...you might be wondering. The answer, for now, is that I'm primarily posting at my Myspace blog. I don't know how permanent this situation will be, (it's possible to likely that it won't be) but I'm forced to go for the moment where the most readers are.
I'm not sure how many people are out there who read this blog who did not follow the other one, but if you are and wondered where I am, there's your answer.
Poor Barack Obama can't win for losing.
You may remember this summer when Obama's appearance at Jim Wallis' Call to Renewal conference left many liberals uneasy. Now, evangelical megastar Rick Warren has invited him to speak at his conference on HIV/AIDS this week, and, in what may be a preview of 2008, he's got the fundamentalists up in arms.
And what are these "moral issues" that "real Christians truly value?" Well, there's no need for the plural.
The Religious Right presently is in dire straights. Not only did they suffer a heavy defeat this month (with the rest of the Republicans) but they have no clear presidential choice set up in 2008 to take the place of their fallen angel George Bush. The three favorites at this early junction for the Republican nomination are Mitt Romney, Rudy Guliani and John McCain; none of whom are cozy with Christian conservatives. Romney is a Mormon. Guliani is prochoice, pro-civil unions and has personal baggage the fundies don't approve of. And while McCain has been snuggling up lately, we all remember who rammed him off the trail in 2000.
Should Obama win the Democratic nomination--which I don't think he will--we could well have an unusual scenario in which the Dem nominee is more comfortable with religious language than the Republican. This, as pastordan astutely points out, scares the everloving daylights out of the fundie braintrust, who can't afford to let even a fraction of their congregation be wooed to the dark side (this takes on a whole new meaning when Obama is the person involved...).
But these guys, the archbishops of right-wing Christianity, are not the kind of people who are going to risk losing an election to take a principled stand for what they claim to believe in. Their satisfaction comes from the illusion of being the engine driving the GOP machine, regardless of who's behind the wheel. They drive him to the White House, then demand to have their wheels greased believing it was they solely responsible for bringing him there (even though they were never a threat to shut down or go elsewhere.)
So they don't care who the GOP nominates; it just makes their job occasionally more difficult. They are already warming up the band for Obama; dragging out the old gruesome abortion rhetoric, trying to turn as much of the flock into single-issue voters as possible, and keep the focus off Mitt or Rudy.
Back in my days with the evangelicals in Bloomington, we would occasionally drive by the local Unitarian Universalist church, which inevitably provoked an outbreak of smirks and jeers. It was, to us, the Church of Nothingness, and we couldn't understand why you'd want to be a member of a religious body where your beliefs about the Big Questions of the world weren't at all relevant. If you want to be a universalist, we believed, then you might as well do whatever you wish and dispense with the unnecessary rigamarole of being religious.
When you unpack it, this is an quirky view the fundamentalist has of religion. As I've discussed several times on the other blog, the chief concern of conservative evangelicals is packing themselves and as many other people as possible into the Big Church in the Sky (heck, this is why they're called "evangelicals" in the first place.) All the other trappings of life are incidental. If they didn't have the carrot on the stick driving them forward, they wouldn't have any need for religon at all.
For them, religion is all metaphysics; all about finding the Right Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Liberal theologians are heckled for lifting up the temporary and pointless and trying to escape the absolute monasticism that "true" Christianity demands (see my earlier post on that subject.) They cannot understand why someone like John Shelby Spong, who spent much of his professional life questioning the historical truth of the New Testament, would still want to be an Episcopal bishop. If it isn't Absolutely True, they find no value in it. (This is why fundamentalists make such terrible artists; they cannot imagine anything worthwhile coming from fiction.)
Liberal religion is, on a very broadstroke level, humanist. It doesn't matter so much what you believe about the metaphysical, we say, because it's what you do with the people around you that matter. If you find personal wisdom in Jesus, Buddha or the Hebrew Bible, well, good for you, because we're all in the same rock here. So the question stands; why bother with relgion at all?
