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Faith and Democratic politics
I don’t have time to say much about it right now, but here are some accounts of an event held last night (you can find the video on this page). The three leading Democratic candidates spent a little time before a friendly audience answering basically softball questions on faith and politics. The campaigns will surely get some good footage to use for outreach to moderate and liberal Christians. I’d ask this: if one’s faith, or a precept derived from it, is a legitimate point of departure for a discussion about poverty policy, why isn’t it also a legitimate point of departure for a discussion of abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.? Another question: is it possible for people of faith to disagree about what policy faith demands for poverty and social welfare as--they would surely contend--it is about abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.? In other words, if I were on the other side of some of these issues (as I, of course, am), I’d use the existence of a forum like this to focus, not on the faith, but on the substance of the issues, with all issues connected with faith being in play. Update: Another question to which I would have loved to have heard the answer: "What do you say to people in your party who argue that religion doesn’t belong in politics, that it is divisive, regressive, and/or irrational?" Update #2: Here’s a little more and here’s a lot more. Kuo’s advice strikes me as quite solid. Remind me: didn’t he recommend a fast from politics not too long ago?
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [8] | 6/5/2007 7:23 AM
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Gitmo trials and tribulations
One of my co-bloggers at Good Will Hinton is excited by this development--a case against a Canadian Gitmo detainee can’t at the moment go forward because he’s been classified as an "enemy combatant," but not as an "unlawful enemy combatant," as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 requires. They’ll likely convene another Combatant Status Review Tribunal for him to make certain that their language conforms to what the law requires--assuming, of course, that he is in fact "unlawful," i.e., that he wasn’t part of a regular force wearing a uniform, for example, when he was detained. And they’ll have to do the same for all the others, since apparently no one has been declared an "unlawful enemy combatant," as the law requires. As Andy McCarthy observes, this looks like "monumental incompetence." But I wouldn’t go overboard in assuming that this is the beginning of the end of the military commissions, which I’m sure is the not-so-secret dream of their opponents. Indeed, I was surprised not to find any commentary yet on sites where I’d have expected it--like Prawfsblog and Volokh. If something shows up, I’ll post links.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 6/4/2007 9:40 PM
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Summer and the Court
Summer is approaching, the flowers are in bloom, the birds are singing, and it’s time to brace yourselves for yet another possible fight for the Supreme Court--this time with Dems in the majority. This story claims that the White House is focusing on female and minority candidates--though most of the names mentioned have been mentioned before.
Posted by Julie Ponzi | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 6/4/2007 4:14 PM
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Another Good Thing About KNOCKED UP
...was (scroll down to a letter to K-Lo) its touching and very unfashionable portrayal of non-homoesexual male friendship. These losers--who really aren’t stupid--do put love and friendship before personal productivity, and so maybe it’s too bourgeois to be too worried about their futures.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 6/4/2007 2:59 PM
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Bourgeois and Bohemian
For Russell Kirk fans: He called himself a Tory Bohemian and was all about the "unbought grace of life" (Burke). He also couldn’t hold a job and had four kids fast relatively late in life because a relatively sensible (or somewhat bourgeois) woman figured out how to catch him. So bohemian means, in this conext, life is beautiful and to some extent don’t worry be happy. Bourgeois means turning all over life over to calculation and consent about one’s own interest. The bourgeois/bohemian distinction originates with Rousseau, who was very hard on the bourgeoisie. Pure bohemian and pure bourgeois are both undesirable and unreproductive extremes, but surely that’s one of the teachings of KNOCKED UP--where an excessively--even repulsively--bohemian man accidentally impregnates an excessively bourgeois woman. And (of course) they make each other better.
David Brooks wrote a book called BOBOS (bourgeois bohemians) IN PARADISE, where he explains that sophisticated Americans today pride themselves in combining bourgeois productivity with bohemian meaningful self-fulfillment. But the truth is that at every crucial turn bourgeois trumps bohemian, because healthy and safety or personal security are real and spiritual purpose or meaning, for the Bobos, is a mere preference or whim. (All this is to explain the terminology used in the KNOCKED UP post below.)
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [6] | 6/4/2007 2:07 PM
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K-Lo vs. KNOCKED UP
The good news is that the film is very pro-life and pro-marriage (at least after you’ve been knocked up). That’s a bigger thing than Ms. Lopez acknowledges. This has been a very over-hyped movie, with extensive coverage on NPR, the Today show etc., and a long and boring article in the NYT Magazine. The mainstream media is in love with a piece of art that celebrates secular, sophisticated America’s pro-life awakening. (George Will certainly needs to see it!)
