Year: 2005

I guess it’s not crazy to come up with a list of the “ten most harmful books” of the last two centuries. But it’s not a sign of intellectual health. It implies that some ideas are worth suppressing for the harm they might do. To my mind, an argument or a book should be read with as open a mind as possible. Its errors or moral failings are better brought to light by exposure than buried. But some of today’s conservative intellectuals believe otherwise; and this list by “Human Events” contributors is a disturbing one, and a sign of increasing morbidity in conservative intellectual circles. Sure, it’s hard to dispute the evil power of hackish tracts like Mein Kampf or Mao’s Little Red Book. (I’m surprised the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ didn’t make the grade.) But Darwin and Nietzsche, two of the greatest minds in Western civilization, whose works still mesmerize and intrigue smart readers and whose ideas are subject to countless interpretations? And Mill and Keynes and Freud? Please. If I were a young conservative mind, the first thing I’d do is read these Indexed books and make my own mind up. It should be possible to be a conservative with a genuinely liberal approach to intellectual inquiry. And that excludes exclusion of ideas deemed “harmful.”

Maybe blogs shouldn’t link to homilies, but there are so few good ones any more, and so many more available online, that when I’m sent a great one, I can’t resist. Here’s one about the true spirit of Christianity, of the Gospels’ Jesus, that seems to me somewhat lacking in some of our most public disquisitions on Christian faith. Money quote:

“We have to be persons who are there for giving life to others… We are not interested in punishing others. We are not interested in condemning or criticizing others. We may use harsh words to point out something they are doing wrong, and that may not be easy for them to receive. But it’s our disposition toward them that is so crucial. If judgment toward our brothers and sisters is condemnation, hatred, loathing or disgust – that isn’t Spirit. That is something else. That is the opposite of what Christ came to do. When he said, “You will free people when you are there for giving life,” that is the mightiest work of God. God’s mighty act is to love every single human being exactly as they are, in this moment, with the hope and the desire that they move in the direction of the truth.
Wanting people to move in the direction of the truth – and taking them for who and where they are – is such a different disposition than condemning and criticizing. It is so different from excluding people. What is so frightening about ‘toxic’ religion is that it becomes exclusive: ‘Get rid of those people who aren’t like us.'”

This isn’t just about the religious right. It’s about the entire religious debate right now on public issues such as marriage or the end of life or the origins of the human person. If we are going to get somewhere as Christians, we have to change our tone. That goes for me sometimes, too. And here’s an idea: if you hear an inspired sermon or homily, and it’s posted somewhere online, why not send it to me? Maybe I could post one each Sunday, to make up for the probably dreadful one you had to sit through yourself.

“John Walters says there is no medical evidence for marijuana’s effects. He is a liar or an ignoramus, probably both.” – Rick Brookhiser, telling it like it is.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “Enough with terrorism and killings. We’re tired and we want God to help us just as he helped his prophets. I beseech him to help the Iraqi people to stop the bloodshed.” – an elderly woman at the scene of another hideous suicide bomb in Iraq. I worry that God is all the Iraqi people now have.

THE CASE AGAINST CHUCK HAGEL: Lawrence Kaplan lays it out for you.

I said I’d keep you posted. I have to say I was pretty depressed by the side-effects of the new meds last week. They reminded me too much of the past, the things you think you have let go of, but haven’t, the friends you lost, the afternoons spent crashed out before waking in a pool of sweat, the nausea that never leaves, and the era of complete panic and death that seared the consciousness of my gay generation. And then you pick yourself up and bloody well get on with it. And the truth is: I’m really lucky. The side effects have pretty much subsided within ten days. My body somehow found a balance again and my energy levels are back up. No nausea any more; no diarrhea; and only mild fatigue (which may well be related to the insane heat in DC this week). So I’m on the upswing. My many friends on the same or similar regimens say the worst is behind me. So off to the Cape on Friday. Can’t wait to see the bay and the ocean and all my Ptown friends. Thanks for your emails of support and suggestions. The only point of this is to put some sort of face on HIV, although I’m no longer a very typical HIV patient. Certainly, from a global perspective, my issues are petty beyond belief and I am grateful beyond words for that.

