My article on conservatism in Free Inquiry

Posted on August 11, 2012 by David Hume

I should announce it somewhere on the web, and this is the best place I can think of. In one of the fall issues of Free Inquiry (probably the one right before the election, so October) I will be making the case of secular conservatism. The article is written, and we’re basically at the final proofing stage. Just thought I would put it out there if want to buy a copy.

Additionally, I want to take an opportunity to “promote” this comment, as I think it’s very interesting. I’m in some sympathy for it, even if I disagree in the details.

… the social conservative who is wary of science in their rhetoric, but will always avail himself of the newest gadgets and best medical care.

Guilty as charged, but perhaps by reason of insanity.

You may have been thinking of social conservatives who have religious motivations — sometimes called the Christian Right. But there are social conservatives such as myself with no religious agenda whatsoever, who both embrace science (I’m a former computer network engineer, avid techie and gadget freak, and a firm believer in heart transplants, for instance) and fear it (I think there are social consequences of “transhumanism” we will not like and I wouldn’t want to see a robot become President {go ahead, laff … but in some circles, that is contemplated}). More realistically, I think “human colonies on Mars” is one of the biggest government hornswoggles ever devised (at least let the private sector do it, if it can afford it). So it’s all a bit more complicated than the picture you give above. What I, as a social conservative, object to about science is its potential to de-humanize humans. I don’t like its ability to look at a woman’s ovaries as a spare parts farm, because it reduces the value of the (potential) human being or embryon to its mechanical minimum so much that life becomes cheap. There is not enough intellectual and political space (not to mention moral space) between using conceived unborn human beings as disposable sources of cheap DNA and eating old people for lunch. This might sound like a crank comment (yes I’m being dramatic), but I do not want to slip down the slope to a world where nobody can tell the difference. If it’s done right, science is valuable and beneficial things can be done with it that nobody but a religious zealot could object to. But the scientific attitude does not naturally accommodate ethics; everything in the universe is a machine at some level. But ethics observes the non-mechanistic humanity in humans as a premise, not an afterthought and I’d rather live in a world like that, than in hubcap heaven. LOL …

Posted in Conferences | Tagged | 1 Comment

The Tea Party: “More Paul than Santorum”

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

David Kirby and Emily Ekins write in Politico:

The Republican National Convention this week announced speaking slots for libertarian Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and social conservative Rick Santorum. Both claim the “tea party” brand. However the 2012 primary season reveals that the tea party playbook is more Paul than Santorum.

Conventional political wisdom for at least two decades has held that Republican primaries are won by emphasizing values issues to placate socially conservative voters. Observers point to Santorum’s strong showing in the presidential primaries. Exit polls, however, reveal Santorum never won a majority of the tea party vote in any primary.

Republican candidates must increasingly win over both Paul and tea party supporters on economic issues. Libertarians and the tea party movement are intertwined in ways the campaigns and the media have yet to fully appreciate.

Tea party supporters are actually united on economics, but split on social issues, we find, compiling data from local and national polls with dozens of original interviews with tea party members and leaders. Roughly half the tea party is socially conservative, half libertarian: fiscally conservative, but socially moderate to liberal.

Libertarians led the way for tea party disaffection with establishment Republicans. Starting in early 2008 through the early tea parties, libertarians were more than twice as “angry” with the Republican Party as social conservatives; more pessimistic about the economy and deficit during the Bush years, and more frustrated that people like them cannot affect government. Libertarians, including young people who supported Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign, provided much of the early energy for the tea party and spread the word through social media.

In fact, 91 percent of tea party libertarians are more concerned about taxes and jobs than gay marriage and abortion, according to a New York Times poll. Religious bona fides will not win the tea party vote in primaries. The tea party’s strong libertarian roots help explain why more and more Republican candidates are running as functional libertarians—emphasizing fiscal issues such as spending, tax reform and ending bailouts, while avoiding subjects like abortion and gay marriage—and winning…

Posted in politics | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

John Fisher: Biter Bit

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Writing in the (British) Catholic Herald, Francis Phillips claims that she “feels a shiver when I see the parallels between our world and that of St John Fisher”.

The context, inevitably, is of officialdom’s supposed attack on religious freedom in the UK. Fisher (1469-1535) is allegedly relevant because this English cardinal was eventually executed for refusing to go along with Henry VIII’s attempt to ensure that England should determine its own laws.

To Phillips, Fisher is a example to be praised, martyred because he would not go against his conscience. Oddly, she doesn’t mention another aspect of this sinister fanatic’s career, his role in the trial and execution of Thomas Hitton, the man often described as England’s first protestant martyr.

Thanks to Wikipedia (in this case, why not), we learn that George Joye (1495-1553) was not so reticent:

“And [Thomas] More amonge his other blasphemies in his Dialoge sayth that none of vs dare abyde by our fayth vnto deeth: but shortlye therafter/ god to proue More/ that he hath euer bene/ euen a false lyare/ gaue strength vnto his servaunte syr Thomas Hitton/ to confesse and that vnto the deeth the fayth of his holie sonne Iesus/ whiche Tomas the bishopes of Caunterburye & Rochester [Fisher]/ after they had dieted and tormented him secretlye murthered at Maydstone most cruellye.

Fisher was no defender of freedom of conscience. What he was defender of his conscience. And, indeed, enforcer of it on others. As for his fate, well, biter bit.

As I noted the other day, Fisher, and another of those responsible for Hitton’s execution, Thomas More, were recently drafted by New York’s Cardinal Dolan into the fight against the Obamacare contraception mandate in the name of religious freedom.

They were not, perhaps, the best of choices.

