The Dish

Ross has a typically thoughtful post responding to Wilkinson:

[Will Wilkinson] points out that the religion-happiness correlation seems to be America-specific, and that the advance of secularization in Western Europe has coincided with an increase in levels of reported happiness on the continent…my suspicion is that the difference has something to do with the role of the welfare state as well – that the benefits of belonging to a religious community are greater in the U.S. than in Europe in part because our welfare state is smaller, and religious participation provides both tangible and intangible forms of security that are more valuable in a society where the free market is more freewheeling and the welfare state weaker. If you’re a Christian who prefers the American model, you might say that the Europeans use government as a substitute for God; if you prefer Europe’s path to modernity, you’d probably say something about Americans clinging to churchgoing because it’s the only protection available against the harsh brutality of our jungle capitalism.

Austin Bramwell suggests a definition:

Conservatism is the defense of legitimacy wherever it happens to exist. “Legitimacy” here is defined in the empirical, Weberian sense: that is, an institution is legitimate if and only if the opinion has become widespread that it is right (for whatever reason or lack thereof) to obey it. The conservative, in short, cultivates obedience to existing institutions. This definition, I submit, has all the advantages of the conventional definitions, none of their defects, and some important advantages of its own.

One quibble: why obedience? Why not acceptance or defense of coherent institutions? Razib responds, and tries to define "Liberalism as the inverse of Bramwell’s definition of Conservatism."

Ambers says the Obama campaign might hire Patti Solis Doyle. They should read this first.

Obama’s now crushing Clinton nationally – but still dead even with McCain.

Chris Crain wonders if the California court decision and the possible intiative aren’t on an unexpected collision course. Money quote:

If voters amend the state’s constitution to prevent gays from marrying, it’s hard to see how the same four justices wouldn’t conclude that the only way to pass constitutional muster is to open up "domestic partnerships" to straight couples and eliminate civil marriage entirely in the state.

But the court would be obliged to defend the constitution in this regard, even if such a constitution is amended to mandate discrimination against gay citizens.

When Obama describes Cuba and Iran and Venezuela as regimes that "don’t pose a serious threat" to the U.S., the usual suspects go nuts. This is "full-throated appeasement" splutters Hewitt. Jen Rubin vents:

So, taken literally, he seems not much concerned about Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorist organizations, its commitment to eradicate Israel, its current actions in supplying weapons that have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, and its role in eroding Lebanon’s sovereignty through its client Hezbollah.

Of course these are different points. It’s possible to believe all that Rubin states and yet not believe that Iran actually poses a serious threat to the US as a whole. America’s economy is 68 times the size of Iran’s, which is an economic basketcase, and rendered more so by religiously oriented mismanagement. America’s military capacity is simply stratospherically greater than a ramshackle Islamist state like Iran’s. Yes: Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weaponry destabilizes the region, and yes, if such weaponry were handed to terrorists, the threat could be enormous. But it’s hard to see why such a threat would be any greater than, say, Pakistan’s government supplying Islamist terrorists with such weapons. And Israel already has a nuclear deterrent to answer the mullah’s threats. It’s also very hard to see how Iran could be more empowered than it has been by the Bush administration’s bungling of the Iraq occupation.

The deeper question – to which it is hard to evince an easy answer – is whether Iran is uniquely immune to nuclear deterrence because the apocalyptic mindset of some of its leaders makes them suicidal as a nation and as a regime.

We have their statements – which should at times prompt alarm – and we have their record for the past quarter century. That record suggests a despicable regime that nonetheless acts rationally in its own interests and defense. But what are our options if we assume that this regime – unlike Kim Jong-Il or Stalin – cannot be deterred? The only logical response is invasion of pre-emptive bombing, with no clear guarantee of success and an enormous chance of blow-back in the wider war.

It seems to me that keeping some sense of perspective and balance about the threats we face is not the same thing as "appeasement." Appeasement means giving a regime something in return for its aggression, in the vain hope that it will be deterred. And making the right calls in this dangerous and complex world is not made easier by facile, constant analogies to 1938.

Peter Singer writes:

In earlier times, when original sin was taken more seriously than it generally is today, the suffering of animals posed a particularly difficult problem for thoughtful Christians. The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes solved it by the drastic expedient of denying that animals can suffer. Animals, he maintained, are merely ingenious mechanisms, and we should not take their cries and struggles as a sign of pain, any more than we take the sound of an alarm clock as a sign that it has consciousness.

People who live with a dog or a cat are not likely to find that persuasive. Last month, at Biola University, a Christian college in southern California, I debated the existence of God with the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza. In recent months, D’Souza has made a point of debating prominent atheists, but he, too, struggled to find a convincing answer to the problem I outlined above.

He first said that, because humans can live forever in heaven, the suffering of this world is less important than it would be if our life in this world were the only life we had. That still fails to explain why an all-powerful and all-good god would permit it. Relatively insignificant as this suffering may be from the perspective of eternity, the world would be better without it, or at least without most of it.

(hat tip: Robin Varghese)

Dana Goldstein says no:

The Obama team should be pressuring, cajoling, and threatening the Clintons and their machine behind closed doors to drop out well before the convention. But until the voting ends on June 3, Obama should not publicly declare victory unless Clinton agrees to admit defeat. That’s very unlikely to happen as long as she continues to win primaries; she’s just too focused on finishing the process. And it’s true that people in the late voting states are mobilized and excited. Why tramp down on their engagement?