Month: March 2004

Here’s an article you would never read in America, but it does capture something about some people’s response to Mel Gibson’s movie:

[A] group of us went to see the first showing of The Passion of the Christ. I am afraid to say that I was late, and, as I entered the foyer of the Odeon West End, a man with an earring broke off from his mobile phone call and said: “It’s all right, Mr Johnson, you’re in time for the Crucifixion.”

Yes, I intend to rent “The Life of Brian” soon. In today’s fetid culture wars, it may help me stay sane. One always has to look on the bright side of life, doesn’t one?

THE CASE AGAINST BUSH: I have to say I haven’t read a more persuasive one than Will Saletan’s.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “There’s been a lot of speculation in the news media the past few weeks about a possible Kerry/Edwards ticket, but the Dems need to put all this foolishness aside, get real, and run Kerry/Satan this year. Despite all the GOP’s pandering to the Christian right, the satanic vote has actually been trending Republican in recent years (they’re very laissez faire on economic issues you know), and putting Satan on the ticket could really help shore up this important demographic. And if the logic of picking a vp is that you choose someone with what you lack, Satan is the perfect foil for Kerry : charming, charismatic, telegenic, etc. I couldn’t imagine a better choice.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

“My days here are numbered because I dared to speak out against the Bush administration and say that the religious agenda of George W. Bush concerning stem cell research and gay marriage is wrong. And that what he is doing with the FCC is pushing this religious agenda. And also the fact that the guy takes more vacation than any President ever. It’s time for him to leave. Having said that pushed me off the air in six markets.” – Howard Stern, venting. I have no idea whether Stern is being paranoid or not. Since I don’t really function before 10 am, I don’t have much exposure to him. But I like his spirit; and I do think that Howard Stern and Howard Stern listeners are not people the president needs to alienate in an election year. And it says something about the fragility of the Republican coalition that he feels he has to. Bush is doing his damnedest to make it hard for anyone who isn’t a paid-up evangelical to support him this year. Why?

P.C. EDIT WATCH: A lovely politically correct editing slip marred an opera review in the Los Angeles Times recently. The original sentence read that Richard Strauss’ operatic epic, “Die Frau Ohne Schatten,” was “an incomparably glorious and goofy pro-life paean…” Fair enough. But you can’t have the epithet “pro-life” in the Los Angeles Times. So the sentence was changed to “an incomparably glorious and goofy anti-abortion paean…” There is no reference to abortion in the opera. The paper was therefore forced to run not one but two corrections on February 25. The writer rightly insisted that the paper exonerate him personally from the idiocy. It reminds me of the occasion when a newspaper decided to remove all usage of the word “black” from its copy, when referring to African-Americans. it was deemed too offensive a term. Everything was fine until some tired copy-editor lazily edited an economics column. Suddenly, the federal budget moved from red ink “into the African-American.” Hey, but no one was offended.

Small insight into what the issue of civil marriage for gays is finally achieving. I’ve been speaking on this subject for years and years, but this time, the crowds are enormous. At a small college last night, over 400 showed up, cramming the biggest auditorium available, to listen to the speech and ask questions. Yes, it’s a campus. Yes, it’s the younger generation. But for me at least, it’s thrilling to see the interest and overwhelming support. And the best part of it is that it was organized and sponsored by the College Republicans. It’s a new world.

“My Islamic History class spent 45 minutes discussing Iraq and the atrocities tonight (my course ends with Napoleon in 1798, but this is one class where I let the kids talk – what they learn impacts directly on current events.)
Here is something no one has noted, but my kids did. Commentators keep seeing a link between Shia states (Iran) and wider Islamists movements such as Al-Queda.”. There is no way that the bombers in Iraq could justify what they did without defining the Shia as “kaffir” (unbelievers). For the past two decades a kind of “ecumenical” Muslim movement has tried to get beyond this. This is now shattered.
I am not sure how this will play out. For a Catholic like me, Shi’ite Islam is much more emotionally similar to Catholicism than Sunni Islam. Shi’ism also has the potentiality to be more progressive. Defining the Shia as a sort of “Muslim extreme” has been as major mistake in the West.
What happened yesterday would be comparable to the Ulster Volunteer Force (or whatever) exploding a bomb at Lourdes. The emotional impact on the Shia is almost unimaginable. I repeat: this is a massive massive event.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

I’ve been thinking and reading some more about the Sunni/al Qaeda massacres at Shiite mosques in Iraq. It’s undoubtedly true that these mass murders are designed to bring civil war and chaos to Iraq. But they are thereby also designed to thwart Shiite majority rule in a future democratic Iraq. Such a democratic experiment could obviously lead to potential Shiite uprisings all over the Arab world, as this persecuted sect seeks their long-lost right to self-government. What we could be seeing, in fact, is the beginning of a broader Shiite uprising, that would, in part, be a result of American intervention and would pit the Shi’a against al Qaeda. What would be the future ramifications of that? For policy toward Shiite Iran, for example? And for policy toward Saudi Arabia, a Wahhabist dictatorship with a large Shi’a population? For al Qaeda’s ability to focus on the West as a target? Just asking.

