The Dish

Jamie Kirchick wants to stop sending PEPFAR money to Uganda, which has introduced legislation that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by death:

When a government actively encourages homophobia, the effect reverberates throughout society. Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, has accused European gays of coming to his country to "recruit" people into homosexuality. Ugandan newspapers and bloggers have seized on the proposed law to launch their own broadsides against gays, posting the names and photographs of individuals in Wild West-style "wanted" posters in print and online. A major tabloid, the Red Pepper, trumpeted an expose headlined "Top Homos in Uganda Named" as "a killer dossier, a heat-pounding and sensational masterpiece that largely exposes Uganda's shameless men and unabashed women that have deliberately exported the Western evils to our dear and sacred society."

From 2004 through 2008, Uganda received a total of $1.2 billion in PEPFAR money, and this year it is receiving $285 million more. Clearly, the United States has a great deal of leverage over the Ugandan government, and the American taxpayer should not be expected to fund a regime that targets a vulnerable minority for attack — an attack that will only render the vast amount of money that we have donated moot.

"Confucius called on Lao Tan and spoke to him about benevolence and righteousness.   

Lao Tan said, “Chaff from the winnowing fan can so blind the eye that heaven, earth and the four directions all seem to shift place. A mosquito or a horse-fly stinging your skin can keep you awake a whole night. And when benevolence and righteousness in all their fearfulness come to muddle the mind, the confusion is unimaginable.   

If you want to keep the world from losing its simplicity, you must move with the freedom of the wind, stand in the perfection of Virtue.   

Why all this huffing and puffing, as though you were carrying a big drum and searching for a lost child." – The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu, one of Oakeshott's influences.

(Drawing: Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly (or a butterfly dreaming of Zhuangzi)

In his Sunday column, Andrew examined the superhuman powers of Sarah Palin. Joining the study of her lying psyche was Michelle Goldberg, Bella DePaulo, David Benjamin, and Matt Taibbi. David Nood corrected her grasp on Alaskan history while Douthat highlighted one of the true silver linings of her rise. On the news side, Palin gave her mission statement to O'Reilly and continued to trash the father of Tripp. Meanwhile, Levi's mom was sent to prison.

In other weekend coverage, Krauthammer endorsed the "show trial" meme, Liz Cheney stoked more fear, Fallows bemoaned the coverage of Obama's trip to Asia, McWhorter gave him advice on ending the drug war, and a reader provided a view from his recession. Get your weekly Jonah Lehrer fix here and here.

In assorted fun, we featured an kick-ass story of sudden fame, found a fascinating document of forgotten fame, read some terrible fictional sex, watched a cool display of imperial decline, and delivered some YouTube crack from The Wire and Mad Men.

— C.B.

Tanner Ringerud passes along a video:

A group of Christian rappers extol the virtues of the “Christian side hug”. Because you will definitely go to Hell if your genitals get anywhere near other peoples' genitals.

Razib Khan ponders the similarities between Islam and orthodox westerners:

On issues such as abortion and the marriage of homosexuals the orthodox will part ways with the conservative. The orthodox Westerner may see in the Muslim a closer adherent to the true tradition. This is one reason why the Traditionalist philosopher Rene Guenon converted to Islam. But, I believe that the orthodox underestimate the implicit cultural commonalities which are unspoken and unelucidated, and which bind societies and civilizations together even more than adherence to a metaphysic. “My Country, Right or Wrong” is at once a profoundly unintellectual idea, but at the same time so is the assumption that one would sacrifice one’s own life for one’s child. Instincts have their limits, but at some point human flourishing is contingent upon [admitting] that life depends on implicit instincts for proper functioning, and that reflection is an exceptional avocation, islands in a sea of reflex.

A reader writes:

About Sarah Palin, you've written that "All we know for sure is that whatever she says isn't true. It never is."

I'd argue that what she says has no relation whatsoever to the truth – you can't count on it to be false anymore than you can count on it to be true. What you can generally count on is that it will be hastily conceived and self serving. I know you've invested a great deal of time proving her to be a liar, but to my mind Palin's a bullshitter, as defined by Harry G. Frankfurt in his book, On Bullshit.

According to Frankfurt, a bullshitter is the greater enemy of truth than a liar. The liar, by acting in opposition to truth, at least has some sense of what it is. The bullshitter, on the other hand, says only what he or she thinks will serve their immediate agenda and therefore pays little attention to what actually "is." Over time their ability to recognize truth becomes attenuated.

Sound like anyone you've seen in shorts on the cover of Newsweek lately?

I always found the term "liar" a little crude or insufficient for her, hence the use of the term "odd lies" to characterize a very particular form of delusional thinking. Having now read the book, I have to say I feel, yes, sadness. The same sadness I felt in a huge wave at the beginning of September 2008. For the innocent people dragged into this whole farce. And the damage yet to come.

A piece in today's L.A. Times tries to determine how much escalating in Afghanistan will cost. Ackerman summarizes:

[According to a memo from the Pentagon’s own comptroller], a 40,000-troop increase would cost an additional $30 to $35 billion annually. That’s on top of current war costs — which, as the piece reports, are rather hard to determine with precision. But if we take the memo’s reported calculation of at $750,000 per soldier/sailor/airman/marine annually, then we’re looking at an existing cost of $51 billion before an escalation.