Speaking in Code

Lest I be "speared", I have no wish to disrespect Huorini / Waodoni culture.

The Huaorani believe that when someone dies, the soul starts a journey towards heaven. On the way, in the middle of the path, a big anaconda is obstructing the way. Only brave souls can jump the boa and reach heaven. Whoever fails, returns to earth as a termite, and leads a miserable existence.

However, if your first exposure to the term is the discussion in a pretty, but clumsily made movie (The End of the Spear), glorifying missionary work, over when particular characters "jumped the great boa"... similar expressions come to mind. I thus propose "Jumped the Boa" as a term to describe when Christian-themed entertainment goes way off mark.

How... Nice For Him

Just when you thought Joe's fifteen minutes were over, we get another dose of tragi-comic relief:

Is he scared that one of the Hamas rockets might have his name on it? Not really. After all, as he explained, he's a Christian so God will keep him safe.

"Being a Christian I'm pretty well protected by God I believe," he said.

So basically, we'll see "Joe the Plumber" follow up on stories of tragedy and loss by asking, "Have you considered converting to Christianity so you, too, can be protected by G-d's magic umbrella?"

Do you think that Joe will stop by Bethlehem for a few "man on the street" interviews with the local Christians? (Do you suspect, as I do, that Joe doesn't even know where Bethlehem is located?)

Citing Scripture

In terms of the invidious citing, distorting, and fabricating scripture to justify the unjustifiable, this remains "right up there":

In Gaza a few years ago, I conducted an on-camera interview with the political leader of Islamic Jihad, Mohammed al-Hindi. With his finely trimmed beard and gracious manners, he symbolized the modern - and moderate - Muslim man.

But his interpretation of the Koran suggested something else. "Where," I asked, "does it say that you can kill yourself for a higher cause? As far as I know, the Koran tells us that suicide is wrong."

Through his translator, the physician assured me that the verses endorsing suicide operations could be found "everywhere" in Islam's holy book. I challenged Dr. al-Hindi to show me just one passage.

After several minutes of reviewing the Koran, then calling for help on his mobile, then looking through companion booklets, he told me he was too busy and must go. "Are you sure you're not pulling a fast one on me?" I asked. He smiled, clearly understanding popular American lingo. "I want to know that you're telling me the truth," I repeated.

The essay continues exactly as you should expect, but not from reading the popular media, listening to western political leaders, or listening to most religious leaders.

Of course, most people - not just Muslims - could use more independent thinking. This point grabbed me at the Gaza office of Mohammed al-Hindi. As we left, I asked his translator why Dr. al-Hindi would give me an on-camera interview, knowing that he could not find a single verse to prove his claim that the Koran justifies suicide operations.

The translator replied: "He assumed you were just another dumb Western journalist." Reporters from the West had never asked this veteran terrorist the most basic of questions: Where is the evidence for what you do in God's name?

It's widespread, abject, unforgivable ignorance that leads dolts like George W. Bush to glorify suicide bomers as "homicide bombers", "jihadists" or "Islamofascists", rather than emphasizing their suicides and the distance between their actions and Islam.

McCain's Campaign Failed, Because....

The right hand didn't know what the right hand was doing?

Take it from Charles Krauthammer: Sarah Palin was a huge mistake.

Palin was a mistake ("near suicidal," I wrote on the day of her selection) because she completely undercut McCain's principal case against Obama: his inexperience and unreadiness to lead. And her nomination not only intellectually undermined the readiness argument. It also changed the election dynamic by shifting attention, for days on end, to Palin's preparedness, fitness and experience -- and away from Obama's.

McCain thought he could steal from Obama the "change" issue by running a Two Mavericks campaign. A fool's errand from the very beginning. It defied logic for the incumbent-party candidate to try to take "change" away from the opposition. Election Day exit polls bore that out with a vengeance. Voters seeking the "change candidate" went 89 to 9 for Obama.

No, take it from Pat Buchanan: Sarah Palin is our hero and savior, and perhaps the second coming of, er, Reagan?

Yet by Sept. 10, McCain, thanks to Sarah Palin, whose selection had proven a sensation, had come from eight points behind to take the lead, and Joe Biden was wailing that maybe Hillary would have been a better choice for Obama.

I disagree with both of them, to some degree. Krauthammer exaggerates the import of Palin, and continues to overestimate the "he lacks experience" theme that by the time McCain chose Palin no longer seemed to be resonating with the public. Look at the polls before and after the convention/Palin bubble - McCain was losing on the experience argument. That's not to say it isn't a good argument or a relevant issue, but McCain's campaign apparently recognized that if they didn't introduce a "game changer" they were going to lose. McCain's choice of Palin left conservative elites like Krauthammer tied up in knots, but she was red meat to Pat Buchanan. Palin energized the religious right and helped McCain ensure their turn-out, and provided him with the ability to launch scurrilous attacks on Obama by proxy. In the weeks leading up to the election did you see Obama's support increase? No, it held steady while McCain's support increased - wavering Republicans returned to the fold.

But Palin turned out to be something well short of a net positive. Her lack of experience wasn't so much the issue as her poor performance. That, coupled with the economic crisis, hurt McCain, because it suggested that he lacked judgment. Krauthammer implies that McCain's post-convention/Palin bounce reflected a permanent advantage,

Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.

This was not just a meltdown but a panic. For an agonizing few days, there was a collapse of faith in the entire financial system - a run on banks, panicky money-market withdrawals, flights to safety, the impulse to hide one's savings under a mattress.

This did not just have the obvious effect of turning people against the incumbent party, however great or tenuous its responsibility for the crisis. It had the more profound effect of making people seek shelter in government.