LETTING ZARQAWI GO: I’m at a loss to understand how the Bush administration failed to act decisively to take out Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi when it had several opportunities to do so. This report is deeply disturbing. I wonder how killing Zarqawi could have conceivably impeded our bid to topple Saddam; and why the White House aborted the military operations. Money quote:

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

The administration flubbed several subsequent opportunities subsequently – and hundreds are now dead as a result. Maybe there is some explanation here that I don’t yet know. But it seems to me that if we blame Clinton for not getting Osama when he could have (and we should), then the blame on the Bush team for letting Zarqawi through the net should be just as intense. What exactly is the real excuse?

I am moved beyond words by the sight of gay couples taking their lives and rights into their own hands and getting civil marriage licenses. I believe they will be vindicated in the light of history. But I also believe in the rule of law. That law will protect civil marriage for gays as it does now for straights; and disrespecting it undermines it for all of us, now and in the future. Where such civil marriages can legitimately take place under the law (as appears to be the case in Oregon), there’s no problem. Where they are being used to dramatize current oppression, they are justifiable only so long as the officials responsible are prepared to face all the legal consequences (as in New Paltz, with the remarkable young mayor). That is called legitimate civil disobedience: violating the law in order to be arrested. And if they are a means to challenge discrimination and are performed with the full intent of abiding by the final legal and constitutional judgment, then that too seems to me to be legitimate, (as in San Francisco). It is how change happens. If a state decides to recognize civil marriages for gays performed in another state, then that too is perfectly within the law (as yesterday’s momentous ruling by Eliot Spitzer revealed.) But it is vital in our struggle for legal equality that we do not, as gay people, show contempt for the rule of law itself. It is our only recourse and our only respite. Legitimate civil disobedience is one thing. Blatant disrespect for the law is another. We are on the verge of a real and solid victory for equality in Massachusetts. It has been achieved through years of legal and political argument and civil demonstrations. We need patience now as well as anger, calm as well as determination. Above all, we must respect the law itself. It is the fabric of our democracy. If we trivialize or violate its importance, civil rights are meaningless. For gay people and for everyone.

THE BIOETHICS COUNCIL FLAP, ETC: The best wrap-up is, as so often, at Glenn’s. Don’t miss his post on the flagging “war-base” for Bush either. My own disillusionment with the president is not, despite appearances, all to do with marriage. I first worried with the aircraft carrier stunt, the post-war mess in Iraq, then the fiscal insouciance, and the more general bossiness that this unlibertarian president was exhibiting. The message chaos of the least few months, capped by that dreadful Meet the Press interview, was unnerving, to say the least. The solution? We need to hear what our future strategy is in the war: who we’re targeting next. We need to see more clarity on Iraq, more commitment on al Qaeda, more explanation of what we’re doing and where we’re going. I’m tired with hearing recitations of the president’s past conduct and want to hear more about the future. Churchill didn’t spend 1943 reminding people of what a great leader he had been in 1940. In contrast, the first Bush campaign ads are all retrospective, nostalgic even. If they’re the campaign, he’ll lose.

Here’s Tom DeLay criticizing John Kerry for fiscal irresponsibility:

“He’s not even trying to be fiscally responsible,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.
“He is either insincere about his new spending, dishonest about his new taxes, uninterested in the new deficit, or they just didn’t teach him arithmetic at the European boarding school that he went to.”

I’m not going to tackle DeLay’s criticism of Kerry as such. But one has to ask: where has DeLay been these past few years? While his party has controlled the House, Senate and White House, we have seen a faster build-up of debt, a greater spending explosion and more entitlement spending than any administration since LBJ. And this man is attacking Kerry? DeLay adds whole universes of meaning to the word “shameless.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY I: “Here’s the dirty little secret. It will never get a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress.” – Senator John McCain, on the proposed religious right amendment to the Constitution.

QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “America is the symbol of freedom. Everybody wants to go live there, or just to go there and have fun. It’s a mixture of people from different backgrounds and its ruling system is not imposed on you. And people are more accepting there than they are in Europe, where we feel like strangers.” – a young Iranian called Noushin, from a recent article in Le Monde Diplomatique.