Posted in Church & State | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on John Fisher: Biter Bit

Old Habits

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

By Wolfgang Horsch, Suddeutsche Zeitung

Posted in Church & State | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Old Habits

Free The Pussy Rioters (2)

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

From the closing statement of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova:

Finally, I’d like to quote a Pussy Riot song because, strange as it may seem, all our songs have turned out to be prophetic, including the one that says: “The KGB chief, their number one saint, will escort protestors off to jail” – that’s us. What I’d like to quote now, however, is the next line: “Open the doors, off with the shoulder-straps, join us in a taste of freedom.

The word, I think, I know, is heroism.

Posted in Church & State | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

How It Is

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Via what looks like the distinctly lefty Chtodelat News, the closing statement of Yekaterina Samutsevich, one of the Pussy Riot three, and, in this extract, an argument of some subtlety:

The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral [the scene of the protest] had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power [in Russia].
Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system.

It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.

How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and shouldn’t any intersection of the religious and political spheres be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of Orthodox aesthetics in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had the aura of a lost history, of something crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present their new political project to restore Russia’s lost spiritual values, a project which has little to do with a genuine concern for preservation of Russian Orthodoxy’s history and culture.

It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long had a mystical connection with power, emerged as this project’s principal executor in the media…

Fascinating, and convincing.

The idea that this politicized church—and its premises—should be immune from protest is ludicrous.

Posted in Church & State | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on How It Is

American loons

Posted on August 9, 2012 by David Hume

My friends often wonder why I identify as a conservative in light of the existence of loons such as Pat Robertson. The problem from where I stand is that lunacy is found to your Left and your Right. My friends to the Left are often indulgent or ignorant of their loons to their Left, though they have a laser-like focus on the loons of the Right. Consider this piece in The New York Times Magazine, Oakland, the Last Refuge of Radical America. The “right-thinking” liberal often decries the know-nothing sentiments of the Creationists and their ilk, but what about the heads-in-the-sand attitudes of these “radicals”:

It is, in a word, gentrification, and what’s most striking about its arrival in Oakland is that it’s just now getting there — that the city has existed for so long as a kind of living museum of 1970s radicalism, its culture of militancy, poverty, crime rates and dysfunctional government all conspiring to delay what now seems inevitable. “For years, Oakland has been the black hole in the middle of the great galaxy of Northern California as it shimmered its way into the electronic age,” says Richard Walker, an urban-geography professor who recently retired from the University of California, Berkeley.

Oakland is not representative. Economically dynamic cities such as Palo Alto are moderately Left-Democrat in their orientation for cultural reasons. But there is part of the Left-coalition which is simply in denial about the reality that the activism, protest, and frankly parasitic lifestyles which they choose to lead are dependent on the market economy which they decry. This is no different from the social conservative who is wary of science in their rhetoric, but will always avail himself of the newest gadgets and best medical care.

Posted in culture | Tagged | 13 Comments

Mustn’t Diss the Russian Orthodox Church

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Interesting report out of Estonia:

Officials are remaining mum for now on a report from the Russian human rights organization Agora that a Karelia-based blogger, Maksim Jefimov, has asked for political asylum in Estonia.

Jefimov is facing criminal prosecution for inciting hatred in writings on the Russian Orthodox Church, earning him comparisons to the jailed punk band Pussy Riot.

“Jefimov contacted the Estonian Police and Border Guard asking for temporary political asylum. He notified us today,” an Agora representative was quoted by Interfax as saying.

The Police and Border Guard did not comment on the case. “The Police and Border Guard do not disclose information on asylum seekers as these are delicate personal data and we are not allowed to do so under legislation on granting asylum to foreign nationals,” Ellen Lebedeva of the Police and Border Guard’s status determination office told uudised.err.ee.

Posted in Church & State | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Hikikomori, Literally

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Via the Daily Telegraph:

Seventy members of an Islamist sect who have been living in an underground bunker without heat or sunlight for nearly a decade have been discovered living on the outskirts of the city of Kazan in Russia.

The sect members included 20 children, the youngest of whom had just turned 18 months. Many of them were born underground and had never seen daylight until prosecutors discovered their dwelling on August 1.

A 17-year-old girl turned out to be pregnant…

The group – known as the “Fayzarahmanist” sect – was named after its 83-year-old organiser Fayzrahman Satarov, who declared himself a prophet and his house an independent Islamic state, according to a report by state TV channel Vesti.

Satarov was described as a former deputy to a Sunni Islamic cleric in the 1970s. His followers were encouraged to read his manuscripts and most were banned from leaving their eight-storey underground bunker which had been dug in the basement of a building, Vesti said.

Posted in culture, Religion | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Hikikomori, Literally

Hikikomori, Again

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Andrew Stuttaford

Via the Washington Post:

JERUSALEM — It’s the latest prescription for extreme ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who shun contact with the opposite sex: Glasses that blur their vision, so they don’t have to see women they consider to be immodestly dressed.

In an effort to maintain their strictly devout lifestyle, the ultra-Orthodox have separated the sexes on buses, sidewalks and other public spaces in their neighborhoods. Their interpretation of Jewish law forbids contact between men and women who are not married
Walls in their neighborhoods feature signs exhorting women to wear closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts. Extremists have accosted women they consider to have flouted the code.

Now they’re trying to keep them out of clear sight altogether.

The ultra-Orthodox community’s unofficial “modesty patrols” are selling glasses with special blur-inducing stickers on their lenses. The glasses provide clear vision for up to a few meters so as not to impede movement, but anything beyond that gets blurry — including women. It’s not known how many have been sold.

For men forced to venture outside their insular communities, hoods and shields that block peripheral vision are also being offered…

Sad.

Posted in Religion | Tagged , | 2 Comments