The Democrats Religion Problem, Again

The always-excellent Amy Sullivan discusses liberal attitudes to the revelations of David Kuo (former second-in-command at the White House Faith-Based Office), who noted that the Bushites were taking their evangelical backers for a ride. It's a devastating expose, showing that the religious language employed by the regime is a fraud, a cynical charade, an afterthought. Perfect ammunition for the GOP's liberal critics, right? Wrong. As Sullivan points put, the mantra that Bush is trying to implement a theocracy is so ingrained among the left, they are unwilling to change their perspective, not only in the face of evidence to the contrary, but evidence that they can actually use against the administration to garner support. Sullivan concludes:

"In fact, the real revelation of Kuo's book is not that the Bushies don't care about evangelicals; it's that liberals are too wedded to their views to capitalize on it."

and

"If it turns out instead to be a political sham that produced only 1 percent of the new funds it promised for faith-based organizations, liberals need rethink their theocracy-phobia."

Liberals were all over tell-alls from Paul O'Neill, Ron Suskind, and Bob Woodward. Just not David Kuo. The major liberal blogs pretty much ignored the story. And, when the topic did come up, liberal commentators tend to mock and insult the evangelicals. This should be a golden moment for the Democrats. As shown in a recent poll, the Republicans have lost a 29-percentage point advantage among frequent church-goers in recent months. Shouldn't the Democrats be trying to capitalize on this? Or are they glued to their own prejudices with all the zeal of a Bush, a Cheney, or a Rumsfeld?

Stephen Colbert Does The Best Tolkien Analogies

In reference to this, Stephen explains this.

Help Me Obi-Wan Bin Laden, You're My Only Hope...

One of the revelations in Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine was that the CIA was certain that Bin Laden's last minute intervention on the eve of the 2004 election was geared to help Bush. After all, Bush's Iraq debacle and overall "up-yours" attitude to foreign affairs were major terrorist recruiting tools. And of course, Bush let Bin Laden slip through the cracks in Tora Bora, and then proclaimed that he didn't really care about him.

Which brings us to the question: will Osama pop up from his cave again before these crucial mid-term elections? If he does, the Democrats should immediately pounce on the fact that he's still free after all these years, thanks to Bushite incompetence. Why is it that only Republicans seem to run Bin Laden ads?

Republicans Support Forced Abortions

This is an old story, but one worth retelling. The scene: the Northern Mariana islands in Micronesia. The issue: a loophole. Garments produced here were entitled to enter the US market free of quotas and tariffs, it being a US territory. In essence, garment manufacturers were allowed to place "made in the USA" labels on their products, but were not required to adhere to U.S. labor laws. The Northern Mariana islands, became, in fact, a kind of Wild West for sweatshop operators, as they brought in women from China and the Philippines, subjecting them to appalling conditions. The women were forced to work 12 hour days, for half the U.S. minimum hourly wage, and were made to live in barbed wire prisons. What's worse, the sweatshop owners forced women to became pregnant to have abortions. As a sideline, they also fostered sex slavery.

Who could support such a situation? The modern Republican party. And quite brazenly too. Inspired by Jack Abramoff, and marshaled by Tom Delay, the GOP stood squarely behind the sweatshops. Delay even praised Abramoff's shady clients:

"You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system."

All the while, Delay claims the mantle of a Christian. And then there is Ralph Reed, erstwhile head of the Christian Coalition. Reed opposed legislation to subject these islands to U.S. federal wage and worker safety laws. Reed made the following statement:

"The radical left, the Big Labor Union Bosses, and Bill Clinton want to pass a law preventing Chinese from coming to work on the Marianas Islands. [The Chinese workers] are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ...[and] are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand."

Horrendous. There's more. Allen Stayman was a State Department official advocating labor law changes in the Northern Mariana islands. As such, he was a threat to Jack Abramoff and his clients. So Ken Mehlman, who was then White House political director (now head of the Republican National Committee) had him fired. In other words, this scandal reached the highest levels of the so-called Christian Bush administration.

This story just doesn't die. More recently, a Texas Republican (Ralph Hall) denounced a teenage sex slave from the floor of the House, claiming that she "wanted to do nude dancing." Don't you just love it when their real moral values come to the fore?