The simple message is that for admirable people "bohemian" trumps "bourgeois," and so lovable babies are chosen over even lucrative designer careers. Being kocked up is a blessing that reveals that life is too wonderful and lovable to be reduced to planning. The shortcoming Kathryn rightly objects to is that the bohemian "lifestyle" portrayed is just too gross and stupid, and you can’t help but remember the wisdom of ANIMAL HOUSE: Fat, drunk (or stoned), and stupid is no way to go through life. On the other hand, presumably the baby will bourgeoisify the fat guy just enough to make him responsible and all that, and so in its own way KNOCKED UP may embrace the wisdom spoken in ANIMAL HOUSE (and KU is certainly much less cynical than AH). My objection to this fairly funny but overrated film is that its basic story is too wish-fulfillment sentimental, and that it could easily have had some class and real plot. With credible characters, it could easily have been more funny. So KNOCKED UP doesn’t rise to the level of its creator’s excellent FREAKS AND GEEKS, although it’s less stupid than THE FORTY YEAR-OLD VIRGIN.
All in all, it’s the message more than the art or even the entertainment that causes KNOCKED UP to get a thumbs up.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [15] | 6/4/2007 8:51 AM
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Salary disparities between men and women
It turns out that one of the big problems is, as the author puts it, that "the altruism is so heavily concentrated in one sex." More social engineering, anyone?
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [11] | 6/4/2007 6:19 AM
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More Evidence (in case you need it) of Why Now is Not a Good Time for a Democrat President
. . . can be found here and here. Indeed, we may not be re-living 1972 as suggested below but, instead, 1978-79.
Posted by Julie Ponzi | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 6/4/2007 2:43 AM
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Dems Debate
We don’t have cable TV and I hate trying to do this kind of thing over the internet, so I didn’t watch the debate. I’ve been picking up this and that on the radio (Drudge has a show on Sunday nights that plays in LA) and on the blogs. This from Patrick Ruffini at Hugh Hewitt’s blog is the best posting I’ve read about it. Hewitt and Dean Barnett also posted, but Barnett seemed to be more worried about the Sopranos--though, for me, that debate sounds like it would have been all the mafia I could take for one night.
Posted by Julie Ponzi | Link to this Entry | Comments [6] | 6/4/2007 2:30 AM
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Andrew McCarthy’s alarm clock
Is ringing. A sample: Militant Islam, you see, is mustered in Iraq, where al Qaeda — the inspiration for Defreitas and his cohorts — has called America out. Like Defreitas & Co., Osama bin Laden and his ranks see themselves in a world war between the United States and a vision of Islam shared by tens of millions. (Think one-in-four, writ large). Iraq, they have decided, is their frontline, though very far from their only line. Everywhere, America is their target. Everywhere, terror — the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent men, women, and children — is their weapon of choice.
For the new Democratic Congress and its growing wake of jittery Republicans, that turns out to be a choice worth living with. Oh yes, they’ll sputter about how barbaric and unsavory it all is. But, like those one in four Muslim males, they’re prepared to let terror rule the day. That’s the plan: Al Qaeda blows up things and people; we leave, grumbling all the way home about civil wars and intractable hatreds between the Religion of Peace’s murderous sects; and al Qaeda triumphs … with bin Laden reminding his acolytes: See, I told you, they’re a paper tiger — make it bloody for them and we win.
Naturally, we’ll tell ourselves they’re not winning at all. They want Iraq? Let ‘em have it. Just like — when they killed enough of us — we let ’em have Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993. Who, after all, needs these hellholes?
Except … militant Islam doesn’t just want the hellholes. It wants everything. It will take the hellholes. For now. But don’t think for a second they’ll be appeased. Read the whole thing to be reminded of the urgency of our situation.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [5] | 6/3/2007 1:09 PM
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Fred Thompson’s jolt to the GOP
The WaPo reports on a speech by Fred Thompson in Richmond at a Republican Party Dinner yesterday. C-SPAN is going to play the speech tonight a couple of times. It may be worth watching both to hear the speech and to see how the audiance reacted to it. If we are bemused by why Thompson is making headway, maybe we should remind ourselves of the connection between politics and rhetoric, or, why poetry is always better than prose (especially with a Southern buoyancy to it). A sample or two:
"Folks, we’re a bit down politically right now, but I think we’re on the comeback trail, and it’s going to start right here..."
"We are a nation of compassion, a nation of immigrants. But this is our home . . . and we get to decide who comes into our home." This got him a standing ovation.
The WaPo also reports:
"Thompson reminded guests that he now lives in McLean, but he offered himself as a Beltway outsider, saying there was a ’disconnect’ between Washington and the rest of the country ’like I’ve never seen before.’ He said the GOP had lost its congressional majorities because ’some of us came to drain the swamp and made partnership with the alligators.’"
