Now That’s What I Call Lobbying

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

From The Hill:

Conservative lawmakers plan a “prayercast” on Wednesday against healthcare reform legislation. Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), along with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) will team up with a group of pastors and religious leaders for a “prayercast” organized by the socially conservative Family Research Council’s action group.

The lawmakers will participate in a prayer service broadcast online on Wednesday evening to pray against “the threats to the God-given right to human life through government funding of abortions, our health from rationing, our family finances from higher taxes, and our general freedom posed by the government plan to take over healthcare.”

“We will enter into a time of prayer for the nation, and our leaders. Your engagement and prayer is more critical than ever as Congress will very soon vote on a final health care bill,” a description of the event on FRC Action’s website says.

Posted in politics | Tagged | 11 Comments

New “old format”

Posted on December 13, 2009 by David Hume

The old format is back. But without the customization. I’ll do that later when I have time….

Posted in Administration | Tagged | 1 Comment

The “new format”

Posted on December 13, 2009 by David Hume

The old theme broke on update. So I swapped in a random format. I’ve switched to the generic WP theme for now. Will try and get the old format back soon.

Posted in politics | Comments Off on The “new format”

Switzerland and the Minarets

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

Just in case it’s of interest to any readers of this blog (I saw that Razib had already mentioned the wider topic), here is my take (via NRO) on the Swiss and their minarets. Razib himself says that he is inclined to agree with Rod Dreher on this topic, but not, I hope, in this respect: 

If the Swiss are afraid of losing their Christian cultural heritage, why do only 16 percent of them go to church?

That’s the sort of observation that one might expect from a devout religious believer such as Rod, so fair enough. Unsurprisingly however, it fails to reflect the complexities of the way that religion and nationality often intersect. Faith is one thing, flag another. There is nothing particularly strange about a people believing that an often extremely loosely-defined Christianity forms (and should continue to form) a part of their nation’s heritage, not to speak of its cultural, ethical and intellectual landscape, without themselves wanting to go to church, or indeed having any belief in the supernatural whatsoever. As to how they defend that Christian heritage, well, baptisms, carols, Christmas trees, Easter eggs, family traditions, the proper teaching of history in schools and, yes, occasionally packing the kiddies off to a church service or two might make a pretty good start. It can be a useful thing, going through the motions.

Posted in culture, politics | Tagged , | 11 Comments

Less More, Please

Posted on December 12, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

During the course of his visit to Britain next year, the Pope will be addressing the country’s parliamentarians from the spot, reports the Daily Telegraph, where Sir Thomas More was sentenced to death in 1535.

The choice of venue is, I reckon, largely a coincidence (Westminster Hall is the usual venue for addresses of this nature – it’s where Reagan spoke, for example), but it does give me an excuse to post about Thomas More, a brilliant, fascinating individual who ought also to be seen as terrible warning of the danger that one man’s spiritual (or wider philosophical) certainty can pose to others when harnessed to the power of the state. Unfortunately, that’s not how he is seen. The old boy gets a pretty good press these days. Maybe that’s because he was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint in 1935. Maybe.

I suspect that the real key to More’s shiny modern reputation is to be found in Hollywood’s hagiographic A Man For All Seasons, a highly watchable, deeply annoying film. As a mild corrective to Paul Schofield’s fine portrait of doomed nobility, it is perhaps useful to recall that, as Lord Chancellor (England’s top lawyer), More showed himself to be a savage ideological enforcer, quite pleased, for example, to support the burning alive (“the short fyre…[prior to] ye fyre eurlasting”, as he so charmingly put it) of heretics.

Was More sincere in his beliefs? Sure, but then again so was Felix Dzerzhinsky.

Having said that, it’s important not to fall into the the current all-too-common mistake of  judging historical figures solely by the standards of our own time. More’s attitudes were hardly uncommon in his era. But having conceded that point, it’s also worth remembering that the fate that ultimately befell him was not so unusual either. He defied the king. He lost. If More was no Dzerzhinsky (although there is this), then Henry VIII was no Stalin…

Posted in history, politics | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Food stamps and the importance of *doing something*

Posted on December 9, 2009 by David Hume

At Gene Expression I recently put up a series of posts relating to food stamps. For example, the correlates of food stamp utilization by county. I’m really skeptical of the ubiquity of food stamp usage. There are vast swaths of the United States where the majority of children benefit from food stamps. Some statistical analysis suggests that 90% of blacks at age 20 will have benefited from food stamps, while 50% of the general population will have (most of these are transient beneficiaries). But the same groups which tend to use food stamps are also subject to an “epidemic of obesity.” My data analysis shows that it’s clear on the geographical level. Where people use food stamps, there is obesity and type 2 diabetes. Regardless of what people say about “food insecurity” I think these characteristics, copious adipose tissue, and diseases of modernity which emerge due to obesity and overconsumption of sugars, strongly suggest that images of the famished simply doesn’t make sense.

