Conservatism reborn in twisted sisterhood

 
VERY COOL POST FROM ONO EKEH on Mary and the Eucharist.
posted by Eve at 6:06 PM

 
TELFORD WORK RESPONDS. I will mull and post more tomorrow or Wednesday.
posted by Eve at 5:50 PM

 
GOOD ARTICLE ON THE DEATH PENALTY here. Diligently sorts theological from prudential claims, and gets into the gritty facts in order to give us some information about those prudential claims. A few scattered thoughts:

Harrington writes, "Prudentially, the evidence is far from convincing that American prisons are up to the task of protecting the safety of persons." He doesn't go on to say (though I have no reason to believe he disagrees with this) that if he is correct in his prudential judgment, Catholics should be working to change that situation. In other words, if, prudentially, the death penalty can and should be applied in contemporary America because our prisons suck so much, Catholics should be working to make the sucking stop, and then, once that task is accomplished, we should turn to working against the death penalty. We should not accept the death penalty as status quo even if we agree that today it is needed.

Christian opponents of the death penalty are often accused, by other Christians, of fetishizing life in a way that is more humanist than Christian. The accusation is that death penalty opponents believe (or have embraced a worldview that springs from the belief) that death is the end--that it is the worst thing that can ever happen--that there is no Hell, no Heaven, no judgment--and that therefore life must be preserved at all cost. I find this accusation unconvincing, largely because it can be so easily applied to most supporters of the death penalty. Most contemporary supporters of the death penalty support it only in cases of murder. Murder is different. Murder is distinct. Why? Because killing, although perhaps not the worst thing you can do to someone (and how are we to even begin judging whether it is worse to be killed or tortured, killed or raped, killed or pressured into denying your faith--how can that calculus ever be made?!), is different. It is the end of the life we know, even if it is also rebirth into a new life. Unless supporters of the death penalty are willing to call for its application in cases of (say) rape, child abuse, grand theft auto, or killing the king's deer--then I don't see how they can responsibly claim that the view that "death is different" is an anti-Christian view.

And if death penalty supporters are willing to extend the penalty so far--or even just to cover all murders--then you can kiss goodbye the standard pro-death penalty argument that the USA doesn't execute the innocent. If that claim is true (and I really don't know, though there are serious horror stories about the quality of the legal counsel given to men who were executed), it is true because there are so many barriers to execution in this country now, and because, relative to the number of murders, we don't execute that many people. Ease the standards for execution and you will see innocent men sent to the chair.

And if you don't extend the death penalty to all murders, if you keep it, as it is today, dependent on a number of shifting factors that deem some murders more deserving of death than others, how is that to be justified? What is there to say to the anguished mother who asks why her child's death wasn't important enough to warrant the supreme penalty? In practice, distinguishing between death-penalty and jail-time cases is messy, an ugly wrangling of lawyers, grief, and sympathy. If we kill murderers to send a message, are we actually clear on what message we're sending?

Finally--too many arguments for the death penalty (not all, of course, but too many) are also arguments for torture. For example, the notion that the criminal must receive punishment that is somehow proportionate to his crime. Well, the death penalty is not always proportionate to the crime. How is lethal injection "enough" when compared to the rape and murder of 14 women? How is that "proportionate"? If we really wanted proportionate justice, we would kill painfully and slowly. (And I think some equivalent of this mindset is behind the view that prison rape isn't a big deal because, after all, they're just prisoners.) Proportionate justice, an eye for an eye, is neither attainable nor desirable. So put that argument aside and move on.

Anyway, Harrington makes a good distinction between what the Church can and does say, and what she can't and doesn't. Clear, readable, journalistic. Good stuff.
posted by Eve at 5:18 PM

 
AND READ THIS EXCELLENT POST FROM THE RAT on men, women, marriage, and the $#@! that gets in the way.
posted by Eve at 3:07 PM

 
PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE AMMUNITION?: The House of David and Telford Work are having a terrific running debate in the Stanley Hauerwas/Christian pacifism thread. Although I am not a pacifist, I must say that Work is making the better arguments here, though HOD is battling valiantly (so to speak).

My problems with both parties' positions are really problems with a certain style of Protestant exegesis. Zorak once noted that "What Would Jesus Do?" isn't really the greatest slogan for a Christian; "What Does The Church Teach?", while not as sexy, more accurately reflects how we should align our actions and loyalties. WWJD? theology tends to run into three dead ends: a) rank speculation about what Jesus might have done, if only He had known all the circumstances, and if He were a lot like us, etc. etc.;

b) an overly literal interpretation of imitatio Christi. The editors of First Things have a good take on this: "Some ask, What would Jesus do? Can you imagine, it is asked, Jesus flying a stealth bomber or joining in a commando raid? One might as well ask if you can imagine Jesus driving a bus, editing a magazine, or being a tenured professor in a religious studies department. The question is not what Jesus would do but what he would have us do. Real pacifists answer that question one way. Other faithful disciples answer that, in obedience to the command to love the neighbor, it is their duty to defend the innocent by engaging in a just war against a murderous aggressor." The editors do not add that Jesus, in fact, did many things that it might not be best for you or me to do--oh, click here, or here, but you can no doubt add your own examples. Some see a switch from WWJD to What Does The Church Teach? as a dilution of Jesus's stern message; I see WWJD? as a rejection of the idea of vocation and a potentially prideful attempt to act as if one were, oneself, God.

c) weird archeological rummagings-around trying to find out "what Jesus really said," since, of course, we can't trust the Gospels, which were vetted and handed down to us by the untrustworthy Church. The "search for the historical Jesus" rapidly dissipates into either despair of ever finding the "real Jesus" or the discovery that Jesus "really" said exactly what I wanted Him to say.

I think HOD is taking option c) while Work is taking b). Work's asking all the right questions to illuminate the flaws in HOD's claims, so I'll just ask a couple questions of Work: First, is pacifism analogous to celibacy? If not, why not? In my opinion, they actually hold strikingly similar positions in the New Testament. (I can elaborate on this if he doesn't take my point, but I think it's kind of obvious.)

Second, I know this isn't decisive for Work's claims, but he's leaning very heavily on the example of the British in India to show how a) political entanglement/use of force by Christians always gets in the way of mission work; and b) nonviolent resistance works. I submit, as a counterexample on both points, the experience of black slaves in America. Slaves used all kinds of nonviolent means to resist authority; yet what actually freed them was not work slowdowns, or attempts to evangelize their masters, or abolitionist rhetoric, but a drop of blood from the sword for every drop from the lash. And nobody had better reasons to distrust the motives of Christian evangelizers than the slaves; and yet the black community is well known for its passionate Christianity. Again, not dispositive, but this really doesn't fit the model of how things work in the world that Work has presented.

Third, I assume I just missed this since it's such a key question, but I don't recall where Work has addressed the distinction between martyrdom--in which I die--and pacifism--in which, if it is widely accepted, I die, and you die, and Glenn Reynolds dies, etc. This is roughly analogous to the "What if you came across a woman being raped in a park?" question. Pacifism isn't about martyrdom, or it isn't only about that; it's also about what happens to those who don't choose pacifism but who can't defeat an enemy without help.

Again, in my view, the crucial questions are, What does the Church teach, and why?

Anyway, Work is making by far the best Christian pacifist argument I've ever read, so go over there. I am impressed though not convinced.
posted by Eve at 3:06 PM

 
A ROCK'N'ROLL CONSERVATIVE BOOK LIST: Not the book list, since I'm no Harold Bloom. Just a book list. I know it's a bit weird to post a reading list, but I think if I were reading this site I might want one. (I loved it when Brink Lindsey would post on what he's been reading, and it would be very cool if other bloggers would post lists of books that had influenced them, as Zorak did.) And hey, every movement, no matter how weird or embryonic, needs books. Sorry for lack of Amazon links--it would take way too long.

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions. A classic of self-examination, and discovering one's truest self through submission to God, that feels startlingly contemporary. Augustine's view of childhood is also a great antidote to both the sickly-sweet Precious Moments stuff and the amoral, feral, jaded adolescents of "YA fiction." Peter Brown's biography is also fantastic.

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind. I think this is still the only book I've read three times since freshman year. Passionate, if metaphysically unstable. Bloom offers a (light-speed, but still insightful) intellectual history of the West, in which the Left assimilates its old enemy, Friedrich Nietzsche. He also gives a furious personal history of Cornell in the sixties; and defends the view that education is driven by love, that it is a seeking of another rather than an expression of oneself.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. Everyone focuses on the "gradual change vs. revolution" distinction here, which is, frankly, not that interesting. I found this book fascinating for its explication of loyalty, especially loyalty to one's country, and the ways in which a country can foster personal loyalty rather than relying on impersonal force.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov; Notes from Underground. Confrontation with these books can overturn one's table of values. They're shattering, ferocious, contemporary--and in TBK, there are passages that will make you fall out of your seat laughing. Before the axe falls. Dostoyevsky intimately knew the ways in which compassion can curdle into fury, or self-doubt spiral into hatred of others.

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. Lyrical essays on education, black rural life, and more. Catch Du Bois's pre-Communist reflections on America.

Maggie Gallagher, Enemies of Eros; The Abolition of Marriage; The Case for Marriage (co-author with Linda Waite). EOE is a white-hot, sometimes scattershot tour of contemporary American sexual mores, with a focus on what the sexual revolution did for (or to) women. The chapter "Abortion and the Children of Choice" is a must-read, but there are great insights throughout the book. AOM is a more solid and coherent book, mixing social-science research with inspiring reflections on the nature of love, loyalty, and marriage. TCFM basically updates the social-science data from AOM; it's not nearly as philosophically rich as AOM, but it is a useful and painless read. Lingua Franca called Gallagher's prose "bodice-ripping"; read and learn why.

Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. Fat book, but well worth the time it takes. A history of slavery that treats slaves, slaveowners, and everyone else in the slave states as complex, conflicted, and resourceful human beings rather than cardboard-cutout heroes and villains.

Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. The old war-horse. Many good insights on the mechanisms of socialism, the ways in which it develops into oligarchy, and the ways it betrays its initial, idealistic supporters. Applicable to everything from the AFL-CIO to the Supreme Court.

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson. Workaday, but useful in building good economic intuitions.

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed; The Screwtape Letters; The Problem of Pain. Compassionate, philosophically astute, imaginative (well, duh), and truly incisive about the lies we tell ourselves and the contortions we get into trying to justify our worst desires. Even if you're no fan of the Narnia books (I'm not), these are fantastic. They delineate a view of human nature that is neither "optimistic" nor "pessimistic," a view in which man is neither good nor bad but Fallen. This view has, to my mind, fairly obvious political ramifications, which I'll maybe blog about later; but if you don't have an intuitive understanding of this take on human nature, reading Lewis is a great place to start.

Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue. This book was not really my thing, but I do acknowledge that MacIntyre's analyses of why so many political/philosophical arguments seem stuck in a crashing-gears, spinning-wheels stage is brilliant.

Charles Murray, Losing Ground and What It Means to Be a Libertarian. Losing Ground is kind of "welfare reform 101," with all the intro-level glossing over of nuances that that implies; but it's a passionate and very useful book, written back when Murray still thought poor people could be the agents of their own destinies. WIMTBAL is mostly a great intro, since Murray focuses on the dispossessed, the needy, and the regular Joe, and shows how libertarian policies would benefit them. In the "sex and drugs" chapter Murray relies on the harm principle in a totally un-nuanced, unsatisfying way (and basically claims that any regulation of sex, drugs, etc. would lead necessarily to tyranny--a standard high school debating move, and unworthy of his abilities), but the rest of the book is really good.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals; Beyond Good and Evil; The Gay Science; The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music; Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche saw much more of the nature of Christianity ("A creditor sacrificing himself for a debtor?" he cried in baffled rage), promise-making, music, man's search for meaning, and atheism than most people. The one thing he couldn't comprehend was love. TGOM, especially, is a must-read.

Marvin Olasky, The Tragedy of American Compassion. Moves away from the old "state aid vs. private aid" conflict, instead presenting a much deeper critique of impersonal, bureaucratic "compassion." Awesome book. If you've been turned off by his columns (I've only read one or two, but they weren't very good), read this anyway.

P.J. O'Rourke, All the Trouble in the World; Eat the Rich; Parliament of Whores; Modern Manners; Holidays in Hell. O'Rourke is something like a cocktail of George Orwell and a more scathing Dave Barry, with extra gin. All of these books except Modern Manners feature O'Rourke staggering and swearing his way through the messes of socialism and do-goodery in our country and elsewhere; he's an acute observer and a hilarious writer. MM is a much darker book (but no less funny), a black-humor look at life in a world where manners have replaced morals. O'Rourke is also a good journalist, and comes across as a mensch; you might also check out his report from the Philippines in Republican Party Reptile to see both of those qualities on display.

George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia; 1984; The Road to Wigan Pier; selected Orwell essays. Do I really need to tell you to read Orwell? Ultimately he was at his best in the essays, but that doesn't mean you should avoid the other stuff....

Plato, The Symposium. There's lots more great Plato out there, but this complex, funny, intriguing, and elusive dialogue is the best place to start.

Paul Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern. I'm cheating a bit here, since I've only read the first volume (on ancient Greece), but that volume was like a quick plunge into a world that is starkly alien, yet has left recognizable traces throughout our culture. I'm really looking forward to reading the other two books. Rahe is a brisk writer who knows exactly when to generalize and when to drop a telling anecdote. Even the index is fun.

Philip Roth, Sabbath's Theater. An antidote to sunny nihilism and contemporary views of sex. Also, of course, a truly brilliant novel.

The Portable Enlightenment Reader. Lots of good snippets, will help you figure out which people you should read in more depth. Very useful reference work.

Antonin Scalia et al., A Matter of Interpretation.

William Shakespeare, King Lear; Hamlet; Macbeth; Henry IV 1&2; Henry V; Richard II; Love’s Labours Lost; Measure for Measure; A Midsummer Night's Dream. I'll try to blog about why these plays in particular later today.

R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages. Fun, quick intro to a crucial and fascinating period of history that, if you were taught in American non-Catholic schools (or probably almost any Catholic school), you were almost certainly not taught about.

Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History. Insightful, if a bit cagey, critiques of modern political philosophy.

Donna Tartt, The Secret History. Stark, terrific book--is there such a thing as philosophical pulp?--about the search for ecstasy and the attempt to return to pre-Christian ways on a modern university campus.
posted by Eve at 1:34 PM

 
MAKE ME READ BOOKS!: OK, I know I've been promising more posting a lot lately, and it hasn't been happening, for various reasons. I hope to post quite a bit today though. One thing I'll be posting soon is a book list--stuff I've read that I'd strongly recommend to anyone interested by rock'n'roll conservatism, i.e. the political/philosophical worldview of this site.

What this list won't include: foreign policy. You'll notice that I very rarely write about that. You may have guessed that I don't write about it because I don't think I understand it well enough to spout off about it. Sure, I'll occasionally do this, and obviously there are the Keston bulletins, which don't really count as "foreign policy," and obviously all the farm-dole/subsidies 'n' tariffs stuff has major foreign policy implications. But in general, The Rest Of The World is an area I stay out of on this site.

I want to change that. So I'm soliciting recommendations. Write up a description of the books you think I should read--including novels, travel narratives, epic poems, whatever you think would be helpful. Basically, write an ad for the things, telling me why I should read them. I can't guarantee that I'll get to every one, but I will a) post the recommendations I get, and b) try to read at least a good chunk of them. Send rec's to eve_tushnet@yahoo.com, and do check out the email policy to your left. Muchisimas gracias, y'all.
posted by Eve at 10:39 AM

 
"Why don't you pass the time with a game of solitaire?"
--Angela Lansbury, "The Manchurian Candidate"
posted by Eve at 12:36 PM

 
KESTON BULLETIN: BELARUS: REPRESSIVE RELIGION BILL SNEAKED THROUGH PARLIAMENT

by Felix Corley, Keston News Service

The campaign group For Freedom of Conscience has described as “a bolt from out of the blue” the sudden adoption by parliament yesterday (27 June) of a repressive religion bill that only a day earlier had been postponed until the autumn (see KNS 26 June 2002). “Yesterday, when I learnt that consideration of the draft law had been postponed until the autumn I thought that common sense had prevailed among the deputies,” German Rodov, head of the Bible Society, declared in a 27 June statement passed to Keston News Service. “But today I have the impression that in taking these decisions the deputies are completely ignoring the views of tens of thousands of Belarusian citizens. This law is a fiasco for the Chamber of Representatives as a parliament and testimony to its
bankruptcy.” Religious minorities in Belarus now fear President Aleksandr Lukashenko will sign the bill into law today, the last day of the parliamentary session.

Leaders of four main Protestant communities, the Baptists, the Pentecostals, the Full Gospel Church and the Adventists, are planning a press conference to express their concerns later today (28 June).

If signed by the president, the new law would be the most repressive religion law in any former Soviet republic other than Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. It would outlaw unregistered religious activity, introduce compulsory prior censorship for all religious literature; publishing, education and charitable activity would be restricted to faiths that had ten registered communities in 1982; there would be a ban on all but occasional, small religious meetings in private homes (see KNS 17 June and 28 May 2002). While Orthodox and Catholic representatives have broadly welcomed or accepted the bill, Protestants and leaders of minority faiths have sharply criticised it.

On the pretext that the electronic voting on 26 June had gone wrong, the bill was again presented for its second reading in the afternoon of Thursday, and was adopted. “Everything went as if according to a pre-determined scenario,” For Freedom of Conscience declared. “Within an hour and a half, article by article without any discussion, the bill was adopted.” Eighty two deputies voted in favour, with only two against. Within fifteen minutes, the upper chamber, the Council of the Republic, also approved the bill, according to information from deputies. An official of the Council of the Republic declined to confirm to Keston on 28 June whether it had approved the law the previous day or not.

Pentecostal pastor Vasily Moskalenko complained of the way the deputies had handled the bill. “Such lurching from one side to another testifies to the deputies’ lack of competence and independence in adopting the decision,” he declared in the wake of the bill’s adoption.

“We have gone back to 1936 and Stalin’s repressions,” Father Yan Spasyuk, leader of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which has been denied registration, told Keston from the village of Pogranichny on 28 June. “When I heard yesterday it had been adopted by parliament I was struck dumb. Everything has been taken from us. Now I’m no longer a priest, just a layman.” He said he was now considering challenging the new law – if it is signed by the president – in the country’s Constitutional Court.

Father Spasyuk blamed the Moscow Patriarchate’s Exarchate in Belarus for the new law. “It feels its weakness in the face of our Church and the Protestants. That’s why they decided to change the law.” He said he had heard that parliamentary deputies had been taken to the Exarchate a few days ago and shown films attacking minority faiths, especially Protestants. Keston has been unable to verify the claim independently. (END)

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posted by Eve at 4:21 PM

 
ANACOSTIA, LAND OF OPPORTUNITY?: Does anyone know of good articles updating this 1999 City Paper piece? If so, please email me; thanks. The article is a great read, by the way, despite phrases like "planted a malignant seed" and "pot of pathology" (in the same paragraph!!!).