Seriously? So Krauthammer is bucking the trend among right-wing pundits and is arguing that the election result gives Obama not only a mandate for massive change, but a mandate to impose socialism? He doesn't like Sarah Palin, but he's clearly been sipping her Kool-Aid. Odd as it seems to say this, for a more rational perspective (albeit one that doesn't survive past the end of the paragraph) let's turn back to Buchanan:

Then came the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the bailout of AIG, McCain’s assertion that the economy was fundamentally sound, and his panicked return to Washington to assist Bush and Hank Paulson push through a wildly unpopular bank bailout - using 700 billion in tax dollars to buy up rubbish paper the idiot bankers had put on their books.

Right up to the point of the collapse, McCain was repeating the mantra, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." Right up to the point of the collapse, his campaign was dispatching its proxies to savage Obama's economic proposals, to call Obama naive, and to ridicule comparisons between our present financial situation and the great depression. Reality intervened, and how did McCain respond? By trying to convince the people that when he said, "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" he actually meant, "American workers are strong", and then fumbling a suspension of his campaign such that he simultaneously looked manipulative, disingenuous and inept.

How did Palin then hurt him? Not by being inexperienced, and certainly not in her appeal to "the base", but by appearing to undecided voters as further evidence of bad judgment - like the supposed suspension of his campaign, the Palin choice appeared at best to be a cynical manipulation that, despite the McCain camp's spin, put campaign ahead of country. McCain's defense of his choices wasn't "straight talk", and it wasn't mavericky - it was sad and disappointing. He wedded himself to G.W. not so much by his voting record and policy choices, but by his refusal to concede even obvious mistakes and his insistence that his mistakes were in fact good choices.

I'll grant that he couldn't exactly say, "I regret my choice of Sarah Palin" - and it isn't clear that he should have regrets, given that Palin largely did her job by energizing evangelical voters and social conservatives - and perhaps he had dug himself too deep a hole with statements reflecting himself as out-of-touch with the economy, but he didn't have to demean himself or to try to advance lines that, simply put, are ridiculous. Nobody with an ounce of sense is going to believe that living near Russia translates into having foreign policy experience. And if you're going to claim that somebody "understands the energy issues better than anybody I know in Washington, D.C.," you had best make sure she's not going to turn around and stick her foot into her mouth. Repeatedly.

Buchanan believes that McCain could have won the election by acting more like Palin - attacking gay rights, advancing a rigid, pro-life agenda, attacking Obama as supposedly wanting to eliminate any restrictions on abortion, smearing Obama with tales of his association with Ayers and Wright, etc. - I don't think that would have worked, and in fact it might have hurt. There's a reason that the McCain campaign happily launched that brand of attack through Palin, while trying to keep McCain himself above the fray, and my guess is that it's because their internal polling suggested that those attacks would hurt him with swing voters (not to mention demolishing the public perception that he's not hostile to abortion rights). What better evidence of this than Krauthammer's horror at Palin and everything she represents?

I personally would argue that what hurt McCain the most with swing voters was his overt efforts to appeal to the Buchananite/evangelical wing of the Republican Party. You can still easily find people who lament that they weren't able to vote for the McCain who ran in 2000, and how they wished that guy had been in the race. That guy apparently concluded early on that he couldn't win his party's nomination without making serious concessions to religious and social conservatives, and apparently later concluded (probably correctly) that it was more important to "turn out the base" - have those reliably Republican voters come out and support him on election day - than to try to hold or win over the middle. Krauthammer writes,

McCain thought he could steal from Obama the "change" issue by running a Two Mavericks campaign. A fool's errand from the very beginning.

But he misses the point that the leading factor, and perhaps the only factor, that made McCain a serious contender in the race was the distance he had historically emphasized between his own positions and those of the Republican Party. Whether you believe that to be reality or myth, that McCain - the McCain of 2000 - could legitimately declare himself a candidate of change. The reminted McCain running in 2008 could not. And he lost.
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Update (via lies.com):

But What If God Makes You Infertile?

The New York Times has a rather vapid piece on same-sex marriage, Using Biology, Not Religion, to Argue Against Same-Sex Marriage. The authors present the views of a Christian couple who contend that their opposition to same-sex marriage arises from biology, not their religious beliefs:

“It takes a man and a woman to create children and thus create a family,” Mrs. Galloway, 60, told a legislative panel in Connecticut last year as it was considering a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.

Except....

For the Galloways, the notion that same-sex couples should not marry because they cannot have children is complicated by their own story. They married nearly 17 years ago, and tried to have children. When they couldn’t conceive, they became foster parents in the hope of adopting.

If the argument truly is that biology dictates the answer - couples who can't have children shouldn't be allowed to marry - why should the Galloways be permitted to remain married? Why should any infertile person be allowed to marry? If the solution to God's will is adoption, as the Galloways suggest at least in relation to their own inability to bear children, how is their marriage different from that of a same-sex couple that adopts?

What of a fertile couple that chooses not to have children, or an infertile couple with no intention of adopting - should they be allowed to marry? How does "biology" justify their marriage?

It's sleight of hand - the argument is quietly shifted from biology - the capacity to reproduce - to "gender roles":

The notion that gender roles are unimportant in raising children is “bunk,” added Mrs. Galloway. “It is not an accident that it takes a man and a woman coming together to create a child,” she said.

Certainly, it's not an "accident" that species that reproduce sexually engage in sexual reproduction. That's a given. But what do we make of "biology" when mommy mantis bites off daddy's head or mommy wolf spider eats daddy. Even if we stick to humans, the mere fact that a species engages in sexual reproduction does not necessarily require that the father have any involvement in the child's life past the point of conception. And that's true even when parents have the best of intentions:

Mr. Galloway, whose father died when he was 3, said being raised solely by women - his mother and his aunts - hindered his development and altered his sense of self-worth.

The Galloway's argument is premised in sociology, not biology. And even in that context, its based upon personal experience and opinion, not empirical data.

This emphasis on biology roughly parallels the idea that "if we call it 'intelligent design' it's not really creationism." When the religious argument doesn't gain traction, spin it into something you can try to rebrand as science, even if there's no actual science involved.