But over the past month or so that I’ve investigated this topic, here’s a typical comment:

To be hungry sometimes is uncomfortable, I know this personally, I am hungry sometimes. Though for me it has to do with the fact that I don’t think that the immediate response to hunger always has to be food to satiate the pangs (I don’t like to eat past a certain hour).

What a way to trivialize other people’s hunger by insinuating that they can’t distinguish between physical hunger and psychological hunger. It’s even more important to distinguish between voluntary hunger and involuntary hunger. Those who don’t have enough to eat may not have the privilege of experiencing psychological hunger.

The italicized are my comments. The general thrust of the response is emotive, dismissive and “how dare you!” Food stamp programs are not a fiscal crisis in this country, but if the targets of this food aid have a tendency toward obesity or diabetes, we need to reassess our presuppositions. Instead of helping those in need, by and large the food stamp program may simply be an adjunct to the interests of a small number of non-profit careerists.

P.S. When I was in college I knew many students who engaged in food stamp fraud. The reality was that they didn’t need food stamps, but they knew that it was very easy to get on the program.

Posted in culture, economics | Tagged | 23 Comments

The Ottoman years

Posted on December 5, 2009 by David Hume

Frustrated With West, Turks Revel in Empire Lost:

Mr. Osman’s send-off was just the latest manifestation of what sociologists call “Ottomania,” a harking back to an era marked by conquest and cultural splendor during which sultans ruled an empire stretching from the Balkans to the Indian Ocean and claimed the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world.

Ataturk’s assertion by fiat that Turks were “European” is bound to fail, because a flower can not blossom without its roots. If the Turks had accepted more aspects of European civilization, such as Christianity, then a civilizational shift might have been viable. But for nearly 1,000 years the Turks were the rulers of Islam. In 1600 all three great Islamic powers, the Ottomans, the Safavids of Persia, and the Mughals of India, were of Turkic provenance. Though Turkish potentates accepted the supremacy of the Arab religion and cultivated Persian poetry, their identity was fused with their role as the ruling race of the Muslim world. The iron hand of Kemalism kept this past from intruding upon the present for nearly a century, but I suspect that that time of ham-handed exclusion of what came before is coming to an end. Of course not all that Ataturk achieved can be reversed, his Romanization of Turkish and purging of Arabic and Persian loanwords, means that Ottoman literature is closed off to all except specialists in modern Turkey. The future will be based more on half-remembered glimpses and recreated myth than the flesh and substance of the past.

Posted in culture | Tagged | 12 Comments

Implicit Eurocentrism & the eternal infidel

Posted on December 2, 2009 by David Hume

A friend pointed me to this article, Outrage on Swiss minaret vote, but how do Muslim states handle churches?. You don’t need to click, you know the score. To be a kuffar in a non-Muslim land isn’t always the most pleasant experience. Instead of imagining, you could probably just ask a black person who lived in the South before the 1960s what life was like, as that probably is a good analog to the lot of Copts in Egypt (or, Shia in Saudi Arabia). There is variation. Southeast Asian nations have large non-Muslim minorities, and in Indonesia Muslims can convert to other religions. But even in Malaysia, where 1/3 of the population is non-Muslim, and which is rather tolerant country set next to the “core” Muslim nations of the Middle East, Islam has primacy in the national culture.