Tangentially: To journalists: If you find yourself writing the words "ironically," "in an ironic twist," or variants thereof, you can be 98% sure you are wrong. Rain on your wedding day, for example, is not ironic. It just sucks. Sorry, pet peeve, has nothing to do w/CP article.
posted by Eve at 3:35 PM

 
REAL POSTING will resume tomorrow. For now, here's a sensible article about women's sports that's interesting even to "sports-negative" types like me. (In sixth grade, during the required "mile run" portion of Presidential Fitness Testing, I unleashed my inner adolescent jerk and walked the entire mile reading a copy of Keats's "Hyperion." Or maybe "Endymion." Whichever, it's not as if either one of them is a great masterpiece, but hey, I was in middle school.) Link via The Rat.

And here's a post about (could I make this up?) Red China Panda Porn. I have to admit that I really dig the pandas--when The Rat was here in the fall, we got to see the guy panda soaking up a jacuzzi bath (or zoo equivalent) and looking just like the Japanese businessman in the "Mr. Sparkle" Simpsons episode. We also saw the pandas play-fighting. And it was really cool. But good grief, they are expensive! And freaky. And, of course, Communist. They should defect, that would rock.

And here's an awesome, awesome picture.
posted by Eve at 3:25 PM

 
THIS ARTICLE is really good. It's on "environmental justice" and the race card in D.C. From 2001, but a keeper.
posted by Eve at 3:22 PM

 
Watch, watch, watch your blog
Gently down the stream
Throw your teacher overboard,
Listen to her scream...

So I can't get het up about the Pledge of Allegiance thing. I never said the controversial phrase in school. (I can't remember if I just refused to say "under God," or if I kept silent for the whole thing--if the former, that would be silly since "under God" was hardly my only problem with the Pledge, but hey, I was silly when I was in elementary school.... My middle and high school didn't require the Pledge, and would probably have actively discouraged it!) I really don't care if "under God" gets stripped out of the Pledge. There are good arguments on both sides, as the cliche goes. (Pro-"under God": Reminds us that our allegiance is not to "My country, right or wrong," but to "My country, under God"--keeps us from making an idol of flag or nation. Anti-"under God": The necessary vagueness of the phrase requires an acceptance of "civil Deism," and civil Deism is wrong and distasteful.) If you want a really good take on possible repercussions in much more important, more venerable areas of civic life, check out this post from Eugene Volokh, who also has a couple interesting tidbits in the two posts above it. He is, as usual, commonsensical and helpful.

E-Pression: A very funny anecdote about the Donne poem below.

Gideon's Blog: Says what I wish I'd said about that "more chicks than cats in college" study. Link via InstaPundit, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering with this, but there you go.

Ranting Screeds: A very interesting post on Eastern Orthodoxy, pacifism, and Stanley Hauerwas. This link is for Charles Murtaugh! The Ranter is not as certain of his position as I am (I'm just not a pacifist, end of story), but that makes him a more thoughtful and nuanced commentator; plus this is just a really interesting post in general. Also from InstaPundit.

Amy Welborn: What a surprise, an Amy Welborn post I agree with 100%. It's about that Boston nun who just got booted for futzing around with baptisms.

And I just got my first email of reader praise (for something I did for Crisis, not for the blog) that included the phrases "Huzzah! ook! ook!"

I'm, uh, honored...!
posted by Eve at 3:16 PM

 
MAILBAG: Israel; monks.

A good friend (who should get a blog!) writes: "1. From a pragmatic standpoint, one can argue that Israel should not have been founded. But from what little I know, I think the founding was legit.

"2. A point about the settlements: many Israelis do not support them, and never have. They were encouraged by conservatives to prevent the Israeli government from ever ceding the land.

"3. I agree, the U.S. shouldn't be in the client state biz. That is, if our military aid to a foreign country is purely charity, that charity
must be done with an exit strategy. But note that this is only relevant if no U.S. interest is served. There have been and continue to be
reasons to support Israel beyond charity. The Cold War, and now as an outpost of western political and economic civilization. The Middle East is in convulsion in part because of jealousy for the riches of the West, and Israel in particular, but eventually I believe that this exposure of the Middle East to Western prosperity (as opposed to the Saudi royal familiy's prosperity) will force the leaders of the Middle East to modernize.

"4. Is the dream dead? No. I believe that Israel will survive for at least my lifetime. Is Israel's existence good for the Jews? Yes. First,
Jews are better off in Israel than they were in Arab countries. Second, the existence of Israel has encouraged some moral growth because it has returned the responsibilities of governance to the Jewish people. It was too easy to be holier-than-thou when Jews didn't have to rule and face the tough choices of politics.

"5. The question 'Is the dream dead?' is tied to the problem of what would happen if the U.S. abandoned Israel. ('If the U.S. abandons
Israel, Islamist terrorists everywhere will rejoice.') That is, the Islamist world can be convinced that their dream is dead. The enemy can lose. Oslo happened because Israel had been winning for years. This is a war of wills, a war of dreams, and if Israel can convince the Arab world it is not going anywhere it can win. This will take decades, but it's already happening. The concessions of the Saudi peace plan are lame, but they are also a sign of progress. Regime change in Iraq might also encourage the Islamist world to change.

"The problem sort of reminds me of the debate as to whether the American people can deal with war dead anymore. I think they can--so long as they believe in a war and they get victories. The Islamists will change their minds once they lose enough. Islamists respect success."

I responded to his fourth point, and he replied in turn. I'm in plain, he's in bold: "I do disagree with the claim that Israel's existence has made Jews politically responsible at last. It's an intriguing argument, but unfortunately recent Jewish history has also led to a kind of 'anything is justified if the Jews benefit' perspective which has made some supporters of Israel (both here and there) wildly irresponsible. There's a sense of 'our turn now'; of 'turnabout is fair play.' I don't know to what extent that attitude outweighs the one you note."
I should also have added that this same attitude of "anything if the Jews benefit" is fostered by American Christian supporters of Israel who believe Israel must triumph for various apocalyptic reasons; and by people who compare Israel/Palestinians to American colonists/American Indians and conclude, "We did it, why can't they?"

Anyway, he responded: "Hmm. The anything goes for Zionism attitude is definitely out there. I may be exaggerating the other effect of Israel's existence, but I certainly see it in several friends in [a Jewish society we know]."

Me: "It's a kind of Israel-based moral relativism. The UN and European condemnations have completely backfired IMO by feeding this sense--'whatever, they'll condemn us no matter what they do so who cares.'"

Him: "This is definitely a problem. The Europeans and the UN have lost all of their credibility amongst my friends who support Israel, at least. In fact, I share a non-relativist (I hope) variant of this view. That is, I obviously think Israel should not do whatever it wants, but I do think that Israel gains nothing by compromising to win the love of the UN and Europe because they won't win it. There is no reason for Israel to go soft unless it is the right thing to do, because it will always be viewed as oppressors by the nations that run the UN's general assembly."

I agree with that.

Now, monks: "Much as I would like to believe it, I doubt that Henry VIII really delayed the coming of the Industrial Revolution by closing down the English monasteries. If the situation in England in the early modern era had any parallels to that in France (and it had some -- though fewer than we might think) then whatever innovations the monasteries introduced were sure to have been offset by the fact that their farms, businesses and industries tended to be less than efficiently managed, thanks to the vagaries of monastic appointments (often dictated by Byzantine power struggles) and other elements of the so-called 'patron/client' system that had replaced the old 'feudal' networks.

"Although it seems counter-intuitive, monasteries and their properties were often not technically owned by the Church itself, but by local magnates (sometimes clerics themselves, but not necessarily) who might decide to take the land back, to withdraw their financial support, or to turn it over to other orders who might have their own ideas about how to make use of the property. Incidentally, monasteries could also be a drain on the parish itself: in Francois de Sales' diocese of Savoie in the late 16th C. one of the major problems faced by parishioners throughout the region was that so much of the land was owned by monasteries that the parishioners who worked it for them could not tithe at a rate sufficient to provide them with money to support parish priests. The money went to the monasteries instead, and the parishioners did without. This was a major issue throughout Catholic Europe.

"Today it is generally accepted by historians of the Middle Ages that Cistercians (and other orders) contributed greatly to the development of agricultural techniques that helped to advance European farming in important ways. But this came at a price: (Male) Cistercians were originally supposed to do their own work as well as to be 'intellectuals' and artists, and to pray, but in the end they found they had to hire men to work the land for them in order to be able to support themselves adequately, destroying their egalitarian ideal in the process. And it was this -- their commercial agriculture -- along with the systematic study of what worked, that helped to improve farming techniques."
posted by Eve at 11:59 AM

 
MY FRIENDS ARE COOL: Sara Russo sent me this bit of news with the heading, "Kick-ass!"

How true.

Oh, and this link should get you to the actual decision.
posted by Eve at 11:32 AM

 
"Wait a minute, haven't I seen you before? I know your face."
"Get out."
"You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big!"
"I am still big. It's the pictures that got small."
--William Holden and Gloria Swanson, "Sunset Boulevard"
posted by Eve at 11:30 AM

 
POETRY WEDNESDAY: With credit to Geistbear who came up with this PW idea. From John Donne:

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.
posted by Eve at 5:17 PM

 
LABOR PAINS: Don't have time to blog about this now. I have a lot to say here. Here's a more in-depth story that gets at some of the particular weirdnesses, tragedies, and dramas of the situation--"devout" Catholic homosexual couple a) uh, is a homosexual couple; b) procures the services of a surrogate mother; c) with IVF; d) and then--asks for? allows? not totally clear--the abortion of one child when it turns out that the surrogate mother has become pregnant with quintuplets, and carrying them all to term would endanger her health and possibly her life. But all I really want to talk about is b). More later, either tomorrow or Saturday.
posted by Eve at 5:04 PM

 
Take this blog and watch it--
I ain't workin' here no more!!!...

Actually, I love my job. But right now I'm up to my ears in work, and Blogger is flipping, so, uh, yeah. Here's some stuff to read, assuming this post ever gets published.

The Chickpea Eater has more bashing of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. I especially recommend the bit about redefining words.

The Old Oligarch is reviewing books, rambling, ranting, etc.

Don't Be A Shamed: Get into the groove, boy, you've got to prove your Constitutionality to me...; bomber stricken by conscience.

Dappled Things: Personal memories of the new archbishop of Milwaukee. One can only hope this guy is as good as Fr. Tucker says. He's got a lot to do.

The Lord Mage of Good replies to my post below ("A Cruel Pro-Life Stance"). All I can say is, look. I agree that people need to take responsibility for their lives. I agree that duty, honor, etc. are great things that are often denigrated and certainly not adequately fostered by contemporary society. I understand that many people who say "You do the crime, you do the time" or variants thereof aren't trying to be jerks. But just look at what's in fact being said. Ask yourself whether that kind of rhetoric is effective, or even accurate; what it means when heard by women with unwanted pregnancies; whether there's a more compassionate, hopeful, and pro-child way to promote responsibility; and whether this style of rhetoric is more likely to produce a) responsible, pro-life responses in the women being discussed, b) "whoa, hadn't thought of that, maybe you pro-lifers aren't all woman-hating $#@!s" on the part of legal-abortion supporters, or c) self-righteousness on the part of people who didn't "do the crime." (And again, I'm not trying to say that everyone who's ever said this is self-righteous, etc., just that I think this catchphrase is more likely to foster self-righteousness than not.)

I also noticed, thinking about this, that the equation of abortion with responsibility isn't just confined to some random women I counsel. Even Lauryn Hill's inspiring pro-life song "To Zion" includes the lyrics, They said Lauryn baby, use your head, But instead I chose to use my heart. (The people telling her to "use her head" were encouraging her to abort her son Zion.) The song itself certainly doesn't present abortion as "the responsible thing to do," but it does make clear that the people around Hill were pressuring her to take responsibility by aborting. So again, think about what will be heard as vs. what you intended to say.

The LMOG is right, though, to point out that women say this too, though I personally have only ever heard guys say it. (Once at a pro-life rally at Yale. Not helpful.)
posted by Eve at 4:51 PM

 
"Do you think beer has food value, Miss Doyle?"
--Robert Ryan to Barbara Stanwyck, "Clash By Night"
posted by Eve at 4:11 PM

 
FAUX EGALITARIANS: Another problem with trying to sustain an institution (even a small one) while promoting an egalitarian ideology: Real inequalities become hidden behind a screen of egalitarian rhetoric. Here is just one example of this phenomenon, which I saw a lot at college. For a brief period I hung out with a lefty group that supported the local labor unions. (Except for the police union, but that's a different story.) I was quickly turned off by this group (before one meeting, we all had to chant, "Hey hey! ho ho! Oppression has got to go!"--could I make that up?), but I did log a bit of time with them. They were run in a "non-hierarchical" fashion; no one was supposed to be more important or authoritative than anyone else. In practice, of course, this meant that the person with the fastest mouth ran all the meetings. Nobody else could get a word in edgewise. One guy dominated the meeting and basically left no room for other voices. And the great thing about the "egalitarian" system was that no one could stop him! No one could exert authority over him--that would be suppressing him and exerting one's own power-over. So because he relentlessly proclaimed his devotion to the principle of equality, he got to yammer on and on while the rest of us sat there cynically passing notes.

I have yet to see a "non-hierarchical" group that actually had no hierarchy. Some hierarchies are based on charisma (which does not always coincide with good judgment), other hierarchies are based on intelligence (same), others on who is best friends with whom (and frankly, this is the most likely outcome in a small, close-knit group). Often the hidden hierarchies were made all the more problematic because no one could acknowledge them. And often there is no counterbalance--the strongest personalities win every dispute.

I'm not saying that every group should be structured in the same way, of course--that would be silly. Neither do I mean to denigrate equality before the law, responsive leadership, the idea that all members of a group should have rights and a say in its operation, or whatever--I saw hard-core "Do as I say! You have no rights!" petty-dictator groups fail just as badly if not more so, and if I absolutely had to pick one, I'd go for the lefty-group model over the top-down control model any day. But there's a third alternative--authority.
posted by Eve at 6:23 PM

 
Billie Jean is not my blogwatch
She's just a girl who claims that I am the one...

Blogging will be light this week, like last week (and for the same reasons, argh)...

Radley Balko: Straight update; letters debate on Bono and whether foreign aid can truly be made "transparent."

Dappled Things: Did Henry VIII delay the Industrial Revolution? Fans of A Canticle for Leibowitz (I'm one) will find this especially intriguing...

The Knowledge Problem: Fascinating post on ceramics and economic history (and it takes place at the Victoria & Albert Museum, where I will soon be immersing myself in the Hall of Fakes, the Hall of Locks and Keys, and the other wiggy delights!). Link via Virginia Postrel. Also, reducing poverty while shifting the incentives away from killing exotic rare beasties; much other econ stuff; and a link to Salma Hayek vs. Friedrich Hayek (eek!).

Todd Reitmeyer is a deacon now!

And some new blogs (new to me, anyway): Uncertain Principles ("Physics, Politics, and Pop Culture"); and The Politics of Crime (left-leaning, very helpful round-up type site). Links via Unqualified Offerings and InstaPundit respectively.
posted by Eve at 6:06 PM

 
"Oh, Raymond, what is the matter with you? You look as if your head were going to grow to a point in the next thirteen seconds."
--Angela Lansbury to her son, "The Manchurian Candidate"
posted by Eve at 5:02 PM

 
DISPELLING ELVISH PROPAGANDA. Lots of fun. Link via Los Volokh.
posted by Eve at 4:14 PM

 
A CRUEL PRO-LIFE STANCE: So coming home from the pregnancy center last night I was thinking about something you'll hear at times from the mouths of people who oppose abortion. (Almost always, but not quite always, these people are men.) "If you aren't prepared to do the time, don't do the crime"--in other words, you chose to have sex, so now you have to live with the consequences, i.e. pregnancy, giving birth, and either raising the child or seeing her placed for adoption. Maggie Gallagher rallied some righteous fury against this stance in the chapter on abortion in Enemies of Eros (and you should absolutely read this chapter--it was a catalyst in turning my friend the Rat pro-life). She identified a Naomi Wolf-esque argument for abortion as "morality as sadism"--women can have abortions as long as they feel really bad, conflicted, and mournful about it--but I think that description could just as well summarize this argument against abortion.

There are (at least!) two other huge problems with this kind of thinking: First, any stance that treats children as punishment is anti-family, anti-life, and deeply anti-Christian.

Second--and this is why I was thinking about this last night--many women with crisis pregnancies view the abortion as their punishment. They know abortion hurts. They know it's taking a life. They have friends who have had abortions. They know. And if you tell them, "You do the crime, you do the time," they think, "That's right. I have to take responsibility for my mistakes--by not inflicting those mistakes on a child. So I'll get rid of it." To quote the famous Frederica Mathewes-Green line, "There is tremendous sadness, loneliness in the cry, 'A woman's right to choose.' No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg." Casting her as a Jezebel deserving of punishment only plays into the view many women already have of their situations--and that will push them right onto the abortionist's table.

If you hear someone saying this kind of thing, please speak up, let him or her know that this stance hurts women and denigrates children. It is not pro-life.
posted by Eve at 3:52 PM

 
VOCATION AND THE "ONE BEST WAY": The Christian notion of vocation means that there is no "one best way" to reach God. This is played out really clearly at the end of Book One of The Faerie Queene, when Arthur and the Redcrosse Knight go their separate ways. Throughout Book One "duality," doubleness, was associated with duplicity and speaking with forked tongue--check out the names of the villainess Duessa and the heroine Una. Yet at the end of the book, there's a forking of the paths, a parting of the ways, and we're clearly meant to see this as right and justified--because Arthur and the Knight have different roles to play in the one drama of life. (Yes, I wrote a paper on this, too!) There can be no contradiction in the object of our love--we must love God with all our heart, mind, and strength. But the paths we take to fulfill that goal, attain that object, are as wildly varied as the lives of the saints. (Cf. "How One Becomes What One Is," below....)
posted by Eve at 3:09 PM

 
THE POLITICS OF DANCING II: So the Willis book also spurred me to think about the postmodern love of contradiction--holding contradictory beliefs or impulses, and not attempting to reconcile them. And this naturally led me to the Cat Power song "Say." And thus I bring you the second installment of The Politics of Dancing, an occasional feature on this blog in which I relate pop lyrics to the workings of my own tangled cerebellum. (Click here for my exegesis of the Cramps' "Eyeball in My Martini.")

Lyrics: Learn to say the same thing
What defeats people is a double confession
One time they will confess one thing
And the next they will confess something else
Talk to them they will say

Learn to say the same thing
Let us hold fast to saying the same thing...

