Sunday, August 31, 2003
Specialized Atheism
I'm currently reading The Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler, which describes the Omega Point theory, or physics' definition of God. I'm not far enough along to offer substantive commentary, but I just flipped through to the end-notes, and found a comment that I had to address.
In attempting to show that belief in God will dissipate as society becomes technologically further advanced unless science is able to "discover" God, Tipler offers the following:
... a 1981 Gallup poll of leading American scientists (defined as scientists listed in Marquis' Who's Who in America) showed that to the question "Do you believe in life after death, or not?" 68% answered "no," 16% answered "no opinion," and only 16% answered "yes." Furthermore, a 1981 Gallup poll of American doctors and medical scientists (defined as persons in the field of medicine listed in Marquis' Who's Who in America) showed that to the question "Do you believe in life after death, or not?" 60% answered "no," 8% answered "no opinion," and only 32% answered "yes" (Gallup 1982, pp.207–12). Thus, even in America, the better educated a person is in the sciences, the more likely it is that the person will disbelieve in life after death.
Unfortunately, as Tipler admits, none of the surveys from which he is working made any attempt to ascertain when belief in God and life after death evaporated, if it was ever held. (Note that we have only the statistics for "life after death," which as figures below illustrate tends to receive a significantly lower percentage of "yes" responses than belief in God.) It might also be instructive to compare responses of the general public correlated to level of scientific education (Tipler shows that "education" broadly defined does not appear correlated to belief in God). As it is, there's no basis to declare a trend, considering that our two points are "general public" and "leading scientists."
Regardless, the factor that Tipler doesn't seem inclined to address is that scientists and doctors have pursued careers that require a specialized way of thinking. They have learned to focus on only that which they can see (or formulate in a provable equation). In other words, their education has trained them to investigate the material world and to disregard that which cannot yield repeatable results. This is entirely speculation, but I can't help but feel that doctors' closer work with individuals and occupational value for life help to explain why they are twice as likely to believe in life after death. And the fact that the scientists are (were) only as likely to have "no opinion" as to say "yes" suggests to me that there is an institutional atheism perpetuated through peer-group conceit rooted in that specialized focus. (If it were level of education and scientific understanding that shifted opinions from "yes" to "no," I would expect the doubters to number somewhere between the two, particularly among a supposedly "objective" group.)
Of further interest is a related sequence of thought within the same end-note. Tipler offers tables for international responses (in 1981) to the questions "Do you believe in the existence of God or a universal spirit?" and "Do you believe there is a life after death?" As shown in the following figures, which I've whipped up, the nations listed range from 95% (U.S.A.) to 52% (Sweden), for belief in God, and 76% (Irish Republic) to 26% (Denmark), for life after death. From this information, Tipler concludes, "Thus we see that disbelief is positively correlated with high standards of living—with the level of technological advancement—among the First World nations." Unfortunately (again), Tipler doesn't show where he gets his standard of living data from, nor does he address the question of whether it is moral turpitude bred by complacency that leads to the dwindling numbers of believers.
But again, the distribution of the non-yes answers implies, in my mind, a cultural bias rather than technological comprehension (remembering that Europe drank much more deeply from the pool of socialism than did the United States). The trend of disbelief is exactly the opposite of the trend of belief. In other words, for both questions, the "yes" category slopes down while the "no" category slopes up. This is predictable; however, in both cases, the "don't know" category is erratic. Again, this is only speculation, but if the diminishing belief were a result of increasing knowledge, I would expect the "don't knows" to be somewhere between the confident answers. As the numbers stand, this is only the case for two countries (U.S.A. and Northern Ireland), and only for the first question (existence of God).
Putting the two chunks of data together, Tipler states, "it is a strong exposure to science that corrodes belief in God, and the results of the European poll could indicate that the average European has more exposure than the average American." Let's just say that I'm skeptical that the general populations of France and Denmark are exposed to science nearly as much as leading American doctors are.
ADDENDUM:
To address what I consider to be the most obvious objection to the above, I thought I'd explain, a little, why I would expect the "don't knows" to be between the confident answers if it were a trend of knowledge. Tipler is emphasizing, here, the movement of science supplanting religion. My point is simply that, if increasing knowledge were replacing religious tradition and emotional desire, it seems reasonable that people would be inclined to resist the change or to be torn between the two. Disbelief is, after all, still a matter of "belief."Unless there is some specific level of scientific study at which the light of faith predictably goes off, it would seem that something else is at work, here, to make "yes" go so quickly to "no" than a working knowledge of the universe. Indeed, Tipler introduces both the European and "leading scientist" data in an attempt to undermine strong evidence that there was not, in fact, a significant decrease in Americans' faith from 1944 to 1988, a period of tremendous technological advancement as well as increases in average amount of education.
The deciding factor does not appear to have much to do with improved ability to consider all aspects of the debate. Therefore, it is not as crucial as Tipler makes it out to be that scientists save religion by discovering God. For starters, they could get over themselves and admit the limits of their studies and of the frame of mind that they require. The problem can be addressed from the other side, as well, among the theologians, who could do a better job of using their religious understanding to address and filter the advances of science.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:19 PM EST
Changing the Tune with Passion
Craig, of Lead and Gold, notes an apparently variable rule:
Hollywood can make movies which mock and twist the central Christian story. Yet believers were urged to see "The Last Temptation of Christ" before they criticized it. Those who wanted the film to be changed or boycotted were decried as censors.
All that free speech, robust dialogue stuff goes right out the window when we get to Mel Gibson and "The Passion."
I'm quite a bit too busy at the moment (and probably will be for another decade or so), but I intend, one day, to spend some time pondering the dynamic whereby people speak B.S. to the rest of society and both the people and society know it to be B.S., but all act as if it weren't. In the case of Hollywood, I'm of the opinion that it is starting to stink a bit too much for the charade to go on.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 04:01 PM EST
Saturday, August 30, 2003
Forgiveness and Religion
Donald Sensing tells contrasting stories that point to religious differences in the concept of when forgiveness is appropriate. Well worth a few minutes of your time, and the lesson is well worth remembering:
The commandment of Christ to love one's enemies and pray for them is not an order to feel affection for them in one's heart. It is a command to treat them in a way that is intended to lead them into righteousness before God. This is not a matter of moonlit nights and violin music. It is almost always unpleasant to do, and difficult.
ADDENDUM:
A mitigating argument covering the inter-religious aspects of Sensing's post is worth reading, as well.No Comments (click to link)
Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:56 PM EST
Empathy for the Selfish
Kathryn Jean Lopez is much more compassionate than am I:
One of the callers was an angry, suffering woman who was an unwed teen mother pre-Roe v. Wade, forced by her family to put the child up for adoption. She hates knowing that her baby is alive, having much rather aborted her child than let the child live, part of someone else’s family. This is nothing new, of course, in a day when wrongful-birth suits are nothing unfamiliar, and one feels for a woman so obviously in pain, but you certainly do have to pray that that adoption remains closed so that her child never has to hear that from his/her birth mother.
"One feels for a woman so obviously in pain"? We should surely pray for her to find the maturity of thought that will ease her suffering, but I can't get over her sickening selfishness. In essence, this woman would prefer that her child be dead rather than happy with another family. Well, perhaps she can take comfort in the possibility that her child's home turned out to be miserable and that he or she regrets ever having been born, but I don't think that the mother, now a woman at least in her forties, ought to be coddled.
Kathryn hopes that this specific child (now in his or her thirties) never has to hear from this specific mother. For my part, I hope that all people who were adopted and do not know their birth parents can remember that, even if their mothers hold this deplorable attitude, it has no effect on their own value as human beings.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:51 AM EST
False Assertions Worthy of Response (?)
I'm debating whether to write to the Providence Journal in response to a letter that the paper ran today by Roger Beaudreault:
Dr. MacAndrew says, "Kennedy is a badly educated Catholic from a badly educated family." Perhaps Dr. MacAndrew is unaware that church scholars have known for some time that a rite for blessing same-sex unions once existed in the early Christian church. It had disappeared by the early Middle Ages. As the church consolidated its political power and amassed great wealth, the pope introduced policies that sadly encouraged our modern-day homophobia.
