The Dish

Imagine if a bevy of Christian Right fundamentalists argued at a public event at a university that a Biblical court should be set up in America that would allow Christians to put gays to death, as mandated by Leviticus. Imagine if such fundamentalists also called on their fellow believers to violate laws against anti-gay discrimination and hate crimes, and barred a gay lecturer at the university from the event. It would be a huge story – and rightly so. But it happened in Australia recently. Everyone looked the other way. Even the gay press ignored it. Finally, a left-winger, writing for something called “Green Left Weekly” blew the whistle. It seems to me that gay organizations need urgently to monitor Islamic fundamentalism and its threat to our very existence. To resuscitate an old slogan, silence = death. Literally. (Thanks to Tim Blair for alerting me to this.)

RAINES WATCH: Jack Shafer piles on again. Alas, it’s getting easier. He’s particularly befuddled by the Times’ weird no-news back-fill piece on steroid use. 3,000 words? For Pete’s sake: Why? I detect paleo-feminist hostility to men who enjoy being men; and the usual busy-body nanny-state hysteria about recreational drug-use. But I’m open to other suggestions. The only motive that seems unlikely is reporting the news.

THE MALE MIND: Why are so many cases of autism among boys and men rather than girls and women? Is autism culturally constructed? Or are the male and female brains subtly but distinctly different? The answer is obvious. It isn’t a matter of debate whether there are subtle differences between male and female brains: biologists know there are. Paleo-feminists will dispute this, but then they dispute whether there are any significant biological distinctions between men and women. Here’s an article thinking out loud about the social repercussions.

OSAMA’S LETTER: “I think the letter is filled with “pitch” paragraphs, pitches which hit on nerves around the world. It hit your nerve. It will hit others in a far different way. Break it down. It’s very, very good.” – all this and a defense of Alessandra Stanley on the Letters Page.

NOT-SO-FULL FAITH AND CREDIT: Some of you have emailed me to say that the real reason for opposing Massachusetts’ possible decision to legalize marriage rights for gays is its national implications. The argument is that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution would immediately mean that legal marriage in one state would be legal marriage in every state. Stanley Kurtz makes this point central to his case. I presume Stanley is simply unaware of Constitutional law in this respect. But the truth is: no serious legal scholar believes this at all. The best paper I know on this question was written by a very gay-sympathetic Constitutional lawyer in the Yale Law Journal (vol. 106, no. 7, 1997). Professor Larry Kramer (not the AIDS activist) is one of the leading experts in what is called the field of conflict-of-laws. He points out that marriage has never been legally subject to full faith and credit. In fact, all the legal precedents point to the opposite conclusion: that states can quite easily disregard legal marriages in other states for a host of legal reasons, most prominently through what is called the “public policy exception.” That is to say, if a state believes that another state’s marriages violates its own public policy, then those marriages can be void in that state. Of course, people could still try and sue for their rights, but, as Kramer points out, they sure shouldn’t expect results:

The brouhaha over Hawaii’s anticipated legalization of same-sex marriages is therefore a big dud from a conflict of laws persepctive. There is simply no problem: other states do not have to recognize such marriages, and they do not need special laws or federal legislation to make that clear.

Since Kramer wrote that, it’s even clearer. The U.S. Congress has passed the Defense of Marriage Act, enshrining gays as second class citizens under federal law; and many states have passed similar laws for their own domains. What was always highly unlikely has now become impossible. Any federal Constitutional Amendment is therefore completely superfluous as a matter of law and is being pursued out of what can only be called hysteria and malevolence. That’s why the White House opposes it. That’s why all intelligent and reasoned federalists should as well.

