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"Pervasiveness" in the religion clauses
One of the most problematical of the many problematical expressions in the judicial attempts to interpret and apply the First Amendment religion clauses is the notion of "pervasive sectarianism," which the plurality in Mitchell v. Helms argued has a rather shameful provenance in anti-Catholic bigotry and, in any event, should not matter, so long as the government’s permissible purposes coincide with those of the recipients of government aid. Nevertheless, the notion of a "pervasively sectarian" entity--and the implication that it is unworthy as a recipient of otherwise reasonable government aid or contracts lives on, surfacing most recently in the decision handed down by a federal judge in Iowa finding Iowa’s contract the Prison Fellowship Ministries’ InnerChange Freedom unconstitutional (for briefs on the other side in the appeal go here). Well, in a sense the shoe is now on the other foot. Colorado’s pro-life Democratic Governor Bill Ritter has announced that he will resume providing state funds to Planned Parenthood, so long as PP doesn’t use the money for promoting or providing abortion. Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput doesn’t think that PP can properly segregate its funds, implying in effect that PP exemplifies a kind of pervasive sectarianism. Since I would assume that he’d eschew that language and analysis with regard to Catholic and other religious institutions, I wish he’d extend the courtesy to PP (leaving open the possibility, of course, that PP could fail to live up to its obligations). And I’d hope that PP and its allies would return the favor with respect to faith-based organizations that they may not happen to like. Update: I should explain that this post grew out of an email exchange with MOJ’s Rob Vischer, whose post is here.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 1/18/2007 2:24 PM
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Y’all come
Next Friday, January 26th, the famous Darcy Wudel will be speaking on "Tocqueville and Associations: A Comparative Perspective" at Oglethorpe. If you’re interested in attending, shoot me an email.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 1/18/2007 11:50 AM
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Obama Lights Up--Part 2
(Don’t read this until you review Julie’s comments 20 and 21 below under my Obama/smoking post.) Julie,
I hope Obama doesn’t read your brilliant strategy and sign you up. It’s true that smoking is catching on again among the young, especially young women. They (admittedly stupidly) seem to think that cigarettes are sexy in some way. And it’s equally true that smoking is a small and humanizing vice (compared, say, with the famous vices of President Clinton or former Congressman Foley), one that shows one’s dissent from the fanaticism of soft-despotic, schoolmarmish, health-and-safety obsessed political correctness. No real man works too hard to look young or live forever. If his Hillary’s schoolmarms criticize Obama for killing babies with second-hand smoke, he can respond reasonably and humorously that the occasional cigarette on the back porch or out on the sidewalk ain’t hurting anybody (well, there’s a small but significant danger to the senator himself--but his embrace of that risk makes him a man in the great tradition of Bogart etc.). The single women that allegedly are Hillary’s core might switch over to a manly but still orthodox liberal guy. Julie really sees the path that can make his campaign (which as far as I can see will be boring and platitude driven in terms of content) very seductive and very dangerous for us Republicans. Consider the showdown between between the smoker Obama and a Mormon who doesn’t smoke or drink (even coffee!)....
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [5] | 1/18/2007 10:00 AM
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Obama cognitive dissonance brain freeze
I just came across this from Cass Sunstein, claiming that the University of Chicago Law School hired Barack Obama at least partly at the suggestion of conservative judicial superstar Michael McConnell.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [14] | 1/17/2007 2:36 PM
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An Obama query
Barack Obama, as everyone knows, was a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, teaching these courses. He should have a reasonably well thought out approach to the Constitution and to constitutional adjudication. Do we have any evidence of it anywhere, other than in these very political instances? I confess that I didn’t find anything particularly thought-provoking or, for that matter, surprising, given his general orientation. I did a quick lexisnexis search a few days ago and didn’t find anything, but I’ll go over the Harvard Law Review more closely for his time at that august institution to see if if fact he made it into print (which he should have, given that he was President of the HLR). Anyone who has anything more specific or interesting should feel free to email me.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 1/17/2007 1:14 PM
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More accreditation and assessment stuff
I can’t tell whether this is good or bad, but the fact that it’s coming from the educrats at the DoE makes me dubious. We are headed, I fear, in the direction of "No College Student Left Behind," to which the modal response will be: create an "objective" assessment tool and then teach to it. Not exactly Socratic or liberal, by my lights.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 1/17/2007 11:09 AM
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Max Boot on the "Big Ifs" About the Surge
Max rightly sees it as a worthy and risky effort to salvage our huge investment so far. There are no credible alternatives. But are we putting too much weight on the surge by thinking of it "as one final effort"?