Unfortunately, Mr. Beaudreault doesn't tell us who the "church scholars" to whom he refers might be. Having come across this assertion before (from Andrew Sullivan, I believe), I suspect that the late Yale history professor John Boswell's findings are involved in the analysis somewhere. Boswell's research is merely a representative of the modern academic way of thinking that forces its perspective into any historical or literary niche that can be misinterpreted to allow it. Another example would be academics who pivot on class to make history fit a simplistic racial model (e.g., whereby the Irish were once "black"). In Boswell's case, it is a matter of "reading" homosexuality into all close same gender relationships... ever. The practice doesn't turn out to be but so difficult, as Anton Marco shows, considering that such research removes inconvenient subtext and sublimates all specific considerations to the fact of a close relationship between men (or women). If anything, Boswell illustrates that homosexuality is sexualizing, and thus destroying, the ancient idea of friendship.
Seeking to give them the most feasible credit for accuracy, Boswell and Beaudreault can claim at best that some representatives of the Church might have unduly conformed to the ethos of particularly decadent eras (and localities). If turning away from those practices represented, in Beaudreault's words, "damage done to 'good' gay Catholics," then anybody inclined to claim that the Church has done damage to "good Catholic anti-Semites" would seem to have logically similar grounds for complaint.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:32 AM EST
And So Ends Friday
I apologize for my lack of posts today. We had a picnic at a pond that proved to be farther away than I had expected (taking three wrong turns didn't help). Then I had to do the work that actually pays the bills. And now, I've just accidentally closed the browser window in which I had collected the few Web pages on which I'd intended to comment.
Other than that, it was a bizarre and exhausting day. On the bizarre front, on my way home, bringing home the dinner that I'd just picked up, I saw an elderly blind (or effectively blind) guy staggering along a very busy — high-speed busy, with multiple exit ramps from a highway — road using a cane. I circled around and drove him to the little restaurant to which he was headed, helping him to avoid crossing the intersection of two high-speed busy roads. The funny thing was that, when I got home, my wife and daughter were watching the children's show Arthur, and it was about a blind "girl" (actually some kind of humanoid animal).
The "exhausting" comes from my 19-month-old daughter. She just will not stop! And she's quite a bit too daring for my tastes.
As for my double-life as an unknown volunteer pundit, I'll try to do better over the weekend. For one thing, I intend to actually write a new essay for my Monday column.
Good night, all.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:03 AM EST
Friday, August 29, 2003
The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week
The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "The Reluctant Preacher," by Andrew McNabb.
Andrew could very well be the best writer whom I know personally. And his Catholicism permeates his work, but not in such a way as to diminish its audience.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:55 PM EST
Thursday, August 28, 2003
What Laws and Rulings Mean
I didn't mean for this Ten Commandments controversy to become my issue of the week, but the more arguments that I come across — particularly because many of them come from conservatives — the more I'm convinced that certain components of "common knowledge" are just plain wrong.
As a disclaimer, I want to mention that I am not really addressing Judge Moore's intransigence. I don't know enough about him to judge, but based on the little that I do know in relation to current events, I'd say that he would behave somewhat differently were his stance even equal parts principle and publicity-seeking. I also want to state for the record that I think approaching the Ten Commandments monument and its removal with more zeal than is appropriate for a representation is inappropriate. What I mean by this is that this specific monument ought not be seen as the crux of the battle, but merely as a symbol of religious expression based on which Christians (and other religious folks) can fight the ever-increasing infringement of the courts into our religious freedom.
What's introduced something new for me is that, today, Rush Limbaugh quoted the following from a column by Gregg Easterbrook:
Moore further said that the First Amendment precept, "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion," does not apply to him because "I am not Congress." Drag this incompetent lunatic out of the court quickly, please. Anyone with entry-level knowledge of Constitutional law knows that the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, was intended to extend the Bill of Rights to state governments; that a 1937 Supreme Court decision specifically declared that the First Amendment binds state officials like Judge Moore.
Of course, included in this is evidence that Moore is perhaps not the best person to be taking up his side of the argument, or else Easterbrook has been selective in his quoting. Ignoring that aspect, however, I find those facts that "anyone with entry-level knowledge of Constitutional law" knows to be questionable at best. The relevant clauses of the 14th Amendment are:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
In a limited sense, this extends the Bill of Rights to the states, but even so, in the case at hand, Easterbrook's assertion presumes that the monument somehow abridges, deprives, or denies something to a citizen of Alabama. I don't see that as the case. If anything, the federal government is abridging the right of the people of Alabama to place religious monuments on state-owned land. Furthermore, the Alan Keyes piece that I mentioned yesterday argues that Moore's complying with the federal court order to remove the monument would have essentially violated his obligation, derived from this very amendment, not to "enforce any law" that restricts the religious freedom of Alabamans.
As for the 1937 Supreme Court decision that Easterbrook suggests "binds" Judge Moore, I presume he means De Jonge v. Oregon. Not surprisingly, that court case deals with a different clause of the First Amendment: freedom of speech and assembly. Nonetheless, the following aspect of the decision applies more broadly:
The First Amendment of the Federal Constitution expressly guarantees that right against abridgment by Congress. But explicit mention there does not argue exclusion elsewhere. For the right is one that cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all civil and political institutions, -- principles which the Fourteenth Amendment embodies in the general terms of its due process clause.
In other words, the fact that the language of the amendment is "Congress shall" does not automatically mean that a law somewhere else that says "Judge Moore shall" is invalid. However, this case involved a wrongly denied right to free assembly — "wrongly" because there was no due process, which is the specific clause of the 14th amendment that this ruling cites as the "elsewhere." The judiciary of Alabama did not "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property" by the placement of the monument, so there is no process that is due. Indeed, De Jonge v. Oregon leaves open the possibility of a legislature answering the "due process" requirement by enacting laws, and the Alabama legislature amended its constitution (#622) in 1901 to include the statement, "Federal and state laws 'neutral' toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise."
Now, if only I could get one of these professional pundits to argue the point with me! (Rush would be good enough.)
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:41 PM EST
Lowry Bangs the Gong
Rich Lowry today offers a too-true "ouch" assessment:
Out on the Democratic hustings, it's as if Sept. 11 never happened. Of course, no organization contributed so much to the lax law enforcement that made possible the murder of 3,000 Americans that day than the ACLU. Mohammed Atta and Co. should have remembered it in their prayers as they screamed toward their targets. If the ACLU gets its way on the Patriot Act, some future successful terrorists will want to remember it in their prayers as well.
As Lowry explores, the USA Patriot Act is another topic about which folks in certain quarters refuse to accept arguments that contradict their conclusions.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:09 PM EST
Writing (and Thinking) for the Public 101
Ann Coulter's columns (at least the occasional ones that I come across) have begun to read as if she keeps a diary of one-line zingers and worthwhile points that she strings together to form an essay. A column from yesterday is typical; it makes some good points, but good points that could be better massaged into a train of thought. The following was one paragraph, however, that hit the mark for me today:
Liberals simply refuse to consider thoughts that would interfere with their lemming-like groupthink. They hold their hands over their ears like little children who don't want to listen to mother.
The target into which this arrow pricked was a letter to the editor of the Providence Journal by Louise Knight, of Chepachet, Rhode Island:
We elect candidates. We have a democratic system of voting our candidates into office. If we don't like the job they are doing, we vote them out in the next election.
California Gov. Gray Davis was elected twice, so the people must have wanted him. The right wing tried to impeach President Clinton, and in Texas Tom Delay is playing funny games with redistricting so the Republicans will have greater control over the House and Senate. Oh, don't forget the debacle in Florida!
To the great army of the unemployed, the minimum-wage earners and just plain folks: Next election, you be the judge.