QUOTE OF THE DAY III: “I have been a Republican and a Christian my whole life. I believe that national security is the #1 most important issue in America – it is, to be blunt, the thing that makes any other issue possible in the first place. I do not buy the loss of jobs argument, I think tax cuts work, and I think abortion is wrong, I still support the Iraq war and feel that those 500 plus brave men and women saved untolled millions from horrible death, and I even agree that activist judges should simply be arrested and dismissed from office. I believe all this and right now, I don’t know if I’m voting for Bush.
I don’t know because this political ploy is so overtly mean-spirited and opportunistic it that my own sense of fairness and decency is far more offended by the attack than whatever defense could be made of it. I can’t believe I am the only one, even the only Christian to feel this way.” – blogger Ozymandias.

Here’s an astonishing result. The Christian Broadcasting Network has an unscientific online poll on the religious right amendment. The result? As of my checking in late last night, a 61 percent against amending the constitution, with 38 percent for. maybe I should stop referring to this amendment as one sponsored by the religious right. Even they don’t want it.

UGLY AND INTEMPERATE? James Taranto argues that the following passages from my blog are ugly and intemperate:

The religious fanatics of 9/11 despise the American Constitution exactly because it guarantees equality under the law, freedom of conscience and separation of church and state. The war I have supported is a war, ultimately, in defense of that Constitution. .-.-. The sanctity of the Constitution is what we are fighting for. We’re not fighting just to defend ourselves. We are fighting to defend a way of life: pluralism, freedom, equality under the law. You cannot defend the Constitution abroad while undermining it at home. .-.-.
It’s the president who has to answer to the charge that in wartime, he chose to divide this country over the most profound symbol there can be: the Constitution itself. I refuse, in short, to be put in a position where I have to pick between a vital war and fundamental civil equality. The two are inextricable. They are the same war. And this time, the president has picked the wrong side. He will live to be ashamed that he did.

One question: how? The context of these remarks is my attempt to argue against the notion that I should support the president because the war on terror is more important than the president’s support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay citizens from civil marriage. My point is that I consider the fight for civil rights indistinguishable in my eyes from the fight for freedom abroad. And I consider the way in which the president has chosen to raise the stakes over civil marriage to a national, constitutional level – where it does not and need not belong – to be recklessly divisive while we are at war. How is that ugly? Dennis Prager equated gay couples seeking civil marriage with terrorists. I simply bemoan the fact that a president I have loyally supported during a vital war should decide to endorse profound discrimination against a group of Americans. I fail to see any comparison. And I fail to see the slightest ugliness or intemperance. Except in Taranto’s ugly and intemperate remarks.

I’ve been following same-sex marriage developments for fifteen years, and I keep getting surprised. The groundswell of support – in San Francisco, New Mexico, New Paltz, and now Portland, Oregon – has stunned me. What I didn’t anticipate is how empowering this issue has become for gay people and how energizing it has been for their heterosexual peers. We keep seeing straight poeple under a certain age seeing this as their generation’s civil rights movement. Now we see black legislators in Georgia putting aside religious objections to stop what they recognize as an attack on a small minority by forces of exclusion and intolerance they have been attacked by in the past. Bush’s religious right amendment has also united Democrats behind this issue in ways they never were before. Attacking the amendment is now an applause line in John Kerry’s election speech – and he will get every gay vote and every vote from their families and friends. Meanwhile, key Republicans, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, have come out and opposed this unnecessary meddling with the Constitution. Even the vice-president cannot manage to explicitly endorse such graffiti on the founding document of this country. What the religious right amendment is doing is splitting the Republican coalition and uniting the Democrats. What the religious right did to destroy the Republican party in a state like California, they are now trying to do across the country as a whole. They are not only on the wrong side of history; and on the wrong side of morality; they are putting the Republican party on the losing side of politics. They must and will be stopped.

We know from the released memo that may or may not have been written by Islamist mass murderer, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, what the strategy of the enemy now is in Iraq. It is to execute coordinated mass slaughters in order to divide Sunni and Shi’a even further and so precipitate a civil war to tear Iraq apart; and at the same time to direct public hostility and blame toward the coalition forces. It’s too soon to tell how successful they have been with their horrifyingly sacrilegious slaughter yesterday. But the attacks are text-book. I persist in regarding them as indications that we are in fact slowly winning the war for a transition to democracy in Iraq, or at least a polity which is constitutional and remarkably free by Middle Eastern standards. But it is equally hard not to be concerned at the impact such mass violence can have. After all, it was acomplished by only a handful of terrorists. But there is a sliver of hope. We are extremely fortunate to have been able to capture one of these Jihadists – possibly a Yemeni, according to John F. Burns. We have to do all we can to demonstrate who exactly is behind these murders and to explain to the Iraqi people that it is foreigners and ideologues completely alien to mainstream Islam who are responsible. A huge amount now rests on our ability to do so.