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [12] | 6/3/2007 10:10 AM
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Homeschooling and state regulation
Over at PrawfsBlawg, they’ve been discussing this paper arguing for a state constitutional duty to "regulate homeschooling to ensure that
parents provide their children with a basic minimum education and check
rampant forms of sexism." The paper highlights the legal distinctness of parents and children and emphasizes that parental control over children’s basic education flows from the state (rather than vice versa). States delegate power over children’s basic education to parents, and the delegation itself is necessarily subject to constitutional constraints. Caricaturing the pro-homeschooling argument as depending upon parental "ownership" of children (naturally, no documentary evidence to back up that ridiculous claim), Northwestern University law professor Kimberly Yuracko contends that, in effect, the family is a creature of the state and that parental rights and responsibilities depend almost entirely upon state decisions, though she generously concedes that "[p]arents do have
constitutionally protected liberty interests in their relationship with their
children." She further argues that the regulatory regime she supports is not a matter of policy, but rather a matter of constitutionally-mandated necessity, which it would have to be since, as she concedes, virtually all the politicking on this issue follows from parental concerns. She naturally focuses on the well-organized efforts of homeschoolers (led by Michael Farris’ Home School Legal Defense Association), but I can’t imagine any effort to legislate along the lines she suggests, following the theory she offers, winning support among any but the most collectivized and complaisant parents. We have a natural intuition that our relationship with our children is natural and primary. This isn’t right-wing "Christianist" homeschool ideology; this is parenthood. Rick Garnett, who called my attention to this piece, recommends one of his own essays as a counterbalance. I’d add an article by Yale’s Stephen Carter, "Religious Freedom As If Family Matters," which appeared in the University of Detroit-Mercy Law Review in 2000 (sorry, no link; find it at lexisnexis).
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [19] | 6/2/2007 2:07 PM
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The Pill’s Creator Predicts New Twist in Creation
The Daily Mail runs this interesting interview/article where the creator of the birth control pill, Carl Djerassi, makes predictions about how conception will be handled 50 years from now. The article has this funny gem: Women, especially, romanticise the moment they conceived," he says, "but the truth is many don’t actually know. And besides, is it such a high price to pay for a healthy child born at a time that is right for the mother?" That’s funny. Romanticizing the moment of conception? I suppose that is a very odd habit of us silly women . . . It’s nice that we have a sensible, rational man like Dr. Djerassi looking out for our frail, irrational mental health. Why didn’t we think of this defrosting alternative before? It’s so much more appealing than the old-fashioned way of conception. Rather like cooking dinner--though, of course, without the spice.
Posted by Julie Ponzi | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 6/2/2007 1:21 PM
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Polish man out of 19 year coma
A man in Poland went into a come in 1988. He just awoke. During that whole time his wife insisted that he be cared for as if he would recover. He knows this, and now knows that communism is dead: "When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol lines were everywhere. Now I see people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin."
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 6/2/2007 1:08 PM
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Dogs as Lovers
dain, in one of our threads, presents the amazing devotion of Bobby as evidence that the difference between human and canine love is only a matter of degree. It is a remarkable story--no matter how embellished it has become--and worth our attention. There are certainly some senses in which dogs can be better friends than other people, and I’m sure many of you will at least welcome an opportunity to speak well of your pets.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [27] | 6/2/2007 12:30 PM
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Let’s Turn the Clock Back to 1972!
That’s George Will’s pro-Giuliani advice. That means that social conservatives should forget about their their progressively more ineffectual and unfashionable concerns about abortion and homosexuality and embrace the most competent competent candidate--the only guy who could defeat the competent Hillary in November. Conservatives, for their own good, should imaginatively return to a time when they weren’t abortion-obsessed in order to take a broader view of our country need now.
George is right that the voters will be reacting big-time in some or way another against the president’s perceived incompetence in 2008. But isn’t the social conservative objection to Giuliani that he’s against turning the clock back to 1972--the year before ROE v. WADE disfigured our country’s political life? In 1972, abortion and same-sex marriage weren’t compelling as national issues because nobody much imagined that they could be resolved in an extreme, national way by the Court. In 1972, abortion policy, as George observes, was the product of legislative compromise on a state-by-state basis.
What Rudy needs to do to unite his party in a way that might produce victory in November is to explain why it’s right--constitutionally correct-- that he should appoint judges that would take us back to 1972. For now, he and George seem to agree that judicial restraint means putting the controversy the Court caused behind us by regarding ROE, as the Court claimed in PLANNED PARENTHOOD, as a watershed precedent that must remain undistrubed.
Will may well be right that most states wouldn’t restrict abortion much and that American opinion is progressing in a direction that will produce public acceptance of same-sex marriage. But it still makes a lot of difference whether such issues are resolved by the people’s moral deliberation and legislation or by judicial fiat that marginalizes much of our country.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [10] | 6/2/2007 11:49 AM
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Refugees to Europe
This article is titled Europe’s Shame. Here is a photo. : "This is the latest snapshot from the killing seas of the southern Mediterranean, the stretch of water at the European Union’s southern gate that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says ’has become like the Wild West, where human life has no value any more and people are left to their fate’."
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [9] | 6/2/2007 10:31 AM
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