Such letters often set me off in search of the op-eds that they summarize, like third-grade book reviews. And it is only recently that I've begun learning to curb my urge to send a letter in response (of course, the blog helps in that regard). I think what has always lured me into taking up the arguments is that they seem such simple points to rebut. Yet, when the person to whom one is responding won't take hands away from ears, even simple points can never be made.
Before I move on, I'll tie up Knight's loose thread: California has a (non-partisan) provision for recalls that has been attempted before (once, I believe, against Ronald Reagan), and it is left to the people to decide whether or not they still want Davis, not to some right-wing inner circle. As a point of fact, Bill Clinton was "impeached," but the Senate acquitted him of the charges; nonetheless, impeachment is a legitimate, albeit difficult, proceeding within our form of government, and Clinton lied under oath and showed tremendous disrespect for his office; moreover, there is a movement afoot among the Democrats to impeach President Bush, proving that the proceeding and the threat thereof is not a partisan exercise. Tom Delay is a U.S. Congressman, which is not an office within the Texas state government, and redistricting is a standard procedure used (and abused) by both parties when they have the opportunity, in some cases breaking out districts for no other reason than that it will ensure the reelection of incumbents. As for Florida, it was Gore and the Texas Supreme Court that sought to change the rules while the game was in progress.
As straightforward as I believe these points to be, I imagine that Ms. Knight's litany paints too much the picture that she wants to see for her to allow the colors to be blurred. The Democrats — those of large soft money donations from rich supporters — are for the people, the Republicans against; end of story. Any evidence to the contrary must be lies, spin, or irrelevancies. Leaving open those three slots enables one never to delve into the complex decision-making required to foster a healthy society, regardless of the topic.
A similar tactic is at work in the latest Providence Journal op-ed to stump for gay marriage, this one by Providence Unitarian Reverend Richelle C. Russell:
One group of people who live, work and love right alongside another group of people is completely left out when it comes to marriage.
I am interested in marriage for any number of reasons. As a career minister I have performed more weddings than I can count. As a Unitarian-Universalist minister, I am also able to bless same-sex unions. I have performed a good number of these, too. I will never forget the private ceremony that I performed blessing the union of two fine young men surrounded by their immediate families, all devout, high-ranking Mormons quietly living out their family values.
At all the holy unions I've performed, there has never been a dry eye in the house. All attending were acutely aware of the courage and commitment necessary for the same-sex couple to stand before their community to be blessed in a house of worship.
Russell herewith transforms the definition of marriage to his desire without so much as a thought to his having done so, much less to the social ramifications of such a shift. Parents cry when their sons "commit" to other parents' sons, so all must be joyfully fulfilled; end of story. What happens thereafter is irrelevant. Whether the Rev. Russell's point of view obscures the actual attitude toward marriage among homosexuals is moot. Those who refuse to act on the end conclusion of all of Russell's preconceptions and erroneous assessments must be bigots, because there can be no questioning of his suppositions. They are settled.
One lesson in writing that I recall specifically being taught was to purposefully anticipate and address objections. This practice underlies the maxim that clear expression results from and leads to clear thought. If an idea doesn't jibe with a neat little essay or worldview, one should not discard or ignore it, but make a point of incorporating it. And writers who won't thus challenge themselves are most unlikely to accept the challenge from others.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:06 PM EST
The Redwood Review Nonfiction of the Week
The Redwood Review nonfiction piece of the week is "Are Adults Too Old for Young Adult Literature?," by Len DeAngelis.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:49 AM EST
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Adams Forgot his Franklin
Glenn Reynolds has added further updates to the post that I spent some time addressing yesterday. In an apparent effort to be fair and balanced, he links Clayton Cramer, who also takes up atheists' favorite Founder one-liners.
Let me re-quote John Adams:
It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.
Well, although Cramer doesn't make the connection, he does quote this from Ben Franklin during a federal convention in 1781:
In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity.
In addition to linking to Cramer, Reynolds makes a point that would seem to bear on the question of whether, in rejecting the dictates of the federal government (as represented by the courts), Judge Moore was being true to his duties as a leader in his own state. Reynolds cites the following bit of Alabama Constitution and suggests that Moore broke with it:
That no religion shall be established by law; that no preference shall be given by law to any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of worship; that no one shall be compelled by law to attend any place of worship; nor to pay any tithes, taxes, or other rate for building or repairing any place of worship, or for maintaining any minister or ministry; that no religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state; and that the civil rights, privileges, and capacities of any citizen shall not be in any manner affected by his religious principles.
Forgive what may seem deliberate obtuseness to the secularist-government crowd, but I don't see how this applies. The only clauses that even come close are the first two, and I don't think they quite make it. The question to which I find myself continually returning is this: How easy is it to "establish" a religion? From the simple language, one would think that it would require an act of a government declaring (probably through legislation), "The Evangelical Church is hereafter the official Church of the State of Alabama," probably with some explanation of what the practical implications of such status would be. But, boy, to listen to the secularists talk, one cannot help but be glad that establishment clauses exist at all: without them, a judge erecting a monument of the Commandments would seem to legitimate the local preacher's slipping behind the mayor's desk!
Similarly, I don't see how a monument of the Ten Commandments indicates that "preference" is "given by law to any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of worship." Primarily, a monument does not a law make. If judges and law enforcement officers are able to act without preference in the execution of their duties, particularly as described in the remaining clauses of the above quoted paragraph, then the monument has had zero effect, much less, indeed, than can be construed about use of the Bible for swearing in. To be sure, there was a period in Alabama when the judiciary felt it appropriate to hang the Ten Commandments within the courtroom itself, until the ACLU made it a federal issue.
At bottom, it ought not be a crime for a person or group of people acting within the public sphere to acknowledge their — and their government's — heritage. That such an intent should be newly discovered within decades- or centuries-old documents indicates that a dogma of another sort is at play here. It's one that I'd say is related to Alabama's 622nd Amendment, which acknowledges that "Federal and state laws 'neutral' toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise." 622 also mentions that the Supreme Court had stricken a similar law passed by the U.S. Congress, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, on the grounds that "the right to regulate was retained by the states." It would seem that the judicial oligarchy has changed its mind significantly since 1997: the right to regulate is now apparently held by the federal judiciary.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:41 PM EST
Going to Hell over the Ten Commandments
I'm in a close place about one aspect of the Ten Commandments controversy.
It took me a moment, after thinking to write that sentence, to remember where the wording came from, and once I remembered, I realized that the relevance to the topic at hand is much more than linguistic. It's from the pivotal moment of Huck Finn:
It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell" — and tore it up.
All his life, Huck has been taught that slaves are property. Therefore, helping a slave to escape would be akin to theft, a sin. He can obey the law as he understands it, which he believes to have God's approval, or he can reject the law and offend God. Of course, the reader is supposed to realize that the laws permitting slavery, being immoral, are not in line with God's will, and that there is a higher moral law that he would be obeying by helping Jim to escape.
The reason I'm in a close place is that I agree with Rush Limbaugh that it sets a dangerous precedent for Judge Moore to disobey a higher court on the basis that he is following God's law. No, says Rush, take down the monument and take up the fight to work within the system for the same effect. This could include appealing to higher authorities within the government, whether higher courts or Congress, to rein in courts that have stepped beyond their boundaries. It could also include perpetuating the ideals denoted by the Ten Commandments apart from Roy's Rock.
On the other hand, I see more than a little merit in what Alan Keyes suggests after showing that it is clearly the intention of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that matters of public religion be left to the states:
Now, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as it applies the Bill of Rights to the states, lays an obligation upon state legislatures, officers and officials to refrain from actions that deprive the people of their rights. With respect to the First Amendment, therefore, it becomes their positive obligation to resist federal encroachments that take away the right of the people to decide how their state governments deal with matters of religion. This obviously has a direct bearing on the case of Chief Justice Roy Moore in his confrontation with the abusive order of Judge Myron Thompson.