You Gotta Watch Out For... Talking Dolls

Have you heard about the talking doll whose short, pre-recorded stream of babble has been represented to include both pro-Islamic and pro-Satanic messages? If you made up this story, you would no doubt be accused of "elitism" and insulting the intelligence of the very people who are insisting that these "messages" are real.

What we are seeing, of course, is how impressionable the mind is, and how easy it can be to "hear" something in babble or nonsense syllables once you are told it is there. As well as how religious (and other) symbols, combined with fear, can make people... dare I say, irrational.

Read more here, along with links to videos and audio samples, and examples of other dolls that supposedly said horrible things.

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Addendum: This is an amusing comparison.

Gerson's Continuing Condescension

You might think that the nation's dumbest columnist would hesitate before being condescending to his readers, but no... today he even gives his brand of condescension a fair label, Faith-Based Condescension.

My regular readers (all three of you? ;-) ) may recall this suggestion from a few weeks back - a campaign ad poking fun at McCain's attacks on Obama's credentials:

I appreciate your work for civil rights. Me, I've fought my entire life for equal rights for everyone. But aren't you being presumptuous? You did some good things as a lawyer back in Illinois, but you're trying to become commander in chief. These are troubled times, my friend, times of war. You've never been on a battlefield. You've never commanded soldiers. What makes you think that you can govern a divided nation and defend our way of life?

Sorry, Mr. Lincoln, I just don't think you're qualified.

That was then, this is now. Lincoln is now used to defend Palin's lack of qualification:

There are reasons to question the choice of the commander of the Alaska National Guard as a prospective commander in chief (though there were equally serious reasons to doubt the military qualifications of another backwoods candidate, Abraham Lincoln, who served for a few months as a private and a captain in the Black Hawk War).¹

See? She's just like Lincoln, so she's qualified.

Except "Honest Abe" would not have pretended his military record qualified him for the Presidency. It takes a great deal of chutzpah to argue that being in a state that's near Russia, or being commander in chief of a state's national guard but not making any decisions pertaining to state or national security, qualify you for higher office.

Now Gerson could have addressed the issue of Palin's qualifications honestly, but that would presuppose that he's an honest man. His brand of faith-based condescension does not involve honesty:

But instead of engaging this issue, liberals have been drawn, helpless and mesmerized -- like beetles to the vivid, blue paradise of the bug zapper -- toward criticizing Sarah Palin's religion.

Well... No. The mainstream coverage has almost exclusively focused on her qualifications. Her religious beliefs and questions they implicate have been raised, but not with any greater disrespect than those questions raised by the polical right about Sen. Lieberman's observation of the Sabbath back in 2000. And certainly nothing like the suspicion poured on JFK over his Catholicism. Sure, you can find people who will say and argue pretty much anything, but we're talking about the mainstream here, aren't we? Well, obviously not - that would be the honest approach, but it doesn't suit Gerson's purposes.

Gerson gives one quote - only one - to show the unfair treatment of Palin, and of course he doesn't attribute it. And, can you believe it... he's quoting the professionally ranting rabid athest, Christopher Hitchens.

She has inarticulately said that her gubernatorial work would be hampered "if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with god." Her local shout-and-holler tabernacle apparently believes that Jews can be converted to Jesus and homosexuals can be "cured."

Hitchens is his best example of a "liberal" who is unfair to Palin? And why is he only complaining that Hitchens was unfair in describing Palin's church as opposed to her beliefs? Wasn't that part of what Hitchens sad vastly more relevant than whether he was fair in his description of her church? Gerson also lies by omission, failing to note that Hitchens also attacked Obama's religion:

Interviewed by Rick Warren at the grotesque Saddleback megachurch a short while ago, Sen. Barack Obama announced that Jesus had died on the cross to redeem him personally. How he knew this he did not say. But it will make it exceedingly difficult for him, or his outriders and apologists, to ridicule Palin for her own ludicrous biblical literalist beliefs.

Gerson gets even less honest from there. After suggesting that it's unfair to even ask Palin about her religious beliefs, he speaks of the role of religion in the advancement of "liberty, tolerance and pluralism". Yet even here he's internally inconsistent:

And, of course, Palin is portrayed as a "theocrat" -- a Muslim fundamentalist in lipstick.

If religion, per se, leads to these advancements, Gerson might have a point. But Gerson is also implicitly condemning Islam, and particularly Islamic fundamentalism. Gerson doesn't want Palin questioned because he agrees with her, but makes it obvious that he has no faith in other faiths - if she were Muslim, he would be among those waving a torch or a pitchfork. And so the lies continue:

Democratic politicians press their appeal to blue-collar workers and the working poor -- while liberal intellectuals and pundits express their disdain for the religious values and motivations of the poor and middle class themselves.

Except it's not onlyDemocrats and "liberal intellectuals" who are concerned about the role of religion in the political sphere. And that's true even if we presuppose that all of the founding fathers were Democrats and liberals. There are conservatives who are skeptical of Palin. And as we just discussed, when the shoe is on the other foot Gerson is among the first on the attack. His faith-based condescension toward secular values seeps out of his every word. His faith-based disdain for the religious values and motivations of Muslims is also patent. His leading concern is Christianity, and moreso his own personal brand of Christianity. Condescend toward any other belief, and you're still okay in his book - in fact, you're following his lead.

Meanwhile, in case you're taking notes, beyond his self-parodic comarison of Palin to Lincoln, Gerson never got around to actually telling us that he sees Palin as even slightly qualified for national office.
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1. Lincoln was not involved in military action during his brief enlistments.

Obama Was Too Christian?

At least, that's what Bill Kristol is suggesting:

So while Obama talked of confronting evil, McCain spoke of defeating it. Obama took the view that evil is generally abroad in the world; McCain focused on radical Islam and 9/11. Obama claimed that all of us must be metaphorical “soldiers” against evil; McCain paid tribute to actual American soldiers. And McCain couldn’t resist saying again Saturday night that if he has to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell¹ to get him and bring him to justice, he’ll do so.

