The Republican Party is a coalition between Christians and people with libertarian economic views. Political pundits are so used to this that they think it’s natural for these two philosophies to go together. In fact the opposite is true; more libertarian people are less religious. As more Christian voters with socialist economic views join the Republican party, candidates who support libertarian economic policies will no longer win primaries, and suddenly the platforms of the two parties will undergo a radical shift. The Republican Party will become the party of religious socialists, and the Democratic Party will be the party of secular libertarians. The good news is that this will result in the leftist wing being kicked out of the Democratic Party. The bad news is that the Republican Party will probably command more votes than the Democratic Party and we will see the country become more socialist, and at the same time abortion will be outlawed, prayer re-introduced to the public schools, etc.
This is the future and it is inevitable.
Well, there is a point there, obscured though it may be by the scare-word "socialist." It would be helpful to know what the author means by "socialist." I don't know many Christians who'd qualify under a commonsense definition, but if by "socialist" he means people who believe that the government has a duty, broadly speaking, to make sure that the inequalities in society don't become too great, and that there's a social safety net, then yes, Christians are generally "socialist."
I doubt there will be the kind of realignment he predicts, mostly because Christians who vote Republican either have no problem with free-market economics as the GOP's libertarians preach it, or they swallow their concerns because issues like abortion, gay marriage, religious liberty, affirmative action and so forth mean more to them than economics. (Don't ask whether or not the GOP will actually do much of anything about those social issues once they're in power; the social conservatives provide a big chunk of the votes, but the business conservatives tend to get the payoff.) Similarly, the Democrats could be making big gains this fall if they'd go all big-tent on social issues. They won't, because their social issues define them.
The only likely thing that could really realign the parties would be a major economic crisis, I think -- something that made economic policy the driving force in US politics. Absent that, I think we're going to have the status quo for some time, with changes around the margins.
UPDATE: Ross Douthat observes "the fundamental problem with the whole post-McGovern Democratic strategy, which has been to build a coalition of upper-middle-class professionals, the poor and minority groups, and enough working and middle-class voters to push them over the top (see The Emerging Democratic Majority). It could work, and indeed it almost has at times—but it’s being persistently sabotaged by the fact that a large and growing chunk of its smart, wealthy, well-educated base just can’t stand religion, and simply won’t let their political party get right with God, or at least the voters who believe in him. As Sullivan says, “[T]hese Democrats view the party’s interest in talking to religious voters as a sure betrayal of the party’s principles.” And they have enough money, megaphones, and high-speed Internet connections to make sure that America knows it."
When's the last time you read the book of Proverbs? Me, probably not since I was a kid. But at Matthew's school, they have a reading schedule from the Bible at night. Parents reading to their kids. They're first graders, so every night, a chapter of Proverbs.
Can I just tell you that the Proverbs writer needed an editor. This is what Proverbs is like:
The wise man speaks pleasantly about his neighbors, But the fool slanders them without remorse.
OK, fine. But three verses down:
Pleasant words about the neighbors issue forth from the mouth of the wise, But the fool is good for nothing but slander.
And you're thinking, hmm. And then you come across:
The neighbors? If you're smart, your lips will drip honey about them; But if you're a dumb guy, not so much.
On and on like this. Somebody was padding this thing out. I'm a writer, I know that trick. I'm just sayin'.
The avuncular Bob Schieffer just signed off as anchor for the CBS Evening News, handing the reins to Katie Couric. Boy oh boy, what a class act he is. I'm going to miss him. My desktop TV only gets one cable news channel (CNN) and one network broadcast channel (CBS), so I've been stuck with Bob for the duration. It was a total pleasure. Now I've got Katie on my screen for the duration. Not so happy about that.
Pope Benedict has cancelled the Vatican's Christmas pop concert.
“Pope Ratzinger prefers Mozart and Bach to 'pop' music and thus, after 12 years, the traditional Vatican Christmas concert comes to an end,” the daily La Stampa said.
“It is impossible not to notice a change under the new pontiff,” the ANSA news agency said.
“Benedict XVI is a very sober pope and is not inclined toward variety shows. He is more concerned about leading the faith of Catholics to its spiritual essence.”
