They have the Internet on the West Bank and across the Muslim world, don’t they? Greg Gutfeld has an effigy store up and running. Bargain prices with a great guarantee: "We ship same day for next day delivery to Amman, Riyadh, Baghdad and Burnley." What are you waiting for? Burn the Pope! In my land of birth, it’s a very old tradition. Why not in the Middle East?
Many evangelical writers and some preachers have spoken out against torture; but isn’t it amazing that there does not seem to be much pressure from Bush’s Christian conservative base on the matter? A reader comments:
I haven’t dug around in my Bible in a long time, but I thought I remembered that a few of the apostles (Peter, Andrew, maybe others?) died from torture. And of course, Jesus was placed in a "stress position" for most of a Friday afternoon. It’s hard to believe that so-called Christians will follow an administration that seems hell-bent on legalizing torture.
And yet so many seem to. Why? Torture is not a hard issue for any Christian. It is an unmitigated moral evil. There is no theology on earth which can make it a less grave moral matter than, say, gay marriage. And yet it has been enforced by this president for five years and where is the outrage? You would imagine that James Dobson would have organized a massive phone-in or email blitz to Capitol Hill on the detainee legislation. You would imagine that every theocon from Ponnuru to Neuhaus would be writing about this every day and night. But nah. Gays getting married in one state out of 49? Massive, coordinated outrage, sermon after sermon, direct mail blitz after direct mail blitz, and a threatened constitutional amendment. The president authorizing torture? You can hear a pin drop on the religious right. Tells you something, no?
For the last two summers, performance-artist/drag-queen/comic genius Dina Martina has been playing in Provincetown. For what it’s worth, I’ve seen a lot of shows in Ptown over the last couple of decades and I’ve never seen anything as brilliant or as funny as Dina. This summer, my fiance and I saw her show seven times in nine weeks. Like all great comedy – Monty Python and South Park spring to mind – it gets funnier the more you experience it. I write this just to let you know that if you’re in New York City from September 22 to October 7, and have tolerance for avant-garde comedy, her new show, "Soft Palate, Fallen Arches" is playing at The Cutting Room, located at 19 West 24th Street. You can buy tickets here. Playwright Craig Lucas said the following about her, and I cannot improve on it:
"Once in a great long while, the planets align and all of nature conspires to come up with the previously unimaginable, the wondrous and newly beautiful, the awe inspiring. And some people are lucky enough to live in a time when such a creative vision appears in their midst. Now is such a time, we are the lucky ones, and Dina Martina is it."
Thanks for all the window views. Just a few reminders. These are not vacation shots or shots from your car window. These are supposed to be photographs taken from the window of where you live. I do my best to verify them, but please keep the parameters clear or we simply have a photo gallery of whatever. You get extra points by including a window frame or reference in the shot. And you may have noticed we have had no trackbacks lately. This is a function of Typepad’s malfunction. We’ve been bugging them for well over a week but they still haven’t fixed it. My apologies on their behalf.
Beijing, China, 3 pm
David Gregory follows Matt Lauer in demanding answers from president Bush on his policy of violating the Geneva Convention. David won’t be fobbed off by Bush’s belligerent evasions. The press is fighting back … at last.
Here’s an interesting remark on Hugh Hewitt’s blog:
As a Jew, I found Fox’s question [to George Allen] profoundly offensive. Trust me, the wounded minority card is not one that I play with much frequency. But the attempt to "tar" Allen as a Jew in a southern state was at the very least disturbing, and I actually consider it sickening.
The premise of this argument is that many Southern voters are anti-Semitic. Is that Hugh Hewitt’s belief, as well as his colleague, Dean Barnett’s? (Hat tip: Mike.) Here’s the video, where Allen regards asking about his Jewish inheritance is a way to cast "aspersions" on him.
A reader writes:
I, perhaps like many, was shocked to see the ABC News report on "Jesus Camp." Certainly the existence of an evangelical youth movement is not news to me, nor is the strong alliance between the Republican party and American evangelicals. What was new was that young Christians worship at the image of the President. How can this practice be considered Christian, or even within the Judeo-Christian tradition? I know of no sect of Christianity that has beatified or canonized President Bush as a living saint – in the mainstream traditions I am familiar with, such reverence is reserved for the departed. This practice seems to displace the divine with the human, and I have difficulty understanding how anyone calling themselves Christian can bow to worship a political leader, no matter how much he or she agrees with that leader’s politics.
I fear it is only the natural evolution of a movement that has fused inerrant Biblical truth with a political party. There is a great need within such cults for a great leader to venerate and worship. Christianity has been prone to such perversions in the past. And so the leadership-cult around Bush is not that surprising. From a Southern woman recently quoted in a CNN piece:
"There are some people, and I’m one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord. I don’t care how he governs, I will support him. I’m a Republican through and through."
This is how "Christians" can come to be motivated by the cause of torture (a position one might say the Gospels are opposed to), and how they come to believe, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, that torture is a "moral necessity". Once you have abandoned all reason to faith, and when that faith is merged into a mass political movement, energized by mass, hysterical rallies where children are indoctrinated, it is quite clear the kind of fire you’re playing with. But Rove and Bush are about power. And there’s nothing quote so powerful as a mass movement with a leadership cult. Check the history books. Then check the current polls. And do the math. Rove is very good at math.
(Photo: Nell Redmond/Landov.)
Susan Collins, Olymia Snowe, Richard Lugar, Mike DeWine, Gordon Smith, John Sununu, Lincoln Chafee, and Chuck Hagel join the Democrats and the leading Republicans on the Armed Services Committee on retaining the Geneva Convention. One word about Sununu: he really is one of the last Goldwater conservatives in the Senate. I’m not surprised by his vote on Geneva, but I’m heartened nonetheless. He’s an under-reported Republican defender of individual liberty – a rarer and rarer species these days in the authoritarian Christianism of the GOP. Notice theocon Kathryn-Jean Lopez’s dismay that the U.S. may be required not to practise torture.
A former Salafist – yep, a college educated American who once studied Islam and decided the Wahhabists were the more persuasive interpreters – has been emailing with Rod Dreher. His name is Daveed Gartenstein-Ross. He has since come to the view that the extremists do not necessarily have the stronger arguments in interpreting Islam, but that their message is more persuasive to the average Muslim than the more complex interpretations of more learned scholars. He is as dismayed as I am about the response to the Pope’s recent remarks. The role of reason and therefore doubt in religious is one of the critical debates of our time (and it’s a central them of my book). The fact that the Pope has to apologize for intellectual engagement of a vital topic, while the West shrugs off the Muslim violence and murder that has ensued is a terrible portent in this civilizational struggle between fundamentalism and reasoned, humble faith.
The Dish 