His refusal of the order is not only consistent with his duty to the Alabama Constitution, it is his duty under the Constitution of the United States. Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, the eight associate justices of the Alabama Supreme Court, and indeed any other state officials in Alabama who submit to the judge's order are, by contrast, in violation of the federal Constitution, as well as their duty to the constitution and people of Alabama.
In this view, Judge Moore, as a public official of the state of Alabama, has a moral and legal obligation to assert the rights of his state even in opposition to a federal court, not based on God's law, but based on Constitutional law. That it is a federal court that is usurping the state's authority only goes to show the difficulty that a state would have in working within the system to assert its rights. What if, for example, a federal court insisted that the state of Alabama incarcerate all conservatives? Or what if a federal court insisted that the state of Alabama release all of its convicted murderers? Shouldn't the public officials of Alabama refuse to comply? It seems obvious that there are scenarios in which, while working toward peaceful resolution of differences, affairs ought to be left in a state of civil disobedience.
In this Ten Commandments scenario, there may indeed have been better ways for Moore to deny the federal government's jurisdiction. For example, it might have made his point stronger and more specific had he refused to submit to a federal court for judgment at all. And compliance is hardly as urgently dangerous as it would be if the judgment had meant roving packs of convicted felons on the streets. Alan Keyes actually suggests that Congress "pass legislation that, in order to assure proper respect for the first clause of the First Amendment, excepts from the appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts those matters which, by the conjoint effect of the First and 10th Amendments, the Constitution reserves to the states respectively and to the people."
Although such legislation strikes me as redundant — like passing a law that requires people to obey the law — I would support it. I am not, however, optimistic at the chances of making the argument to an American citizenry that has, over years of eroded principle, come to see the judiciary's word as gospel. How many Americans are even aware that Congress has the authority to declare that the judiciary has been exceeding its jurisdiction for years and must cease to do so? Perhaps a state leader's direct and visible rejection of the rapidly expanding purview of the federal courts will serve to direct people's attention to the facts that (1) there is a legitimate conflict, and (2) there is already a mechanism to resolve it.
Be the specifics of Moore's case what they might, I can't help but feel that Limbaugh and other conservatives overestimate the possibility of asserting federalism from within the federal government. That just doesn't seem to be how these things work. More likely, federalism will require states to reaffirm the belief that they are, indeed, independent entities participating in the United States. This could begin through a state judge's rejection of a federal court's authority over him on a matter of religious expression, but it will require larger numbers of a given state's government than just one man to declare their intention, if obeying the federal government is a moral obligation, to go to hell.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:26 PM EST
Songs You Should Know 08/26/03
The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "Gimple the Fool" by Mozaik.
"Gimple the Fool" Mozaik, Psychedelic Jewgrass
Stream (HiFi)Download
from Beyond Words
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:47 AM EST
The Redwood Review Poem of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:46 AM EST
Just Thinking 08/25/03
My Just Thinking column for this week is "To My Audience," a poem that I wrote a few years ago but thought merited further presentation (especially considering how behind I am).
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:08 AM EST
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
Funny Thing on the Way to the Courthouse
Glenn Reynolds links to a parody of sorts mocking the Decalogic goings on in that Alabama courthouse:
Alabama Superior Court Justice Roy Moore addresses his supporters outside the Alabama Judicial Building where a monument of Cthulhu was put in place by Moore which he has refused to take down, August 21, 2003 in Montgomery, Alabama. Alabama's Supreme Court judges, breaking ranks with their chief justice, ruled that a Cthulhu monument must be removed from the state court building to comply with a federal order, drawing protests from insane cultists who want to keep it there.
Reynolds then does the following nice lawyerly sidestep to ignore the underlying truth — that the Judeo-Christian God is inherent in the foundations of our country and its laws — of an email that he received in response:
Hmm. So the real question here isn't whether we have a state religion. Rather it's the claim that we do, or should, have a particular state religion. I'd certainly prefer Christianity or Judaism to the Elder Gods, if that's the choice. But I don't believe that the Constitution requires me -- or even permits me -- to make that choice.
The funny thing, in all of this, is that I wouldn't consider it a federal matter if a state courthouse built a monument to some pagan god or goddess (that chick with the scales derives from elsewhere than Christianity, I believe), particularly if the folks in the community supported it sufficiently to hold seance vigils. I'd shake my head at what those nuts in (most likely) California were up to, but I wouldn't think it an obvious travesty against the United States Constitution. Of course, relating to Reynolds's email correspondent, the parodist's scenario isn't very likely, for the simple reason that Cthulhu doesn't have millions of followers and a featured place in the founding documents — and hearts of the founders — of our nation.
Applying this litmus test of reality to the parody at hand, we also find that Deskmerc (the author) handily skipped over much the same distinction as Reynolds does: the real monument isn't an image of God, but a list of laws that permeated every culture and religion of the West. In contrast, I read through the entire parody without finding indication of what the laws of Cthulhu might be.
This, in my view, points to the underlying danger of the specious argument that government ought to have nothing to do with religion: one must ignore the degree to which our entire history and society is rooted in religion. It must ignore that right up through our nation's founding to the present day, leaders have acknowledged from whence claims of equality and justice come. The only alternative to ignoring it would be to suggest that we've "moved beyond" the need to filter our society through God, which establishes an explicitly religious view in the law at least as much as a Nicene Amendment to the Constitution would. And pushing open that gap in the thread of precedence, secularists make the law the arbiter of morality; if it ain't illegal, it must be moral.
One would think that civil libertarians would see the directly inverse ratio of the influence of religion and the required size of the government and be sympathetic to government acknowledgement of religion — broadly at the federal level, but allowing for more specificity toward the local level. But they don't, and they don't often consider what the outcome might be if government is pulled back at the same time that the reach of other forms of social influence is forcefully restrained. Libertarianism is all about the religion of Me — allowance of individual liberty come Hell, high water, or the wrath of Cthulhu.
ADDENDUM:
I suspect libertarians might object to my suggestion that religion is being "forcefully restrained." They might reply that religion is free to peddle its wares in the "free market of ideas." To this, I would ask that they look inside themselves to discern what their reaction would be if a state courthouse put up advertising for a local company or put up a monument to Reason.ADDENDUM II:
So, Instapundit has gotten fewer emails on this issue than he expected. I can give him a reason that he didn't get one from me: I've come to feel that it isn't an open discussion with Professor Reynolds on such issues, and therefore not worth my time. Perhaps I'll alert him to this post and see what happens.I thought I'd also address an update that he's added. Instapundit reader Michael Gebert emailed, "I have to wonder which Founding Fathers Ben Gibbons thinks were so determined to see Christianity sewn into the very fabric of our government and society." Of course, the Ten Commandments aren't strictly a Christian thing, being in the Old Testament and all, and it was to the Judeo-Christian God that Gibbons was referring.
This blurring of religious references ties in with the rest of Gebert's email because he shifts a general argument into a very specific sub-argument. Gebert follows the above statement with a bunch of those quotations that it seems atheists are compelled to memorize. Search any one of them in Google, and you'll find that they very often appear with the most limited amount of context necessary to make the anti-Christian point. When they are put into context, their power as trump cards for the rationalist-state argument begins to diminish. Indeed, looking beyond even the immediate context will tend to undermine the intentions of those who raise the quotations in the first place.
John Adams: "It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses."
The first thing to note with this one, which I list first only because Gebert does, is that all of the founders were writing during a time when ideological attacks would have come from a theistic, rather than atheistic, position. In that context, this quote makes a very specific statement: the government cannot claim to be acting on behalf of God. It was formed based purely on "reason and the senses"; perhaps we could rephrase that as "purely based on self-evident Truths," such as that "all Men are created equal [and are] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." The Adams quotation is only useful, in the modern day, to argue against those who wish to claim that the founders intended explicitly to follow Christian (or any specific religious) doctrine as such and were divinely inspired to do so. The underlying faith is still a constituent part of "reason."