Now, I'll forgive Kristol for not being up on the teachings of Christ, but this was a quasi-religious forum. Which answers are more consistent with the Christian view of evil?
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1. To the gates of Hell, yes, but not into Pakistan. Not that I would expect Kristol to remind us of the facts.

Why Do Bad Things Happen....

To put it mildly, I'm no theologian. But I do find some theological debates interesting, such as the centuries-old debate over theodicy - "Why does God let bad things happen." This is really only a struggle if you believe three things: God is all-knowing, God is all-powerful, and God is all-loving. Take away any one of the three and you have an answer. But for those who insist that God is all-three, the debate cannot end as there can never be a satisfactory explanation.

Ross Douthat questions why people seem more willing to question God's benevolence in good times than in bad,

It's my impression - and it's only an impression, which is why I'd like to see someone do the necessary intellectual spadework to refute it or back it up - that this argument [that the existence of evil disproves God] has gained increasing currency even as our material conditions have dramatically improved; which is to say, the less suffering a particular population experiences, the more likely the suffering it does experience will be cited as evidence against the existence of a benevolent deity.

Douthat proposes as possible explanations increased levels of atheism associated with growth of scientific knowledge, "mass media and instantaneous communication" increasing people's exposure to tragedy, "the scale of inhumanity that modern technology makes possible", or something in human psychology that "makes suffering seem like more of an absolute injustice the less we actually experience it".

I think his best points are the first and last, although I can't endorse them as stated. If you speak of secularism as opposed to atheism, and relate it to the diminished authority and control of the church, it makes sense that scientific knowledge would lead to a secular understanding of tragedy, and make certain religious explanations of specific tragedies seem cartoonish. If you are a powerful church, capable of suppressing science and speaking to a medieval audience, "God brought this plague upon us to punish us for our sins" may resonate. Not so much when you're speaking to a scientifically literate audience - instead, you make God, or perhaps more accurately yourself, seem petty.

I suspect that the characteristic of the human psyche that comes into play emerges from the difference between a shared tragedy and an individual tragedy. When one out of three households loses a child below the age of five to injury or disease, that can be seen as the way of the world. When it's one in a thousand, it seems arbitrary and personal. The reaction of others to the tragedy changes as well, from recognizing the tragedy as something that could happen to anyone, to trying to rationalize the tragedy often by finding ways that the family brought it on themselves.

Daniel Larison seems to view God's benevolence as part of a quid pro quo:

If you are relying heavily on agriculture that depends on favourable weather and freedom from blights, as people for most of history did, and you are exposed to the ravages of famine or plague without the protections of extensive food surpluses or medical treatment, the irrationality of blasphemy and doubting God’s benevolence becomes much clearer.

That, of course, brings us back to the medieval audience - one that lacks the scientific knowledge to understand weather patterns, blight, food shortages, or to provide effective medical treatments to the ill. He seems to see faith as granting some form of herd immunity - God's benevolence ends when the level of "blasphemy and doubting" of His benevolence exceeds a certain threshold. But on the other side of the coin,

At the same time, enjoying plenitude and wealth allows those with the most advantages the luxury of worrying not so much about the suffering that they experience, since they tend to experience relatively little, and worrying a lot more about suffering elsewhere.

So if you're a dirt farmer with insufficient faith in God, you get hit with blight or famine. But if you're enjoying plenitude and wealth, your doubts - or even your taking it a giant step further and cursing God, don't affect your plenitude and wealth? This is an argument in favor of belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God?

With the exception of natural disasters, which are the things that you might think would cause more doubt than human cruelty, complaints against God for things that we do to each other are really quite bizarre. First of all, if you believe that God did not create man with a sinful nature, but that man turned away from God, it is difficult to believe that God can be blamed for what we do to one another.

As I previously indicated, if you don't view God as all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving, this isn't a problem. Within a theology that demands belief that God is all of the above, the argument that man turned away from God is not compelling, as God knew that would happen when He created man. Also, it's inherently unsatisfactory, for example, to argue that God would let a horrific tragedy befall on babies because mankind as a whole has turned away from God. It's similarly unsatisfactory to be suggesting that somebody enjoying plenitude and wealth, unvisited by personal tragedy, shares responsible for horrific tragedy half-way around the world by having "turned away from God" - one might ask, "Why is God's aim so bad?"

Larison continues,

“But why does God permit it?” someone always asks. The standard (and true) answer is that God permits it because He respects human freedom, up to and including the freedom to disobey, because neither obedience nor love would be of any value if it were not ultimately voluntary.

To me, this is satisfactory if you subtract love from the equation, and presume that in creating man God could not foresee the future - God becomes the master of an ant colony, and we're the ants he watches and judges. Forget to feed the ants, such that they fight and eat each other? "Bad ants." It also raises the question, when according to the Bible and Catholic teaching God has at times been highly interventionist in human affairs, God chooses at other times to sit back and watch.

Yet what these people seem to be terrified of most is the possibility that God really has allowed man such an extensive freedom, and that God is nothing like the caricatured martinet dictator that the sad New Atheists portray Him to be. Indeed, one gets the impression from many complaints against God for permitting suffering that they would very much welcome a deity who regimented and ordered their lives in order to provide maximal security and prosperity.

I have yet to meet an atheist who is terrified of God, let alone the notion that God has given man freedom. But perhaps more to the point, isn't it institutionalized religion that depicts God as a being who will regiment and order your life, providing maximal security and prosperity, if only you believe, defer, and follow the rules of the Church? What church teaches, "Your reward for belief in and worship of God is that you are free to do what you want and, whatever you do, what happens will happen"? (Calvanism?)

Even though God does intervene in history in dramatic, powerful and world-changing ways (see the Incarnation), what troubles the doubters is that God does not intervene more often.

