John Locke the Stockholder

If Locke's political ideas are sometimes caricatured for picturing the state as a joint-stock company, this caricature seems nowhere more appropriate than in the birth of the Bank. The scheme of Locke's friend Halifax had made 1,272 individuals actual owners of the state. Interestingly enough, Locke was among them.
-Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle

This comes from Daniel Larison, who has successfully exceeded his monthly bandwidth quota with but one day left.

Despite my foray into Straussian hermeneutics discussing Locke, with all the school's close readings and sometimes labored interpretations I can't recall Strauss or his epigones ever pointing out this very germane fact.

Dying for a joint-stock company seems as ignoble as killing for the telephone company. Does a strong and respectable stream of Western Liberalism really rest upon a self-justifying political tract?

Waterboarding OK? Demonstrate it on YouTube, Then.

Vasko Kohlmayer, a writer for FrontPageMag.com, has endorsed waterboarding:

Waterboarding, on the other hand, is fleeting in duration with the actual discomfort lasting seldom more than a couple of minutes. And since a man can be safely deprived of oxygen for at least twice as long, there is almost no risk of long-term harm. The possibility of injury is further reduced by the fact that the procedure calls for no direct physical contact between the subject and his interrogators. Not even as much as pushing or chest slapping is required at any time, making waterboarding one of the safest and least confrontational among interrogation methods. Involving the lowest risk of long-term harm and the least amount of cumulative discomfort, it is also the most humane. Most importantly, it is the most effective.

I doubt this writer would voluntarily waterboard or be waterboarded himself. Yet all we really need for a demonstration of waterboarding(assuming even a demonstration is morally permissible) is a stuntman, a trained medical professional, and a filming crew willing to post their film on YouTube. A fictional portrayal of waterboarding is already on display at that site. Since some apologists argue the method is not that bad, perhaps we can observe for ourselves what some endorse in the abstract and get a reaction from a "subject" who can speak our language in the Fear Factor style to which we have become so inured.

Gay Activist Intimidation in Colorado Springs

Catholic Exchange reports a CO Springs family had their lawn set on fire, their home vandalized, and their family threatened for placing signs against a domestic partnershim initiative on this November's ballot. The threat read in part:

"This sign is a symbol of hatred" YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN A TERRORIST BECAUSE YOU DISPLAYED THAT SIGN!

"The purpose of this document is to inform not you, but all who share your anti-gay or any other discriminatory beliefs, your world is about to change" SO TAKE WARNING! Your life, your government and the world as you know it is about to change. YOU ARE EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US!

Such activists have been lively before. Fifteen years back, some vandalized the Catholic cemetery. It is disturbing that this is happening in one of the most conservative cities in the state. I am also curious that this story hasn't made the mainstream press, circulating only in special-interest news sites. I suspect it is overshadowed by the atrocity in Bailey.

Focus on the Family is the source for this story. The family's campaign signs seem typical for Colorado Springs evangelicals, simultaneously earnest and embarrassing. That's no excuse for vandalizing intimidation, and I hope this event gets more coverage soon.

Misdirected Chastity?

In the typical "conservative" church, pastors were falling strangely silent on the sins that beset their own flocks, mostly sex outside of marriage and before marriage, while they were often trumpeting their churches' beliefs on the sexual activities of gays and lesbians. It was the old plank-in-the-eye issue.

I thought it was interesting that I was told, while working on one of my earliest columns about the "True Love Waits" movement, that some of the strongest opposition to the concept came from adults, not teens. The problem was that pastors could not offend divorced deacons or other adults in the church who were having sex before marriage or outside of their marriages.

When it comes to sex, the typical conservative pastor is much more afraid to talk about premarital or extramarital sex than about homosexuality. There is a story there, I think, and it's an important story.
-Terry Mattingly

The Constitution As Figurine

And even some Republicans who said voted for the bill said they expected the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation because of the habeas corpus provision, ultimately sending the legislation right back to Congress.

"We should have done it right, because we're going to have to do it again," said Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican from Oregon, who had voted to strike the habeas corpus provision, yet supported the bill.
NYTimes, "Senate Passes Detainee Bill Sought by Bush"

This is exactly what happened with the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. The legislature passed that bill expecting its grossest requirements to be struck down, yet the Supreme Court failed to oblige. That a legislator can acknowledge that he has voted for a bill he believes to be unconstitutional shows the sorry state of limited government.

