Month: July 2005

A British reservist differs with Juan Cole on the role of his forces in Southern Iraq. Good for Cole for posting the email. Cole also notices the hopeful Jihadist-Sunni clashes on the Syrian border, reported in greater detail in the Telegraph.

Another emailer reaches that asymptotic bloggy synthesis:

I agree with your last emailer that Santorum’s comments aren’t exactly a harbinger of the apocalypse (which seems an apt analogy when dealing with the good senator), but, like you, I found his commentary on the role of women and the importance of education highly troubling. The reactions that neocons like you and I are feeling probably have less to do with the factual accuracy of what Santorum said (of course kids would be better off with stay-at-home moms) and have more to do with our ability to view his attitudes against the backdrop of what we know Santorum believes about society. Santorum is a paleocon in the truest sense. He’s the latest incarnation of Pat Buchanan. In fact, he may be more accurately described as a paleoliberal of the pre-1960s variety. The man reminds me of many older folks back in the small midwestern town in which I grew up. He thinks that gender roles should have greater societal definition. He scoffs at the need for the universality of higher education, even in this post-industrial age. He considers the pursuit of happiness to be ultimately selfish. Santorum is the opposite of a forward-thinking conservative. To the contrary, he is perpetually rooted in a time gone by, convinced that if we just bring back antequated mores and close the doors to trade and feed organized labor, the desolate factory-towns and emptying churches of Catholic Pennsylvania will boom once again and the age of innocence will return.
Rooted in 1930s economics and 1950s social norms, Santorum is the past, not the future of the conservative movement.

Here’s hoping.

David Corn examines the evidence allegedly fingering Karl Rove as Matt Cooper’s source for outing Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative. He’s underwhelmed.

“Calm down, there, tiger. I’m no fan of Santorum, but what exactly is so wrong with those excerpts you linked to? They are certainly not worthy of the mullah comparison.
Are children better off when one parent stays home to raise them, as opposed to a daycare provider? I’d be surprised if you believed that they are not. Is the feminist movement partly to blame for more mothers leaving the home to pursue professional careers at the expense of their children? Of course. Even if you disagree, is that such a radical or nonsensical position to hold? On number three, Is college the right path for everyone? I know many people who have been pushed needlessly into college only to end up with tens of thousands of dollars in debt and a tough job market to deal with. Of course, one will have more opportunities with a college education, but do you really think the solution to every single mother’s woes is to pack up and go to school?
Seriously, I think you are overreacting here. Just remember to take a deep breath and count to ten from now on whenever you see Santorum’s name.”

I’d say that this piece of news from Iraq is encouraging. Perhaps the real news from that country is that the insurgency is very slowly being divided between nationalist Sunnis and the Jihadists from abroad. I certainly hope so. We’ll see as the constitutional process continues.

The Senator from Pennsylvania explains his views on the role of women. Benedict XVI – and a few mullahs in Iran – would approve.

Lawrence O’Donnell parses Karl Rove’s lawyer.

The new claim is that the United States’ occupation of Iraq has led to 300,000 Iraqi deaths. Tom Elia elaborates.

The heterosexuals, of course! Stephanie Coontz will find few dissenters on the social right. The revolution in civil marriage – in which it became about love, not property, in which women and men were equal, in which children were not necessary – all occurred before the gay revolution. Since marriage has already been redefined to make the exclusion of gays logically absurd, the campaign against letting gays into the human family necessarily raises the suspicion of mere animus. It’s not bigotry to say that these are the rules that govern civil marriage and too bad if you can’t live up to them (i.e. procreation, or traditional gender roles). But it is suspicious when you abolish all those rules for straights and then use the old rules to bar gays. I don’t see how gay marriage opponents manage to get round the logic of this – except by resorting to purely religious arguments (which would invalidate most heterosexual marriages today as well), or simply reiterating the definitional case that marriage is for straights, dammit. This glaring hole on the argument must have something to do with the fact that an idea that was novel in the 1980s is now the law in several civilized countries and one state in America. Reason eventually finds a way.

FRUM ON MIERS: Another cold day in hell, but I think David Frum has a point on Harriet Miers. In my occasional interactions with the Bush brigade, I have discovered she is revered as well as feared. Not much of a paper trail; but hard as nails.

“I stand up and challenge them when they say things that are anti-gay. I haven’t given up on them yet,” – Luis Ibarcena, a 32-year-old Spanish security guard, on why he still attends mass, despite now being married to his husband.

JOHNNY APPLE DOES MY HOME COUNTY: I grew up in the rural idyll of West Sussex. Gardening was the religion. The NYT’s Johnny Apple regularly eats and drinks his way through much of it each summer. Enjoy. He sure does.