February 14, 2014

This is why I go to New Advent for this stuff:

At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city. In William of Malmesbury's time what was known to the ancients as the Flaminian Gate of Rome and is now the Porta del Popolo, was called the Gate of St. Valentine. The name seems to have been taken from a small church dedicated to the saint which was in the immediate neighborhood. Of both these St. Valentines some sort of Acta are preserved but they are of relatively late date and of no historical value. Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing further is known.

Saint Valentine's Day

The popular customs associated with Saint Valentine's Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e. half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer's Parliament of Foules we read:

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers' tokens. Both the French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain allusions to the practice. Perhaps the earliest to be found is in the 34th and 35th Ballades of the bilingual poet, John Gower, written in French; but Lydgate and Clauvowe supply other examples. Those who chose each other under these circumstances seem to have been called by each other their Valentines. In the Paston Letters, Dame Elizabeth Brews writes thus about a match she hopes to make for her daughter (we modernize the spelling), addressing the favoured suitor:

And, cousin mine, upon Monday is Saint Valentine's Day and every bird chooses himself a mate, and if it like you to come on Thursday night, and make provision that you may abide till then, I trust to God that ye shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion.

Shortly after the young lady herself wrote a letter to the same man addressing it "Unto my rightwell beloved Valentine, John Paston Esquire". The custom of choosing and sending valentines has of late years fallen into comparative desuetude.

Where else are you gonna read a word like "desuetude"?

You're welcome.  Enjoy the hearts and flowers today.  Just keep in mind it's got zip to do with Christianity or Emperor Claudius.

The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of....um, wait, what?

I would send Mark Joseph Stern some Chick Tracts; but I'm afraid the shock would kill him.

What he describes here is not really too different from my childhood in East Texas.  I knew people who were determined to raise their children in at least some measure of ignorance.  To me, the ignorance that mattered was Christian doctrine. I started reading Kierkegaard at 17 in response to the mind-numbing vulgarities that were passed on to me as "Christianity."  I kept the Christian faith; I discarded the stupid.

I met the children of fundamentalists, even then.  I knew families who had been normal and suddenly became irrational, and I had arguments with them about the "literal inerrancy" of the Bible.  I learned quickly you couldn't win, that they would hold fast to their doctrine that every word in the Bible was literally true, even when it couldn't be.  What you gonna do with folks like that?

Stop discussing religion with them; that's all you can do.  Avoid them like the plague, because they are worse than Amway sales reps.  (Funny how people don't freak out about Amway sales reps; they can be just as obnoxious as people who want to save your soul.)

But dangerous?  All I can say is, they tried to control the Texas Board of Education, and while that august body is still several bricks shy of a load and their elevator still doesn't reach the top floor, in a one-party GOP state, the fiercest of the fundies and creationists on the BofE were removed in a GOP primary election(!!!!!).  We don't pay enough for education in Texas, and we don't pay enough attention to it; but we still don't want our kids being taught pure bullsgeschicte.

Stern insists, however, that this is the end of civilization as we know it, if we don't watch out:

It’s easy to scoff at all this, to giggle at the vivid weirdness of young Earth creationism and then shrug it off as an isolated cult. But the 40 percent of Americans who reject evolution, as well as the tens of thousands of children or more who are being brainwashed with it in publicly funded classrooms, aren’t laughing. Creationism is built to metastasize; those who believe it won’t rest until everyone else believes it, too. True believers yearn for the rest of us to be locked up in the same mental prison where they have consigned themselves and their children. They insist that evolution has robbed us of our humanity. But in reality, it’s their twisted gospel that aims to strip us of the very thing that makes us human.

That "tens of thousands of children" claim refers in part to some charter schools in Texas, which I'd like to see shut down, too.  All of 'em, for my money, even the ones that are supposedly doing a good job.  I'm no fan of charter schools, especially not when Texas schools are so strapped for cash.  On the other hand, I suspect the kids being taught creationism would get the same information at home, or the parents in a public school would be complaining about "godless evolution" (and there is more of a fight on that front in Texas education than there should be).  But is it the end of civilization?  In a state still heavily dependent on knowledge of geology for money, I'm not too worried that we're about to turn out a whole generation of Ken Ham disciples.

Besides, the "40 percent of Americans who reject evolution" claim is not quite right.  "Built to metastasize"?  Then why hasn't the percentage changed significantly in the past 3 decades?  According to Gallup:

Gallup has asked Americans to choose among these three explanations for the origin and development of human beings 11 times since 1982. Although the percentages choosing each view have varied from survey to survey, the 46% who today choose the creationist explanation is virtually the same as the 45% average over that period -- and very similar to the 44% who chose that explanation in 1982. The 32% who choose the "theistic evolution" view that humans evolved under God's guidance is slightly below the 30-year average of 37%, while the 15% choosing the secular evolution view is slightly higher (12%).

I'm curious as to what the percentages were before 1982, and when "creationism" was formulated as a doctrine (1982?  Earlier?  Later?  I dunno.)  There is also a correlation to church attendance (those who attend church weekly are most likely to agree with what Gallup calls the "creationist explanation") and with education level attained.  Not too surprisingly, those with only a high school education are most likely to agree with the "creationist explanation."

Which brings us back to what we teach in public schools, and how well we teach it.  It's only been within the last year that Texas has allowed the teaching of "alternatives", and I don't think that even took effect until this school year.  Yet the percentage of Americans who prefer "creationism" has remained effectively the same since 1982.  Kind of hard to blame that on the creeping influence of Ken Ham or charter schools.

After all, most of these idiotic ideas have been around for a long time.  I didn't get any creationism in my public school education in Texas, but neither was I told the only explanation for life was evolution, and that excluded God (a la Richard Dawkins & Co.).  I have a lot of complaints with public education in Texas; but I'm not setting my hair on fire that the whole state, much less the whole country, is about to descend into a new dark ages (or, conversely, that we're all about to become atheists).  The true believers have always yearned to lock the rest of us up in the same mental prison they live in.  It's what keeps Chick in tracts.

But just because somebody somewhere is crazy, doesn't mean it's as contagious as a movie epidemic.  Viruses in real life don't spread as fast or rabidly as they do in movie plots, and bad ideas will never turn us all into mindless zombies a la "Resident Evil," either.

I'd really rather see the attention turned toward the root problem.  And while most education "theory," at least as it trickles down to me, seems to think the problem in public schools is they aren't entertaining enough, the students seem to think the problem is school isn't challenging enough.

So, maybe, if instead of focusing on teaching data (which is all AP classes really emphasize) we taught kids to think instead:  to reason, to question, to examine, to take nothing at face value and question everything critically and deliberately; we wouldn't even have as many high school graduates who thought nonsense like "creationism" made any sense at all.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Because we all really should be Charlie Brown before we grow up.  It would be a life lesson; or something.