I used to be really, really into this whole "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself/I am large, I contain multitudes" shtik. It's a big part of "Third Wave" feminism--many 3W anthologies seem filled entirely with women ruminating on the various contradictions within their lives and their feminism, and then ultimately deciding it's not important--I hate the "beauty industry" but I can wear lipstick if I wanna!, masochism as feminist statement, I'm a Christian but I think God is a She, etc. It was part of my antipathy to purity.

But the problem is that trying to incorporate contradictions into one's worldview and everyday life fractures one's identity. Some bits of your life are lived one way, other bits another, and it gets harder and harder to hang on to a unified sense of "who you are," or even a sense that there's a "you" at all. I don't have time or energy to get into it here, but if you want a really long look at this problem, it crops up again and again throughout my senior essay ("Nietzsche's Rejection of Eros"): Fragmentation of identity, disappearance of identity, means the loss of the ability to make promises, and without promise-making love and loyalty similarly fragment and then vanish. I think this is one reason I have never seen a convincing portrayal or description of postmodern love--postmodernity is about alienation from self, and alienation from self means that promising and giving oneself can't happen.
posted by Eve at 3:07 PM

 
HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE IS: I recently read Ellen Willis's Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll. It's an essay collection showing Willis's various journeys through rock journalism, psychoanalytic theory, individualist feminism, and what can perhaps best be called post-Judaism. (The final essay describes her stay in Israel, her brush with Orthodox Judaism, and her ultimate rejection of that faith.) There's a lot to talk about there, but I'll just blog about one recurring theme in the book--the relationship between individuality and authority. Willis tends to assume a hostile relationship between the two--authority squelches individuality, rebellious individuals battle tradition in society and its residues within their own minds. This really hasn't been my experience.

I first became aware of a richer interplay between individuality and authority in college. I became a member of a philosophical debating society. (Wow, that description is totally inadequate--better summaries, which we used at the time, include "a party of lovers" and "a cult of the good.") This society is steeped in ritual and eccentric tradition. It is organized hierarchically, and members who have attained the Chairmanship are accorded especial authority. (This is true even when the particular Chairmen are, uh, sub-optimal.) The society was one of six parties in the Yale Political Union (a.k.a. the onion, the bunion, the gorgon, the eunuch, etc.), and none of the others had as much respect for the structures of authority and the historical accretion of tradition. (The ones on the left tended to dissipate their energies into let-it-all-hang-out rulelessness and wandering; the ones on the right tended to oscillate between top-down quasi-dictatorship and egalitarian mocking of their hierarchies.) As a freshman, I never would have expected to be attracted to such an "authoritarian" society; like Willis, I believed that authority was repressive, and actually liking that authority was a sign of psychological imbalance or insecurity.

But I was drawn to the society because of the wild efflorescence of personalities among its members. So many of its members seemed to be more fully themselves than anyone else I'd met. Coming across a member was like finding a jaguar or a gazelle in the dining hall--it was an encounter with someone totally distinct from everyone else around him, including other members. I'd joke that I was drawn to the group because I like "distilled spirits." The other parties certainly sheltered a fair crop of eccentrics--this is the Ivy League, after all--but it was very rare to find someone as intense, and as intensely different, as your average member of my own society.

Why this convergence of authority and individuality? Why this situation in which authoritarian structures seemed to either attract or encourage people who were so intensely themselves? (I quickly learned that both attraction and encouragement were involved--even people who entered the group as blurred carbon-copy Republicans or Objectivists or nice Southern girls were often distilled into strong and startling personalities.)

I think there were a lot of reasons. First, an encounter with a living tradition, in our age, is inherently startling and countercultural; thus it attracts rebels, provokes self-scrutiny, and stirs the imagination. Second, egalitarianism in a debating society typically means that you can't get too deep into any one question--lines of thought are derailed from week to week as different members take the helm. Egalitarianism can lead to a focus on whether or not each member is actually being treated equally; and since that's never true (someone will always make better speeches, have more friends, or whatever the relevant categories of value are), an egalitarian ethos can breed resentment. Third, authority--of both the society's traditions and her leaders--forced people to have respect for institutions or members whom they would otherwise be tempted to dismiss. The society's leaders bore much heavier responsibilities than leaders in other parties, and I think the authority accorded them made those responsibilities much easier to fulfill. And fourth (but probably not last--the longer I spent with the group, the more wisdom I found in its traditions and self-understanding), the idea that authority and individuality are at odds is just, you know, wrong. This is due to the distinction between power and authority. Power is forcing others to do stuff; authority is gaining others' loyalty. Submission to authority always involves a degree of awe; thus it approaches the sublime. And an encounter with the sublime will necessarily draw people out of our usual submission to culture and to whim; it will change us and, under certain circumstances (such as a philosophical debating society that demanded personal integrity and rigorous self-examination), it will make us more our own than we could ever have been without that awe.
posted by Eve at 2:43 PM

 
IRANIAN WOMEN BLOGGING. This seriously rocks. Via Blogger, appropriately enough.
posted by Eve at 1:50 PM

 
"Stop calling me Chiquita. You don't say that to girls you don't even know."
"Where I learned Spanish, you do."
--Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum, "The Big Steal"
posted by Eve at 1:48 PM

 
HERE'S ANOTHER "anti-death penalty, pro-Scalia's recent dissent" article. You've probably seen it, but if not, it's well worth your time.

And I'm outta here. Back Saturday.
posted by Eve at 5:45 PM

 
"A KHRUSHCHEVITE SMELL": From the Keston Institute, which you should definitely check out: MOLDOVA: "KHRUSHCHEVITE SMELL" FROM NEW CRIMINAL CODE ARTICLE (20 June). Religious leaders and human rights activists have criticised an article in the new Moldovan criminal code lifted almost word for word from an article introduced into the Soviet criminal codes at the beginning of the 1960s during the anti-religious persecution unleashed by Nikita Khrushchev. The Pentecostals and the Jehovah's Witnesses, who learned of the new article from Keston News Service, are particularly concerned. "I grew up with this I know what it means," Bishop Pyotr Borshch, head of the Pentecostal Union, said. In Soviet times this article was widely used against believers, including Pentecostals ("singing in tongues" or prophesying was deemed to harm health) and Hare Krishna devotees (chanting was likewise deemed to harm health). Jehovah's Witnesses suffered under this article because of their
rejection of blood transfusions and their refusal to vote or perform military service.

MOLDOVA: FINED FOR DOOR TO DOOR PREACHING (21 June). For the first time in recent years, a Jehovah's Witness has been fined for door to door preaching. Igor Danile was fined 360 lei (27 US dollars, 28 Euros or 18 British pounds), equal to twenty months' minimum wage, for preaching from door to door.
posted by Eve at 3:50 PM

 
RANDOM MAILBAG: Exhibitionism, funeral rites, Israel, London:

In response to my comments on blog exhibitionism, a reader sent this quote: "One of America's specific problems is fame and glory... partly on account of its extreme vulgarization. In this country, it is not the highest virtue, nor the heroic act, that achieves fame, but the uncommon nature of the least significant destiny. There is plenty [of fame] for everyone, then, since the more conformist the system as a whole becomes, the more millions of individuals there are who are set apart by some tiny pecularity." -- Jean Baudrillard

On mourning rituals: "The administration of funeral arrangements is alienating and there is confusion about authenticity. But this is perhaps as it should be. One is dealing with one of the great meaning-fraught crises that occur in life -- the death a family member or friend -- and also dealing with maddening and mundane details such as caskets and scheduling and food and who will come to which services and finding clothes for the children to wear, etc. etc. It is perhaps helpful to one's longer life to have all these banalities
intrude, and to be conscious of the roles one assumes. Arrangements that are good are those which include some moments which seem to capture all of one's feelings and hopes -- sometimes a hymn or a remembrance or reading, sometimes (rarely) a sermon, or a gesture at some point. Rare that these are more than moments -- though the requiem mass can be a rather sustained moment... And it is naive or childish to expect the whole thing to roll out as a nice satisfying exercise in reintegration and reaffirmation, though hard to resist that desire. Perhaps that is why there is so much (unseemly) jockeying for position at public memorials like the various WTC things. And it happens at private funerals also. I wonder what your thoughts are about the trend toward a succession of
friends or family speaking about the dead person. Despite frequent off-notes, these are to be encouraged, I think."

I basically agree with this. I'll just add that I was really struck by the section in Why Do Catholics Do That? in which Kevin Orlin Johnson notes that Catholic funerals are set up to echo baptismal rites (the funeral color is white, for example). Baptism involves dying to self and being reborn in Christ, while a funeral also, in a different way, marks the blessed soul's entrance into new life--the next life.

A fellow Yale grad writes from Jerusalem (I think it will be obvious which statements I agree and disagree with here; and I will try to revisit this topic sometime in the more or less near future): "I'm an American citizen and I've been in Israel for more than a year. Counter to what one reader wrote to you, I find this country to be a very pleasant place to live. Very pleasant, that is, to everyone except those citizens of America and a few other developed nations who do not appreciate the paradise into which they were born. To most of the world, and of course especially Jews, Israel is a step up. Even now, there is more immigration into Israel than emigration out.

"I work for the Shalem Center, an American-style think tank, the only one of its kind in Israel. So naturally a million things about Israel annoy, infuriate and dismay me. The socialized economy, the stupid activism of the courts, the disorganization of the government -- all of these collaborate to hold Israel back, and even threaten its very existence. Much of what Israel has accomplished, it has accomplished despite its institutions and even its ideology. However, Israel was making great progress in all these areas in the '90s. Demand for deregulation was growing, the nation as a whole was reassessing the system of elections, and ultimately, I believe, a
constitution would have been put on the table and would have eventually passed. The second intifada froze all those improvements or rolled them back. The threat of physical annihilation will do that. With the problem of the Palestinians solved -- somehow -- Israel could and would get better and freer.

"(Not that the mere fact of having a constitution necessarily makes a country more liberal and democratic. Think of how many constitutions France has blown its nose on. I say this just to rebuke the people who snark at Israel for not having one. There are sound historical reasons why it doesn't, and there are legal mechanisms that plug the gaps. Now, though, the time for a constitution has come.)

"So why even now do people immigrate to Israel? When the Russians started to pour in, hundreds of thousands of non-Jews were among them. Besides the spouses of Jews, they included many who immigrated on their own initiative and got in by hook or by crook. Now they are full citizens. The Jews came because here at least they have a chance at self-defense. The non-Jews came
because Israel is a free country, is tolerant, is liberal, is democratic. The idea that a Jewish state is tainted by racism is absurd and
disgusting. Italy is the Italian state. Holland is the Dutch state and we all know what happened with Pim Fortuyn. Is the problem that Judaism is a religion as well as an ethnicity? Well, the American civil religion, which I believe in with all my heart, makes America one of the most nationalistic democracies in the world, as well as the most free. Judaism does present special problems to a liberal state, but then again so does Catholicism. At any rate, Israel has full citizens of every race and religion, including Arab and Muslim. The
exigencies of living in a state of war are just that: exigencies. They do not stem from ideology, either Zionism or liberalism. Rather, they arise when ideology smashes up against reality, in this case the reality of Arab hatred. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, FDR interned Japanese-Americans, India bulldozes mosques, etc. etc. Israel has yet to do anything so illiberal as that, and if it did, no one would have the right to raise an eyebrow.

"Myself, I scorn arguments about Israel's utility to the U.S. Of course they can be made. But I don't care about them. America should support Israel because our national honor demands it. We should not grovel to dictators and kings, which will only make them hate us more. We should reward loyal allies and not abandon them, even when defending them incurs some cost to ourselves. In Roman terms, America is patron, Israel is client; both sides have obligations and both should meet them. I do not object to, in fact I laud American self-interest; but the idea of calculatedly betraying an ally simply disgusts me. The national honor is the national interest. At one point the U.S. might have let Israel go with no fuss and no shame; but that time is long past, and now vacillation will earn the U.S. nothing but spite and scorn from all sides, including a fair number of its own citizens."

Various London recommendations (I'm only printing the emails with fun tidbits in them): "You wanted to hear about 'unusual fun' places there, so here's the site for a place called Woodchester Mansion, where a nouveau-riche convert tried to create his own little Catholic kingdom in the 19th century. The only thing he didn't quite manage to build was his own palace, so there's this huge old unfinished house. I've never been there, but if I ever get to England again I'd like to. Anyway, I thought I'd pass it on."

From Mark Cameron: "You'll get this advice twenty times over, but the church to go to in London is the Brompton Oratory, among the most liturgically splendid Catholic churches in the world. It was founded by Fr. Frederick Faber, the great hymn composer, and also has many Newman associations (Newman was a member of the same Oratory of St. Philip Neri congregation, but in Birmingham). The Oratorians have maintained Gregorian chant, polyphony, Latin, the whole nine yards, and it is usually packed for a Sunday high mass. They use the new rite, but cunningly disguised as the old. They also celebrate the old rite in one of the side chapels.

"Westminster Cathedral has a very good choir and Mass is celebrated reverently there, as well.

"If you go to the Tower of London, ask to go into the crypt below St. Peter's Church, where St. Thomas More was buried and a memorial shrine may be seen. It is not officially open, but the guards will let you in if you say you are Catholics and wish to pray there. I understand that Thomas More's cell in the tower can now be seen by tourists as well."

Another: "Brompton Oratory. High Mass is at 11:00, I think. I'm sure it's easy enough to find out. Nice church, nice service. Perhaps a bit too Tridentine for my taste (but I'm in my mid 50s and have less than ecstatic memories about the Tridentine Mass and the attendant Catholic culture of those days), but only just. Right next to the V&A. Get there a bit early because it usually fills up. Whenever I've been there, it is a choral Mass -- don't know if they'd have a choir in July, though. Good sermons. You'd probably like it, too, because Alfred Hitchcock got married there. Also the Newman Center at U London on Gower Street, near Russell Square. Simple church in the rear lower level, not quite a basement, lots of natural light, simple ceremony, quiet service, but nice community feeling, and good sermons. Small congregation -- largely foreign (largely Asian) -- during the summer."

After another recommendation for Brompton Oratory: "And high Mass at Westminster Cathedral when the Palestrina choir is in
session. (Do they take the summer off? I don't know.)

"And St. Etheldreda's, Ely Place, the only (I think) pre-reformation Church in London in Catholic hands. There is an 11 a.m. sung Mass in Latin on Sundays."

I know it's a bit of a shank to post just a mailbag and a blogwatch--and I doubt I'll have time for real posting today--but I will be posting tomorrow. Thanks to all who wrote in.
posted by Eve at 3:29 PM

 
I think we're alone now
There doesn't seem to be anyone around
I think we're alone now
The watching of your blog is the only sound...

First, you'll notice that many but not all of my archives have returned! And there was much rejoicing. However, I'm planning to create a separate "Best of EveTushnet.com" page in case the archives continue to be blogspotty. This page will definitely include all the Andrew Sullivan replies; the big post on feminism; the second Wendell Berry piece ("I believe that..."); the Israel post and responses thereto (more of which are coming); and the post on providence, if I can find it. Oh, and the best contest results. If there are other posts you particularly liked, please email me and let me know. Don't feel like you have to remember the post's title, the date, etc.--"the one where you..." will do just fine. I want a fairly small but worthwhile selection. Expect this page to appear... uh, sometime before the end of July.

Cacciaguida and Shamed on the Supreme Ct. retarded-prisoner decision. Both make very good points. I add only that if your judicial philosophy means that every law you really wish would pass is actually embedded in the Constitution already, that's a good sign that said judicial philosophy is really lame. C'mon people, what's so hard about passing a law?

Mike Hardy: A very, very interesting letter than should be read by everyone who wants to understand the role of homosexuality in the Church scandals--and everyone who likes the very annoying "Catholic girls start much too late" song....

Both InstaPundit and Father Tucker have blogged this WaPo article on whether sex 'n' violence on TV shows make it harder for viewers to remember the commercials. If they read the Register, they'd know about this already--I either wrote a story on it or put it in one of the little "media watch" sections when I worked there, can't remember which. (I assume my memory is faulty because of all the sex and violence occurring at the Reg offices.)

How English are you? (Via De Feo.) I, unsurprisingly, am not really English at all.

Finally, enter my contest! I'm extending the deadline to next Thursday because, well, because I am. It's very existentialist of me.
posted by Eve at 2:54 PM

 
"Have you ever noticed if for some reason you want to feel completely out of step with the world, the only thing to do is sit around a cocktail lounge in the afternoon?"
--Lizabeth Scott to Dick Powell, "The Pitfall"
posted by Eve at 2:35 PM

 
REASONS FOR RITUALS: I'm reading Yukio Mishima's Death in Midsummer. He's a terrific observer, a distanced, cool eye that picks out the right detail at cataclysmic moments in the narrative and zooms in on it. In that way he reminds me of Hitchcock.

"Death in Midsummer" itself concerns the accidental drowning of two young children and the aunt who was looking after them. It shows the aftermath of the deaths on the children's parents; and it highlights the way that the rituals of grief alienate the couple from themselves and those around them: "The two bodies were found the next day. The constabulary, diving all up and down the beach, finally found them under the headland. Sea bugs had nibbled at them, and there were two or three bugs up each nostril.

"Such incidents of course go far beyond the dictates of custom, and yet at no time are poeple more bound to follow custom. Tomoko and Masaru forgot none of the responses and the return gifts custom demanded.

"A death is always a problem in administration. They were frantically busy administering. One might say that Masaru in particular, as head of the family, had almost no time for sorrow. As for Katsuo [the surviving son], it seemed to him that one festival day succeeded another, with the adults all playing parts."

This picture does not wholly override, but it does complicate, the quick-'n'-easy Anthro 101 explanation that rituals of mourning are meant to help the survivors re-integrate into the community, reaffirm their social bonds, and thereby reaffirm their own identities. Funerals and other forms of ritualized mourning, in my experience/opinion, have also a strong potential to alienate the survivors from those around them, strain their social bonds, and make them feel like their own identities are just a series of masks donned in rituals of grief. It becomes difficult, at least for a time, to tell which emotional responses are real and which are simply called for by the occasion; and whether that distinction matters, or can be drawn at all.
posted by Eve at 5:52 PM

 
WHAT I TALKED ABOUT WHEN I TALKED ABOUT BLOGS: Last night was fun. Blogging proved to be surprisingly controversial. Best criticism: "So isn't it unconservative to be yammering away about your personal life in public?" (more on this below.) Best line: Gene Healy, on Berkeley's proposal for a j-school course on blogging: "Isn't that like Joycelyn Elders's thing about teaching kids to masturbate? I mean, it's not difficult..."

Joshua Micah Marshall was levelheaded, pointed out that unlike most bloggers he actually does break news and do real reporting on his site, though only because in the course of his ordinary freelancing he comes across lots of interesting tidbits that he shares with his blog-audience.