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [2] | 1/17/2007 10:21 AM
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Obama watch, part 12
You can judge for yourself Obama’s smoky voice here. I guess it’s time to dredge up the piece I wrote last summer about his speech on religion and politics, which differs little from what’s in his new book on the subject. If you’re interested, you might also want to take a look at his church’s website, these "precepts" and "covenantal statements", and this account of a visit to the church. This church takes its Afro-centrism seriously, but does qualify it in the following way: W.E.B. DuBois indicated that the problem in the 20th century was going to be the problem of the color line. He was absolutely correct. Our job as servants of God is to address that problem and eradicate it in the name of Him who came for the whole world by calling all men, women, boys and girls to Christ. I’m not quite sure how this squares with, for example, a "[p]ersonal commitment to embracement of the Black Value System," as the precepts call for; perhaps some enterprising reporter will ask Obama about it.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 1/16/2007 10:18 PM
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More on the Remarkable Economic Data
Here’s why our booming economy is rightly called the Bush economy.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments | 1/16/2007 10:22 PM
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Should Obama Quit Smoking?
Well, maybe he shouldn’t. Smoking may be the cause of his "magic voice." And being unable or deciding not to kick the habit is one way he can really distinguish himself from fashionable liberals.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [34] | 1/16/2007 10:00 PM
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Religion and the university
MOJ.s Rob Vischer has a nice review of what appears to be a nice book. Consider, for example, this snippet: [T]the Christian virtue of hospitality, according to Aurelie Hagstrom, a theology professor at Providence College, “reflects a radically different and compelling alternative to tolerance.” While tolerance is a “false sort of engagement” given its tendency “to trivialize what is most important to us,” hospitality demands “a personal, authentic encounter that is self-emptying and open even to those with whom we have deep philosophical, theological, and political disagreements.” Under this view, the university’s sponsoring religious community acts as host, and community members from other religious traditions are welcomed as guests. In today’s hyper-egalitarian campus environment, attaching the “guest” label to non-Christians will smack of paternalism, but the host-guest paradigm may be inescapable if the Christian story is to have a privileged role as a shaper of the institution and its mission. Read the whole thing.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments | 1/16/2007 7:36 PM
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Charles Murray on Education and the Importance of Having ’g’
Because I am either a chronic underachiever or because I simply do not have enough ’g,’ I have absolutely no interest in re-opening the can of worms that Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve opened in 1994. But being over-prudent has never been one of my setbacks either, so here it is. His Opinion Journal essay today and the promise of more to come in the next few days on the subject, is certainly worthy of serious consideration by those who think they have enough ’g’ to handle it. My sense (I won’t call it a view, having not studied the subject in any serious way) is that there is probably some merit to it. My experience working at my kids’ kindergarten for two years, seems to confirm my sense of the thing. This school is a very intense, almost one-to-one teaching experience. But no matter what you do with some kids, you get little back. It is hard to say why that is. It appears that some have nothing going on inside their minds--as if they were asleep mentally. One doesn’t know if that is because the kid is still immature or if the kid just hasn’t got it. Still others are so advanced that they pay you no mind at all because you and the idea of learning bores them. There are other kids who run circles around you and dazzle you with brilliance. Most are just work-a-day plodders like my kids and myself. To be sure, you can get better results with this individualized kind of teaching--but I’m not even so sure about that as I used to be. So much depends on the wisdom and the experience of the teacher. I used to have a history teacher in high school who had the reputation of being difficult. On the other hand, he told us that we could all get an "A" in his class if we really wanted it. I don’t think he really believed what he was saying in the strictest sense, but it was a noble lie. He said it with so much passion, anyway, that I believed him. And because I believed him, I did get an "A." I knew a few students who worked as hard (or harder) as I did and could still only get "Bs." But I suppose they might only have achieved a C or D if they hadn’t tried so hard to get the "A." Of course, the grades don’t really mean anything in the scheme of life, I know. But the lesson of learning to believe you are capable of more than you think you are is indispensable. That is almost always true. Perhaps the most we can hope for from education is that it do its level best to inspire each kid to give his best.
