Author: Andrew Sullivan

The Vatican acts glacially, but it seems clear to me the direction that it may well now go. This story in the Catholic News Service is a sign of the coming purge of gay people from the priesthood and the Church itself. First, a subtle change was introduced into the Catechism. As CNS notes,

[t]he wording in the catechism that describes the homosexual inclination as “objectively disordered” was added when the definitive Latin text of the catechism was released in 1997. Earlier editions of the catechism said homosexual acts were intrinsically disordered and said homosexual tendencies represented a trial for most people.

This is the difference between saying that some people can do immoral things and saying that some people, because of whom they love, are morally sick in themselves. It’s a subtle move but a critical one as part of the process of undoing the progressive stand of the Church in the 1970s and 1980s in defending the dignity of homosexual persons. A while ago, surveying the tensions in Catholic teaching between an abhorrence of any gay sexuality and a defense of gay people as human beings, I posited two directions the Church could take. It could reverse itself away from a respect for homosexual persons, call them irredeemably sick, and purge them from the priesthood and the pews, or it could go further and integrate gay Catholics and their sexuality into Church teaching. The latter was always a very long shot; but the recent scandals in the Church has given some the opportunity to take the more obvious route. If and when this new policy is formalized, many of us Catholics will therefore face an excruciating choice: do we stay or do we leave? Can we actually attend a Church that has gone from tentative outreach to gay people to a formal theological position that describes them as sick? Can we in good conscience attend a church that blithely ignored the abuse of children, but cannot tolerate even a chaste and holy priest who also happens to be gay, a Church that keeps Cardinal Law in office but would have prevented someone like Father Mychal Judge from being the priest he was? Some will dismiss this as a minor issue. I don’t think so. When a church scapegoats a group of people for its own moral lapses, when it describes, as totalitarian regimes do, a person’s love as a sickness, when it purges priests regardless of their abilities, then it seems to me the entire moral credibility of the institution is at stake.

CHICKENING IN: I think in his heart of hearts that Tom Friedman has a grudging respect for the Bush administration. Apart from Bill Safire, he’s the only Times columnist who doesn’t actively hate the president. But perhaps because of his audience or bosses or habit, Friedman’s always veering just this side of agreeing with the White House. This morning’s argument is a classic. Friedman gets the game of chicken that Bush is playing with Saddam. It rests on a very basic principle: only if Saddam actually believes that an invasion is imminent will he agree to disarm; and only if an invasion is imminent will he believe the threat. This bluff requires that Saddam truly believes Bush will invade Iraq, if he absolutely, positively can, and that this isn’t some elaborate game in order for the U.S. to avoid war. That’s where Friedman doesn’t get it. It’s precisely Bush’s cowboy image – the perception that he may just invade anyway – that alone can bring about a peaceful solution. And it’s because part of that image is actually genuine that the gambit can work. (That’s why Clinton never stood a chance of disarming Iraq or deposing Saddam. Everyone knew Clinton wasn’t a cowboy or could be talked out of any military course of action if needs be.) Bush is different, and the more his opponents portray him as a reckless, terroristic Caesar-wanna-be, the more they will be strengthening his hand. Like Reagan versus the Soviets, it often helps to have the enemy afraid of the president. The sterling consistency of Bush, and the tough talk of his aides, is therefore paradoxically our best insurance against war. So far, with a new sheriff behaving firmly but also aggressively, we’ve had more movement from Saddam than in years. Now let’s ratchet the pressure up some more, shall we? How about it, Mr Daschle?

PAGING ORWELL I: Delegates at an anti-racism conference in Barbados have just decided to expel all non-blacks from certain discussions. (I mentioned they were considering it last week.) It is a fact that many organizations now devoted to “anti-racism” are themselves racist. But it’s rare you get such a clear-cut case. Enjoy.

PAGING ORWELL II: As I write, the Hitch book on Orwell is ranked # 3 on Amazon. I’m really glad that so many of you are going to get a read of this book. And I hope you’ll be following the discussion and taking part later this month. If you still haven’t ordered the book, click here. Thanks again.