“Valentine’s Day is about expressing your unique heartfelt feelings for your special loved one,” blogger Elizabeth Esther told Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. “To just robotically hand out, ‘Here’s your Valentine, here’s your Valentine.’ Like, what are we? It totally removes the meaning, the special memory for the kids.”

I remember buying boxes of Valentines:  they were simple cards, usually in a box of 30 or so, which you distributed to everyone in the classroom, without fear or favor (oh, maybe you tried to favor one person).  But it was pretty much "Here's your Valentine, here's your Valentine."  I mean, who in elementary school has "unique heartfelt feelings for your special loved one"?

As Charlie Pierce says:

Imagine the mind that thinks this way. Imagine the mind that thinks, hey, this is a viewpoint worth airing on national television.

These really are the mole people.

Loving v. not loving....

I have no legal expertise in the matter, but this could be interesting:

Wednesday's hearing combines two cases, one from Mark Phariss and Victor Holmes who filed a federal civil rights lawsuit complaining that Texas' ban unconstitutionally denies them the fundamental right to marry because of their sexual orientation. The other lawsuit was filed by Cleopatra De Leon and Nicole Dimetman, who argue that Texas officials are violating their rights and those of their 2-year-old child by not recognizing their marriage license from Massachusetts.

This is why I find it interesting:

This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. [n1] For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment.

In June, 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court [p3] of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 199, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge, and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. 

Granted, the difference in Loving is that Virginia had criminalized interracial marriages.  Then again, how do you ban marriage between men and women of different "races" (I use the term advisedly, frankly) except to make it criminal?  Far easier to simply say the state won't recognize same-sex marriages, that they are a legal nullity.  It doesn't make the ban any less repugnant, IMHO, but it does tend to lower the threshold just a bit.  It certainly changes the application of the due process argument, a central part of the ruling in Loving.

It might, in other words, be enough of a distinction for the very conservative 5th Circuit.  Because otherwise, I have a hard time seeing how at least one claim here isn't on point with the Loving decision.

In upholding the constitutionality of these provisions in the decision below, the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia referred to its 1965 decision in Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80, 87 S.E.2d 749, as stating the reasons supporting the validity of these laws. In Naim, the state court concluded that the State's legitimate purposes were "to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens," and to prevent "the corruption of blood," "a mongrel breed of citizens," and "the obliteration of racial pride," obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy. Id. at 90, 87 S.E.2d at 756. The court also reasoned that marriage has traditionally been subject to state regulation without federal intervention, and, consequently, the regulation of marriage should be left to exclusive state control by the Tenth Amendment.'

We don't use quite such blatantly racist language in court opinions or statutes anymore, but the arguments against same sex marriage pretty much rest on preserving the integrity of marriage as well as the "sanctity" of marriage (an issue in which the state has no legitimate interest, since I take "sanctity" to be a religious concept).  And that last line could as easily be the words of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott:

"The attorney general's office will defend the Texas Constitution in this case just as we do in all cases where state laws are challenged in court," Abbott's spokeswoman Lauren Bean said. "The U.S. Supreme Court was clear that states have independent authority to establish their marriage laws."

Not that the Supreme Court said states have carte blanche to establish any marriage laws they please, mind:

 While the state court is no doubt correct in asserting that marriage is a social relation subject to the State's police power, Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888), the State does not contend in its argument before this Court that its powers to regulate marriage are unlimited notwithstanding the commands of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nor could it do so in light of Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923), and Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942).

So Abbott is posturing for the cameras in that press release.  I'm sure his briefing attorneys will present a much better legal argument.

This is where my knowledge of the law breaks down.  Loving is not a solitary decision; it has been interpreted since by the courts, and may have seen it's conclusions expanded beyond the racial discrimination grounds the Court was primarily concerned with in that case.  Loving does rest on a due process argument which isn't applicable here; and the equal protection argument of the case is primarily concerned with racial discrimination.  So I'm not sure Loving is dispositive in these cases, but subsequent rulings have probably used it to support arguments regarding same-sex marriage.

There's also simply the question of comity:  how do you deny a marriage in one state, in another state?  I find the legal basis for that rather bewildering.  It seems to me any state that wanted could require all marriages to be performed in that state, for a fee paid to the state (don't laugh; Texas more and more relies heavily on fees to fund state government), and all out of state marriages are void unless the fee is paid in that state (again, say: Texas).

Would that be defensible?  If not, then why is it defensible for Texas to refuse to recognize certain marriages from other states, but not other marriages?  Seems to me, in fact, that's where the equal protection argument takes hold.  On what basis do you declare some marriages valid, others not, when there is no effect on society (I'm thinking of bigamy, degrees of consanguinity, and marriage of minors here)?  The only grounds for banning same sex marriage is that it is not traditional.

And I don't think that's enough to escape an equal protection analysis.*

*DOMA, by the way, was a Federal law.  It violated due process and equal protection, but under the 5th Amendment, not the 14th.  There really isn't enough similarity between U.S. v. Windsor and Loving for me to be comfortable making an analysis of Texas law based on Windsor.  On the other hand, Windsor seems to be the decision all the Federal courts are going to. The court in Kentucky ruled that the state cannot refuse to recognize out of state marriages on an equal protection argument.  

I'm optimistic that's where this is going now.  We'll just have to see.

"O blank confusion!"

This is basically a stupid post at Salon, but see if you can spot the fundamental flaw in the argument here:

The accomodationist tendency to insist that manifestations of religion that they dislike aren’t actually religious in nature is both wrong and dangerous. Accomodationists want us to believe that religious people who are morally upstanding are that way because of their religion. Yet at the same time, they take great pains to explain that those religious people who do harm actually do so for reasons other than their faith, or because they fundamentally misinterpret the underpinnings of their religion.

The only thing being misinterpreted here is the essential nature of religion. Humans can be irrational enough without adding highly subjective doctrines and moral codes into the mix. As the physicist Steven Weinberg once said of religion, “With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

Ignore the ignorant slander of Steven Weinberg and notice the argument is that all religious believers are inherently irrational, and not to be trusted.  But don't call anyone who rejects religious belief a "New Atheist:"

First, I have never heard anyone refer to himself as a “New Atheist.” As far as I can tell, it is most commonly intended as a smear by believers and accommodationists – those who believe there is a common ground to be had between religion and science.

Religion can all be reduced to an absurdity, but "atheism" must be given all due accord and respect because....well, I don't know why, exactly.  "New Atheism" is a term as bad as "n----r," or any other racial slur, or slur against sexual orientation, mental ability, gender, etc., according to Mr. Luciano; but he can't be bothered to explain why.  I use the term to distinguish people who can't make nearly as sound or rational an argument as Bertrand Russell, so perhaps that's where the injury lies.

