The Dish

The most interesting piece of data in the new study of the under-fives is not, it seems to me, that fact that almost half are now non-white. What’s interesting is that only 4 percent of the under-fives are African-American. That compares with 15 percent Asians, 22 percent Hispanics, and 55 percent non-Hispanic whites. Compared with the general population, that’s a potentially huge future drop in the black presence in American life. Perhaps I’m more aware of this because of where I live: Washington D.C. In the decade and half since I’ve lived here, D.C. has only gotten whiter and browner. Its black heritage is just about hanging on. But I doubt it will survive my lifetime with much demographic strength.

Finally. The Onion has the details.

A reader writes:

I now forgive you of every bad thing you have written because you use the word pop instead of soda.

For a geographical analysis of who says what, here’s a great resource.

Two leading Christianists have just fought back against my recent essay in Time magazine. Ramesh Ponnuru and Hugh Hewitt are two of the most articulate advocates for fusing Republicanism with religious fundamentalism. I can see why they would dissent. But Hewitt surely goes overboard in describing my essay as "hate-speech."

Ponnuru’s argument is that the Christian/Muslim vs Christianist/Islamist parallels don’t work very well. He has a point. Islam begins with far lesser appreciation for individual liberty than Christianity. But history shows that Christianity, when pressed, will murder and burn and torture countless people to enforce orthodoxy. We live in kinder, gentler times, and Christianity experienced a Reformation, a Counter-Reformation and even the Second Vatican Council in ways that Islam sadly has not. And so regular Muslims are far closer to Islamists than many Christians are to Christianists.

Moreover, the Christianists keep moving the goalposts so far to the right that the distinction between Christians and Christianists is far more persuasive now than in even the recent past. Leading theocon Robert P. George, for example, believes not just that all abortion, including that caused by rape and incest, should be illegal; he believes that a microscopic zygote is morally indistinguishable from a fully-grown adult. Many Christianists therefore now believe that many forms of contraception are the moral equivalent of abortion; and many leading Christianists are moving fast toward banning contraception altogether. (For an important glimpse into the growing radicalism of Christianism on the question of contraception, check out this essay in the New York Times Magazine). Rick Santorum supports laws that would allow the cops to enter a gay couple’s bedroom and arrest them for private, adult, consensual sex; Robert George has no problem in theory with making non-procreative sex illegal (his sole problem is that it would be hard to police such a law). Other Christianists are opposing an HPV vaccine that could prevent 90 percent of cervical cancer in women, because it might lower the risks of extra-marital sex. They seek not merely to oppose marriage rights for gay couples – but to strip gay couples of all rights in the federal constitution. In Virginia, Christianists have made even private legal contracts between two members of the same gender illegal. They support keeping people in persistent vegetative states alive indefinitely through feeding tubes – for decades, if necessary – even if the individual herself has a living will begging to be allowed to die in peace. They have contempt for federalism, believing that the federal government should over-ride state laws and even families in enforcing religious dogma. Remember Terri Schiavo?

In all of this, the Christianists do not represent most Christians, although they have made great strides in the Vatican and in the fundamentalist leadership. I should stress: these people have every right to their views. They certainly have developed an arsenal of arguments and a body of thought to back them up. But this agenda, whatever else it is, cannot be described as mainstream Christianity. Its extremism, its enmeshment with partisan political power, its contempt for individual liberty, its certainty and arrogance and intolerance, demand that some other name be given to it. They have gotten away with too much for too long. It’s time for mainstream Christians, in both parties, to fight back. And we are.

(Photo of David Barton, leading Christianist, by Lee Blankenship Emmert, for Time.)

They have this great new machine thingy that makes all your senses so much more acute:

Super Power uses machines, apparatus and specially designed rooms to exercise and enhance a person’s so-called perceptics. Those machines include an antigravity simulator and a gyroscope-like apparatus that spins a person around while blindfolded to improve perception of compass direction, said the former Scientologists.

I wonder if it controls box offices as well. I’m totally serial.

The case against Bill Clinton’s nannying initiative to prevent school kids from drinking pop.

A reader writes:

I can not thank you enough for writing the essay "My Problem with Christianism".
I am so sad at what the religious right has done to the word "Christian". I cringe when I hear it because in this political climate it has become almost a bad word to me. I do not share their religion, their certainty or their intolerance. They have hijacked my religion and I resent it. I especially mind the way the media has adopted this description without considering what the vast majority of Christians actually believe.
Thank you for trying to put an end to this myth and to this monopoly. Please know that we "other" Christians are indeed out here!