Noah Schachtman (oy, there's no way I got that right...) described a split between bloggers and journalists (the former cast as resentful right-wingers who perceive themselves as being shut out of Big Media; the latter, an irritable Old Guard annoyed at the pretensions of the upstarts). I don't doubt that this is true--turf battles are a part of human nature--but in my own experience blogging has mostly reinforced or aided my ability to get freelancing gigs. Twice so far I've gotten articles accepted that were based on posts I made here. Because I'm (duh) not very well-known, the blog also helps me get my name out in public--Marshall, I assume, doesn't need the extra promotion. I do worry a bit about whether some of my commentary here will turn off potential editors; but whatever, it's not worth it to me to hassle about that sort of thing.

Stan Evans, of the National Journalism Center, made two excellent and basic points: Bloggers need reporters (and opinion journalists should hone reporting-type skills before they think they can pontificate about the news of the day--I would count assessing the value of a source, cultivating same, finding stuff out, and most importantly spotting the most interesting details or angles of a story as "reporting-type skills"), and vast right-wing conspirators should not huddle in little protected compounds, but should rather seek to infiltrate the major media. To the extent that the conservative or libertarian parts of the blogosphere become ingrown, they fail to do necessary persuasive work.

I said a bunch of stuff (I was definitely not as cool as Marshall--he'd sketched a couple points on the back of a pamphlet, whereas I knew I'd ramble and make no sense unless I had a detailed outline), main points: 1) Bloggers (Marshall excepted of course) almost never report, and that's a weakness. Sometimes a story will boil up out of the earth right next to a blogger (as w/Meryl Yourish and the SFSU Israel protest), but that's rare.

2) Due primarily to cultural reasons, but partly to technological innovations, blogs tend to be less "team-player"ish, less willing to bury inconvenient stories or interpretations, than the major media. I stress that this is only a tendency, not a certainty. But I have found that right-wing bloggers link to, appraise, and even acknowledge the accurate points made by left-wing bloggers, and vice versa, in a way that is simply not found in mainstream journalism. (Two exceptions spring to mind: I think Ramesh Ponnuru is really fair, but he rarely concerns himself with issues on which the left makes good points, so I'm more talking about his relationship to libertarians and supporters of cloning here; and Tunku Varadarajan.)

Partly, this greater tendency to acknowledge what "the other guys" get right occurs simply because blogs have less credibility than mainstream media. The New York Times, rightly or wrongly, enjoys a presumption that it will not bury the facts or report only half the story. A blogger has to earn his readers' trust, and one major way of doing that is by refusing to play partisan games. As some blogs become more popular, and attain that presumption of credibility, I expect some of the more popular ones will stop bothering to respond fairly and accurately to the opposition; to some extent that's already happening.

Another reason, which is somewhere between cultural and technological, is that blog posts tend to be short and experimental. Thus if you say something stupid and someone calls you on it, or if someone points out a nuance you overlooked, it's easy to correct or elaborate without losing face. The NYT can't really do that. (I think that this distinction between old and new media, like most of them, will either blur or disappear with the advent of digital paper--but boy, is that another story.)

The tech reasons for this greater openness to "the enemy" are: a) hyperlinks, of course--if I misrepresent your points, I'll probably link to the article in which you make them, and readers can see that I've played fast and loose with your writing; b) the blogroll--most bloggers maintain permanent links to people with whom they have sharp and obvious disagreements; and c) comments boxes. (Which I don't have, I know. And my blogroll hasn't been updated in donkey's years. We're working on it.)

The final nifty characteristic of blogs that I discussed was the personal nature of the writing. Now, this can be either a bug or a feature. It is just creepy to detail every moment of your life, or worse yet, to air your dirty laundry in public--who is reading your site? Why are you writing it? I think last night I sounded more critical of personal-life blogs than I really am--when they're funny, their appeal is pretty much the same as Dave Barry's. Tepper runs a very cool blog that oscillates between personal and political/legal; the Possumblog is a durned good time. But there are some blogs that really do suffer from exhibitionism, and that's lame.

But when it's presented with a little more care for one's own privacy, the personal aspects of blogging can help other people really understand your philosophy--the underlying worldview that unites your stances on, say, gun control, Bruce Springsteen, and race relations in Milwaukee. Blogs help show that politics isn't--or shouldn't be--some disconnected policy preferences; political beliefs should flow from underlying ethical and ultimately metaphysical beliefs that you live with all day long. (Or try to, anyway.)

That also makes it easier for others to be persuaded--we can imagine what it would be like to live all day as a leftist, a conservative, a pro-lifer, an Objectivist, and we can see that it needn't make us lousy people. So much of contemporary politics is about personal preferences and affiliations--were the leftists you knew condescending? Were the conservatives rich bigots? Who do you want to hang out with--a Gore voter, a Bush voter, or a Nader voter? Blogs show that there are leftists/conservatives/whatever who don't fit your stereotypes--there are people who are kind of like what you might be like if you were a leftist/conservative/whatever. And seeing people who you might want to be like can help you evaluate their beliefs without worrying that if you start agreeing with them you'll turn into a jerk.

Just as Plato wrote dramatic and biographical accounts of Socrates, rather than simply presenting Socrates' arguments, blogs persuade by showing a whole life. At their best, blogs are an act of life as rhetoric.
posted by Eve at 5:40 PM

 
POETRY WEDNESDAY: Oh, why not this, from the Swan of Avon:
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

And for those who feel that science is the best poetry, here's my results from the MSNBC science quiz. Link via Tepper via Hsieh. Be thankful I'm out there building our country's strategic fiction arsenal rather than, say, our weapons. (If that link didn't work, I got an 89%--all but the last question right.)
posted by Eve at 5:05 PM

 
You are the blogwatch queen!
feel the beat from the tambourine
you can dance, you can jive
having the time of your life...

Disputations: A necessary point to consider when discussing the fact that more traditional religious orders and dioceses attract more vocations.

Mike Hardy is back, which is good. Prompted by him, I'll probably blog a bit about a few leftover snippets of homo-Catholic stuff, but not right now.

Charles Murtaugh: Murtaugh, like others in the blogosphere, is unhappy that our government allied itself with Islamist tyrannies in order to prevent passage of a UN bill that would name "reproductive health services" (including abortion) as a human right. If you think abortion is a human right, I can see why you'd be against this--but I really don't get Murtaugh's position. He doesn't think abortion is a human right, but he is too fastidious to make alliances with scummy dictators. How does he think anything gets done in the world? It's almost never the case that international alliances--military, diplomatic, whatever--only include nice liberal democracies. I can see, if we were making concessions to the tyrannies, why this would be wrong--"You can kill your Christian converts if we can keep these 'health services' out of the women's rights statement," or, "You vote against abortion rights and we'll vote against a woman's right to separate from her husband [/drive/etc.]" But at least according to what I've read so far, that's not what's happening. So why is it wrong to team up, temporarily, with people who want the particular (very important) thing we want, even if their reasons for wanting it are really bad? Murtaugh's stance seems pristine to the point of ineffectual. But, of course, maybe I'm missing something....

The Rat: More quotes from And Quiet Flows the Vodka. Very funny.

Unqualified Offerings: Petty despotism in Prince George's County. Sigh.

The Volokh Conspiracy: Excellent points on why corporations should enjoy many Bill of Rights protections.

Amy Welborn: I know--I always tell you to read her--but I thought it might be worthwhile, for the few readers who could really use her site and don't already make it a daily stop, to blogwatch her today just to show you what she does. More on that Brooklyn priest who "partied" with teenage boys, and what the bishop knew; acute comments from a (different) bishop; must-read: Ask not what you can do for God, ask what your church can do for you; blackmail in the Church; the Amish, handicapped children, and what it means to be blessed; and a great round-up essay that is, like so much of Welborn's work, inspiring. And there's so much more there. Go!!

And I basically agree with Jonah Goldberg, but I think he's unnecessarily slamming a "literary" mindset and the belief that life has a plot. I can (and do) believe that life has a plot, without believing that Dubya is the Plotter; I would say that paranoid fantasies of the omnipotent and omnicompetent state are attempts to recreate the religious belief in providence without the religious belief in God. (Whether you think that state is evil or good is actually irrelevant here; the fantasy at least gives life a purpose and an explanation.) And like all other attempts to do atheist Christianity, it's a wretched failure. I'll probably write more about the "literary" mindset and its advantages later.
posted by Eve at 1:17 PM

 
"Shoots me with my own gun, that's what gets me."
--Earl Holliman, "The Big Combo"

Yes folks--I'm back. And, as is traditional, I'm on the attack.
posted by Eve at 10:26 AM

 
GIDDY LONDON, IS IT HOME OF THE FREE OR WHAT?: So The Rat and I are gonna hit the sceptred isle for a week in late July. ("Will it hit back?") We found a super hotel-and-airfare deal, so off we go. If anyone has suggestions for unusual fun to be had in London/the English countryside, email me; I'd especially like suggestions on good churches in London. (By which I mean, Mass celebrated reverently, not pretty buildings--I figure it shouldn't be too hard to find the lovely architecture. Kensington Road area would be best.)

And TOMORROW I AM SPEAKING ON A PANEL ABOUT BLOGS. (Sorry to shout. As long as my archives are screwed up I don't want to do too many separate posts.) Speaking will be Stan Evans of the National Journalism Center, journalist and blogger Joshua Micah Marshall (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/), and up-and-coming me. Also joining us will be Noah Shachtman who recently wrote a piece on blogging for Wired News. Attorney and blogger Gene Healy (http://www.genehealy.com/) will moderate. The event will take place at the Fund for American Studies (1706 New Hampshire Ave., NW). Drinks will begin at 7:00 p.m., with dinner and discussion following at 7:30. Please RSVP to jerry@americasfuture.org. I've been to these things in the past--fun crowd.

Meanwhile, I'm still up to my eyeballs in work. Why don't you look here, here, here, or here instead?

My new motto, by the way, is: INVINCIBLE ROBOTS CANNOT SUCCEED!!! Click here to learn more.

Tomorrow, if I can dig myself out from under my work, I plan to post on authority vs. individuality; Cardinal Law and the Good People; Agatha Christie. Later in the week: What I said about blogs; men without countries; postmodernism and contradiction. Someday, when I have what we in the business call "time," the blogwatch will return. Don't worry--am not pulling a Lindsey--but must spend a few days immersed in the sublime joy of state budget deficits.
posted by Eve at 4:53 PM

 
YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED that my $#@! archives are $#@! missing. I have already tried the interesting but useless suggestion at the PublicMind Blogger site. If people have other fun ideas I will give them a whirl. Argh. ("Move off BlogSpot" does not count as a fun idea, by the way.)

[edited to add that work is uber-hectic today, so I don't think I'll be able to post anything. Sorry--regular posting will resume as soon as possible--Amy Welborn is blogging like a mad thing--here's a Latin Mass in Vienna, VA--and here's a relevant Garfield cartoon--apologies again for light-to-nonexistent posting.]
posted by Eve at 11:11 AM

 
CAMP, HORROR, NO ESCAPE: So I read this while listening to this and this. My life is a sitcom. Anyway, yeah, grrrr, lame article. I would've given 'em a quote that would make their hair curl.
posted by Eve at 12:32 AM

 
OTOH, he just failed to get Grenadine to float.

"Now you're very Sullivan-like." --Shamed
posted by Eve at 12:16 AM

 
DON'T BE THIS BRILLIANT: Shamed notes that a new terrorist organization has been noted in the U.S.: al-Sharpton.

And he pointed out that we're both the same age as Garfield. Sara is closest.
posted by Eve at 12:12 AM

 
THRILL OF THE CHASE: Actually, I could get really into this--because I HATE $#@!ING POP-UP ADS so much that I would take huge, huge glee in tracking them down and KILLING them. They cause my computer to crash on an average of once a day. (Admittedly this is partly my fault--I often have too many windows open, blah blah blah--but c'mon people. If we can put a man on the moon...) Anyway, this "search-and-destroy" pop-up sounds like good sick fun.

UO has other interesting stuff too, like: The confusing trail of Czechs mix.
posted by Eve at 5:26 PM

 
THREE INTRIGUING INITIATIVES: A liberal arts core curriculum open to staff.

St. Luke Productions.

And my contest!

Click and feel the love.
posted by Eve at 4:53 PM

 
ISRAEL FINAL FOR TODAY: Two points: First, saying that in 1948 Jews "should have gone to Brooklyn instead" ignored some basic realities about immigration--how many Jews would actually have gotten in? I alluded to this by saying that Israel was basically where Europeans (and Americans...) stuck Jews in order to get 'em out of their hair. Look how well that worked. But I didn't mean to sound quite so flippant about Jews' lousy options at the time.

Second, for those who believe that Jews have a right to a homeland because they have been persecuted in the countries where they tried to settle: Do you support a homeland for the Gypsies? Where would you, uh, put it?
posted by Eve at 4:39 PM

 
ISRAEL MAILBAG: First, I should note that everyone who wrote in has been civil and thoughtful. No flames. I also note that I've been really lousy about answering email lately, so if you sent me something this week and I haven't responded, uh, well, you're not the only one. Work just heated up again and will be boiling away for another week at least; I will try to post quite a bit but email will fall by the wayside.

Here's the initial vast post. Here are the responses, with no commentary from me (I will comment later on some, but almost certainly not all, of these points):

Blogadder's final word.

A (satirical) suggestion from a permalinkless Talking Dog.

The Kairos Guy: "Okay, now, taking your arguments one at a time:

1) Illegit state. I'm basically with you, except you didn't mention that the only difference between Israel and EVERY ONE of her neighbors is that Israel created herself, rather than being imposed by the League of Nations. Strikes me that Israel's claims to legitimacy are that much stronger.

2) Settlements. The question of settlements is not as cut-and-dried as the NY Times would make it seem. But since you're prepared to let the entire issue slide, so am I.

3) Endangering Americans. This is a variation on Plato's question about goodness: Do the gods love something because it is good, or is it good because the gods love it? The Arabs don't hate us because of Israel, I believe, they hate Israel because of the US. If that is true, Americans are endangered already.

4) No reason. This argument assumes the conclusion, and so begs the question. (Hey, I finally used "begs the question" in its original, philosophical sense! Wahoo!)

For:
1) Anti-semitic. I don't think you are automatically anti-semitic for questioning aid to Israel. But I do think there is a strong risk of anti-semitism, as my other emails said. One never has to justify support of France or Japan in quite the terms that one has to justify support of Israel. Is that in fact antisemitic? Let's just say I'm skeptical.

2) Always support... This is close to axiomatic to me, as close to a religious truth as I will admit to foreign policy. It seems to me that our long term interest is always served by this, even if in the short-term it presents risks. I have yet to hear a refutation of it that leaves my faith ragged. I'm not saying there is no such refutation, only that I have not heard of it.

3) We are stuck with them. Realpolitik is gritty and ugly. But I can't see a way to walk away from them for the near term.

The client state thing deserves its own treatment some time when I have more time."

More from The Talking Dog: "Actually, the legitimacy of the State of Israel is almost unique in the annals of world history; its establishment was mandated under a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly around 1947 (of course, the same United
Nations General Assembly that devotes somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of its time condemning Israel, and of course, the same United Nations with a refugee arm that supports, breeds, educates, and, probably trains, Palestinian suicide bombers). Israel then fought a MIRACULOUS war of independence (losing 1% of its Jewish population in the process) when all of its organized Arab neighbors took it on militarily. So, while the Jews could have had their homeland located in Uganda, as once proposed by the British; or Siberia, as proposed by Stalin, somehow, there would be dangers attached to that too: Jews have always lived in a tough world. It was understood that WHEREVER the Jewish state was located, it was going to be a powder keg. So it just happens to be where it is. But for the fact that its enemies sit on a black liquid that this country is addicted to, we would ignore its enemies as the modern day medieval $#@!holes (that haven't contributed anything to the world in centuries) that they are.

As to the stolen land argument, I daresay the occasional Navajo or Sioux might have better reason to question a certain other country's legitimacy than those of Palestinian Arab descent. There are land grabs, and then there are acts of genocide accompanied by land grabs. Israel can, at worst, be accused of the first one. The United States? Well, let's move on... Most--not all, but most-- so-called Palestinian refugees have recent ancestors who only showed up in Palestine from other parts of the Ottoman Empire at
around the same time as the Zionist interlopers for the enhanced opportunities offered by the Jews and their oppressive Western health, sanitation, education, infrastructure and economic standards.

As to your personal background, mine is similar, my father and brother are Jewish as well (as are my mother, sister, wife and daughter, but I digress). As you know, under the Nuremberg laws, your status was "close enough" for a one way train ride, as is mine, of course. While Jews are certainly subject to an unfortunate level of violence against them in Israel these days, we as a people, alas, have a lengthy historical memory of persecution. I daresay a typical year or two of pogroms in Bielorussia and Ukraine would have racked up comparable numbers to the Intifada--without a mighty Jewish air force and military apparatus present to impose
punishing (though sadly, not completely deterring) retaliation. So, I respectfully dissent from this argument, as well. Hell, if my choice were to live in Israel, or France, right now, I'm not sure I wouldn't take Israel. It would certainly win out over Russia.

I agree with you (obviously) on the Supporting Israel endangers Americans fallacy. Arab elites, alas, are simple (though hopelessly corrupt) people: they respect power, the more rawly displayed, the better. Frankly, what is endangering Americans is our support of ARAB regimes, notably Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, whose gratitude is expressed by sending us acts of terrorism. And of course, we suffer from the catastrophic and insane act of weakness displayed by 41 when he (1) wouldn't let Israel (here we go again!) retaliate
against Saddam directly (you know--they might have just taken him out and solved most of our problems), and (2) didn't take out Saddam himself, thus forcing us into a longstanding containment game, with no good outcome even possible.

Anyway, having more or less established Israel's (1) legitimacy, (2) benefit as a safe haven for the Jewish people and (3) real irrelevance in terms of the current threat faced by the United States, you come to the more interesting argument: is it a good investment?

I offer this. Unfortunately, we have seen how effective our own intelligence apparatus has been recently; perhaps 5 guys in the whole
freaking CIA who can read and understand Arabic, the third or fourth most prominent language in the world, and of course, the language of the most troublesome people in the world right now. Well, the Mossad and Shin Bet can read Arabic. And they can read tea leaves, and otherwise, act as a very effective intelligence source FOR US (which they are; yes, they spy on us; it is unfortunate that they see the need to do this-- I would have hoped by now that they would be like Canada, Australia and Britain, but then, we had
James Baker as Secretary of State, didn't we? Not to mention George Bush as CIA director, as well as president (twice)). On the whole, though, Americans are idiots with respect to world affairs. We need someone smart out there: Israel fits the bill perfectly, and for the most part, is a critical and trusted ally. For this alone (as well as being a bulwark of liberal, democratic values in a mostly dark region), they are worth every dollar we ship there.

