Category: The Dish

This parody of the kind of ads the GOP has been running this campaign is too good to miss. Enjoy:

Helsinki, Finland, dusk.

"I think one of the biggest dangers here is solitude. Someone has to be there to interrogate and investigate every aspect of our lives," – Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler, on James Dobson’s radio show, on lessons from the Haggard affair.

I figure you’ve heard enough from me on the issues in this campaign; and there is some propriety in allowing these civilly sacred hours of voting to pass in silence. (Pssst: VOTE DEMOCRAT!). But my policy has always been to report news – real news – as soon as I get it. So if I get any access to exit polls early, I will pass the data along to you. The caveat, of course, is that these are exit polls. They may not be accurate. They weren’t in 2004. But they are data, and as long as you can judge them with the right mix of interest and contempt (think of watching the O’Reilly factor as an analogy), then take them for what they’re worth. Here’s a handy guide to the exit polls. Stay tuned.

From Czeslaw Milosz‘s "On Angels":

"I have heard that voice many a time when asleep
and, what is strange, I understood more or less
an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:

day draw near
another one
do what you can."

An abridgment of A.R. Ammons‘ "Corson’s Inlet," found in his collected poems:

I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning
to the sea,
then turned right along
    the surf

                    rounded a naked headland
                    and returned
    along the inlet shore:

… there is serenity:

        no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,
or thought:
no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:
terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities
of escape open: no route shut, except in
   the sudden loss of all routes:

       I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will
not run to that easy victory:
       still around the looser, wider forces work:
       I will try
     to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening
scope, but enjoying the freedom that
Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,
that I have perceived nothing completely,
       that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.

Here’s part of his interview with David Remnick:

"I think this is the historical moment we’re in ‚Äî we have come to define religion in absolutist, fundamentalist terms. So to be a believer is to be a fundamentalist in some fashion. And I guess what I was trying to describe is a faith that admits doubt, and uncertainty, and mystery. Because, ultimately, I think that’s how most people understand their faith. In fact, it’s not faith if you’re absolutely certain. There’s a leap that we all take, and, when you admit that doubt publicly, it’s a form of testimony.

Then what I think it does is it allows both the secular and the religious to find some sort of common space where we say to each other, Well, I may not believe exactly what you do, what you believe, but I share an experience in wondering what does my life mean, or I understand the desire for a connection to something larger than myself. And that, I think, is in the best of the United States religious tradition."

It’s very close to my own account of the kind of faith I sketch in my book, It’s close to David Kuo’s assessment of his faith. Money quote from "The Conservative Soul:"

As humans, we can merely sense the existence of a higher truth, a greater coherence than ourselves, but we cannot see it face to face. That is either funny or sad, and humans stagger from one option to the other. Neither beasts nor angels, we live in twilight, and we are unsure whether it is a prelude to morning or a prelude to night.

The 16th century writer Michel de Montaigne lived in a world of religious war, just as we do. And he understood, as we must, that complete religious certainty is, in fact, the real blasphemy… 

In [non-fundamentalist] faith, doubt is not a threat. If we have never doubted, how can we say we have really believed? True belief is not about blind submission. It is about open-eyed acceptance, and acceptance requires persistent distance from the truth, and that distance is doubt. Doubt, in other words, can feed faith, rather than destroy it. And it forces us, even while believing, to recognize our fundamental duty with respect to God’s truth: humility. We do not know. Which is why we believe.

Could Obama lead conservatives of doubt out of the wilderness? Into the Democratic party? I was deeply impressed by his speech on religion and politics back in June – and that address is worth re-reading alongside the Remnick interview.

Or should we we only lead ourselves? I’m open to any possibility that can restore the right order to faith and politics in America. I think a quiet rebellion among moderate and tolerant Christians is taking place. Recapturing humility for Christianity, reunderstanding the centrality of doubt to faith, accepting mystery as faith’s core, making faith alive and integrated into one’s full soul and being: this is our truly difficult path. I make a longer and deeper defense of this kind of Christianity – non-fundamentalist Christianity – in my book.

I’m a believer. In the same God as the fundamentalists. In the same Jesus. But in a slightly different way. I’m glad Obama is open to that approach, because it is, in my view, as essential for Christians to reclaim their faith from extremism, as it is for moderate Muslims to reclaim theirs’. A great deal is at stake in that bettle within religions right now. And Obama seems to understand that. Which is vital in a potential president in this decade.

This reader gets it right:

I took the time to read Klinghoffer’s essay on NRO and I hit this line like a speed bump:

"If everyone were in control of his appetites, there would be no need for the government to be involved in endorsing some sexual relationships while withholding endorsement from others."

I am basically a Red Tory, so perhaps I need it spelled out in slow sentences and small words. Can you please explain to me what in pragmatic, limited-government, conservatism requires government to ‘endorse’ the behavior of consenting adults? I think what animates the anger towards you from The Corner and other, er, corners is that you have hit a point of vulnerability i.e. their claim to be the voice of conservatism.

If you were to integrate the sectarian, infinite-government authoritarianism that seems to be the stance of the National Review these days into a political movement, it would be labeled Christian Socialism or some such. Certainly not Conservatism.

They want to use government to enforce divinely-mandated laws. If the constitution forbids this, they are all too happy to amend the constitution. In a nut-shell, that’s a key part of my argument in the book. Their personal attacks are correlated with their philosophical incoherence.

My readers know everything:

Did you know that Olivia Newton-John‘s grandfather was Max Born, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist who was one of the founder’s of quantum physics in the 1920s?  He left Germany when the Nazis came to power, became a British subject and taught at the University of Edinburgh for 20 years.  He carried on a warm correspondence with Einstein for many years.  Of this correspondence, Bertrand Russell said, "In an age of mediocrity and moral pygmies, their lives shine with an intense beauty. Something of this is reflected in their correspondence and the world is richer for its publication."

I guess Olivia, unlike her grandpa, was of her age.