There are other ways you can look at God's intervention, ranging from viewing the stories of interventions as fables created by man, to demonstration of God's will and authority over all of dominion. But if you take the latter approach, you are forced to ask yourself, "What are God's priorities"? It's neat that God intervened in the the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem to help accommodate a lack of consecrated olive oil, such that a mere day's supply lasted for eight days. But if interventions are to be limited in number, whether to choose between that or stopping the Holocaust.... Tough choices for a deity.

It’s as if they want to say, “Stop respecting my free will and just do something for me!” That this sounds exactly like the statement of a spoiled child is appropriate, because that is what it is.

Now we're coming full circle, back to the medieval farming village told that their crops have failed because they had too much doubt in God. They're told, "Pray to God, give to the Church, and God will smile upon you and bring you bounty. If you're wealthy, God wants you to be wealthy. If you're poor, God wants you to be poor. If you're king, God made you king. Accept your lot in life." But everything bad is attributed to "free will"? How convenient.

Then, in those moments of chastening and real trial that God permits or wills, the spoiled children whine even more when they are confronted with some small modicum of loving discipline.

"Loving discipline", like the Holocaust? Genocide in Rwanda? Conveniently, those horrors are placed exclusively in the hands of man as acts of "free will". I'm not sure what Larison sees as a manifestation of the actual hand of God, but his dividing line seems to be, "If it might otherwise make me question my faith, it's the work of man."

Blair Must Be Thankful That He Had Better Writers

I imagine that, save for George Bush and maybe one or two others, people would find it more than a bit painful to have Michael Gerson put words into their mouths. Speaking of the "American kickoff of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation", Gerson's word-insertions start almost immediately:

At an event designed to further mutual religious sympathy, two of the panelists - including the president of Yale University, Richard Levin - casually asserted that religious Americans who support pro-life restrictions on international family planning aid are as doctrinaire and exclusionary as Saudi extremists. Pro-life Catholics and evangelicals? Wahhabi extremists? What's the difference?

Gerson share's Tony Blair's reaction to his spin, as,

Speaking to me after the event, Blair was patient, arguing that that "could not be what they intended."

It sounds like Tony Blair was trying to tell Gerson that he got it wrong. But Gerson didn't provide a quote for the statements that supposedly constituted the casual assertion, nor did he even deign to quote Blair's full sentence. But Gerson wants to tell us what people said, not show us, and we're supposed to take him at his word that he's getting things right.

But Blair is also critical of an "aggressive secularization," which, he told me, makes it easier to "forget a higher calling than the fulfillment of our own desires." Religious faith, at its best, not only encourages idealism, it provides an explanation and foundation for human rights and dignity, "an inalienable principle, rising above relativism and expediency." This does not "eliminate the painful compromises of political existence," Blair recognizes. But it does mean that "not everything can be considered in a utilitarian way." Blair defends a pluralism without relativism, a tolerance consistent with a belief in religious and moral truth - indeed, a tolerance that arises from within those convictions.

The worst thinking, of course, falls outside of the quotation marks. For example, the idea that religion, and by implication religion alone (and perhaps only the particular Christian beliefs of Gerson... and Blair?), "provides an explanation and foundation for human rights and dignity". Yet it's pretty simple to find and articulate entirely secular explanations of, and foundations for, human rights and dignity. Just as it's pretty simple to find examples of religion, not "at its best", undermining both.

On top of that, to put it mildly, neither the administration led by Blair nor the administration exalted by Gerson, can justly claim to have expanded the "foundation for human rights and dignity", either at home or abroad. Their anti-terror security rules at home pared back domestic liberties. Support for indefinite incarceration without charges, denial of habeas corpus rights, mistreatment of prisoners, use of techniques such as waterboarding that have been traditionally classified as torture, and rendition of prisoners to other nations that will use torture? But it's all worth it if in a decade or two, or four, or ten, Iraq becomes a somewhat non-repressive Shiite-dominated authoritarian democracy of some sort? Is all of this one of the "painful compromises of political existence"?

To speak of "pluralism without relativism, a tolerance consistent with a belief in religious and moral truth" seems misguided. Is this Gerson's way of saying, "My particular religious and moral beliefs are superior to yours, but enable me to tolerate your inferior beliefs"? Or, "As long as you respect the superiority of my beliefs, pluralism is great"? How can you hold those beliefs and sincerely believe that you support a pluralistic society? For the leadership of a state to champion its own religious beliefs while branding others as inferior is the opposite of pluralism. Even assuming it's what he said, Blair's certainly smart enough to see the inconsistency.

But his main argument is public and visionary. Religion, Blair argues, is not going away, as secularists have expected and predicated for centuries.

This game again - okay, Michael - name names. Which specific "secularists" are you referencing? But beyond that, isn't it far more accurate to say that religious leaders have feared for centuries that secular elements of society will cause religion to wither and die? Isn't the gist of your very column that religion is at a disadvantage in what you see as "a faithless world"?

A Clash Of Faiths

On one side, the inimitable Michael Gerson,

But compassionate conservatism has come under criticism for a variety of reasons. For some, it is fundamentally at odds with fiscal conservatism -- no social priority is deemed more urgent than balancing the budget. For others, it is a violation of their vision of limited government -- the state's only valid purpose is to uphold markets and protect individual liberty. But by drawing these limits so narrowly, such critics would relegate conservatism to the realm of rejected ideologies: untainted, uncomplicated and ignored. And by leaving great social needs unmet, they would grant liberalism an open field and invite genuine statism.

On the other side, (sort of) free market advocacy from Daniel Larison:

How tiresome it is to hear that “social needs” are unmet because government is not involved in meeting them, or that government must be involved if those needs are, in fact, unmet. If they’re unmet, they’re probably unmet because someone whining in the name of “compassion” forty years ago complained that the government wasn’t doing enough, so the state usurped the proper social functions of existing institutions that have since withered and died from neglect and lack of support, and now all we are left with is recourse to still more government.