A more interesting question is what exactly we are getting out of our FAR MORE SUBSTANTIAL investments to help Muslims, be it in Kosovo or Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kuwait or, come to think of it, Afghanistan. (And don't forget that Jordan and Egypt get pretty much around the same aid package that Israel does). Oh wait-- I saw what we were getting for this from my office window on September
11th.

The fundamental problem with our foreign policy is that we are often willing (and sometimes forced to) make expedient compromises, backing less than liberal, democratic nations, for which we later pay the price. I assert that that is where the country finds itself in the war on terrorism. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are regimes that should get every bit the same priority for regime change as Iraq or Iran, and yet...

I sincerely beg to differ with the proposition that the United States has EVER gone wrong backing a nation with free presses, free markets and free elections. Is Israel perfect? Hell--I don't live there, and haven't even visited (I hope I'll get there one of these days; possibly by boat)."

From Christopher Jones: "One of your reasons in favor of support for Israel is 'Always support every mostly-democratic and vaguely-liberal state'. I have a good deal less sympathy with this reason than you have. Firstly because I disagree with the principle of always supporting a liberal democracy (which I will elaborate on presently); and secondly because I have grave doubts that Israel qualifies as a liberal democracy. As to the principle, my first question is, why in a given situation should we 'support' any state
other than our own? If Canada, Paraguay, or Zimbabwe don't have to have a 'Mideast Policy' and choose up sides between Israel and Palestine, why must we? Some may argue that our pre-eminence as the sole superpower imposes this responsibility on us; but even if that were true (which I don't believe), our first responsibility is to our own safety, security, and national interests. Any responsibility for other states is clearly secondary.

As for preferring the more democratic state, I hearken back to John Adams's recommendation that America should always be "the friends of liberty everywhere, but guardians only of our own". True democracy and liberty will much more reliably take root in a nation which has earned its own liberty as our forefathers did than in one which owes its liberty to the largesse and military force of a great power.

You've hinted at my second point by the heavy qualifiers "mostly-" and "vaguely-". The truth is that Israel doesn't fit all that well into
Americans' working definition of "democracy". An American-style democracy is a secular, multi-racial state based on the rule of law and respectful of the rights of individuals and of ethnic and religious minorities. Israel has no written constitution and no Bill of Rights. Israel has an explicitly ethnic/religious basis. Israel is able to be a democracy only because a large part of the indigenous population was driven out and is not allowed to return. In short, Israel is a democracy only for the Jews. When the Palestinians are allowed to return to their homes in Israel as full citizens, then Israel can justly claim to be a democracy. Then we can talk about democracy as a moral basis for American support.

In your discussion of the anti-aid reason "We have no reason to support Israel", you treat it as somehow related to "Supporting Israel
endangers Americans". It's not. It is really the heart of the matter. As a small-government conservative (which I think you are as I am), I believe that government should do only those things which further its essential mission, which (in the case of the federal government) is to defend the country and its vital interests. The small-government philosophy should apply to foreign just as much as domestic affairs. Thus the burden of proof should be on those who think we should NOT "mind our own business". I think the supporters of Israel should have to come up with positive, explicit reasons why it is in America's (not Israel's) interest that we should
support Israel. I've yet to see it."

From Stephen Dodson: "The only things I would add at the moment (I'm sure if I sat and reflected for a while I could come up
with lots more, but I'm at work) are that 1) "If the U.S. abandons Israel, Islamist terrorists everywhere will rejoice" is way too reminiscent of the main reason we stayed in Vietnam: "If the U.S. abandons Vietnam, Communists everywhere will rejoice"; and 2) unconditional US support for Israel is not only damaging to the US (as is our similarly driven policy on Cuba, but the latter has far less drastic consequences) but profoundly corrupting to Israel: being able to do whatever they want and not face any consequences
except fretful tut-tutting means those who rule Israel have been allowed to grow increasingly megalomaniacal and out of touch with reality. If we cut back our support so that they were forced to come to terms with the people they have to live with for the long run, it would be better for them, for the Palestinians, and for us."

From the Lord Mage of Good: "I've been following politics since I was four. Seriously. I'm that big a nerd. And, since age four, I've more or less been a Republican. And, from about age four to age twelve (still not kidding) I was a massive Israel backer. In third grade, we had a debate over whether Mondale or Reagan should be President. (I
was lucky; I got to back the winner and my favorite, all in one.) Anyway, a point I made -- which not one of my peers even pretended to understand -- was that, with Reagan, we'd have a President who would support Israel, ergo, all democracies, and isn't that a good
thing?

Then the intifada started (or at least, I became aware of it) and my opinions started to change a little. I knew, intellectually, that it wasn't Israel's fault that they had bullets and the Palestinians had rocks and Molotov cocktails, but I couldn't help but be moved a little. Fast forward five years, and I'm suddenly confronted with a real chance for peace between Israel and her enemies, and forced
to admit that if nothing else, I'd have to thank Clinton for helping that come about.

For the next several years, I grew more strongly pro-Palestinian (ending up about dead-neutral on the subject). I'd say of Arafat: "Look, he's trying, he's the best we've got, etc." I was *pissed* with Bibi Netanyahu for basically telling us to get stuffed, even if he was telling Billy Boy (when you're from the South, you get an automatic right to make fun of *anyone* from Arkansas) and the thumb-squatters at
State to shove it. "You don't bite the hand that feeds you," I told a friend in a debate we had on the topic.

And then Barak -- honest, decent-hearted, crypto-Carter-wannabe though he might be -- got bitch-slapped for trying to do more than any other Israeli Prime Minister ever dared. And those folks over at the New York Times started saying that it was Sharon's fault for going to Temple Mount (for which I no longer read the Times except on jump-cite), basically acting as a mouthpiece for the PA and The Nation.

And then 9-11.

My point is, in this condensed-but-not rendition, to say this: I understand. And after all this time, it seems to me that we have to stand with Israel.

Here's why: You give shorter shrift to some solid reasons for support than they deserve (or so it seems to me), or more accurately, you miss some of where your logic seems to lead.

Israel's survival is dependent in part on her ability to stand alone economically, right? And that's hindered by the weird socialism her Ashkenazi founders brought to the table, right again? First, this seems a bad line of thinking on which to make policy decisions; we all come into the world flawed, but we all hope for a helping hand along the way. And if we turned our back on every democracy with a troubled founding and uncertain economic systems, there go (at various times in the last sixty years): England, France, Japan, Taiwan, Spain, Mexico (I'm from Texas, I can talk your ear off on this one), and, let's be honest, almost every other democracy in the world. Most are pulling themselves out of the toilet. Taiwan went from being a marginal kleptocracy to an economic powerhouse, and a real democracy to boot. Why won't Israel? Indeed, why wasn't Israel, before this new Intifada? Theirs is a lousy democracy in form, but not in content -- you have an opinion, there's probably someone representing you in the Knesset. Sephardim aren't dealing with political exclusion any more. Their economy was picking up fast (look at their high tech and health sectors) and developing the crucial
infrastructure for future development -- world-class universities, well-educated workforce, increasing capital mobility, and dramatically increasing world trade. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't as big an aid drain as it had been. And yes, that irritating kibbutz dream was still lingering, but it was *dying.*

Admittedly, their economy is in the tank now, but that's (a) hardly surprising and (b) not a good excuse to kick them in the teeth. They're getting there -- like Taiwan did.

On a second (and for the sake of your poor eyes, probably last) note, like Taiwan, they're a good case for "charity aid." Charity aid is not just because we support democracies as a matter of principle (although there's a good argument for that, and you touched on
part of it); it's also a matter of exporting, albeit indirectly, our views to the world and giving them an upclose and personal look at what being America's friend can do for you. It's a de facto way of saying, "Hey, free trade and democracy can do wonders for YOU!! SIGN UP NOW!!" It's also -- on a more explicitly Realpolitik note -- a good way to have a beachhead where we might need it in the future. As you say, our enemies in that region will come for us at some point; we might as well have a landing strip in place. Yes, Turkey does the same thing, but why throw away a perfectly good knight just because you have a bishop fianchettoed in the corner? The two can actually give you checkmate, if used just right.

Last (quick) point: I fail to see why the fact that a more or less democracy is a pariah among its neighbors is a reason to drop it. That smacks of defeatism. We should encourage such experiments; after all, we descend from one.

Yes, I'm a conservative, so my sympathies reflexively lie with Israel; but I've given this a *lot* of thought the last couple of years. And it seems to me, that at the end of the day, you stand with your friend, even if he did just get back from a meeting of the Socialist International."

From Adrian Edmonds: "I came to live in Israel just over two years ago and I'm still trying to learn about it. For sure there are no easy answers but on thing I do know. Far from being ' a light unto the nations of the world' Israel is turning into a very unpleasant place."

Again, thanks to all who wrote. If I didn't link to your commentary, by all means email me with a heads-up.
posted by Eve at 4:27 PM

 
"Oh, the fresh type, eh?"
"Just informed."
--Agnes Moorehead and Humphrey Bogart, "Dark Passage"
posted by Eve at 3:57 PM

 
COMING DISTRACTIONS: I'm very hungry and must get groceries and then dinner ASAP, but I have a lot of stuff to say (I've been storing it in my hump). So tomorrow you'll get: Israel/Palestine mailbag (with pretty much no responses from me for the moment); more Israel/Palestine questions, unrelated to mailbag; the return of The Politics of Dancing!!; authority and individuality; and, as always, random links.
posted by Eve at 6:12 PM

 
ANOTHER PRIEST! This looks cool.
posted by Eve at 6:05 PM

 
THE NEWEST WASHINGTONIANS: New immigrants in metropolitan Washington by country of origin, 1990-1998:

Other (166 countries): 24.0%
El Salvador: 10.5%
Vietnam: 7.4%
India: 5.5%
China: 4.6%
Philippines: 4.4%
South Korea: 4.1%
Ethiopia: 3.9%
Iran: 3.1%
Pakistan: 3.0%
Peru: 2.9%
Former Soviet Union: 2.7%
Bolivia: 2.3%
Nigeria: 2.3%
Jamaica: 2.1%
Ghana: 2.0%
United Kingdom: 1.6%
Guatemala: 1.6%
Sierra Leone: 1.6%
Taiwan: 1.4%
Nicaragua: 1.3%
Mexico: 1.2%
Trinidad & Tobago: 1.1%
Bangladesh: 1.1%
Dominican Republic: 1.1%
Somalia: 1.1%
Afghanistan: 1.1%
Colombia: 1.0%

"In 1998 only four cities--New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami--attracted more legal immigrants. Unlike the top four, however, the capital drew newcomers not predominantly from any few countries or regions, but from around the globe.

"...Different groups had different settlement patterns. Asian immigrants (primarily from Vietnam, India, China, the Philippines, South Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Taiwan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan) were more likely to move to the outer suburbs, with 56 percent of new Asian arrivals choosing to locate outside the Beltway in areas that have accounted for much of the region's job growth. Indian and Chinese immigrants were the most dispersed of the Asian immigrants. Vietnamese and Koreans were more likely to cluster, the former in the inner suburbs and the District of Columbia, the latter in the outer suburbs.

"Latin American immigrants tended to live inside the Beltway. ...

"Washington attracts the largest proportional flow of Africans of any major U.S. metropolitan area. ...Like their counterparts from Latin America, African immigrants tend to live within the Beltway."

(Singer, Audrey, Samantha Friedman, Ivan Cheung, and Marie Price, "The world in a zip code: The nation's capital reveals the nation's future," The Brookings Review, Jan. 1, 2002, p.32.)
posted by Eve at 3:00 PM

 
GOOD IDEAS FROM THAT WELFARE-TO-WORK STUDY: "The assistant director of one faith-based group in Dallas, for example, spoke enthusiastically of plans to develop a new 'technology center that will be based on the model of a cyber cafe' where after-school youths and adults can come to receive computer training and conduct job searches. A Latino Baptist pastor in Philadelphia spoke about his organization's plans to start a Christian junior college in cooperation with a local four-year Christian college, to develop and enlarge a charter school already in existence...."

Sometime when I have more time (thus, not for a while) I may start a blog that will act as a clearinghouse for all of these grassroots rock'n'roll conservatism ideas. I'm thinking rootsrock.blogspot.com or some similar URL. I'll keep you all updated on this.
posted by Eve at 2:43 PM

 
ATTN: BLOGADDER. Go here. You won't regret it. Link via Rat.

Also, here are some funny lawyers, via Overlawyered.
posted by Eve at 2:39 PM

 
FAITH AND WELFARE-TO-WORKS: My employer, the Manhattan Institute, just put out an important study comparing government, secular non-profit, for-profit, very religious, and less religious welfare-to-work programs. Unfortunately the study didn't focus on results; its findings were more basic. Nonetheless there's a lot of good stuff. You can get the full report in PDF form here. Here are some meaty quotes:

Fifty percent of all faith-based welfare-to-work programs already receive government funding.

Government funds comprise 50 percent of the budgets of less-religious faith-based programs, and 30 percent of the budgets of those that integrate religious elements into the services they provide.

Secular nonprofits receive much more government funding than do faith-based groups, and 21 percent of all faith-based programs that have applied for government funding were turned down, compared with only 7 percent of similar applications from secular nonprofits.

There is little evidence that faith-based groups have to reduce their religious emphasis or practices as a result of receiving government funding. Only 3 of the 60 faith-based programs receiving government funding reported having to reduce these practices as a result of receipt of these funds.

Nearly 40 percent of faith-based groups have an internal policy of not applying for government funding. Most do so out of general fears of governmental interference with their operations.

About 40 percent of the faith-based programs explicitly integrate religious practices into the services they provide. A majority of religious groups that run faith-based programs do not make explicit religious messages a central feature of their work.

Government-run programs, for-profit firms, and secular non-profits are much larger in size than their faith-based counterparts.

Dallas and Philadelphia are notable for the large proportion of welfare-to-work programs being provided by faith-based agencies (36% and 40% respectively when one combines the integrated [more-religious] and segmented [less-religious] faith-based programs). These are higher proportions than is the case for the other 2 cities [Chicago and Los Angeles], and may reflect the emphasis that Texas under former Governor George W. Bush and that Mayor John Street of Philadelphia have put on faith-based approaches in meeting social needs.

[Faith-based providers generally wanted to expand their operations much more than secular nonprofit or government providers.] In our visits to faith-based providers it was clear that these reported expansion plans are more than fond hopes; time and again persons we interviewed were able to cite concrete plans their organizations were actively pursuing. ...We were struck by how many of the nonprofit/secular organizations seemed to wait for a government grant to become available, rather than actively moving into areas of perceived need. The job developer at a secular noprofit agency in Philadelphia that receives all of its jobs funding from the government stated: "The main question in an organization like this is, 'What does the government require us to do with the money?' Because if you don't do that, you lose the money and that might not be the optimal way to do it."

[W2W programs run directly by a church or congregation were less likely to integrate religion into their services than faith-based W2W programs run by independent organizations.]

...[I]n our visits to those faith-based programs that do not receive government funds we probed further in regard to the reasons for their not receiving public funds. Time and again, fear for their religious freedom, a more general fear of cumbersome, time-consuming government regulations, or not being able to pursue the programs they felt called to pursue (or all three) were cited.

...[A]ny public policy initiative seeking to enable faith-based welfare-to-work programs to partner more frequently with government will need to address issues of overly complex application and reporting processes and of rigid, constricting program criteria....

In visiting faith-based as compared to nonprofit/secular programs, we were often struck by the tendency of the nonprofit/secular organizations to have the attitude that if there is no government contract available to provide a given service, there is nothing they can do. Whereas faith-based organizations seemed to have other sources of funds, so that even if they were receiving government funding and if they saw a need not covered by their government contract, they would meet it out of existing funds or go out and try to raise money to meet this need.

For example, when visiting a secular nonprofit agency that receives 100% of its welfare-to-work funding from government contracts we interviewed several staff members who work directly with welfare recipients. They told us that basic life skills are very much needed by their clients. When asked if they favor more spending on life skill classes they responded: "Yes! On budgeting, saving, and buying what they need before luxuries, on nutrition, cooking instead of snack foods. Self-esteem training is needed [I am very skeptical of this--Ed.]....Many have no knowledge of nutrition--their kids get too much sugar, and therefore they are hyper at school and the teacher wants to medicate them. One thing leads to another." Then when asked why such classes are not offered their response was simply there are no government grants available for such classes. In contrast, a faith-based inner city ministry in the same city that receives 40% of its funding from government sources and 60% from private donations moves into new fields to meet new needs as they recognize and define them. The assistant executive director told us that there are now fewer single mothers on welfare in their area, "but former welfare recipients who are single moms are now working one or two jobs trying to make it. Their kids are left to wander the neighborhood, so now we have shifted our programming to provide a safety net for unsupervised children."

Majorities of all five types of providers reported receiving referrals from government. Near majorities reported making referrals to government and--perhaps most significantly--majorities reported having "had informal consultations or exhanges of information with government offices."

We were introduced to a healthy does of reality by an assistant director of an inner city faith-based program that receives government funding and has done so for some years, when he said: "My theory is that in the inner city nobody really cares what you do. One can evangelize, etc. without persons asking questions. This is different in the suburbs--there the ACLU would be all over you.... The political alliances are different here in the inner city. The ACLU and we are on the same side on many issues, not at odds. This helps."
posted by Eve at 1:22 PM

 
Who robs kingfish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
Blogwatch... blogwatch...

The Agitator: Rapper or toiletry? (hilarious); plus scroll down for more on Straight.

Two new blogs: The incredibly foofily named "Chickpea Eater's Bookblog," in which a friend of mine spouts off about stuff he's just read (sorta like this page only longer). First entry is on Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. I expect this page to be fun, philosophically rich, and poorly spelled. (Dude: The Rat eeks out a living; a musician ekes out a living.) And Bloggus Caesari--yes, Julius Caesar has a blog. This is beyond cool, because I am beyond dork. Links via The Rat and The Volokh, respectively.
posted by Eve at 12:35 PM

 
"The enjoyment of art is the only remaining ecstasy that is neither immoral nor illegal."
--Clifton Webb, "The Dark Corner"
posted by Eve at 11:11 AM

 
Who keeps the blogwatch off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do... we do...

Blogadder and Cacciaguida on my Israel post. (Have gotten some good email on this which I'll post tomorrow--a.k.a. when I have more time.)

Juan Non-Volokh: Two very worthwhile posts on organic farming and environmentalism.

The Hall of Shame: A vast, depressing, awful list of priestly crimes and clerical coverups. Link via Amy Welborn. Who also has this fantastic post which you must read right now.

