Category: The Dish

NRO echoes NYRB. And, of course, it can be a religion. But I don’t see why it has to. Finding pragmatic solutions to pressing problems is not a religious crusade. But if the problems can be overcome by human adaptation but remain fatal for other species, is there not another dimension here? Here’s the latest on what is happening to our planet:

The Living Planet Index monitors more than 1,400 species. From 1970 to 2005 the report shows an overall fall in population trends of 27%.

The declines are due to human activity such as habitat destruction, pollution, overexploitation such as fishing, the spread of invasive species and climate change.

Obviously, these changes have happened for ever – but there is little doubt we are accelerating them. And this does reach deeper, moral questions. Do we humans have a moral obligation to the planet we live on, to the species with whom we share this world? I’d say a firm yes. I don’t believe that our world is merely to be used with no respect for its conservation. Does this spring from a religious viewpoint? In my case, yes. But it isn’t necessary to view this moral obligation from a religious viewpoint in order to see it as a powerful principle to defend. (And if you haven’t read Matt Scully’s book, Dominion, do yourself a favor.)

                        

Josh Marshall and Jonathan Alter unload on the unhinged Clintons.

The Dish list of our favorite blogs keeps expanding. Check them all out in the lower right-hand column called "Blog Love". If you’re new to the blogosphere, it’s a pretty good list of many of the best out there. Surf on.

It really does get personal when you’re told to sit in a special segregated section of the marriage bus:

To me what it feels like just, you know, I will speak for myself…it feels when someone says you can have a contract and you’ll still have insurance and you’ll get all that. It sounds to me like saying well you can sit there (points in one direction), you just can’t sit there (points in another direction). That’s what it sounds like to me. It doesn’t feel inclusive. It feels isolated. It feels like we aren’t owed the same things and the same wording.

MCCAIN: Well, I’ve heard you articulate that position in a very eloquent fashion. We just have a disagreement and I, along with many, many others wish you every happiness.

ELLEN: Thank you. So you’ll walk me down the aisle? Is that what you said?

MCCAIN: Touché

If everyone can muster the courage and integrity of Ellen DeGeneres, we will win the vote in California. And we will deserve to. This really is a challenge to the gay community and our families and friends: this is the fight of our generation. What have you done to make it happen?

Suderman reviews the new Indy movie. Aaron has made me watch the prequels. I forgot how good – and trend-setting – the first one was. Malkin would like Indy to be less Blue State. Sigh.

Adventures in science.

I don’t disagree with Yuval Levin’s point about Burke’s distinction between "reformation and "change." It’s what I was trying to express this way:

[Conservatism] is about a modesty toward what problems government can ever solve. Its responses to emergent questions will not be an attempt to "solve" them, but to ameliorate them with a narrow set of tools.

There is a distinction between tackling problems pragmatically in order to maintain a coherence in a society as it changes over time – and the liberal notion that any given human problem can be definitively "solved." Burke expressed it better, of course, and Yuval’s quote is well worth a read.

I used the climate change example – an attempt to address a pressing problem without claiming to definitively solve it, or expanding government’s reach still further in overly elaborate and ambitious regulatory schemes. The same perspective informs my own view of marriage reform.

I see including gay couples within the existing institution – which already defines gays’ own families, parents and siblings – as the truly conservative position. Constructing a new institution, such as domestic partnership, is, in contrast, fraught with unintended consequences, as it offers to heterosexuals a marriage-lite institution which is a much bigger threat to marriage than allowing gay people into it. This is a debatable proposition, of course. But it is frustrating to have one Burkean approach defined as leftist or radical or anti-family. It isn’t. And the AIDS era showed many of us the consequences of not providing any social support for stable gay relationships in the modern world.

William Saletan looks at how the British House Of Commons voted on various child-related measures. There’s the usual and vital sense of moral engagement as the US – but nowhere near as much polarization. Same with gay issues. And the death penalty. A key aspect is what the Brits call "free votes" in Parliament. On central moral issues, where religion and conscience play a role, the parliamentary parties remove any obligation to follow a party line. There is no cost to violating the party leadership’s position. In this pragmatic way, the British have always avoided the danger of Christianism – the conflation of religion and politics and especially the conflation of religion and partisan politics. It’s a more civilized way of dealing with these issues. Which us why uncivilized people like Karl Rove don’t care for it.

David Corn on Clinton’s recent actions:

As Clinton comes to terms with what seems to be defeat, she is trying to have it both ways. She’s doing nothing overt to undermine the likely nominee of her party, but she ain’t bowing out and she keeps on insisting her party’s making a big mistake. None of this is too much of a drag on Obama at the moment. But come June 3–or thereabouts–Clinton is going to have to quit or fire off one helluva shot. Judgment Day is nearing.

Actually, Judgment Day was a long time ago. If I were forced to predict, I’d say she’s taking it to Denver. Yes, they’re that psycho.

"At some point I’d grown accustomed to the idea that there was a public place where I would always be allowed to write, without supervision, about how I felt. Even having to take into account someone else’s feelings about being written about felt like being stifled in some essential way," – whiney narcissist Emily Gould.