A big part of the problem with "compassionate conservativism" is that it was a lie from day one, with perhaps Michael Gerson being the only living person not to have come to terms with that fact. The term represents typical G.W., attempting to depict himself as a centrist who will reinvent the social safety net to help people climb out of poverty, coupled with a promise to dole hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of federal dollars into religious organizations. He didn't mean the first part and, as far as I can see, for G.W. the second part was solely about getting votes. I've seen no evidence that G.W. cares about the efficacy of vouchers (and in fact "No Child Left Behind" and voucher programs appear calculated to prevent direct comparison of public schools to private schools, by doling out money to private schools while exempting them from NCLB's testing requirements and standards).

But what of Larison's cult of the free market? What social support network is he imagining, flourishing some forty years ago, but that has now disappeared? It's a fiction presented as fact.

That's not to say that the government has not stepped into places where charities, particularly religious charities, once dominated. Counties offer free and discounted medical care that one might have historically received through a hospital founded by a religious group. Poor people get food stamps (or should I say an EBT card) rather than queueing outside of the Salvation Army offices or some other soup kitchen. Housing subsidies and government funded shelters have largely replaced charitable shelters.

But when you look at why this happened, it was due to the failure of private and religious charities to meet the needs of an industrialized society. Giving full respect to the significant charitable efforts made by many people and organizations before the dawn of the so-called "welfare state", there was no glory day when the needs of all of the nation's poor were well-met by charity. Religions and charities did not shutter workhouses and orphanages, in favor of keeping families together. Religions and charities did not bring about universal public education. Religions and charities still do operate hospitals - but for most of us, the bill isn't any smaller than it would be at a private or public hospital, and they would be overwhelmed and bankrupted if they were to open their doors to the nation's poor with no charge and without requesting reimbursement through Medicare and Medicaid. Moreover, the government can administer programs evenly across states or the entire nation, where charities did not and cannot. In short, we're dealing with two issues: The fact that the world Larison depicts as an ideal never existed (and never will), and the fact that society has changed from the days when charities and religious organizations could partially fulfill the needs now served by government.

The question of whether it is better to serve up charity with a religious sermon or a dose of shame, or if it is better to leave charity to hands that can deny relief to people deemed "undeserving" (whether because they're not seen as making a sufficient effort, or because they're of the wrong faith or perhaps even ethnicity) is apart from the question of whether private charities and religions could take the place of public social assistance in a modern industrialized society. They cannot. You want to talk about ending dependence? I'm all ears. But it's a separate issue.

Gerson seems to recognize the failure of non-state actors, arguing that fiscal conservatives, "by leaving great social needs unmet, ... would grant liberalism an open field and invite genuine statism." Where he devolves into the comical is in the idea that the "alternative" is for state and federal governments to tax their citizens then pass the money along to third parties to administer in a "charitable" manner. There's no evidence presented, nor argument given, that this approach saves money, increases efficiency, or reduces dependency.

Larison objects to the continuation of dependency, arguing,

However the program or initiative is designed, it will always be another form of dependency and another means to concentrate power in the state by creating these bonds of dependency on government initiatives. How insulting to listen to someone who has never blinked at proposing spending other people’s money on the problems of people he has never met mock fiscal responsibility, and then claim that those interested in the profoundly moral effort to not pass on our debts to our posterity supposedly believe that balanced budgets are the top “social priority.” What is Michael Gerson’s top social priority? It seems that gratifying his undying need for atoning vicariously through good works that he isn’t doing that are paid for by wealth he isn’t creating in places he will never go is his top priority, and woe betide the moneychangers who block him on the path of righteousness!

Well, a big part of the problem probably starts with turning this into a religious debate, dictated by unseen forces emanating from our WWJD bracelets. The fact is that as long as there have been churches, there have been collection plates. Shall we discuss tithing, which at times and places in history was little different from a tax? What churches offered straw polls to let people decide where and how they spent the collected money? Save for individual efforts and those of small groups, something that cannot take the place of large-scale social programs, this has always been about paying money to third parties who decide if and how it will be expended for the benefit of the poor.

The dichotomy Larison implies - and it's a false dichotomy - is that we have a choice between balancing the budget and providing public assistance to the poor. We can also balance the budget by increasing taxes or cutting other areas of spending. So if we're going to speak of a "profoundly moral effort to not pass on our debts to our posterity", we must ask why the most "moral" solution is to put social spending on the chopping block, while preserving current levels of corporate welfare, military spending, and those provisions of the tax code that are exceedingly favorable to the rich, or instead of raising taxes to cover the difference. Larison argues,

Instead of a supposedly libertarian Christ, Gerson offers us Christ the social worker, which is an appropriation every bit as unpersuasive as the other caricatures he rejects, and the disciples of this social worker have an unerring ability to be extremely annoying.

You can make a strong libertarian case for prioritizing a balanced budget and cutting social welfare benefits first, but spare me any argument that it's dictated or even supported by Christ's teachings.

Why Am I Skeptical....

John Hagee wants our sympathy:

What has been disappointing has been to see my life's work - the great passion of my life ? mischaracterized and attacked. I have dedicated my life to combating anti-Semitism and supporting the State of Israel. In taking a stand for Israel I have received death threats from anti-Semites and neo-Nazis, and I've had the windows of my car blown out beneath the windows of the rooms in which my children slept. To hear people who know nothing about me or my life's work claim that I somehow excuse the Holocaust is simply heartbreaking.

You would think there would be a huge paper trail relating to these threats, with intense investigations by the local police and perhaps the FBI. Yet Hagee suggest that the FBI didn't investigate his report of these various anonymous threats and acts, all of which apparently date back to 1981. And what of the way he tells the story?

