One indication might be her position on abortion. But a perusal of her record shows her to have voted for any type of abortion anywhere any time for anyone. She even supports partial birth abortion. Conservative Catholic? If you have any data supporting this assertion of hers, please let me know. I’ve put a call in to her office asking for details. When I get any, I’ll report back.
WAS IT WORTH IT? Are you kidding? Here’s an account from the Guardian – yes, the Guardian – hailing American intervention in Afghanistan as a signal achievement against the forces of human darkness. Good for liberal Polly Toynbee for seeing what we eagles have long argued: that American military power is overwhelmingly a force for moral good in the world, and we should stop pretending otherwise. Here’s a typical paragraph:
At the Woman to Woman centre, 20 women of all ages were sitting on the floor, all them with burkas left hanging on pegs by the door. Despite the absence of outward change, were things getting better for them now that the Taliban had gone? There was a spontanteous chorus of cries, hands raised in the air, laughter, sighing, exclamations – my translator could not keep up with their energetic assertions that life had changed beyond recognition. This relative liberation – freedom to walk outside for many who had never left their one room in years – was hard to imagine. “I never saw the light of day in five years!” one widow said.
We need to remember one important thing: much of the anti-war left wanted to do nothing in Afghanistan. They were rightly ignored then. The same people need to be treated with extreme skepticism now.
THEOCONS VERSUS THE CHURCH: I tend to agree with this essay by George Weigel, defending war against Iraq within the Catholic Church’s just war tradition. He even argues that some clerics may not be the best candidates for figuring out questions of public morality:
There is a charism or gift of political discernment unique to the vocation of public service. That charism is not shared by bishops, moderators, rabbis, imams or inter-religious agencies. Moral clarity in a time of war demands moral seriousness from public officials. It also demands a measure of political modesty from religious leaders and public intellectuals, in the give-and-take of democratic deliberation.
Couldn’t agree more. But isn’t this a pretty flagrant dissent from Church teaching? And isn’t Weigel one of the key intellectual supporters of enforcing Church orthodoxy on everyone, especially in the academy, who dare to question official Church teachings? That’s one of my beefs with the theocons. They want strict orthodoxy on practical issues that have no deep moral meaning, like a celibate priesthood, but feel free to dissent openly on war, economics and social justice. Am I the only one to find their position just a little bit too easy?
WHY GAYS SHOULD STAY SILENT: An email from a rank and file soldier on the military gay ban. It speaks for itself. I’m sure the guy’s being honest; and I’m equally sure that antipathy toward gay men and a pathological fear of being “looked at” by them is common among military recruits. Here’s his email:
I’m afraid I must disagree with the separated gay officer. When he said that “the rank-and-file” had no problem with gay personnel, he was exercising in some wishful thinking. Perhaps, as an officer, he had blinders on. It is a definite truth that our officers are in many ways unaware of aspects of the enlisted culture.
I am the Navy “rank-and-file”, an E-5 with nine years of service. And, just so you don’t think I’m some kind of troublemaker, I also outrank my peers on ALL of my performance evaluations since I entered service.
I’m not saying it’s right, but most of my peers have a definite and obvious dislike of male homosexuals. Openly gay personnel would have a negative effect on good order and discipline and some of them would get HURT.
Most personnel I have met and worked with seem generally satisfied with current Navy policy (though some would surely like to see a return to openly violent attitudes against gays). Many people say that gays are “alright”, AS LONG AS THEY KEEP IT TO THEMSELVES. Then the discussions degenerate into descriptions of the retaliation they would visit on any gay member who dared to make overtures or even look at them crossways.
I have a gay friend who was outed by a drunken boyfriend two years ago. We decided to just keep it amongst our “clique.” But you would not believe the sense of crisis it created when it first came out. There were arguments, recriminations … total chaos in our circle of friends. Sadly, two of my other friends simply refused to continue any relationship with our gay friend. If he came to my home or one of our hangouts, they made a big show of leaving. The only reason things did not become far worse is because this is a guy we FOUGHT beside. When I was behind on rent, he was there with his checkbook. When I got jumped in a foreign port, he was wading into the fray. Had he been a little less close or a little less brave and generous, he would probably be out of friends.
I am not gay. I do not want to serve with the openly gay, since it would cause a great disruption of accusations, harassment, and possible violence. And let me make this clear … I am not projecting my own opinions onto my fellows. We have been discussing this since I walked onboard my first ship. We may put a PC face on things, but when all the masks finally come off, the consensus is…DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL.
A couple of comments. How is this different from racial hatred once common, now clearly forbidden in the military? Notice the problem is not gay conduct, but merely the fact that someone is gay. So the behavior issue of gays doesn’t really come into play. And you can strongly forbid sexual behavior among the ranks, and I’d have no problem throwing anyone out who disobeyed this rule. Nope. This is pure hatred of the other; and it’s so prevalent that the military has decided that hating homosexuals is a critical cohesive element in America’s armed services. That’s the reality; and we might as well face it. The military actually endorses this kind of hate; and certainly wouldn’t protect gay soldiers from the vengeance of their violent peers. That’s why soldiers have actually been killed on base. By American soldiers.
IN THE SHOWERS: But the issue that genuinely perplexes me is the fear and panic that many straight men display when they think another man might find them attractive. I can understand why they might find this awkward or unwelcome – but I don’t understand the violent emotions this kind of thing triggers. When a woman finds me attractive, I’m flattered, even though there’s always a little discomfort. But I don’t want to beat her up or kill her. So why is that so often the reaction among straight men toward gay men? Is it because they’re afraid of being raped? C’mon. Assuming all gay men – or even any – are potential rapists is completely loopy. (And the same people who make this bizarre argument would scoff at a woman who screamed rape if a man looked at her in a sexually interested way.) Nevertheless, big, brawny straight guys – in the military no less! – scream like six year olds the minute they suspect a gay guy might find them sexy. I don’t understand it. Are straight guys that insecure? Again, it doesn’t strike me as an aversion to intimate contact between men as
such. That happens all the time. Some football crazies just shoved a Sharpie pen up one of their team-member’s butt. What straight guys do on submarines on long trips makes Provincetown look positively repressed. No, it’s something deeper than that. These guys are not afraid of Saddam Hussein; they fight terrible wars; they’ve gone through rigorous training. But they’re terrified of fags. Could someone please tell me why this isn’t absurd.
THOSE CRUDE BRITS: A reader sends me a Lionel Trilling quote about the impolite English, as an early observation of what I was writing about here. It’s from Trilling’s introduction to Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia:
Whatever the the legend to the contrary, the English character is more strongly marked than ours, less reserved, less ironic, more open in its expression of willfulness and eccentricity and cantakerousness. Its manners are cruder and bolder. It is a demonstrative character – it shows itself, even shows off. Santayana, when he visisted England, quite gave up the common notion that Dickens’ characters are caricatures. One can still meet an English snob so thunderingly shameless in his worship of the aristocracy, so explicit and demonstrative in his adoration, that a careful, modest ironic American snob would be quite bewildered by him.
Even crass in their snobbery. What rubes and provincials the British often are.
BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “It’s a rhetorical question with no response required … Suppose there was such a thing as a time machine. Suppose all the bad-guy Germans of the 1930s and 1940s – the Gestapo, the Brownshirts, the Blackshirts – were fed into the time machine and emerged as modern-day Americans. Suppose they all still held the beliefs they had when they died. So my question is, Which political party would they support now, Democratic or Republican? Just wondering.” – Harley Sorenson, San Francisco liberal.
The Dish 