To conclude, I will quote again from Second Vatican Council document Gaudium Et Spes (the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World):

"The varieties of crime are numerous: all offenses against life itself, such as murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and willful suicide; all violations of the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture, undue psychological pressures; all offenses against human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children, degrading working conditions where people are treated as mere tools for profit rather than free and responsible persons: all these and the like are criminal: they poison civilization; and they debase the perpetrators more than the victims and militate against the honor of the creator."

I've quoted this before in the context of torture. But what comes next is also applicable to the Republicans. One final thought: if only the Democrats were not so in the thrall of the abortion lobby, they could be hanging the "forced abortions" banner over the heads of the GOP on a daily basis. Sometimes the Democrats are simply their own worst enemy.

Santorum Gets Tolkien Analogy Wrong

Rick justifies Bush's Iraqi fiasco with the following reasoning:

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else... It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

First things first. I discussed the real Tolkien analogy for the Bush administration here. It is the idea that one can engage in evil to do good. This is Bush's consequentialist logic for embracing torture, the idea that it is necessary to save lives. But, as Tolkien would say, this is akin to trying to use the ring of power against the Dark Lord. The One Ring is evil, and corrupts all who wield it. That is the lesson Santorum needs to draw, himself being an advocate of using the Ring.

But what to make of what he actually said? It's a little bizarre. It would be as if the alliance in the Lord of the Rings attempted to save Minas Tirith and Gondor by bringing down the wrath of Sauron on some far away realm, completely indifferent to the lives of the people who live in that realm. Santorum is supposed to be a Catholic. Is he seriously implying that the lives of some are worth more than the lives of others? Then again, this gels well with his consequentialist reasoning, and the Santorums of times past justified the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on precisely these grounds.

C.S. Lewis Makes Sense on Marriage

Andrew Sullivan quotes the chronicler of Narnia:

"My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, and the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought be to quite sharp, so that a man know which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not."

This is indeed the crux of the matter, as I've argued here, and it has direct relevance to the gay marriage debate. Remember, though, that Lewis was an Anglican. For him, marriage was not even a sacrament. Think about how much more resonance this should have among Catholics, as marriage assumes a whole new supernatural dimension. But there is so much muddy thinking out there, reflecting the inability to separate the sacrament--the permanent union of one man and one woman in mutual self-giving ordered toward the bearing and rearing of children-- from civil marriage, which is a legal arrangement bestowing certain rights and responsibilities. Of course, most of what passes for marriage in the secular world comes nowhere close to the sacramental ideal. And that's fine. We should not try impose Catholic conceptions of marriage on non-Catholics. We don't bat an eyelid when the secular authorities "bless" Britney Spears's 24-hour drunken Las Vegas marriage, so why do we care so much about gay marriage? Would accepting gay marriage not merely clarify the difference between the sacrament and the legal arrangement?

Kim Jong Il and J.R.R. Tolkien

The Times of London has a disturbing report from North Korea based on its infamous eugenics program, consisting of the murder of all disabled children. More than this, the regime is imbued with a sense of racial superiority, and there is a concerted effort, King Herod style, to kill the babies born to Korean women and Chinese men. The details are utterly appalling, with stories of babies thrown in baskets and left to die. Should this surprise us? If you think about it, not really. The society of North Korea is based upon a man-made ideology. Instead of God, we are presented with the deification of Kim Jong Il, underpinned by the notion of racial superiority.

What has Tolkien to do with this? Well, in a little gem of a book, Sanctifying Myth, Bradley Birzer argues that in Tolkien's world, everything that God (Illuvatar) creates is good, and that attempts of evil to create result in a "perverse mockery of Illuvatar's creation". The most prominent example are the Orcs, a hideous race created by Morgoth and Sauron (fallen angels on Tolkien's mythology) that are really corrupted Elves. Of course, since only God can create from nothing, the creation of evil is always a distortion of what is good. There is a core lesson Tolkien's writing for all of us. When human beings create their own "religions", based on ideologies that place humanity at the center, they serve only as a perverse mockery of the good that God has created. Thus communism was founded as a utopian desire to foster the betterment of the working classes, but ended up trying to control the lives and thoughts of its subjects, all the while denying the dignity of the individual. Hitlerism and Kimism are no different, creating a race-based religion, casually sliding into mass murder.

Poverty, Peace, and Dr. Yunus

I agree with Shadhu’s post below that the choice of Dr.Yunus is a good one, given that the Nobel Peace Prize is really a prize for doing good. He absolutely deserves a prize for doing good.