And here's a Canon Law group blog. Link also via Welborn, which is kind of silly of me really, because I doubt anyone interested in canon law reads my page and not hers, but hey, whatever, I thought this was a cool concept for a blog. This message brought to you by the Department of Redundancy and Repetition Department.
posted by Eve at 4:19 PM

 
HEE HEE!: The Dostoyevsky Drinking Game. A gift to you, from me and the Rat.
posted by Eve at 3:34 PM

 
SPEAK, BLOGGERY: Just received confirmation that I'll be speaking next Wednesday at an America's Future Foundation panel on blogs. What will I say? Won't know 'til I get there! Come on, feel the noise--here's the email I received:

On Wednesday, June 19, the America's Future Foundation will present a roundtable on the new online phenomenon known as Weblogging or "blogging." Are blogs legitimate sources of news and opinion [boo, hiss--Ed.]?Do they threaten the established press? Or do they empower journalists and others who until now had to rely on "big media" to get their message out?

Speaking will be Stan Evans, dean of old-school reporting and director of the National Journalism Center, journalist and blogger Joshua Micah Marshal (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/), and up-and-coming Catholic blogger Eve Tushnet (eve-tushnet.blogspot.com). Also joining us will be Noah Shachtman who recently wrote a piece on blogging for Wired News. Attorney and blogger Gene Healy (http://www.genehealy.com/) will moderate.

The event will take place at the Fund for American Studies (1706 New Hampshire Ave., NW). Drinks will begin at 7:00 p.m., with dinner and discussion following at 7:30. Please RSVP to me at jerry@americasfuture.org.
posted by Eve at 2:22 PM

 
"WORDS WHICH COULD ONLY BE YOUR OWN...": I can't believe I forgot to mention the most intriguing moment in Sasha Volokh's "why study the dead guys?" post--the secret Morrissey/Heidegger connection! (You mean there's only one?)

Compare Volokh: "Heidegger said biography doesn't tell us anything useful -- he said of Aristotle: 'He was born. He lived. He died.'"

with "Cemetry Gates": "All those people, all those lives/Where are they now?/With loves, and hates/And passions just like mine/They were born/And then they lived/And then they died." (OK, so these lines are apparently stolen-with-love from "The Man Who Came To Dinner." Still, it's good enough for me. Martin Heidegger and Shelagh Delany, together at last....)
posted by Eve at 11:51 AM

 
POETRY WEDNESDAY: More Larkin:
A slight relax of air where cold was
And water trickles; dark ruinous light,
Scratched like old film, above wet slates withdraws.
At garden-ends, on railway banks, sad white
Shrinkage of snow shows clearer than the net
Stiffened like ectoplasm in front windows.

Shielded, what sorts of life are stirring yet:
Legs lagged like drains, slippers soft as fungus,
The gas and grate, the old cold sour grey bed.
Some ajar face, corpse-stubbled, bends round
To see the sky over the aerials--
Sky, absent paleness across which the gulls
Wing to the Corporation rubbish ground.
A slight relax of air. All is not dead.
posted by Eve at 11:44 AM

 
"If you were just a dame, it'd be different, Susan, but you're special."
--Van Heflin to Evelyn Keyes, "The Prowler"
posted by Eve at 10:12 AM

 
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy blogger
Who could watch you under the table
David Hume could out consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel...

The Lord Mage of Good lists his Top 10 movies.

The Rat compares me to a Harper's editorialist. Ouch! A worthwhile post if you're following the "Sir Mick" controversy. This Reason take is also good.

Amy Welborn continues to be an indispensible source of sanity and news on the crisis in the Catholic Church.

And that is all. More tomorrow.
posted by Eve at 6:57 PM

 
DEAD PHILOSOPHERS: A Volokh throws down the gauntlet: We don't spend too much time reading ancient, medieval, or even pre-20th-century economists, mathematicians, political scientists, or natural scientists. Why then do we read Plato, Anselm, and the like?

Well. First of all, I submit that philosophy reaches its nifty tendrils into all kinds of disciplines (biologists, of course, are practicioners of natural philosophy), and some of those disciplines are more likely to attain more-or-less-final answers than others. Does rotting meat spontaneously generate maggots? Nope. Does ethics require metaphysics? Well, Richard Rorty will fight you if you think that one's been decisively answered in a way that convinces more-or-less-everyone, the way the rotting-meat question has.

There are ancient philosophers who do get neglected; we're not really concerned about whether the world is basically made of fire, or water, or whatever. The long-dead philosophers you'll read in halfway decent philosophy courses still get read because the questions they raise have persisted. And no, often those questions have not been put better by others; as in literature so in philosophy, there is true genius. (Not that literature and philosophy are entirely distinct either. There's no hygienic separation between disciplines.) Because later critiques generally assumed familiarity with the philosophy being criticized, it's also very difficult to read later philosophy without earlier. The Old Oligarch was just complaining the other month about attempts to understand Descartes without any knowledge of the religious and philosophical context to which he was responding; it's easy to misunderstand his claims and either accept or dismiss what you think he's saying, thus missing the point of his critiques. It's like trying to read Endgame without having ever read Shakespeare.

I'd also note that there's great value to be gained from raw confrontation with an ancient, alien, yet great and compelling mindset. More on that here.

As for whether you should care about a philosopher's biography--although there are obvious dangers (prurience; dismissing a great philosopher's work because you find his life repugnant), in general, I think the answer is yes. Ideas have consequences, at least sometimes; just as we'd want to know how countries who tried to implement socialism have fared, so we might want to look at people who tried to live their lives in accordance with their philosophies. Moreover, having specific examples can lead us to feel the pressure of political or philosophical questions that we might otherwise ignore or gloss over--Mark Lilla's excellent "The Lure of Syracuse" (link requires subscription) gives us the political contexts in which Plato, Heidegger, and other thinkers made their claims; I think that context helps us to remember how important their stances were, how much courage or blindness or pride their positions required, and what their words meant in context. (Think of the recent "Jihad at Harvard" flap--context matters a lot.)

Some of the first great works of philosophy--Plato's dialogues--were also biographies, of course. I think that's in large part because there is no sharp distinction between the life of the mind and "real life." People often change their lives because of a philosophical conclusion they reached; it seems to me both appropriate and enlightening to look at how they changed and what the results were. If rhetoric is acceptable in philosophy, life should be too; for in many ways, living one's life as an exemplar of one's philosophy is an act of rhetoric.
posted by Eve at 6:28 PM

 
OY VET ER KUMEN ZU GEYN, VELN ALE YIDN IN ERETZ YISROEL AYNSHTEYN: I promised a post on U.S. support for Israel, and here it is.

BACKGROUND: Let's clear one major obstacle out of the way. My father is Jewish. My sister too. I counterprotested the idiotic Jew-hate-not-free-trade! march in April. (Read about it here and here.) Although I was not raised with any particular affection for the state of Israel, and I'm neither ethnically nor religiously Jewish, I still have a lingering sense, I think, of the dream of Israel–a place for us. So I hope I can blog about my problems with the actual state of Israel without drawing accusations of anti-Semitism.

As will soon become glaringly obvious, I'm really conflicted about the question of U.S. aid to Israel. I figure I'll address a bunch of different arguments and see where I end up. I'll tackle each "side," starting with the arguments I find least persuasive.

AGAINST AID TO ISRAEL: Israel is an illegitimate state, founded on stolen land. I've read conflicting accounts of the founding of Israel; although I think it should be obvious to everyone why Israel was founded, I also think it was a very bad idea. The Jews suffered from their usual wretched luck–set your state down in the middle of what's about to become a hotbed of anti-Semitism and imported Naziphilia–and they got used by Europeans who wanted to make those pesky Hebrews somebody else's problem. My basic stance on the founding of Israel is, I know this sucks, but you should have gone to Brooklyn instead.

But that isn't really too important in the foreign-policy department, for a lot of reasons. First, the U.S. supports scads of far-less-legitimate states. Some of them we should stop supporting. But some of them are helpful to us, or at least better than the alternatives.

Second, there were Jews settling in the land that became Israel well before the founding of the modern state. Land was stolen from Palestinians (spare me the rant about how there were no "Palestinians"; there were people there, OK? They became a nation-like group partly because of the founding of Israel. That's how ethnicities form), but if Israel is pushed into the sea (which is where the illegitimate-state argument goes) those pre-Israel settler Jews will have their land stolen. Plus lots and lots of people will die. So even if you think Israel is illegitimate, getting rid of it will lead to murder and theft. And that strikes me as "illegitimate" too.

For more on why Israel is not evil, click here.

The fact that Israel has been expanding the settlements in the Occupied Territories means that Israel doesn't want peace. Whatever. Yes, the settlement expansions are wrong. I don't expect our allies to be angels, and if the worst thing you can say about Israel is that it plays dirty pool, I don't see that as enough of a reason to ditch a mostly-democratic, sorta-liberal ally. (Don't worry, you'll get more reasons later on.)

Supporting Israel endangers Americans. This is the "suicide bombers: coming soon to a theater near you!" argument. I frankly think we'll still be hated even if we yank all our cash and weaponry from Eretz Yisroel. I'm not really sure what, if anything, we can realistically do that will stop terrorist attacks on our country; do too little and you have no effect, but do too much (attempt "regime changes" in every hostile nation, say) and you end up a colonial power with some of the world's most resentful colonists. In the end, our support of Israel is not a big factor, I think. Not nonexistent–Mickey Kaus has diligently tracked Bin Laden's references to Israel–but I don't think ending our support of Israel will protect us. More on why this self-protective approach might backfire, below.

We have no reason to support Israel. This is a smaller version of the previous claim. It's a "what do you do for me?" question–why should the U.S. support any country unless our own interests are plainly involved? Here's the big cop-out of this post: I'm not sure whether there can be such a thing as "charitable foreign policy," which is what many supporters of U.S. aid to Israel are really proposing. I have not yet been convinced that such policy is at all times wrong or impossible. In almost all cases we either don't know enough about the region and its history–click here for some background on the Kosovo Liberation Army, to take only one example; or read up on our adventures in Haiti–or we can't do much good anyway. However, I don't want to rule out the possibility that there are real cases in which the USA can stop (say) genocide or invasion, through military force or military aid (since the latter is what we're sending Israel), at relatively low costs to us, and without screwing up the affected region worse than it was when we entered.

If Israel can only survive through US aid, it's a client state not a sovereign state–and the US shouldn't be in the client-state business. I don't have an argument against this. I basically agree with it.

ARGUMENTS FOR U.S. AID: You're anti-Semitic. I hope I've dealt with this already. An analogy: Lots of racists oppose affirmative action. I oppose affirmative action. I am not, however, racist. I think an excellent argument could be made–in fact, let's cut the middleman here and I'll just make the argument myself–that the existence of the modern state of Israel is bad for the Jews. Jewish grandmothers are getting blown up at bar mitzvahs, people. How is this good for the Jews? Cui bono? If the claim is that personal safety is less important than political self-determination–again, to what extent is Israel genuinely autonomous and to what extent is it a US client? Also, do Jews actually lack representation in the US? If you wanted to raise a Jewish family–wouldn't you rather do it here, and doesn't that tell you something about what's good for the Jews?

Also, if there were no Israel, the Schools of Resentment in the Middle East would have to find somebody besides the Jews to hate. They could start with their tyrant rulers, who use state-run media to pump out blood libel and Nazi-like propaganda. Again: good for the Jews, or bad for the Jews?

I know that the establishment of the state of Israel was a huge psychological boost for Jews around the world. Instead of being slaughtered, Jews were fighting back, and they were winning. They proved that Jews could win; and every people needs to know that it has a fighting chance in the world. I know that, as Glenn Reynolds eloquently put it (quoting from memory here; and close to tears), if Israel's enemies win out against her, "Many Israelis will remember Masada and die with the dream." All I can say in response is, the dream is already dead; it was stillborn. You can't build a country, in the midst of vicious enemies, on a dream. When blood runs in the streets of the "land of milk and honey," the dream is already dead.

Always support every mostly-democratic and vaguely-liberal state. I have great sympathy for this position, and in general it's right–just as, in general, "charity-war" is a bad idea. Most of the time, supporting the countries more like liberal democracies over the countries less like liberal democracies is the best plan, and very much in our long-term self-interest. (The world needs to know that liberal democracy works.) However, if there were ever an exception to this rule it would be Israel. Israel is not self-sufficient (and some of that is doubtless the fault of its socialist heritage and practice), so it's not a great example of liberal democracy "working"; and the fact that the most liberal-democratic state in the region is a pariah among its neighbors, in my opinion, does more to retard liberalization in the Middle East than to spur it on.

If the U.S. abandons Israel, Islamist terrorists everywhere will rejoice; our allies will see that we can't be trusted; we'll look weak, mutable, and beatable. This too is where I throw up my hands in defeat. I think this is just true. This, to my mind, is the best argument for supporting Israel–and it's an argument from despair. (And yes, I know that the intifada is not all that Islamist. But I still think Islamists would take a US aid cutoff as a major victory, and proof that terrorism works.)

FAINT HOPES: At this point, I see only a few very unlikely ways out of the impasses created in 1948.

The U.S. does something really awesome in the war on terror, thus allowing us to slowly withdraw from supporting Israel without looking weak. This is my least preferred option. I do not think Israel can last long without us.

That "something" also changes the balance of power in the Middle East significantly enough that Israel has a much better chance of making a lasting peace with her neighbors. When the threat of all-out war against Israel is removed, I think it may be possible to negotiate Palestinian statehood or (vastly less likely, not that any of this is likely) assimilation. This is better.

Move to Brooklyn. The least realistic of all the options; and by far the best.

I think it should be obvious that I'm open to persuasion on this–in fact, I'd love to be persuaded out of the confusion and hopelessness I'm in. So check out the email link to your left. Thanks to everyone who emailed me before I wrote this vast post; and feel free to write again.

posted by Eve at 4:28 PM

 
GETTING IN TOUCH WITH MY FEMININE SIDE: Recently I mentioned two recipes that require virtually no clean-up. A reader asked me what they were. Mmm mmm good. As with all recipes, variations are encouraged and quantities are approximate.

Sandwich (this is a variant of a recipe I got from 365 Days Vegetarian--in general, a good cookbook--and I think it had some silly name like "San Francisco Sandwich," but since it's the only kind of sandwich I ever make, I feel no need to give it a foofy name):
You need: Tinfoil; a club roll or portuguese roll or similar; canned corn; plum tomato; white mushrooms; onion; canned artichoke hearts; munster cheese; cayenne pepper. That's for one sandwich; it should be fairly easy to figure out how to make more.
Preheat oven to 375. Get yourself two big sheets of tinfoil. Slice the roll in half the short way, then slice the halves in half. (Sorry if I'm explaining this badly. You should end up with two bottom-halves and two top-halves. It should look like a much shorter version of a halved sub sandwich.*) Set each bottom-half on a sheet of tinfoil. Cover the bottom-halves with a layer of canned corn (skip this if it sounds too weird, but it's really good). Slice plum tomato and layer that on top of the corn. Then add a layer of sliced mushrooms; then a layer of onion; then a layer of artichoke hearts. Top each half with a slice of munster cheese; sprinkle cayenne on the cheese; cover with the two top-halves. Wrap the half-sandwiches in the tinfoil and bake for about 15-17 minutes or until onions are as soft as you want 'em. Unwrap and enjoy. Keep napkins handy--these are very messy--but there are no pots or pans to clean. When you're done, just throw away the foil and give the plate a quick scrub.

Pasta with Roasted Vegetables and Whatnot
You need: Tinfoil, garlic, plum tomatoes, mushrooms (white or crimini), pasta, dried herbs/spices, and butter. You may also want an onion, artichoke hearts, and/or a package of shredded cheese.
Preheat oven to 375. Put water on to boil. Cover a pan in tinfoil. Thinly slice garlic. Set mushrooms on tinfoil. Slice tomatoes (big chunks work best) and set them also on tinfoil. Place the garlic slices on the mushrooms and tomatoes. Cover mushrooms and tomatoes with spices--I use oregano, basil, cayenne, and black pepper, but thyme works too.
When the water is about to boil, stick the pan in the oven. Cook the pasta while the vegetables roast. If you want artichoke hearts or very crisp, tangy onions (mmm), slice them up and put them on the plate you'll be using.
When the pasta is done, drain it and take the pan out of the oven. Butter the pasta. Scrape the vegetables into it. (You can slice the mushrooms if you want, but they'll squirt juice at you, and I rarely bother.) If you want cheese, put it on the pasta and vegetables. I prefer Sargento shredded Mexican-blend cheese--unusual with pasta, but good. The heat of the pasta and vegetables, plus the melting cheese, cooks the onions a little bit, but be forewarned--they don't cook fully.
Clean-up: Throw away the tinfoil. Rinse the pasta pot. Scrub the plate. Especially if you don't add cheese, this is extremely easy.

* The Rat once found a list of difficult job-interview questions that included, "Explain to me how to tie my shoes. Use only words, no gestures, and don't get a shoe and practice on it." This was startlingly tough.

Anyway, there will be real posting later today, but for the moment I thought there might be readers out there who are as obsessed with recipes as I am. In general, the tinfoil trick works wonders--you can cook steaks, for example, with equally limited clean-up.
posted by Eve at 10:50 AM

 
"You know how it is early in the morning on the water, and then you come ashore, and in no time at all you're up to your ears in trouble, and you don't know how it began."
--John Garfield, "Breaking Point"
posted by Eve at 10:26 AM

 
THE RAT INFORMS ME that Agatha Christie's title was Dame Commander of the British Empire. Now that is cool.
posted by Eve at 4:20 PM

 
TIM DRAKE'S ARTICLE on Catholic bloggers is online, here.
posted by Eve at 4:11 PM

 
BECAUSE THE KNIGHT: Why would people want Mick Jagger to be knighted? What would knighting the guy accomplish? Here's my take:
1) I'm not sure why artists get knighted in the first place, rather than reserving the honor for people who, you know, perform heroic acts or similar. But that said,
2) There's a big difference between knighting (or whatever the equivalent is for women--you can see that I don't follow this sort of thing) Agatha Christie, and knighting, say, Jean Genet. If you make your name slagging the Establishment, why should you want its favors? If your whole shtik is what a downtrodden, alienated, street-fightin' man you are--all your Satanic sympathies and so forth--doesn't it defeat the purpose if you get knighted? I mean, imagine John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) getting knighted.
And finally, 3) While obviously you can't expect everyone who gets knighted to be a moral exemplar, I think you can expect him to eschew rampant sleaziness. I like the Rolling Stones' music a lot, but why should people be rewarded for $#@!ing up in public?
posted by Eve at 4:06 PM

 
FLORIDA SAYS 120 CHILDREN IN STATE CARE ARE MISSING.
posted by Eve at 3:57 PM

 
THE MIRACLE OF SHANK: I know I promised lots of substantive posting today, but my weekend kind of escaped me, and I just don't have the time to do it. However, I am reading all your emails and whatnot, and there will be much blogly goodness here very soon. I apologize for the delay. Try me tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Unqualified Offerings and The Agitator both have bucketloads of good stuff, so you should go read them. Also, The Old Oligarch and I met Fr. Jim Tucker on Friday, after he celebrated (? prayed?--I haven't been Catholic long enough to know all the lingo--do you only celebrate a Mass?) a Novena to the Sacred Heart. Very very cool. He was then mobbed by little old ladies. The O.O. muttered that that was why widows had special ritual roles in the early Church--if they're gonna mob you, might as well give 'em something to do.... Anyway, it was awesome, and we will probably return for the next First Friday.
posted by Eve at 1:42 PM

 
"She had dressed for the occasion too, but her idea of a sex kitten looked like something the cat had dragged in."
--The Last Good Kiss , James Crumley

Thanks to the reader who sent it in.
posted by Eve at 1:34 PM

 
(GRASS)ROOTS ROCK: The Cranky Professor writes: "Along with Catholic books for public libraries (an EXCELLENT idea), let me suggest gift subscriptions to Catholic magazines for school libraries both public and parochial.