The next time we laugh at the antics of England's House of Windsor, deriding them as figureheads, let's remember that our Constitution might itself have become a mere totem. Our fierce and respected political foundation has lapsed into a sentimental icon; it is turning into a Precious Moments figurine, put on display for a bit of fawning civic discussion before being returned to its small cabinet, easily ignored until the next tea party.

Local Color

Douglas Groothius, a professor at Denver Seminary on sabbatical in Arizona, is blogging at The Constructive Curmudgeon

There's some good advice on getting into the tech sector with a Liberal Arts degree over at Darwin Catholic

Army Sends 52-year-old Woman into Combat?!?

Obituary of a Humvee Gunner. Radical feminism wrapped in the flag.

I thought this was against military regulations. What happened?

(See Bonnie Erbe present the case for chickenhawk feminism)

FBI Snooping on Pro-Lifers

"In August of that same year,[1994] Attorney General Janet Reno established a task force, the Violence Against Abortion Providers Conspiracy (VAAPCON) group to investigate anti-abortion violence and civil disobedience. VAAPCON included representatives from the FBI, the US Postal Inspection Service, the US Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms ­ the thugs who carried out the killings at Ruby Ridge and at Waco. By 2000, it was clear that the VAAPCON task force was investigating many pro-life groups and individuals who had no connection to any crimes against abortionists. Documents released under pressure of lawsuits showed that the FBI had assembled dossiers on Cardinal O'Connor of New York, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Feminists for Life, Concerned Women for America, the American Life League, the Christian Coalition, and other law-abiding pro-lifers. Some FBI agents objected on legal and ethical grounds against this surveillance, but their objections were overruled by the upper levels of the Justice Department. Attorney General John Ashcroft is keeping the VAAPCON task force in existence."
-Lee Penn

Having an FBI dossier was once a much-trumpeted badge of honor on the left. Outside of WorldNetDaily and FrontPage Magazine, I remember no large outcry when these surveillances were revealed.

Quite worrisome that VAAPCON is possibly still around.

(Anti-)Political Poetry

Through Daniel Larison I have discovered an excellent old poem of medium length. Selected Excerpts:

Thus, while around the wave-subjected soil

Impels the native to repeated toil,

Industrious habits in each bosom reign,

And industry begets a love of gain.

Hence all the good from opulence that springs,

With all those ills superfluous treasure brings,

Are here displayed. Their much loved wealth imparts

Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts !

But view them closer, craft and fraud appear,

Even liberty itself is bartered here.

At gold's superior charms all freedom flies,

The needy sell it, and the rich man buys;

A land of tyrants and a den of slaves,

Here wretches seek dishonorable graves,

And, calmly bent, to servitude conform,

Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm.

[...]

As nature's ties decay,

As duty, love, and honor, fail to sway,

Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law,

Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe.

Hence all obedience bows to these alone,

And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown;

Till time may come, when, stript of all her charms,

The land of scholrs, and the nurse of arms,

Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame,

Where kings have toiled, and poets wrote for fame,

One sink of level avarice shall lie,

And scholars, soldiers, kings, unhonored die.

[...]

In every government, though terrors reign,

Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain,

How small, of all that human hearts endure,

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure !

-Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller

Derbyshire on Europeans Enslaved by Muslims

Papal Lecture Controversy Influences Colorado House Races

After the flap about the Pope's speech in Regensburg, local US House Rep. Tom Tancredo wrote a letter to the Pope supporting his statements. An opportunistic attempt to ride the papal coattails, end of story.

Not quite.

Tancredo provoked the ire of a congressional staffer of Colorado US Rep. John Salazar, a staffer who started the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association. So now Ms. Nayyera Haq is a campaign issue. See
To the Right and Google News for the latest.

Mirror of Justice links to an Ireland Religious Freedom case involving a Jehovah's Witness and blood transfusions.

The Good News of Predestination

Daane suggests that the Arminian construal of election is unpreachable because it is too humanistic; but this misses, I think, the crucial point. Arminian predestination is unpreachable because it is not good news about anything. It doesn't build up the body of Christ. It doesn't edify. It doesn't embolden or encourage. It simply gives an answer to a perplexing theological question that is of interest only to a few. Why waste limited preaching time on predestination? Good preachers have more important words to speak to their congregations. The Arminian pastor cannot stand before his congregation and announce to them that they are the elect of God, because he does not know who in his congregation will persevere in their faith and be saved and thus "become" the elect.

