Category: The Dish

Jonathan Rauch elaborates.

"[F]or every Westerner who calls for the destruction of Islam in order to defend the Western status-quo, there is another Westerner who agitates for change in Islam because has a Muslim friend who has been hurt by what passes for Islam, or has a glimpse (in Hafiz, perhaps in Ibn Rushd), of what Islam could be; and as such, is upset by what Islam today is not. I believe that there are many in the West capable of recognizing beauty — and they have recognized the beauty that Islam was in the hands of Rumi, and also have recognized the potential of that beauty in Islam today, in Muslims today. This is another way of saying that I believe there are many in the West who are driven by the humanity of the Muslim, who faces daily in Iraq, in Punjab, in subversive mosques in Europe, the inhumanity of a utilitarian death theology," РAli Eteraz, on his reformist-Muslim blog.

Here’s an interesting quote in a damning National Journal piece about what the president knew in the run-up to the Iraq war about the aluminum tube issue:

"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn’t in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn’t do that with the tubes."

A "a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort"? Your suspicions in an email, please. My question: when and for what will Colin Powell eventually tell what he knows?

A reader writes:

"In your blog recently you have been pointing out how far removed the Christianists are from the religious attitudes of the Founding Fathers. This is all very true, but I think there is another dimension to this shift that you are missing.
The Founding Fathers were not very representative of Americans in the late eighteenth century. During that time period, the country was rocked by a number of fundamentalist religious revivals, in both the North and the South. So in their detached Deism, Jefferson, Adams, and the like were really unrepresentative in their own time.
I think the Founders recognized this, and this is why the Constitution tried to check the power of democracy as much as possible, by limiting the right to vote, by having the assemblies elect Senators, and by having the electoral college choose the President. The Founders didn’t want the Bible-Thumpers in their midst making the important decisions. In case white male voters started transferring their "irrational" religious beliefs to the ballot box, the Founders could ensure that these other safeguards would prevent them from having their way.
Of course, in the intervening centuries, the democratic process has become much more inclusive. Now the people elect their own Senators, and the electoral college is little more than an archaic formality. The natural consequence of this is that the group of people whose religious enthusiasm the Founders once sought to exclude are now moving to the front and center of the political process. This is the price of democracy in a predominantly Christian land with a strong tradition of evangelicalism. And this is exactly the price the Founders hoped to avoid."

The founders, in other words, were elitists. You bet they were. You can see the imprint throughout the constitution, which is a republican, rather than democratic, achievement. And they were often conservative elitists, trying to restrain the impulses of democratic majorities, especially when conjoined to religious appeals. Remember when conservatism was like that? Miss it? Me too.

Does anyone act less like a judge than Antonin Scalia?

"Hello. I’m a post-patriotic progressive. I believe that nation-states like the USA are obsolete and indeed immoral. I abhor and denounce the bigotry of ‘citizenism’ – the idea that the American government should favor the interests of the 300 million citizens of the US over those of the other 5.7 billion people on earth. I oppose policing and fencing the border, just as I oppose any measure that would threaten the inalienable human right of foreign nationals to sneak into the US without our government’s knowledge or permission. And whenever I see an American flag, it creeps me out because it seems, well, fascistic," – Michael Lind, satirizing the people with whom he must sometimes form alliances.

"Who has not found the heaven below   
Will fail of it above.   
God’s residence is next to mine,   
His furniture is love."

– Emily Dickinson.

Need some tips on how to keep the Iraqi government negotiations going? Try this video.

The original can be found here.

Borders and Waldenbooks will not carry the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine, because it contains four of the Danish cartoons. The reason? They’re afraid of Islamist violence:

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

Well, at least they’re honest. Sharia: 1. The West: 0. If you care about freedom of expression, don’t buy books from Borders or Waldenbooks. And if you want to draw a lesson from the entire episode, it’s obvious: violence against free writers and artists gets results. We have all but invited more.