But the more interesting issue is whether Dr. Yunus would have deserved a "Peace Prize" that was much more narrowly defined: a prize for an actual contribution to world peace. Here we enter deep waters. Suppose we agree that Grameen has lifted millions of people out of poverty; a proposition for which there is good evidence. Does reducing poverty really bolster peace?

The standard argument in favor of the proposition is that poverty breeds despair, which breeds radicalism and terrorism. Perhaps this is true. But I’m skeptical. Isn't it equally likely that the truly poor have too much to worry about in terms of putting food on the table, to be the slaves of whatever extremist ideology is in the wind? Note that all the 9-11 hijackers, and other prominent would-be terrorists of recent vintage have been relatively well-educated and well-to-do. I would be more inclined to believe that income has a “U-shaped” relationship to the probability of becoming a violent extremist. Bill Gates and a Bangladeshi landless laborer share a propensity not to blow up airplanes.

Maybe, then, the argument is that poverty encourages civil conflict and / or inter-state conflict? But the twentieth century is the bloodiest century on record. It is also, by far, the most prosperous century in the history of humankind. And within this exceptionally bloody century, the greatest bloodbaths of all—World Wars I and II—were fought among the richest nations. So the link between poverty and peace is, again, hard to discern.

The Nobel Peace Prize to Grameen Bank

Eid came early to Bangladesh this year, with the Nobel Peace Prize going at long last to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank. Bangladeshis were ecstatic but not surprised by the news. Ever since Bill Clinton wrote in My Life that Mr. Yunus should have received the award long ago, it was just a matter of when not if.

Coincidentally, I have been reading Banker to the Poor, the autobiography of Mr. Yunus, lately. It is a highly readable book distinguished by humble candor. Mr. Yunus lovingly talks about growing up in rural and urban Bangladesh in the 1940s and 50s, traveling the world in his teens as a boy scout, living through the political and social turmoil of the era, pursuing higher education in the U.S. in the 60s, falling in love with a Russian-American and marrying her, returning to the newly independent Bangladesh, struggling professionally and personally immensely in his war-ravaged country, the latter because his foreigner wife simply could not adjust. Of course, during this period he also began to think about ways to address the acute poverty he saw around his Chittagong University campus, where he taught Economics.

I find the book a good read more for the social observations than the success story of Mr. Yunus or the Grameen Bank. Particularly compelling is the section on the initial difficulties of getting micro credit going, when rural women just wouldn't come out of their houses to talk about money, and how they could not believe their eyes when they received their first loan as they had never handled cash before. What happens to the same women in mere months is as good an example of empowerment as it gets.

On a rather sour note amid the jubilation, the Economist has come up with an article claiming that the Nobel Peace Prize has lost its way, and that Grameen was not an appropriate choice as micro-credit is not exactly "peacemaking." I find the article characterized by intellectual hubris. Even a cursory look at the list of past winners would reveal that the award has been about humanitarianism, which encompasses a larger and deeper idea than peacemaking. Hence the Nobel has been given to missionaries (Mother Teresa, 1979 and Albert Schweitzer, 1953), an agriculture scientist (Norman Bourlaug, 1970), and a writer (Elie Wiesel, 1986). Did the Economist object to those awards as well?

That this year's prize went to an institution and individual who have done wonders for poor women's financial and social conditions in a predominantly Muslim society underscores the Nobel Committee's impeccable sense of timing. In these troubled times when ominous beliefs like "clash of civilizations" are taking hold, it is deeply heartening to see an idea that aims to lift the downtrodden transcend cultures and civilizations, and receive global recognition.

Dobson's Response to Bushite Con Job

Yesterday, I discussed allegations made by David Kuo that the Bushite faith-based initiative was designed chiefly for political ends, and that the evangelicals were regarded as "nuts". So how would Fundie-in-Chief James Dobson respond to this? Outrage? Disappointment? Sadness?