Here's a wonderful story about a Christian couple who left their home in Oregon and relocated with their kids to New Orleans after Katrina to be there to minister to the broken and broken-hearted. Jim Louviere and his wife Michele were doing well in Oregon at the church they founded. They now live in a battered trailer behind an abandoned strip mall. They are, effectively, missionaries. Excerpt:
Jim Louviere, a dark-haired, deep-voiced man, also works to spread the church's help and its message, sending mobile relief trailers to outlying neighborhoods and setting up tents that might one day grow into bricks-and-mortar churches.
Meanwhile, his wife -- a dynamic woman who talks about how vital it is to "love up" those who suffer -- races through her days helping hurricane survivors cope and training other counselors and student interns to do the same. She says it's tough, if not impossible, to stem the grief.
Not a day goes by when she doesn't talk to clients in pain because they lost a loved one in the storm or the continuing psychological and physical aftermath. Two weeks ago, a fellow church member killed himself. He and his family had lost everything when their St. Bernard Parish home flooded last August; last week, the man's brother-in-law was slain inside his home as he worked to repair the flood damage. Michele Louviere struggles to console the family.
Another newly homeless family recently learned that their losses will multiply if the father isn't fortunate enough to get a liver transplant; he's dying.
"You can't say, 'You're gonna be OK,' " Michele Louviere says, "because they're not. I've never seen the levels of grief I see here.
"Everybody," she says, "is hurting."
I'm proud to be able to say I know them. Michele and I were in the same class in high school. She was so effortlessly kind to everyone. And now she and her family are doing something heroically selfless. It's humbling to think about.
I re-read Rumsfeld's American Legion speech this morning, and it's just horrible, an embarrassment, for all the reasons Fred Kaplan says. I said it was a "disgrace" yesterday, and I mean just that. The very idea that the Secretary of Defense, given the calamitous way he's handled Iraq, has the nerve to parachute in and paint his critics as cowards and appeasers, and the news media an America-hating fifth column, is just beyond the pale.
But enough about him. What about Bush? Here's the White House transcript of his speech to the American Legion. It was a much better speech, but then again, it would have been hard to have done worse. This is what caught my eye:
In the space of a single morning, it became clear that the calm we saw in the Middle East was only a mirage. We realized that years of pursuing stability to promote peace had left us with neither. Instead, the lack of freedom in the Middle East made the region an incubator for terrorist movements.
So we push for democracy, and bring to power a Shia theocracy in Iraq as a prelude to a civil war. And we bring to power Hamas among the Palestinians. Is it really "the lack of freedom" that has incubated terror there? Why is it that many other nations lived, and do live, without freedom, yet are not tempted by a psychotic religious vision? Why is it that giving "freedom" to people in this society only institutionalizes their pathologies? Maybe the lack of "freedom" is only tangential to the real problem.
The freedom agenda is based upon our deepest ideals and our vital interests. Americans believe that every person, of every religion, on every continent, has the right to determine his or her own destiny. We believe that freedom is a gift from an almighty God, beyond any power on Earth to take away. (Applause.) And we also know, by history and by logic, that promoting democracy is the surest way to build security. Democracies don't attack each other or threaten the peace. Governments accountable to the voters focus on building roads and schools -- not weapons of mass destruction. Young people who have a say in their future are less likely to search for meaning in extremism. Citizens who can join a peaceful political party are less likely to join a terrorist organization. Dissidents with the freedom to protest around the clock are less likely to blow themselves up during rush hour. And nations that commit to freedom for their people will not support terrorists -- they will join us in defeating them. (Applause.)
So America has committed its influence in the world to advancing freedom and democracy as the great alternatives to repression and radicalism. We will take the side of democratic leaders and reformers across the Middle East. We will support the voices of tolerance and moderation in the Muslim world. We stand with the mothers and fathers in every culture who want to see their children grow up in a caring and peaceful world. And by supporting the cause of freedom in a vital region, we'll make our children and our grandchildren more secure.
Lord have mercy, will he not observe that to more than a few people in the Muslim world, freedom does not mean the same thing it does to Americans. Freedom means freedom to live as they believe God has commanded them to live. Democracy means electing people who will implement God's law, as they understand it. This crazy hubris, believing that everybody in the world wants the same thing as Americans, is wrecking us. The president said today:
The freedom agenda is based upon our deepest ideals and our vital interests. Americans believe that every person, of every religion, on every continent, has the right to determine his or her own destiny. We believe that freedom is a gift from an almighty God, beyond any power on Earth to take awa
y.
