Author: Andrew Sullivan

Here’s a link to Benedict’s first encyclical. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Just had a root canal. Stay tuned, tho.

Norm Geras is an admirably honest fellow: a leftist who supports democratization in the Middle East, and an atheist who refuses to dismiss all religion as somehow dangerous or untrue. The truth, as he rightly points out, is much more complex. There are many types of religion. Sadly, fundamentalism of all varieties – Christian, Muslim, Jewish – has somehwat eclipsed the other religious pathways. Worse, in the rants of the Christianist or Islamist right, some fundamentalists have begun to assert that they are the only valid forms of faith. Norm provides some perspective. Money quote:

"In Warsaw in 1943, a Polish Catholic risks her life to save an endangered Jew. She does so because she has been taught from childhood that all people are the children of God and it is a sin to take innocent life. How, in the face of that – which has happened plenty, and in many other historical variants as well – can one say there has been no good in religion, or that this good is merely apparent because of what it is mixed together with? I could give more than this, but it is enough. Just two things: that religious believers have often been motivated by their beliefs to act in beneficent, caring, selfless, heroic ways; and that there are universalist variants of religious belief which, in historical context, have marked a significant progress for humankind – that is quite enough empirically, against the notion that the bad in religion undoes the good."

I’m not sure that’s quite enough. Religion can be a force for both good and evil. Fundamentalism, however, skews the balance toward the bad. Which is why it is up to the rest of us people of faith, those of us who are not fundamentalists, to criticize and call to account the extremists now giving faith a bad name.

The latest target of nannying liberals: cereals making your kids fat. Please. Apparently, there’s an organization called the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. After cigarettes, porn, steroids, weed, and prescription drugs, they’re after my Lucky Charms. All for the sake of the children. Take it away, Jacob Sullum!

We need to be patient – but not too patient – with the political maneuvring now going on in Iraq. As usual, the best analysis comes from the blogosphere. Check Omar out on the latest. His take: women are among the biggest losers so far in the parliamentary negotiations.

Don’t we need as many trained medical professionals in the military right now without firing them because they’re gay? Guess not.

It’s one the critical races this year. John Cole thinks Santorum just stuck another foot in it. John J. Miller thinks Casey’s organization looks formidable. So sue me for feeling great.
 

A reader writes:

"As an American, Jew and Zionist, one might expect me to feel a stronger connection with the Christian fundamentalists who are political allies on the Israel issue. But as a 25 year-old male with a healthy libido and healthy understanding of sexuality, I’d swim with the Muslim Aussie girls any day before the Christian girls wearing those (dis)respecting outfits. I mean, that’s just a long t-shirt waiting to get all wet, hot, and bothered. Can’t you see that Andrew? Wait, no, I guess you might not be able to. ;-)"

:-(

Canceled because of right-wing p.c.? Or just because it was dreadful?

More reports from the field of routine brutality toward military inmates. From the Salt Lake Tribune:

"It was a place where innocent men, rounded up in broad sweeps alongside terrorists and killers, sat in filth and extreme temperatures, tied at the wrists for days and weeks at a time.
The rats outnumbered the inmates. The inmates outnumbered the guards. The nights were punctuated with artillery fire and lit by bright flares that hung under tiny parachutes over the western Iraqi city of Al Qa’im. Central Intelligence Agency officials were beating inmates with hoses and sledge hammer handles, soldiers have testified."

It was here that "Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer wrapped an Iraqi general in a sleeping bag, bound him, sat on his chest and covered his mouth," until he was dead. For that murder, Welshofer got "two months of restricted duty, forfeiture of $6,000 pay and a letter of reprimand." The soldiers who served with him testify that "the conditions at Blacksmith and tactics of others there made Welshofer’s interrogation methods seem humane by comparison." And so it goes on. We have no power to stop it. Welshofer’s defense was that he was following orders. Whose? Witnesses were "apparently restricted from testifying as to the presence and actions of CIA agents." And so it goes on.