None of the above. This is what Dobson says (thanks to Carpetbagger):

"The release of this book criticizing the Bush administration's handling of its faith-based initiative program seems to represent little more than a mix of sour grapes and political timing. David Kuo's book doesn't hit shelves until next week, but excerpts released by media outlets paint the picture of a dissatisfied federal employee taking shots at the White House effort to connect faith-based nonprofit groups with legitimate societal needs. Big media will no doubt play this story to the hilt in the next several weeks, because it allows them to take aim at two of their favorite targets: President Bush and socially conservative Christians. Sadly, Kuo's characterization of his former colleagues, bosses and mission — mischaracterizations, really — will be fed to the public as truth. "

In other words, he is sticking with Bush no matter what. The reason is quite simple: Dobson and his friends are simply a part of the Republican party. They do not really exist in any independent fashion. So of course the party is going to defend its own from attack.

But, in spite of Dobson, the evangelicals on the ground are not dumb. They know they've been played for fools. There are lots of polls floating around in this frantic pre-election season, but the most telling to date is a Gallup one showing the decline in support for Republicans among white frequent church-goers. In a spate of 3 months, a 29-percentage point advantage has dwindled to zero. This is fundamental. Remember, this is the last solid group in the Republican base.

Does Karl Rove Own Slate?

This morning, Slate (a magazine I respect) ran a piece entitled The Movie the Vatican Won't Want You To See. It goes on to take seriously the allegations of a documentary made by a group who wants to discredit Cardinal Mahony of Los Angelos. And it even accuses Pope Benedict of complicity in covering up pedophilia, which is exactly the opposite of what happened. Patrick Kenny in the Irish Examiner sets the record straight:

"In 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger reserved exclusive Church jurisdiction over such cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, primarily with the aim of speeding up the defrocking of priests.... If ... this Pope is responsible for a massive cover-up of child abuse cases, he has a strange way of showing it in practice. On two separate occasions within the first 13 months of his papacy he imposed strict penalties on famous founders of religious orders accused of abuse. The first was Fr Gino Burresi, founder of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary... Following an investigation into allegations of abuse, the Pope banned him practicing as a priest in any context whatsoever. For a priest, especially the founder of an order, this is a stunning Church penalty.... The same happened a year later in the case of 86-year-old Mexican Fr Marcial Maciel , the founder of the Legionaries of Christ. Hugely influential in the Church, his order was one of the fastest growing worldwide and has an associated lay group with tens of thousands of members. As a cardinal, Ratzinger initiated an investigation into accusations against Maciel; as Pope he imposed a ban on public practice as a priest and a requirement to live a life of penance. Pope Benedict still took a consistently hard line even when there was only a question mark of suspicion."

Doesn't Slate realize that this kind of unthinking bias is exactly makes Catholic run into the arms of Republicans? The sad thing is, anti-Catholicism is still rampant in this country, as reflected in the current witchhunt (and it is a witchhunt).

Santorum to Casey: I'm More Catholic Than You

Beleaguered Senator Rick Santorum claims that, yes, he is the real Catholic in the race. A little difficult to make this case, though, given that Casey is avidly pro-life. But that doesn't stop Santorum: he accuses Casey of not being pro-life enough, through his support of the morning after pill, and his opposition to nutty far-right judges. And of course, Casey supports civil unions. Never mind that people like Cardinal McCarrick professed to have no problems with civil unions.
Shame on the National Catholic Register for publishing such trash. Why no mention of Santorum's support for Bush's Iraqi adventure that left 655,000 dead? For his support of torture, a non-negotiable issue if any? Or how about the fact that the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) listed Santorum as one of the top three corrupt senators? Is that compatible with his Catholicism, I wonder? No, this is just the same nonsense that allows outfits like Catholic Answers and the Catholic League to feign neutrality, whereas in fact that lie in bed with the Republican party. And that bed is a very comfortable one, with 600-thread sheets, oversized pillows, and a glorious duvet.

William Donohue and Deal Hudson: Best Friends Forever (A Very Special Catholic League Watch)

Who is Deal Hudson? He was the hyper-conservative Catholic editor of Crisis magazine, who was first in line to swear fealty to the Bush administration, and to hector Catholics about how they needed to follow his lead. Along with his friend Bill Donohue, he led the Catholic assault on John Kerry in 2004. His bullying extended to the bishops, when he promised to take "a close look at some of the bishops who are allowing their local politicians to get away with the deception of calling themselves Catholic while voting for abortion rights."

