Month: May 2009

The View From Your Window Book: You Pick The Cover

We are in the final stages of editing the Dish's View From Your Window book. In its proof stages, I have to say it has really taken me by surprise. Your photos have made the book into something much more than the sum of its parts, and much more than seeing just one each day in the middle of the blog. There's something oddly moving and gripping about all those windows – all those lives – spread across the pages in print. Yes: good old print. It can do things no blog can do, like juxtaposing on opposite pages window views that reflect and mirror and play off one another. There's also something quite wonderful, to my mind, about the new media returning in some innovative fashion to the old.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying we couldn't make up our mind about what should actually be the cover-image. We came down to ten windows that could easily qualify – and so it seems only fitting that we give you, the readers who created the content for the book, the final call on the cover image. So we have a new poll.

You can can peruse the candidates and vote here. It closes Friday. Pick us the cover art.

The Weekend Wrap

In case you missed the Dish (and had a life) over the weekend, we examined how Bush and Cheney took us from an emergency to an elected tyranny, looked back at their first victim of abuse, as well as Truman's crimes. In the news, Fallows informed us that China is detaining Mexicans, Bruce Bartlett eulogized Kemp, Josh Green revealed Obama's quiet green coup, and the NYT, moved by Stanford students, unearthed internal discord among the Bushies on torture. We also covered female orgasms. Derb furthered his secular case against marriage equality while Stephen Fry reflected on his gay youth. Finally, I gave my overdue take on Palin's moment of conservative doubt regarding Trig.

Marriage Equality “Compromise”

Dale Carpenter:

Protecting religious liberty as a "compromise" position on SSM is gaining traction. The swing vote in the state senate came from a Democrat who just last week voted against the bill in committee, but switched after more protection for religious liberty was added. The amendment, she said, is “respectful to both sides of the debate and meets our shared goals of equality under the state laws for all of the people of New Hampshire.”

Religious persons already have most these rights – but if reaffirming religious liberty will reassure those opposed to marriage equality, it's hard to see the case against incorporating them into legislation. In fact, I see the Connecticut language as an inherently good thing.

It's critical, it seems to me, that the marriage movement in no way seem hostile to religious freedom and conscience. We support religious liberty just as we support heterosexual marriage. And the fact is: this change unsettles some people. I understand that, and we need to be more cognizant of it, and sensitive to it, instead of engaging, as some sadly have, in ad feminem abuse. (Yes, I'm talking about Miss California, who may not be terribly smart but whose position is not inherently bigoted and whose qualms can be accommodated without obloquy).

Strong religious liberty clauses alongside marriage equality laws make a hell of a lot of sense. Let's embrace them.

Slippery Slopes

Drum has a powerful post on why we don't allow torture:

I don't care about the Geneva Conventions or U.S. law.  I don't care about the difference between torture and "harsh treatment."  I don't care about the difference between uniformed combatants and terrorists.  I don't care whether it "works."  I oppose torture regardless of the current state of the law; I oppose even moderate abuse of helpless detainees; I oppose abuse of criminal suspects and religious heretics as much as I oppose it during wartime; and I oppose it even if it produces useful information.

The whole point of civilization is as much moral advancement as it is physical and technological advancement.

 But that moral progress comes slowly and very, very tenuously.  In the United States alone, it took centuries to decide that slavery was evil, that children shouldn't be allowed to work 12-hour days on power looms, and that police shouldn't be allowed to beat confessions out of suspects.

On other things there's no consensus yet.  Like it or not, we still make war, and so does the rest of the world.  But at least until recently, there was a consensus that torture is wrong.  Full stop.  It was the practice of tyrants and barbarians.  But like all moral progress, the consensus on torture is tenuous, and the only way to hold on to it — the only way to expand it — is by insisting absolutely and without exception that we not allow ourselves to backslide.  Human nature being what it is — savage, vengeful, and tribal — the temptations are just too great.  Small exceptions will inevitably grow into big ones, big ones into routine ones, and the progress of centuries is undone in an eyeblink.

The GOP’s Problem

A.L. gets to the root of it:

When you've just been voted out of power for manifest incompetence and your opponents are led by a very popular and reasonable-sounding person, you don't have the luxury of acting righteous and uncompromising all the time. You have to acknowledge error. You have to act civilly. You have to appear pragmatic and reasonable. But the GOP is not interested in doing any of these things. Those who are left in the party are ultra-partisan and utterly convinced of their own infallibility and moral righteousness.  Until they lose that attitude and general combativeness, it won't matter what their ideas are. They'll just keep turning people off.

Cantor and Jeb are at least trying, I suppose. But it reminds me of the endless Tory "listening tours" in the wake of their 1997 collapse. It's eleven years later, and only now do they look like getting back into office. And only after Blair has long left the building.

Google Gets Closer To World Domination

They are angling to take on Facebook:

Brian Stoler, a Google software engineer, wrote that the company is adding profiles to search results in order to "give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name." That sounds sensible enough. But some observers see a more ambitious agenda. Why would Google want to encourage people to create profiles of themselves? Because it aims to take on Facebook. By promising improved vanity searches, the thinking goes, Google is getting us to tell the company a lot more about ourselves. In the process, it's garnering enough information to build the world's largest social network—and make a fortune besides.