Category: The Dish

There is bumper crop of opium coming out of Afghanistan this year:

The facts are stunning: in 2001, after a Taliban ban on poppy cultivation, Afghanistan only produced 11 percent of the world’s opium. Today it produces 93 percent of the global crop; the drug trade accounts for half of its GDP; and nearly one in seven Afghans is involved in the opium trade. In Afghanistan, more land is being used for poppy cultivation than for coca cultivation in all of Latin America. The trade strengthens the government’s enemies and – unless its large place in the Afghan economy is permanently curtailed by crop replacements and anti-poverty efforts – poses a potentially fatal obstacle to keeping the country stable and peaceful.

Many, many people in the Bush administration support lifting the unique discrimination against HIV in immigration and tourism. But I’m immensely heartened by and grateful for Yuval Levin’s post at the Corner today. I’m also in agreement with Michael Gerson on the broader PEPFAR question and know how much he personally did to help people with HIV around the world. We have our differences, pretty deep ones, but Michael will be remembered in history for the work he has done on AIDS and HIV, for the countless lives he has literally saved. So will the Bush administration, which, despite skepticism (some of it from me), pioneered PEPFAR as a model of its kind. Everyone who has battled this disease should acknowledge the Bushies’ contribution – as profound as it was not inevitable. Here’s Levin’s post:

The ban now on the books is not only unreasonable (given what we now know about how the disease is and is not spread) but utterly unenforceable, and creates a dangerous perverse incentive, encouraging people with HIV to go untreated and unreported—thus increasing, not lowering, the risk they will spread the disease. When I was in the White House, we made inquiries on the Hill (at the President’s personal request, if I’m not mistaken—though I don’t recall that with certainty) about removing the ban by statute, and found a mix of (mostly) disinterest and (a little) hostility on both sides of the aisle. There is now a bipartisan effort to attach a provision removing the ban to the PEPFAR reauthorization bill. I hope it succeeds.

I hope Coburn relents. 

The marriage decision in California is imminent. As I’ve said before, in some ways I’d prefer this to wait. But the process has been going on a long time. We had an initiative in 2000, domestic partnership since, a premature breakthrough in San Francisco, then the state legislature’s passing marriage equality twice, with two governor vetoes, and now a court decision. No one knows for sure what the decision will be – but, given the length of time this has taken, it’s perfectly possible the court will order civil marriage equality immediately without a stay. That would lead to thousands of irrevocable civil marriages and set up a ballot initiative this fall as a potential watershed for civil rights.

Those in favor of civil equality better get ready. The gay civil rights movement will never have waged a battle this big, this expensive or this important. We can win at the ballot box as well as in the courts and legislatures. And the good news is that the Republican governor has said he will oppose any initiative to take marriage rights away, if they are granted. Hold on tight.

A reader writes:

As a fan and Buddhist, a couple of points seem relevant regarding your "Neural Buddhists" post.  When you write,  "Deus Caritas Est. Buddhists intuit this, which is why the overlaps between Buddhism and Christianity have been so compelling to many in recent years," you do some transposing.  As I’m sure you know, Buddhists don’t have a position on god.  (Deus being a poetic construction on your part.)  But more to the point, the word "love" here is theologically problematic.  Buddhists hold that the fundamental mistake un-enlightened beings make is mistaking the nature of self and other. Without delving too deeply into it, the "love" you suggest is characterized as compassion and generosity in Buddhism because these are impulses not polluted by the intention to reify the self.  It’s not a moral code, though.  (Much, much more could be said.)

The second point is a critical one for understanding Buddhism.

For people coming from a Christian civilization, we often fail to recognize our basic assumptions.  In the US and Europe, we assume that belief and religion are identical.  When you ask a person about their religious views, you say "What do you believe?" This is a peculiarly Judeo-Christian view.  Indian-based religions don’t have an orientation to belief. Buddhism’s focus is on meditative practice, which imparts non-conceptual insight; more or less the opposite of belief.  In fact, the central obstacle to overcome in Buddhism is a belief, and so the religion regards belief with some big suspicion.

In your post, you spoke of belief and love. Recognize that you are speaking as a Christian, not a Buddhist, and that the view from this side of the window is a lot different. (Not incompatible, but different.)

All points taken. I had a Buddhist phase in my twenties and found the question of the self and other an insuperable problem. Now I’m less sure.

A new low:

“I never thought it would be the Democratic Party that didn’t want to count votes in Florida. I thought that was a Republican strategy — or strategery as the case may be. And I just ask you all this, do you really believe Florida would be getting this kind of treatment if the vote had turned out the other way?”

Maybe others do not share my soft spot for silly songs in foreign languages. But the dancing bear put this over the top:

I agree with Matt:

This business of Travis Childers winning an extremely Republican district on the heels of two other Democratic special election wins drives home how infuriating the idea of even having an extended "electability" argument about "who can win" is at this point. The reality is that given current conditions, either Clinton or Obama is very likely to win. That, I assume, is why Clinton is fighting so hard. There’s no need to join David Corn in reaching for esoteric explanations, she’s fighting hard for the prize of the nomination because it’s a very good prize to have.

HarperCollins tinkers with an online, reader-based book selection process.

David Frum pens a striking appreciation of William F Buckley Jr in Yale’s alumni magazine. Money quote:

With God and Man at Yale, William F. Buckley was audaciously claiming that a Catholic could speak to Yale with all the rights of an insider — rather than with the grateful deference appropriate to an outsider. In time, similar claims would be made by Jewish students, by African American students, by women, by gays, and by the children of the great post-1970 immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Many (not all) of their particular claims would have appalled the author of God and Man at Yale. And yet those claims were also anticipated and to some degree made possible by him. A strange outcome — but then again, maybe not so strange. At once reactionary and rebel, conservative and iconoclast, religiously orthodox but culturally heterodox, a man of the 1950s in his politics but a man of the 1960s in his literary sensibility, Buckley was a man of many dimensions.

Publius succinctly describes what Obama could do to racial politics:

As of now, coded racism (from Nixon to Bush 41) has been a politically rational strategy at the presidential level. (Bush 43 has, to his credit, avoided it). The Willie Horton ad was disgraceful, but it was also successful. In the Darwinian world of politics, it was effective strategy.

An Obama victory would change this racial calculus completely. It would be a true watershed in that it would signal to future campaigns that a new national political majority has emerged that not only rejects race-baiting, but that (more crucially) doesn’€t depend upon the votes of those swayed by race-baiting.

For this reason, there’s more at stake in this election than the substantive reforms Obama (and Clinton) have discussed. The 2008 election also offers a chance to exorcise some of the demons of history. Call it identity politics if you will, but I think it would be enormously significant – and beneficial -€” for a nation of former slaveholders to elect its first black president. Would it make the past go away? Of course not. But it would represent both substantive and symbolic progress on addressing America’s original sin.