Yale, putting a fraction of its endowment to good use, has launched the Open Yale Courses web site.
Containing free video and audio files of professors' lectures, the site is the answer to a technologist's dream of cheap, high-quality education for everyone with an internet connection.
Right now I am working my way through Prof. Stephen B. Smith's Introduction to Political Philosophy. Like my PoliSci professor at CU-Boulder Thad Tecza, Smith earned his doctorate at Chicago University and displays all sorts of crypto-Straussian habits.
Other promising offerings in the Liberal Arts include Prof. Donald Kagan's Introduction to Ancient Greek History and Prof. Amy Hungerford's The American Novel Since 1945, which presents two lectures on Flannery O'Connor's disturbing novel Wise Blood.
Unfortunately the science classes are of more limited availability.
But it's ungrateful to complain now that anyone can audit a semester of Ivy League courses.
Addendum:
OnlineUniversities.com provides links to 100 other open lectures at Harvard, MIT, and other prominent universities.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Is the embryo one of us?
The rapid march of technology has outpaced our ethical judgment. We have blundered into a confusing world of in-vitro fertilization, human cloning, and embryonic stem cell research. We ask ourselves: what is the human embryo, and how should we treat it?
Into this disputed realm strides Colorado's Amendment 48, which would grant legal personhood to every human being from the moment of fertilization. Whatever the merits and flaws of the proposal, it certainly presents us with an occasion to look at the ethical problems our society has ignored in its pursuit of worthy goals like increasing knowledge and inventing new medical treatments.
Who counts as a person in our society? This isn't some egghead's question above our pay grade; it's a vital topic of political life.
People have the bad habit of denying other people's personhood, ignoring their moral status as creatures whom we should respect. Different societies across time have refused legal protection to people based on criteria like race, sex, or disability.
Proving that somebody who is excluded should instead be included in society can be a difficult task, especially in the case of early human life.
Many people defend the personhood of each human being from the moment of conception by appealing to religion, often Christianity specifically.
This religious argument is nothing to be ashamed of, as religion is perhaps the best way to communicate to all men the content and the gravity of our complicated moral world. However, this kind of argument leaves out people who lack the same kind or the same level of religious commitments.
Fortunately a non-religious case can be made for the ethical worth of the human embryo. Professors Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen have made that weighty case both in their many magazine columns and in their 2008 book Embryo: A Defense of Human Life
. (See this excerpt in the Jan. 26 Denver Post)
While the promises of science ask us to look forward, we must not forget to look backward as well -- backward, that is, to the point at which we each came into being.
In Embryo, Professors George and Tollefsen begin with the story of Noah, who was saved from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when rescuers retrieved the container that contained his embryonic self from a flooded New Orleans hospital. His embryo was later implanted into his mother's womb, and Noah was born sixteen months after his rescue.
Noah's continuous existence since his laboratory conception is proven in a chapter which rivals a biology textbook in detail, ably recounting the conception and the intricate development of the human embryo.
From conception, the embryo acts in a way quite different from the sperm and egg whose union created it, but quite similar to the organism's behavior later in life. Studies of the embryo show its self-directed growth and its continuous bodily unity as it matures. In George and Tollefsen's view, this is evidence that the embryo is itself a human being, who is a human person.
An obvious reply to this claim states that the capacity for, say, consciousness, only begins with the formation of brain structures weeks into an embryo's development. Since only conscious organisms can be persons, a critic might argue, the embryo can't be a person.
But this argument raises objections. For instance, people who are asleep or in comas lack consciousness, but we don't deny that they are persons. The consciousness of infants is in some ways more limited than that of animals, but obviously we consider infants to be persons too.
The authors of Embryo also claim such critiques about consciousness and personhood untenably split the body from the person, in a theory they call "person-body dualism."
In ordinary life we sense that the person and the body are intimately united. When we cut a finger, we say "I am hurt," not "my body is hurt." If we claim that the person somehow enters the human body at a time after its conception, we have to think in that latter, counterintuitive way.
Instead of accidental characteristics like possessing a state of consciousness, the authors argue that a human being has a set of essential "capacities" that are in development at the embryonic stage but still merit calling that being a "person."
As law professor Richard Stith suggests, imagine taking a priceless picture with an old Polaroid camera. Its photo produces a full image after minutes of waiting, but that image is present within the developing photograph since the click of the camera shutter. Destroying such a photograph still destroys that worthy image, even though we can't yet perceive its full nature.
In a similar way, the human embryo is a person even at its beginning, which is our beginning. As George and Tollefsen write, embryos aren't "potential lives," they're "lives with potential."