JUDICIAL USURPATION: A little history simply confirms this. The main legal precedents are in inter-racial marriage cases. Inter-racial marriages were long recognized in northern states before they were made legal in southern states. In fact, the discrepancies lasted over a century. If Full Faith and Credit worked the way Kurtz argues, Massachusetts’ inter-racial marriages would have been legal in Mississippi immediately. And when SCOTUS finally ruled against the ban on inter-racial marriage, it did so not through the “full faith and credit” clause but through equal protection. (I wonder how many conservatives today actually oppose that piece of judicial ursurpation of the people’s will. Polls in 1967 when the court ruled on inter-racial marriage showed higher opposition to inter-racial marriage then than to same-sex marriage now. I ask Stanley Kurtz directly: would he have opposed Loving vs Virginia as judicial liberal activism? If not, why not? It was classic court usurpation of an ancient tradition supported by huge majorities in the states involved.) In other words, the notion that marriage in one state means marriage in every state is false. It is untrue. It is not rooted in fact. It is an unfact. Its veracity is pushing up the daisies. Next time you read or hear someone making such an argument, make a mental note that he or she is either ignorant or happy to lie to advance his or her political agenda. (Shameless plug: the best collection of legal papers and essays on this issue, including the full analysis by Kramer, can be purchased here.)

TO GORE’S DEFENSE: Tim Noah rushes in to poo-poo the notion that Al Gore’s “fifth column” reference is anything comparable to my own qualified use of the term over a year ago. (I say ‘qualified” because I wrote “what amounts to a fifth column,” meaning it need not be a self-conscious or literal one. And in retrospect, I should add that I wish I hadn’t used that inflammatory phrase. But it was two days after 9/11 and my emotions were in full flood.) Noah defines the term by referring to the following definition: “a clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity by any means at their disposal. The term is credited to Emilio Mola Vidal, a Nationalist general during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).” Given that definition, it seems to me that my point was prescient. It’s now simply a matter of public record that some people – on the far ri
ght and, to a greater extent, the far left – really do sympathize with the enemy in this war, or certainly find the United States to be more morally suspect than al Qaeda, Saddam or the Islamo-fascists, or believe the alleged power of international Jewry is the deeper issue. I get daily emails from these people hailing every defeat for the United States and every victory for Saddam. Most weeks, I link to some statement of anti-Americanism from these fringe and not-so-fringe types. Is Noah saying that I’m fabricating these statements? And if I’m not, why should I retract a prediction that has turned out to be alarmingly on the mark?

NOAH’S COCOON: Noah may disagree. To which I have to respond: How would he describe the beliefs of someone who says, for example, that the real enemy in this war is the United States? What is his view of, say, ANSWER, the organizing group behind the anti-war rallies? Or the views of Noam Chomsky? Do such people exist on the American left? The answer is empirically yes. Among the academic class, this ambivalence about defending America and the Consitution from Islamofascism is endemic. I can see why embarrassed liberals like Noah don’t want to acknowledge the existence of such types; but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Now compare this to Al Gore’s statement about the “fifth column” in the media. What could he possibly mean? Does he mean that some journalists, under the cover of objectivity, actually favor a conservative agenda? If he does, I think he’s right. But it also surely applies (and to a far greater extent) to the left as well. But the use of the term “fifth column” is completely unnecessary here and deliberately inflammatory. And Gore doesn’t even have the emotional excuse of writing two days after a mass murder. Imagine, to turn the tables, if I had called Howell Raines a member of a “fifth column,” and argued that “most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks – that is, day after day, injecting the daily Democratic talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.” This is, in fact, one of the themes of this blog, but I haven’t used the term “fifth column” precisely because of its inflammatory implications. If I had, do you think Tim Noah would have let it pass? Not a chance. Which just goes to show that Noah is precisely part of the problem he purports to be above.

Here’s the original. Mickey says the fact that Kelley turned out to be a Boston Protestant doesn’t vitiate the entire story. Make your own mind up. Howell Raines may not know the difference between Boston Catholics and Protestants. But anyone who’s Irish-Catholic knows that when you spell Kelley with an “e”, you’re usually no papist. And you also know that Catholic-bashing isn’t exactly unknown among Boston Protestants. But somehow “Boston Protestant Attacks Catholic Church” doesn’t promote Raines’ agenda, does it? (By the way, the Times can’t even get his middle initial right either. Is it David J. Kelley or David E. Kelley? The Times has both – one for the caption and one for the piece. That’s our paper of record!)