A reader comments:

The thing that bothered me about the interview is that Hannity didn’t even challenge him from the right. Hannity has never pretended to be an objective journalist. The guy’s a partisan who is explicitly matched with a liberal on his TV show to provide balance, and that’s fine. No one should be surprised or upset that he didn’t ask Cheney whether Iraq is becoming the next Vietnam (there’s plenty of other folks asking those questions anyway). But a journalist of the right should ask him the questions to which conservatives would like some answers. Ask him, e.g., about the administration’s spending habits. He asked him about immigration, but when Cheney said illegal immigrants perform an important function in our economy by doing jobs no one else will do, Hannity should have jumped on him. Why does he think Americans won’t do those jobs? Wouldn’t reducing illegal immigration just force the employers to raise the rates of pay for those jobs so that Americans would do them, and isn’t that a good thing? Etc.

Absolutely. The problem is not Hannity’s bias; it’s his worship of those in power. Here’s his question on immigration:

I take calls from people three hours a day on the radio. One issue that people keep coming back – I would say probably the conservative movement in the country, the one criticism they have, the biggest criticism they have of the administration is the issue of immigration and border patrol. We know the border patrol admits that there are 4 or 5 million people that they know that they don’t get every year that cross the border. And people express their concern about the vulnerability and susceptibility of our borders. Your thoughts?

Your thoughts? Can you get a more puff-ball gentle volley across the net? It’s great to have conservatives in the media. But there’s a difference between conservatives and supine vessels for government spin.

In Canada, they just celebrated their first military same-sex wedding between a sergeant and a warrant officer in the Canadian military. A twofer! The ceremony was held in the chapel at Nova Scotia’s Greenwood airbase. Meanwhile, Frum’s sloppy stats on marriage in Canada get a fisking here.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I like your take on MJ, mostly. However, I had some issues with what you say about the race angle. Here’s the money quote:

“The case is also subtly about race, another taboo. The key fact about Michael Jackson is that he is the first true black celebrity in America who has literally turned himself into a Caucasian. African-American culture has long been obsessed with varying degrees of blackness. Light-colored men and women have historically enjoyed social status in African-American society and we have learned from the exhaustive biographies of Jackson that his father ridiculed him in his youth for having a flat nose and stereotypical black features. Jackson’s response? To take the valuation of lighter skin to its logical conclusion.”

I think you’re off base to say ‘A-A culture has long been obsessed with varying degrees of blackness,’ if you mean by this statement that this obsession is exclusively, mostly, or even historically a black pathology. Maybe you didn’t mean to imply this, but such an implication can easily be drawn from your statement. Colorism / Racism is most definitively not a product of black obsession; it is historically a product of white supremacy and white privilege. It seems like you are “blaming the victim,” if this is your implication. That black people (e.g., Joe Jackson, MJ’s father) have bought into the sick racist ideology that equates the tone of one’s skin – it’s relative lightness – with self-worth is a survival technique that was and still is encouraged by the dominant white culture. Internalized racism operates analogously to internalized homophobia: an attempt to change what is immutably natural is a desperate, pathetic and destructive byproduct of the hatred (e.g., homophobia; racism) that society constructs. In some ways, the ridicule of MJ’s father is not all that different from the parents who send their gay kids to those reparative camps, in the hopes that they will be reformed and converted into heterosexuals: both of these responses are symptoms of deeper social ills (hatred of gays and African Americans) which are the real obsessions that we need to expose. Which again proves that the struggle for a young person to appropriate and accept his or her identity (particularly race and sexual orientation) is a terribly complicated and fragile project in American society, given our legacy of racism and homophobia.”

