Category Archives: Faith

Have some fun in the Sistine Chapel

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The guy who did the ceiling.

Before I forget about it totally — go check out this cool interactive Vatican site that Burl brought our attention to in a comment the other day. You can spin it around 360 degrees in three dimensions, and do so all sorts of different ways by changing the mouse

setting down in the left-hand corner (where you’ll also find the buttons that let you zoom in and out).

Very cool. And much cheaper than a trip to Rome. I enjoyed it, anyway.

Michelangelo did a pretty awesome job. I wonder what he would have charged, say, to do my TV room?

3D Politics: And that puts the UnParty… smack dab in the middle, more squarely than ever

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As you know, I strenuously resist any attempt to place me along America’s left-right political spectrum, even to the extent of being in the middle. Personally, I just don’t feel comfortable anywhere on that line, and “middle” suggests always being somewhere between the two extremes (or, to use another paradigm I reject, between the two parties), which I most certainly am not. Depending on the issue, sometimes I’m in the middle, sometimes I agree with Democrats, sometimes with Republicans, and sometimes I’m out beyond either of them on their respective “wings.”

That’s because I think about each issue and the various factors bearing upon it, rather than buying a prefab set of values selected by someone else to appeal to some variation on the lowest common denominator. I passionately believe that that’s an inadequate, and intellectually dishonest, way to approach important public issues.

Considering all of that, I was intrigued by a chart Herb Brasher shared with me, which was compiled by his son, a teaching fellow in political science at Indiana University.

Here’s the description. The chart itself is above:

I’ve been thinking about messing around with a 3-dimensional model of partisan ideology for a while. Usually we only talk of right vs. left, although some political science literature works with two dimensions. While somewhat difficult to display for an artistically challenged person like me, I make a rough shot at placing European, Canadian, and American parties in a more complex political spectrum. Any thoughts, suggestions?
1) Parties / Party Families
a) SOC: European socialists
b) SOD: European Social Democrats and some socialists; British labour; Canadian NDP;
c) Green: Greens/environmental parties
d) CD: European Christian Democrats
e) DEM: American Democrats
f) CON: European and Canadian conservatives
g) LIB: European liberals
h) CLIB: Canadian Liberals
i) REP: American Republicans
j) TEA: American Tea-party
2) Partisan Ideology Dimensions:
a) Some assumptions:
i. Instead of the common left-right model, or even two-dimensional one in some political science literature, a three-dimensional one; added complexity, but also better representation of reality?
ii. Note: all parties fit within the liberal democratic framework – I’m not including parties that want to get rid of democratic regime form
b) Dimensions
i. Free vs. social market – degree to which party advocates government involvement in the economy, and social welfare policies
ii. Environment vs. Growth – degree to which party advocates environmental protection, quality of life vs. growth of economy (particularly jobs) – this is separate from the
above issue – strong interventionist parties, like the social democrats, are not traditionally known as pro-environment (blue-collar jobs, etc.)
iii. Secular-Religious – degree to which party/party family either rhetorically or programmatically promotes traditional vs. progressive values; or situates itself as a secularizing force, or protective of religion, etc.
3) Interpreting Party Position
a) Position: I place the parties in the figure based on a quick and dirty assessment of its ideological positioning vis-à-vis each of these dimensions
b) Size: I’m assuming that each party ‘box’ is the same size; however, in order to get a 3D effect, the bigger the box appears in the figure (and the bigger the font), the closer it is to the front, and the smaller, the further back it is. In this case, since the secular-religious dimension is the third dimension, the more secular a given party/party family is, the further up front it is, the further back, the more religious.

Unfortunately, this did not help place me, really — except, if you assume that these are the three axes that must be considered, to put me right in the middle, even in three dimensions. Here’s why:

  • Free vs. Social Market — This just doesn’t cause a flutter in my heart either way. The libertarians on the blog will cry, “He’s a statist!,” but I’m not. I sound like it sometime because the prevailing wind in South Carolina is radically libertarian, libertarian to a harmful degree, and I resist it strenuously in an effort to pull the conversation toward a neutral middle ground. I believe there is nothing inherently superior about either the public or the private sector (which is why I’m always arguing with people who believe, ideologically, that the private is inherently better — I never run into anyone on the opposite side of that equation to argue with). There are simply issues that are better solved one way, and others that are better solved another.
  • Environment vs. Growth — I’ve cared deeply about the Earth since before the first Earth Day, when I was in high school. But I think some people take some really ridiculous, harmful positions in the name of love of the Earth. I reject those who reflexively reject nuclear power, for instance. And of course we should drill in the ANWR and offshore — taking care to do so safely. In fact, my whole Energy Party Manifesto sits squarely along the center of this axis. Or perhaps I should say, borrows from various points along it. And one of the reasons why is that I think the country’s strategic position in the world is tied up with, and just as important as, the two issues on this axis. That affects the way I look at both.
  • Secular-Religious — No question that I endorse the First Amendment and the liberal democracy it makes possible. I also think secularists are off their trolleys with their oversensitivity about religion in public life, seeing every small expression — a nativity, a blue law, a public prayer — as some sort of establishment of a theocracy. So again, I can’t be comfortable in either camp.

    • The thing is, I think a lot more than those three factors are involved, and I try to take all the other factors into account as well. So does the UnParty, bless them.

    Stand in the place where you live

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    Strong misgivings: Yossarian and the chaplain.

    For the longest time, I didn’t have a quotation on my Facebook profile. This didn’t seem right. I’m all about words. I’m all about pithy expressions of one’s world view, yadda, yadda. (Although I fear that now that I no longer have the discipline of writing a weekly column, I’ve gotten somewhat lazy about it, hence the “yadda, yadda.”)

    Loads of other people — people who were not overly thoughtful students of rhetoric, judging by the quotations they chose — had multiple quotations. They had all sorts of things they wanted to say — or rather, things they wanted to let other people say for them.

    But the thing is, I like so MANY things that I read — one of my problems in reading books is that, as I read them, I follow people around reading great passages aloud to them (and a well-written book will have at least one such passage per page), which is why people avoid me when I’m reading books — that the idea of singling out one, or two, or even 10 such quotes just seemed too restrictive. I thought, What is that good that I’m willing to have it almost as a personal epitaph? People will see that and think this sums me up. What quotation is there that I like that much?

    It would need to be semi-original (obviously, if it were entirely original, it wouldn’t be a quotation). It couldn’t be trite. I couldn’t have seen anyone else use it. It needed to say something I believe. And it needed to be something that has truly stuck with me over time, as opposed to, say, the funniest recent thing I’ve read on Twitter.

    So one day it struck me that I should post this:

    “I wouldn’t want to live without strong misgivings. Right, Chaplain?”
    — Yossarian, in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22

    So I did.

    And for the longest time, that stood alone, and I was satisfied to let it do so. I liked it on a number of levels. For instance, in a day when our politics are dominated by people who are SO DAMNED SURE they’re right and other people are wrong, it had a certain countercultural UnParty flavor to it. At the same time, it’s not an existential statement of doubt — the fact that he’s saying it to a chaplain, one who certainly believes in God (although in an unorthodox way, being an Anabaptist), anchors it in belief, but still expresses the idea that one should always be willing to question one’s assumptions.

    It also said something I wanted others to know about me. Because I tend to argue whatever position I’m arguing rather tenaciously, even vociferously, people tend to think I’m inflexible. They’re wrong about this. I can usually think of all the reasons I might be wrong just as readily as they can, perhaps even more readily. (After all, one of the main steps in building an argument is imagining all the objections to it.) For instance, take our arguments over the Iraq War, or the debates I have with libertarians. My interlocutors think I’m a bloodthirsty war lover, and a rigid authoritarian. But I’m not, not really. I have a tendency to argue very insistently with your more radical libertarians because I think they go overboard, and that I have to pull REALLY HARD in the other direction to achieve any balance. And on the subject of the war, well… when you reach the conclusion that military action is necessary, and that action is initiated, I feel VERY strongly that you have to see it through, and that the time for debating whether to initiate it is long past. At least, that’s the way I saw the Iraq situation. That doesn’t mean I didn’t think there were viable arguments against it in the first place — I was just unpersuaded by them.

    I suppose I could go on and on about why I like the quotation, but that’s not what this post is about.

    This post is about the fact that I thought that quote was sort of lonesome, so I added another today:

    “Stand in the place where you live.”
    — R.E.M.

    And here’s why I picked this one.

    I’ve always had a beef with people who constantly tear down the place where they live. You know, the whiners who always want to be someplace else. The people who seem to think that if it’s local, it’s no good. These people are destructive. They’re not good neighbors to have.

    You know that I’m a born critic, and I’m constantly expressing dissatisfaction with aspects of Columbia, or South Carolina. But I do it from a love of my home, and from a determination to make it better. If there’s something you don’t like about your home, you should be trying with all your might to make it better.

    To me, this is a fundamental moral obligation. And like most true believers, I can find Scripture to back it up. Remember the passage that Nathan Ballentine came up with to encourage me when I got laid off? It was Jeremiah 29:11:

    For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.

    Well, when I looked that up, I found that I liked what preceded that just as much, the passage in which the prophet told the people not to whine about being in exile, but to affirmatively embrace the place where they were, and get on with life in it:

    Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon:
    Build houses to dwell in; plant gardens, and eat their fruits.
    Take wives and beget sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters. There you must increase in number, not decrease.
    Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.

    Let’s repeat that last:

    Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the LORD, for upon its welfare depends your own.

    Amen, I say unto you. Stand in the place where you live.

    Bad Things Arising (got to shake these from my head)

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    Over the weekend, I had some silly be-bop song running through my head, after hearing it on a CD my wife was playing in the kitchen. Perfectly harmless, and no permanent damage. I’ve already forgotten what song it was.

    Today, something more ominous has gripped my mind… I’ve got two songs from “Jesus Christ Superstar” running through my mind — “This Jesus Must Die” (which is bad enough) and “Judas’ Death.”

    This is what I get, I suppose, for not going to Mass yesterday. I had a cold, I was scheduled to administer the Eucharist, and under the circumstances I thought it best not to show.

    Now this.

    Sample lyrics from the first song:

    Caiaphas:

    Fools! You have no perception
    The stakes we are gambling
    Are frighteningly high
    We must crush him completely
    So like John before him
    This Jesus must die
    For the sake of the nation
    This Jesus must die
    Must die, must die
    This Jesus must die…

    And a sample from the second:

    Judas
    My God, I saw him
    He looked three-quarters dead
    And he was so bad
    I had to turn my head
    You beat him so hard
    That he was bent and lame
    And I know who everybody’s
    Going to blame
    I don’t believe he knows
    I acted for our good
    I’d save him all the suffering
    If I could
    Don’t believe
    Our good
    Save him
    If I could

    Now, in my defense, the first song really has some appealingly clever lyrics, before you get to the bloodthirsty ones:

    Annas
    What then to do about Jesus of Nazareth?
    Miracle wonderman, hero of fools

    Priest
    No riots, no army, no fighting, no slogans

    Caiaphas
    One thing I’ll say for him, Jesus is cool…

    What then to do about this Jesusmania?
    How do we deal with the carpenter king?
    Where do we start with a man who is bigger
    Than John was when John did his baptism thing?

    But nevertheless, this is not a good way to start the week…

    Pro-life snub of Sheheen misses huge opportunity

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    Pat pointed out back here the fact that my old friend Holly Gatling (formerly of The State‘s Pee Dee bureau) and her compatriots at South Carolina Citizens for Life endorsed Nikki Haley for the thinnest, most procedural of reasons. That is indeed true:

    Citizens for Life director Holly Gatling says Haley scored a 100 on its 19-question election survey. She says Democrat Vincent Sheheen has voted with the anti-abortion group and has “never been hostile to our issues.” But he did not return the survey, so the group backed the candidate who put it in writing.

    The fact is that in Vincent Sheheen, the pro-life movement has that most rare and precious of commodities, a creature that those who care should want to warmly embrace, cosset and nurture — a pro-life Democrat. Not since Bob Casey won his Senate seat from Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, despite the nasty blowback from the likes of NARAL, has there been such a chance to support a pro-life Democratic nominee for high office.

    And SCCofL has blown that opportunity for the sake of a piece of paper not obediently filled out.

    Thereby the pro-life movement misses the opportunity to demonstrate it is more than a lapdog of the Right, to be taken for granted, to be bought for a piece of paper filled out with the answers that everyone knows they want to hear. The state Chamber of Commerce has had the guts to demonstrate in this race that it is not slavishly Republican. Even Republicans, from Cyndi Mosteller to Bobby Harrell, have to varying degrees expressed their differences with the nominee of their party. Why pass up this opportunity to demonstrate some real, conscience-based, independence for the sake of a piece of paper?

    As The State noted a month ago, the pro-life movement has TWO strong candidates in the major-party nominees for governor (the subhed was, “Voters who support procedures left in cold by major candidates for governor” — those of you who want to pause and hold a moment of silence for the folks Holly calls the “pro-aborts” because for once they don’t have a champion, go right ahead; I will move on), and one of them is someone who, being a Democrat, actually takes some political risk, who actually gets out of the comfort zone of a member of his party, for his support for life. Me, I’d want to give a guy like that some props. But that’s me.

    War and Peace in the hymnal on Sunday

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    Remembering “War is Hell” Sherman reminded me of our processional hymn at Mass yesterday. For the first time since I was a kid, I think, I found myself singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

    It sort of snuck up on me. I had been scheduled as “alternate reader” — in English this time, so I hadn’t studied in advance (I always have to practice, to warm up the right muscles, before reading in Spanish) — but when I arrived, all the slots were filled on the sign-up sheet, so I went to take a seat with my wife for a change. Then, just as the processional hymn was starting up, Judy leaned in to our pew to hurriedly whisper that I was needed, after all. Apparently, someone had messed up and signed in on the wrong spaces at a previous mass.

    So I moved quickly to line up for the procession, Debra handed me a hymnal/lectionary, I asked “Which reading?,” was told it was the first (Good! I love doing the first; not so much the second), and was flipping through the book to check it out when I was asked if I could “double up” and serve as a Eucharistic minister, too, and I said sure, just as we stepped off to start the procession.

    So it was not until then, as the congregation was starting the second verse, that I realized we were singing “The Battle Hymn.” Not knowing that verse, I wisely suppressed the urge to sing the first lyrics that came to mind:

    Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school
    We have tortured all the teachers; we have broken ev’ry rule…
    Glory, glory, hallelujah
    Teacher hit me with a ruler
    I hit her in the bean with a rotten tangerine…

    Finding the right page, I then sang with the others as we walked up the aisle:

    I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
    They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
    I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
    His day is marching on.

    And the thought occurred to me, This is what it feels like to be a Yankee, self-righteously celebrating victory over us Southerners… (And no, we didn’t sing it in a medley with “Dixie,” Elvis-style.)

    You may have noticed, church gives me a lot to think about on Sundays, but it’s not always what I should be thinking about. But I try.

    I focused a little better when I went to the pulpit to do the first reading, which began:

    The LORD said to Moses,
    “Go down at once to your people,
    whom you brought out of the land of Egypt,
    for they have become depraved.
    They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them,
    making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it,
    sacrificing to it and crying out,
    ‘This is your God, O Israel,
    who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’
    “I see how stiff-necked this people is, ” continued the LORD to Moses.
    Let me alone, then,
    that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them.
    Then I will make of you a great nation.”…

    You see why I like the first reading? Unlike all that theological abstraction you get with Paul’s letters (which is what you get on the second reading most of the year), there’s drama in the Old Testament. The readings we use from it are never boring or tedious. Lots of Sturm und Drang. You can really get into it reading it aloud. I especially like the flair in “Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them,” like the Lord’s just beside himself, indulging in such a Shakespearean rhetorical flourish (as in, “Bear with me;
    My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.    “)

    I found myself thinking how like a divine editorial writer the Lord sounded there. I could imagine him haranguing SC voters for being a depraved, stiff-necked people for electing Mark Sanford twice, or nominating Alvin Greene. As I walked back to my pew, I started imagining how I could rewrite that as a political satire on the blog, but decided that would be just a little too sacrilegious.

    So did I ever set aside idle digression and get into a proper, worshipful state of mind during that hour?

    Actually, I did. I found myself blessed by one of those rare moments of transcendence that you always hope for, whatever church or other house of worship you attend.

    I don’t know if it was the way our music director had arranged it, or the voices of the choir (only about five people at that Mass) lifting above the congregation’s, or the brilliance of Jean Sibelius, or the coffee I had for breakfast kicking in. But as we sang it yesterday, Finlandia sounded like the most beautiful hymn I had ever heard. It may sound trite, like something an envious Salieri would say about Mozart’s work, but it was as though the voice of God himself were leading us.

    And as we sang, I realized the lyrics were every bit as strikingly beautiful as the music. Particularly the second verse, which was the most poetic evocation of the universal longing for peace that I have ever heard:

    My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
    and sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine.
    But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
    and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
    This is my song, oh God of all the nations;
    a song of peace for their land and for mine.

    Best line of all: But other lands have sunlight too and clover…

    After Mass, I said something about it, and my wife said the same. Of course, she’s not a war-monger like me — quite the opposite, in fact. So it’s not as surprising that she liked it. But it’s a testament to the beauty of the moment that I did, too. Very much.

    The original Finnish lyrics, by the way, are more run-of-the-mill nationalistic stuff. Whoever wrote the English version above (and there are many songs sung to this tune), was, I believe, divinely inspired.

    Is this the best Stephen Hawking can do?

    11 Replies

    It was with some trepidation that I started reading the piece in the WSJ over the weekend headlined “Why God Did Not Create the Universe,” and with the byline of Stephen Hawking and some other guy.

    I mean, he’s a smart guy. He knows lots of stuff. Maybe he’ll make a good argument that I don’t want to hear. Right?

    But I read it anyway.

    And the whole time, I figured he was lulling me, leading me down a logical primrose path, so that when he finally hit me with the reason WHY God didn’t create the universe, I wouldn’t see it coming. I was all ready to be indignant over such a cheap trick.

    That’s because most of the piece, to me, beautifully expresses the reasons why one would naturally believe in a Creator God.

    I knew that he knew this, and he acknowledged it by saying “Many people would like us to use these coincidences as evidence of the work of God.” And when he did say that, I thought, here it comes. Here’s the Whammer coming up to the plate. He’s going to knock God’s pitch right out of the park.

    But he didn’t. At best, he took a walk.

    Near as I can tell, what he had to say was that, ummm, it doesn’t have to be God. Even though, you know, this is kinda the way it would look if God DID create it. But he didn’t have to. At least, I don’t think so…

    It was weak. When I was finished, I understood why the WSJ had buried it on an inside page in a back section. If he’d made a better argument, it would have been real news. Far better to play Tony Blair’s essay on the front of that section. He made more sense. He always does. (You know, he converted to Catholicism. Just like me.)

    Sure, Newton’s thinking was kind of fallacious, if Hawking is accurate in the way he describes that luminary’s attempt to stick up for God by saying our habitable solar system did not “arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature.” The problem was with the “mere” part. As though said laws would be anybody’s but God’s. I mean, duh. Whether you’re a deist or a Prebyterian, the original Designer fits perfectly with observable facts.

    But I always come away from these things thinking that. When I look at life evolving over billions of years, I think to myself, Yep, that’s exactly the majestic way He would do it. As Tom Sawyer would say, I wouldn’t give shucks for any other way. Or for a God who wanted to do it any other way.

    But that’s just me, I guess.

    The Koran-burning church, and other foolishness

    33 Replies

    By now you’ve heard about it. I tend to look at it from the perspective of Gen. David Petraeus:

    KABUL, Afghanistan — The top American commander in Afghanistan has warned that plans by a small Florida church to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday, the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, could play into the hands of the very extremists at whom the church says it is directing that message.

    Burning copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, “would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence,” the commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus said in an e-mail message to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

    Echoing remarks the general made in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Tuesday, he said: “It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort. It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”…

    Somebody needs to find a way to talk some sense to those rockheads down in Florida. Unfortunately, sense is one thing I’m sure they are adamantly determined not to hear. Folks like that are allergic to it, or something. The fact that it’s senseless provocation is what appeals to them. Or maybe I’m wrong. The pastor says he hasn’t changed his mind, but is praying about it. Here’s hoping the Almighty answers him with a big, booming, bone-rattling NO, so that even he can hear it.

    One of the really unfortunate things about modern global communications is that when some marginal, fringe doofuses that no one in this country would pay attention to acts out this way, it gets reported to other idiots on the other side of the world, who use it as an excuse to riot and generally raise hell, which makes the idiots over here feel justified, and so the foolishness continues, one generation into the next… (I think the writer of Ecclesiastes would have been a blogger today).

    Basically, what we have here is a low-rent version of the allegedly sophisticated “journalists” in Europe who proved how free and enlightened they were (to each other) by specifically commissioning cartoons designed for no other purpose than to be of maximum insult value to conservative Muslims. And thus another unnecessary cycle of violence was launched. (The Enlightened Ones would justify themselves by saying that the violent reactions were unjustified. Of course they were unjustified, you twits. They were also entirely predictable, and your provocation of it was entirely unnecessary.)

    I mean, if you just start with what Mamanem taught you before kindergarten, you don’t go around poking fun at the way other folks do church. Sure, if you’re a Baptist, you know what those Methodists do down the street isn’t REAL baptism, but you don’t make fun of them because well-bred people don’t do that. Well, this is like that, only with AK-47s — we have a practical reason not to unnecessarily inflame irrational passions. It’s not just rude, but stupid.

    And when it endangers our troops in the field — and Gen. Petraeus is absolutely right to point that out — it is inexcusable.

    Why did I write this? I don’t know. I set out thinking this would be a good thing to discuss, but then as I was typing, I thought, “What’s to discuss?” So I threw in the cartoons stuff. I know some of y’all will argue with me about that, but the point is the same, from my perspective.

    Mistaking feeling for thinking in American politics

    20 Replies

    I enjoyed reading an op-ed piece in the WSJ this morning headlined “A Muslim Reformer on the Mosque,” with the subhed, “The warriors for tolerance and the antimosque crusaders are both wrong.”

    Some bits I particularly liked… this:

    Election-year politics, ratings-hungry media and deep personal fear foment raw emotion. In such an environment, “I’m offended” takes on the stature of a substantive argument. Too many Americans are mistaking feeling for thinking.

    And this:

    As a proud New Yorker as well as a reformist Muslim, I think, and not just feel, that this would be a fitting salute to the victims of 9/11. It would turn the tables on the freedom-hating culture of al Qaeda. And it would subvert the liberty-lashing culture of offense.

    Perhaps you’re noting there’s a certain theme in what I like. Of course, I kind of helped you out by boldfacing the important points.

    That first one should be made into a bumper sticker:

    Too many Americans are mistaking feeling for thinking.

    Maybe we should streamline it:

    Don’t just feel. THINK.

    It can be truly said of so very many things. Sure, I can speak from the gut when I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I did it back here. But I was aware that I was doing it. I told you I was doing it. Am I always that self-aware and candid about it? No. We are infallible. I mean, fallible.

    But I try to lobby for thinking whenever it occurs to me to do so. That’s what I was doing back here. A few threads back, I was accused by Kathryn of making like a Vulcan. To which I could only respond, “Captain, Kathryn is being illogical.”

    Yeah, we need some passion in public life. But we could use a LOT more Spock.

    We got a fever in American politics, and the only prescription is more Spock.

    Gay bar planned next to Ground Zero mosque

    26 Replies

    Well, I got a hoot out of this item, shared by Stan Dubinsky:

    Greg Gutfeld To Open A Gay Bar Next To Ground Zero Mosque To Cater To “Islamic Gay Men”

    No, this is not a joke. In fact, it is instead one of the most brilliant pieces of provocations in recent years. Greg Gutfeld from Fox News’ Red Eye announced today via his blog that he is actively speaking to investors and plans on opening a gay bar next to the controversial mosque being built near Ground Zero in New York. To make matters worse (better?) the bar will be specifically designed to cater to homosexuals of the Islamic faith. God, this is going to be an exciting block.
    Here’s Gutfeld’s entire post which he will expand upon during tonight’s Red Eye:
    “So, the Muslim investors championing the construction of the new mosque near Ground Zero claim it’s all about strengthening the relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim world.
    As an American, I believe they have every right to build the mosque – after all, if they buy the land and they follow the law – who can stop them?
    Which is, why, in the spirit of outreach, I’ve decided to do the same thing.
    I’m announcing tonight, that I am planning to build and open the first gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men. To best express my sincere desire for dialogue, the bar will be situated next to the mosque Park51, in an available commercial space.
    This is not a joke. I’ve already spoken to a number of investors, who have pledged their support in this bipartisan bid for understanding and tolerance…

    I just don’t know what I can add to that, other than to point out the obvious: The folks who want to build this mosque there have every right to do so, no matter how it may offend the sensibilities of many touchy Americans. In keeping with that principle, they are under NO obligation to, say, move it a few blocks away. At the same time, this guy is perfectly within HIS rights to start this bar, no matter how deeply offensive it would be to many touchy Muslims.

    As a sorta kinda communitarian, I’m always interested in the tension between what people have a RIGHT to do, and what they OUGHT to do if they are sensible folk.

    An “alternative” Nikki Haley? Nope. Her sister…

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    Twisted Sister — whose music both Nikki Haley and Sarah Palin employ as a theme, in spite of their Family Values messages — represents one kind of irony. Here’s another kind, and it also involves a sister — specifically, Nikki’s. (At least, it’s her sister unless there’s another person with the same name who looks this much like Nikki.)

    When I first saw the picture above, I thought it WAS Nikki — maybe Nikki in an alternative universe — but then I saw it was her sibling, Simran Singh. Her Web site describes her this way, in part:

    Simran Singh, Visionary, Life Coach, Talk Show Host, Publisher of 11:11 Magazine, Founder of C.H.O.I.C.E. (Collaborating Holistic Organizations Inspiring Conscious Empowerment) and Creator of BELIEVE…Choices for Conscious Living, utilizes the mind, body, and heart to support individuals in realizing authentic personal expression by tapping inherent power and potential via self-inquiry and conscious choice. Through honoring and illustrating value for each step in the journey, her products and services bring to awareness one’s inherent value.

    So many choices! N.O.W. has “reproductive choice.” Nikki has private school “choice.” And her sister has “Collaborating Holistic Organizations Inspiring Conscious Empowerment.” What a country we live in! Something for everybody.

    Be sure to check out the video on the site. Way, WAY New Age:

    Tune in and turn on… feed the mind… embrace positively… release the tension… step out of fear. Host Simran Singh will help you broaden your mind and open your heart toward a greater understanding… on Seventh Wave radio… because shift happens.

    You might want to check out the recordings of some of her shows. Like this one about Jesus’ “30 Lost Years” and his connections to Eastern religions. The coming Age of Aquarius and the quest for the philosophers’ stone are mentioned in connection with her guest, “a renowned American clairvoyant.”

    Yup. It’s a very interesting world we live in.

    How about that zero? THAT was something, huh?

    19 Replies

    I have two things to say about this brouhaha over Charles Bolden saying he was told to help Muslims feel good about their culture’s historic contributions to science, and the White House denial of such a brief.

    First, the silly thing: I have trouble picturing the no-nonsense Marine on a self-esteem-building mission. When I try, my imagination comes up with something really goofy, like:

    Hey, guys and how about the concept of zero? That’s a biggie! I don’t know what we’d do without it! Why, back in the Middle Ages, sports fans all over poor, benighted Europe didn’t know how to keep up with what was happening on the field when their team hadn’t scored (which is a big disadvantage when you’re soccer-crazy — you could spend the whole game in the dark!). They had to make up lame alternative words, like “zip” and “nil.” The guys who kept the medieval scoreboards would just be standing up there scratching their heads wondering what to put up until somebody finally scored… Boy, I’m glad I wasn’t trying to follow sports back then…

    And that just doesn’t sound like Gen. Bolden.

    Now, to my serious point: If Charles Bolden says that the White House told him it wanted him to make the Muslim world feel warm and fuzzy about itself, that’s what happened.

    Charles Bolden is one heckuvan impressive guy, and a squared-away Marine. If he says those are his orders, those are his orders, and don’t get between him and his mission.

    Anyone at the White House who says otherwise either isn’t in the loop, or is lying.

    And that’s the name of that tune.

    If I were Muslim, this would make me a militant

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    Terrorists, would-be terrorists and terrorist sympathizers come up with all sorts of reasons to declare us the Great Satan: U.S. troops being in Muslim countries (the fave of Osama bin Laden and incompetent bomber Faisal Shahzad), support for Israel, the immodesty of our women, rock-‘n’-roll, beer, what have you.

    Of them all, the only excuses that strike any sort of resonance in me are the cultural ones. I do sympathize with people of a religion that values sobriety and modesty feeling beleaguered by the global assault of the tackier, baser elements of American popular culture. If you’re trying to keep the young men’s minds on the words of the Prophet, Lady Gaga cannot be seen as helping one bit. It doesn’t justify violence, but it could certainly be maddening.

    But now, Western influence has gone too far. Check this out:

    KUALA LUMPUR—The U.S. has “American Idol.” Britain has “The X Factor.” Malaysia, one of the world’s more progressive Muslim nations, has something rather different—a televised search for the country’s most eligible young religious leader.
    “Young Imam” might look familiar at first glance. Ten good-looking male contestants in sharp-looking suits are assigned to sing and complete a series of complex tasks. At the end of the show, the studio lights dim, the music drops to a whisper, and a clutch of young hopefuls step forward nervously, waiting hand-in-hand to find out who will be sent home that night.
    Instead of a record contract or a million-dollar prize, though, the last imam standing wins a scholarship to the al-Madinah University in Saudi Arabia, a job leading prayers at a Kuala Lumpur mosque and an expense-paid trip to Mecca to perform the Haj pilgrimage.
    The sole judge who decides who stays and who goes each Friday in prime-time isn’t an aging pop star or talk-show host. He’s the turban-wearing former grand mufti of Malaysia’s national mosque, Hasan Mahmood. Last week Mr. Hasan stifled a sob as he eliminated 25-year-old Sharafuddin Suaut from the show for stumbling over some of the finer points of Islamic theory…
    Sorry, folks, but desecrating Islam with the great cultural evil of our time, “reality TV,” is an outrage too far. If I were a conservative Muslim seeing this on the tube, I would have just become radicalized.

    Anybody just a little worried about this “synthetic cell” thing?

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    There’s this joke… you’ve probably heard it.  Basically, scientists tell God they don’t need him any more because they’ve figured out the secrets of life, from DNA to cloning to whatever, and they know how to create a man from scratch. So God says, let’s see. And the scientists say OK, we just need to gather up the right minerals and chemicals to synthesize what we need, and… God says, “Hold on, there: Use your own dirt.”

    Anyway, they’re still using God’s dirt for raw material, but science moved a little closer to making the joke’s scenario a reality, with the announcement of the first “artificial cells.”

    The Church (on this blog, The Church is always the Roman Catholic Church) has weighed in on the subject already, with a basic This all sounds very well and good, but do you really know what you’re doing? (“Church warns cell scientists not to play God”) Which I think has merit, as reactions go.

    To put it another way, in hyping what a big deal this is, one of the science boffins said the following:

    “This is a tour de force and a landmark paper … that is akin to Jurassic Park or Frankenstein,” said Dr. Anthony C. Forster, a molecular biologist at Vanderbilt University who is an expert in the field of artificial life forms. “I think it will probably be regarded as the dawn of synthetic genomics.”

    Yeah. Exactly.

    I’m not worried about an 8 foot tall guy staggering around with a bolt through his neck. I’m more concerned about a microbe with unintentional effects — saying, wiping out all life on the planet, or other inconveniences.

    Oh, I’m sure the scientists are all being careful and oh-so-responsible. But… do they really know what they’re doing? And as the knowledge spreads, and more and more people learn to do it and try different tricks with it, and the probability that someone will screw up majorly increases….

    Maybe I’m just a worrier. Maybe I should just adopt Alfred E. Neuman‘s stance, since the toothpaste is already out of the tube.

    My dog and the Garden of Eden

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    Back on yesterday’s Virtual Front Page I made a passing reference to God the Creator. That inspired Phillip to respond:

    The line in Genesis about God creating man in “His image and likeness” has troubled me since the day I first read it, as that idea seems to me to be a self-serving construct of man himself, which has in turn served to justify just about everything man has ever done, for ill as well as good.

    To the extent that I believe in some kind of unknowable First Cause, I’d have to say that insofar as He-She-It created man in His image, He also created single-celled amoebae in His image, or igneous rocks, or airless space, or kangaroos, etc.

    The whole Genesis thing implies that man is somehow the culmination of God’s creation, the highest plateau, which just seems dubious considering A) the blink of an eye which comprises the whole duration of man’s existence compared to the earth’s history, and B) the significant mathematical probability that highly intelligent and evolved life exists on other planets in the universe.

    To which I respond…

    Phillip, Genesis is evocative literature, albeit inspired. The “image and likeness” part is poetic language for the fact that we are creatures capable of contemplating good and evil, and choosing between them. Other creatures can’t, as much as we’d like to assign such moral values to them.

    I had a reminder of that this morning. I got up to find that my dog — during the part of the night BEFORE he woke me up whining to go out — had gotten into the garbage and chewed and torn and spread it all over the kitchen and another room, in SPITE of the fact that I had put it in the cabinet under the sink and secured it with a big rubber band, specifically to keep him out of it.

    He must have spent most of the night on it. I’m still not sure how he did it without opposable thumbs. I should have taken a crime scene photo to post here, but I wasn’t thinking straight.

    As I was fuming and ranting cleaning it up, I was thinking (and saying aloud, though I was alone) how horrible and wicked, how thoroughly evil,  it had been for him to do this so deliberately. so painstakingly. Which was, of course, idiotic on my part.

    I had put in the garbage a paper towel with which I had wiped a plate full of juices from a steak dinner. The smell must have driven him half mad.

    And he’s just a dog. He’s just like all the other creatures in the Garden. But if a grown human who had been thoroughly warned about this — say, Eve, or that slacker Adam — did the same, I’d be rushing to get my flaming sword…

    The prime suspect in this morning's thoroughly nasty crime. So far, there are no indications of an al Qaeda or Taliban connection, but this is early in the investigation.

    Clean sweep: No Protestants on Court (heh-heh)

    12 Replies

    Not that I’m gloating about the success of our plot to take over the judiciary, but if Elena Kagan is confirmed, there will not be a single Protestant on the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Hey-heh-heh. I mean, uh, isn’t this interesting?

    The fact that Ms. Kagan is Jewish draws attention away from the fact that two-thirds of the court is now Catholic. Crafty, eh?

    Now, to work on the other two branches…

    OK, we’ll let you back in, if you’re sorry about Anne Boleyn

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    Since I didn’t blog yesterday, I missed my chance to comment on this front-page item from The Wall Street Journal — except, of course, that I didn’t miss it at all, since on my blog I can write about something any time I feel like it. Anyway, here’s the item:

    The Vatican said it will make it far easier for disgruntled Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, in one of Rome’s most sweeping gestures to a Protestant church since the Reformation.

    A newly created set of canon laws, known as an “Apostolic Constitution,” will clear the way for entire congregations of Anglican faithful to join the Catholic Church. That represents a potentially serious threat to the already fragile world-wide communion of national Anglican churches, which has about 77 million members globally….

    The move comes nearly five centuries after King Henry VIII broke with Rome and proclaimed himself head of the new Church of England after being refused permission to divorce…

    Speaking of commenting on things a bit after the fact — personally, I’m way more interested in sorting out this mess with King Henry than I am the stuff about gay bishops and such.

    I want to go on record right now as saying that his majesty was in the wrong on this one. I mean, it’s a bit late to help out Thomas More at this point, but he was right, you know. Which is why we made him a saint.

    Bringing entire Anglican congregations back into the fold all at once is nothing new to us here in Columbia, of course. I seem to recall something like that happened here awhile back. (I’d be more specific, but I’m not positive about the details, and can’t seem to find anything about it on the Web — any links you could share would be appreciated).

    And I’m all for welcoming folks back home and all — especially folks who’ve been catholic all along — but I think we ought to come up with a formal litany for the returners to recite. Something like, “I reject King Henry… and all his works… and all his empty marriage vows…” and so forth. Just to make sure nobody forgets how this started. (And to think — all we had to do to put a stop to all this nonsense is throw open the doors…)

    Next, we should go to work healing the rift with the eastern church. Frankly, I think that whole business of splitting the Roman empire was a mistake to begin with. What got into that Constantine character? Sailing to Byzantium, indeed…

    Goys will be goys

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    There is a saying that negroes like watermelon because…

    No, that doesn’t quite capture it, does it? By comparison, it’s pretty innocuous. After all, you could end the sentence, “everyone does.” What’s the harm in liking watermelon? Rather insensitive, not the sort of thing you’d go around saying if you had half a brain and cared anything about other people’s feelings, but it’s not in the same league with Edwin O. Merwin Jr. and James S. Ulmer Jr. invoking the myth of the rich, avaricious Jew, a stereotype that helped feed the resentments that led to the Holocaust.

    No, for an analogy, you’d have to reach to something that actually resulted in the murders of black people, something like, “There is a saying that black men lust after white women because…”

    Where did the GOP find these guys? In case you missed it, these two geniuses Merwin and Ulmer — Republican Party chairmen in Bamberg and Orangeburg counties, respectively — wrote the following in an opinion piece published in The (Orangeburg) Times and Democrat:

    There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

    I find myself wondering, What saying? Who says it?

    These guys actually could make a guy sympathetic toward earmarks, which one assumes was not their aim.

    Karen Floyd says they’ve apologized, and that’s that. What do y’all think?

    Let’s see if we can help the Souper Bowl go viral

    6 Replies

    Y’all hear enough from me. Now, for a message from the “Good Brad” — Brad Smith, the founder of the Souper Bowl of Caring.

    That Brad spoke to Rotary today. Although he’s now the senior pastor at Eastminster Presbyterian in Columbia, he still believes strongly in the organization he founded, and headed up full-time for seven years. (To remind you of the story, it all started with a line from a prayer that Brad said on Super Bowl Sunday in 1990: “Lord, even as we enjoy the Super Bowl football game, help us be mindful of those who are without a bowl of soup to eat.” Some kids at his church — Spring Valley Pres at the time — stood outside after services with a cookpot asking folks to give a buck. Then kids at lots of other churches started doing it…)

    And he’s got this dream about it. Even though it has grown far beyond anything he could have imagined at the beginning — the Souper Bowl has raised $60 million for charity, and on the most recent Super Bowl Sunday involved 200,000 kids in its good work, and now has the backing of two former presidents (and their First Ladies) and seven NFL team owners — he has a vision of it being even bigger.

    His vision is a two-parter: That the president of the United States would decide to highlight the Souper Bowl (as one of the inspiring stories of volunteerism that presidents are always citing in such speeches) in his State of the Union address. And that would inspire enough people to give that during the Super Bowl itself, the Souper Bowl would be mentioned, and the announcer would say that X hundred thousand kids participated, and an amount equal to a dollar for each person (the standard “ask” for Souper Bowl is a dollar) watching the game had been raised.

    That would be over a hundred million dollars, which would eclipse what the program has raised in total thus far.

    Yes, it’s a reach, but it’s possible, given the right conditions. As Brad (the other one) said today, “Somebody here knows someone who can make that vision come to pass…”

    Well, maybe. And if not, then maybe somebody reading this knows somebody who knows somebody who can make it happen.

    It’s worth a try, anyway.