Except that Hudson was undone by hypocrisy. In 2004, the National Catholic Reporter went public with allegations of an inappropriate sexual relationship with a freshman female student when he was a professor at Fordham University. The girl in question is Cara Poppas, who was a troubled undergraduate at the time (in and out of foster names, mother an alcoholic). She was 18 when she met Hudson, her professor. He invited her to a bar with some other students, dismissing the fact that she was under age. According to the NCR article (based on Poppas's recollection), Hudson began French kissing two girls, and started doing "body shots". He then took Pappas back to his office, and persuaded her to engage in sexual activities. Afterwards, Hudson left Fordham and paid $30,000 to terminate the girl's lawsuit.

Now, everybody makes mistakes, and I'm not a fan of "outing" people's past behavior. The main exception is where hypocrisy is on the line. Given his background, it is interesting that Hudson had the following to say about Bill Clinton:

"Over and over again, we hear on the talk shows that we shouldn't hold the president to a 'higher standard.' I would argue quite the opposite. Those who are not willing to bear the burden of these higher standards should not seek office . After we have stripped away all idealism from offices that bind our culture together -- president, father, husband -- what will be left for us to aspire to? Who will want to sacrifice personal desires for public responsibilities?" Of his daughter's reactions to the scandal, Hudson wrote that "she is being imbued with the lie that a person's private conduct makes no difference to the execution of their public responsibilities. It's this lie, alive in our culture of death, that has shaped the character of Bill Clinton and encouraged the moral softness in all of us."

But what is Donohue's role in this mess? This blog has been examining some of the Catholic League's most glaring instances of hypocrisy and partisanship (and will continue to do so). But the most notorious of all Donohue press releases do date pertains to his defense of Hudson. This press release was pulled shortly afterwards. Yes, even Donohue has some shame. Luckily, the intrepid Amy Sullivan preserved a copy. Here are the lowlights:

"Effective today, the Catholic League has a new requirement for all future employees: all candidates must show proof of being immaculately conceived, that is, they must demonstrate that they were conceived without sin. We fully understand that we have raised the bar very high, but in light of the revelation that the National Catholic Reporter decided to expose a sexual harassment charge against Deal Hudson-- one that was made almost a decade ago by a drunken female he met in a bar-- we at the Catholic League are not prepared to take any chances. Unfortunately, we will not be able to make our new requirement retroactive, for to do so would mean the Catholic League would have to shut down. You see, unlike the puritans at the NCR, we at the Catholic League are sinners. "

A drunken female he met at a bar? Such a cavalier attitude to the sexual shenanigans of Republicans was also displayed by his reaction to the Foley scandal of course:

"As for the alleged abuse, it's time to ask some tough questions. First, there is
a huge difference between being groped and being raped, so which was it Mr.
Foley? Second, why didn't you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all,
most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn't allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?"

Catholic League Watch 4

Donohue, today:

“The time has come for responsible Catholic leaders to hold up a stop sign to this kind of ad hominem assault. Robust free speech should be welcomed... but ... it must respect logic and standards of evidence. Character assassination ... does not meet that test.”

Past Donohue:

*After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn't allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?"

* The DNC is spinning out of control. It's support for anti-Catholic bigotry is now matched by its support for hard-care teen pornography.

*Meanwhile, the National Organization for Women is too busy celebrating gay marriage to be worried about a woman whose cheating husband allegedly asked Terri's nurses, 'When is that bitch gonna die?'

*An innocent person is being intentionally starved to death because lawmakers have decided to honor the words or her discredited, morally delinquent husband.

*It is not evangelicals who worry Catholics- it is fat-cat, left-wing bigots like George Soros who concern us.

* Who's Catholic? Freddy-the-Faker-Ferrer or Mike Bloomberg?

*Name for me a book publishing company in this country, particularly in New York, which would allow you to publish a book which would tell the truth about the gay death style.

*Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, okay? And I'm not afraid to say it. ... Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism.

*Gays were all of a sudden worrying if people would start aborting kids when they found out the DNA suggested the kid might be gay or God forbid, we'd run out of little gay kids.

*Well, look, there are people in Hollywood, not all of them, but there are some people who are nothing more than harlots. They will do anything for the buck. They wouldn't care. If you asked them to sodomize their own mother in a movie, they would do so, and they would do it with a smile on their face.

The first 6 quotes come from assorted Catholic League press releases (this, by the way, from an extremely brief review). Thanks to Media Matters for the last 4, from television appearances (as you can tell, Donohue is slightly more restrained in print!).

Earth to Evangelicals: Bush Has Been Using You!