Of course, it's also relevant that Adams was among the strongest proponents of separation of church and state, in fact:
As a member of the Massachusetts constitutional conventions of 1779 and 1820, John Adams strenuously fought to separate the church from the state. Although his efforts failed, the goal was achieved seven years after his death. In a statewide referendum in 1833, Massachusetts voters disestablished the state religion by a 10-1 margin.
Amazingly, this Founding Father failed to bring the state of Massachusetts to the Supreme Court to end the "unconstitutional" establishment of religion. Perhaps he thought states ought to have the right to establish religion (let alone place the Ten Commandments in a courthouse).
But the question of Massachusetts religion relates to another of Gebert's quotations:
Ben Franklin: "When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
This statement was made with reference to "religious tests" in Massachusetts. Note the sentence preceding the above:
If Christian preachers had continued to teach as Christ and his Apostles did, without salaries, and as the Quakers now do, I imagine tests would never have existed; for I think they were invented, not so much to secure religion itself, as the emoluments of it.
To be sure, this is not a condemnation of Christianity, but of the misdirected Christianity of eighteenth century Massachusetts. As a Catholic, and guessing that the established Christianity in question was Protestant, I'm not inclined to disagree. (Note to Protestants: these are old disagreements, and for the modern time being, we'd do best to put them aside, wouldn't you say?) I'm also not inclined disagree with the following, from a different writing of Franklin's to be found immediately below the preceding on the page linked above:
Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. That he governs by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.
I left it there to end on the "Franklin chuckle," but the next sentence suggests that belief in Christ's divinity might be of value to persuade more people to take the related moral code more seriously. I leave it to you to dig up the argument for Christ's divinity being necessary for belief in his moral brilliance (hint: C.S. Lewis), because the point is that Franklin obviously considered God as a constituent component of reality, nature, and reason. As for the question of a religion "supporting itself," I refer you to my first Addendum.
Thomas Jefferson: "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
Note the brevity! Note also the words "common law." This quotation bears on a specific discussion (scroll down) about the derivation of Saxon "common law." I don't have time to dive into the necessary research, but I do wonder what Jefferson was responding to. The context given in the link is to the seventh Amendment and "Suits at common law," about which I know nothing, but which don't seem related to Christian doctrine. I will agree with Jefferson that anybody wishing to argue that the words "common law" prove a specifically Christian basis for our law has more homework to do. Nonetheless, returning to that broader perspective away from which the secularists continually attempt to pull the conversation, one still has to acknowledge that the specific "common law" in question derived from other systems of law, including Roman, through which Judeo-Christian principles likely seeped.
George Washington: "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
This one is Reynolds's offering, and it comes from the Treaty with Tripoli (I don't believe that it's specifically Washington's language, but I could be wrong). Not only was this statement made purely as part of a treaty, but it was part of a treaty with a Muslim country. In that sense, not being founded on the Christian religion means having no inclination to use the structures of government to convert other nations. Nonetheless, even with these qualifications, this quotation would contradict those who insist on declaring the United States to be an explicitly Christian country. Yet, it only contradicts that argument.
Again, the Ten Commandments are not strictly Christian, Alabama is not the United States, and we deny the religiously based faith and morality that is — indeed — "sewn into the very fabric of our government and society" at our peril.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:22 PM EST
Blogging on This Day
Well, whataya know — the book that I recently finished typesetting came back into my hands with some final, last minute, absolutely-mean-it-this-time changes. A lot of them.
Plus, I still have to get to my column for this week. And Two Towers arrives in my DVD player this evening.
It might motivate me to keep up a rapid pace if a couple people took the downtime as an opening to go and buy a book or two. Just a thought.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:30 PM EST
Monday, August 25, 2003
A Note for Liberals and Libertarians
I daresay receiving a thoughtful answer to this passage from a John Derbyshire column would ensure a reasonably high level of respect on my part for a liberal or libertarian, regardless of agreement:
There is a war on: People who hate America are working day and night to destroy us. Just a few months ago they murdered 3,000 of us, and brought down two of our noblest buildings. Manufacturing jobs are long gone, and middle-class paper-shuffling jobs are following them fast. Public-sector unions are pillaging our state treasuries to fund their 50-90 programs (retire at 50 on 90 percent of your salary). Meanwhile, trial lawyers are chewing their way like termites through the private sector. We have 13 million illegal immigrants scoffing at our laws and helping themselves to the welfare provisions that citizens have spent their lifetimes funding through taxes. Two million of us are currently in jail, and the one-eighth of our population that is black supplies one-half of those inmates. Our education systems are collapsing under absurd demands that "no child be left behind" — everyone must be above average! — and hundreds of thousands of citizens have fled those systems in disgust to school their kids at home. Our universities are in the hands of nihilist ideologues who hate their own nation, culture and ancestors. The political system has seized up, impossible-to-cut spending programs crashing head on into impossible-to-raise tax rates. Drop a cigarette butt into some power generator in Cleveland and you can shut down the northeastern U.S.A. for a day. A North Korean nuke has been smuggled across the Mexican border and hidden in a filing cabinet on the 102nd floor of the Sears Tower. (I made that up, but if it hasn't actually happened yet, it won't be long.)
And action to deal with all these problems is massively hindered by the fact that we can't even talk about them in public for fear of being branded with one of the half-dozen modern equivalents of the scarlet letter — "racist," "nativist," "elitist," "profiler," and the rest of the idiot schoolmarmish cant we hear from the guardians of our public virtue.
In short, we are going to hell in a hand basket here, and all you liberals can think of is to jab your finger in the eyes of 46 percent of your fellow citizens over some footling dubious point of Constitutional law? Just ask yourselves — please, please, ask yourselves: Is Roy's Rock [the infamous Ten Commandments monument] really a proper target for my zeal, my energy, my passion, my money? Is my reaction to it in any kind of proportion to any harm it might conceivably do? [emphasis in original]
For so many folks with "L" politics, those three paragraphs must seem little but lunatic ravings.
They're not.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:45 PM EST
The Big Lies of Liberalism
I guess what pushed me most surely away from liberalism is the dishonesty of its spokespeople and the myopia that it requires in its adherents. Consider the conclusion of Beth Shulman's recent op-ed meant to rally the masses by supposedly dispelling some myths about the problems surrounding low-income workers:
The world's richest country should not tolerate such treatment of more than a fourth of its workers. The myths of upward mobility and inevitable market forces blind too many people to the grim reality of low-wage work. A presidential campaign is the right time to begin a conversation on how to change it.
The line of thought that gets Shulman to this statement could be unraveled point by point, which would make it a great exercise in a classroom. It would also be worth arguing with anybody who might choose to take up the opposite side. But a deep deconstruction isn't necessary for my purposes with this blog. For one thing, one need only peel back the flimsiest of layers to reveal disingenuousness. Here's the paragraph at the beginning that explains that "fourth of its workers" phrase:
Fully 30 million Americans -- one in four U.S. workers -- earn $8.70 an hour or less, a rate that works out to $18,100 a year, which is the current official poverty level in the United States for a family of four. These low-wage jobs usually lack health-care, child-care, pension and vacation benefits. Their working conditions are often grueling, dangerous, even humiliating.
And indeed, this handy table from the U.S. Census Bureau reveals that a family must have at least four members before it is considered "poor" at $18,000 per year. Furthermore, Shulman is surely folding together statistics to get her desired result. First: a family of four consisting of two adults will have two potential wage earners, who, at $8.70 per hour, would have a household annual income of over $36,000. That means that within that "one in four U.S. workers" are couples that earn well above poverty level. Second: one might argue that those households of four with only one adult make a good social case for marriage (and, in some cases, abstinence). Nonetheless, it would be worthwhile for society to help these families out in some way; the point is that they number far less than 25% of the working population, and if two one-parent households of four were to combine forces, that $36,000 per year would still be well above the poverty level for a family of eight.