Well, none of us is going to force you, of course. There are many answers, and this post is already running out of control without trying to do anymore here. Many people feel it gives them a path in life that cold, hard science doesn't provide.* I think there is probably something to this.
*As a footnote, many people think fundamentalists are completely rejecting of science. Not exactly. They will constantly try to use science and philosophy as long as it serves their ends (see creationism/Intelligent Design). They distrust science because it doens't always provide what they need. Remember, they are primarily occupied with physical/historical/metaphysical true/false questions. For them, it isn't that their faith and science answer different kinds of questions, it's that they answer the same questions a different way.
Hee hee hee...I love this story. Some parents in an Illinois school district are trying to have a book called "And Tango Makes Three" removed from the school library. This is a children's book that tells the (apparently true) story of two male penguins in a New York zoo who take in an abandoned egg and raise the chick as their own.
Complaining about the book's homosexual undertones, some parents of Shiloh Elementary School students believe the book — available to be checked out of the school's library in this 11,000-resident town 20 miles east of St. Louis — tackles topics their children aren't ready to handle.
Their request: Move the book to the library's regular shelves and restrict it to a section for mature issues, perhaps even requiring parental permission before a child can check it out.
The bigots are agog at the notion that these two sodomites are spreading their Gay Penguin Agenda to their impressionable youngsters. What are they thinking? We all *know* homosexuality just isn't natural. Didn't they get the memo that the task of raising families is between one male penguin and one female penguin, because we said it was?
I read a thought last week (I've forgotten where) by someone wondering what the conservatives do "if God loses?" He or she was talking in particular about the war in Iraq, which was hailed as divine will by many Christian Right ministers. I'd like to explore that question myself in more detail sometime, but for now, suffice to say, what happens when they're faced with the sour prospect of humiliation is to move it to the section for "mature issues." The better to keep the youngsters in the fold for a bit longer, at least.
The other article in last week's issue of The Nation which has everyone buzzing is Kathryn Joyce's piece on a group calling themselves the "Quiverfulls [sic]". They are a loose network of very fringe-y fundamentalists who try to churn out as many babies as possible, believing the key to winning the long-term culture war is winning the baby battle.
Instead of picketing clinics, Pride writes, Christians should fight abortion by demonstrating that children are an "unqualified blessing" by having as many as God gives them. Only a determination among Christian women to take up their submissive, motherly roles with a "military air" and become "maternal missionaries" will lead the Christian army to victory. Thus is Quiverfull part of Mary Pride's whole-cloth solution to women's liberation: embracing an opposing way of life as total and "self-consistent" as feminism, and turning back the tide on a society gone wrong by populating the world with right-thinking Christians.
I have to admit, I have a grudging admiration for these people. They're crazy, but they are consistent, and that's not easy to find. I have often argued that, if the "pro-life" movement were coherent, this is the position it would have to take. Choosing whether to have children doesn't start with pregnancy. If you are one to believe that snuffing out life before it actually begins is a heinous crime, then you should have to answer why you are not producing as much life as you are able. And, heaven knows, you cannot stop with what you can support financially, since this is not an excuse for poor women who want an abortion. Faith in God and all that.
The ultimate goal for the Baby Factories, of course, is to eventually run off us child-hating liberals with a tidal wave of their spawn. There are good reasons to be vigilant about the theocratic threat, but this isn't one of them. We may not breed, but we adopt (so to speak), and these authoritarians aren't going to change the historical pattern of hemorrhaging their charges in large numbers to the sweet smell of freedom. This is the 21st century, and it is becoming increasingly hard for fundamentalists to incubate their children deep enough into the Christian bubble to shield them from deleterious influence and still function.
Here's another interesting thing I've discovered about Rapturemaniacs: for people who are so self-assured in their ability to map out the End Times down to the second, they are mysteriously unable to come up with a cogent answer for which Middle Eastern country has to get blown up in order to bring about Armageddon. Every time conflict breaks out, like last summer's Israel-Hezbollah war, they start honing their harp-playing skills as if This Could Be the One.