We don't believe that for one minute. We believe that every person has the right to determine, in a political sense, his own destiny in the same way that feminists believe women should have the choice to work or to stay home: we only believe it insofar as they'll choose our way of doing things. I think it's probably true that we hold liberal democracy to be divinely mandated. The conservative scholar Claes Ryn does a first-rate critique of this belief here. Excerpt:
This mode of thinking is in marked contrast to the old Christian tradition. Christianity has always stressed the imperfect, sinful nature of man and warned against placing too much faith in man made political institutions and measures. Augustine (354–430) is only one of the earliest and least sanguine of many Christian thinkers over the centuries who would have rejected out of hand the idea that mankind is destined for great progress and political perfection, to say nothing about the possibility of salvation through politics. Although Christianity has stressed that rulers must serve the common good and behave in a humane manner, it has been reluctant to endorse any particular form of government as suited to all peoples and all historical circumstances.
The president continues:
The path to that day will be uphill and uneven, but we can be confident of the outcome, because we know that the direction of history leads toward freedom.
There you have it: the Whig theory of history. The whole speech sounds as if it had been delivered three years ago. We are in trouble.
FYI, for your listening pleasure, I'll be giving a commentary on NPR's "All Things Considered" later this afternoon. I recorded it just now, and it will air sometime today, don't know exactly when. I waxed philosophical about what it's like to drive around a Dallas summer without air conditioning in your car. I kept the strangled screaming to a minimum.
UPDATE: Just caught the piece live. They edited it clumsily, so you might not have understood what I was talking about at one point. But NPR tells me they'll have it fixed for the re-feed. After 7:30 eastern, you can hear the commentary here.
We’re hearing a lot about this — Lou Dobbs runs a regular segment on it. I think the real war is on the working class, who are being priced out of jobs by floods of illegal immigrants. Of course, nobody much cares. In a modern meritocracy, all the articulate members of the working class — the kind of people who might organize, agitate, and make trouble — are siphoned off into colleges and law schools at an early age, to become members of the elite, agitating for elite interests. Those left behind can eat cake, or welfare — that seems to be the general attitude, certainly the elite attitude.
The lower-middle and middle classes really do seem to be hurting, though. I mean, I live among such people, and I hear about it. I don’t care how many feelgood pieces Larry Kudlow posts on NRO, telling us how wonderfully well the economy is doing. It may be doing fine by Larry over there on his gated private estate, but I’ve never heard so much grumbling down here on Main Street.
The following is not an original observation, but it’s one worth repeating: Much of the talk we hear from economists and government financial panjandrums nowadays treats the national economy as a thing in itself, to be egged on and expanded and caressed and cherished, without any concern for the actual citizens of this country. Sure, I’d rather live in a rich country than a poor one, and a healthy economy is a jolly good thing; but “expanding” is not necessarily synonymous with “healthy,” not for economies any more than for waistlines. A swelling economy is not ipso facto a good thing. It might lift all boats; or it might just lift a few and swamp the rest. It depends how things are organized. As Oliver Goldsmith noted: "Ill fares the land, to hast’ning ills a prey,Where wealth accumulates, and men decay." That’s about where we’re at, it seems to me. And no, it’s not a leftist remark; Goldsmith was a Tory.
Front page news here in Dallas yesterday: wages in north Texas are declining. Economists blame it on an influx of low-wage immigrant workers. How legal do you think they are? Yesterday I had a long conversation with a middle-class homeowner who recently left the Dallas area for up north. He said that he lived in a decent middle-class neighborhood north of the city. Ethnically mixed, which was fine by him, because everybody took care of their properties, and got alone fine. About five years ago, there began to be an influx of Latino immigrants. They started running businesses out of their rental houses. Almost overnight, there were cars parked all along the street, even in yards, which were piling up with junk. He assumes they were illegal, but can't prove it, and it wouldn't matter if he could, he said, because nobody in the city was going to do anything about it. Not even code enforcement.
He said he and his wife sold their house at a loss, just to keep from losing more money. They could see where the neighborhood was headed. He's a conservative Republican, but says he's sick of the multiculti left and the open-borders, big-business right. Nobody is speaking up for people like him, he said, and the media is bound and determined to portray them as racist. He said the issue never was having Hispanic neighbors, which is fine by him. The issue was having lawbreakers move in who had no respect for the traditions and practices of the neighborhood. And nobody in Washington or anywhere else giving a damn.