In addressing arguments such as Shulman's, one runs into the problem that every paragraph points to the dishonesty of another. For example, in the blockquote immediately above, Shulman speaks of the "grueling, dangerous, and even humiliating" working conditions of low-wage earners. Yet, here is how she defines the group:
They are nursing-home and home-health-care workers who care for our parents; they are poultry processors who bone and package our chicken; they are retail clerks in department stores, grocery stores and convenience stores; they are housekeepers and janitors who keep our hotel rooms and offices clean; they are billing and telephone call-center workers who take our complaints and answer our questions; and they are teaching assistants in our schools and child-care workers who free us so that we can work ourselves.
Many of these strike me as jobs held by second-income members of a household, whether spouses or young adult children. Apart from that, few of them are "dangerous," none are inherently "humiliating" any more than any other job in which one interacts with others, and the definition of "grueling" would have to be stretched some to apply to retail clerks, for example. To be sure, Shulman defines laborers and manufacturers out of her target group in order to dismiss the "myth" that globalization "stops us from doing anything about this problem."
I'm going to stop following the thread of deception here, because, as I suggested, the entire essay unravels at the most mild application of critical thought. For a quick example, consider that Shulman complains that "the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage fell 30 percent during the 1980s," yet counts "Federal Reserve policies focused on reducing inflation threats" among the contributors to "the problem." However, this paragraph, which supposedly indicates "the myth of upward mobility," I just cannot pass up:
In a recent study following U.S. adults through their working careers, economics professors Peter Gottschalk, of Boston College, and Sheldon Danziger, of the University of Michigan, found that about half of those whose earnings ranked in the bottom 20 percent in 1968 were still in the same group in 1991. Of those who had moved up, nearly two-thirds remained below the median income.
Got that? Let's rephrase: over the course of 23 years, half of those earning in the bottom 20% had managed to climb out of that group. Of those who managed to make that improvement, one-third had moved all the way above the median income. In pointing this out, I don't mean to detract from the difficulties of those for whom upward mobility has proven to be a myth, but I am pessimistic (to put it mildly) about the chances of socialistic solutions to improve upon this record, particularly considering the degree to which Shulman ignores problems created by them and is dishonest about the need for them.
Beware when lawyers write books about solving the problems of the poor. If you're inclined to ameliorate the unjust distribution of money, you can start by deciding not to buy Beth Shulman's The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans. If the Providence Journal paid her the same as it has me for an op-ed, Shulman took in roughly the equivalent of twenty hours of minimum-wage work, and I'll bet she didn't find it grueling, dangerous, or humiliating in the least, although perhaps the third of quality ought to have applied.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:25 AM EST
Sunday, August 24, 2003
Let the Conspiracy Theorizing Begin
What a plot!
A new Archbishop is appointed in Boston with the hopes that he'll "fix" the problems associated with the pedophilia scandal, and then (emphasis added):
John J. Geoghan, the former priest who used his clerical collar and cunning to wage a decades-long rampage against young children, was strangled and beaten to death yesterday by a fellow inmate at a maximum security prison in Shirley, authorities said. ...
Joseph L. Druce, a 37-year-old self-proclaimed neo-Nazi serving a life sentence for strangling and mutilating a Gloucester man, will be charged with murder, Worcester County District Attorney John Conte said last night.
Last year Druce, who changed his name in prison from Darrin Smiledge, pleaded guilty to sending hoax letters laced with white powder and swastikas to a New Hampshire federal prosecutor and 39 Massachusetts lawyers with apparently Jewish surnames.
As one of the victim lawyers put it:
"They also feel eerie about the death of John J. Geoghan,'' Garabedian said. "They feel as though there's been a dark cloud about the John J. Geoghan matter since its inception in 1994 and his death only darkens that cloud.''
"Darkens that cloud"? Why's that? What's the "cloud"? Sounds like one of those cryptic things that lawyers say to prod the emotions of the public.
But I'm sure that even many who won't go for the conspiracy angle will fault Cardinal O'Malley for his reaction:
"It's a tragic end to a tragic life,'' a somber Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley said yesterday after celebrating Mass in Medford. ...
"I prayed for him,'' O'Malley said. "I feel sorry for his family, too. It will also no doubt be upsetting to the victims - thrust into a situation of remembrance. It's very sad.''
Of course, few feel sorrowful at about this particular death — as O'Malley suggests, the life was tragic. Nonetheless, it will take an act of God to break through the evil that has gripped Geoghan, and for that we should pray.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:41 AM EST
Friday, August 22, 2003
Why Doesn't Instapundit Link to These Scrappleface Offerings?
Scott Ott has a great eye for the underlying irony of issues in the news. Consider:
Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore today ordered the installation of another stone monument in the rotunda of the state judicial building.
The move comes as Justice Moore continues to defy a federal judge's order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the building.
The new monument is a simple stone block engraved on top with the words of the Alabama state oath of office which Justice Moore and other state officials have sworn to uphold.
Here is the text of the oath: "I solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of Alabama, so long as I continue a citizen thereof; and that I will faithfully and honestly discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter, to the best of my ability. So help me God."
There's more. I wonder what Glenn Reynolds, who often links to Scrappleface, thinks when he reads such offerings. It certainly isn't his trademark "Indeed."
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:04 AM EST
The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week
This is one of my favorites in the review, this year. It's sad, but masterful.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:00 AM EST
Due Diligence
So... how would you feel about sending your son or daughter to the university whose student paper published this.
Oh, I think I'll be an off-campus subscriber to some college's internal news organs one day.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:19 AM EST
Thursday, August 21, 2003
It's Been an "Are You Kidding Me?" Day
So I made it all the way through the Amazing Race 4 trying not to make too much of the fact that the show referred to Reichen and Chip as "married." But their little speech when they won the race tonight was just too much (to paraphrase): "Just because we happen to be gay doesn't mean that we can't do anything that anybody else can do."
Are they joking? Are all people of all groups for which activities are more difficult insulted? Frankly, I'm appalled that two young, intelligent, fit, wealthy, white, and well-traveled men would attempt to lay claim to some sort of victim group status in the context of a race around the world. The elite culture is, as far as I'm concerned, pulling the plug out of the pool of accomplishments of those for whom life actually is more difficult. Want some perspective? Here are pictures of the four winning teams so far (starting with the first season):
See a pattern?
This season... I don't know. I'm not putting this forward as indicating anything that is very likely (although the show is on CBS), but it was all just a bit too perfect for R&C. Reichen is ex-military. They're "married." They had an anniversary while the race was in progress. They won, and they turned it into a gay-rights statement. It couldn't have been scripted better.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:49 PM EST
Deciding Which Step Should Be Our Last
Step 1: Private, consensual sex between a husband and wife is off limits to policies based on public interest.
Step 2: Private, consensual sex between any man and woman is off limits to policies based on public interest.
Step 3: Private, consensual sex between any two adults of any gender is off limits to policies based on public interest.
Step 4: Private, consensual sex between any combination of adults is off limits to policies based on public interest.
Step 5: Private, consensual sex between children is off limits to policies based on public interest.
Step 6: Guess.
As a matter of law — as distinct from cultural pressure and opprobrium — I could go all the way to Step 4 (socially, not personally), although I would insist on increasing the mechanisms for the public, as individuals and as groups, to exercise personal pressure (e.g., through employment and renting). However, the manner in which Step 3 was taken (so as to obviate the need for any public debate about Step 4) leaves me little hope that we will not slip quickly into Step 5 and beyond.
God help us to push back on this self-destructive wave.
(via Mark Shea)
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:08 PM EST
Can You Believe This Headline?
You don't even have to read the article; here's the headline:
Hamas Abandons Truce After Israeli Strike
I'm speechless. Well, almost. It is inconceivable to me that a major, supposedly objective, news service could go with such a headline. Even "Hamas Officially Abandons Truce" would have be fine, but without "officially," it is just beyond acceptable; it's not even rational to anybody with any concept of the sequence of events. And assuming that the Associated Press doesn't employ drooling morons nor people with no sense of current events, the only explanation is bias of the sort that ought to — I repeat, ought to — cost the service credibility.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:44 PM EST
How Is This Possible in This Day and Age?
