Year: 2005

A reader emails:

You’re being somewhat unfair to the researchers who attribute suicide terror to “altruism.” We generally use the word “altruism” in a positive sense — an “unselfish concern for the welfare of others,” as defined in The American Heritage Dictionary. However the same dictionary defines the scientific term “altruism” as “instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species.” There are no value judgments inherent in this scientific definition, which seems clearly to be the meaning intended by the researchers in the article to which you link. The conclusions reached by the researchers may or may not be accurate, but understanding the mind of the suicide bomber is both a worthy and necessary goal.

Huh? Let’s concede for the sake of argument that altruism in this sense means precisely “instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species.” You’re saying that the murderers of 9/11 were exhibiting “cooperative behavior” for the “survival of the species”? Suicide bombing is an upper-middle class form of mass murder, attached to a psychotic, narcissistic version of religious faith. If someone wants to martyr himself as a protest, that’s one thing. If he wants to take other innocent people with him, it’s quite another. I would think that distinction is an obvious one. Within the confines of today’s value-free academia, it apparently isn’t.

Mystery Pollster has some very credible doubts that Bush’s approval numbers are that low.

That’s a new “theory” on the motivations of suicide bombers. Read the piece detailing the study and see if you can find a distinction between martyrdom – which kills only oneself – and suicide-bombing, which, of course, kills others. Money quote:

[S]o long as group mentality motivates the suicide, it is still altruistic, Pedahzur and his colleagues claim. They claim individuals who kill themselves in search of ‘a lofty and glorious place for themselves’ fall into a different but closely related category – ‘acute altruistic suicide.’

Acute altruistic suicide ‘stems from a strong religious conviction in the glorious destiny which awaits the perpetrator in the afterlife,’ Pedahzur said. ‘With a serene conviction derived from the feeling of duty accomplished, this person is carried to his death in a burst of faith and enthusiasm.’

Faith alone, however, does not a terrorist make, Ginges cautioned. ‘I found personal devotion to and belief in Islam unrelated to support for terrorism,’ he said. Religious organizations find it easier to generate support for terrorism not because of their beliefs but rather ‘because of the link between collective rituals and altruism,’ Ginges said.

It seems to me that if Islamic fascists wanted merely to blow themselves up, few of us would object. In fact, it might be worth encouraging. Win-win: they go to “heaven”, we get to ride the subway in peace. But these people are mass-murderers. I guess it takes an academic to see that as altruism.

“She’s a good person? Well I’m relieved, because after all, that’s half the battle. What I really want to know is whether she is a dog person or a cat person, and what is her favorite Britney Spears album. Come on! Other than the scary butt-kissing correspondence to the most brilliant person ever, I don’t think anyone has really been attacking the woman personally. Whether or not she is a nice person or functional party guest probably won’t make a bit of difference as to her abilities as a supreme court justice. The elephant is still sitting in the middle of the room – she may be an excellent corporate lawyer and personal attorney, but there is no way this person would have been nominated if she hadn’t been Bush’s friend.”

“A few weeks before the wedding, over coffee at Starbucks, I asked Jamie why he wanted to marry. For my generation of gay men (I am 45), legal marriage was unthinkable, and emerging into the gay world often meant entering a cultural ghetto and a sexual underworld. Jamie, who could just about be my son, replies with an answer that turns the world of the 1970s and 1980s upside down. Once he realized he was gay, he says, he simply expected to marry.

‘Why does anybody get married?’ he asks. ‘I wanted the stability, I wanted the companionship, I wanted to have a sex life that was accepted, I wanted to have kids. For me, it’s not a choice. A marriage evens you out.'” – Jonathan Rauch’s latest column. What many opponents of marriage for gays have yet to grasp – because so many have sadly such limited awareness of or interest in actual gay lives – is that the revolution has already happened. Or, rather, the evolution. This was not a function so much of activism, although that played a part. It was a human maturation – and one of the most encouraging, healing social changes in years. I believe that one day, most conservatives will see that. I try and describe the deeper, structural change in gay self-consciousness in a new essay here. The New Republic has also kindly collected a series of my essays on gay life in the last two decades here.

Everything Matthew Scully says about Harriet Miers conforms to every anecdote I have ever heard privately about her. I’m going to reserve judgment for the hearings, since we are ultimately judging someone’s capabilities not her character. But it seems clear to me that Harriet Miers is, by all accounts, a person of deep integrity and acute attention to detail. I’m warming to her. So, I think, should the Democrats. Both sides would do well not to impugn her personally. She is clearly a good and decent human being. That matters too.

NYT’s public editor, Byron Calame, unloads:

“Now Is the Time.

The lifting of the contempt order against Judith Miller of The New York Times in connection with the Valerie Wilson leak investigation leaves no reason for the paper to avoid providing a full explanation of the situation. Now.
As public editor, I have been asking some basic questions of the key players at The Times since July 12. But they declined to fully respond to my fundamental questions because, they said, of the legal entanglements of Ms. Miller and the paper. With Ms. Miller in jail and the legal situation unclear, I felt it would be unfair to publicly castigate them for their caution.
At the same time, I decided my lack of information made it impossible to fairly evaluate for readers Ms. Miller’s refusal to identify confidential sources and how The Times was handling the matter. The absence of complete answers to my fundamental questions also prevented me from publicly rising to Ms. Miller’s defense, despite the initial burst of First Amendment fervor among some journalists supporting her.

But legal concerns should no longer rule the roost…

While a multitude of issues need to be addressed, I certainly will expect The Times’s explanation to address these fundamental questions that I first posed to the key players at the paper in July:

–Was Ms. Miller’s contact with the source she is protecting initiated and conducted in genuine pursuit of a news article for Times readers?

–Why didn’t she write an article?

–What kinds of notes are there and who has them?

–Why wasn’t she exploring a voluntary waiver from the source?

An important and obvious issue that has arisen in recent days, of course, is Ms. Miller’s seemingly belated discovery of notes from a June 2003 conversation that she had with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Several hours after she testified before the grand jury yesterday about the notes, a federal district judge in Washington, D.C., lifted the contempt finding that had caused her to spend 85 days in jail.
I write this expecting The Times will publish its explanation as soon as possible. Unfortunately, even if it were published Friday or Saturday, deadlines wouldn’t allow me to assess The Times’s explanation in the public editor’s column space this Sunday. I must submit my column by Friday morning; the space Sunday will be devoted to reader letters about my two previous columns, as regularly scheduled.
So, assuming The Times publishes its explanation sometime in the next few days, I will be assessing it in my column on Sunday, Oct. 23. I will need time to do some reporting. A representative of Ms. Miller has indicated that she will talk to me at some point, and I would expect to have access to both Mr. Keller and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, if necessary.”

Memo to Byron Calame: you can use the web first. Like this. It’s easy. Print it later if necessary. For the record, I’m not going to try and guess the ending of this particular Washington movie. But it’s a sleeper, isn’t it? (Hat tip: Petrelis.)

How had I missed this one?

That was just the teaser on O’Reilly for an upcoming segment. Could a parodist do any better?

Tim Ash has the best analysis of Germany’s new government I’ve yet read.