a few days to reread the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war. That period, from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2003, is not one I will remember fondly. Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president's war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine.
Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta, whose weekly sermons are seen by millions of television viewers, led the charge with particular fervor. "We should offer to serve the war effort in any way possible," said Mr. Stanley, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. "God battles with people who oppose him, who fight against him and his followers." In an article carried by the convention's Baptist Press news service, a missionary wrote that "American foreign policy and military might have opened an opportunity for the Gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."
As if working from a slate of evangelical talking points, both Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of Billy Graham, and Marvin Olasky, the editor of the conservative World magazine and a former advisor to President Bush on faith-based policy, echoed these sentiments, claiming that the American invasion of Iraq would create exciting new prospects for proselytizing Muslims. Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the hugely popular "Left Behind" series, spoke of Iraq as "a focal point of end-time events," whose special role in the earth's final days will become clear after invasion, conquest and reconstruction. For his part, Jerry Falwell boasted that "God is pro-war" in the title of an essay he wrote in 2004.
The war sermons rallied the evangelical congregations behind the invasion of Iraq. An astonishing 87 percent of all white evangelical Christians in the United States supported the president's decision in April 2003. Recent polls indicate that 68 percent of white evangelicals continue to support the war. But what surprised me, looking at these sermons nearly three years later, was how little attention they paid to actual Christian moral doctrine. Some tried to square the American invasion with Christian "just war" theory, but such efforts could never quite reckon with the criterion that force must only be used as a last resort. As a result, many ministers dismissed the theory as no longer relevant.
Some preachers tried to link Saddam Hussein with wicked King Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical fame, but these arguments depended on esoteric interpretations of the Old Testament book of II Kings and could not easily be reduced to the kinds of catchy phrases that are projected onto video screens in vast evangelical churches. The single common theme among the war sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God's will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply.
Such sentiments are a far cry from those expressed in the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. More than 2,300 evangelical leaders from 150 countries signed that statement, the most significant milestone in the movement's history. Convened by Billy Graham and led by John Stott, the revered Anglican evangelical priest and writer, the signatories affirmed the global character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that "the church is the community of God's people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology."
On this page, David Brooks correctly noted that if evangelicals elected a pope, it would most likely be Mr. Stott, who is the author of more than 40 books on evangelical theology and Christian devotion. Unlike the Pope John Paul II, who said that invading Iraq would violate Catholic moral teaching and threaten "the fate of humanity," or even Pope Benedict XVI, who has said there were "not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq," Mr. Stott did not speak publicly on the war. But in a recent interview, he shared with me his abiding concerns.
"Privately, in the days preceding the invasion, I had hoped that no action would be taken without United Nations authorization," he told me. "I believed then and now that the American and British governments erred in proceeding without United Nations approval." Reverend Stott referred me to "War and Rumors of War, " a chapter from his 1999 book, "New Issues Facing Christians Today," as the best account of his position. In that essay he wrote that the Christian community's primary mission must be "to hunger for righteousness, to pursue peace, to forbear revenge, to love enemies, in other words, to be marked by the cross."
What will it take for evangelicals in the United States to recognize our mistaken loyalty? We have increasingly isolated ourselves from the shared faith of the global Church, and there is no denying that our Faustian bargain for access and power has undermined the credibility of our moral and evangelistic witness in the world. The Hebrew prophets might call us to repentance, but repentance is a tough demand for a people utterly convinced of their righteousness.
Charles Marsh, a professor of religion at the University of Virginia, is the author of "The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today."
From The Rainmaker:
Matt Damon's first year lawyer character, Rudy Baylor, to Jon Voight's slick, rich lawyer character, Leo F. Drummond:
"I'm just wondering, do you even remember when you first sold out?"
Stanley, Fallwell, Graham, Olasky and LaHaye are sell-outs. They're not Christians. They're conservative hacks, dressed up to look like Christians. Unfortunately, they come from a long, infamous lineage of pastoral elites who have always cowtowed to the conservative elite, embracing slavery, segregation, nationalism and homophobia as the situation has warranted. Now when they speak about matters of war, gay rights, and tax policy they expect to be taken seriously. By too many congregants I suspect they are.
But not by this Christian.
Must be time for another bloggers' ethics panel
From Atrios:
Tweety
The guardians of our elite discourse.
MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I've seen everything else but that. I just-
IMUS: No, I haven't seen it. Why would I want to see that?
MATTHEWS: I don't know. No opinion on that. I haven't seen it either, so-
IMUS: So they were-it was out when I was in New Mexico and-it doesn't resonate with real cowboys who I know.