Anyway, you can't use the term "New Atheist" because it is used by those who think a common ground is possible between religion and science.   Those people want to get their religious chocolate in our scientific peanut butter, and that is just not on!  Derrida's discussions of heilige come to mind here, ironically; as well as his argument that religion and reason develop in tandem.  To Mr. Luciano science must remain pure, unscathed; holy.  His argument proves Derrida right about reason and religion even as he rejects it.  Mr. Lucian wants science to be the new religion which replaces Christianity (I don't see anything in this article that references Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism, just to name three major world religions.  I don't know any adherents to those faiths who preach the Creationism of Mr. Ken Ham.).  Otherwise, why bother making the argument at all?  If, as the "second" point made in the next paragraph after that quote asserts, it is true that religion is withering away (rather like Marx's "state," I suppose), then just wait for the "progress" of society to improve to the point we're all rational atheists.  What do you have to lose but your mind-forged manacles?

I mean, when they were still around I thought flat-earthers were silly and illogical; but I didn't bother arguing with them.  If you are convinced someone is both wrong and their thoughts about to be extinguished, why worry so about them?

Of course, the idea that religious belief is antithetical to reason will come as a shock to the father of genetics and the original author of the Big Bang Theory, not to mention most of humanity since the dawn of time.   But sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander here.  Accommodating religion is as bad as being religious, because religion is bad!  However, don't call atheists "New Atheists" because that's smearing everyone with a tar brush.  Or something.

Oh, I can't disentangle it.  Let's walk away quietly so we don't disturb these bizarre and exclusionary ruminations.*

In fact, I just give up.  It's really not the argument that bothers me anymore; it's the inability to make an argument that bothers me.  In my Freshman English class, I'd rip this to shred just for the internal inconsistencies alone.  Luciano's post isn't an argument, it's a rant; and it's no more rational than a spittle flecked primal scream.

*(The other flaw in Mr. Luciano's "argument" is the hasty generalization that since Creationism is founded in a particular flavor of Christianity, it is "religious," and hence all religions partake of all the flaws of Creationism.  Just so, any white male who has ever murdered any individual makes all white males murderers.  Amirite?)

A Passage to India

Forster's story, from which we get his lovely epigram:  "Only connect."  The David Lean movie version was on TCM just now.  Interesting parallels to my own thinking of late.

I pause to insert a personal note:  I examined the typescript of the novel, over 30 years ago, at the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.  The only portion that was in manuscript was the passage about the events at the Marabar caves.  I always meant to do some further study and try to figure out if that was something of some significance, but I failed at my chance to.  Godbole would say that was as it was meant to be; and perhaps he would be right; if he existed.

The story turns around an Englishwoman, alone at the Marabar caves with an Indian Muslim, an educated doctor of medicine, who has an experience that causes her to accuse the doctor of attempted rape.  He is, of course, guilty, because, well, you know:  the experience of the British with the "darker races."

The prosecutor spells that out quite clearly in the courtroom, by the way.

Racism?  Well, yes, but the English would have insisted that they had known too any victims of rape and assault to just let an Indian slide when there was a fairly clear pattern.  Patterns are always what we see, and they are there because we see them.

I mean, you can't argue with that.

And the Indian doctor is only released because his accuser, the Englishwoman, recants her charge against him when she takes the witness box.

The other interesting bit was when Mrs. Moore, the mother of Heaslop, the City Magistrate who is engaged to the victim of the attempted rape, tells her son that no one understands the Marabar caves because they haven't been there.  The caves themselves are described by the prosecutor and another Indian, Dr. Godbole, as featureless;  "empty and dark" is Godbole's description.

They are, in other words, Mrs. Moore insists, an experience:  not a "thing."  She has somewhat the same reaction to them as Miss Quested, her travelling companion and son's fiance.  And neither of them can explain their experiences to anyone else.

Miss Quested also admits, in open court, that she struck up a conversation with the unfortunate Dr. Aziz, the accused, about his marriage, because she had then just renewed her engagement to Mr. Heaslop, and she didn't love him.  I find this interesting because it has to mean his engagement to her is at an end, whether he wants it to be or not; whether she does, either.  They love each other, or convince the community they do, by getting engaged.  But if she admits to all and sundry in public that she doesn't love him, the engagement falls apart like an ice ring on a hot day.  How, now, can they put up the pretense of a happy marriage, or a conventional relationship?  It is not only "Why should they bother?", but "How could they possibly?"  Because love is another personal experience which is only "true" because they participants say it is.  We cannot test it, measure it, weigh it, or observe it with instruments.

We can only take their word for it.  Like the Marabar caves, it may be a destination in the stages on life's way; it may even have a reputation; but it is not a thing.

Nor is Dr. Aziz; or Miss Quested; or allegations of improper conduct.

In re:

So I was watching "Twelve O'Clock High" late last night.  Gregory Peck is the star; the man who became Atticus Finch.  And remember who Atticus defended?  A black man, who was guilty because a white woman said he was.  Guilty of rape, when there was no evidence the man ever touched the woman, except her word that he did.  Oh, yes, the case was underlined by the fact the black man had only one arm, the other being withered since childhood.

All of that does occur in a courtroom, but the conviction that the guilty man must die is a conviction reached outside the courtroom (not that the courtroom did much to blunt the headlong rush to judgment).  The guilty man's fear of the mob that wants to hang him prompts him to escape, and he his shot to death, which I suppose is a legitimate operation of the legal process.

But the community was determined to see him die, to see him held accountable for his crime, because they were determined to believe the victim, because they were determined to believe the accused was guilty because he was accused; and because he was a black man.

The only difference is, nobody's gonna put Woody Allen in jail now, or lynch him.  But the decision that he must be guilty?  Why, precisely, is it right in this context?  Because the system is flawed?  Which system?  And how does this correct that flaw?

My soul magnifies the Lord...and that's what's scary

(war and panics on the stock exchange, bankruptcies, war loans, good growing weather for the House of Morgan.)

When the guns started booming at Fort Sumter, young [John Pierpont] Morgan turned some money over reselling condemned muskets to the U.S. army and began to make himself felt in the gold room in downtown New York; there was more in trading in gold than in trading in muskets; so much for the Civil War.

During the Franco-Prussian war Junius Morgan [father of J.P.] floated a huge bond issue for the French government of Tours.

At the same time young Morgan was fighting Jay Cooke and the German Jew bankers in Frankfort over the funding of the American war debt (he never did like the Germans or the Jews).
...
In the panic of '93
at no inconsiderable profit to himself
Morgan saved the US Treasury; gold was draining out, the country was ruined, the farmers were howling for a silver standard, Grover Cleveland and his cabinet were walking up and down in the blue room at the White House without being able to come to a decision, in Congress they were making speeches while the gold reserves melted in the Subtreasuries; poor people were starving; Coxey's army was marching to Washington; for a long time Grover Cleveland couldn't bring himself to call in the representative of the Wall Street money-masters; Morgan sat in his suite at the Arlington smoking cigars and quietly playing solitaire until at last the president sent for him;
he had a plan all ready for stopping the gold hemorrhage.
....
By 1917 the Allies had borrowed one billion, ninehundred million dollars through the House of Morgan; we went overseas for democracy and the flag;
and by the end of the Peace Conference the phrase J.P. Morgan suggests had compulsion over seventyfour billion dollars.