“If I were young enough for military service and was compelled to fight either for Iraq or America, I would fight for Iraq, on the simple grounds that the Iraqis and their surrounding countries should be allowed to work out their own destinies without Western bullying. If I feel that, how much more strongly would it affect a young British Muslim?” – A.N. Wilson, the London Evening Standard. Perhaps Wilson is unaware that, at present, the only chance Iraqis have of “working out their own destinies” is after a Western liberation.

GILMORE WAS HERE: Readers may remember Glenda Gilmore as the Yale professor who argued in the Yale Daily News that the real enemy in the current war was the United States. I linked to her as a nominee for the coveted Sontag Award. The Yale Daily News comment board subsequently lit up with some controversial posts and some abhorrent ones. The pure jibes were removed, as they should have been. But Gilmore is not content. She wants the Daily News to remove discussion boards or is apparently threatening to sue the student paper for libel. According to this piece in today’s Yale Daily News, other faculty members are supporting her. It is, of course, part and parcel of some parts of today’s left: they have been in the forefront of intimidation of free speech for years now. But that policing free discussion of important issues in a student newspaper is now an acceptable course of action shows how deep the rot has gone. Good for those Yale students fighting back for free speech.

THE DIGNITY OF GAY RELATIONSHIPS: Great news from two quarters today. The new Archbishop of Canterbury has affirmed the dignity of faithful gay relationships within the Christian tradition and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the monstrous 1986 Bowers vs Hardwick ruling that upheld a law that made consensual non-procreative sex in private ok for heterosexuals but a criminal act for gay people. Slowly, the double standards in sexual morality are being unraveled by reason and faith. There will be backlash – especially if Massachusetts ends its discrimination against gay citizens in marriage rights next year. Conservatives who support federalism in every other circumstance will try and coerce states to adhere to federal marriage diktats if individual states move toward equality under the law. Revealing about their true priorities, isn’t it? Federalism for everyone who agrees with them. You want to know why some people find some Republicans two-faced on states’ rights? Here’s why.

Was I hallucinating or is the New York Times now advertising on, yes, Matt Drudge’s blog? Matt Drudge, constantly belittled and scorned in the Times’ news pages, derided as an internet “gossip” whom real journalists are “reduced” to reading when all else fails, is now helping sell the New York Times. Congrats to both parties.

THE FIFTH COLUMN: That’s Al Gore’s description of some conservative-leaning media outlets. Here’s the quote:

The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party. Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh – there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media … Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their ranks – that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a whole.

I think what he means is that conservative political bias is anathema to good media (implying, I think, that only liberals can be good journalists). He names names. He accuses individuals of being traitors to their own vocation. Now you’ll recall the hubbub when I suggested over a year ago that some politically leftist enclaves might at some point launch “what amounts to a fifth column” in the war on terror. I named no names; I made sure to qualify my remarks; even so, the hatred of the United States that worried me then has since flourished in several places, especially the academy. Still, that one sentence of mine was described in the New York Times as a “disgusting diatribe.” Eric Alterman even attempted to insinuate that I had described all New Yorkers or blue staters in this way. So I’m waiting for these same sources to denounce Gore for saying something far less nuanced or careful. He even insinuates that being Republican in the media is to represent a “fifth column.” And he does so long after the immediate emotions after 9/11 have subsided. Again, I’m waiting …

BLOGGER BARBIE: Yes, it was inevitable.

BBC BIAS WATCH: Check out this piece from the BBC news site. The headline: “Iraq Attack ‘Means Third World War’.” Look for the “balance” that is allegedly the BBC’s guiding principle. This is pro-Saddam propaganda, pure and simple – from a German former U.N. official. Can you imagine the BBC running a similar piece urging the need for disarming Saddam?

ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: As I pointed out last week, in France, the major publisher, Flammarion, has just published a children’s book called “Dreaming of Palestine,” a thinly veiled anti-Semitic tract. This kind of thing, I now learn, is by no means new to Flammarion. That publishing house also brought out Edouard Drumont’s “La France Juive,” back in 1886. According to Johns Hopkins professor, David Bell, “La France Juive” was “the most influential anti-Semitic work in French history, and probably the most influential in nineteenth-century Europe. It went through 200 editions, becoming one of the great bestsellers of the period, and helped create the atmosphere in which the Dreyfus Affair took place.” Plus ça change …

MISS WORLD, APPEASERS: From the semi-literate press release put out by the Miss World organization:

The Miss World Organisation and all of the Miss World contestants were shocked and deeply saddened by the appalling comments made in the Nigerian Newspaper “This Day” that led to such a tragic loss of life.

Jaw-dropping.

THE PAPER OF RECORD: Maybe you saw the piece that ran earlier this month in the New York Times on one of the writers for “The Practice.” It was about the show’s coverage of the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic church. The headline ran: “A Catholic Writer Brings His Anger to ‘The Practice'”. The accompanying photograph had as a caption: “David J. Kelley, writer of “The Practice,” was raised as a Catholic in the Boston Diocese.” The entire story was about a Catholic writer’s grappling with his own Church – and it was an effective one. The only trouble with this story is that it isn’t true. The Times ran a correction last Tuesday: “An article in The Arts on Nov. 7 about “The Practice,” the ABC television series that has been been addressing the scandal over sexual abuse by priests, misstated the religious background of the writer David E. Kelley. He was brought up Protestant, not Roman Catholic.” This correction essentially destroys the entire story. The writer’s Catholicism was the entire rationale for the piece. And it took them from November 7 to November 25 to make the correction! I guess they were waiting for people to forget about the original story. Sorry, Howell. We’ve got Nexis now.

POMO ANTI-SEMITISM: What happens when post-modernist critical theory meets the Holocaust? I guess we’ll soon find out. These guys are from Berkeley and Washington State University.

SO WAS IT FAKE? Swiss experts believe the Osama audio-tape is a fake. If it is, I think it’s an extremely good sign that OBL is dead. Here’s hoping.

THE MEME PROPAGATES: Newsweek has picked up on the damage Howell Raines’ dictatorial paleo-liberalism has done – and is still doing – to the New York Times. His unhinged campaign against the Augusta National Golf Club appears to have been the final straw for some Times journalists. “That was just shocking,” one anonymous Times staffer tells Seth Mnookin. “It makes it hard for us to have credibility on other issues. We don’t run articles that just say so-and-so is staying silent. We run articles when something important actually happens.” Of course, this notion that the silence of others makes something a news story is one of Raines’ leitmotifs. It was under that loopy rubric that he justified turning the Times into an anti-war propaganda sheet last summer. Meanwhile, Raines is … silent. Newsweek reports yet again: “Raines refused to discuss the Times’s coverage.” In fact his only recent response to his critics was to an audience of lefties at Berkeley. Here’s a simple question: what kind of journalist won’t talk to the press about legitimate stories about his coverage?

THE LIBERAL ARAB WORLD: They don’t execute gays; they just persecute them.

FATWA, FATWA: A left-wing black feminist has been targeted by the Islamo-fascists for killing. She has to live in hiding in the United States. Never heard of her? I guess her fellow lefties are too busy campaigning for the release of Mumia.

My old colleague, the legendary British journalist and drunk Henry Fairlie, had a favourite story about his long, lascivious love affair with America. He was walking down a suburban street one afternoon in a suit and tie, passing familiar rows of detached middle-American dwellings and lush, green Washington lawns. In the distance a small boy – aged perhaps six or seven – was riding his bicycle towards him.

And in a few minutes, as their paths crossed on the pavement, the small boy looked up at Henry and said, with no hesitation or particular affectation: “Hi.” As Henry told it, he was so taken aback by this unexpected outburst of familiarity that he found it hard to say anything particularly coherent in return. And by the time he did, the boy was already trundling past him into the distance.