MATTHEWS: Yeah-
IMUS: But then, maybe there's stuff going on on the ranch that I don't know about. Not on my ranch, but you know-
MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who's on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]-what's he call it?-he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That's his name for the movie.
IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain...
Thank God Matthews and Imus are credentialled members of the media. Thank God for the wonderful Michael Savage.
Sounds like it's time for another one of those "blogger ethics panels".
Tweety
The guardians of our elite discourse.
MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I've seen everything else but that. I just-
IMUS: No, I haven't seen it. Why would I want to see that?
MATTHEWS: I don't know. No opinion on that. I haven't seen it either, so-
IMUS: So they were-it was out when I was in New Mexico and-it doesn't resonate with real cowboys who I know.
MATTHEWS: Yeah-
IMUS: But then, maybe there's stuff going on on the ranch that I don't know about. Not on my ranch, but you know-
MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who's on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]-what's he call it?-he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That's his name for the movie.
IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain...
Thank God Matthews and Imus are credentialled members of the media. Thank God for the wonderful Michael Savage.
Sounds like it's time for another one of those "blogger ethics panels".
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Losing the Alito's?
Brooksie chimes in on the idea that the Dems are wandering the political wilderness because they lost the "Sam Alito" types, you know, the white ethnics.
Well, I don't know. The Sam Alito's of Trenton (my hometown) might have been voting Dem when they were younger, back in America's "Golden Age", before desegregation, but the Dems, if memory serves me correctly, were also getting smoked election after election in NJ during that time, too. Jersey was a nice, red, Republican state for decades.
Not no more.
Republican Dewey won the state in 1948, Ike both times he ran in 1952 and 1956. Kennedy and then Johnson carried the state for the Dems in 1960 and 1964, but from 1968 to 1988, the Republican standard bearer won the state, with votes closely paralleling that of the nation as a whole. Dems have won it ever since, by 7 points in 2004, when that "liberal" Kerry ran.
And oh, the governor is a Dem as are the state's two U.S. senators, and as is the state legislature.
Maybe the Dems have lost their "Alito's" to the Republicans in NJ, but they're winning anyway.
Well, I don't know. The Sam Alito's of Trenton (my hometown) might have been voting Dem when they were younger, back in America's "Golden Age", before desegregation, but the Dems, if memory serves me correctly, were also getting smoked election after election in NJ during that time, too. Jersey was a nice, red, Republican state for decades.
Not no more.
Republican Dewey won the state in 1948, Ike both times he ran in 1952 and 1956. Kennedy and then Johnson carried the state for the Dems in 1960 and 1964, but from 1968 to 1988, the Republican standard bearer won the state, with votes closely paralleling that of the nation as a whole. Dems have won it ever since, by 7 points in 2004, when that "liberal" Kerry ran.
And oh, the governor is a Dem as are the state's two U.S. senators, and as is the state legislature.
Maybe the Dems have lost their "Alito's" to the Republicans in NJ, but they're winning anyway.
Nuking Up
I know I'm supposed to be a dutiful American and Upholder of the Supremecy of Western Values, being a white, Christian-bred, Jersey-born guy and all, but I can't help but think that the U.S. and its "allies" are being just a tad bit hypocritical in their reactions when nations like Iran and North Korea pursue nuclear technology, when, after all, we have the stuff, too. And we've used it.
Does it occur to anyone that the only legitimate anti-proliferation policy is to completely disarm ourselves first? If we didn't have them, it seems to me we would be in a much more credible position to take whatever action was necessary against a country seeking to establish the means to build nuclear weaponry.
Until then, I don't see why it isn't in a country's best interests to arm themselves with whatever technology and means is available.
Of course, maybe I'm just naive, and that given the technology and science that is accessible, total nuclear disarmament is impossible--if a country wants nuclear weapons there will always be the science and the means to acquire them. On the other hand, unlike other uncoventional weapons--like biological and chemical weapons--nuclear technology is pretty limited in the effort it takes to construct a nuclear weapon. It can't just be done under the cover of night in a garage. There's a considerable amount of work and construction that goes on to make them deliverable.
But in any event, I don't see the justification for the West's position here.
Does it occur to anyone that the only legitimate anti-proliferation policy is to completely disarm ourselves first? If we didn't have them, it seems to me we would be in a much more credible position to take whatever action was necessary against a country seeking to establish the means to build nuclear weaponry.