SELF-ESTEEM: The case against, posted opposite.

DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE:“It’s an election year. Turn the bums out. Stir the pot. Make political history. Cause a revolution. Don’t do it because the Republicans represent a great alternative – because they don’t. Do it because the Democrats – far too many of them – are evil, pure and simple. They have no redeeming social value. They are outright traitors themselves or apologists for treasonous behavior. They are enemies of the American people and the American way of life.” – Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily. (For a brief explanation of our various awards, click here.)

DASCHLE’S OPPORTUNISM: I’m grateful to a reader for directing me to Tim Russert’s dissection of Tom Daschle last weekend. What Russert did was confront Daschle with his rationale for supporting the threat of military force against Saddam in 1998:

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, I think that we often cite the ’98 resolution as our precedent for this action. That’s exactly what we did in the ’98 resolution. We tied it down to the use of force. We weren’t as broad as this resolution now implies, and so I think that it’s appropriate to go back to that precedent and to work with the administration to ensure that that’s their understanding, as well as ours.

MR. RUSSERT: You raised the ’98 resolution. There was a resolution back in January of ’98, which you know well and I’ll put it on the screen. These were the words: “Resolved by the Senate…That Congress…urges the President to take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs…” And you’ll see that’s one Tom Daschle from January 28. But you also went on, Senator-and this is quite striking. These are words you uttered in February of 1998
. And let me show you and our viewers. You were talking about the Clinton administration: “The administration has said, ‘Look, we have exhausted virtually our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so?’ That’s what they’re saying. This is the key question. And the answer is we don’t have another option. We have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily.” The Bush White House will suggest that you were trying to give President Clinton more support when he was taking on Saddam Hussein in 1998 than you’re willing to give a Republican president in the year 2002.

Nice work, Tim. Daschle had no credible response to this. He still doesn’t have one. So he’ll give in, once it seems in his direct political interest to do so. Trust these guys with national security? You’ve got to be kidding.

The power of you guys – Hitch’s book just went from # 1,074 to # 8. In less than 15 hours.
UPDATE: The book has now reached # 3 on Amazon.

Ipsos-Reid finds the Congressional race a dead heat.

Dick Morris also weighs in this morning on the Times poll. In his words: “The phrasing of the questions is so slanted and biased that it amounts to journalistic “push polling” – the use of polling to generate pre-determined answers to vindicate a specific point of view. It was just such polling that led the Democratic Party astray over the summer and played an important role in catalyzing their criticism of Bush over Iraq.”

OVERNIGHT: The Hitchens book on Orwell, which is our current Book Club pick, just leaped from 1,074 on Amazon to 76 overnight. Don’t forget to get the book, “Why Orwell Matters“, and join the conversation later this month.
UPDATE: The book has now reached # 9 on Amazon.

Check out David Tell’s devastating review of the New York Times’ Sunday poll, purporting to argue that most Americans believe the economy should be a more urgent priority than Iraq. Tell points out that there is simply no evidence for this in the Times’ own poll. Polls are always the most direct measurement of Howell Raines’ disinformation campaign against the Bush administration, because he can rig the questions, spin the analysis and bury the data, in the hopes that no one will bother checking. The result, this time, in Tell’s words, is “an outright fraud, a falsehood, a work of fiction.” He’s right. Check it out.

RAINES WATCH II: Why didn’t the networks carry president Bush’s critical speech last night? Because the White House didn’t ask them politely enough! That’s this morning’s spin from the Times. I guess Fox was just sucking up. Herewith an almost classic insight into how, whatever happens, in the mind of the New York Times, it’s always Bush’s fault.

It seems to me that the critical part of President Bush’s elegantly constructed speech last night was his rebuttal of the only credible and responsible line of criticism from the Democrats:

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary, confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror … Terror cells and outlaw regimes building weapons of mass destruction are different faces of the same evil. Our security requires that we confront both. And the United States military is capable of confronting both.