In that exchange, Henry used to reminisce, so much of America was summed up. That distinctive form of American manners, for one thing: a strong blend of careful politeness and easy informality. But beneath that, something far more impressive. It never occurred to that little American boy that he should be silent, or know his place, or defer to his elder. In America, a six-year-old cyclist and a 55-year-old journalist were equals. The democratic essence of America was present there on a quiet street on a lazy summer afternoon.

Henry couldn’t have imagined that exchange happening in England – or Europe, for that matter. Perhaps now, as European – and especially British – society has shed some of its more rigid hierarchies, it could. But what thrilled him about that exchange is still a critical part of what makes America an enduringly liberating place. And why so many of us who have come to live here find, perhaps more than most native Americans, a reason to give thanks this Thanksgiving.

When I tuck into the turkey on Thursday, I’ll have three things in particular in mind. First, the country’s pathological obsession with the present. America is still a country where the past is anathema. Even when Americans are nostalgic, they are nostalgic for a myth of the future. What matters for Americans, in small ways and large, is never where you have come from – but where you are going, what you are doing now, or what you are about to become. In all the years I have lived in America – almost a decade and a half now – it never ceases to amaze me that almost nobody has ever demanded to know by what right I belong here. Almost nobody has asked what school I went to, what my family is like, or what my past contains. (In Britain I was asked those questions on a daily, almost hourly, basis.) Even when I took it on myself to be part of the American debate, nobody ever questioned my credentials for doing so. I don’t think that could ever happen in a European context (when there’s a gay American editor of The Spectator, let me know). If Europeans ever need to know why Ronald Reagan captured such a deep part of the American imagination, this is surely part of the answer. It was his reckless futurism (remember star wars and supply-side economics?) and his instinctive, personal generosity.

Second, I’m thankful for the American talent for contradiction. The country that sustained slavery for longer than any other civilised country is also the country that has perhaps struggled more honestly for the notion of racial equality than any other. The country that has a genuine public ethic of classlessness also has the most extreme economic inequality in the developed world. The country that is most obsessed with pressing the edge of modernity also has the oldest intact constitution in the world. The country that still contains a powerful religious right has also pushed the equality of homosexuals further than ever before in history. A country that cannot officially celebrate Christmas (it would erase the boundary between church and state) is also one of the most deeply religious nations on the planet. Americans have learnt how to reconcile the necessary contradictions not simply because their country is physically big enough to contain them, but because it is spiritually big enough to contain them. Americans have learnt how to reconcile the necessary contradictions of modern life with a verve and a serenity few others can muster. It is a deeply reassuring achievement.

Third, I’m thankful because America is, above all, a country of primary colours. Sometimes the pictures Americans paint are therefore not as subtle, or as elegant, or even as brilliant as masterpieces elsewhere. But they have a vigour and a simplicity that is often more viscerally alive. Other nations may have become bored with the Enlightenment, or comfortable in post-modern ennui. Americans find such postures irrelevant. Here the advertisements are cruel, the battles are stark and the sermons are terrifying. And here, more than anywhere else, the most vital of arguments still go on. Does God exist? Are the races equal? Can the genders get along? Americans believe that these debates can never get tired, and that their resolution still matters, because what happens in America still matters in the broader world. At its worst, this can bespeak a kind of arrogance and crudeness. But at its best, it reflects a resilient belief that the great questions can always be reinvented and that the answers are always relevant. In the end, I have come to appreciate this kind of naivety as a deeper form of sophistication. Even the subtlest of hues, after all, are merely primary colours mixed.

At the end of November each year this restless, contradictory and simple country finds a way to celebrate itself. The British, as befits a people at ease with themselves, do not have a national day. When the French do, their insecurity shows. Even America, on the fourth of July, displays a slightly neurotic excess of patriotism. But on Thanksgiving, the Americans resolve the nationalist dilemma. They don’t celebrate themselves, they celebrate their good fortune. And every November, as I reflect on a country that can make even an opinionated Englishman feel at home, I know exactly how they feel.