Until then, I don't see why it isn't in a country's best interests to arm themselves with whatever technology and means is available.
Of course, maybe I'm just naive, and that given the technology and science that is accessible, total nuclear disarmament is impossible--if a country wants nuclear weapons there will always be the science and the means to acquire them. On the other hand, unlike other uncoventional weapons--like biological and chemical weapons--nuclear technology is pretty limited in the effort it takes to construct a nuclear weapon. It can't just be done under the cover of night in a garage. There's a considerable amount of work and construction that goes on to make them deliverable.
But in any event, I don't see the justification for the West's position here.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
What I Wish I Had Said
Lance Mannion:
Hollywood's Republicanism as expressed in its movies and certainly its Right Wing Authoritarianism are NOT conservative.
But then even when Republicanism was a lot more sympathetic to traditional Conservativism than it is now, it was never truly conservative because of its faith and championing of unfettered Free Market Capitalism, which is a progressive force not a conservative one.
Progressive is not synonymous with Liberal or with goodness and niceness.
Exhibit Number One: Shopping malls.
What most contemporary Republicans call conservative in themselves is really just authoritarianism. There is nothing conservative about that because of how easily them exempt themselves from the rules they lay down for others to follow.
Divorce is wrong, except mine which was necessary and proves my last marriage didn't count.
Mothers should stay home and take care of the kids, except my wife who is bringing in 6 figures and so we can hire a really good nanny who is not a person in her own right, merely the incarnation of our love for our kids, and so we get credit for being involved parents through her.
Homosexuality is wrong and gay marriage a threat to society, except for my brother and his partner, who aren't really gay.
Duty comes before self, which is why your kids should be proud to die in Iraq but my kids have the opportunity to go to law school so leave them alone.
Etc.
All the supposed "traditional" values the Right preaches are rules for keeping the plebes in line.
Real conservatives do not exempt themselves from the rules. In fact, they believe in holding themselves to a stricter standard---real conservatives believe that it is the job of the elite and the privileged to set an example not just to make rules.
See this fine post by Shakespeare's Sister.
Movies are Republican in the way they celebrate the joys of Free Market capitalism.
They are Right Wing in the way the champion the arrival of an authoritarian strong man to save us.
But the wingers are right. Hollywood movies are not conservative.
No more than the wingers are themselves.
Hollywood's Republicanism as expressed in its movies and certainly its Right Wing Authoritarianism are NOT conservative.
But then even when Republicanism was a lot more sympathetic to traditional Conservativism than it is now, it was never truly conservative because of its faith and championing of unfettered Free Market Capitalism, which is a progressive force not a conservative one.
Progressive is not synonymous with Liberal or with goodness and niceness.
Exhibit Number One: Shopping malls.
What most contemporary Republicans call conservative in themselves is really just authoritarianism. There is nothing conservative about that because of how easily them exempt themselves from the rules they lay down for others to follow.
Divorce is wrong, except mine which was necessary and proves my last marriage didn't count.
Mothers should stay home and take care of the kids, except my wife who is bringing in 6 figures and so we can hire a really good nanny who is not a person in her own right, merely the incarnation of our love for our kids, and so we get credit for being involved parents through her.
Homosexuality is wrong and gay marriage a threat to society, except for my brother and his partner, who aren't really gay.
Duty comes before self, which is why your kids should be proud to die in Iraq but my kids have the opportunity to go to law school so leave them alone.
Etc.
All the supposed "traditional" values the Right preaches are rules for keeping the plebes in line.
Real conservatives do not exempt themselves from the rules. In fact, they believe in holding themselves to a stricter standard---real conservatives believe that it is the job of the elite and the privileged to set an example not just to make rules.
See this fine post by Shakespeare's Sister.
Movies are Republican in the way they celebrate the joys of Free Market capitalism.
They are Right Wing in the way the champion the arrival of an authoritarian strong man to save us.
But the wingers are right. Hollywood movies are not conservative.
No more than the wingers are themselves.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Strict Constructivism Revisited
I've been thinking about the Weekly Standard column by Harvey Mansfield I referenced yesterday. In it, Mansfield, in defending the Administration's extralegal authority on wiretapping (and presumably whatever else the administration might feel inclined to execute), basically says that "the law is not enough" when carrying out the executive's powers.
Specifically, I was wondering how this fits with, or contradicts, that old conservative standby, the "principle" of "strict constructivism". You know that one, don't you? Strict constructivism is a sort of "letter of the law" construct conservatives rely on in attempting to deny basic Constitutional protections, like the right to privacy, which conservatives claim, can't be found explicitly in the Constitutional text, and which, as a result, should not be used as a basis for making judicial decisions or interpreting congressional legislation or state actions.