Interestingly, I also had a conversation with a very, VERY liberal activist reader here in Dallas yesterday. She lives in a mixed neighborhood not far from my own. She said she's sick of seeing all the illegals piling into her neighborhood, and of the
idea that if you want to speak critically about it, you are automatically suspected of harboring racist bigotry. This is a woman who has not been shy in letting me know over the past few years that she thinks I'd make a good Tonto for Attila the Hun. But she's had enough.
The good news, I guess, is that somebody has finally set up a Wikipedia page for Your Working Boy. The bad news is that it's factually incorrect. I'm not from Baton Rouge, but St. Francisville. I'm Gumby, dammit!
Over at Eunomia, Daniel Larison has a series of blogs on the subject of pessimism that made cheerfully gloomy me, um, happy. Like this quote:
Instead of blaming pessimism, perhaps we can learn from it. Rather than hiding from the ugliness of the world, perhaps we can discover how best to withstand it. As I noted above, pessimism’s critics have often assumed that it must issue in some sort of depression or resignation. But this assumption says more about the critics than about their targets. Who is it, exactly, that cannot bear a story unless guaranteed a happy ending? Pessimists themselves have often been anything but resigned. Indeed, they have taken it as their task to find a way to live with the conclusions they have arrived at, and to live well, sometimes even joyfully. If this cannot be true for all of us, it is not the pessimists who are to blame, but the problems they grapple with. -- Joshua Foa Dienstag, Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld gave a speech to the American Legion yesterday that I found simply disgraceful. I don't think the word is too strong, and here's why.
Here's part of the speech:
We need to face the following questions:
+ With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased? + Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists? + Can we truly afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply “law enforcement” problems, rather than fundamentally different threats, requiring fundamentally different approaches? + And can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America -- not the enemy -- is the real source of the world’s trouble?
These are central questions of our time. And we must face them.
Those are central questions, but who, exactly, is posing them? Who in this country, other than the Chomsky-Kos-Sheehan crowd, really believes that America is the real source of the world's trouble? Which serious person in American public life is proposing negotiating a separate peace with terrorists? The SecDef is setting up straw men to portray his critics, and critics of the way he and this administration have fought the Iraq War, as lily-livered Chamberlains. Prior to stating the above passage, he brought up the specter of 1938, and Hitler, just so the audience would get the message that either you're with this administration, or you're on the side of Islamo-Hitlers. Never mind that there are an increasing number of conservatives and others who are quite willing to fight the good fight against the Islamofascist menace, but who think Team Rummy has done so incompetently. It is possible to be a loyal soldier in the war on Islamist terror, and to dissent loyally from the present leadership.
Anyway, Rumsfeld goes on to say:
But this is still -- even in 2006 -- not well recognized or fully understood. It seems that in some quarters there is more of a focus on dividing our country, than acting with unity against the gathering threats.
We find ourselves in a strange time:
When a database search of America’s leading newspapers turns up 10 times as many mentions of one of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib who were punished for misconduct, than mentions of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror;
When a senior editor at Newsweek disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our Armed Forces as a “mercenary army”;
When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief [Note: this was actually former CNN president Eason Jordan] admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein’s crimes when he was in power so CNN could stay in Iraq; and
It is a time when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare, as “the gulag of our times.”
Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths, and distortions being told about our troops and about our country.
The struggle we are in is too important -- the consequences too severe -- to have the luxury of returning to the old mentality of “Blame America First.”
This is such clumsy, blame-the-messenger propaganda one can hardly believe that at this late stage in the Iraq War someone of Rumsfeld's intelligence and sophistication s
toops to using it. The news media, by bringing us reports of Bad Things Happening in Iraq, are lying and aiding and abetting the enemy. They hate America, even!
If you think about it, this speech is almost quaint in its ham-fistedness, it's red-meatiness, its complete disconnection from reality. Who is still persuaded by stuff like this? Anybody?
Though the Pew Center poll finds growing dissatisfaction (dillusionment?) of the Religious Right with the GOP, Jeremy Lott and Patrick Hynes say that religious conservatives are not likely to abandon the Republican Party:
The Democratic party elites cheer when regulators force Catholic charities to fund things the church considers immoral. They vote to curtail the freedom of conscience of pro-life pharmacists. They filibuster judicial appointees who do not hold to the interpretation of Ted Kennedy, senator, of the constitution-as-rubber-stamp for liberal causes. Worse, they compare religious rightists to Muslim terrorists ("Christianists") and warn that we have entered a new Dark Age. Garry Wills, the popular historian, called the 2004 election the end of the Enlightenment on American soil, and meant it.
