The Rugby Video

A reader writes:

Now that’s the sort of unselfconscious homoeroticism I wish we had in this repressed country, and one of the great things about England. Get the boys a few beers and they’re all over each other. On this side of the pond, to have such fun you have to first join the gay cult, go through a great personal crisis, come out of the closet, tell your parents in a tear-filled late night heart-to-heart. Lots of hassle (although worth it in the end).

I don’t think the Brits are that different from Americans, although British culture has loosened up these past couple of decades in ways I don’t think anyone anticipated. Lady Thatcher must be unamused at the consequences of her economic liberalization. The key difference is that Brits are often simply, mindlessly, incapably drunk. Rugby the game unleashes in a controlled form the violent id of many adult or adolescent males. Beer does the rest. Well, beer does almost all of it.

Christianism vs Human Rights

A reader writes:

You speak of human rights as possibly being viewed as "contingent human achievements." But in the world view of fundamentalists there is no such thing as contingent human achievement, no evolution of development – simply a created order that got messed up in the garden, and has not improved much since, and awaits the return of Christ. The only advancements are technological, not moral – for we ever are as we ever were, save for God’s dipping his hand in from time to time to help bring things into better focus, and of course sending in his Son.

However, give humankind a real evolutionary background, which reveals a history of moral development and we see that regardless of who, what or whether there is a God, this achievement is valuable to humankind and to be valued by humankind on its own terms.

In a world without an evolutionary view of ourselves, the Fall explained our shortcomings, and God our moral insights. For many, a directed moral path now requires neither.

I’m somewhere in between. I do not believe that human nature is subject to much change, but I do believe that our intelligence and civilization and institutions can harness, restrain and prevent that human nature from doing its worst. That is the essence of my conservatism, and it couldn’t be more alien from the Wilsonian fundamentalism of a liberal like Michael Gerson. The West, in my view, has managed to achieve the restraint of human nature and the establishment of individual liberty by a series of accidents, economic and social shifts, great thinkers and prudent leaders. This is an entirely human achievement, as politics always is. Much of it was achieved as a direct response to religious rule.

I fear that the Christianists, whatever their intentions, have no real respect for or understanding of this inheritance. Which is why they have done so much damage to it, and why their president is such a threat to it. Iraq is an exemplum of a theological mindset with no understanding of the deep human achievement of order and law. It has created hell. If we let these people stay in power, more hell awaits.

Quote for the Day

It’s from "The Brothers Karamazov," an exchange between the intellectual Ivan and his brother:

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature – that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance – and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I wouldn’t consent," said Alyosha softly.