But Scalito/Cheney's "unitary executive theory" basically seems to suggest that the law is pretty open to interpretation, at least by the administration, and should mean whatever the executive thinks it should mean. This seems to fly directly in the face of "strict constructivism" as conservatives have advocated it.
Now, that conservatives would hold contradictory, mutually exclusive "principles", pulling out one, while discarding the other, as the situation warrants, probably wouldn't surprise anyone here.
All the same, what do you think of the Mansfield "law is not enough" line and the previously inerrant and infallable conservative "principle" of "strict constructivism?" Consistent? If so, how?
Specifically, I was wondering how this fits with, or contradicts, that old conservative standby, the "principle" of "strict constructivism". You know that one, don't you? Strict constructivism is a sort of "letter of the law" construct conservatives rely on in attempting to deny basic Constitutional protections, like the right to privacy, which conservatives claim, can't be found explicitly in the Constitutional text, and which, as a result, should not be used as a basis for making judicial decisions or interpreting congressional legislation or state actions.
But Scalito/Cheney's "unitary executive theory" basically seems to suggest that the law is pretty open to interpretation, at least by the administration, and should mean whatever the executive thinks it should mean. This seems to fly directly in the face of "strict constructivism" as conservatives have advocated it.
Now, that conservatives would hold contradictory, mutually exclusive "principles", pulling out one, while discarding the other, as the situation warrants, probably wouldn't surprise anyone here.
All the same, what do you think of the Mansfield "law is not enough" line and the previously inerrant and infallable conservative "principle" of "strict constructivism?" Consistent? If so, how?
Monday, January 09, 2006
First the Law, then Elections
It may be one thing for conservatives to argue that law and policy should be more conservative. It's quite another to basically contend that law itself is irrelevant, which is what many of Bush's backers in the intelligencia think.
Steve Gillard picked this up from Glenn Greenwald, who picked this pro-Bush screed up from Harvey Mansfield writing in the Weekly Standard:
Enemies, however, not merely violate but oppose the law. They oppose our law and want to replace it with theirs. To counter enemies, a republic must have and use force adequate to a greater threat than comes from criminals, who may be quite patriotic if not public-spirited, and have nothing against the law when applied to others besides themselves. But enemies, being extra-legal, need to be faced with extra-legal force. . . .
To confirm the extra-legal character of the presidency, the Constitution has him take an oath not to execute the laws but to execute the office of president, which is larger. . .
Yet the rule of law is not enough to run a government. Any set of standing rules is liable to encounter an emergency requiring an exception from the rule or an improvised response when no rule exists. In Machiavelli's terms, ordinary power needs to be supplemented or corrected by the extraordinary power of a prince, using wise discretion..
In rejecting monarchy because it was unsafe, republicans had forgotten that it might also be effective. With one person in charge we can have both secrecy and responsibility. Here we have the reason that American society, in imitation of American government, makes so much use of one-man rule. Much present-day thinking puts civil liberties and the rule of law to the fore and forgets to consider emergencies when liberties are dangerous and law does not apply.
Greenwald writes:
Just to recap: The President is "larger" than the law. The "rule of law is not enough to run a Government." We must remember that monarchy is "effective" and therefore, in times of "war" (like now), we must embrace "one-man rule." In sum, in emergencies like the one we have now and will have for the indefinite future, the "law does not apply."
I do not believe that very many Americans, once they are made aware that this is really what is being done, will accept it. I posted a little bit about the article here, but the article on its own makes the case better than anything anyone can add.
It's difficult to overstate just how bizarre things are getting. If the "law" can be set aside or overridden, "elections" probably can, too. That's the next thing, isn't it? Diebold machines may not be enough to comfort the angst of right-wing politicians intent on creating a new order from the ruins of the World Trade Center buildings.
Steve Gillard picked this up from Glenn Greenwald, who picked this pro-Bush screed up from Harvey Mansfield writing in the Weekly Standard:
Enemies, however, not merely violate but oppose the law. They oppose our law and want to replace it with theirs. To counter enemies, a republic must have and use force adequate to a greater threat than comes from criminals, who may be quite patriotic if not public-spirited, and have nothing against the law when applied to others besides themselves. But enemies, being extra-legal, need to be faced with extra-legal force. . . .
To confirm the extra-legal character of the presidency, the Constitution has him take an oath not to execute the laws but to execute the office of president, which is larger. . .
