Month: February 2007

The Dangers of Fake Faith

One of the problems of the weakening of traditional religion is the emergence of fake religions. Michael Burleigh’s book on "Sacred Causes" links the rise of pseudo-religions like Soviet Marxism and German Nazism to the vacuum created by declining traditional religious commitment in twentieth century Europe. There’s a useful summary of the book in today’s WSJ. (The book, alas, is not Burleigh’s best.) But this is not, I think, a defense of some of contemporary American evangelicalism, let alone contemporary Wahhabism or Salafism. Some strands of today’s American evangelicalism are as phony and as fake as any atheistic alternative from the last century. The "Prosperity Gospel," for example, is not Christianity. It’s a form of capitalist self-help under-pinned by emotional manipulation, legitimized by the patina of Christian scripture. Similarly, a Christian faith that is primarily about politics and social policy is not authentic faith either: it’s Christianism, not Christianity. That’s one reason, I think, that non-fundamentalist Christians should stay in established traditional churches and resist the fundamentalist onslaught. Institutions matter. Religion matters. A society that severs the two is prone to dangerous bouts of ill-considered zeal and far-too ideological politics. We’re not there yet. But the danger signs are flashing red.

Steyn and Bosnia

More evidence that he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about:

I agree with your reader’s assessment of Bosnian Muslim and Serb dynamics in your post. My mother suggested evidence from the Croatian point of view, as well. She’s from Zagreb. She said the Hercegovinian Croats who moved to Zagreb were much more ambitious and "good at business" than the Croats from Croatia, and for that reason resented. But she said that the Muslims in Bosnia were considered to be even more ambitious and better at business than the Croats there–they were called "the Jews of Bosnia" (ironic, considering the generalized antipathy between Jews and Muslims today) for their business and financial prowess.

Memo to Steyn: some anti-Muslim bigotry is a lot like the old anti-Semitism. You need to be a little more careful who you’re rooting for.

T.C. Republicans

Terry Jeffrey makes a pragmatic case for sticking to t.c. (theologically correct) politics:

Bottom line question: If the GOP runs a candidate such as Rudy Giuliani, who mirrors the Democratic candidate’s liberal positions on key social issues, and who will not benefit from the presence of a marriage amendment on the ballot, does the GOP increase or decrease its chances of winning Ohio?

Running against a senator who just won a landslide reelection in New York, Giuliani is far more likely to paint Ohio blue than his home state red.

Kate O’Beirne is concerned that a socially inclusive Catholic like Giuliani could expose the extremism of theoconservative politics. She’s right. It’s one reason I find Giuliani appealing.

The Allies

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The small British withdrawal from Basra is not a watershed. Its miminal nature and indeterminate timing make it the least that Blair can still do to appease the overwhelming sense of public opinion in Britain, while not rupturing the alliance, or leaving irresponsibly. It is not, whatever the unhinged vice-president says, a sign of great success. Blair, a man of good faith who is yet another victim of this presidency, was candid about that:

"What all this means is not that Basra is how we want it to be," Mr. Blair said, "but it does mean that the next chapter in Basra’s history can be written by Iraqis." The city, he said, "is still a difficult and dangerous place."

What’s more telling is how unpopular the war is in Britain, and how an entire generation of Brits have now grown up thinking of the United States as a bullying, torturing force for instability in the world. That’s not the America I love – but it is the image of America that Bush and Cheney have built for the largest generation of human beings ever to grow up on the planet. In Italy, the government has fallen because there is no longer support for even a minimal presence in Afghanistan, let alone Iraq.

Soft power can be over-hyped. It’s no substitute for military prowess. But soft power still matters. Once, for all the residual anti-Americanism out there, it was a significant plus for the U.S. Bush has somehow managed to give the U.S. a soft-power deficit – in a war against some of the most barbaric, evil enemies we have ever faced. That really is an achievement. And it will take another generation to fix it. It’s one reason Obama is so appealing, I think. Electing him after Bush-Cheney would amount to the strongest signal that America is moving past the Bush-Cheney era. That’s a message the world is desperate to hear, and it would make enlisting more allies in the war against Islamist terror much easier.

(Photo: Peter McDiarmid/Getty.)

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib

HBO has an important documentary debuting tonight at 9.30 pm on the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policy of torturing terror suspects. It’s directed by Rory Kennedy. Here’s a brief interview with her. She began the documentary interested in the psychology of people who torture others. But when torturer after torturer told her that they were following instructions, she pursued an investigation. Some don’t want us to go there. Some want to euphemize it. Some want to describe it as self-actuated. The evidence won’t allow us such easy outs. This happened. It was policy. Under mercifully more constrained conditions, it still is. And something deep in America has died. We can, I think, discuss whether such a shift away from America’s historic abhorrence of torture is somehow necessary. But before we can debate that, we have to face the truth. America is now a torturing nation.

Ridiculous Cheney

The war between Cheney and McCain went up a notch again yesterday, and I’m glad McCain isn’t taking the abuse and condescension lying down. Money quote:

When asked about the administration’s environmental record, Mr. McCain said, "I would assess this administration’s record on global warming as terrible."

Asked by a reporter about his comments about Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. McCain said, "The criticism of the conduct of the war I have voiced for more than three years when I saw that this train wreck was taking place."

Some minutes later, after the news conference had ended, Mr. McCain, unbidden, said to the reporter, "Sir, I stand by my comments about Secretary Rumsfeld, by the way."

It’s good to see a simple and accurate phrase deployed to describe the Bush-Cheney war in Iraq: a train wreck. It’s also good to see a leading Republican place the blame squarely on Rumsfeld. McCain, it seems to me, grasps two essential facts in a way few others do. Those two facts are that America is a nation dedicated to the rule of law; and we are engaged in a lethal war with ruthless and fanatical enemies. He also believes in crafting domestic policy to address actual problems, rather than to support electorally important constituencies. His isolation in today’s Republican party is a sign of its sickness, not health. And the compromises the man has made to stay even faintly viable in such an atmosphere have made that sickness worse.

I should add that, at this point, the vice-president should have the self-respect to keep his views to himself. He does not realize it but he is a ridiculous figure. The record of his public statements over the last few years, from the idiotic "last throes" comment to the absurd "enormous successes" boast have rendered him a deeply unserious public official. The fact that he is ridiculous does not, alas, make him any the less dangerous to the constitution or to the successful conduct of the war. There is plenty of damage he can still wreak, given the chance.