J.P. Morgan is a silent man, not given to public utterances, but during the great steel strike, he wrote Gary:  Heartfelt congratulations on your stand for the open shop, with which I am, as you know, absolutely in accord.  I believe American principles of liberty are deeply involved and must win if we stand firm.(Wars and panics on the stock exchange,
machinegunfire and arson,
bankruptcies, war loans,
starvation, lice, cholera and typhus;
good growing weather for the House of Morgan.)

1919, John Dos Passos.

I had this prepared as a different post, and had that never-published post in mind when I wrote this one.  So now I have to push it out of the nest, but first, some explanation.

Tom Perkins is a street punk.  Bill Gates is a piker Andrew Carnegie would have hired as a bootblack; Warren Buffet is small beer.

They didn't call them "Robber Barons" for nothing.  It was in the context of 1919 (albeit 13 years earlier), more than the context of a modern fear of "Kristallnacht" among the undeserving rich of our day, that Teddy Roosevelt told Congress in a State of the Union letter (with thanks to NTodd):

The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government. Not only should he recognize this obligation in the way he leads his daily life and in the way he earns and spends his money, but it should also be recognized by the way in which he pays for the protection the State gives him.

And yet if there was a drinking word in Barack Obama's SOTU recently, it was "opportunity."  The boldest thing Obama said was to mock the GOP for 40 votes to repeal Obamacare; which is about as bold as pointing out he won the last Presidential election, so Mitt Romney should get over it.   The takeaway was that employers need to be a little less piggy and American citizens need to do something bold for themselves because, after all, Obama is only the President, he's not a dictator.  I almost expected him to ask the American people to help him Whip Inflation Now.

Where are the power centers of yesteryear?

Sure, Tom Perkins and company have far too much influence on American politics; for all the talk of "small donors," the bulk of political spending is still capitalized by big money donors with very deep pockets; and money still talks.  What has intervened since 1919 is the income tax and the estate tax (championed, in his old age, by Andrew Carnegie).  (Yes, the 16th Amendment was ratified in 1913, but the financing of World War I obviously still rested on the House of Morgan.  Can we imagine anything similar today?)  What has been is not likely to be again; at least not in that guise.

And what do we learn?  Perhaps that the more things change, the more they remain the same.  Except no one today has the power J.P. Morgan wielded in 1893.  And that while in some ways we've taken irrevocable steps forward, in other ways (T.R. v. Obama, say), we've taken giant steps backward.

Those who do not learn from history are perhaps fated to see significant parts of it repealed.

And the irony? There was scene in "48 Hours" where Eddie Murphy brings a bar full of San Francisco cowboys by saying:  "I'm your worst nightmare!  I'm a n----- with a badge!"  That's how Perkins and Zell and Langone and Wynn see Barack Obama:  their worst nightmare, but not because he's a socialist.

He represents what they fear most:  that the oppressed and repressed and excluded, can sit in the seats of power.  And if they can do that, can Mary's song be far behind?

Keep awake.

Poor Little Rich Boys

TPM

"They are frightened to death — frightened that they will have the IRS or SEC on them," Marcus said. "In my 50 years in business, I have never seen executives of major companies who were more intimidated by an administration."

Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn likewise sounded off on these fears in a rant during a 2011 conference call with investors. Although he described himself as a "Democratic businessman," Wynn said "those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear" of Obama.

"Well, this is Obama’s deal. And it is Obama that is responsible for this fear in America," Wynn said.

"The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, they are holding too much money," he added. "You know, we haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody is afraid of the government and there is no need soft-pedaling it. It is the truth. It is the truth."

Meanwhile, Wall Street finished 2013 with the biggest annual gains since the 1990s.

There was a rich man whose fields produced a bumper crop.  "What do I do now?" he asked himself, "since I don't have any place to store my crops. I know!  I'll tear down my barns and build larger ones, so I can store all my grain and my goods.  Then I'll say to myself, "You have plenty put away for years to come.  Take it easy, eat, drink, enjoy yourself."  But God said to him, "You fool!  This very night your life will be demanded back from you.  All this stuff you've collected--whose will it be now?"  That's the way it is for those who save up for themselves, but aren't rich where God is concerned.

--Luke 12: 16b-21, SV

I dunno; maybe that's the voice they keep hearing; and they just think it's Obama's.

Addressing Horatio....

I find myself in the odd position of agreeing with William Saletan.  You should follow his link to his first article, then read the one that comes second.  In the latter he quotes Jennifer Wiseman, senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, who makes an argument I cannot find fault with:

I tend to think of a miracle as possible, and that miracles actually have happened, but they are just what they sound like: They are a miracle. There’s something that’s outside of the natural working of the forces of nature, and so science is not equipped to address that one way or the other. Science is equipped to address how things normally and naturally work. So as a scientist, I study the universe in the way it normally and naturally works and has worked throughout the whole history of time. I don’t look for anything else, because my scientific tools are not equipped to measure anything else. But does that mean that nothing outside of the normal, natural physical processes that science can address ever happened or ever does happen? Well, science can’t answer that question. So I have to answer that question in some other way. And to me, the answer is yes, because I see both historical and personal evidence for God’s actions …

I do see evidence for things—in particular, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is to me ample evidence that that event, in the course of time, changed history and changed lives, and people are experiencing the living Christ today. Is that a scientific conclusion? Absolutely not. But is there enough evidence for one to believe it? For me, yes.

A miracle is, by definition, a usurpation (or, if you prefer, a violation) of the natural order (I won't say "natural law," as that's a concept that rightly belongs to Aquinas, a theologian.  Gotta watch your language!).  As such, it is outside the realm of science.

Which sounds like I'm "compartmentalizing," as Saletan says.  Nothing so condescending at all.  Can anything, you might wonder, be "outside the realm of science"?  Well, can science explain, as I mentioned earlier, why I am so deeply moved by the music of Bach, or Sondheim, or plainsong?  Can it explain my love for my wife?  What evidence is there of such love, after all, except my own statements?  Take them as profession, confession, delusion:  how do you judge them as wrong, since it is not connected to inappropriate behavior (stalking, possessiveness, etc.)?   How, if ever, will science explain my love?  In a general sense, by a reductio argument that my love is actually just brain chemistry, neurological function, a matter of biology or genetics or "selfish genes"?

Well, maybe; but I'll never accept it, and never accept that my rejection of such "explanations" is merely me "compartmentalizing."  Really, it's a matter of what matters to the rest of the world.  If my love for my wife does not provoke aberrant behavior, what does society care?  Even if my wife didn't return my love (although then she wouldn't be my wife), the only result would be my heartbreak.  Might make a good story, but otherwise the world would move on.  Would my love, then, must be illusion?  A bad compartment?