Yet the rule of law is not enough to run a government. Any set of standing rules is liable to encounter an emergency requiring an exception from the rule or an improvised response when no rule exists. In Machiavelli's terms, ordinary power needs to be supplemented or corrected by the extraordinary power of a prince, using wise discretion..
In rejecting monarchy because it was unsafe, republicans had forgotten that it might also be effective. With one person in charge we can have both secrecy and responsibility. Here we have the reason that American society, in imitation of American government, makes so much use of one-man rule. Much present-day thinking puts civil liberties and the rule of law to the fore and forgets to consider emergencies when liberties are dangerous and law does not apply.
Greenwald writes:
Just to recap: The President is "larger" than the law. The "rule of law is not enough to run a Government." We must remember that monarchy is "effective" and therefore, in times of "war" (like now), we must embrace "one-man rule." In sum, in emergencies like the one we have now and will have for the indefinite future, the "law does not apply."
I do not believe that very many Americans, once they are made aware that this is really what is being done, will accept it. I posted a little bit about the article here, but the article on its own makes the case better than anything anyone can add.
It's difficult to overstate just how bizarre things are getting. If the "law" can be set aside or overridden, "elections" probably can, too. That's the next thing, isn't it? Diebold machines may not be enough to comfort the angst of right-wing politicians intent on creating a new order from the ruins of the World Trade Center buildings.
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Sunday Night Quarterback: Special Wild Card Weekend Edition
Redskins 17
Tampa Bay 10
Yeah, 120 yards of offense, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, shut up. They won. That's what you need to do in this league, at this time of the year. Find a way to win. I'm concerned about Portis' shoulder...hope he'll be at something resembling full strength in Seattle. What? You don't think they have a prayer against the Seahawks? I didn't think they had much of a chance against the Bucs. The task against Sean Alexander and Matt Hasselback will be enormous. They'll need to force a lot of mistakes on defense, get some turnovers, and keep Sean Taylor in the game without spitting on anybody.
The Rogue Progressive and the Trackball of Truth guy will have to suffer through another week of Redskins mania.
Pic: 'Hawks
Jags 3
Patriots 28
Jags played 'em close for a half. But it went downhill fast after that. Turned this game off in the third quarter.
Pats go to Denver next week. Pic: Denver
Panthers 23
Giants 0
I was listening to Mike Francesca this morning. One of the things he pointed out was that in Saturday's games, the rookie QB (or QB starting his first playoff game) lost. He said to watch out for that on Sunday, too. Know what? The Man was right.
Next week, Panthers at Chicago. Pic: Panthers
Steelers 31
Bengals 17
Carson Palmer went down with a knee injury on the second Bengal play from scrimmage. Pitt pulled off a neat trick play where Antwaan Randal El took the snap, threw a lateral to Rothelisberger, who through a TD to someone named Cedric Wilson.
Next week, Pittsburgh at Colts. Pic: Colts
Oh, yeah, Vince Young has declared for the NFL draft.
Tampa Bay 10
Yeah, 120 yards of offense, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, shut up. They won. That's what you need to do in this league, at this time of the year. Find a way to win. I'm concerned about Portis' shoulder...hope he'll be at something resembling full strength in Seattle. What? You don't think they have a prayer against the Seahawks? I didn't think they had much of a chance against the Bucs. The task against Sean Alexander and Matt Hasselback will be enormous. They'll need to force a lot of mistakes on defense, get some turnovers, and keep Sean Taylor in the game without spitting on anybody.
The Rogue Progressive and the Trackball of Truth guy will have to suffer through another week of Redskins mania.
Pic: 'Hawks
Jags 3
Patriots 28
Jags played 'em close for a half. But it went downhill fast after that. Turned this game off in the third quarter.
Pats go to Denver next week. Pic: Denver
Panthers 23
Giants 0
I was listening to Mike Francesca this morning. One of the things he pointed out was that in Saturday's games, the rookie QB (or QB starting his first playoff game) lost. He said to watch out for that on Sunday, too. Know what? The Man was right.
Next week, Panthers at Chicago. Pic: Panthers
Steelers 31
Bengals 17
Carson Palmer went down with a knee injury on the second Bengal play from scrimmage. Pitt pulled off a neat trick play where Antwaan Randal El took the snap, threw a lateral to Rothelisberger, who through a TD to someone named Cedric Wilson.
Next week, Pittsburgh at Colts. Pic: Colts
Oh, yeah, Vince Young has declared for the NFL draft.
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