Month: November 2009

Jasmine Beach-Ferrara encourages the marriage equality movement to use doubt to its advantage. Ed Kilgore embraces the strategy:

Beach-Ferrara concludes that ballot measures to stop gay marriage keep winning in no small part because equality advocates don’t talk much to conflicted voters, particularly those for whom religious dogma pulls them away from their own personal sense of fairness–i.e., non-bigots who are lumped in with bigots in most LGBT-rights strategies.

Based on her first-hand interviews with torn voters, Beach-Ferrara contends that marriage equality activists would do well to spend some time convincing such voters to reflect their true convictions by conscientiously passing up the opportunity to make a choice they aren’t prepared to make. In other words, rather than pushing people to come down on one side or the other, activists should have looked at doubt as a political asset.

If those in doubt abstained, would we win?

A reader writes:

I've been a fan for a while now, but there is one opinion that is not infrequently espoused on your blog that drives me nuts. This quote is from the the post "The Swiss Ban Minarets":

"But it is a useful reminder that religious liberty and toleration have roots that are not so deep in Europe"

There are many reasons why a statement like this infuriates me. Here are just a few:

First, you can't just say "Europe" and assume you are talking about some cohesive entity. Europe has a history spanning thousands of years, with many different cultures that have developed alongside each other, and cultural differences are vast when it comes to things like religion and religious tolerance. There's so much difference between Southern Europe, Central Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Northern Europe that making a statement about people's attitudes in the entire thing is nonsensical. It's like saying "North America has a real problem with gay people", and including Canada, the US and Mexico in that statement. It just doesn't make any sense.

Second, the roots of religious liberty and toleration "are not so deep in Europe"? That's just insane!

Take, for instance, a look at the wonderful country that is Poland: they have essentially had religious freedoms since the 15th century (yes, that's BEFORE Columbus discovered America) and complete freedom of religion was guaranteed at the Warsaw Confederation in 1573, and with a few gaps (like, obviously, in the 1940s, but you can't really blame the Poles for that), it has essentially remained ever since.

Third, I live in Stockholm and what you are describing are is far, far from the reality I know. I grew up with Muslims, I went to school with Muslims, I work with Muslims and I have life-long friends that are Muslims. This is the case for most people I know my age. Certainly, Sweden isn't perfect when it comes to integration of recently arrived immigrants and such, but in terms of religious tolerance and religious freedom, I'll put us up with any other country in the world. I defy you to find a single place in America more tolerant of different religions than we are here in Sweden. You wont be able to do it. That's not to say that religious intolerance doesn't exist here (of course it does), but the country as a whole is firmly dedicated to the right principle.

All that said, of course, it's incredibly stupid and discriminatory and offensive of the Swiss to ban minarets. But you know what, just because one dumb-ass country does something stupid, it doesn't mean the whole continent is messed up. Just like Europeans shouldn't extrapolate US views of people of color from things that happen in West Texas, please don't judge "Europe" based on what one country in it does. It's offensive and it obscures the much more nuanced truth.

The Economist asks Radley Balko about the biggest problem with the criminal justice system. Part of his reply:

[T]he incentive problems are most apparent with prosecutors. Prosecutors get no credit for cases they decide not to bring, either because of a lack of evidence or because pressing charges wouldn't be in the interest of justice. They're only rewarded for winning convictions. That's what gets them promoted, or re-elected, or gives them the elevated profile to run for higher office. Every incentive points toward winning convictions. And particularly with prosecutors, there's really no penalty at all for going too far to get a guilty verdict. One real disservice the Duke lacrosse case did for the criminal-justice system is it put in the public consciousness the idea that bad actors like Mike Nifong are regularly disciplined for misconduct. In truth, that case was really exceptional.

Beck backs up Charlotte Gainsbourg:

The comments section on Antville tries to decipher the video's WTF. Commenter Bunny Greenhouse – who just happens to be the creator of these brilliant YouTube mashups of Girl Talk tracks – lends a hand:

it's almost as if [director Keith Scofield] had this idea of making a cinematic montage of his fave internet/art images for a while, and he just starting saving 'em in a folder on his computer – and now… voila

Bunny's findings after the jump:

More matches here.

A reader writes:

I agree with your main point, but the line

In fact, recent events suggest a move backwards as the entropy of the Arab and Muslim world reasserts itself.

suggests a Tom Friedman-style derogation of Arabs and Muslims and a lazy analysis to boot.  Isn't it more a case of the continuing fallout from Britain's creation of an artificial state designed to be perpetually at war with itself? (Yet another reason why many of us who hated Saddam still thought the war was a really bad idea.)  

 

Is the never-ending fight of the Sunnis and the Shiias and the Kurds to rule their own lands with no influence from foreign tribes any different from what's going on in Israel?  Or Ireland?  The entropy of religious and nationalist extremism reasserts itself everywhere.