If I were them, I'd just lob a few nukes at the place and figure one of 'em has to hit the right button. Which, unfortunately, seems to be more or less the direction they're headed. Via this DKos diary, a NYT story on our favorite fundigelicals banging the Iran war drums. Because maybe the Jesus Elevator is hidden in Tehran...
Some evangelical leaders say they are wary of reports that a panel including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III might recommend negotiating with Iran about the future of Iraq. "It certainly bothers me," said Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the most influential conservative Christians. "That has the same kind of feel to it as the British negotiating with Germany, Italy and Japan in the run up to World War II."
Dear oh dear. What will we ever do with the Good Doctor? For Pete's sake, man, just stop trying to rewrite history to bolster your weak point. You don't care about an honest reflection on history, and your endless army of tools doesn't care about philosophy or law or science or anything else beyond whatever mangled, formulaic bastardization they gin up to obfuscate their arguments which are otherwise rooted solely on dogma. (You don't care about democracy, either, but I'll get to that.)
But I'm not just going to pick on you here. Truth is, this is an old slapdown that every hawk thinks he has in his back pocket. Whenever you try to suggest that diplomacy might be the solution to a rogue head of state, out comes the ghost of Neville Chamberlain. It's the inverse of Godwin's Law; the hawk you're debating will immediately become smug and victorious waiting for you to defend not taking preemptive action against Nazi Germany. There are many reasons why this is not the trump card they imagine. Among them:
"But," they will protest, "what about the Holocaust? Shirley you can't object to intervening on behalf of the population facing extinction!" Yes, I can, Shirley. Because while many in the West were aware of the racial proclivities of the Nazis, it amounted, before 1939, to some institutional discrimination and political prisoners so far as they were concerned. And heck, the USA at the time was all about the institutional discrimination. The "Final Solution" wasn't introduced until the war had already started, and it would be until the war was nearly over until many people realized the scope of what had happened.
You might wonder why the neocon hawks are so enamored of the British leaders during WWII; imagining themselves as barreling Chruchillian nobles sticking their collective thumb in the eye of weak-kneed liberal Chamberlains. They will occasionally mutter about FDR's isolationism, but only meekly, because that was the overwhelming mood in the country at the time, and because their conservative forbears were even more isolationist. Some, including Charles Lindbergh and Charles Coughlin, the father of modern gasbag radio, were outright Nazi sympathizers. Re-purposing themselves as British is merely an attempt to erase another historical conservative embarrassment and to deflect praise from the man whose legacy they resent more than any 20th-century figure: Franklin D. Roosevelt.
King George II is off to tour Asia in his Royal Aeroplane this week, but I'm not sure he knows exactly where he's going. As Foreign Policy's Passport blog points out, the White House website, intending to post the flag of Vietnam, instead posted the old flag of the defunct nation of South Vietnam.
Freudian slip much?
Well, friends, it was only a matter of time. Another piece of American cultural garbage is headed north to infect the Great White Land. As Chris Hedges reports in The Nation, the poisonous seeds of the Christian Right are making inroads in Canada and threatening to besmirch what would be our social democratic refuge should things turn too dark here.
Harper, who heads a minority government, is a member of the East Gate Alliance Church, part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, a denomination with 400,000 members that believes in the literal word of the Bible, faith-healing and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. Women cannot be ordained in his church, homosexuality is a sin and abortion is murder. Canada, however, is unused to public displays of faith, and Harper has had to tread more lightly than George Bush. But many fear the prime minister is taking a cue from the Bush Administration and slowly mobilizing Canada's 3.5 million evangelicals--along with the 44 percent of Canadians who say they have committed themselves to Christ--as a power base. Harper has spent the past three years methodically knitting a coalition of social conservatives and evangelicals that looks ominously similar to the American model.
Canadians tepidly put the Conservative Party, led by the Bush clone Stephen Harper, in power this year after Liberal Party was beset with scandals and stagnation. I have been assured by some in Canada that their country remains faithfully liberal and will boot out the Cons as soon as they try any funny business or the Liberals regain their balance. I wish I could say I was as confident. Once it starts, the cancer of the Christian Right is hard to stop.