But there is, for me, ample evidence that my love for my wife is real, not delusional.  "Is that a scientific conclusion?  Absolutely not.  But is there enough evidence for one to believe it?  For me, yes."  And yet my love for my wife has not "changed history and changed lives," and Wiseman is right:  "people are experiencing the living Christ today."  At least, they say they are.

How do you prove them all wrong?

And here, again, I would point out that Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian monk (as was Martin Luther!), and Georges LeMaitre was a Jesuit priest.  You may wish to describe them as "compartmentalizing", too; but I really don't think you'd get very far with that.

There really are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in some philosophies.

"Damn you rich! You already have your consolation!"

Those kids are just jealous because Scrooge is rich....

We hate 'em because they're successful.  Or beautiful.  Or something.

"I guess my feeling is that he’s right," Zell said when asked by Bloomberg's Betty Liu how he felt about Perkins' stance. "The 1 percent are being pummeled because it’s politically convenient to do so."

Zell then said the problem is that all non-rich are just jealous that they don't have the same work ethic that the country's wealthiest do.

This is where it gets to be fun.  What does "work harder" actually mean?  I've worked as a construction laborer.  I've worked as a painter in the oil fields.  I've taught school, practiced law, pastored churches.  And, as they say, I've done "real work."  Which work is the kind Mr. Zell thinks is "harder"?  Which does he think required more effort?  Effort of what kind?

"The problem is that the world and this country should not talk about envy of the 1 percent. It should talk about emulating the 1 percent," he said. "The 1 percent work harder. The 1 percent are much bigger factors in all forms of our society."

Not surprisingly, it isn't really about hard work, it's about who is working and what they are doing.  School teachers and pastors and lawyers and construction workers aren't nearly as important to the world as Mr. Zell who does...what, again?  Oh, he's chairman of Equity Group Investments.  Hmmm...if Mr. Zell were to never have been born, would he mean as much to the world as George Bailey?

I wonder.

Liu countered that the ever-widening gulf between the richest and poorest Americans must make it harder for those living under the poverty line to get ahead, no?

Nah, said Zell.

"Lots of people have come from nowhere and become part of the 1 percent," he said.

Jack Parr had a problem with Steve Allen that he never quite let go of.  Allen claimed to have written hundreds of songs, among other Renaissance-man like accomplishments.

"Name three," Parr would reply.

 Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.

NYT.

Or did Mr. Zell mean in the entire world?  And how many of the world's 3.5 billion  individual souls at the bottom of the economic ladder likely to join the 85 individuals who own as much as all of that lower class combined?  And if the answer is just "1," would that mean the system is working and everything is fine?

The Snowed-on Effect

Gonna ride them someday....

Salon reminds us just how brave Glenn Greenwald is.  He wants to come "home" to the U.S....someday.  But he's really not that anxious to: 

“My parents are getting older, my nieces [live there] — none of that is something I’m going to go home for now…." 

Not even money could make him change his mind:

"I had a foundation that wanted to sponsor and pay for and market aggressively a six-city speaking tour to talk about the NSA story and the revelations. I would have completely loved to have done it… on the assurance that nothing would happen. And because we couldn’t get it from the U.S. government, I had to cancel.”

The threats, we are assured, are real.  Or kinda real.  Maybe real.  Anyway, public figures have said not-nice things about this brave, brave man:

[Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike] Rogers compared Greenwald to a thief selling stolen material. [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper appeared to suggest that Greenwald and other NSA reporters are “accomplices” to Snowden’s crimes. In each case the innuendo sidesteps the unseemly appearance of targeting journalists by attempting to distinguish the work of the journalist from journalism.

Still not sure how journalists get to violate laws on classified materials with impunity, but set that aside because it's a valid question whether any U.S. Attorney wants to open that can of worms.  My guess is:  none. However, precisely what prosecutorial power does James Clapper have?  Or Rep. Mike Rogers (R, not D, so who in DOJ is listening to him)?  Still, if you stick with this 15 paragraph report until paragraph 12, you get rewarded with this:

"Everybody I’ve talked to, including experienced lawyers — nobody has said ‘this is crazy,’” Greenwald added, stipulating that he doubts he’d actually be charged with anything — less than 50 percent chance of that in his mind. Nevertheless, “Everybody recognizes that there’s some risk.”

Greenwald is a lawyer, so presumably he knows it is malpractice to give legal advice that there is no risk, especially when the question is "Will I be prosecuted?"  There's always a risk of that.  How much risk is the question, but on that, Greenwald is deliberately, shall we say, legalistic?  Because even I would say "there's some risk."  But I wouldn't necessarily mean arrest was guaranteed the moment his plane touched down. And then there's paragraph 13:

A Justice Department spokesman referred me to these inconclusive November comments by Attorney General Eric Holder. “[O]n the basis of what I know now, I’m not sure there is a basis for prosecution of Greenwald.”

And that's "inconclusive" because no prosecuting attorney or AG worth his law license would ever say "there is ABSOTIVELY POSOLUTELY NO BASIS" for prosecution.  And even if Mr. Greenwald had that assurance, as his lawyer I'd tell him that promise is worth the paper it's printed on.

That's just the way the world works.

And while Mr. Greenwald really misses his family but doesn't want to come see them anytime soon, he will come to America if he wins the Polk Award, he assures us.

Wild horses, apparently, couldn't keep him away from being publicly feted.

That man is so brave!

What belongs in the Agora

I suppose you could say he's selling something....

Because one post really won't capture it, let me pick up yet another aspect of this "evolution v. creationism" debate.

So evolution is not anti-religion in general. But is it atheistic? No. Evolution takes no stand on the existence or lack thereof of a god or gods. Whether you think life originated out of ever-more complex chemical reactions occurring on an ancient Earth, or was breathed into existence by God, evolution would take over after that moment. It’s a bit like the Big Bang; we don’t know how the Universe came into existence at that moment, but starting a tiny fraction of a second after that event our science does a pretty fair job of explanation.

That's pretty much how I learned it, growing up as one of God's Frozen Chosen (Presbyterian).  I might also point out, ad nauseum at this point, that the scientist who formulated the Big Bang theory was a Jesuit priest; and the genetics that are all the rage with Richard Dawkins, et al., started with a monk.

You could look it up.

So even science isn't "anti-religion" or atheistic.  But the question swirling at the moment is:  should Nye have debated Ham?  Phil Plait says "yes," because:

Roughly half the population of America does believe in some form of creationism or another. Half. Given that creationism is provably wrong, and science has enjoyed huge overwhelming success over the years, something is clearly broken in our country.

I suspect that what’s wrong is our messaging. For too long, scientists have thought that facts speak for themselves. They don’t. They need advocates. If we ignore the attacks on science, or simply counter them by reciting facts, we’ll lose. That much is clear from the statistics. Facts and stories of science are great for rallying those already on our side, but they do little to sway believers.