But for Muslim majority countries (more than 50% Muslim), with Albania as an outlier, you need to grade on a curve. Actually, you don’t need to grade on a curve, but then you would observe that several Muslim nations are as officially atheistic as North Korea excepting their one God. Looking at discussions online there are those who praise the Swiss (generally on the Right) and those who abhor them (generally on the Left). The issue of double standards has cropped up, with the Right pointing out that on a universal scale Switzerland is quite tolerant indeed. But for the Left, a double standard is necessary, because two wrongs don’t make a right, and civilized nations should not be judged by the values which barbarians uphold. Oh wait, no good thinking liberal would actually say in public that Western nations are civilized and Muslim nations are in the main barbaric, but that’s really the implicit framework. When it comes to religious liberty Muslim nations are invariably in the “Special Kids” class. They have their own Special Olympics, whereby autocratic Syria dominated by a heretical quasi-Muslim sect is a champion of pluralism, serving as a haven for fleeing Iraqi Christians.

For all the talk of multiculturalism, no one really accepts this on a deep level. There is always a standard of values. Some of the most vociferous Left multiculturalists in fact are strong believers in the distinction between the civilized and barbaric, they simply draw lines closer in. For example, “heteronormative Red State patriarchal Christian” is a long-winded way of saying heathen or infidel. To many multicultural Leftists I suspect non-Western cultures are like the mythical Prester John, a potential ally against the near enemy. But like Pester John the ally is an illusion and fantasy, just as Western Leftist’s pretense toward cultural neutrality and acceptance of differences is predicated on fundamentally “Eurocentric” norms and values.

Note: In regards to the Swiss minaret issue I probably lean to Rod Dreher’s position. They really need to address the structural issues at some point.

Posted in culture | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Miscellany, December 2

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Walter Olson

Yes, it’s true, I’ve been absent from the site for half a year (unless you count Secular Right’s Twitter account) and I’ll be scarce for yet a while longer because of the book manuscript I need to finish. But there’s still time to round up some short items from the past month that might otherwise pass without note:

  • “Few people are motivated by purely secular considerations to become …better people.” Really? [PrawfsBlawg]
  • Trail of proposed Uganda death-for-gays law leads back to U.S. [Box Turtle Bulletin]
  • “Why he stopped believing: confessions of a former missionary” [Amy Alkon]
  • “Coma man” tale: “CNN and MSNBC duped by ‘facilitated communication’” [Michael Rosch/Examiner, Orac/Respectful Insolence]
  • “War on Christmas” grievance-collectors really should lighten up [Ken at Popehat]
  • Successful “libel-in-fiction” claim against author of bestselling “Red Hat Club” novel included allegations that plaintiff had been depicted as atheist and “right-wing reactionary” [Fulton County Daily Report, Overlawyered]
  • “Hard Evidence: Seven salient facts about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan” [Christopher Hitchens]
  • “How many Bibles must there be in the jury room to aid in the deliberations?” Four in this Texas capital case [Scott Greenfield]
  • “Man sacked for belief in psychics backed by judge” [U.K. Independent]
  • Heh: “Efforts to reach Christ for comment were unsuccessful.” [USA Today; Alabama woman who changed her name to “Jesus Christ”]
Posted in Odds & Ends | 5 Comments

Huckabee and the Tacoma police massacre

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

A specious leftist belief that the criminal justice system is racist has undoubtedly led to more disastrous criminal justice decisions than a specious religious belief that one is in touch with one’s favored divinity.  And perhaps Mike Huckabee’s high rate of sentence commutations resulted from his best efforts to empirically evaluate the evidence presented to him by parole boards, rather than, as has been speculated upon, religious inspiration.  Still I am never reassured to learn that an elected representative may be praying for guidance or consulting the bible in making political decisions.  Though this line is impossible to enforce and certain not to be followed, the only valid materials for political decision-making  in my view are publicly-enacted laws and as much actual knowledge about the world as a politician can get his hands on.  I doubt whether a Christian would take much comfort in learning that a politician with power over his life is consulting with Allah in deciding upon a public line of action, since he does not regard the Koran as a valid source of either divine revelation or political authority.  Nor would the Christian be wholly confident that the Allah-inspired politician was moved by rational evidence in constructing his belief system or in reaching the conclusions that he drew from it.  Though prayer may merely consolidate a leader’s existing inclinations, it could also give them a zealotry or dubious certitude that they do not deserve. 

 

A few years ago, one of the neo-con-theo-con movement’s most revered religious figures lectured me on overincarceration, a subject he clearly knew noting about, during a black-tie dinner.  It was hard to escape the suspicion that his prim self-righteousness about the prison rate was fueled in large part by his belief that he had a particular in with God, though perhaps I do him an injustice.

Posted in politics | Tagged , | 16 Comments