Later, he related a story of a similar event in 1981 at his church where a bomb threat was called in. When he informed the attendees of the threat, the Christians in the audience left the building quickly, but the Jews in attendance stayed put "as if I had said there would be kosher hot dogs available afterward."

Such a funny man.

But that's bypassing the central question. Hagee's "support" for Israel grows out of his religious belief, that God wants all of the world's Jews to congregate in Israel where, in the "end of days", they will either perish in the "sea of fire" or convert to Christianity. In Hagee's words, "Today Israel is back in the land and they are at Ezekiel 37 and 8. They are physically alive but they're not spiritually alive." Hagee's views in a literal sense may constitute "support for Israel", but it takes a great deal of imagination to construe them as also supportive of Jews.

"They're All Happy Campers"

Remember years ago, when Dan Quayle visited American Samoa?

You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.

Exceptionally patronizing and condescending, right? Well, maybe not. Because if you read the likes of Michael Gerson, it's "patronizing" to suggest that blocks of voters are anything but happy campers.

The roots of Gerson's thesis, of course, are the wishes of his Republican masters to expand upon Barack Obama's "bitter/cling" comments, and advance the idea that he is "elitist" for generalizing in any way, whatsoever, about any group of people. Well, no, scratch that - as far as his masters are concerned, it's fine to generalize about blocs of voters who lean Democratic. Not a one of them would criticize somebody for alluding to Democrats or liberals as part of a "Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show". What's forbidden, apparently, is to generalize about voters who lean Republican or who are in the amorphous political "center". The only way to escape that trap, it seems, is to follow the Quayle model of treating them as "happy campers".

Moreover, you must plug your ears to political reality. The "happy campers" of this nation have no resentment of affirmative action. They have no fear of crime. They don't "feel their dreams slipping away". African-American "happy campers" who came of age in an era of Jim Crow and segregation (and here Gerson seems to be speaking both individually and collectively) cannot be said to have "bitterness and biases" resulting from their experiences with legal and institutionalized discrimination.

Gerson explains, "The only thing more insulting than being attacked is being explained." Except it's not "insulting" to be explained, unless the explanation is wrong or "the truth hurts". It's insulting to be "explained away", but that's very different from being "explained", and that expansion on Gerson's actual words doesn't fit Gerson's accusations against Obama. (Besides, Gerson's prior profession was speechwriter, so we shouldn't need to read extra words into his column to have it make sense.)

Gerson proceeds to exemplify how, despite his earlier claims, it's okay to generalize about "they don't vote for us, anyway" voter blocs. Gerson presents extreme elements of "Black theology" that he attributes to James Cone, then tells us that Rev. Wright was mentored by Cone (guilt by association) even though Gerson has apparently been unable to put Cone's words directly into Wright's mouth, then he implies that anybody who goes to a church that is in any way associated with "Black theology" (guilt by association by association) must either accept those views as basic beliefs of their pastor or have been "asleep in the pew".

Although not offered as an defense of his generalizations, Gerson writes, "Most people would rather be termed right or wrong than be dismissed." See? So Gerson wasn't being patronizing, condescending or dismissive when he generalized what he sees as the worst of "Black theology" to all churches that advance some aspect of "black liberation theology" (those are his terms and his capitalization, and it is he who uses the terms as synonyms), and in suggesting that those churches follow a philosophy that is "not Biblical." He was simply telling all of the ministers of those churches, and everybody in their congregations, "You are wrong." Don't go reading a James Baker-type attitude into that. (And don't you dare suggest that Gerson wouldn't dream of offering a similar analysis of a mainstream white Christian movement.)

What's perhaps most interesting about these continuing, relentless right-wing assaults on Obama, Reverend Wright, and his so-called "elitism" (the difference in that regard between Obama and the other candidates being principally one of image, not substance) is that it suggests that Obama remains the Republicans' most feared opponent for the fall campaign.

... And The Spin Machine Keeps On Spinning

Robert Novak is smarter than a lot of his fellow columnists. Unlike, for example, a Michael Gerson, who happily says the most stupid things to advance the Republican agenda, Novak puts those words into the mouths of others. Perhaps accurately, but let's just say I wouldn't recommend talking to him about a controversial subject lest you become his convenient foil.

Novak starts out by reminding us that it's important for Obama not to be seen as an angry black man.

Did [the latest speech] solve Obama's pastor problem? Leading Democrats certainly hope so, but they are not sure. His vulnerability transcends relations with a radical preacher. If Obama comes to be seen not as a presidential candidate who happens to be black but as a black candidate in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, he will face a difficult struggle in the general election against John McCain even if he bests Hillary Clinton.

That's clever. Novak could have issued a straightforward acknowledgment of the fact that only "teh stupids" would conclude that Obama is "in the mold of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton", and that nobody who is familiar with Obama's record would make such an obvious error. But candor is not consistent with Novak's goal, which (of course) is to keep the tarnish on Obama's image, not to clean it off.

So who is Novak's foil?

My friend Armstrong Williams, the African American conservative, told me, "It is not unusual to hear in many black churches the same language that Reverend Wright is being criticized for." I raised this with NPR reporter and Fox commentator Juan Williams (no relation to Armstrong). "Not at all," replied Williams, who also is African American. "It's ridiculous. I never have heard that in church."

Wright's demagoguery is so unusual in Juan Williams's view that it was necessary for Obama to separate himself from it two months ago. Instead of orating about race in America, Williams says, Obama should have repented as a "sinner" partaking of lies from the pulpit. It was a post-partisan, post-racial opportunity lost by the candidate.

From what I can see, Williams is Episcopalian. I can't say that I'm surprised that his church experiences would depart from... well, pretty much any church that doesn't offer staid, conservative services that follow centuries of church doctrine and tradition. It would seem, well, vapid to speak of a "white church" experience by comparing Episcopal services to the preaching style of John Hagee, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggert, Rod Parsley, Jim Bakker.... "That's not a 'white church' experience - I've never heard anything like that in church." Well, duh.