Well, frankly, that depends on what "believers" you are talking about.  Since schools do little or nothing to teach religion (which would actually be a good idea, at least from the Huston Smith/world religions and people are fundamentally religious point of view, a position I consider as undeniable as the fact that people are social animals) and a great deal to teach science, I don't think the problem is really a matter of teaching either science fact or science reasoning.

I think the problem is that we don't teach philosophy; at all.

I will start this conversation by pointing out there is a difference between religion and philosophy of religion, and that I would support the study of religion as an academic subject, as a philosophical subject, as, in other words, a subject for objective concern; but the subjective concern of religion, i.e., what is your individual relationship to a religion (not to the subject of religion as a part of human existence/society/history) is excluded from public school teachings by the 1st Amendment.

It could easily be done.  Since my days as a college student the Norton Anthology has added excerpts from the Bible to its anthologies, without expressing any opinion about which version of Christianity or Judaism one should ascribe to.  They also include passages from the Baghavad Gita, but no one expects us to proselytize for Hinduism by assigning those texts.  Admittedly, especially in public school classrooms, you could have teachers who wouldn't distinguish between the objective knowledge of the subject and the subjective knowledge; but you have that problem now with science education.  We aren't going to solve that problem by excluding science from the curriculum.  We can solve it by insisting on a fuller picture of human reality.  We can teach science without trying to turn every student into a physicist, a chemist, or a biologist; we can teach religion without proselytizing.

And the benefit would be to emphasize the distinction between the two ways of thinking.  I'm not arguing here for NOMA; I think that's a rather ridiculous distinction.  But the problem with 'creationism' is that it sounds like science, and it sounds like Christianity, when it is neither.  It is impossible to understand that, however, unless you better understand both science and religion, and how they fundamentally differ.  You can try to just say "They aren't the same," but unless you clearly delineate those differences, and study the limits and the contents of both subjects, you can't really establish that assertion.

I think the fact that so many Americans today believe in "creationism" pretty much proves that.  I grew up with prayer in schools and far fewer distinctions between secular life and religious life, in a Southern Baptist dominated small East Texas town.  But it was a town built on the oil business, populated by geologists and engineers and other learned professionals, who had no problem accepting that the earth was billions of years old and that oil came from plants and animals which predated Noah by millenia.  It things have gone to smash since then, it is perhaps because we have insisted too much since then on keeping certain ideas out of the public discourse of the public schools (about the only place we have a public discourse anymore).  Perhaps it is time we reconsider what our definition of "church" and of "state", and what about them must be kept separate.

Science is a philosophy. It is not a source of access to the only truth available to humankind, if only because science will never adequately explain why I love my wife and my daughter, or why I am so moved by the music of Stephen Sondheim, J.S. Bach, and medieval plainsong.  Most people, of course, wouldn't insist that it should.  If anything, that I am moved by art is an argument for teaching more about art in public schools, too; another area we have failed in over the decades.

Phil Plait says:  "The conflict over the teaching of evolution is based on the false assumption that evolution is antagonistic to religion."  I agree.  And the solution to that is not simply to teach more science.

It is also to teach more religion; just not in the sense most people think.  But then, if we did, we'd solve that problem too, wouldn't we?

Why I despair of the internet as a source for intelligent conversation

And yes, I know, we're all supposed to despise Woody Allen right now...

A comment from this article:

"A more fruitful debate would be between Ham or any member of his Young Earth Creationist cadre and a dedicated Christian ethicist "

Like police, politicians and the Mafia, Christians never turn on each other.

Let me know when said debate is scheduled. It will mark the beginning of real, productive dialogue.

Later that same day, on the same website:

On the Wednesday edition of his TV show, “The 700 Club,” Robertson indirectly implored Ham to put a sock in it, criticizing [Ken] Ham’s view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

“Let’s face it, there was a bishop [James Ussher] … who added up the dates listed in Genesis and he came up with the world had been around for 6,000 years,” Robertson began. “There ain’t no way that’s possible … To say that it all came about in 6,000 years is just nonsense and I think it’s time we come off of that stuff and say this isn’t possible.”

“We’ve got to be realistic that the dating of Bishop Ussher just doesn’t comport with anything that’s found in science,” Robertson continued, “and you can’t just totally deny the geological formations that are out there.”

“Let’s be real,” Robertson begged, “let’s not make a joke of ourselves.”

I'm not sure how productive this debate would be, but Robertson has a point.

Don't you wish real life were like this?

Ham and Nye talk past each other; film at 11

Surprising no one (well, certainly not me), Bill Nye and Ken Ham spoke at each other and past each other for some time last night.  The crux of the issue simply proved Wittgenstein right, though I don't think either of them realized it:

That all was further confirmed when a member of the audience asked what turned out to be the crux of the debate: what, if anything, would convince the men to change their minds? Ham’s answer: “I’m a Christian.” (In other words, nothing.) Nye, on the other hand, was happy to concede that just one piece of evidence to support a Biblical interpretation of Earth’s formation — that the universe is not expanding, or that rock layers can somehow form in just 4,000 years — would cause him to change his mind “immediately.”

Now, I understand what Nye means; but the fact is, "evidence" as understood by Nye is not "evidence" as understood by Ham.  Nye can insist on his own vocabulary all he wants; but he can't make Ham adopt it.  The exchange in the debate went something like this:

 Throughout the debate, Nye made the observation that Ham was essentially a cultish leader, he asked frequently why Ham’s followers would “believe him instead of what they could clearly see before his eyes.” Ham admitted that, “No one will ever convince me that the word of God is not true.” 

There is a bit more there than meets the eye (sorry!).  Nye speaks of what can be "clearly" seen; because clear sight = undeniable truth, right?  Except what Ham's followers think is undeniable truth is that the Bible is the Word of God, and they can see the Word of God quite clearly, thank you very much.

Which is not to say I agree with them.  I agree with Sean McElwee:  creationism is quackery. I agree with  Elizabeth Stoker, that Ham's argument is really about his vision of Christian ethics, and her conclusion that this argument should be handled by Christians:

[Ham] really is our concern, and his fears and the fears of those who believe as he does should be answered. So long as he can point to those who do not believe in God and have markedly different ethics than he does as the main proponents of evolution, his position that evolution ruins faith and Christian morality will appear at least superficially probable.

Arguing the reasoning of Creationism as if it were a science is like wrestling with a pig:  you get dirty, and the pig just enjoys it.  When you are dealing with people who think reading the Bible literally is not a hermeneutic (another system of interpretation), where do you start to find common ground from which to reason?

Wittgenstein understood (and post-modernism has been at pains to point out) that "reason" is not the universal baseline to which we all must agree (that was the death of logical positivism).  We may agree the table is hard or the rock is heavy, but beyond that kind of trivia we cannot begin to establish universal agreement on any more complex statements.*

And the irony is, that's the conclusion of the greatest of the empiricists, the school of philosophy upon which Bill Nye justifies his conclusions about reality.

These things that pass for knowledge I don't understand....