“My America,” first published November 24, 1996, Sunday Times of London

I guess I passed a milestone this week. As the winter closes in, Provincetown gets a little bleaker each day. It’s truly odd living in a resort town. From 50,000 inhabitants in the summer to 3,000 or so in the winter, it almost becomes a different town as autumn ends. The cafes close down; the stores shut; there are times when I almost feel as if I’m on Survivor, as each friend or acquaintance gets kicked off the island. To add to the weirdness, they’re currently constructing the town’s first real sewer – so much of the main street is dug up, with sand and soil in heaps and tracks all over town. Squint your eyes and the winding, uneven, muddied street could be of a century ago. But the solitude is also intoxicating. As I write this, I’m looking out at the dark bay, a lighthouse blinking in the distance, in my room on a wharf which has just had its water supply turned off to keep the pipes from freezing over. The boyfriend, beagle and I now live in a friend’s house nearby, with water and a fireplace. I make a short walk each morning to the water’s edge to begin the work day. It’s simple living – but I am extraordinarily lucky to be able to live and work this way. And after twelve years of continuous living in Washington, it’s healthy to take a break, to get some distance. When January comes, even the boyfriend will have to leave and we’ll resume the long-distance thing. But I’ve decided to try and stick it out here by myself. I have a few friends still around, a dog, a fireplace, more books than I could possibly read, and cable television and DSL. More and more people are living here in the winter and I don’t feel like a true townie in any sense until I’ve lost my Ptown winter virginity and stayed through the dark months. Besides, I’m going to be forty next year (gulp) and some solitude – which is different than loneliness – can only do me good. With the blog, it’s also impossible to feel that lonely. Which is why, today, I’d like to say thanks to all of you for making this whole enterprise possible and coming back day after day to check in. Have a great Thanksgiving.

IDIOCY OF THE WEEK: My take on the West’s apallingly mealy-mouthed response to the Muslim Miss World riots is now up on Salon.

JOE CONASON AND CHARLIE BROWN: Reading the pristine partisanship of Joe Conason is always an enjoyable experience. But reading him yesterday called to mind the old Charlie Brown and Lucy cartoon strip. Charlie Brown knows Lucy’s going to snatch the ball away at the last moment but he still kicks. Same with Conason and the other members of the cocoon left. He still doesn’t know why Bush is popular. He’s even reverted to the “he’s just a nice guy” theory that bedeviled the Left under Reagan:

Where have we heard this all before? When Ronald Reagan was president and then won a landslide reelection, the voters felt a similar ambivalence: liked the man, disliked his ideology and agenda. A reader explained this recurring, baffling phenomenon: “Americans usually vote for the friendly guy – Ike vs. the intellectual Stevenson, Truman over Dewey, gush Bush not bore Gore, Reagan over naggin’, JFK over Nixon, Carter over Ford…. It is a bit like those high school class [presidential] elections – the vote goes to the nice, social type, not the socialist …”

Memo to Joe: don’t you think it might have a teensy-weensy bit to do with the fact that the country is at war and most voters approve of Bush’s handling of it? And don’t you think it might also have something to do with the fecklessness of the opposition (as you’ve admitted before) and even, God help us, the tax cut which Democrats want to take away from people? Oh well. Worth a try. Beside this, what does it say about some liberals’ view of ordinary voters that they honestly think people vote for someone’s personality alone? Such condescension toward the electorate is a big part of their problem. You’d expect the Left to get over this after Adlai Stevenson, but they just can’t seem to do it.

WWJD: It seems that parts of a reader’s letter I posted on the question of “What Would Jesus Drive?” were lifted from this site, OffKilter. True credit goes to Roy Rivenburg of the Los Angeles Times and Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle. I had no idea; and apologize for inadvertently running their material without credit.

