A baby cries as he is held by his father in Dedaye township, some 48 kilometers south of Rangoon on May 9, 2008. Polling stations opened on May 10 in parts of cyclone-hit Burma, as the military regime asked voters to approve a new constitution just one week after tens of thousands of people died in the storm. The military delayed the vote for two weeks in the areas hardest-hit by Cyclone Nargis, including in the main city and former capital of Rangoon. By Khin Maung Win/AFP/Getty.
"Under modern conditions, where almost everyone lives in communities in which diversity has taken the place of consensus, certainty is much more difficult to come by. Relativism can be described as a world view that not only acknowledges but celebrates the absence of consensus. So-called post-modernist theorists like to speak of narratives and, in principle, every narrative is as valued as any other. The moral end result of this world view can be captured by imagining a television interview with a cannibal. “You believe that people should be cooked and eaten. I certainly don’t want to be judgmental, but the audience will be interested. Tell us more.” (Laughter.) This is not all that fictitious.
Fundamentalists respond to the same situation of certainty-scarcity by seeking to regain absolute certainty about every aspect of their world view. No doubt is permitted. Whoever disagrees is an enemy to be converted, shunned or, in the extreme case, removed. The last two centuries of history have made it very clear that there are secular as well as religious fundamentalisms. Both relativism and fundamentalism threaten the basic moral order without which no society, least of all a liberal democracy, can exist: relativism because it makes morality a capricious game, fundamentalism because it balkanizes society into mutually hostile camps that cannot communicate with each other," – Peter Berger, in a dialogue on Relativism and Fundamentalism: Is There A Middle Ground?
New
The long path sap sludges up
through an iris, is it new
each spring? And what would
an iris care for novelty?
Urgent in tatters, it wants
to wrest what routine it can
from the ceaseless shifts
of weather, from the scrounge
it feeds on to grow beautiful
and bigger: last week the space
about to be rumpled
by iris petals was only air
through which a rabbit leapt,
a volley of heartbeats hardly
contained by fur, and then the clay-
colored spaniel in pursuit
and the effortless air
rejoining itself whole.
Academic now: but with all the primary votes finally counted and tallied, the Clintons’ win has gone from 10 percent to 8.8 percent and Obama gains an extra 26,000 votes to his popular vote margin.
Robert Wilken discusses the role of allegory.
Dan Savage asks: when did they coopt the cross as a symbol?
A new exhibit in London features classic weapons made of paper:
A lead of 26 percent? Danny Finkelstein comments here.
Daniel Larison thinks that the argument that Obama could appeal to developing countries’ populations and transform American soft power will only hurt Obama at home:
You could not have concocted a more insidious anti-Obama campaign than what many of his supporters (as well as the candidate and campaign) have managed to do in constantly talking up all the foreign places he lived, his relatives in Kenya, and on and on. From a certain perspective, Obama’s background and biography must seem to be undeniable political assets, but slowly it is beginning to dawn on his boosters that a great many, probably most, Americans do not share that perspective. Furthermore, the emphasis on Obama’s background and biography has always meant that the ‘08 election would become a culture clash, and it is one that I suspect the Democrats still cannot win.
I find this too depressing and defeatist an attitude. If Obama’s biography and appeal affect global opinion and therefore foreign policy, the subject should be on the table – as a weapon in pursuit of national self-interest. If we cannot have a debate in a democracy about this impact without fostering xenophobia, ignorance and fear, then democracy cannot work. Which, I suspect, is partly Larison’s point. I’m not as defeatist – and it’s telling that many criticisms of Obama – Carole Simpson’s for example – fall into this trap.
With oil at $126 a barrel, Henry Blodget considers our options:
Time to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge? No. Time to cut us gas-subsidy checks? No. Time to work on a tax and consumption policy that encourages less oil usage and more investment in alternative, renewable energy.
Well: duh. With public transportation booming, there is a silver lining in higher oil prices.
