Month: February 2007

The Case Against Giuliani

A New Yorker writes:

It’s very far out and lots of things can happen, but here are some initial thoughts about Rudy from a longtime New Yorker who witnessed firsthand what he did (and didn’t do) for New York.

1. If you thought Bush was bad with cronyism, wait till this one gets in power. Remember the one protege of his he got into a high government office? Bernie Kerick? That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Rudy runs a multimillion-dollar consulting firm whose essential mission is to profit off of 9/11. He’s got his finger in a lot of military-industrial pies. If he gets in, watch for a DoD and a DoJ stuffed full of lackeys and yes-men.

2. If you think Bush is insular, wait till this one gets in power. When Rudy was mayor of New York, he absolutely refused to allow anyone around him who disagreed with him in the slightest. He publicly humiliated every Board of Ed president who uttered a peep against him. He rammed through three police commissioners before he found one who knew how to say "Yes, Rudy."

3. If you think Bush is a ham-handed diplomat, wait till this one gets in power. This is, after all, a man who led a personal crusade against hot-dog vendors. This is a man who criticized the parents of kids who got killed by cops for letting them out on the street past 10. This is a man who publicly lectured Arafat (which was sort of fun, but he *was* just a Mayor, not Pope Rudolfus IV). So if you’ve been entertained by Bush’s excruciating gaffes internationally, you’ll have 4 more years of fun.

and finally…

Do you honestly think that people will elect a man who wants to keep us in Iraq for four more years? Americans might vote for victory but they won’t vote to throw money and lives away just so we can save face. Americans know (and you know, and I know) that "victory" just isn’t possible in Iraq, just as it wasn’t possible in Vietnam.

Oh, and then there’s the fact that he’s cavalier about torture, married his cousin, announced his divorce at a press conference, looks creepy and has all the personal warmth of Torquemada.

Come on. Tell us how you really feel.

Romney’s Double Standard

How can a candidate oppose a federal abortion amendment while supporting a federal marriage amendment? The Independent Gay Forum reproduces fresh Romney quotes on this question. Jon Rauch sums it up:

So it’s official: Romney favors a constitutional amendment to prevent gay couples from marrying, but not to prevent what most pro-lifers regard as infanticide. Not even Marx (Groucho) could find a consistent principle here, unless political expediency counts.

That last sentence could apply to Romney’s entire campaign, I’m afraid.

Faith and the Universe

Cometdavidlilloafpgetty

I’ve quoted Carl Sagan recently on the intersection of science and faith and there’s a helpful piece on him in the NYT today. What I think he gets – and what my generation perhaps has grown to internalize – is the utter insignificance of this planet, let alone human beings, in the context of what we have come to know about the universe. This knowledge was unknown to those who wrote the Bible; the endless expansion of the cosmos and the infinitesimal speck of it that we represent was beyond their knowledge. Yes, many suspected it or believed it or had myths about it. But we know. And that knowledge alters faith. For me, it pushes me toward deeper appreciation of spiritual mystery, and the understanding that if God exists, then God must be as beyond our human understanding as outer space is beyond our visitation. At the same time, it deepens my conviction in God’s existence. It makes God realer and yet more distant than before – and therefore makes the Incarnation even more astonishing as an event in human history.

The point I’m making, I guess, is the one Sagan made. It is not to pose a crude opposition between science and faith, as Sam Harris does (and my next response is imminent); it is to see the two in a constant interaction in the pursuit of ultimate truth. Sagan grasped that; he saw the "pseudo-religion" of those who shunned scientific knowledge. Denial of evolution, in my view, is a sign of weak faith, not strong faith. It’s a function of terrible fear, not the confidence of a loving God. Which is why some ( but not all) forms of fundamentalism are indeed, in my view, pseudo-religion; and some of what passes for evangelicalism (but not all) is pseudo-Christianity. No faith based on fear is real faith. The first thing Jesus told us is: "Be not afraid." The last thing we should be afraid of is the truth about our world.

(Photo: McNaught comet in Peru last month by David Lillo/AFP/Getty.)

“Slam Dunk”

Did I actually read this this morning?

One person who has read early drafts of the book said Mr. Tenet defended himself by carefully parsing the ‘slam dunk’ comment: he said he was not telling Mr. Bush that there was rock-solid evidence that Mr. Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, only that the president could make a ‘slam dunk’ case to the American public about these weapons programs.

So the case for Saddam’s WMDs was not a "slam dunk". But the ability to foster enough fear and panic among Americans to persuade them to go to war on the basis of the WMD intelligence was a "slam dunk." Or at least that’s a plausible inference. If that’s true, then the betrayal of faith is even deeper than we imagined.