And they're moving in.
Unfortunately for Canada, Harper has a lot of American help. James Dobson has set up a Canadian branch of his Focus on the Family three blocks from the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. The organization, called the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, provides political expertise to and otherwise supports Harper's allies in the bid to turn Canada into an Americanized Christian state. Dobson, who rails against Canada's defense of gay rights and legalization of same-sex marriage, buys radio time in Canada to attack the nation's tolerance of gays and calls for legislation to roll back these measures. The proliferation of new Christian groups is dizzying, with organizations such as the National House of Prayer, the Institute for Canadian Values and the Canada Family Action Coalition, whose mission is "to see Judeo-Christian moral principles restored in Canada," publishing election guides, working with sympathetic legislators and mobilizing Canadian evangelicals in local and national campaigns. These groups turn frequently to American Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell, who came to Canada two years ago for an "Emergency Pastors Briefing" to rally 400 evangelical ministers against a bill before Parliament that included a provision making it a hate crime to denounce homosexuals.
Seriously, the "Institute on Marriage and Family?" I know that Peterson Toscano likes to jokingly refer to Dobson's organization "Focus on the Faggot," but now they've stopped being even modestly opaque about it.
Unfortunately for Big Daddy, they are slipping through his fingers faster than he can catch them. The South African legislature yesterday legalized same-sex marriage, the fifth country to do so, and the first in what I suspect might be a big wave in the next couple of years. You have to hand it to the RSA; it took them awhile to get the whole democracy thing figured out, but they understand something about it the United States doesn't: basic civil rights aren't subject to a popular vote.
Don't look now, but I think the punditocracy has collectively learned a new word, because in the wake of the election all I hear is,
"Blah blah repudiation yak yak repudiation. Are the voters repudiating the policy of George Bush? Is it a repudiation of the war in Iraq? Has Karl Rove's strategy been repudiated?" On and on...
Must...not...succumb....
Not only is he in the Senate, but Bernie Sanders now has his own simplistic-yet-oddly-addictive internet arcade game.
When will the madness end? (When Firefox 2.0 stops correcting my spelling, that's when. Geez, take all the fun out of it whydontcha?)
(h/t Majikthise)
I may have been on the spearhead of the blogging craze a few years ago, but I'm apparently the last person on earth to give in to the Myspace craze.
All of you NewsCorp. tools can find me here.
Today is Armistice Day, or Veteran's Day if you prefer the uniquely American retconning of a holiday originally meant to acknowledge the end of a war into a celebration of war in general. This is a macabre and cynical view, of course, but I mostly view these military parades as another excuse for hawks to hide behind the Sanctity of the Troops as a prima facie justification for their reckless wars. (Curiously, their support for The Troops only endures so long as they don't possess any opinions of their own; see the excellent documentary "Sir! No Sir!" about the GI peace movement during Vietnam or, more recently, the right-wing treatment of congressman Jack Murtha.)
Anyway, this causes me to don my very-amateur historian suit and reflect on some people who don't often get much credit on days like today despite their contributions to American military history. I'm thinking in particular of this post's titular character, and perhaps the first in history to fit the bill, the Baron Fredrich Wilhelm von Steuben. Steuben was a Prussian mercenary brought by George Washington to Valley Forge in the famous winter of 1778 to drill the inexperienced Continental Army in European military tactics. Though he's considered by some the founder of the US Army and honored with a minor holiday and a statue in Lafayette Park, most schoolchildren probably wouldn't have his name roll off the tongue when listing American Revolutionary War heroes.
Oh yes, Lafayette. You might wonder why there are so many "Lafayette"'s dotting the Eastern US. That would be on account of this guy. But I haven't got to the good part yet. You see, in 1778 Ben Franklin himself went to a European capital to ensure a certain country's entry into the American Revolution. That country would later provide a decisive factor, including the war's final battle when their fleet (in the absence of a cogent colonial navy) prevented supplies from relieving Cornwallis at Yorktown and compelling him to surrender.