Marty Lederman examines the legal arguments behind the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani at Gitmo, as reported in Time. The techniques used against Qahtani clearly violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice, as government lawyers pointed out at the time. So how did the military get around the law? The April 4, 2003 DoD Working Group Report states that

“[D]efenses relating to Commander-in-Chief authority, necessity and self-defense or defense of others may be available to individuals whose actions would otherwise constitute these crimes, and the extent of availability of those defenses will be fact-specific … Where the Commander-in-Chief authority is being relied upon, a Presidential written directive would serve to memorialize this authority.”

The entire structure of permissible violations of American law, the UCMJ, and Geneva seems therefore to have been made legally possible solely by the president’s invocation of his wartime authority as commander-in-chief, as crafted in now-infamous Justice Department memos. In other words, the entire abuse scandal may be rooted directly in decisions made in the Oval Office. Marty has more questions, but his analysis, as always, is a must-read.

I found myself watching the Sean Hannity “interview” of vice-president Dick Cheney last night on Fox. I must say I have chortled through quite a few Larry King-style, fawning interviews by liberal journalists of liberal politicians in my time – all under the rubric of “objectivity.” But I don’t think I have ever witnessed a more fawning, sycophantic and simply rigged interview than that between Hannity and Cheney. In fact, the whole conceit that this was an actual interview is preposterous, along with the notion that Hannity is in any way a journalist. The first instinct of an actual journalist is to ask the tough questions even of someone you admire – perhaps especially of someone you admire. Hannity’s instinct is the exact opposite: ingratiation of his interview subject and his audience. The transcript reveals no distinction of any meaningful kind between the interviewer and interviewee. Here, for example, are a selection of statements made during the half hour. See if you can tell whether Hannity or Cheney said which:

a) “The world’s much better off and much safer today because Saddam Hussein’s in prison, will soon go on trial in Iraq, and the 25 million people in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan, have been liberated. Those are all major achievements.”

b) “We just had elections in Iraq. The security forces are growing in Iraq. There’s still an insurgency, but there’s a lot of progress.”

c): “We’ve got millions of people here illegally… It adds significant cost to local communities who have to provide educational services or health services.”

d) “People express their concern about the vulnerability and susceptibility of our borders.”

e) “The Koran had not been flushed down the toilet, and the – Newsweek had to withdraw its comment. It’s important that they be careful and exercise a sense of responsibility here, because lives are at stake.”

d) “When Newsweek puts out reports that the Koran was flushed down the toilet, and then later they have to retract a story like that. The impact it has on people worldwide and those people that are looking for reasons to hate the United States or justify, perhaps, actions against our troops.”

f) “Two hundred and fourteen years, we’ve never had a judge that would have otherwise been approved by the Senate filibustered.”

g) “We need to restore the traditional practice of the last 214 years.”

No prizes for correct answers. You can figure it out from the transcript. This is a free country, and Sean Hannity and Fox News can broadcast what they want. Fox is far more entertaining than the other cable news channels and I can see its appeal, and the need for a less liberal network. But this was not journalism. It was propaganda, cloyingly arranged between interviewer and interviewee, based on talking points adhered to by both sides, and broadcast as if it were a real interview. I worry that viewers actually begin to believe that this is journalism, that asking questions designed to help the interviewer better make his case, in fact often supplementing his answers to improve their rhetorical power, is somehow what real journalists do. It isn’t. I wish I could provide a better kicker for this blog item than Sean Hannity did. But I can’t. So here’s his sign-off: “Lynne, I was too tough on him.”

Another Greg Djerejian take-down.

LIBERATING STRAIGHT CAMP: Protesters have arrived at the “Love In Action” camp, designed to sequester gay kids and re-program them. Stories are being written, exposing this form of psychological child abuse. Young Zach’s blog made this happen.

A case of the importance of “reasonable doubt.” I’ve said my piece. Now I’m merely looking forward to watching Nancy Grace tonight, and to see that smug, self-righteous sneer get wiped off her face.