*for an example, read the comments at the McElwee article, and how many of them are concerned with refuting the term "New Atheists."  There's a lot of mental energy being expended, and a lot of offense taken, to reject a label that ain't exactly a racial slur, or even bears a significant social stigma.  Gotta wonder about that....

So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow....

“The company used such an iconic song, one often sung in churches on the 4th of July that represents the old ‘E Pluribus Unum’ view of how American society is integrated, to push multiculturalism down our throats.”

I guess so, though I don't clearly remember ever singing "America the Beautiful" in church.  I'm pretty sure it was in more than one hymnal I picked up over the decades, though, so I'll concede the point.  Certainly I always took it as a patriotic hymn meant to bolster my allegiance to a country especially blessed by God with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; one nation most definitely under God, to which I had pledged allegiance (whatever that meant) every morning of every school day for years (don't remember when that stopped, but probably it was junior high.).

It was a bit of a surprise to find out the "Pledge of Allegiance" wasn't written for Americans Only, and indeed was written by a "Socialist," and a greater shock to find out it wasn't always "one nation, under God" to which Americans had pledged their allegiance (watching "The Bells of St. Mary" on TCM the other night, it was funny to hear the students recite the pledge without those two words.  They weren't anti-American, they were just pre-Red Scare).  Try as I might, I couldn't quite re-hear the words of that pledge as the author meant them, and I still can't pledge allegiance to a flag (especially in church services on Scout Sunday).  But I can re-hear the words to "America the Beautiful".

"America the Beautiful" is both a declaration of Bates' patriotism and a protest against Gilded Age greed. It begins with the now well-known words,

“Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain; For purple mountains' majesty above the fruited plain."

Then she pivots to the lines meant as a protest against America's reckless and illegal overseas military adventures as well as the U.S. government's illegal suppression of free speech, dissent, and civil liberties:

"America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! "

In another verse, she observed:

"America! America! God shed his grace on thee. Till selfish gain no longer stain The banner of the free! "

Since the 1970's reaction to the anti-war movement, I've associated patriotism with "My country, right or wrong!," and "America:  Love It or Leave It." (If you think the Tea Party is sui generis you are so, so wrong.)  Not the humble love of country and nation, in other words, but the muscular assertion of superiority of an idea.  So it is a challenge to my preconceptions to hear the words "God shed his grace on thee" not as a declarative statement, but as a request.  Even with the sentence that follows, my insistence on the context that song was always presented in overrode what the words were actually saying.

So much, in other words, depends on what we are told the words mean, than on what the lyrics themselves reveal they mean.  But if we take the lyrics for what they say, rather than for how some have presented the song, we get a sense of the humility that makes America great, rather than the braggadocio that dminishes us.

And if you hang on through the commercial above, you'll get some beautiful statements from the singers about our liberty in law, about free speech and civil liberties, and about who is "American."

It's a lovely response to the haters, who just gotta hate.  Alan West should be ashamed of himself; but we should still consider him an American.

We connect, you decide

Shamelessly "borrowed" from Wonkette

So, this happened (picked up on January 7, as you see, by a mainstream news outlet; or not):

The Girl Scouts of America tweeted a link last month to a Huffington Post article and video panel discussion that praises pro-abortion politician Wendy Davis (D-Texas.)

The Girl Scouts of America tweet on Dec. 18 says, “Is there anyone you’d add to this list? Incredible Ladies Who Should Be Women Of The Year For 2013

The label "pro-abortion" is your first clue as to that news outlet's interests.  However, to be fair, the article does note that the GSA said this was not an endorsement of Ms. Davis' candidacy for governor:  

CNSNews.com contacted the Girl Scouts of America (GSUSA) for comment on their tweet and received this response from Kelly M. Parisi, “Our tweet simply asked our followers to share their opinion about what women should be included in a discussion about women in 2013 initiated by HuffPost Live.  Girl Scouts has not endorsed any politicians. Additionally, in the page we linked to, included is a second hand link.

“Our Twitter bio states that a retweet does not equal an endorsement. Our sharing a link was not to endorse any of the women featured, but to highlight the source's acknowledgement of women who made a mark in 2013. The title of the article was not created by GSUSA, but by the source.

“As the world’s premiere leadership organization for girls, we are charged with developing girls of courage, confidence and character.  We hope that all girls have the courage to make the their voices heard and welcome respectful discourse about what qualities a woman of the year should have.”

But still, the meaning was clear:

Anti-abortion groups angry over what they see as the Girl Scouts' support for abortion-rights advocates, including Democratic Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, have launched a cookie boycott.

The groups have taken issue with tweets and Facebook postings that link to articles recognizing Davis, who shot to political stardom last year with a filibuster of abortion limits, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, another Democrat who supports abortion rights.

"It's very clear that they are not citing any pro-life leaders with any praise, even though their official stand is they are not taking any position on abortion," said John Pisciotta, director of Pro-Life Waco and organizer of the so-called CookieCott 2014.

But that was reported by ABC on February 4; as usual, the lamestream media was several days late to the party.  ThinkProgress had the story on January 30:

“We’re asking you to boycott Girl Scout cookies in 2014,” reads a new site dedicated to the boycott, explaining that Davis should not be lifted up as a “worthy role model for our children.” The same accusation is being leveled against the group in regard to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was included in a different news article about influential U.S. women that the Girl Scouts shared on its Facebook page.

The controversy has been building for several weeks. At the beginning of this month, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly hosted a panel discussion about the organization’s tweet. Panelists suggested that sharing any material related to Davis violates the Girl Scouts’ policy to remain uninvolved in politics.

And yes, there was a Fox News connection; they picked up on this as soon as two weeks after the tweet went out.  Apparently, so did others, because by February 2nd (via Southern Beale):

Authorities in Temecula say a man pulled a gun on a girl scout who was going door-to-door selling cookies Sunday.

The incident took place in the 31000 block of Strawberry Tree Lane.

Police responded to an assault with a deadly weapon call.

Officials said the victim, a minor, was selling cookies door-to-door when a resident opened his door and pointed a gun at the girl.

The scout’s father witnessed the alleged incident and called police.

Coincidence?

Mortal Epistemological Kombat

Finish him!

There are two reasons the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham tonight is a bad idea, and I can link to both of them.

The long, and excellent, reason(s) is(are) provided in Sean McElwee's thoughtful discussion of how the issue of "creationism" is about politics, not theology (it isn't about religion at all.  Creationism is a specifically Christian doctrine with no relationship or attempt to relate to any other world religion; and it is a particularly crabbed and Protestant version of Christianity that gives rise to it).  McElwee makes his argument eloquently in his first paragraph:

Bill Nye and Ken Ham will be debating creationism on Feb. 4, and it’s a bad idea for both scientists and Christians. Ham’s young-earth creationism represents the distinct tendency of American Christian fundamentalists to reject science and use their religion to defend economic ideas, environmental degradation and anti-science extremism. But these views aren’t actually inherent in Christianity — they’ve been imposed on the biblical text by politically motivated and theologically inept readers. The solution is not anti-theism but better theological and scientific awareness.

Or, as Mr. Adams and Mr. Niebuhr would have said:  education.

The second reason is, ironically, in an article at Huffington Post about scientists who think Mr. Nye is misguided because he will only give "creationists" like Mr. Ham a platform to assert their legitimacy.  A point I'm not sure is that strong, but which is somewhat supported by the comments at that post.  The comments that are not specifically atheist in approach, all make weak to poor arguments about how "evolution" is subject to question based on various ideas which have little to do with scientific reasoning, and a great deal to do with engaging in a language game Mr. Nye is not playing.

In other words, they are talking past each other, and no amount of effort on Mr. Nye's part is going to convince them to use the language he is using.  Mr. Nye is not likely to do anything tonight except confirm the prejudices of both sides and convince each their position is right, their use of language justified.

I think creationism is a crock, mostly because it is neither science nor theology, but makes a hash of both.  Debating the merits of creationism by presenting the merits of evolutionary theory, however, is not going to do much to stop people from promoting creationism.  After all, confronted with archaeological evidence of an account of the Flood from a Babylonian tablet, the response of Biblical scholars is that this tablet, written a millenia before the Genesis account, is probably the basis for that account.

But Ken Ham, who founded Answers in Genesis-U.S. and is trying to raise $73 million to build a full-scale replica of Noah's Ark in Kentucky, says it must have been the other way around: The true account must have come first in Genesis, and was corrupted by the time the Babylonians set down their details on the Ark Tablet.

"Because the Bible is God’s inspired Word, it gives us the true account," Ham wrote. "The other flood legends are man’s changed versions of the event called Noah’s Flood, which occurred close to 4,400 years ago!"

Anybody really think you're going to have a fruitful debate with a man like that?  As Mr. McElwee said, "the solution is....better theological and scientific awareness."

In Advance of the Liberal Arts

All fame is fleeting....

NTodd takes me back to Niebuhr; and I just want to let things speak for themselves here:

John Adams

But this my Friend, to be serious, is the Fate of all ages and Nations; and there is no resource in human nature for a Cure...Limited Monarchy is founded in Nature. No Nation can adore more than one Man at a time. It is an happy Circumstance that the object of our Devotion is so well deserving of it; that he has virtue so exquisite and wisdom so consummate.

There is no Citizen of America will say, that there is in the World so fit a Man for the head of the Nation. From my soul I think there is not; and the Question should not be who has done or suffered most, or who has been the most essential and Indispensable Cause of the Revolution, but who is best qualified to govern us?

Nations are not to sacrifice their Future Happiness to Ideas of Historical Justice. They must consult their own Weaknesses, Prejudices, Passions, Senses and Imaginations as well as their Reason.

Reinhold Niebuhr:

A further consequence of modern optimism is a philosophy of history expressed in the idea of progress. Either by a force immanent in nature itself, or by the gradual extension of rationality, or by the elimination of specific sources of evil, such as priesthoods, tyrannical government and class divisions in society, modern man [sic] expects to move toward some kind of perfect society. The idea of progress is compounded of many elements. It is particularly important to consider one element of which modern culture is itself completely oblivious. The idea of progress is possible only upon the ground of a Christian culture. It is a secularized version of Biblical apocalypse and of the Hebraic sense of a meaningful history, in contrast to the meaningless history of the Greeks. But since the Christian doctrine of the sinfulness of man [sic] is eliminated, a complicating factor in the Christian philosophy is removed and the way is open for simple interpretations of history, which relate historical process as closely as possible to biological process and which fail to do justice either to the unique freedom of man or to the daemonic misuse which he may make of that freedom.

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, Vol. I (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press 1996), p. 24.

Democracy has a more compelling justification and requires a more realistic vindication than is given it by the liberal culture with which it has been associated in modern history. The excessively optimistic estimates of human nature and history with which the democratic credo is linked are a source of peril to democratic society, for our contemporary experience refutes this optimism and there is danger that it will seem to refute the democratic ideal as well. Modern democracy requires a more realistic philosophical and religious basis.

Adams:

 The social science will never be much improved, until the people unanimously know and consider themselves as the fountain of power, and until they shall know how to manage it wisely and honestly. Reformation must begin with the body of the people, which can be done only, to effect, in their educations. The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it...They must be taught to reverence themselves, instead of adoring their servants, their generals, admirals, bishops, and statesmen.

"Modern democracy requires a more realistic philosophical and religious basis."  Which further requires an education in both philosophy and religion (religion is not a province which public schools cannot teach; it is only one they cannot proselytize in.)  But then that would require a recognition that validity of a concept is an objective problem, but one's relationship to that validity (i.e., "truth") is equally important, but a subjective problem.  What I know about religion, in other words, is one thing; my relationship to that knowledge, is another.  Both, to underline the point, are of equal importance.  If we are going to consult  our own "Weaknesses, Prejudices, Passions, Senses and Imaginations as well as [our] Reason," we cannot reasonably exclude religion, as well as philosophy, from the discussion.

The Passing (and far away) Parade

The question really isn't "What did Chris Christie know, and when did he know it?"  The question is (well, besides "Outside of New Jersey, who really cares?"):  "Why is Chris Christie still governor?"

In his radio interview yesterday, Christie admitted he could no longer "warrant" anything his staff said.  Which makes his staff useless, and him useless as well.  If a governor's staff cannot speak and act with the governor's authority, the governor is frozen.  He's useless.  Nothing any staff member says can be relied on, even by the governor; so of what use are they?  And of what use is the Governor?

So that's really question #1:  why is Chris Christie still the governor of New Jersey?  He's admitted he can't do the job, that he can't hire trustworthy people and he can't trust them and therefore he's completely incapable of carrying out the duties of the office.  He's stuck in a dilemma of his own making, because he doesn't want to be responsible for what his staff did (but they only act on his authority, or with the color of his authority, at least), and he doesn't want to be responsible for finding out what his staff did (because, again, he would be responsible, especially if staff said anything from "But you told us to!" to "But you asked who would rid you of this meddlesome Mayor!").

And besides, who really cares what Christie knew and when he knew the traffic on the GWB was snarled?  It's not a criminal investigation, and Christie knows that.  That's why he said, in the interview, that the only question was what did he know about the bridge, and when did he know it.  The question he doesn't want to answer (either) is:  what did he know about the allocation of Sandy funds, and when did he know it?

Follow the money.  That's where the criminal charges are going to go.

And that whole thing about Christie being a GOP nominee in 2016?  Fuggedaboutit!  Christie never had any more chance of taking that nomination than Giuliani did in 2008.  Anybody remember when "America's Mayor" was gonna sweep the country because the Beltway Press said so?  Problem was, the Beltway Press didn't leave the Beltway to find out what the voters were gonna do; they didn't even ask America if Giuliani was their Mayor.

So, back to the original and fundamental question:  Outside of New Jersey, who cares what happens to Chris Christie?