Here's a graph that puts the generational shift on marriage equality in stark relief:
A clear majority of the under-30s favor marriage equality in all but 12 states. This doesn't make defeats any easier, and it doesn't make those constitutional amendments any easier to reverse. But it does add some perspective and may help us keep our cool. We're winning where it counts. And the future will arrive some day.
Bruce Bartlett makes it.
Will Saletan wants the ban on women in combat scrapped:
The question isn't whether men are physically stronger than women on average. Of course they are. The question is whether to translate that average into a rule against women in combat. The 2009 Navy policy, for example, states that women must be barred from jobs whose "physical requirements would necessarily exclude the vast majority of women service members." Why should some women be excluded based on the performance of others? Would you tolerate such an average-based rule against any racial or religious group?
(Photo: Cadets in the graduating class of the United States Military Academy at West Point participate in commencement exercises on May 23, 2009 in West Point, New York. By Spencer Platt/Getty.)
Napoleon Linardatos reads Matthew Continetti’s 4,700 word missive to Sarah Palin so you don't have to:
The
sole legitimizing force behind Sarah Palin is the persecution that her
supporters perceive that she is subjected to. It’s a movement – if we
could call it that – animated by its sense of victimhood. The quantity
and ferocity of criticism directed at Palin, right or wrong, is the
ultimate arbiter of her worth as a political figure; what she has done,
what she promised to do, what she could do, don’t seem to matter.
And so it is with Matthew Continetti’s “The Palin Persuasion”, an essay of more than 4,700 words trying to make the case for Sarah Palin in American politics. It’s extraordinary that in this long essay we don’t have any arguments for Sarah Palin emanating from things that Sarah Palin has done. After more than a year in the national political stage, the dynamism of the Palin phenomenon is entirely dependent on the convulsions it generates in the two extremes of the political spectrum.
Yes, Slavoj Zizek was a bit hard to swallow yesterday.
A bill to ban infant circumcision will have a hearing in Massachusetts soon. The bill is S-1777, and people can submit written testimony to Michael.Avitzur@state.ma.us
Although the genital mutilation of infants is, to my mind, barbaric, I wouldn't go so far as to ban it under law. It is too integral to the religious identity of Muslims and Jews for that. But I would like to see it banned in public hospitals outside of religious rituals. Men have a right to grow to adulthood without having their bodies permanently altered without their consent. If they wish to do it to themselves as adults, fine.
Today on the Dish we saw Iraq take a big step towards democracy and US withdrawal. We also discovered more gruesome details on the Hood massacre and saw how it's playing in the Arab press. Jay Newton-Small and some readers offered some parting perspective on Cao's role in the healthcare vote, and a few more readers followed up on the Bishops' embrace of the bill. Get your Palin fix here, here, here, and here.
Andrew, Tom Friedman, and Joe Klein called for a firm reevaluation of US aid to Israel. The Dish commemorated the Berlin Wall anniversary with some stunning views from Germany here and here. We also featured a photo essay of a young Army recruit in training, triggering this emotional email.
Big news on the Dish home front: our long-awaited View From Your Window book is finally for sale. But before you buy, check out the details of our crowd-sourcing scheme, which will surely get the price low enough to allow this guy to enjoy the book as much as we do.
— C.B.
A reader writes:
Thank you so much for sharing that riveting photo essay of the baby-faced, tattooed soldier. It made me want to weep. I cannot help feeling guilty, and angry and sad, but proud and admiring at the same time. I am an utterly privileged person, and the idea of enlisting to make something better out of my life simply never occurred to me. . . and my kids won't have to do so either. But where I teach, at a college where many students need help to pay for their education, a significant subset of these young people enlist in the military. They are so admirable, many of them my best, most motivated students. But I ache for them, too, and worry like a mother about them going off to war. Face it: the children of privilege do not have to make this choice.
A reader writes:
It's only a pinprick in the vast world, but my personal recession and unemployed status hit home today when I realized I can't buy your window book, which I'd been anticipating.
Put me down for one, later.
Let's see how low we can get the price down to first, eh?
A reader writes:
Honestly, much as I loathe the Christianist right, it's not really accurate to cite the Westboro Baptist Church as even their fringe. The WBC is more like the LaRouche cultists—so far off in a world of their own that categorizing them as right or left doesn't make sense.
In fact, their move off the map is something of a fascinating story—in the early aughts, they could have hitched their star to the rising Christianist movement. But instead they started protesting military funerals, a move seemingly calculated to alienate them from the white southern populists who seem like their natural allies.
And I've always thought it *was* specifically calculated to that end. One of the most interesting things about the BBC doc on the WBC is seeing how their organization thrives on alienation and humiliation—whenever someone attacks on of them at a protest, via shouts or thrown Slurpees, everyone in the group comes together in a way people only can when they feel mutually threatened. In that sense, they are like Glenn Beck—people who deliberately provoke outrage, because the outrage of their enemies strengthens group solidarity.
The Dish 