Month: September 2009

After this ghastly revival of literalist, self-help fundamentalism, there's a shift in American religion:

The rise of the Nones is usually decried by religious leaders as a sign of secularization or atheism's ascent but get this: 51% say they believe in God.

Now some of those folks might just be religious people in between churches. So the Trinity folks asked them to describe what kind of God they believed in.

24% say they believe in "a higher power but no personal God." That would mean about 3.6% of Americans could be considered Deists, making them more common than Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or Mormons.

Barry Kosmin, one of the authors of the study, points out that an earlier study that looked at Nones as well as those who did "affiliate" with a religion found that 12% were Deistic. That would make Deists bigger than all of the aforementioned groups combined, and one of the largest spiritual groupings in America.

Somewhere Jefferson is smiling.

Richard Just praises the UN for providing Gaddafi a global stump:

Conservatives will probably offer his 90-minute-long rant as more evidence for the pointlessness of the U.N. But I would argue that it proves the opposite. It's been all too easy to forget in recent years that Qaddafi is an unadulterated lunatic. He agreed to disband his nuclear program back in 2003. He got published on the op-ed page of The New York Times. (Then his son did.) He became head of the African Union, and other African leaders seemed perfectly willing to ratify the veneer of respectability he was acquiring.

From the AP:

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky… Investigators are still trying to determine whether the death was a killing or a suicide, and if a killing, whether the motive was related to his government job or to anti-government sentiment.

Investigators have said little about the case. The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, said Wednesday the man was found hanging from a tree and the word "fed" was written on the dead man's chest. The official did not say what type of instrument was used to write the word.

From this profile of the cancer survivor and volunteer, it appears suicide is unlikely. We'll find out. But at some point, unhinged hostility to the federal government, whipped up by the Becks, can become violence. That's what Pelosi was worried about. The Dish will keep its eyes on this story.

Jason Rosenhouse joins the debate:

If the universe seems completely indifferent to human needs and wants that is because it is. If our bodies can fall prey to all manor of crippling, awful diseases it is because evolution is a messy process that did not have us in mind. If all of this suffering, pain and death seems so pointless that is because it is.

This requires unpacking:

King told a conservative news radio program:

If there's a push for a socialist society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together living collectively off one pot of resources earned by everyone, this is one of the goals they have to go to, same sex marriage, because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. They want public affirmation, they want access to public funds and resources.

… King also said that former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) was right to say that legal same sex marriages would open the door to legal polygamy or bestiality. "Not only is it a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis," King said.

Socialist?

You realize that King must have no understanding of the word, or that the word has now become synonymous in Foxland with "anything that scares me." How on earth is allowing 2 percent of people the right to marry the person they love a path to redistribution of wealth or government ownership of the means of production? Marriage is an institution that helps people be independent of the state. If one spouse gets sick, it is his or her spouse's first responsibility to care for him or her. Without the spouse, the government would have to step in. Marriage encourages responsibility, long-term commitment, and leads to better health. All of that too helps people remain independent of the state. In fact every single argument that social conservatives make about marriage for straights – and rightly so – also applies to marriage for gays. 

The mindset that lumps this in with some amorphous threat to everything good and American is not rational. It is gripped by paranoia, illogic and prejudice.

Goldblog finds an instance when the two were on the same page.

Ezra Klein responds to a Dish reader.

It's remarkable to read and watch the usual suspects splutter and harrumph at an American president who actually seeks to engage foreign powers as equals rather than as subordinates. What Obama sees as self-confidence in the supreme military and economic powerhouse on the planet, they see as craven weakness. So you get Paul Hinderaker throwing up in his mouth watching the UN address:

Obama then listed a series of decisions that he hoped might placate the assembled thugs, dictators, and hypocrites — a crowd from which he feels compelled to seek approval on behalf of the United States. Obama noted that he has banned torture, closed Gitmo, moved to end the war in Iraq, moved towards disarmament, attempted to advance the ball on creating a Palestinian state, "re-engaged the United Nations, paid our bills, joined the Human Rights Council."

So here was the president of the United States doing everything but getting down on his hands and knees before the representatives of every wretched regime in the world to plead that the U.S. has turned over a new leaf and, in effect, become harmelss.

Notice the neocon right's view of the rest of the fricking world: "assembled thugs, dictators, and hypocrites." Against this, we have blameless America, always right, never wrong, and blameless Israel, always the victim, never the aggressor. And when you realize that this was the worldview of the last president, you understand why he got so little of any substance from any foreign country, except Britain, whose prime minister's career was destroyed by the decision.

Obama's promise was and is a re-branding of America (which was the primary reason I supported him). Of course, if you are a neocon, you see no need to rebrand after Gitmo, Iraq, Bagram and Abu Ghraib. Torture and pre-emptive wars waged on false pretenses are things to be proud of. But if you are capable of absorbing complicated reality, you realize that such a re-branding was essential if the US were to dig itself out of the Bush-Cheney ditch and to advance its interests by defter means than raw violence and occupation. 

What are the results so far?

As with much of the rest of the Obama presidency, we do not know yet. But I agree with Packer that so far, Obama seems more JFK than LBJ in foreign affairs (except that it was his predecessor who revealed the limits of swagger in global politics rather than himself). So far, it appears that the Israelis, playing the game they think is still apposite, have no interest in cooperating with the US. Netanyahu believes his contempt for the American president is risk-free because Israel has a lock on the US Congress on the issues that matter to it. Obama's counter is to reiterate his views on the settlement question and to up the ante by proposing final status talks right away. We have no idea where this will end up. And it will be impossible to call Netanyahu's bluff if the Palestinians decide to miss yet another opportunity. But it's a process, and the US is still very much in the game. And one suspects Netanyahu has not yet absorbed the shift going on – even in Congress.

On Iran, we see an interesting dynamic. The missile defense maneuver simultaneously improved Israel's security and pleased the Russians. Yesterday we saw much more positive signs from Moscow on Iran sanctions than at any point in the past. They may not deliver, but the tone has shifted. I'll believe Russian support for sanctions on Iran when I see it. But sometimes, a little give from the superpower can be more effective than the superpower acting as if it is a tiny vulnerable country paranoid about its defenses and terrified by a two-bit, half-cracked dictator who is clinging onto power through a coup.

What I'm seeing in American foreign policy, in other words, is less fear and more confidence. Confidence is not the same thing as weakness. It is better understood, I think, as a rational attempt to seek self-interest through international cooperation, to see the US less as the hegemon than as the facilitator. If it works, it will be a breakthrough. If it works.

But isn't it worth trying?

(Photo: US President Barack Obama (R) leaves the room after a bilateral meeting with Russian President Dimitry Medvedev at the Woldorf Astoria in New York, NY, September 23, 2009. By Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)

Drum's take on the ACORN lawsuit:

Points for chutzpah, I guess, but this is a bad idea on so many levels it hurts just to think about it.  All they're doing is extending the news cycle on this whole debacle, making fools of themselves with transparently petty arguments, and just generally showing less common sense than your average mafia don caught on a 60 Minutes sting.  At this point, ACORN needs to take their lumps, finish their internal investigation, and clean up their act.  In the meantime, the least they can do is avoid handing the Glenn Beck crowd free additional ammunition.  Fair or not, shooting the messenger isn't helping their cause.

Allahpundit has nearly the same reaction.

"I told his Excellency, Mr. President, that we believe we need to help Iran to take a right decision. As to also have sanctions, Russia's belief is very simple, and I stated it recently. Sanctions rarely lead to productive results. But in some cases sanctions are inevitable," – Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev.