squee
02-26-2002, 05:26 PM
. . .is the end section to my favorite magazine, First Things (a journal mostly on religion in public life but also considering political news, et cetera), in which the publisher, John Newhaus, briefly dissects a few issues of the day. Here are some tidbits from the January issue (February's not being online yet):
One may be heartened, or not, by polls showing that the overwhelming majority of Americans back the security measures being imposed by the government. It depends upon whether one reads those polls as reflecting support for the war or indifference to civil liberties. Robert Harris, writing in the Daily Telegraph, wants it understood that he supports the war, but he is definitely disheartened. Drawing on the experience of World War II, he says that wars, even wars fought for freedom, are bad for freedoms. “Terrorist wars are, if anything, even more insidious, for there is never any definite victory after which prewar conditions can once again prevail. If proposed new powers of arrest and detention, interception and suppression are pushed through in allied nations, we may take it as absolutely certain that the rights that are being taken away will never be restored.” A problem with that is that we have never before been in this kind of war against terrorism. Another problem is that, in fact, after both world wars of the twentieth century, civil rights were not only restored but dramatically expanded. But he does have a good point about what constitutes “definite victory” in this kind of war. We are only a few months into the war, and so far there has been very little, if any, curtailment of the rights of citizens (unless it is a right not to have one’s nail clipper confiscated at the airport check–in). In any event, as with David Yeago’s assertion above, the conflict before us will likely provide ample time for reflection on, and debate about, such issues.
Richard Pipes of Harvard has written a little book, Communism, in Modern Library’s history series, and he packs a world of learning into a brief 175 pages. He concludes with this: “Marx maintained that capitalism suffered from insoluble internal contradictions, which doomed it to destruction. In reality, capitalism, being an empirical system responsive to realities and capable of adjustments, has managed to overcome every one of its crises. Communism, on the other hand, being a rigid doctrine—a pseudoscience converted into a pseudo–religion and embodied in an inflexible political regime—has proven incapable of shedding the misconceptions to which it was beholden and gave up the ghost. If it is ever revived, it will be in defiance of history and with the certainty of yet another costly failure. Such action will border on madness, which has been defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
A reader tells me I am further burdening an already troubled part of our community by pointing out that there is no historical parallel for a leadership of a people actively collaborating in the dramatic reduction of their numbers, as the leaders of black America do by their overwhelming support for abortion. No, I don’t think so. The fact is that, were it not for the children killed in abortion over the last thirty years, there would be more than twenty million more blacks in America than there are, with the greatly increased influence, political and otherwise, that comes with such numbers. Hispanics are on the edge of overtaking African Americans as the largest minority group, and one reason is abortion. There are white people in this country who think that, all in all, we would be better off if there were fewer black people. Until a few years ago, Planned Parenthood literature boasted of the huge amounts saved in education, welfare, and crime costs because of its “services” to the poor, meaning mainly the abortion of black babies. Many years ago, Jesse Jackson and other blacks used to draw the analogy between abortion and Pharaoh’s population policy for the Israelites. Not any more. Today there is hardly a black leader of national prominence who does not uncritically back the unlimited abortion license. I point this out not to further burden black Americans but to note their onerous burden in having a leadership that actively collaborates with those who do not wish them well.
An Associated Press story reports on a new study that finds that “feminine beauty affects a man’s brain at a very primal level, not on some higher, more intellectual plane.” Science marches on.
Admittedly, it is a delicate question. President Bush is undoubtedly right in not wanting to have the war against terrorism framed as a war between Islam and the Christian West—although sensible people acknowledge, sotto voce, that it is also that. The problem is that Bush—and, more egregiously, the State Department—keep making public statements about how authentic Islam is peaceful, nonviolent, supportive of religious freedom, and so forth. A Taliban spokesman is representative of the Muslim reaction to such statements: “I am astonished by President Bush when he claims there is nothing in the Koran that justifies jihad or violence in the name of Islam. Is he some kind of Islamic scholar? Has he ever actually read the Koran?” Surely it is enough for U.S. officials to say that we are fighting a war against terrorism, not against Islam; and that some Muslim scholars say terrorism is contrary to Islamic teaching, and we hope they are right. For our political leaders to go much beyond that is to raise questions about their credentials as scholars of comparative religion among non–Muslims, and to make them appear ludicrous to Muslims, who presumably do know something about Islam.
James Carroll, perpetrator of the risible history of Christian anti–Semitism Constantine’s Sword, is a columnist for the Boston Globe. “This War Is Not Just” is a rehash of the usual arguments, but he adds the complaint that the government used the anthrax scare to justify the war on terrorism. “Now, the operating assumption is that the anthrax cases, unrelated to bin Laden, are domestic crimes, not acts of war. But for a crucial moment, they effectively played the role in this war that the Gulf of Tonkin ‘assault’ played in the Vietnam War, as sources of a war hysteria that ‘united’ the nation around a mistake.” Apart from the fact that, as of this writing, we don’t know whether the anthrax attacks were domestic in origin, the events weeks earlier at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon seemed to have escaped Mr. Carroll’s attention. As readers of Constantine’s Sword have reason to know, Mr. Carroll has problems with making connections.
It is not as though the Christianly specific is forbidden everywhere. The Somerville Theater in Somerville, Massachusetts, presented “Jesus Has Two Mommies.” Daniel Gewertz of the Boston Herald hailed it as “a lesbian revision of the nativity tale just in time for the Yule season.” When asked why a Jewish lesbian is staging a play starring Jesus, Faith Soloway opined that “he’s like the icon of the Bible” and that around Christmastime he is “sort of the star.” In the play, two women join in a “commitment service,” and Ms. Soloway meets Jesus who approves, admitting that he had two mommies, Mary and Josephine, who met at a dyke bar called “The Burnin’ Bush.” Somerville is an upmarket and achingly PC community where one is not likely to meet Christians who would even hint at taking offense. Hey, it’s just blasphemy. Can’t you take a joke?
I think these are all fine topics to kick around on THT. Anyone want to begin?
One may be heartened, or not, by polls showing that the overwhelming majority of Americans back the security measures being imposed by the government. It depends upon whether one reads those polls as reflecting support for the war or indifference to civil liberties. Robert Harris, writing in the Daily Telegraph, wants it understood that he supports the war, but he is definitely disheartened. Drawing on the experience of World War II, he says that wars, even wars fought for freedom, are bad for freedoms. “Terrorist wars are, if anything, even more insidious, for there is never any definite victory after which prewar conditions can once again prevail. If proposed new powers of arrest and detention, interception and suppression are pushed through in allied nations, we may take it as absolutely certain that the rights that are being taken away will never be restored.” A problem with that is that we have never before been in this kind of war against terrorism. Another problem is that, in fact, after both world wars of the twentieth century, civil rights were not only restored but dramatically expanded. But he does have a good point about what constitutes “definite victory” in this kind of war. We are only a few months into the war, and so far there has been very little, if any, curtailment of the rights of citizens (unless it is a right not to have one’s nail clipper confiscated at the airport check–in). In any event, as with David Yeago’s assertion above, the conflict before us will likely provide ample time for reflection on, and debate about, such issues.
Richard Pipes of Harvard has written a little book, Communism, in Modern Library’s history series, and he packs a world of learning into a brief 175 pages. He concludes with this: “Marx maintained that capitalism suffered from insoluble internal contradictions, which doomed it to destruction. In reality, capitalism, being an empirical system responsive to realities and capable of adjustments, has managed to overcome every one of its crises. Communism, on the other hand, being a rigid doctrine—a pseudoscience converted into a pseudo–religion and embodied in an inflexible political regime—has proven incapable of shedding the misconceptions to which it was beholden and gave up the ghost. If it is ever revived, it will be in defiance of history and with the certainty of yet another costly failure. Such action will border on madness, which has been defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
A reader tells me I am further burdening an already troubled part of our community by pointing out that there is no historical parallel for a leadership of a people actively collaborating in the dramatic reduction of their numbers, as the leaders of black America do by their overwhelming support for abortion. No, I don’t think so. The fact is that, were it not for the children killed in abortion over the last thirty years, there would be more than twenty million more blacks in America than there are, with the greatly increased influence, political and otherwise, that comes with such numbers. Hispanics are on the edge of overtaking African Americans as the largest minority group, and one reason is abortion. There are white people in this country who think that, all in all, we would be better off if there were fewer black people. Until a few years ago, Planned Parenthood literature boasted of the huge amounts saved in education, welfare, and crime costs because of its “services” to the poor, meaning mainly the abortion of black babies. Many years ago, Jesse Jackson and other blacks used to draw the analogy between abortion and Pharaoh’s population policy for the Israelites. Not any more. Today there is hardly a black leader of national prominence who does not uncritically back the unlimited abortion license. I point this out not to further burden black Americans but to note their onerous burden in having a leadership that actively collaborates with those who do not wish them well.
An Associated Press story reports on a new study that finds that “feminine beauty affects a man’s brain at a very primal level, not on some higher, more intellectual plane.” Science marches on.
Admittedly, it is a delicate question. President Bush is undoubtedly right in not wanting to have the war against terrorism framed as a war between Islam and the Christian West—although sensible people acknowledge, sotto voce, that it is also that. The problem is that Bush—and, more egregiously, the State Department—keep making public statements about how authentic Islam is peaceful, nonviolent, supportive of religious freedom, and so forth. A Taliban spokesman is representative of the Muslim reaction to such statements: “I am astonished by President Bush when he claims there is nothing in the Koran that justifies jihad or violence in the name of Islam. Is he some kind of Islamic scholar? Has he ever actually read the Koran?” Surely it is enough for U.S. officials to say that we are fighting a war against terrorism, not against Islam; and that some Muslim scholars say terrorism is contrary to Islamic teaching, and we hope they are right. For our political leaders to go much beyond that is to raise questions about their credentials as scholars of comparative religion among non–Muslims, and to make them appear ludicrous to Muslims, who presumably do know something about Islam.
James Carroll, perpetrator of the risible history of Christian anti–Semitism Constantine’s Sword, is a columnist for the Boston Globe. “This War Is Not Just” is a rehash of the usual arguments, but he adds the complaint that the government used the anthrax scare to justify the war on terrorism. “Now, the operating assumption is that the anthrax cases, unrelated to bin Laden, are domestic crimes, not acts of war. But for a crucial moment, they effectively played the role in this war that the Gulf of Tonkin ‘assault’ played in the Vietnam War, as sources of a war hysteria that ‘united’ the nation around a mistake.” Apart from the fact that, as of this writing, we don’t know whether the anthrax attacks were domestic in origin, the events weeks earlier at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon seemed to have escaped Mr. Carroll’s attention. As readers of Constantine’s Sword have reason to know, Mr. Carroll has problems with making connections.
It is not as though the Christianly specific is forbidden everywhere. The Somerville Theater in Somerville, Massachusetts, presented “Jesus Has Two Mommies.” Daniel Gewertz of the Boston Herald hailed it as “a lesbian revision of the nativity tale just in time for the Yule season.” When asked why a Jewish lesbian is staging a play starring Jesus, Faith Soloway opined that “he’s like the icon of the Bible” and that around Christmastime he is “sort of the star.” In the play, two women join in a “commitment service,” and Ms. Soloway meets Jesus who approves, admitting that he had two mommies, Mary and Josephine, who met at a dyke bar called “The Burnin’ Bush.” Somerville is an upmarket and achingly PC community where one is not likely to meet Christians who would even hint at taking offense. Hey, it’s just blasphemy. Can’t you take a joke?
I think these are all fine topics to kick around on THT. Anyone want to begin?