"Most public libraries aren't thrilled with gift subscriptions because they are sure that then they'll have to take it out of their limited budget once you stop giving (the solution -- call the magazine and find out how cheap a perpetual endowment would be -- I know that some of the scholarly journals will do it for as little as $500 in one payment. Think about it -- perpetual subscription to a scholarly journal for $500! Oh. You probably don't read Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies.)

"However, most schools are [happy to get gift subscriptions] -- and I've actually NOT had opposition to subscribing to religious journals for public [school] libraries. They're just grateful to get something on the shelves!"

Note how easily this idea can be modified for non-religious uses--just replace Crisis or the Register with City Journal, Reason, Commentary, etc.
posted by Eve at 5:52 PM

 
"CHRISTIANITY FROM THE OUTSIDE" is available online. There are terrific responses from Jack Balkin, Emmy Chang, Christopher Hitchens, David Kelley, James Morrow, Jacob Neusner, Jonathan Rauch, Ellen Willis, and Michael Yaeger. I was honored to work with them.
posted by Eve at 2:35 PM

 
COUPON CLIPPERS: I'm a creature of habit. Every time I go to the grocery, I buy the exact same nine things. I love cooking, but I hate washing dishes, so I've grown to love two yummy recipes that require virtually no cleanup. This means, among other things, that I get a lot of coupons I don't use. I get 'em in the mailbox; I get 'em on my receipt; I get 'em here, I get 'em there, etc.

There's gotta be a use for these coupons. I've been throwing them away, but it occurred to me today that I might be able to give them to a food pantry or other charity. I'll look into this and tell you what I find.

One section of the Rock'n'Roll Conservatism manifesto (coming, slowly but surely, to theaters everywhere) will deal with grassroots activities--things anyone can do to promote markets, marriage, the well-being of the poor, and similar nifty stuff. Coupon-clipping is a tiny act, but there are many, many possibilities that most people overlook. Here are some excellent ideas: ROSCAs; marriage mentoring; Threads of Love; the Heifer Project; bringing Catholic books to public libraries (I'm sure non-Catholics can think of similar projects); Magdalene Home; Deborah Darden's Right Alternatives Family Service Center (it's described toward the end of that article); and there's a lot more out there, which will be explored in the Manifesto.

D.I.Y.
posted by Eve at 2:30 PM

 
HERE'S THE LIST of people at the blogfest last night. Muchisimas gracias a Gene Healy.
posted by Eve at 1:49 PM

 
ARE YOU A LAY CATHOLIC? Are you seeking saints from your own walk of life? Do you want to learn more about the history of the Church and her saints? Do you need to exercise your arm muscles and build upper-body strength? You need this tome! (I'm borrowing it from The Old Oligarch.)
posted by Eve at 1:12 PM

 
My blogfest's back and you're gonna be sorry--
Hey la, hey la, my blogfest's back!

(I will never again be able to hear that song without thinking of the "Sesame Street" parody with the Squirelles singing about the boyfriend's back--and his front.)

Boy were there a lot of people at the blogfest. I didn't even meet half the people there. It was great to see folks from the first DC fest--Dave Tepper, Unqualified Offerings and Mrs. Offering, and Will Wilkinson (even though I didn't get a chance to say hi to Will). Also had much fun talking with Eugene Volokh, Jon Adler, Radley Balko, Brink Lindsey, Julian Sanchez (OK OK, you're not an anarchist!), arrrggghhh--there's no way I'm going to be able to get everyone's name in. Why don't we just call everyone "Kevin"? (You won't regret clicking that link, by the way.) Apparently there was a sign-up sheet where people wrote their names and URLs, though I missed it. Shamed and Russo were there, arguing that we should attack Iraq (Russo) and that there's nothing sketchy about chicks in halter tops dancing on a bar and squirting vodka down men's throats (Shamed of course). Here are many photos. I'm in one of them, but as usual I look like an idiot, so I won't tell you which one. But here's a hint: One of the people in this photo is Russo, who isn't looking like a dork. (My lesson: Look at the camera, you freak!) I do vote that next time we pick a QUIETER and larger place--Rendezvous was very good-looking, but way too loud and crowded. It was difficult to have a good conversation. Nonetheless, Eugene Volokh gave me some very good, sharp (=helpful, acute; not "sharp" as in "ouch, that stings!") criticism of the points I made in a judicial-philosophy post that has disappeared (uh, where are my early archives? Oh well...); I'll be mulling that over and getting back to you people on it.

Balko and I went back and forth a bit on "abstinence-only education." I made my usual point that trying to corral teens within rules and regulations, and emphasizing the riskiness of sex (whether contracepted or not), is never going to work. I suspect many abstinence-only programs fail because they're about what you shouldn't do, not what you should do; they're about abstinence and not marriage. Teens think they're invulnerable, and they like the risk inherent in sex because a) risk is sexy, c'mon, and b) taking risks "proves" one's invincibility. So if you focus solely on a "don't take risks!" approach you'll never change teens' behavior. I do think, though, that educating teens about what marriage is, why physical fidelity matters, the emotional turmoil caused by premarital sex, the difficulties it causes for marriage--in short, showing teens an achievable ideal and then pointing out that premarital sex undermines their ability to achieve that ideal--can work. It can only work if you have a believable teacher. I know a woman who does abstinence-until-marriage education, and she talked very frankly about the difficulties of convincing teens she wasn't scamming them or being a hypocrite. Once she did convince them, however, she said they were in general very enthusiastic, somewhat tripped out (nobody had ever talked to them, in a straight-up, no-bull manner, about marriage), and intrigued. (Obviously this is just going on her word; I hope to take a day off from work sometime soon so I can observe some of her classes.) My only point here is that if you do it wrong, "abstinence only" education can have many of the same flaws as "'safe' sex" education (which also emphasizes regulations and risk-avoidance, rather than ideals and goals). But the fact that some people do dumb abstinence-only ed doesn't mean that all abstinence education is dumb. Here's a big long review of marriage-ed programs: the good, the bad, and the silly.

Oh, and two people asked me if I was related to my father. I told them that if you ever meet a Tushnet, in any walk of life whatsoever, I'm very closely related to that person. I think the number of Tushnets in the world, total, is in the high teens or so.

Blogadder has some good thoughts, or beginnings of thoughts, about the whole Roman-vs.-Anglo law dispute that's been rockin' the Catholic blogosphere.

Social Theorist Trading Cards! (link sent by The Rat, who is blogging like a rat in a coffee can today.)

And you need to read this. Update on Radley Balko's excellent "Straight" story exposing an abusive "drug rehab" center.
posted by Eve at 1:03 PM

 
"How extravagant you are, throwing away women like that. Someday they may be scarce."
--Claude Rains, "Casablanca"
posted by Eve at 12:13 PM

 
COME, MUSE, LET US SING OF RATS: Another one rides the bus--The Rat has a blog. Right now there's lots of St. Petersburg, SnarfQuest, and Dostoyevsky. Go, feel the bite of the Rat.
posted by Eve at 4:48 PM

 
Avalanche or blogwatch
I was a snowball in hell
Avalanche or blogwatch
A jailer trapped in his cell...

Ted Barlow: How to thank those awesome Masai who sent us cows. The comments are also good.

Dappled Things: Latins vs. litigiousness; Roman exceptions; a very good post on the Curia. And the Reformation Polka (which is not as much fun as the Masochism Tango, I regret to inform you).

Brink Lindsey: Fathers and Sons; people need plants and pets (this, by the way, is one reason DC is the greatest city in the world--city-at-night streetscapes plus lots and lots of big flowering and leafy trees; there's no reason to pose a stark dichotomy between nature and city); and tariffs have consequences.

Emily Stimpson beats up on the teachers' unions; Michael Shirley defends them (as always, check the comments); Sara Russo busts out the whuppin' stick.

Dave Winer: Must-read quick essay about spineless journalists. To quote Edward G. Robinson in "Five-Star Final," "No wonder the newspaper is rotten. We need more drunkards." Hey, me and my friends are doing our part....

And I forgot to link to Daniel Connaughton's blog--he's the guy who sent in all those nifty contest entries below.

Oh man, Dee Dee Ramone died. No surprise I suppose. R.I.P.

Not back on it, Joe, still on it.
Not back on it, Joe, still on it.
Not back on it, Joe, still on it.
posted by Eve at 3:46 PM

 
SO I WAS TALKING with a friend about this. She nodded. She had just one question: "Pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian?"

I wasn't sure what she thought the right answer was. "Pro-Israel, I think," I said. That was the right answer. "...I'd actually been wondering what you were thinking about that," I added.

She paused. "Despair," she said.

Yeah. I have a whole tangle of thoughts about U.S. support of Israel, but it all ends in utter confusion and the sense that there's no realistic hope of anything anyone does there working out. As I said below, I plan to blog about this on Monday, once I've sat down and sorted my thoughts out; I figure even laying out the sources of my confusion may help clarify matters for me and even perhaps for you all. But if you have helpful links, info, or thoughts, feel free to email before then.
posted by Eve at 2:02 PM

 
MODERN LOVE: Something I've wondered for a couple years now: Why do different disciplines use the word "modern" to refer to such different eras? In history, as far as I can tell, modernity begins at the end of the Renaissance; but modern art starts much later. Philosophy generally uses the history definition, in my experience, or a definition in which modernity starts with the Enlightenment, or with Machiavelli; and then "postmodernity" kicks off with Nietzsche. I'd be interested in any emails about either a) the source of the divergence in these definitions of "modern," or b) if the art-definition and the history-definition actually relate to one another, how are they connected?

And this is probably not a question about mods. Probably.
posted by Eve at 1:58 PM

 
NEW CONTEST!!!: Probably very light blogging today, but I will post a lot of stuff on Monday--the death penalty, Israel/Palestine, anything else I can think of. For now, why don't you all busy yourselves with a contest?

The new one springs off of this much-blogged news item: The New York State Education Department's decision to bowdlerize the literature they used on statewide exams. Your task is to "edit" famous works so as to make them acceptable to the Dept of Ed. Get out the red pen! Send entries to eve_tushnet@yahoo.com . A good entry is its own reward. Some samples to get you started:

Unpleasantness Comes for the Archbishop
Shakespeare's Queen Cordelia
To Kill A Mockingbird without reference to race (or rape...)--or with a racially diverse cast of characters, e.g. Mayella is Chippewa, the guy she accuses is Irish, Scout is Haitian, her father Atticus is Chinese...
The Bible without Jews
Portnoy's Complaint: He just can't stop watching "Friends"!

Winners will be announced in two weeks(ish).
posted by Eve at 1:50 PM

 
"I'm overwhelmed. You're all such wonderful people. Everybody has my interests at heart. Everybody wants to take me to the cops."
--Pat O'Brien, "Crack-Up"
posted by Eve at 1:44 PM

 
CONTEST RESULTS!!!: Well, I got the best results for the farm-bill contest, so we'll look at that last. First let's turn our attention to the "When life gives you lemons..." contest.

3rd PLACE: Seth J. Farber: If you had two lemons in the Reagan Administration, you would use one to add to a school lunch program, so you could count it as both a garnish and a vegetable, and you would align the other with your star chart to determine appropriate foreign policy.

2nd PLACE: Father Shawn O'Neal, lately of Onealism:
Before the IMF gives you lemons,

1) you have sell the furniture in all your buildings to the working-class pot-bangers out in the street,

2) you must dispatch of your holdings by selling them to the Spanish for 20 centavos on the peso,

and 3) you must ensure that both the public and private distribution managers living in the estancias aren't asking as much for "lemon
handling fee" as they did the last time the lemon boat arrived in the port.

When the IMF gives you the lemons, you have 15 months to give them full documentation concerning how those lemons were used -- including that ones that were "mishandled" by the distributors who live in the estancias.

You also have 18 months to pay back the IMF in lemons even if you don't have access to citrus trees, but the IMF does, so they'll cut you a deal.

GRAND PRIZE: A matching set from De Feo: When Objectivism gives you lemons, check your premises.

When Catholicism gives you lemons, offer them for souls in Purgatory.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: De Feo again: When fascism gives you lemons, blame the immigrants.

When Lucrezia Borgia gives you lemons, you're in trouble. Because she's been dead for a while.

When Enron gives you lemons, give them back.

When skepticism gives you lemons, you can't be sure they're lemons.

When aristocracy gives you lemons, have them thrown at the masses.

When the Democrats give you lemons, it's probably because you're a minority.

When the Mafia gives you lemons, it's a Sicilian message.

Jacob Profitt: Before the EU gives you lemons, you have to first reassure that you won't put French or German farmers out of work, agree to the nine-volume "Organic Lemon Handling Initiative" (HILO) and visit Brussels to grease the appropriate palms.

When Bill Gates gives you lemons, you'll be able to make lemonade, but first you have to agree that you will not unbundle juices or seeds and that you will use Microsoft-approved pitchers only for Microsoft lemonade and not for Sunny orange juice, Apple-MacJuice, Lime-ux, or ICM (International Concentrated Mangos) GS/2 (Grapefruit Sauce 2).

And two good ones from a seemingly bitter Marine: When the military industrial complex gives you lemons it's because some congressman decided to write citrus subsidies into the newest iteration of the defense budget in order to appease constituents in his district...and hey, why not give the lemons no one wants to the Marines (Not that our unofficial motto is "We do more with less" or anything)

When the military industrial complex gives you lemons, assume it's a goodwill attempt to add flavor to M.R.E.'s (That's meals ready to eat for those who haven't had the experience...and Meals Rejected by Ethiopia for those who have...you know that little bottle of Tabasco only goes so far).
______________________________
And now the big one--"Write a post about the farm bill in the voice of a literary character." Enjoy, folks.

3rd PLACE: Scott Helgeson: Hop on Crop Subsidies
(as told by the Washington Fat Cat in the Hat)

Every blogger
down in Who-ville
liked libertarianism a lot...

Senator Grinch
(Independent, from Whoville)
did NOT.

He looked down at Whoville and anxiously thought
For my re-election voters need to be bought.
Then he growled, his fingers nervously drumming.
"I must find a way to keep subsidies coming!"

Then he got an idea!
An awful idea!
Sen. Grinch got a wonderful,
AWFUL IDEA!

He got in his limo
And took off with a screech
To the center of Who-town
To make a big speech.

"I'll give you a thousand, I'll give you a million!
I'll give you a doe-decal-dupple-dog-zillion!
Just send me back to the Capitol, my dear
I'll get money there, and I'll bring it back here."

He subsidized farmers and giggled with glee.
"Now the farmers," he said," will all vote for me!"

"I gave them money for dairy,
for big ketchup packets,
I even gave money
for mohair pimp jackets."

And some say the Grinch's heart grew 3 sizes that day,
Because he gave so much taxpayer money away.

2nd PLACE: Daniel Connaughton: "Angstrom held the NY Times with a gathering anger, the serrate-edged white pages garlanded with those ads of models, all svelte with their ring-appointed mid-drifts, slices of skin endlessly beguiling and
faithful to the long evolutionary line of tricks women have used to overcome a man's fear of rejection, a display to marry pistil and stamen. Amid the skin and sex and perfume his attention ratcheted upon, quite perversely, a news item concerning a farm subsidy
bill. This was the source of his inchoate anger, and to his Dell he flew, typing furiously into his forgiving, warm, blogger spot:
"'Don't have time to link this, but it was in the NY Times today (link requires registration, blah,blah) - the bastards passed a $190 billion dollar farm subsidy bill...'"

GRAND PRIZE: Mark Byron. For vast, obsessive length--and because I'm biased toward noir. Click here.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Connaughton: Thoreau (not a literary character--not in that sense, anyway--but we forgive): From his blog entitled "Blogden Pond":

I set out to live deliberately in the wilds of eastern Kentucky with only a lap-top and a lean-to, recreating a previous experiment in this "computer age". Though a computer is not absolutely necessary, I plan to use it as a "word processor" and thus save the parchment and pencil waste formerly associated with the author's trade. One may see the economy in that. I plan to blog only once a day, and not spend more than one hour per day reading other blogs, for the mass of bloggers live lives of paragraph-sized desperation. From the desperate city blogs to the desperate country blogs, few heed the call to simplify.

I chanced upon a day-old newspaper on my grounds yesterday, perhaps blown in from the nearby interstate with its thundering herd of trucks and trash-laden gravel shoulders. The story above the fold contained a humorously titled congressional bill: "the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002". One hundred fifty years later and still we seek security from a congressional bill? Oh but pity the poor agri-business conglomerates, with only a governmental stipend to keep them in the sheaves! Surely without the subsidy of the government the mass of farmers would have no sugar or dairy or grain to give us and we would, wretched in our own failure to urge our
representatives to pass a Congressional act, be forced to farm ourselves, or better yet live deliberately off the land. Hmm...

Seth J. Farber: I do not like green eggs and ham,
I do not like them Sam I am,
I do not like this new farm bill,
It smells of pork from on the Hill.

Try them, try them, you will see,
There's nothing wrong with subsidy,
Green eggs and ham are but one strand,
Of vast farm aid wide and grand,

I do not like this spending spree,
When our nation suffers calamity,
I do not like it Sam I am,
I think this farm bill is a sham.

But our land was built by the family farm,
A way of life with such great charm.
Farmers get help with the right quota--
And we might pick up South Dakota!

I do not like this, not at all.
I think this farm bill smacks of gall.
Our nation needs to stand united,
And not lament the checks it kited.

Try the farm bill you will see,
Grow a carrot, grow a pea,
Or raise some bees for honey--
Don't worry-- Congress has the money.

