Author: Andrew Sullivan

Wieseltier, in a brilliant little piece:

Rules of military engagement that allow soldiers to fire on political activists (I leave aside the question of their humanitarianism for a moment) may signify something still deeper and even more troubling. It is hard not to conclude from this Israeli action, and also from other Israeli actions in recent years, that the Israeli leadership simply does not care any longer about what anybody thinks. It does not seem to care about what even the United States—its only real friend, even in the choppy era of Obama—thinks. This is not defiance, it is despair. The Israeli leadership seems to have given up any expectation of fairness and sympathy from the world. It is behaving as if it believes, in the manner of the most perilous Jewish pessimism, that the whole world hates the Jews, and that is all there is to it. This is the very opposite of the measured and empirical attitude, the search for strategic opportunity, the enlistment of imagination in the service of ideals and interests, that is required for statecraft.

In the past, the US Catholic bishops have remained neutral on the question of whether there should be discrimination protections for gays and lesbians in the workplace. I always found this bizarre. I can see how super-libertarians might oppose employment non-discrimination laws for gays (along with everyone else), but I naively imagined that the church would actually support a bar on firing people solely because of an innate sexual orientation (and, yes, the church itself understands homosexuality to be, for many, "innate"). The church has no problem with anti-discrimination laws when it comes to, say, race or immigration status. It has no objection in principle; au contraire. It declares itself a champion of the weak and marginalized and vulnerable.

But Benedict's church is different – when it comes to gays. The latest statement from the Bishops reads as if it were drafted by Robbie George, and reflects a total capitulation to theo-conservatism in the American hierarchy. Legally protecting gays from employment discrimination is now, apparently, illegitimate for Catholics. Why? Because non-procreative sexual acts violate church doctrine, and protecting employees who might engage in such acts in private therefore violates church doctrine. How does anyone know that the gay person in the office or factory is engaged in non-procreative acts? You don't. You assume it. But the assumption is enough. And so firing gay people cannot be made illegal – or it would be a restriction on "religious liberty."

Notice that there is no attempt here to argue that straight people who violate church doctrine – anyone who masturbates or uses contraception, is divorced or re-married – should not be protected from discrimination. It is always just the gays who are the target, because their identity inherently proves their iniquity, while most straight people can hide theirs. Notice also that the focus here is entirely on the victims of discrimination, not the perpetrators.

So the church that emerged from a man who preached the story of the good Samaritan, is now in the business of identifying Samaritans and ensuring they remain the targets of discrimination in the workplace. It does not matter whether they are good at their job; their orientation, even if no one even knows it results in sodomy, is sufficient to allow them to be fired and no law be broken.

The Bishops also argue against non-discrimination laws for gays because the laws imply that gay people are equal citizens and if they are equal citizens, the right to civil marriage will not be far behind.

And so we have a prudential political argument in defense of an obvious evil – persecuting people for something that they cannot change. The bishops say they'd like to protect gay people, but only if they can be seen as in no way endorsing sexual acts. But you can't do that. You can't enact a law protecting some gays from discrimination while omitting others, the distinction being whether they are engaged in non-procreative acts. It would be unenforceable, as the Bishops seem to imply.

And so they have a choice: favoring a civil society to protect individuals from unjust discrimination or not. When it comes to gays – and only gays – the Bishops have taken a stand. It is a de facto endorsement of obvious injustice. It is a profound betrayal of the core message of Jesus: that the already despised should be embraced not stigmatized, that the victims of discrimination be protected not marginalized.

More meditations here.

Good move. And he retains total editorial control.

The latest from the flotilla fiasco:

Reports in the Turkish press identified the American as Furkan Dogan, 19, who was born in the United States before returning to Turkey with his family as a young child. The Cihan news agency reported that Mr. Dogan had one bullet in the chest and four bullets fired into his head from close range. 

My italics. The brutality is described by a journalist eye-witness:

Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, who reported from the ship during the raid, confirmed that live ammunition had been used by Israeli commandos as they stormed the ship. He said that he witnessed some of the killings, and confirmed that at least "one person was shot through the top of the head from [the helicopter] above" …  "The first shots [coming from Israeli boats at sea] were tear gas, sound grenades and rubber coated steel bullets," said Eshayyal. "Live shots came five minutes after that. There was definitely live fire from the air and from the sea as well." He confirmed that some passengers took apart some of the ship's railings to defend themselves as they saw the Israeli soldiers approaching. "After the shooting and the first deaths, people put up white flags and signs in English and Hebrew," he said. "An Israeli [on the ship] asked the soldiers to take away the injured, but they did not and the injured died on the ship."

The full video taken by Israel will help clarify or rebut this. When do we get to see it?

