The Anti-War Right

There are murmurings afoot – from disgruntled Republican Congressmen to a skeptical defense secretary to a maverick but refreshing Republican candidate, Ron Paul. My column in the Sunday Times is on this strange and perhaps fleeting convergence:

[Ron Paul’s] very presence reminded Americans of what the Republicans used to be. They were once the fiscally prudent, freedom-loving isolationists of the United States.

The idea that the party of Eisenhower or Goldwater would have suspended habeas corpus indefinitely, as Bush has done for “enemy combatants”, would be unthinkable. The idea that they would have tried to occupy and rebuild an entire country in the Middle East is unimaginable. They were ferociously anticommunist, but also wary of direct engagement in foreign countries and deeply suspicious of all wars.

This kind of prudence and caution was once the hallmark of the middle of the country and its Midwestern American values. Paul reminded Americans of this past. He told them that the Republicans opposed the second world war, ended the Korean war and ended the Vietnam war. Why not the Iraq war? Why not indeed.

Quote for the Day

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"The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes.  Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.  Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.  Belief clings, but faith lets go.  In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception," – Alan Watts, "The Wisdom Of Insecurity."

Face of the Day

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A Palestinian boy holds the side of his face as he lies wounded in Al-Shifa hospital following an Israeli strike against the house of a Hamas leader in Gaza city, 20 May 2007. Four people were killed and five people wounded in a new Israeli air raid against Gaza today targeting the home of Hamas leader Khalil al-Haya, who was at the time fo the attack away from his home. Israel pounded Hamas targets across Gaza for a fifth day today as rival Palestinian factions laid down their weapons following a new truce to end a week of ferocious infighting. By Mahmud Hams/AFP.

James Dobson and “World Of Warcraft”

A reader writes:

In your Wednesday post "Dobson, Armageddon, and Foreign Policy"  you noted that the untouchable James Dobson, "the most influential man in the Republican base", is "quite clearly out of his mind". I could not agree more. Reading the bizarre transcript you quote of his interview with author Joel C. Rosenberg ("Jesus… is moving in the Middle East"), I was reminded of my teenage nephew and his friends playing one of their online virtual-reality role-playing games – most notably their favorite: "World of Warcraft" (WOW). As you know, WOW is an MMORPG, a "massive multiplayer online role-playing game", a "multiplayer computer role-playing game that enables thousands [actually, millions] of players to play in an evolving virtual world at the same time over the Internet." The only difference I can see between MMORPGs and fundamentalist sects is that the kids know they’re playing a game, while Dobson and Rosenberg think their own "World of Rapture" is actually real. They are – literally – out of their minds.

Couple that insight with your comment that:

"[T]he Republican party has not been very keen on reason these past few years. What matters is faith in a leader and unremitting violence in accomplishing goals. Whatever else this is, it isn’t conservatism as I have come to understand it."

and you can see why Sam Harris, in his book "The End of Faith" and in his online discussion with you, is so concerned: our belief systems, our "massive multiplayer real-life role-playing games", when unmoored from reality, propelled by the paranoid delusions of dogmatic fundamentalist cults (whether Islamist, Christianist or Communist) and supplied with weapons of mass destruction, bring our very survival in the next century into question…

The ancient world fell. So might we – and by "we" I do not mean just the United States, but our whole evolving modern global civilization. I do not think that will happen – but it certainly could. It is possible. And I know you share that concern. If we do fail and fall, it will be an expression of sheer human insanity, of fear and paranoia and self-destruction overwhelming love and courage and creativity in a huge psychotic break – the kind of break already enjoyed by Dobson and Rosenberg. If we survive these times, it will be because we are forced to find a better answer than either rational atheism or raptural nihilism. This is a test – an evolutionary challenge. So although I disagree strongly with Sam about the existence of God and the nature of faith, I am with him 100% in his call to confront our own beliefs – and the beliefs of the world’s fundamentalists – with a large dose of cold reality. We can no longer afford to coddle insanity in the name of faith. The paranoid narratives of the world’s fundamentalisms – including secular fundamentalisms – must be demonstrated to be the fantasies they are.

Fundamentalists – including our home-grown variety – need to have their thinking challenged. There are at least two good ways to do that: Cognitive therapy – the public variety – and humor.

Both James Dobson and Joel C. Rosenberg are public figures making public arguments that effect our collective future (as Rosenberg said, "…given the events going on in our world today, people at the Pentagon, people at the CIA, people at the White House are asking to sit down and talk [with me] about these issues, to understand the Biblical perspective…"). They should be challenged publicly without deference to their "faith" status.

Serious cognitive challenges to this insanity must be offered. Both you and Sam helped begin that process with your recent books ("The Conservative Soul" and "The End of Faith", respectively), though from very different angles. But, with all due respect, nothing matches the power of… South Park:

While this famous episode does not address fundamentalism directly, it would allow your readers to get a first-hand (well, second-hand) glimpse of an MMORPG in action: "World of Warcraft" as experienced by South Park fourth-graders Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny. It’s only a short leap from there to James Dobson and "World of Rapture". 

Pissing Match Update

I too don’t want to get into a pissing match with Glenn Reynolds over torture since he claims his position is identical to mine. He’s just much more "sensible" about these things. The sensible position against torture is to say you’re against it, vote for and support the first administration in history that has legalized it, and then devote all your energies to minimizing or ignoring what they have done. If you think I’m being unfair, go read Glenn’s archives on torture yourself and make up your own mind. The great thing about the blogosphere is that if you really do care about this kind of thing, it’s all out there for inspection and for your own judgment.

But here’s a question that springs from Glenn’s public stance against any coercive interrogation that involves pain or injury (if you search the archives long enough, you’ll find it). Why would someone who is genuinely against torture, as defined by the law, spend more time mocking, attacking and criticizing the opponents of torture than criticizing the torture itself? This is not, after all, a minor issue. We have a severe moral and intelligence and military crisis. After Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Camp Cropper, Gitmo, Hicks, Padilla, etc. is it not bizarre to be more upset by the critics of torture than by the politicians who have enforced it? And the politicians who are still strongly supporting it? And after last week’s debate on torture, do you think that someone who strongly opposes torture would write a post about the candidates’ positions on the subject – in order to mock John McCain?

How, in short, does someone opposed to torture believe that the main phoney in this debate, the main man worth taking down a peg or two is … McCain? It just baffles me.

An Obsession With Spines

When you see a photograph which contains a bookshelf, can you resist trying to figure out what the books actually are? I can, but David McKie can’t, the poor bugger:

Whenever I see such pictures I have an uncontrollable urge to seize the nearest magnifying glass and try to decipher the titles. What is it that drives some people (I know others who confess to this failing) to devote their time to such snooping when we could be walking the downs, or exploring the music of Medtner, or deconstructing the latest piece about Paris Hilton?

In part, it’s just an addiction to books. When visiting stately homes, the bits that intrigue me most are the libraries. While others gasp in awe at the ormolu washstands, I eagerly examine the titles on the shelves – though often of course the books have been put there purely for show by later custodians, or are sometimes simply mocked-up covers with no real books behind them. But other, less healthy, instincts are operating here too. Perhaps it’s a form of voyeurism, a lust to discover guilty secrets. What I really hope to discover is that someone like Roger Scruton has shelf upon shelf of chick lit; that Jeremy Clarkson can’t get enough of the novels of Margaret Drabble; or that the dainty aesthete Roy Strong is harbouring a stack of books on motor-vehicle maintenance, one of which is a dog-eared volume entitled The Sump.