Say, Sam, I see what you mean.
For not just ham and eggs are green--
With MY check in hand, I must confess,
I'm now a fan of this largesse.
posted by Eve at 5:17 PM

 
RIGHT-LEANING LEGAL EXPERTS: If you're in the media and looking for a list of legal experts who slant "right" (whatever that means), this link might be useful to you.
posted by Eve at 4:12 PM

 
POLLUTED BY WOLVES: Those who know me well know that I love wolves. Other girls had horse phases; I had a wolf phase. Such a long and intense phase, in fact, that I will not be at all surprised if some relatives send me wolf paraphernalia this Christmas. I sold my copy of White Wolf: The Wolves of Ellesmere Island (yes, they're gorgeous, but I wanted to buy more Dostoyevsky), and I think I gave my old stuffed lupine companion Rosebriar to the pregnancy center, but I still think wolves are pretty awesome.

However. The only wolves I've seen up-close-and-personal were safely behind bars. I do not see wolves padding down 16th Street, slinking through Rock Creek Park, or dining on Bambi carpaccio out in darkest Virginia. And this suits me just fine.

I was reminded of my preference for a wolfless habitat when I read an account of a Close Encounter of the Wolfen Kind in Portland, Ore. Wolfie had his snout stuck in the trashcan behind a local eatery. Raised his head, spotted customers leaving the restaurant, and went into classic stalking-wolf mode. The customers backed away very slowly, and the wolf retreated.

I really don't deal much with nasty beasties in my daily life. ("Who's that in that nasty car? --Nasty beasts!") Rats, big weird swamp-type bugs, that's about it. I see deer in the Park quite often, and many years ago one wandered into the Capitol, smashed through a plate-glass window, and stumbled around in a daze until it was captured and removed. I don't have to back slowly away from the Tastee Diner dumpster because some carnivore is rifling through the garbage; I don't have to worry that when our cat escapes some fangtoothed coyote or Canis lupus will snuff him. This is great. This happened because humans changed the "natural world" we found around us.

The separation between humans and the rest of nature goes back to Genesis, of course--we were given dominion over the creepycrawlies and the flittering things and, importantly, the clawed and jagtoothed wild animals. But that separation between us and them was predicated on our dominance. We, not they, stood at the top of the Great Chain of Being.

Later philosophies, in which humans become just another part of nature, had a much harder time justifying that dominance. (You could read the book that seduced me into nine years of vegetarianism if you want a utilitarian take on the subject--an accurate, consistent utilitarian take, I might add... which is one of the problems with utilitarianism.) Attempts to justify humans' use of other animals too often rely on a "group rights" approach (what's really valued is rationality, and humans are the kind of critters who can be rational [as demonstrated by, say, our use of language, or our ability to make moral choices], so all humans get protection under the "umbrella" of rational-animals even if the particular humans in question have severely impaired rationality, have not yet developed rationality, or aren't exercising their rationality at a given moment).

There are some benefits to viewing ourselves as just another part of nature--for example, this viewpoint helps us see why the changes humans make to a landscape aren't necessarily any less "natural" or moral than the changes other animals make. (Virginia Postrel has a great example of this in The Future and Its Enemies, in which an environmental group tried to recreate an American forest as it would have existed before Columbus. The attempt failed, because the greenfolk refused to burn down trees that would be burnt by the American Indians who had lived there. Without this periodic culling, some tree species quickly crowded out others; some trees took over, while others vanished. In order to recreate the supposed "beautiful nature," humans would have had to intervene, since we inadvertently had created the species diversity that gave the forest its majesty. Because humans were viewed as intruders, usurpers in the Wild Kingdom, the Greens failed to see that we were actually helpful players in the biological drama.)

However, if we view ourselves as only one species among others, we can have no justification for our dominance or use of other animals. (Or we end up with justifications for using beasts that also turn out to justify using other humans.) This justification of human dominance is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult problems for philosophy (especially secular philosophy); it's ignored simply because most people either don't think about the outliers (non- or not-yet-rational humans; clever pets), or simply laugh when they're asked to take Peter Singer's claims seriously. (Three cheers for common sense on this one, by the way--I'm thrilled that people reject human/beast equality, even if arguing the case from modern secular premises is tougher than we usually realize.) So people who don't have a good sense of what differentiates us from the beasties around us often retreat into a hazy romanticism about "nature." Natural good, manufactured bad!

Eugene Volokh came up with a good way of thinking about pollution that avoids this problem: Pollution is nasty stuff in the environment that causes disease. Here are the relevant paragraphs: "How can I say that the world has gotten cleaner, given all the smog, toxic waste, etc.? Well, there's certainly pollution out there, which I would define as material in the environment that can cause disease. And there's more chemical pollution, I suspect, than there was, say, 300 years ago.

"But there's vastly less biological pollution. For much of human history, the species was literally plagued with a vast range of material in the environment -- bacteria and viruses -- that can cause disease. Some of this was an artifact of people living next to each other, but it happened with population densities much lower than we see today. And biological pollution has generally proven to be much more lethal than chemical pollution.

"On aggregate, then, the world is much cleaner today than at any time in at least thousands of years, as defined in what I think is the soundest way: There is far less disease caused by the 'unclean' stuff in the environment than there ever has been."

This view seems to me to get it right: The emphasis is on what humans need (we're dominant) and what we can control (both manufactured and biological "pollution"). We're neither entirely separate from nature (in which case our actions would be inherently "unnatural," and usually "anti-nature") nor merely another cog in the Green Machine. So yes, under certain circumstances--when they threaten human life, limb, or livelihood--wolves can be classified as pollution. I say that with tongue in cheek; I think "pollution" is, in general, stuff we don't want around at all, rather than critters we like in zoos and off in the wild where they can't mess with anyone. But the way of thinking Volokh proposes strikes me as entirely sensible. The world is cleaner today than it was, and that's good. That shouldn't stop us from trying to make it cleaner still, but that's a very different argument about technology, economic development, and trade-offs (how much chemical pollution will we bear now in order to maintain a booming economy that ultimately benefits us greatly?).
posted by Eve at 2:46 PM

 
POETRY WEDNESDAY: Because people end up memorizing random things. Here are all four of the poems I know by heart. All typed from memory, whence any errors. From A.E. Housman:

I to my perils
Of cheat and charmer
Came clad in armor
By stars divine.

Hope lies to mortals
And most believe her
But man's deceiver
Was never mine.

From William Blake (all the line breaks are probably wrong):
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm who flies through the night
In the howling storm
Has found out your bed of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Does your life destroy.

From John Keats:
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb
So chill thy days and haunt thy sleeping nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart drained of blood
That in my veins red life might flow again
And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--
I hold it to you.

And from Lewis Carroll:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub Bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch."

He took his vorpal sword in hand,
Long time the manxome foe he sought.
Then rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood a while in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came.

One-two! one-two! And through and through
His vorpal sword went snickersnack.
He left it dead, and with its head,
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Calloo, callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
posted by Eve at 1:26 PM

 
When you wake in the night, wipe the sweat from your forehead--
Blogwatch Most Horrid!

Ted Barlow: Excellent post on his trip to a gun show. Read the comments too.

E-Pression: Higher quicker is better; and she's cute when she's angry.

An important document ranking the dioceses according to ordinations per Catholic. (I.e. if you have 4 ordinations out of 10 Catholics you'd rank higher than a diocese with 8 ordinations and 40 Catholics.) Link via Amy Welborn, who also has good commentary on it, and a truckload of useful Scandal-stuff.

When you wake in the night, enormously torrid,
Blogwatch Most Horrid...
posted by Eve at 1:13 PM

 
"Why you cheap little clip-joint canary!"
--Robert Ryan to Lizabeth Scott, "The Racket"
posted by Eve at 12:36 PM

 
OK, THIS LETTER to Pete Vere says what I was thinking (but hadn't put into words): Most bad marriages are marriages--no annulment for you. I entirely agree with Amy Welborn's and Vere's thoughts on the ways in which our attitudes toward marriage, big costly weddings, and premarital sex have made good marriages more difficult, and that's why I linked to their posts on the subject, but I really agree that you can't have a definition of marriage in which you're not married unless your choice was made in the best possible fashion. Here are the key passages: "Amy mentions that people get married who shouldn't. I agree. However, making a bad choice, even an idiotic choice, is not the same thing as having an inability to choose.

"...What does this mean? Jerks can marry. Head-in-the-clouds 19 year-old couples can marry. Almost anyone can marry."

Civil divorce is a separate issue, though it has its own problems. Obviously I'm not making any judgments about particular annulments--I'd never pretend to know "which ones were real." And I know it can come off as arrogant talking about this subject at all, since I'm not married; I really hope I don't sound like a jerk. But I don't know what else to say--telling people, "You were never really married," when they were, is not kosher at all. I know a bad marriage is a terrible thing to go through--one of the worst--and again, separation or civil divorce are very different from annulment. And I agree with pretty much everyone that the best way to help Catholics make better marriages is to focus on marriage preparation, resisting the contraceptive culture, and in general helping people understand what they're supposed to be doing. But yeah, as far as I can tell from very limited knowledge, there are also too many annulments in this country; some marriages are being called invalid for insufficient reasons; and I do worry about what happens to the people who want to argue that their marriage was real.
posted by Eve at 4:22 PM

 
THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE to win my contest(s)!!! Winners will be announced TOMORROW. You will also get a juicy new contest then; I think you will enjoy it. Here's this week's contests again:

Send all entries to eve_tushnet@yahoo.com .

1) When capitalism gives you lemons... This was inspired by this post over at The Volokh Conspiracy. You know those lists of different political systems and what they'd do with two cows? I want similar ideas--but fresh, funny, tart 'n' tangy, like a splash of lemon juice in the face...--that take off on the old adage, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." When Communism gives you lemons, what happens? When anarcho-syndicalism gives you lemons? When George W. Bush gives you lemons? Etc.

2) I joked about making the next contest, "Write a post about the farm bill as if you were Ivan Karamazov." Then I thought, It's so crazy, it just might work! So yeah. Write a post about the farm bill as if you were any major literary character--Winnie the Pooh, Raskolnikov, Madame Bovary, Molly Bloom, Romeo, Napoleon and/or Snowball, Scarlett O'Hara... the possibilities are endless. Go to town. No spoilers!

Send 'em in!
posted by Eve at 3:39 PM

 
CATHOLIC STUFF: Tim Drake has a whole passel of interesting stuff over at his blog--responses to the questions he asked various Catholic bloggers. I have to say that I really don't notice the "narcissism" of blogs--if somebody bores me, I skip him--but the points about time-management are well taken. Perhaps that issue explains the departure of Mike Hardy from the blogosphere. Come back little Sheba! Personally, I doubt he will be able to resist at least firing off the occasional email or turning up in a comments box. I hope so anyway. And John Da Fiesole is right in his reasoning about the use of the atomic bomb--we can't make the utilitarian calculus of sacrificing some innocents for others. We can pursue justice--including killing the wrongdoers--but we can't target those who have not done the wrong.

Here's Dave Kopel's Marylinks page--scads and scads and scads of links about the Mother of God. Lots of art, prayers, books, apparitions, scholarship, rosaries and "alternative rosaries" (like the Chaplet of the Five Wounds of God, or the Rosary of St. Joseph), doctrine (what's up with the Immaculate Conception? why do Catholics believe Mary remained a virgin?), and much much more. (Mary in the Koran... Martin Luther's devotion to Mary... what's a scapular?...) Very very cool.
posted by Eve at 3:26 PM

 
I know you're antiseptic
your deodorant smells nice
I'd like to know you but you're deep frozen like ice
he's a blogwatch adolescent...

Note: There will be very light blogging today, as I have to, like, work and stuff. But you should read the novella "Sweet Smell of Success" by Ernest Lehman. Basis of awesome movie. Very very good stuff.

Don't Be A Shamed: Great moments in Google searches. All I can say is, To the person who came here looking for "gay Straussian"--welcome! You've come to the right place, sort of! Kind of. Not really. No.

Charles Murtaugh: Two good posts about eugenics, experimental ethics, and cloning; and sad news. I'm sure there will be prayers in the blogosphere for Professor Murtaugh's family.

Matt Welch: Bush, basketball, blunders; and another good post on Afghan civilian casualties.

A NRO article says slave redeemers in Sudan aren't being scammed. Read it; click here and poke around; then read my take on it; and decide for yourself.

Notes from a Hillside Farm: Very nifty blog from an Orthodox Christian who likes both me and Wendell Berry.

And last, Engrish.com. The name is not for the ubersensitive. But the site is SO FUNNY. Like tears coming down the face funny. Click and see the wonder of one Japanese quirk: the passion for putting English words on everything. Hilarious. And I've drunk Pocari Sweat, by the way--nice, but salty.
posted by Eve at 11:46 AM

 
"We go together, Laurie. I don't know why. Maybe like guns and ammunition go together."
--John Dall to Peggy Cummins, "Gun Crazy"
posted by Eve at 11:01 AM

 
D.C. BLOGFEST THIS THURSDAY! Rendezvous Lounge (18th and Kalorama), 7 p.m. Me, Brink Lindsey, Radley Balko, Julian Sanchez, et fascinating alia. Will probably start upstairs. To quote the email: "Bloggers, fans and friends of bloggers, and anyone generally interested (or not interested) in blogging are invited, welcome and encouraged to attend."
posted by Eve at 5:57 PM

 
"I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE LAST YEAR AND CONDEMNING THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT FOR, UH, CONDEMNING ME.": So I went to Saturday's candlelight vigil outside the Chinese Embassy. Tomorrow is the 13th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. Executive summary of the vigil: Small but hopeful. Here are some scattered thoughts and observations.

I didn't know that in 1989, protesting students built a Statue of Liberty in Shanghai.

I had never seen the poster at Tiananmen Square, hung during the demonstrations, that read (in English), "Give me liberty or give me death!"

Photo captions detailed the ways in which the Communist government turned protesters' deaths into propaganda: Goons hung signs around the protesters' necks listing their "crimes." The protesters were forced to kneel, then shot in the head. The government recorded it all for the official files, and for public consumption--the latter is known as "killing the chicken to scare the monkey."

The gathering itself was very small, very amateurish (lots of people had trouble with the microphones), and almost entirely Asian. There was a lovely reporter with Radio Free Asia; I didn't notice any other press. Guess it's passe to have luminaries like Wei Jingsheng in town.

Wei looks like somebody's dad. He was dressed in a t-shirt and khaki shorts. (Did I mention that this was not a super-big event?) He spoke in Chinese with a translator, and displayed his well-known sense of humor by joshing the translator a bit.

Wei, like some of the other speakers, discussed the divisions that have plagued the Chinese freedom movement. He said, "The apathy and lack of support for our movement from overseas Chinese [4 1/2 years ago, when Wei was released from prison] is perhaps understandable, due to the behavior of the people within our movement, which was less than commendable." But, like the other speakers, he asserted that over the past few years the dissident community basically got its act together and stopped fighting so much. I suspect this is probably true; if it weren't true, I doubt any of the speakers would have mentioned the infighting. If it is true, this is a terrific thing.

John Kusumi, founder of the China Support Network, probably had the most detailed policy prescriptions. These were a bit sketchy. He called for the 2008 Olympics to be taken from Beijing, on the grounds that there was evidence (he said) of an "Olympic crackdown," as the Communists try to sweep all opposition under the rug as fast as possible. (I don't know if it's started yet, but I fully expect such a crackdown--other major conferences in China have provoked crackdowns in the past.) Kusumi also called for China to be treated like Cuba by the U.S. (He didn't give details, just said that Cuba policy was a model for China policy.) I don't think either of these ideas (revoking the Olympics decision and starting a China embargo) are good places to put one's energy, so Kusumi's speech was disappointing. I'd love for the Olympics to go somewhere else, but it won't happen; and a China embargo is not even a good idea, let alone a politically feasible one.

Two men who led the 1989 student demonstrations also spoke--Wang Dan, who was in Tiananmen Square, and Liu Junguo of Canton. Neither said anything particularly unusual, but it was still wonderful to see such brave people. Both now live in the U.S. (as does Wei).

Gao Zhan also spoke; she's the one I quoted in the title of this post. Here's a synopsis of what happened to her. Her most memorable quote: "I feel a sense of guilt because over the 13 years [between Tiananmen and her own arrest] I allowed my anger to die down, my conscience to die down, and my memory to die down."

If you want to help Chinese people struggling against their dictators, check out these websites: Chinese gulag; underground Catholic priests; free church for China. If anyone knows of groups who circulate samizdata (underground, suppressed literature) in China, please let me know--I know there are societies that produce tiny Bibles that are smuggled into China, but are there any groups that do the same with other books? eve_tushnet@yahoo.com

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free....
posted by Eve at 5:54 PM

 
BECAUSE I KNOW YOU NEEDED MORE POSTS ABOUT CREEPY DOLLS: Avram Grumer of Pigs&Fishes writes: "Eve, I think you're wrong about why dolls are creepy. While it is true that modern society doesn't quite know what to do with children, that's got nothing to do with dolls. Dolls are creepy because they are designed to appeal to some very basic human instincts -- the desire to cherish and protect infants, and this is an impulse non-human primates also display, meaning that it's almost certainly an instinct that's older than humanity itself -- but they're also these inanimate lumps of plastic, dead things.

"I don't know where the children chanting in horror movies comes from."
I basically agree with this--I wasn't trying to list every single reason dolls are creepy--but I think the other factors I detail here also play a role. And I think they help explain the creepy chanting children, too.
posted by Eve at 4:46 PM

 
I am a blogger and I don't care,
I like to make people stare!...

Joe De Feo: Blogger britcom wig-out.

E-Pression: Zorak seeks "defenses for U.S. support for Israel. E-mail them to me and I'll link them (with helpful glosses, natch)."

OxBlog: Moving story from Kenya; is Africa becoming freer but poorer?

The Poor Man: A really funny parody of The Corner. Link via Electrolite via Unqualified Offerings... I think.

Unqualified Offerings: David Broder gets spidey-smacked; if you don't trust the FBI, why do you trust HHS? I need to add my own rant to the Broder-bashing, because this passage promotes an idea that seriously gets (and annoys) my goat: David Broder writes, "In 1962, when the first Spider-Man comic appeared, the notion of making his alter ego a New York City kid was unobjectionable. We were an innocent country then, not yet familiar with assassinations, urban riots and terrorist attacks." I HATE this cliche. I hate how America didn't lose its innocence with slavery--or the removal of the Cherokee--or the Civil War--or the World Wars--or Hiroshima and Nagasaki--but a pretty president pulls a Lincoln and suddenly America's lost her virginity? What kind of blinkered, privileged, everything-everyone-hates-about-the-Boomers perspective is this? C'mon.

Matt Welch: More on Afghan civilian casualties. Comments also worth reading.

There's a lot of good stuff here--a blog by a Catholic canon lawyer. Lots of stuff about annulments; the effect of premarital sex on marriages; liturgy; and other canony stuff. And here's Yet Another Overeducated Catholic Blog--but in a good way... All But Dissertation.
posted by Eve at 1:08 PM

 
"You're gonna have a hard time holding me."
"Be fun trying."
--Myrna Dell and Walter Sande, "Nocturne"
posted by Eve at 11:37 AM