But Reformed preachers are in no better position. There is a gap, asserts Daane, between what is declared in the Reformed confessions and what is preached in the Reformed pulpit. Why? Because in Reformed reflection predestination goes hand in hand with reprobation...
The good news that became unpreachable, Pontifications

Baptist Terrorists in India?

News to me:

The most prominent among the terrorist outfits of Tripura is the NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura). It employs terror tactics to effect mass conversion to Christianity (The Statesman 1999, 2000; Ghosh 1999) and is a predominantly Baptist (Protestant) organisation.

[...]

The sectarian nature of the Baptist terrorists has come to the fore. They killed a Catholic priest called Father Victor Crasta on July 25, 2000. In protest the Catholic Church of Tripura called a bandh (closure) in all Catholic run institutions on August 10, 2000. (The Telegraph 2000)
Terrorists in North-East India get support from America

Christianity and Buddhism, Cultural Cross-Fertilization

Catholic missionaries to Tibet in the early part of the last century were struck by the outward resemblances to Catholic liturgy and discipline that were presented by Lamaism—its infallible head, grades of clergy corresponding to bishop and priest, the cross, mitre, dalmatic, cope, censer, holy water, etc. At once voices were raised proclaiming the Lamaistic origin of Catholic rites and practices. Unfortunately for this shallow theory, the Catholic Church was shown to have possessed these features in common with the Christian Oriental churches long before Lamaism was in existence. The wide propagation of Nestorianism over Central and Eastern Asia as early as A.D. 635 offers a natural explanation for such resemblances as are accretions on Indian Buddhism.
Buddhism, Catholic Encyclopedia
via Daniel Mitsui

It seems to me there are pop-speculations aplenty about Buddhistic influences on Christianity, but little about influences in the reverse direction. I do not know whether present comparative religion studies would back up this article from the early twentieth century. However, Peter Leithart acting in a similar spirit once suggested that influences from liberal Protestantism helped sift Buddhism into a Sunday-school friendly form of religion.

Stupid Blurbs: A New Guerilla Marketing Technique?

This is a portion of one sad advertisement from the BlogAds network for the philistine atheist Sam Harris' book Letter to a Christian Nation. It quotes one Jaeger on Myspace: "it's a big middle finger from Sam Harris...."

The full quote is found on the book's Myspace page and reads "I just got the book and it is great... Its a big middle finger from Sam Harris to the idiotic christians (and all other religions)"

(Adding that apostrophe to his blurb sure was a nice editorial touch.)

Bad punctuation, village atheism, references to obscene gestures, MySpace user... need we mention that Jaeger is eighteen years old?

Sure, it's in bad taste to pick on young kids, but it's even more tasteless to quote a kid to advertise a non-fiction book advocating a "mature" belief system.

These blurbs are suspiciously tasty blogfodder. Relapsed Catholic noted another stupid Harris blurb ripe for ridicule. Were I more confident in the marketing savvy of the publishing industry, I'd suspect I was being used.

Ave Atque Vale!

The New Pantagruel closes up shop. Good fun, thanks you all.

When Fundies Read Beowulf

Via The Crockery comes some truly bizzare literary analysis:

Why, then, do so many literature critics say that Beowulf is fiction? It is because they do not believe that dinosaur creatures lived at the same time men lived. Their evolutionary worldview says that dinosaurs lived long ages before men evolved on the earth. Therefore, in their minds, this all must be fiction. But with a Biblical worldview, we can see that dinosaurs entered the ark with Noah--land species at least--and they lived on the earth again after the Flood. But the post-Flood earth was not so hospitable to large creatures and they eventually became almost extinct.
Beowulf: Fiction or History?

The New Democratic Party Summed Up

It is obviously much more difficult to politically organize masses of people if they all think of themselves as individual consumers or as expressive individualists, each freely choosing his own unique (even if vapid and banal) lifestyle, than to organize masses of people who think of themselves as members of working classes or local communities, who share in common most of the important conditions of their lives.
-James Kurth The Rich Get Richer