Put away your Freedom Fries, kids. The United States owes its independence in part to none other than the dirty French.
I'm never amazed at the historical depravity of Americans, but sometimes I find the temptation for admonishment too much to pass by. I wonder if the people who created the infamous Google joke about French military victories had ever heard of this guy. Or her. Just to name a couple. I'm sure they were thinking only of the Second World War, or as I like to call it, The Glorious Manifestation of Holy American Salvation, for which the world is forever indebted to us Amen. Even this obscures the fact that the Eastern Front of WWII was far larger than any theatre that Americans participated in, and indeed larger and deadlier by itself than the any conflict in human history. Far more Russians died to stop the Wehrmacht than anyone else, which is not how we like to remember the story.
What America needs is a national holiday to formally recognize the non-Americans who often played a critical role in the country's military history. Sure, there are minor, regional holidays, like Casimir Pulaski Day, which has since been immortalized by the eponymous Sufjan Stevens song. But there should be something more national and universal, if for no other reason than to remind people that history is usually sloppy and the idyllic portrait of a Self-Made Man in a Self-Made Nation is an inaccurate and eventually dangerous whitewashing of the honest record.
I don't see why fundamentalists are so opposed to same-sex marriage.
Their marriages have the same sex every time.
*cricket* *cricket*
Back in November of 2004, after I watched with incredulity as a majority of Americans switched off their brains long enough to re-elect George W. Bush president, I groused that the possibility of perpetual Republican victory seemed at hand. Karl Rove's dream of one-Party hegenomy was coming to fruition.
So much for that.
As you know by know, the Democrats have retaken the House, as expected, with a gain that will probably exceed 25 seasts by the time all the dust has settled. They also appear headed for a surprising takeover of the Senate, as well, pending only the Virginia Senate race between Jim Webb and George "Sen. Macaca" Allen. Webb has claimed victory, and has a tiny lead that is nonetheless probably recount-proof. If Allen's seat falls, the Senate will be 49-49 with 2 independents who say they will caucus with Democrats; socialist Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman of the Joe Lieberman Party.
Without trying to compose an all-encompassing treatise on "what it all means," a couple of observations relating in particular to what it means for my main object of observation; the religious right.
Going into election night there was a possibility that an anti-gay marriage ban could fail to pass for the first time. It happened, though not in a place I was looking. The citizens of Arizona have the honor of being the first to turn back the foaming fundamentalist hate ammendment, by the narrowest of margins. Some have pointed out the defeat came less at the hands of noble equal-rights activists and more at their ability to convince people that the bill's language would also strip benefits from unmarried straight couples, but the Virginia ammendment with similar extreme language survived what we thought could be a similar fate.
A pleasantly-surprising near-miss came in South Dakota, which passed its hate ammendment with a 52-48 margin. However, that was overshadowed by national attention on another SD ballot intiative; to reject the absolute abortion ban signed by the governor earlier this year. It passed 55-45. The ban had no exception for rape, incest, or life of the mother, issues on which the anti-abortion side is loath to compromise as it leaves them in thorny philosophical waters. In that respect, the loss in South Dakota represents a major defeat for them.
Wait, this is South Dakota we are talking about here, right? How did this supposedly solid "conservative" red state defeat a draconian abortion law and come far closer to beating the Hate Ammendment than supposedly progressive Wisconsin did?
The answer comes from the failure of the single-axis polarization narrative that prevails in mainstream punditry to accurately define the political situation in the United States. South Dakota is a "red state," but it's a different shade. What we saw yesterday is the difference between the libertarian conservative "prairie politics" of the Upper Midwest and interior West and the fundamentalist/authoritarian social conservativism that dominates the Republican party in the South, where the gay-bashing ammendments in Tennessee and South Carolina passed with over 75% of the vote. They may agree on economics, or even on personal values, but the libertarians in South Dakota rejected the Big Brother, bedroom snooping government hawked by Christian Right.
This may be no small thing, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out when the GOP lays out its strategy for 2008.