Posted by Julie Ponzi | Link to this Entry | Comments [10] | 1/16/2007 5:14 PM
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Here’s Where We Need the "Surge"
In Afghanistan, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of attacks on U.S. and allied forces by Taliban members who seek to reestablish their hold over the country. Currently there are only 24,000 U.S. troops in that country, where the Al-Qaeda presence is considerably stronger than it is in Iraq. Moreover, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are operating with the tacit assistance of the Pakistanis, who are tolerating insurgent sanctuaries within their borders.
Posted by John Moser | Link to this Entry | Comments [9] | 1/16/2007 12:45 PM
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Women without husbands
"For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to the NY Times analysis of census results." Mona Charen objects to some editorializing in the report, and notes the class implications of the marriage issue. This, while interesting, of course is not the end of the story. I just spoke to a young woman yesterday (a college grad, now working, circa 24 in age). She says she is worried because in two years of work she has not yet met a man that was sensible enough to marry; she assumed she would (because she did not meet one in college). Her practical remedy is this: she is attending two to three church services (different churches!) each week hoping to increase the odds of meeting someone more normal. The ones she has met through other venues have been a "little rough", as she put it. So far, she has had no luck. This is common, and in a couple of more years her worry will turn to panic. In over thirty years of observing young men and women on their dating habits--their ways of getting along with one another--things have only become more difficult, more complicated, more bizarre over the years. What will happen?
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [32] | 1/16/2007 11:13 AM
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Double the Minimum Wage for Illegal Aliens?
That’s the modest proposal of Free Frank Warner. Frank wants NLT reaction to his ingenious argument--one he thinks everyone should like. Give him some. Frank is a national greatness liberal, and Senator Lieberman should certainly hire him.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [12] | 1/16/2007 9:11 AM
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Generation Next
I’m working my way through this Pew survey report about young people today. So far (in my reading), the "bad" is that one-third of them have tatoos, they’re focused on fame and fortune, and 20% are atheistic or religiously unaffiliated, while the good is they tend to favor privatization of social security. Right now, they’re more Democrat than Republican, though that could change (we hope). An interesting observation for those dissatisfied with George Bush’s America is that, across the board, people are pretty doggone happy: more than 80% in every age group report their quality of life as excellent or good, and over 80% say they’re very or pretty happy. But nevertheless, "the country" is going in the wrong direction. By what measure?
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [11] | 1/15/2007 10:56 PM
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Buckley vs. the Surge
THE NATIONAL REVIEW editor sees no evidence that it will address the real reason for insurgent effectiveness and the real threat of Iran. And the president didn’t explain why withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster. I don’t agree, and I certainly think we should let the president make the call for now. But Buckley’s opinion deserves our respectful consideration.
Posted by Peter Lawler | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 1/15/2007 9:12 PM
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American fascists?
Is this what Chris Hedges means? Is this kind of outreach to broken and needy people the prelude to theocracy? Update: Are the kids described in this article brownshirts-in-training?
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [6] | 1/15/2007 10:48 AM
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