"Partaking lies from the pulpit"? Williams was truly suggesting that Obama's immediate response to the Wright controversy should have been to condemn the entire church, all of its works, and everybody who attended services while Wright was leading the church? That, to Novak, would have been taking a "post-partisan, post-racial opportunity"? I think the laugh track on the Washington Post website must be broken, because at this point we should be hearing raucous laughter. (But at least at this point he's not (overtly) trying to put that suggestion into Williams' mouth.)

The "thrown under the bus" line should be retired, but of course Novak drags it out:

Nobody knows whether Obama's performance has damaged his candidacy permanently, but his supporters hope the issue is out of the news. The difficulty is that Jeremiah Wright, thrown under the bus by his former parishioner, can reemerge any time he wishes and renew discussion of the Democratic presidential front-runner's real identity.

And if Wright doesn't wish, he'll have partisans like Novak trying to bring the issue to the forefront at every opportunity.

But for Novak to suggest that Obama's statement threw Wright under the bus? After suggesting that the proper response to the initial scandal would have been to throw Wright, his entire church, and his entire conversation under a Mack truck and run over them fifty or sixty times? If you were ever in doubt that Novak is a man with no shame....

Different Visions of Rev. Wright

The New Republic attempts to explain what might have attracted Obama to Rev. Wright. Presenting a passage from David Mendell's biography of Obama,

Wright remains a maverick among Chicago's vast assortment of black preachers. He will question Scripture when he feels it forsakes common sense; he is an ardent foe of mandatory school prayer; and he is a staunch advocate for homosexual rights, which is almost unheard-of among African-American ministers. Gay and lesbian couples, with hands clasped, can be spotted in Trinity's pews each Sunday. Even if some blacks consider Wright's church serving only the bourgeois set, his ministry attracts a broad cross section of Chicago's black community.

* * *

But more than that, Trinity's less doctrinal approach to the Bible intrigued and attracted Obama. "Faith to him is how he sees the human condition," Wright said. "Faith to him is not . . . litmus test, mouth-spouting, quoting Scripture. It's what you do with your life, how you live your life. That's far more important than beating someone over the head with Scripture that says women shouldn't wear pants or if you drink, you're going to hell. That's just not who Barack is."

The article suggests,

So, if you buy Wright's account [as given to David Mendell] - and it rings pretty true to me - it was his intellectualism and social progressivism that won Obama over. Certainly it's hard to imagine that someone like Obama, who came from a progressive, secular background, would have felt genuinely comfortable in a socially conservative, anti-intellectual church. The problem for Obama is that the flip-side of these virtues was a minister with a radical worldview and a penchant for advertising it loudly.

That interpretation would help explain why Obama might accept Wright, warts and all, into his life. And why he would give Wright a chance to redeem himself, rather than issuing the renunciation some demanded from "day one" of this petty scandal.

The Washington Post in an unsigned editorial (and it seems almost cowardly to say this without attaching an author's name) opines:

We didn't join the renewed and growing chorus calling on Mr. Obama to renounce the Rev. Wright after the minister's all-about-me rant at the National Press Club on Monday, but the candidate's motivation is pretty obvious. The Rev. Wright praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, said it was plausible that AIDS was a genocidal tool of the U.S. government to kill African Americans and proclaimed that attacks on him were an attack on the black church. He also delivered a deliberate poke in the eye to his former parishioner, suggesting that Mr. Obama's conciliatory Philadelphia speech was nothing but politics. With each defiant utterance Monday, the Rev. Wright dug a deeper political hole for Mr. Obama.

Did Mr. Obama climb out of that hole yesterday? It seems to us that the whole sorry episode raises legitimate questions about his judgment.

You can't pat yourself on the back for supposedly not calling for further repudiation of Wright while insisting that Wright's comments raise questions about Obama's judgment - the two go hand-in-hand. Moreover, do try for some internal consistency. Yesterday's similarly unsigned editorial proclaimed,

None of this is helpful to Mr. Obama, who could face more calls not only to denounce such inflammatory comments but also to renounce his longtime pastor. We will not join in that chorus. In his address on race in Philadelphia last month after video of the Rev. Wright's fiery sermons burst onto the national scene, Mr. Obama condemned, "in unequivocal terms, the statements of Rev. Wright that have caused such controversy." The candidate credibly explained how he could understand his minister's anger without sharing or approving of it. Having had a closer look at the Rev. Wright, voters will have to decide for themselves how much weight to give Mr. Obama's long association with the pastor. But it is the Rev. Wright, not Mr. Obama, who yesterday chose to further discredit himself.

So yesterday Obama had given a credible response to attacks over Wright, and today he has insufficiently responded to "legitimate questions about his judgment"?

The saddest part here is that Wright had a choice to make. He could have stepped up by presenting himself as a solid, Christian leader who had been misunderstood in one sermon. He could have engaged in a gentle dialog on race, discussed the difference in style between his style of preaching and the more restrained version many Americans are used to. He could have deflated the use of the out-of-context "G-D America" clip by Obama's opponents. But no, he instead chose to act the part of, in Jim Sleeper's words, a "wounded, raving, preening narcissist". It has to be painful to have your career reduced to a caricature, to have your good works ignored, and to have the Washington Post suggest that anybody who would voluntarily associate with you is unfit for national office. But Wright needs to take responsibility for the fact that he just made that pain a lot worse.

Texas Acts Against Polygamy

Is the primary purpose of this costly move to protect the children, or to make polygamists think twice about continuing their expansion into Texas?

To me it looks a lot like something that was planned long in advance, while politicians waited for an appropriate triggering event to take their pre-planned action.

"I Meant It As A Compliment"

John Hagee then:

The Catholic Church is "the great whore of Babylon."

John Hagee now:

The secular media is desperately attempting to portray me as anti-Catholic and a religious bigot.

The media should give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he wouldn't be the first religious leader who, as it turns out, has a fondness for....