The good folks who make up the religious right may not love the Republican party, but they know a threat when they see one. The modern Democratic party is hostile to their very existence. An embarrassment for the Deanified Democrats in the November mid-term elections would be a victory not for theocracy, but for enlightened self-interest.
This is precisely why I will probably end up holding my nose and voting Republican. I don't like the Republicans much these days. But as a religious conservative, I fear the Democrats.
A few years ago, when Matthew was a baby, the three of us went to Rome. Had a great time. The Italians made a fuss everywhere about Matthew, who was two and a half at the time. It was pretty much a cliche, actually, effusive Italians fussing over the bambino. It was unsettling, though, to see how few Italian babies there were on the street. You could see things like Prada babywear for sale, which sounds insane (and is insane), but hey, if you only have one child, you might well have the money for that sort of indulgence.
Well, Newsweek has a story out saying that this is a big global trend, and that even some Roman restaurants won't let you bring in children:
In Greece, as in much of the world, having kids is no longer a given among a growing swath of the population. "Never before has childlessness been a legitimate option for women and men in so many societies," says Catherine Hakim, who studies the phenomenon at the London School of Economics. In a rapid shift occurring in countries as disparate as Switzerland and Singapore, Canada and South Korea, young people are extending their child-free adulthood by postponing children until they are well into their 30s, or even 40s and beyond. [snip] The trend has spawned a new culture of childlessness. In Britain, there's a growing market for books such as "Child-Free and Loving It," which journalist Nicki Defago says she wrote "to let women deciding against children know that their feelings are perfectly normal."
But their feelings aren't perfectly normal. The overwhelming majority of people are still choosing to have children -- but only one child, or maybe two, lest it interfere with their lifestyle. This is what happens when "choice" becomes an absolute value, a development concomitant with a growing materialism and focus on the Self. As liberal thinker Philip Longman has pointed out so vividly -- like, here in "The Return of Patriarchy" and "The Liberal Baby Bust" -- when modern, progressive people choose not to have kids, or choose to have them at below replacement rates, the world of the future will belong to the religious conservatives -- Sacralists -- who still hold children to be a very great Good.
We can argue over and over about the morality of choosing childlessness, and I suspect we will. But in the long run, you can't wish away the fact that the choice not to have children is for most who make it a decision to sacrifice tomorrow for the sake of enjoying today. Get enough people who make that individual choice and you have the death of a nation. Of nations. For as the great German historian Oswald Spengler observed, when a people has to be persuaded that having children is a good idea, baby, it's over for them. As Mark Steyn observed, "A society that has no children has no future." And:
Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.
I'm not much for fiction, but I really want to read Claire Messud's "The Emperor's Children." Reading the Slate review brought to mind Donna Tartt's "The Secret History," which came out like, forever ago (1992, to be precise). I loved that book way back then. Wonder if I'd like it now. Wonder why it hasn't been made into a film?
I think we can all agree that the great unfilmed novel is "A Confederacy of Dunces," though Victor will no doubt have five different dissents, three of them sensible. But you know, I can't believe that the BBC hasn't made miniseries out of Robertson Davies' "Cornish Trilogy" and/or his "Deptford Trilogy." What wonderful books they are.
Anyway, anybody who's had time to read the Messud novel, let us know what you think. Also, how about your nomination for a Book They Should Make Into a Film?
In Frisco, a booming northern suburb of Dallas, a fifth-grade public school art teacher has been suspended from her job. Why? For taking her students on a field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art. There they were reportedly exposed to statues of naked people. And paintings involving the unclothed, without benefit of fig leaf or loin cloth. Some parents complained, and the oh-so-courageous principal suspended the teacher.
Just so you know, Frisco's not Hickburg. It's one of the most prosperous suburban towns in America. Unbelievable.
Well, that was fun. Not. John Mark Karr is not only a hairless sociopathic perv, but a big fat liar, as many people suspected even before Colorado taxpayers subsidized his first-class flight back home from Bangkok. But you know, I find it hard to imagine what else the Boulder DA's office could have done under the circumstances. Read what the DA said today. They weren't sure about Karr, but they had reason to suspect him, and felt compelled to move in after believing that he was about to molest a Thai girl with whom he'd become obsessed. This case reminds me of investigators who move in on suspected terrorist cells, even when the evidence is not as strong as they'd like, because they fear the cells are going to pull off a crime. Maybe I'm going too easy on the DA, I dunno. But I'm glad John Mark Karr is off the street, and, one hopes, headed to jail in Sonoma County on child porn charges.