As brief as this discussion is, it’s persuasive. When anti-war Democrats argue that we cannot “focus” on both Al Qaeda and Iraq, they make no sense at all. Philosophically, pre-empting terrorists from getting weapons of mass destruction must logically include preventing the allies of terrorists from harboring such weapons. And practically, I’ve yet to read a single, credible military account of why we cannot both disarm and remove Saddam and keep up the pressure on Al Qaeda at home and abroad. The whole “focus” issue is as fake as the whole “delay” issue, as Charles Krauthammer deftly pointed out yesterday. If Saddam has weapons, if he won’t give them up, and if such weapons are a threat to the region and to the U.S., what possible reason is there for delaying? These “arguments” aren’t really arguments, of course; they’re desperate rhetorical roadblocks thrown up by some Democrats terrified to face their responsibilities in a time of war. The last phony anti-war argument was that President Bush had yet to “make the case” for war against Iraq, as if grown-ups didn’t have the capacity to make their own minds up on the issue without constant guidance from the commander-in-chief. But that surely must now be in tatters as a point, since the president has made speech after speech in the last year clearly laying out the rationale for the war on terror, a rationale that has always included defanging Saddam. And now he’s gone and laid it out in full, at length and in detail in prime time. And what did the networks do, the same networks that routinely feature talking heads bravely pronouncing that the president hasn’t made his case? They ignored him. Of course they did. What losers and sophists.

SULLIVAN, HITCHENS AND ORWELL: Well, in the end we couldn’t resist. I’ve just finished reading Christopher Hitchens’ lively, witty and oddly moving defense of the life and work of George Orwell: “Why Orwell Matters.” If you’ve read all of Orwell (and I’m getting close) or have barely read him at all, the book is both a wonderful introduction to the man’s work and a stimulating overview of all the issues he raises. Orwell’s ability to confound both right and left, his tenacious honesty, his pellucid prose, his power of moral reasoning, his ability to distinguish between an argument and a feeling – all these come through loud and clear in this little book. Buy it and read it and then join Hitch and me for a weeklong conversation at the end of the month about what Orwell means, and why his example still shines, perhaps more brightly than ever, in an era of war and ideological conflict. Buying the book through this site also helps support us financially, so enrich your mind and support this blog by getting the book today. Click here to purchase.

AIDS SCAM, CTD: We’ve already seen how the attack on the pharmaceutical companies’ intellectual property rights has led to a stark deceleration in HIV research. Now comes news of yet another unintended consequence of well-meant anti-AIDS measures. When you give large numbers of anti-HIV meds to Africa, where most cannot be dispensed effectively in the first place, it’s not surprising that others might find a better use for the pills. Why not re-export them to Europe for a tidy profit? That’s what’s happening now, as this story indicates. So we’ve hurt AIDS research, barely helped any significant numbers of Africans, and now given criminals a whole new career in drug trafficking. Good work, no?

McDERMOTT WATCH: Here he is, marching in front of a poster that has the word “terrorist” plastered over President Bush’s face. Nice to know that his kowtowing to Baghdad’s tyranny is also reflected in a complete moral equivalence about the difference between Saddam and Bush. This is one face of the anti-war left. And it’s depraved.

A BLUE-PRINT: One of the clearest plans for post-Saddam Iraq I’ve yet read.

MORE ISLAMIST DEATH-THREATS: Yet another person daring to criticize the backwardness of Islamism with regard to women, gays and individual freedom in general has received a death-threat. This time it’s a Somali immigrant woman in Holland, and she has just had to go into hiding to protect herself. “This is nothing new – just think of Salman Rushdie,” Secil Arda, the head of a Turkish women’s group, told Radio Netherlands. “Some people have the courage to say something, to give their opinion. I consider our fight a milestone in the process of emancipation. Without this quest we would never have change.” After Fortuyn’s murder and Delanoe’s stabbing, this takes courage. Why aren’t these brave liberals more firmly defended by the Western left? I guess we know the answer to that, don’t we?

ANTI-CATHOLICISM WATCH:“Sexual abuse is disgusting, but it’s not as harmful as the grievous mental harm of bringing children up Catholic in the first place.” – Richard Dawkins, as transcribed in the Dubliner.