(Cross-posted to YourHub.com)
Into this disputed realm strides Colorado's Amendment 48, which would grant legal personhood to every human being from the moment of fertilization. Whatever the merits and flaws of the proposal, it certainly presents us with an occasion to look at the ethical problems our society has ignored in its pursuit of worthy goals like increasing knowledge and inventing new medical treatments.
Who counts as a person in our society? This isn't some egghead's question above our pay grade; it's a vital topic of political life.
People have the bad habit of denying other people's personhood, ignoring their moral status as creatures whom we should respect. Different societies across time have refused legal protection to people based on criteria like race, sex, or disability.
Proving that somebody who is excluded should instead be included in society can be a difficult task, especially in the case of early human life.
Many people defend the personhood of each human being from the moment of conception by appealing to religion, often Christianity specifically.
This religious argument is nothing to be ashamed of, as religion is perhaps the best way to communicate to all men the content and the gravity of our complicated moral world. However, this kind of argument leaves out people who lack the same kind or the same level of religious commitments.
Fortunately a non-religious case can be made for the ethical worth of the human embryo. Professors Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen have made that weighty case both in their many magazine columns and in their 2008 book Embryo: A Defense of Human Life
. (See this excerpt in the Jan. 26 Denver Post)While the promises of science ask us to look forward, we must not forget to look backward as well -- backward, that is, to the point at which we each came into being.
In Embryo, Professors George and Tollefsen begin with the story of Noah, who was saved from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when rescuers retrieved the container that contained his embryonic self from a flooded New Orleans hospital. His embryo was later implanted into his mother's womb, and Noah was born sixteen months after his rescue.
Noah's continuous existence since his laboratory conception is proven in a chapter which rivals a biology textbook in detail, ably recounting the conception and the intricate development of the human embryo.
From conception, the embryo acts in a way quite different from the sperm and egg whose union created it, but quite similar to the organism's behavior later in life. Studies of the embryo show its self-directed growth and its continuous bodily unity as it matures. In George and Tollefsen's view, this is evidence that the embryo is itself a human being, who is a human person.
An obvious reply to this claim states that the capacity for, say, consciousness, only begins with the formation of brain structures weeks into an embryo's development. Since only conscious organisms can be persons, a critic might argue, the embryo can't be a person.
But this argument raises objections. For instance, people who are asleep or in comas lack consciousness, but we don't deny that they are persons. The consciousness of infants is in some ways more limited than that of animals, but obviously we consider infants to be persons too.
The authors of Embryo also claim such critiques about consciousness and personhood untenably split the body from the person, in a theory they call "person-body dualism."
In ordinary life we sense that the person and the body are intimately united. When we cut a finger, we say "I am hurt," not "my body is hurt." If we claim that the person somehow enters the human body at a time after its conception, we have to think in that latter, counterintuitive way.
Instead of accidental characteristics like possessing a state of consciousness, the authors argue that a human being has a set of essential "capacities" that are in development at the embryonic stage but still merit calling that being a "person."
As law professor Richard Stith suggests, imagine taking a priceless picture with an old Polaroid camera. Its photo produces a full image after minutes of waiting, but that image is present within the developing photograph since the click of the camera shutter. Destroying such a photograph still destroys that worthy image, even though we can't yet perceive its full nature.
In a similar way, the human embryo is a person even at its beginning, which is our beginning. As George and Tollefsen write, embryos aren't "potential lives," they're "lives with potential."
(Cross-posted to YourHub.com)
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Kraft im Recht: Metternich on political philosophy
The blogger Deogolwulf has posted to his blog what he claims to be the first complete English translation of Prince Metternich's Political Testament.
The text itself is directed to historians, advising them which archives are pertinent to the statesman's deeds and giving them a few autobiographical notes.
"I made history and therefore did not find time to write it," Metternich says, offering a few reflections on the French Revolution and Napoleon and the Revolutions of 1848.
Yet he also discusses political science, taking as a starting point his adopted motto "Strength in Right" (Kraft im Recht). He praises political gradualism and ordered liberty while condemning ideology and revolution.
"I have always regarded preconceived systems as the product of leisured heads or the outburst of emotional minds," he writes.
His remarks on Montesquieu's system of checks and balances are of interest to any student of the U.S. Constitution. He calls it
Those who complain about the "divisiveness" of American political debates, just before they realize the relative insignificance of these disagreements, should recognize that the object of their dislike is in fact the proper functioning of the country's constitution.
Metternich continues: "Without the foundation of order, the call for freedom is nothing more than the striving of some party after an envisaged end. In its actual use, the call inevitably expresses itself as tyranny."
