Month: September 2009

Let’s Get It Started:

Venezuela state TV cites Family Guy, wins drug war.

Stephen Walt picks apart Eliot Cohen's latest column on Iran:

Cohen trots out the usual bogeymen about Iran's "fanatical, ruthless, and unprincipled regime" (an obvious hint that these are irrational criminals who could not be deterred), and flatly declares that no "real negotiation or understanding" is possible with such people.  He says that allowing Iran to have the bomb "may yield the first nuclear attack since 1945," even though he also believes the mullahs are "willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power."  (Newsflash: if "staying in power" is the Iranian leadership's  primary goal, starting a nuclear war and thus inviting overwhelming retaliation by the U.S. or Israel isn't something they're going to do.)

I found Cohen's column to be one of the more honest out there. At least, he conceded the appalling consequences and limited effect of a military strike against Iran. That candor and realism is not often dispayed on the neocon right.

A reader writes:

I love your blog and the service you perform for your readers by aggregating interesting tidbits from around the web each day.  I do not love your forays into religious debate.  This email 

was particularly galling in its self-righteous tone.  Your reader

complains of others 'ignoring' great thinkers of the past 2,000 years, as if St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Luther, Calvin, or Kierkegaard have not been roundly criticized for centuries for failing to solve the theodicy problem to general satisfaction. Why would Niebuhr or Lewis have attempted to answer the very same question if those first five had done a bang up job of things?

I believe that the problems you and your readers are 'debating' have much more to do with disagreement over mode of inquiry than with any real attempt to answer important questions of our origin, the problem of suffering, our ultimate end, etc.  In other words, some of your readers (myself included) take issue with otherwise intelligent people who propagate the acknowledged myths of Christianity because we do not believe that, as Marcus Borg might say, the fact that a particular myth did not take place in history does not make it untrue.  We insist that the only proper and intellectually honest answer to the questions religion attempts to answer is simply 'I do not know.'  

In the second paragraph of your reader's email, she concedes that theology has no basis in empirical truth and yet is somehow 'true in every moment of existence.' I would counter that one might as well say, this cannot possibly be true but I feel better for believing it, so I believe it anyway.  What kind of honest discussion can take place in that environment?  He goes on to ask what counter to the Christian response to theodicy non-Christians would give.  The answer, again, is simple: I do not know.  The burden of proof, under a hypothetical mode of inquiry, lies with the one doing the hypothesizing.  If one wants free reign to believe any old story, just stop pretending to be intellectually honest, drop the pretenses to intellectual inquiry, and say, I believe it because I believe it.  There is no arguing with that.  But don't expect to be taken seriously.

In the final paragraph your reader decries the 'pretensions of science' and asks what 'they' expect 'us' to believe.  She has, somewhat ironically, missed the point of many great thinkers of the past couple millennia, many of whom were put to death by Christians who felt threatened by scientific challenges to their shamanistic hegemony.  Science does not ask for belief.  The scientific/hypothetical mode of inquiry asks for an open mind and the humility to say I do not know when observable data do not present an answer.

Taipei, Taiwan, 12 pm

Will Wilkinson seconds Tim Lee calling freer immigration laws a civil rights issue:

Showing that increased immigration tends to benefit natives reduces resistance on the margin, which is worth doing. But, in my experience, laying out clearly the immense benefits to the immigrants is extremely powerful. It highlights the needless misery caused by the heartless status quo. Even then, it is more powerful still to illustrate clearly how the status-quo system of borders, passports, visas, and citizenships systematically violates basic human rights to free movement and association.

David Frum thinks the GOP should reconsider its options now that the public option has been rendered mostly dead (for the umpteenth time):

Until now, Republicans have clung to the untenable healthcare status quo in great measure because they feared the likeliest alternative would be worse. But what if the alternative might be an improvement over the status quo? Suddenly the deal option begins to look a lot more interesting.

Greg Sargent has related thoughts about the risks the GOP is taking by flat-out opposing reform. I still think a public option could survive, if the Democrats were capable of persuading anyone. But, of course, they aren't. When a serious political party is headed by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, you begin to understand why so many Americans feel contempt for it. I sure do.

Polanski's defenders have solicited sympathy for the director by noting the length of time since his crime (32 years) and even his Holocaust survival. Good Lord. Norm Geras contends they are mutually exclusive:

As a genocide, the Holocaust was a colossal, a continent-wide, crime against humanity, as well as being composed of countless localized crimes against humanity. There is no statute of limitations for crimes against humanity. (See this Convention.) That is because of their gravity. For the same reason, in most national jurisdictions the provision for statutory limitation does not normally cover grave crimes against the person. Reference to Polanski's being a Holocaust survivor should therefore remind us that, whatever other arguments there may be against extraditing him, the fact that his offence was committed long ago isn't one of them – unless raping a child is thought not to be a serious offence.

Friedersdorf picks his ideal GOP 2012 contenders:

My somewhat uninformed guesses: David Petraeus and Colin Powell (who’d have all kinds of difficulty winning the primary). These accomplished generals share one related trait: deep credibility as men who are serious about national security, enabling them to run as sane, experienced stewards, rather than bellicose idiots so desperate to seem toughest on terrorism that they spend the primaries calling for “doubling Gitmo” and competing to see who would torture in more contrived ticking time bomb situations.

They’re also both post-partisan figures of the kind that Americans seem to like, haven’t got long voting records to be picked apart, and can nevertheless credibly claim more executive experience than President Obama.

Who says Petraeus is a Republican? And he has publicly vowed to not run for high office. I'm also creeped out by the militarism of this, and know full well that Powell would be more anathema to the base than even McCain. And can you see Petraeus – an educated, civilized, humane man – presiding over the party of Beck and Limbaugh? Only if the elites had any power. But the elites have either left or have thrown their lot in with the populist maniacs. Conor can dream, I guess. And the future is always unpredictable. But there are forces that have to run their course. Even into an abyss.