I have received countless emails on these lines. Here’s another I just got:

Raised a Baptist, and baptized as a Christian nearly 60 years ago, the most common portrayals of either connotation has often made me reluctant to declare any religious affiliation at all. My faith is between me and God, and as far as I’m concerned, the same goes for my neighbor, both here and abroad. Naturalists will tell you, if you don’t bother a creature, it won’t harm you. I have to tell you, Christianism is a big bother to people who think like you and me. It’s about time somebody with the necessary fangs bit back!

But I plan on publishing the critical ones day by day and addressing their counter-arguments. (I’ve already published two with responses here and here.)

Reading the "letter" from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to president George W. Bush is worth doing for an insight into the kind of propaganda Iran’s leader now thinks will work for him. There is the early insistence on the abhorrence of the existence of the state of Israel; there is the rubbing in of the WMD debacle; there is the preposterous call for human rights, from a leader of a country where such rights do not exist; there is the veiled conspiracy theory about 9/11; and there is the anti-hegemonic appeal to the developing world.

But there is also something else. Ahmadinejad writes to Bush as a fellow religious fundamentalist, a true believer. He seeks common ground based on the notion that "liberalism" and "Western-style democracy" do not "realize the ideals of humanity." Because Bush has staked the U.S.’s global position and moral authority on religion, he has given Ahmadinejad a rhetorical opening to do the same. Since American democracy is, in Bush’s eyes, a manifestation of God’s will – not the construction of human beings alone – Ahmadinejad has an interlocutor who speaks his own theological language.

Then there are these passages:

"We believe a return to the teachings of the divine prophets is the only road leading to salvations. I have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (peace be upon him), and believes in the divine promises of the rule of the righteous on earth …
"The Almighty has not left the universe and humanity to their own devices. Many things have happened contrary to the wishes and plans of governments. These tell is that there is a higher power at work and all events are determined by him. Can one deny the signs of change in the world today? Is this situation of the world today comparable to that of ten years ago? Changes happen fast and come at a furious pace." [My italics.]

Ahmadinejad is appealing to Bush on the basis of their shared faith in the coming Apocalypse. It seems to me a perfectly good question for journalists to ask the president if he does indeed share Ahmadinejad’s belief that God controls all human events, that the world will soon come to an end, and that there seems to be an acceleration of change that suggests this might be coming soon. That’s what Bush’s pre-millennialist base believes. It’s what Ahmadinejad believes. Does the president?

(Photo: Reuters.)

Fairfax County just experienced the cold-blooded murder of a policewoman. It was accomplished by an 18 year-old who had just escaped from a mental institution. He had on him at the time, according to the Washington Post, "an AK-47-style assault rifle, a high-powered hunting rifle, five handguns and extra clips of ammunition … He squeezed off 70 rounds before the fierce gun battle with officers ended." It appears he was trying to kill as many cops as he could. Where did he get such an amazing armory? Money quote:

His father, Brian Kennedy, 49, works as a manager in the meat department of the Food Lion grocery store just outside Fairfax City. His mother, Margaret Kennedy, 44, works at a nearby For Eyes optical shop …  Investigators are not sure who owned the guns but believe they belonged to the family. When police searched the townhouse later Monday, they found "plenty" more guns inside, Horan said. He said he thought the guns were legally owned."

A grocery store clerk in Virginia can legally own a vast arsenal of deadly weaponry. Was he planning on shooting quail with an AK-47-style assault rifle?  I guess that’s what Glenn Reynolds would call his civil rights. Now, I’m sympathetic to the arguments against gun-control, but this kind of story gives me pause. I mean: surely common sense suggests that this kind of access to legal weaponry is, shall we say, "over-kill".

W is at 31 percent; JFK is at 26 percent. Don’t even think about it, Mr Senator. One more thought. Can you imagine how battered a president Kerry would have been by now? He’d be stuck with Bush’s Iraq mess; he’d be constantly told he’s Neville Chamberlain on Iran for doing exactly what Bush has been doing; he’d be ruthlessly attacked by the Hannity right over Teresa, immigration, gays, and any other cultural issue they could exploit. And the GOP would have escaped the responsibility for their fiscal insanity, while Kerry took lumps for raising taxes. As a matter of principle, I do not regret endorsing Kerry. My decision was based on the manifest incompetence and unconservatism of Bush. But in the sweep of history, it is fitting that Bush, for the first time in his entire life, actually face the consequences of his own recklessness. It is also important for conservatives to see up-front what abandoning limited government and embracing fundamentalism leads to: the collapse of a coherent conservatism. There was a silver lining in Bush’s re-election: the unsentimental education of conservative triumphalists.

(Photo of Kerry: Charlie Neibergall/AP.)