ROTH AND NARCISSISM: A reader nails it:

“I finally stayed several months in New York, where I kept a studio. For me New York had become interesting again because it was a town in crisis, particularly in the weeks that followed when everyone was expecting another attack. It was a strange time and the first time for years that New York interested me.” – Philip Roth. Who is this guy to accuse ANYONE of narcissism? I just plowed through “The Human Stain”, which was a piece of crap. This windbag can’t stomach people singing “God Bless America” in honor of firemen and cops who gave their lives in the 9/11 attack (which, mercifully, didn’t interrupt Roth’s swim time), but he’ll devote an entire novel to justifying Clinton’s tryst with Monica Lewinsky?

Ah, yes. Roth reminds me of all those New Yorkers who spent the summer of 2001 lamenting that the city had
lost its “edge” under Giuliani. Well, I’m just sorry 3,000 people had to die for Roth to find the city “interesting” again.

AH, THOSE STEREOTYPES: At the Eagle in New York City on Saturday night, I bumped into a man I’d previously met in Provincetown and came to ask him what he’s doing these days. He laughed. “Well, actually, I’m producing a new series for PBS on the history of the Broadway musical.?Can anyone beat that?

MEA MAXIMA CULPA: For the record, there have been three, not two, presidents elected without a plurality of the popular vote in American history: John Quincy Adams, with a mere 31 percent of the popular vote in 1824, Hayes with 48 percent in 1876 and Harrison’s 1888 squeaker with 47.8 percent. Thanks for your relentless and voluminous capacity for fact-checking my ass.

Mea culpa on the sentence in my latest column for the Sunday Times that reads as follows: “[Bush is] the first president who never had a majority of the popular vote.” A lot of presidents have not had a majority. What I meant was that he didn’t win a “plurality,” something that has happened twice before in America. I’m sure most of you know what I meant, but for the rest, my apologies.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I coined that phrase. Good to see the meme is beginning to propagate:

South Park Republicans are true Republicans, though they do not look or act like Pat Robertson. They believe in liberty, not conformity. They can enjoy watching The Sopranos even if they are New Jersey Italians. They can appreciate the tight abs of Britney Spears or Brad Pitt without worrying about the nation’s decaying moral fiber. They strongly believe in liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, and free markets. However, they do not live by the edicts of political correctness.

This kid is onto something.

RIGHT-WING ENVY WATCH: Methinks Tom Tomorrow is jealous.

They won’t hear the New Jersey case and they won’t say why. Great call. Now the Republicans need to get on with the real task of persuading the voters to back Forrester. Not too hard a task.

KRUGMAN’S SECOND SCREW-UP: Having published an email as proof that Army secretary Thomas White was a “corporate evildoer,” without any firm evidence that the email was genuine, Paul Krugman has now gone one step further. He has violated the confidentiality of his source:

[A]lthough Leopold provided the e-mail on condition that his source, the former Enron executive, not be named, the Times published the name Friday after Krugman passed a copy to a colleague with the name only partially scratched out. “I am sick to my stomach … I have screwed up very seriously,” Krugman told Leopold by e-mail. Says Leopold: “The Times broke its promise to me… I felt like the Times news division sold me out.”

How many basic rules of journalism can you break in one story?

The Times does its best to spin their poll this morning. But the critical number is the 67 percent support for war against Iraq, despite the intense and relentless campaign by the elites at the Times and elsewhere to turn that number around. They have failed. Now they will try to change the subject.

EDWARDS VS. GORE: A smarter tack from the smarter candidate. Edwards’ criticism of Bush’s foreign policy strikes me as fatuous stuff. But by supporting the Iraq war so intently, Edwards has carved out a position of a far more credibility than the increasingly bitter Gore. And so his speech today should be seen less as a serious attack on Bush than as a statement that he is the true inheritor of Gore’s previous centrism in the Democratic Party. He’s wily, this guy. And flagging the speech to the Washington Post beforehand is worthy of Blair.