How is it possible for anywhere between 5,000 and 14,000 people to have died from the heat wave in France? Don't they have air conditioning?
I offer condolences to the families and prayers for the deceased — and my hope that the French will find whatever it is that is allowing so many to die from the weather and fix it.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:11 PM EST
Insidiously Anti-American
Amazingly, the U.K. press managed to squeeze some anti-Americanism into a horrible story into which nationality need not have entered:
A BOY of seven narrowly escaped death after being mauled by two American pit bull terriers.
Were the dogs actually shipped from America? Are there different lines of pit bulls depending on nationality? The article never mentions whether the owners were American. However, it does mention this similar occurrence:
In a separate incident, John Smyth, 47, had plastic surgery yesterday after being attacked by two bull mastiffs in Dunkeld, Perthshire.
I offer this link in case the Mirror was unable to discover the nationality of bull mastiffs.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:07 PM EST
The Redwood Review Nonfiction of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:33 AM EST
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
The Growth of the Artist
I'm a fan of personal songwriting, so it shouldn't be surprising that among my favorite things is to spot what I consider to be personal growth in a musician.
Among the soundtrack-albums of my late teens was Jeffrey Gaines's self-titled first album. One track that I never thought much about, but that came to be a tremendous detractor as I gave the issue that it addresses some thought is "Choices." Here are some select lyrics:
And if there weren't so many
Unwanted children in the world today
Then maybe I could understand your view
But as long as there's so many
Children without a happy home
Then leave my choices alone ...Please respect that it's
My life, my mind and my body
And leave my choices alone
Forcing me by law to follow suitConsidering that this album came out in 1992, this is a prime example of protest in keeping with the victorious side and the safe view — made all the more egregious by the morally fatuous nature of the view and the protest. And to be sure, by Gaines's third album, Galore, his "social interest" songs hadn't moved beyond facile parroting of the popular view. There is the anti-war "A Simple Prayer," which has an admirable, if simplistic, message, and would stay on the admirable side of that line if it weren't for lines such as "the noblest of things is to die in their war," which begs the question, "Who are they?" We can guess the answer, and we can be reasonably sure that it won't prove thorough consideration of the way human society operates.
But the song on this album that has kept me from spending my ever-more-limited dollars on Gaines's two subsequent albums is "Praise or Blame":
All throughout history
You've made sure your conscience be clear
But there are two sides to every story
Here's what you don't want us to hearThat they once had harmony
And you could not understand
How they could live so free
You drove them off of their land ...They once were royalty
But you could not measure their worth
Until you sold them like property
The salt of their sweat fed the earthThe "you" in this song is obvious: it's me, representative, as I am, of "whitey." It's hard to understate the degree to which this song accepts a popular rewritten history that is not dangerous in the least to sell as a song. The Indians were prancing around the forests of this continent like wildlife — only more spiritual and peaceful — until the Big Bad White Man came and crushed them; those who became slaves in the new world had been ripped from their thrones by invading white people, not sold to the Europeans by fellow Africans, rival tribes and "royalty." The suggestion that Gaines is revealing some deliberately hidden "second side" is laughable — albeit a nervous laughter, because part of what makes these travesties of history so horrifying is that they weren't as simplistic as we now pretend them to have been, and good and bad did not as clearly align with black and white. Frankly, this song is easy repetition of an offensive line that is not worthy of a mature man, much less a talented songwriter.
However, what intrigues me on this album, and what has kept me continually debating whether to give Gaines's later work a chance, is the song "Right My Wrongs":
Those things I thought
Well, I was a baby
Just what I was taught
So how can you blame meI really want to right my wrongs
The words I said
A mockingbird was I
I was easily led
And never asked whyI really want to right my wrongs
It used to be I could justify anything
And never stop to worry about the pain I might bring
No one could have told me 'cause I knew everything
But I woke up this morning and I felt like changingNow, I don't know whether Gaines had abortion in mind when he wrote this song, and it certainly seems that he doesn't realize the extent to which these words apply to other songs on the very same album. Nonetheless, it opens the way for hope that he'll come to see what he's been missing, and by extension, it opens the way for hope about all those millions of young adults who are guilty of the same intellectual (and physical) offenses.
Jeffrey Gaines is best known for his live cover of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." I remember, when I first became familiar with Gabriel's version, that I was disappointed to learn that the lyrics were meant to be ambiguous as to whether they were about a lover or about God. At the time, I regarded anything more profound than interpersonal love to be so much superstition, and I'm still at a loss to explain the aversion that I had, then, to indications that anybody actually believed in God. Jealousy, maybe.
Does Gaines know the backstory to that song? I don't know, but the references to spirituality and God permeate Galore. Those times when I consider catching up on my Jeffrey Gaines collection, it is because I recognize the path that he appears to be on, and I'm curious to see whether he maintained course. Perhaps one reason that I reach for other CDs than his on those rare occasions that I splurge on my former obsession is that I'm afraid to find that he's turned back.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:32 AM EST
How Predictable Can You Get?
I'm only mentioning this to explain why I think it should be ignored:
A coming edition of GQ magazine turns President Bush in to Jesus Christ -- in a full-page photo illustration!
Oh, yes, there's all that stuff — absolutely true — about the double standard of which Christians get the short end. And that's part of the reason that such things should be ignored: I'd prefer my coreligionists to behave as if they are confident enough in what they believe not to express grievances indicative of doubt and insecurity.
But the other reason is given in the last line of the Drudge blurb:
The photo marks a dramatic entrance for new GQ editor Jim Nelson.
It's nothing more than a publicity stunt. Let the snickerers buy the issue and, well, snicker. One of the blessings of true religion is that it enables spiritual and intellectual growth. Let's act like grownups and not grant the obnoxious kids in the class the attention that they covet.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:36 AM EST
The Redwood Review Poem of the Week
This one comes very highly recommended; it is certainly worth a few minutes of your time.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 09:46 AM EST
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Songs You Should Know 08/19/03
The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "Realities" by Mr. Chu.
"Realities" Mr. Chu, Hard Rock
Stream (HiFi)
from Chu's NextNo Comments (click to link)
Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:19 PM EST
A Note on Sending Me Money (And Getting Stuff in Return)
So anyway, a few weeks ago, before I knew that I'd have an entire book to typeset, I mentioned to my Web host that the program that sends me email via forms was being accessed without my receiving anything, although the forms appeared to work correctly. The host replied that I would have to change the generic name of the program to something else.
Well, since the book had landed in my lap, I tested the program using the form that subscribes to my column, and it still worked, so I figured I'd finish off the book and then deal with the online problems. Everything appeared to be working, and my schedule was packed enough that I figured I'd risk having some people who had never heard of Timshel Arts be spammed for a couple of weeks.
This morning, I got an email that somebody's server had rejected and returned to the sender, which was technically me, but was really a spammer disseminating a "Wicked Screensaver" that was more likely a virus. Upon seeing this, I decided to go ahead and change all the file names and links involving my form emailer program, only to discover that my host had blocked my order form — the HTML page — which had the same name as the CGI program, but not the program itself. Who knows how many thousands of dollars of orders I've lost! (That's a joke, by the way.)
This functionality of my Web page goes way back to when I was still crawling up the Web design learning curve, as apparently was the tech support guy from my old host who told me not to change any of the names. It's all fixed now, so if you've been itching to buy something from the store but were frustrated by the lack of an order form, here it is.
Hackers and virus-senders and spammers have proven one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: as humans overcome natural barriers and increase the ease with which amazing things can be done, other humans will volunteer their services to replace those barriers — meaning, to take advantage of those who use the new technology. Who'd have thought, not long ago, that any schmo with a Web page could set up automatic order forms and the like? But scumbags are out there just waiting to ensure that those schmos have as difficult a time as possible.