Anyway, not a moment too soon the cablers have a new weird-sex-nut to obsess over: freaky-deak polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs, arrested today on charges related to his alleged arrangement of marriages to underage girls. Now, Jeffs crossed the legal and moral line if he's guilty of what he's being accused of, but let's consider polygamy among consenting adults for a second.
Sacralists have no trouble explaining why it's wrong. On what grounds, though, would naturalists show that it's wrong? If marriage is in its essence no more than a social and legal construct that confers certain benefites and obligations on parties to the marriage contract, why deny consenting adults the right to "plural marriage"? Especially if you think gays should have the right to marry? Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU, has said, "We have defended the right for individuals to engage in polygamy. We defend the freedom of choice for mature, consenting individuals."
There is compelling logic here. Seriously. If gay marriage is enshrined into law -- and it would be done so on the basis that 1) same-gender is not a legitimate legal barrier to marriage, and 2) marriage is a merely human construct that in infinitely malleable -- then on what basis do we draw the line at polygamy? As Charles Krauthammer put it in a column:
In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement -- the number restriction (two and only two) -- is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.
This line of argument makes gay activists furious. I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I'm not the one who put them there. Their argument does. Blogger and author Andrew Sullivan, who had the courage to advocate gay marriage at a time when it was considered pretty crazy, has called this the "polygamy diversion," arguing that homosexuality and polygamy are categorically different because polygamy is a mere "activity" while homosexuality is an intrinsic state that "occupies a deeper level of human consciousness."
But this distinction between higher and lower orders of love is precisely what gay rights activists so vigorously protest when the general culture "privileges" (as they say in the English departments) heterosexual unions over homosexual ones. Was "Jules et Jim" (and Jeanne Moreau), the classic Truffaut film involving two dear friends in love with the same woman
, about an "activity" or about the most intrinsic of human emotions?
To simplify the logic, take out the complicating factor of gender mixing. Posit a union of, say, three gay women all deeply devoted to each other. On what grounds would gay activists dismiss their union as mere activity rather than authentic love and self-expression? On what grounds do they insist upon the traditional, arbitrary and exclusionary number of two?
Now that would be a discussion worth having on the cable shows! Similarly, I would like to hear a debate about the limits of religious liberty in this country, and the challenge posed by polygamy.
There's been a kerfuffle in recent days over alleged comments made by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he is said to have told a Dutch interviewer that homosexuals would have to change to get right with the church. Actually, if you read the actual text of the Dutch interview (available here in English), that's not really the case. Rowan may think it -- his actual comments leave that interpretation open -- but the earlier reports read his remarks prejudicially.
I thought one of the most interesting things he said, though, was this:
Q: Do you have an explanation as to why Anglicans are prepared to let the Church split now over homosexuality, and not for example when a Bishop denied the Resurrection of Christ?
A: I am intrigued by that. On the one hand it says something about our own age, which is obsessed with sexuality - left and right. But I think there's something else. Christian often find it difficult to describe what distinguishes them. More and more they live like the people around them. Divorce is a sad case in point. For some people homosexuality is the last issue where you can draw a clear line. And then it is for many people a central issue of the authority of Scripture. I don't want to minimize that. Even about divorce there are certain things in the Bible that seem to give a bit of room for manoeuvre. It is harder to say that about homosexuality.
I think he's spot-on there. A friend of mine -- gay, orthodox Catholic, chaste -- does not favor gay marriage, but has observed to me before that the culture of divorce and general heterosexual free-range rutting has surely caused far more damage to society -- especially children -- than anything gays have done. Yet we don't see too many Christians willing to rush to the barricades to defend "traditional marriage" when it's under assault from straights in the name of sexual autonomy. His point is very well taken, not as a premiss from which to argue for gay marriage, but as an observation about hetero hypocrisy.
I mean, look, what the gay-rights movement is asking for flows naturally from the premises of the sexual revolution. If you are a "naturalist" about sex (versus a "sacralist" -- see previous post) and human nature, then you will want to see social and moral strictures relaxed so that individuals can choose to do what they like, within broad boundaries (i.e., no child abuse). If sex has no intrinsic meaning outside of the individual's experience, why not? And if you believe that, by what right do you tell gay couples that they should be treated in the law differently than straight couples?