Yes it does, and I was too glib in that throw-away.

My point is that in most regions of the world, the rare experience of a liberal state that tries to counteract the atavistic impulses of fundamentalism, tribalism and sectarianism is entirely absent. These pathologies are human pathologies, not just Muslim or Arab ones. But with no real tradition of liberalism to counter them, the struggle is quixotic. Look at how sectarian America now is! If the country of Jefferson gave us Palin, the rest of the world seems worthy of cold-eyed realism before we declare freedom on the march. If we haven't learned that these past few years, we have learned nothing,

More fun from the book "edited" by Adam Bellow and "written" by Sarah Palin. I have to say I guffawed out loud when reading her citations of Plato and Aristotle, when what she really meant to cite was Quote Garden. But she can't even get more folksy references correct. Geoffrey Dunn:

Perhaps the most embarrassing gaffe so far is her mis-attributed quote to UCLA basketball legend John Wooden. As the epigram to Chapter Three, "Drill, Baby, Drill," Palin assigns the following remarks to the Hall of Fame hoops coach:

Our land is everything to us… I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember our grandfathers paid for it–with their lives.

Only the quote wasn't by John Wooden. It was written by a Native American activist named John Wooden Legs in an essay entitled "Back on the War Ponies," which appeared in a left-wing anthology, We Are the People: Voices from the Other Side of American History, edited by Nathaniel May, Clint Willis, and James W. Loewen.

Ah, Quote Garden. Live by it; die by it. Will this be corrected in future editions? Will any of the lies and errors in this book? We know the answer. The book is published by Harper Collins and edited by Adam Bellow and Jonathan Burnham. They have as much interest in factual accuracy as Jayson Blair.

Will at Ordinary Gentlemen ponders Islam's relationship to modernity:

Over the next few decades, it will not surprise me if major Muslim leaders begin emphasizing how Islam preserved the works of great philosophers and fostered scientific learning throughout the Middle Ages as evidence of their faith’s integral relationship with science and modernity. In fact, it’s already pretty common to hear similar talking points from moderate Islamic leaders in the United States and Europe. This narrative may not be completely accurate, but that’s almost beside the point. If the number of liberal Muslims reaches a critical mass, they’ll find ways to justify their political and cultural outlook within a rich theological tradition, just as liberal Christians have done in the West.

But it took centuries for that to happen within Christianity. The question today is whether in a world of weapons of mass destruction we have the same amount of time to withstand the fruits of murderous religious certainty.

"Many of us in the progressive movement just want to throw up. Democrats put one hand out to ask for money, and with the other they stab you in the back," – Steve Goldstein of Garden State Equality, New Jersey's gay rights group.

The best news in a long time comes via the Washington Post's new poll:

The GOP is a party that has become increasingly conservative, particularly on fiscal issues. Obama's stimulus package of nearly $800 billion, bailouts for banks and the auto industry, and a health-care bill with a price tag of nearly $900 billion over 10 years have aroused strong opposition on the right. Almost three-quarters of Republicans and GOP-leaners identify themselves as "conservative" on most issues, up sharply from a couple of years ago… On fiscal issues, the percentage calling themselves conservative has soared to more than eight in 10. More striking is that a majority considers themselves to be "very conservative" on fiscal issues, up about 20 points in two years.

The better news is that Republican voters understand that the GOP is also responsible for the fiscal mess:

Just 1 percent pick George W. Bush as the best reflection of the party's principles, and only a single person in the poll cites former vice president Richard B. Cheney. About seven in 10 say Bush bears at least "some" of the blame for the party's problems.

The problem, it seems to me, is that most sane people understand that offering no stimulus this year and no bank bailout and no auto industry bailout would have led to an unemployment rate far higher than we have now, and a much, much steeper recession which would have compounded the debt, not helped it. McCain could have opposed TARP in the campaign but didn't. Maybe a president could have just said: let it all collapse, it will revive soon enough. I just doubt that any actual president could ever have actually done that.

And the bigger problem is: what do we cut now? If we are ruling out any tax increases, then huge reductions in Medicare, Medicaid and defense are going to be essential. Who is proposing that among the GOP leadership? Not even Palin. And the base is far less interested in obstructing climate change legislation than expanding private health insurance through public subsidy. So polarization may actually decline next year if health reform passes. 

I'd say all this is grist for a third party Perot-style fiscal reform movement. Unless Obama gets there first and calls the GOP bluff on spending. But it isn't good news for the GOP. They have no serious leaders, no practical policies that can win a majority, and no coherent plan for actually reducing government and debt other than adolescent protests. Other than that, they're on a roll.

A contribution from the New Zealand Campaign Against Landmines (CALM):