Steinglass does a Western conservatism post mortem:

The individualist Western conservatism Mr Goldwater articulated is one of the great strands in American political thinking. It is quite distinct from Southern conservatism, and has less room for the politics of racial resentment. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when George Bush and John McCain supported immigration reform and Republicans were winning substantial Hispanic votes, it appeared that this brand of conservatism might achieve cross-racial appeal. But in the past five years, that promising trend has been crushed. And now, in many areas of the West where racial diversity is re-emerging, one sees Western conservatism becoming very focused on racial politics indeed.

It's always worth recalling that the Republican party's historic conservatism, from Lincoln to Eisenhower, was not based in the South. Nixon changed that. For a while, the fusionism worked, primarily under the sunny Californian, Ronald Reagan. But the South is so strong an identity, so powerful a cultural force, that it inevitably becomes the cuckoo in any nest. And the South is hard to comprehend without the racial politics which has defined it and thus contemporary Republicanism. This has proven fatal to a coherent governing conservatism, in my view. And it is deadly for conservatism's future as something other than cultural reaction and denial of the shifting nature of 21st century geo-politics.

A reader writes:

I notice you chose to spotlight a small protest in Tel Aviv (you can tell how small the group is – they're on a beach boardwalk) celebrating the flotilla raid outside the Turkish embassy. The hundred or so people assembled are clearly waving "Kach" signs, representing an extreme-right group that is banned in Israel. Imputing those views to the Israeli public is unfair and misleading. This is tantamount to showing the Westboro Baptist Church protesting outside a war hero's funeral and claiming "the American public is full of soldier-hating homophobes."  Of course, there have been plenty of protests against the Israeli government's action. The society's views on this are far more complex than a small right-wing protest.

The only poll I can find shows that 63 percent of Israelis preferred a different way of intercepting the flotilla, although the blockade of Gaza retains strong support.

(Israeli left-wing protesters demonstrate against Israel's deadly raid on an aid flotilla bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip on May 31, 2010 in Tel Aviv, Israel. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

The day after the Lost finale, Megan noted that only 13.5 million people watched the episode, while 106 million watched MASH’s denouement. This prompted Rod Dreher to go all Alasdair Macintyre on us again. He was back at it yesterday:

The culture has fragmented, but it’s also easier to reach back in time and claim what was discarded… For those who have the creativity and the will, it is increasingly possible to live out in miniature a “Benedict Option” of one’s own, and reclaim, or attempt to reclaim, what was lost. We are condemned to be free to choose. But for those who wish to reacquaint themselves with the tradition that previous generations rejected, we are free to choose it in ways that we were not before. And that’s good.

But he gets the paradox:

The obvious objection to all this is: the moment you choose a tradition, it is no longer a tradition; what makes a tradition binding is the awareness that one doesn’t choose it, one submits to the prior claim it has on one’s loyalty. The moment you become aware that you have chosen tradition, its power over you, and therefore its power to sustain itself in time, weakens.

Welcome to the modern world, Rod. The kind of unthinking cohesion of the past, sustained by elite control of the media and by ancient accommodation to a world before contraception, advances in longevity, and the technological revolution, is indeed gone. We are all subcultures now. This is hard, bewildering for many, too much for some. The reason why Rod is worth reading is that he is not in denial about this – just a mild form of despair. But that the only intelligent response for a traditionalist is retreat into a faux traditionalism tells you something about the problem. It is insoluble. It is our reality. And conservatives adjust to reality; they do not assault it.

Who can say? I'd like to see a few executives in jail myself. Michael Coren examines the bill:

BP's legal strategy has yet to emerge. For now, it has set up a website to pay out immediate claims. One prediction is that BP will settle many of the outstanding costs as soon as possible, and allow bad press to recede for as long as 2 to 3 years, before attempting to fight any cases and paying out claims of pending lawsuits.  

For McRae, at the Cedar Point Fishing Pier in Coden, Alabama, his business may not survive to see the fight. Business is down 50 percent compared to last May. He's already submitted claims to BP for the loss in customers, but says he hasn't heard back and is not optimistic after attending a meeting with company officials in the neighboring town of Gulf Shores. An accountant at the meeting representing a local condominium development raised his hand to say that he submitted 1,700 pages documenting his losses, and BP replied requesting more information. "Does that tell you they are going to do the right thing?" asks McCrae. "They are not going to do the right thing."

(Image: Oil floats ashore at the Grand Isle East State Park May 27, 2010 on Grand Isle, Louisiana. By Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The editorial, which contained a veiled threat of violence, is withdrawn. Money quote:

In an effort to find a catchy ending, I was a bit too creative with the last paragraph. If I had it to do over again, I would have left off the last sentence of the editorial. It doesn’t add to my point, which was that there is nothing particularly newsworthy about someone moving in next door nor about a new fence going up to protect the privacy of neighbors. I certainly did not mean to suggest that McGinnis would or should be the victim of violence. For that matter, I didn’t mean to suggest the Palins would do such a thing. All of which points to the power of words. I misused them on Saturday. I’ll try to have more respect for that power next time around.