I would suspect that Hugh Hefner is all for gay marriage. At least he's honest. The dishonest ones are straight people who think society should accomodate without judgment their multiple marriages, their abortions, their rutting, etc., but God forbid the gays should insist on being accomodated.
At the Asia Times Online site, the estimable Spengler has launched a discussion thread about my piece discussing why the Islamist ideologist Sayyid Qutb -- hanged 40 years ago today in Cairo -- is so important to the war we are now in, and will be in probably for the rest of our lives.
According to Shulevitz, Luker doesn't believe that the intense arguments over sex ed in schools are silly. Neither does Shulevitz, who shrewdly observes, "We can’t agree about sex education because we can’t agree about sex, and the way in which we disagree about sex has everything to do with how we’re breaking apart as a nation."
I think Shulevitz is onto something here, with her more precise terminology:
Luker identifies Americans’ competing visions of sexuality as “liberal” and “conservative,” but even she acknowledges that those terms are too flabby to nail down our real differences. More muscular terms, it seems to me, would be “naturalist” and “sacralist.” Naturalists, whom Luker calls sexual liberals, hold that sex is natural and unmysterious, a healthy, pleasurable, quasi-recreational activity. Sacralists, whom Luker calls sexual conservatives, consider sex sacred but dangerous, transformative when contained by marriage but destructive outside it. Sex education, to the naturalist, involves nothing more than helping young people manage the risks of having sex by giving them the facts. It’s information, not values. To the sacralist, conventional sex education is chock-full of values, but all the wrong ones. It’s an indoctrination in secularism, teaching kids to be irresponsible and draining sex of its mystery and power. “Sexuality isn’t peanuts and popcorn, although there are those who made it be that,” says one minister Luker talked to. “Thinking of sex that way, it’s such a diminution of what is actual and real.”
I think "naturalist" and "sacralist" are much better terms to use in discussing attitudes toward sex and sexuality, because they shear the political baggage from our conversation. (Even though it's true that political conservatives tend to be much more sacralist, and liberals much more naturalist, it's not inevitable that one's politics will dictate the way one sees sexuality, especially when it comes to teaching sexual right and wrong to one's children). This jumped out to me because the worldview I hold and advocate in "Crunchy Cons" is sacralist about most everything. And it is a metaphysical view because I truly believe it's the most true to human nature, and indeed to the structure of the universe. As Shulevitz pointed out, both sides find it hard to agree on sex ed because we can't agree on what human beings are.
By the way, Ross Douthat read the same review, and he says that one thing the Luker bottom line definitely suggests is the "intellectual bankruptcy" of the view that the way to make abortion more rare is to do extensive sexual education in the schools. The right may not want to hear that abstinence education isn't all that effective, but I know from experience that the left doesn't want to hear that conventional sex ed isn't that effective.
Remember when Bill Clinton in 1995 nominated Dr. Henry Foster, a Nashville physician, to replace Dr. Joycelyn Elders as US Surgeon General? In her remarks announcing the move, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala said:
This is a
man who brought community members together to create the successful "I Have a Future" program at Meharry School of Medicine. This community-based program takes at- risk youths living in public housing and teaches them to say "no" to sex and pregnancy and "yes" to job skills and self- reliance. And, it works. ... The President wants to repeat this success story on a national scale.
Well, the Washington Times sent me to Nashville to see if "I Have a Future" worked. It did not. In fact, if memory serves, the data showed that the kids who were involved with the program -- which involved full-on sex education, and the distribution of contraception -- had a slightly higher pregnancy rate than the kids who had no involvement with it at all. When I began asking standard questions about how the data showed "I Have a Future" was not only no help to the teenagers, it put them at a slight disadvantage, I was shown the door in Nashville.
Charlotte Allen delivers a blistering attack on the White House for rolling over on the "morning after" abortion pill (and yes, if you believe -- as most pro-lifers do -- that life in a moral sense begins at conception, medication that prevents implantation is an abortion pill). Excerpt:
I hope that this time around, the religious conservatives wake up to the fact that Bush is often not their friend. Again, he has thrown them a few bones—in the name of provisions for monitoring Plan B distribution in order to ensure that the pills do not fall directly (in contrast to indirectly) into the hands of minors. But Bush’s opponents—Planned Parenthood and its many allies—already have their knives sharpened to gut those provisions, as well as the ban on sales to girls age seventeen and under. And there is more nastiness in sight for pro-life pharmacists, physicians, and hospitals. The Washington Post reports this:
The FDA decision does not resolve other controversial issues swirling around the pills, including the refusal of hospitals run by religious organizations to offer them, of some pharmacies to stock them and of some antiabortion pharmacists to dispense them.