“As far as I’m concerned it’s equally disrespectful and abusive to have women prancing around a stage in bathing suits for cash or walking the streets shrouded in burkas in order to survive.” – Jill Nelson, MSNBC.

“In a measure of additional concern for Democrats, Al Gore, who is the best-known Democrat who might run for president in 2004, is viewed unfavorably today by a ratio of almost two to one…. Just 19 percent said they held a favorable view of the former vice president, compared with 43 percent who had an unfavorable view.” – New York Times today. Almost?

SLATE ON RAINES: Jack Shafer says no one would accuse Howell Raines of being a demagogue. I would. But Jack does an excellent job limning the now almost comic hyping of non-news stories to fit Raines’s paleo-liberal agenda, specifically on the Augusta National Golf Club. As Jack points out, Raines is morphing the Times into a daily blog. The Mickster has sharper comments. And I’ve also noticed how Alessandra Stanley has eagerly become Raines’ dutiful copy-slave.

A strange tale of rescued photography from Susan Sontag’s out-tray.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Wayne Denson, 75, a Democrat and retired optician from Kansas City, Mo., said: ‘I voted for [Gore] to start with but now that Bush got elected, I’d rather vote for Bush than Gore. Bush has got more intelligence.'” – the New York Times today.

“I abhor the targeting of civilians in any armed conflict, though why those who rain bombs on defenceless people should be allowed to lecture anyone on terrorism beats me. If there is a war, then Britain, given the complicity of Blair, could become a prime terrorist target. He is thereby potentially a bigger danger to our country than Saddam ever was.” – Jimmy Reid, The Scotsman.

THE DEATH OF RAWLS: Perhaps the most self-effacing but influential American political philosopher of recent times, John Rawls, died Sunday. Jacob Levy has a generous appreciation and some links to further reading. I agree with Levy. Although Rawls’s writing never, to my mind, plumbed the psychological, spiritual and moral depths of the great political philosophers, his bold attempt to re-think liberalism from first premises reinvigorated political theory in the 1970s and became the basis for much valuable and intricate criticism – a model for what philosophy can do.

THE ISRAELI VICTIMS: Five documented names should suffice: Haggai Sheffi, Shai Levinhar and Leon Lebor in the towers; and Danny Lewin and Alona Abraham in the planes. Dozens of Jewish-Americans also perished. It sickens me I even have to report on this easily accessible information and that a professor at a major university, with the same facts at his fingertips, chose to perpetrate an evil lie instead. One reader also had a fitting response:

My standard response to the “No Jews died at the World Trade Center” slander is “I went to David M. Weiss’ memorial service. He was Jewish. So are his kids. I’ve met them. If you don’t believe me, ask the surviving members of Rescue 1, FDNY. But stand far enough back when you ask.”

THE PURGE BEGINS: A gay seminarian kicked out not for sex but for outspokenness. The Church hierarchy believes that the way to solve this difficult question is to enforce silence on anyone who might know something about it. They keep impressing with their wisdom, don’t they?

IN THE MIDST OF WAR: The Israelis decide to translate the Federalist Papers into Hebrew and have a major conference about them. Somehow, I don’t think they used to do that in South Africa.

REPRESSION OR OPENNESS: Dan Drezner has some challenging points about which kinds of societies are most endangered by HIV and AIDS. He says those that cannot allow open debate about sexuality; those who restrict freedom of speech and open-ended scientific research; and those that can separate church and state. The alternative, he argues, is far more fragile:

Some, like [Phyllis] Schlafly, may argue that there is another option – a fundamentalist regime that actually gets its citizens to practice sexual abstinence. This could work in theory, but it’s a much less robust strategy. Once AIDS occurs in these societies, it’s impossible to stop, since the state can’t admit its existence without admitting its founding principles are being violated. Any discussion would have to admit the possibility of illicit sex and drug use. In fact, the spread of AIDS in totalitarian societies is likely to be much faster because of the state’s reluctance to ever publicly broach the topic.

I would also add a free market in pharmaceuticals. Alas, on that score, we’re headed in the opposite direction.