This is quite the antidote for free-floating cries of "Freedom."
Upon reflection, we see the defense of order is not merely institutional conservatism. Rather, it is at root an exercise in contemplation.
The single-minded man of only one principle may dismiss the need for both general wisdom and concrete knowledge, as he holds his principle may be applied universally by anyone regardless of her circumstances or personal quality.
Those who counsel our monomaniacal friends to curb such enthusiasms lack this nescient luxury of fanaticism.
The narrowly principled reformer must only know his principles. These may be listed in a brief manifesto without significant distortion, like constants set for a computer program. Contrariwise, the defender of the present order must perceive and praise the many goods targeted by the would-be revolutionary.
An opponent of feminism could find herself defending a multitude of concrete habits and customs: the patronizing behavior required from polite men on dates; the ban on women in combat; the benefits of unequal pay in the workplace.
A proponent of feminism must only defend and assert one idea, an intangible often left undefined in relation to any ideal or real order.
It is little wonder why traditional conservatives applaud the Permanent Things. They have so many things to consider.
The text itself is directed to historians, advising them which archives are pertinent to the statesman's deeds and giving them a few autobiographical notes.
"I made history and therefore did not find time to write it," Metternich says, offering a few reflections on the French Revolution and Napoleon and the Revolutions of 1848.
Yet he also discusses political science, taking as a starting point his adopted motto "Strength in Right" (Kraft im Recht). He praises political gradualism and ordered liberty while condemning ideology and revolution.
"I have always regarded preconceived systems as the product of leisured heads or the outburst of emotional minds," he writes.
"Not in the struggle of society towards progress, but rather in progression towards the true goods: towards freedom as the inevitable yield of order; towards equality in its only applicable degree of that before the law; towards prosperity, inconceivable without the foundation of moral and material peace; towards credit, which can rest only on the basis of trust — in all that I have recognized the duty of government and the true salvation for the governed.
I have looked upon despotism of every kind as a symptom of weakness. Where it appears, it is a self-punitive evil, most intolerable when it poses behind the mask of promoting the cause of freedom."
His remarks on Montesquieu's system of checks and balances are of interest to any student of the U.S. Constitution. He calls it
...a conceptual error of the English constitution, impractical in its application, because the concept of such a balancing is rooted in the assumption of an eternal struggle, instead of in that of peace, the first necessity for the life and prosperity of states.
Those who complain about the "divisiveness" of American political debates, just before they realize the relative insignificance of these disagreements, should recognize that the object of their dislike is in fact the proper functioning of the country's constitution.
Metternich continues: "Without the foundation of order, the call for freedom is nothing more than the striving of some party after an envisaged end. In its actual use, the call inevitably expresses itself as tyranny."
This is quite the antidote for free-floating cries of "Freedom."
Upon reflection, we see the defense of order is not merely institutional conservatism. Rather, it is at root an exercise in contemplation.
The single-minded man of only one principle may dismiss the need for both general wisdom and concrete knowledge, as he holds his principle may be applied universally by anyone regardless of her circumstances or personal quality.
Those who counsel our monomaniacal friends to curb such enthusiasms lack this nescient luxury of fanaticism.
The narrowly principled reformer must only know his principles. These may be listed in a brief manifesto without significant distortion, like constants set for a computer program. Contrariwise, the defender of the present order must perceive and praise the many goods targeted by the would-be revolutionary.
An opponent of feminism could find herself defending a multitude of concrete habits and customs: the patronizing behavior required from polite men on dates; the ban on women in combat; the benefits of unequal pay in the workplace.
A proponent of feminism must only defend and assert one idea, an intangible often left undefined in relation to any ideal or real order.
It is little wonder why traditional conservatives applaud the Permanent Things. They have so many things to consider.
When 'pro-choice' is anti-abortion
Noting Tony Campolo's comments at the Democrats for Life Town Hall concerning the number of Americans divided between the pro-life and pro-choice camps, we noted:
A new Knights of Columbus survey backs this contention.
CNA reports:
Significantly, CNA says, only 15 percent of self-described “pro-choice” respondents favored unrestricted abortion throughout a pregnancy, the status quo under Roe v. Wade. Among the overall population, only eight percent favored that position.
(Unfortunately, the Knights' survey does not examine whether self-described pro-life people have views more consistent with the label they choose for themselves. This is an intelligence failure which leaves weaknesses unexamined.)
When 23 percent of self-described pro-choice voters sound like compromising Republicans, it is clear that the anti-abortion coalition is not as broad as it could be.