It's really not a surprise. Every election year, the Bushites whip up the base into frenzy over gay marriage and how the Democrats want to bring Satan into the classroom, but nothing is ever delivered. Instead, the rich get their tax cuts, the war party gets to invade countries and torture people, the cronies get the good jobs, and the lobbyists get to write legislation.

Now, finally, the cat is coming out of the bag, as recent evidence suggests that the Bushites have been playing the poor evangelicals for fools all along. David Kuo, the former second-in-command at the White House Faith-Based Office, has said that the faith-based initiatives were there to serve a political end, and that Rove's office (the chief exploiter of evangelicals) viewed them as "nuts". Tucker Carlson also confirmed this recently, appealing to his personal knowledge, declaring that the "deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power." Then again, stooges like James Dobson (and our old friend Bill Donohue, the Catholic who acts like an evangelical) have only themselves to blame.

But it gets worse than this. A lot worse. More from Kuo:

"Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races. According to Kuo, 'Ken loved the idea and gave us our marching orders.' Among those marching orders, Kuo says, was Mehlman’s mandate to conceal the true nature of the events."

and

"In fact, when Bush asks Kuo how much money was being spent on “compassion” social programs, Kuo claims he discovered “we were actually spending about $20 million a year less on them than before he had taken office.” The money that
was appropriated and disbursed, however, often served a political agenda, Kuo claims.“Many of the grant-winning organizations that rose to the top of the process were politically friendly to the administration,” he says."

Playing everybody for fools. Playing God for a fool too. That may have consequences...

Err on the side of life? 655,000 dead...

George Bush, in the midst of the Terry Schiavo exploitation debacle, claimed that the government should always "err on the side of life". Noble sentiment. But, as with pretty much everything associated with this administration, a deep chasm spans rhetoric and reality. When indeed has Bush erred on the side of life? Surely not when he was mocking a woman on death row pleading for her life ('Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'")? Now we have an estimate that the US invasion of Iraq led to 655,000 deaths. That's a staggering number. Almost a third of the deaths were caused directly by the United States and other occupying forces.

Bush's "err on the side of life response"? First, dispute the numbers, which, by the way, come from a highly reputable study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I guess because the Bushites (in postmodern fashion) deny the existence of objective facts that are independent of ideology, they assume everybody else does so too. More pertinently, though, was Bush's next response:

"And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they're willing to you know, that there's a level of violence that they tolerate."

Remember again, this is supposed to be the Christian president.

The Stench of Hypocrisy III

Bill Kristol edition.

This is getting too easy. Anyway, this one comes courtesy of TNR's Jonathan Chait.

Kristol:

"It's not credible to tar a political party with the misdeeds of one person. ... Issues usually trump scandals. Americans like reading about scandals. They like watching Desperate Housewives. But voting is different from voyeurism."

And Kristol's evil twin:

"The dominant issue of the 1998 election will be Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton alone; his perjury; his cover-up; his obstruction of justice; and, yes, his sexual misconduct."

Welcome...

.. to the newest member of our dynamic blogging team, Straw Man! Be sure to read his stuff!

Lessons from North Korea

As I discussed in an earlier post, the Bush administration deserves a large portion of the blame for the current situation. The Bushites would not even consider negotiating with somebody that Bush's gut told to hate, and they could certainly not bring themselves to following the Clinton administration on anything. Let's look at the record:

George H. W. Bush: one to two bombs worth of plutonium.
Bill Clinton: zero plutonium.
George W. Bush: 4-6 nuclear weapons worth of plutonium and one nuclear test.

But this goes way beyond North Korea. As Kevin Drum put it:

"Let's recap: The Bush/Cheney administration took a bad situation with Iraq and made it even worse. They've taken a bad situation with Iran and made it even worse (see here, here, and here). They've taken a bad situation with North Korea and made it even worse (see Fred Kaplan here). At every step along the way, they've deliberately taken actions that cut off any possibility of solving our geopolitical problems with anything other than military force."

An, of course, much of the blame for these various debacle lies with Cheney and Rumsfeld. How many failures in the past six years cannot be traced to this dynamic duo, I wonder?

But of course, John McCain-- fresh from sacrificing his principles and supporting torture so he could become president-- blames Clinton's policy in the 1990s, when it was precisely this policy that kept North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. As Carpetbagger notes, if Clinton's policy was a failure, what do we make of Bush's policy? But that's beside the point! The real point is to drill it into people's minds that, after six years of incompetence and disaster, Clinton is still to blame. For 9/11. For not catching Bin Laden. For Hurrane Katrina. I'm sure they'll pin Mark Foley on him shortly.