That's why I support the death penalty for spamming, hacking, and virus sending. Alright, alright, that's a bit harsh. How about just life in prison for hacking and virus sending? And for spammers, we'll do to them the opposite of whatever their lying promotions claim to do. Get rich? We make them poor. Larger genitalia? ...
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:00 AM EST
Monday, August 18, 2003
Just Thinking 08/18/03
The interesting thing is that I probably spent more time on these fourteen lines — and more-intensive time — than I do on even difficult columns. Yet, I enjoyed the writing more, and I found it more rewarding, without regard to how the final product is received by others. I guess I should take that as an indication...
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:19 PM EST
Bono: The Way Activism Should Be
I forget where I saw it, but I read somebody opining recently that Bono of U2 is one of those lefties whom conservatives will tolerate. I think the central reason the writer suggested had to do with the era in which Bono came into the public light. I wonder if it isn't something more fundamental to his activism.
Bono is cause driven, not team driven. He'll work with anybody who's interested in order to get something done. And, perhaps more importantly, he gives one the sense that, in contrast to the activists about whom Kathy Shaidle wrote yesterday, he would be thrilled to give a victory speech.
That's just something I thought when "Where the Streets Have No Name" came on the radio this morning. For what it's worth.
ADDENDUM:
Aha: as he notes in a comment (but, inexplicably, without a link) it was Steve from Absit Invidia who made the "came of age" statement. Rereading his post, I find what is to expected upon rereading anything: there's more to it than I mentioned above.2 comments (click to link)
Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:46 PM EST
Americans Wanted in Europe
Some acquaintances of mine recently returned from Europe, and apparently, the people over there went out of their way to be nice and to present a friendly face. Instapundit cites some data that helps to explain why:
In Britain - the most popular destination for American tourists to Europe - figures for the first half of 2003 show an 11 percent decline in US visitors. In Italy, it's more than 20 percent, while in France, it's even worse: an estimated 26 percent drop this year.
"Until Sept. 11, about 45 percent of our clients were Americans," laments Mauricio Mistarz, head receptionist at a small three-star hotel on the Left Bank in Paris. "Now, on a good day, Americans fill 20 percent of our rooms."
It isn't only that bad; Americans apparently tend to stay longer and to spend more when they visit. I guess that's the upside of the "ugly American."
Look, as long as I've been alive, European condescension toward America and outward contempt for American culture has been tacitly understood. It's just that now Americans are waking up from the stupor of the elitist, lazy, and selfish temper that has predominated over the past few decades, and as a consequence, we do not dislike ourselves as much.
Hopefully the "European street" will take the opportunity for some reflection and, perhaps, find the wherewithal to pull back from the precipice of socialisme.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 07:39 PM EST
Does Religion or Race Make the Difference for Abe?
Relating an anecdote about President Lincoln's allowance of a Fourth of July fundraiser on the White House lawn for the first black Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., Lane Core asks:
The ACLU, People for the "American" Way, and (Protestants and Other) Americans United for Separation of Church and State would be apoplectic if George W. Bush did anything like that, wouldn't they?
Y'know, I can't say for sure. If those groups were consistent, one would believe so, but the treatment of Christianity according to the strictest interpretations of "separation of church and state" coexists with treatment of other religions more as protected ethnicities. I think a similar petition granted to black Christians might cause enough internal conflict among the People for the Civil Liberties Union's Way that George W. could coast right through with the proper spinning.
Maybe it's just the type of subtext for which it was pounded into me in college to look, but this seems, if I proved correct about the response, it would reveal a bit of the racism inherent in modern liberalism; it's as if the religion of "brown-skinned people" cannot be sincere or mature enough to be dangerous in the way that anti-religionists fear.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:08 AM EST
"Plan C" Has Its Own Organization!
Apparently, my Plan C idea wasn't but so unique:
The Free State Project is a plan in which 20,000 or more liberty-oriented people will move to a single state of the U.S., where they may work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government. The success of the Free State Project would likely entail reductions in burdensome taxation and regulation, reforms in state and local law, an end to federal mandates, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world.
Unfortunately, according to Steve at Absit Invidia, the FSP looks likely to make me move in order to participate. FYI, folks, I'd prefer New Hampshire to Wyoming, although I still think free marketers would enjoy all the waterfront in our state. Hey... you have to kick these things off thinking small!
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:47 AM EST
Marriage Isn't What They Really Want...
... broadly speaking, it is at best a substitute, a symbol of confirmation that, like miscreant high schoolers whose parents sue to ensure the complete absence of consequences, whatever they do cannot be wrong because it is just being "true to themselves." Speaking as a parent of an 18-month-old, I'd suggest that, sometimes, it is much better for individuals and everybody around them if they learn to be a bit more "untrue" to themselves.
Along these lines, I advise you to go read this post by Kathy Shaidle:
There is always a deeper issue. To deny this is to be hopelessly naive. Sadly, "hopelessly naive" describes the vast majority of people who've received a "It's a Small World After All" public school education in North America... Which is why they "don't get what the big deal is."
When gay activists get the right to marry, they will throw some surprisingly tasteless parties, scream Screw You, Pope Guy! into the tv cameras, then move onto something else. Something like lowering the age of consent laws, forcing women's shelters and rape counselling centres to hire pre-op "transexuals" as counsellors, and so forth.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:40 AM EST
Speaking of Rules and the Law
Of course, you've probably come across the tale of the club for recovering alcoholics that cannot allow its members to smoke because only organizations with liquor licenses can accommodate smokers, and an organization that seeks such a document only in the context of its being a "smoking license" cannot get a liquor license. But I just had to link to it.
This is a magnificent example of the danger of pursuing numerous discrete laws just because they "sound good" according to the preferences of the day. It's a bit like weaving a web around ourselves; eventually, we'll all get tangled up in it. That's why legislation is generally a weak tool except in a broad-view sense.
It's also a magnificent example of the service that Canada offers the United States by forging ahead with the logical (though insane) extensions of public policies with which some among us have begun to play.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:25 AM EST
Filter-Down Irresponsibility
Julia Steiny has been giving some thought to the broken chain of consequences-doling authorities that leads today's children — e.g., the teenager hazers who recently made headlines — with the impression that they can do no wrong... or at least that they can do no illegal:
Family and school rules govern a little universe that socializes the young to live comfortably with authority and structure by creating consequences for rule breaking. The structure of rules will naturally be unique to each family, and each school's rules will also reflect that school's character and circumstances, so the rules will naturally appear arbitrary to a disinterested observer. Still, certain lawyers and organizations are armed and ready to do pitched battle with any rule that can not be justified by The Law, which is to say, applied to everyone in the nation under identical circumstances.
As parents have been wrong-headedly protecting their little wretches, their legal victories have subverted efforts to teach kids that seriously negative consequences can result from ill-considered actions. Schools have been taken to court so often they can barely enforce discipline codes any more. Most are resentfully intimidated by their parents who, in this litigious society, often threaten to involve the Law.
The only thing with which I would quibble is that the better argument would be that school rules would be "applied to everyone in the nation under identical circumstances." Any American attending school A and committing act B will run into punishment C. Of course, even The Law provides room for application of such factors as prior behavior.
But Steiny's hit on an important point, here, and that is that schools are another realm of society in which the American legal system has overstepped its bounds. Mind-boggling, isn't it, how reform of that legal system would benefit so many areas of modern life — notably among those issues on which politicians expend quite a bit of rhetoric, such as education and healthcare.
Wonder why nothing's been done, then...
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:10 AM EST
Saturday, August 16, 2003
The Hoax of Our Times
Imagine, if you will (if you can), a controlled environment in which participants in the largest-scale study ever conducted are provided only information that indicates a particular view of reality over the course of their lives and then asked to tell researches whether particular anecdotes "are possible." What would we call that? "False memory" doesn't seem to apply.
Over in the Corner, Andrew Stuttaford links to this article as indicative of "false memor