Expect the abortion lobby, now that it has gotten most of what it wanted, to focus its efforts on securing the rest: forcing medical professionals of conscience to dispense a known abortifacient even to children or else lose their licenses and their livelihoods. Thank you very much, George W. Bush.
It rained this weekend here in Dallas. Which was momentous for us, not only because we're bone-dry here, but because it broke the 19-day streak of temps over 100 degrees. I hate summer. Hate. It. Winter can't get here fast enough.
The weekend was also refreshing because I finally got the Mars Hill Audio podcast to download to my iPod via iTunes. My financial planner must hate that Ken Myers. Every time I listen to anything from Mars Hill, I want to go out and buy the books discussed there. The podcast is mostly a promotion for the latest version of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, and indeed the current one sounds fascinating, which is standard for Mars Hill. I hope that Myers' plans to distribute the Audio Journal via MP3 download will multiply his audience vastly; this is absolutely first-rate cultural programming, every bit as sophisticated as the very best that public radio has to offer, and as far as I am aware without peer among Christian broadcast media (if "broadcast" is word). Anyway, the podcast is basically just an appetite-whetter, but it does include a standard-length interview with Nigel Cameron, a theologian and bioethicist, that makes the podcast well worth listening to.
Cameron made a number of good points with regard to the stem-cell research controversy, but one that stuck with me is his frustration with how the entire public debate is framed in conventional "pro-life" terms. The way we talk about embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR) is stacked in favor of the scientists, because it assumes that the ethical objections to it are only the result of religious conviction. Therefore you have on one side (the story goes) religious people who want to stop scientific progress versus open-minded scientists who only want to help humanity. No wonder the restrictionists keep losing.
Cameron points out, though, that some very important ethical issues are being conveniently swept out of the way in this simplistic and inaccurate rendering. Funny how most European countries -- where religious conservatism has no political or cultural influence -- restrict ESCR, with Germany and Austria outright banning it. Why do you suppose that is? Answer: Germany and Austria understand intimately what society can do to the weak if human life is seen as something that can be eliminated by science for the perceived good of the strong.
As Cameron asks in the podcast, what limits would the science-without-limits crowd put on research? After all, Dr. Mengele was a research scientist. The question itself exposes the shoddy thinking at the heart of the Faith vs. Reason false dichotomy in the ESCR debate. If people want to argue that those who believe in banning or restricting ESCR are wrong, that's one thing; but to claim that this is a battle between the forces of rational Enlightenment and religious Endarkenment is not only unfair, it's dangerous.
Today HUD Secretary Alfonso Jackson announced that the federal government would spend ALMOST TWO BILLION DOLLARS to -- wait for it -- rebuild housing projects in New Orleans.
That's right, the taxpayers are going to spend NEARLY TWO BILLION DOLLARS to recreate what New Orleans had before, which was such a success story before. And get this statement by HUD's Jackson:
[W]e're first going to stop the flow of money out of these communities. You know something's wrong when local earnings of poor folks end up in pockets of Wal-Mart shareholders in Manhattan. After extensive discussions, Wal-Mart and three other chains have agreed to withdraw from areas near low-income New Orleans neighborhoods and to help nurture local businesses to replace them. Legislation under study at state and federal levels will make sure this sticks.
Holy Andrew Young, the Bush administration has strongarmed Wal-Mart and other chain stores to abandon the poor and make their neighborhoods safer for Andy Young's Least Favorite People to come in and charge higher prices for everyday goods.
What sense does any of this make? I wish I could blame Brownie, but he's long gone. I blame Bush throwing federal dollars down a rathole in a desperate attempt to shore up the GOP this fall.
UPDATE: It was all a ruse! NOT TRUE! HUD's calling it a "cruel joke" -- some impostor showed up at the housing summit in New Orleans and made this announcement. The mayor and the Louisiana governor shook his hand. He pretended to be from HUD, and everybody bought it. The fake organization he set up sent out an official-sounding press release to the news media, which is how we learned about it at the Dallas Morning News. According to CNN's reporting, nobody knows who these scammers are, but they managed to fool a lot of people. Me included. Apologies to all.
Add to Del.icio.us 
Digg This 
Fave on Technorati