Jesus Camp

I saw this documentary last night. It's about a summer camp for evangelical fundamentalist children, where the desire of the pastor is to instil in them the same passion and fire that she sees in children throughout the Islamic world (presumably on television). It's full of extremist rhetoric about "Christians" seizing back the country, as well as highly emotional, almost crazed, worship services. The most horrific moment comes when the children are urged to worship and pray before a "golden calf" in the form of a cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush.

What to make of this? It's too easy to go for the standard liberal platitudes about separation of church and state, and the horror of Chistians mimicking the Taliban. I think there is a need to go deeper, to explore how these people think. What is the true underlying theology, and how has it deviated so much from historic Christianity? And in that, what are the errors and dangers? Three points come to mind.

First, they are voluntarists. As I noted before the in context of Islam, voluntarism believes that God should be seen as a force of pure will, not intelligence or reason, and that God's purposes are essentially arbitrary. On the other hand, the Catholic view is that God is rational (Logos), which means that God is truth and infinite Intelligence. Voluntarism suffuses the evangelical Christianity on display in this movie. One of the opening scenes in the movie shows the pastor beginning her sermon by repeating over and over "God can do anything". And when you look at some of their beliefs pertaining to the world, it's hard to deny the influence of voluntarism. Science and the laws of nature can pretty much be ignored. As one of the protagonists claims, "science doesn't prove anything". They go to great pains to debunk the consensus of scientific wisdom pertaining to global warming, and adhere to a ridiculous notion of "creationism" (denying evolution). This is voluntarism, pure and simple. And as I noted before, voluntarism is always tempting when your source of revelation is a fixed text. So, yes, American evangelicalism shares some traits and faults with Islam.

Aside from an anti-intellectualism in the scientific sphere, is this really so dangerous. Well, yes. To see why, I need to explore the second issue: the doctrine of predestination. This holds that God divides the world randomly into two groups, the saved and the unsaved, with the latter damned to hell. Even worse, this decision is made before you are born, so there is nothing you can do about it. We see evidence of this too in the movie. In a sense, this comes directly out of the voluntarist ethic, given the concept of an erratic, somewhat capricious God, that it implies. And in the ultimate random capricious act of all, they believe that God will take all believers to heaven (the "rapture") and damn the rest. What this means of course is that it is possible to divide the world into good and evil, the realm of God and the realm of the devil. It then takes only a short leap to claim America as God's country (you can hear a lot of that in the movie) and the obvious implication that America's enemy (communism yesterday, fundamentalist Islam today) is the realm of Satan. It goes without saying that Satan needs to be destroyed, not negotiated with, and we certainly need to waste no effort trying to understand him! This also explains the embrace of Bush, the military trappings and the idealization of the military, and the constant presence of the American flag. More worryingly, it explains the evangelical support for American exceptionalism, a hyper-Zionist view of the Palestinian crisis, and Bush's "pre-emptive" war. If God has damned them all anyway, what's the problem with a few carpet bombs, or even a small nuclear attack?

Third, what is striking about the movie is the lack of rootedness in historic Christianity. Conservatism is supposed to be about conserving what is good about the past, and yet this supposedly "conservative" groups embrace the most shallow, most materialistic, most banal, aspects of American suburban life. It's convenient they deny global warming, because they drive trucks and SUVs. And clearly, the sin of gluttony is not high on their agenda given the size of the pastor. Top of the list are sexual sins, but the other stuff seems to get left behind. As a Catholic, it's hard to describe how weird I find these "churches'', that look like concert halls, replete with huge stages, bands, cheesy soft rock music, and lots of emotional jumping up and down. How is this related to historic Christianity? It isn't. It comes right out of modern America. Orthodox Jews and Amish dress in certain ways to remind themselves that they are ultimately not of this world. Similarly, when Catholic priests wear vestments, use incense, and celebrate mass using prayers dating from the earliest days of the church, it reminds us that we are part of something bigger, something more profound, a sense of the sacred amid the hum-drum of the early 21st century life. But with the evangelicals, they take modern America right into their churches with them. Is it any surprise that their outlook is so narrow?