Early pro-life leaders likely chose their label in an attempt to set a positive, non-adversarial tone like that perceived in the label "anti-abortion." Perhaps the word choice was meant to distinguish them from the "wrong kind" of abortion opponents, especially the violent ones portrayed on "Law & Order."
This move of rhetorical self-satisfaction has drawbacks, as when people begin to think of "pro-life" as outré. Ask such a person "How pro-life are you?" and they could respond very equivocally as they distance themselves from stereotypes. Ask such a person "How anti-abortion are you?" and you might get a concrete answer on which to base a discussion.
The abortion debate is being obscured by its labels. Pro-life candidates and their publicists need to remind the electorate how radical Roe v. Wade is and how conflicted the pro-choice side is.
When a vigorous pro-life candidate describes his consistent stand in his campaign literature, he must do more than consider his acceptability to his base. Rather, he must propose actual legal reform.
Failed Colorado Senate candidate Pete Coors' 2004 political position paper is an exemplar of the tendency merely to signal support.
"I have a fundamental belief in the sanctity of human life. I am opposed to abortion," Coors explains there.
That was his entire statement on the issue.
Not very helpful. Its lack of explanation even fosters doubt about whether the man is only "personally opposed" and therefore not interested in political action on the issue.
In his present campaign, Sen. McCain only describes Roe as a "flawed decision," without explaining the flaws for the reader's benefit.
What is needed in these position statements is a minimal effort at voter education and coalition building. A candidate should add something like this:
The eight percent of people who favor the Roe status quo have been allowed to misrepresent the national consensus for too long. May the truth come out.
some of the “pro-choice” people referenced by Campolo don’t approve of legalized abortion in most cases, while some of the pro-lifers make exceptions of their own.
A new Knights of Columbus survey backs this contention.
CNA reports:
Only 15 percent of self-described “pro-choice” respondents favored unrestricted abortion throughout a pregnancy. About 43 percent of pro-choice respondents said abortion should be restricted to the first trimester and 23 percent would restrict abortion only to cases of rape, incest, or where the mother’s life was in danger.
Significantly, CNA says, only 15 percent of self-described “pro-choice” respondents favored unrestricted abortion throughout a pregnancy, the status quo under Roe v. Wade. Among the overall population, only eight percent favored that position.
(Unfortunately, the Knights' survey does not examine whether self-described pro-life people have views more consistent with the label they choose for themselves. This is an intelligence failure which leaves weaknesses unexamined.)
When 23 percent of self-described pro-choice voters sound like compromising Republicans, it is clear that the anti-abortion coalition is not as broad as it could be.
Early pro-life leaders likely chose their label in an attempt to set a positive, non-adversarial tone like that perceived in the label "anti-abortion." Perhaps the word choice was meant to distinguish them from the "wrong kind" of abortion opponents, especially the violent ones portrayed on "Law & Order."
This move of rhetorical self-satisfaction has drawbacks, as when people begin to think of "pro-life" as outré. Ask such a person "How pro-life are you?" and they could respond very equivocally as they distance themselves from stereotypes. Ask such a person "How anti-abortion are you?" and you might get a concrete answer on which to base a discussion.
The abortion debate is being obscured by its labels. Pro-life candidates and their publicists need to remind the electorate how radical Roe v. Wade is and how conflicted the pro-choice side is.
When a vigorous pro-life candidate describes his consistent stand in his campaign literature, he must do more than consider his acceptability to his base. Rather, he must propose actual legal reform.
Failed Colorado Senate candidate Pete Coors' 2004 political position paper is an exemplar of the tendency merely to signal support.
"I have a fundamental belief in the sanctity of human life. I am opposed to abortion," Coors explains there.
That was his entire statement on the issue.
Not very helpful. Its lack of explanation even fosters doubt about whether the man is only "personally opposed" and therefore not interested in political action on the issue.
In his present campaign, Sen. McCain only describes Roe as a "flawed decision," without explaining the flaws for the reader's benefit.
What is needed in these position statements is a minimal effort at voter education and coalition building. A candidate should add something like this:
Roe v. Wade was a bad decision. Did you know Roe v. Wade and related Supreme Court decisions legalize almost all abortions throughout all nine months of a woman's pregnancy? This is a case where the court is out of touch with America.
More than sixty percent of Americans, many of whom consider themselves pro-choice, favor allowing abortions no more often than in cases of rape, incest, and a danger to the mother's life. Another 24 percent favor banning abortions performed later than the first trimester of pregnancy.
If I am elected and Roe is overturned, I pledge to work to bring our laws and the outliers of the American medical profession into line with our standards for protecting human life in its earliest months. While I personally believe abortion should be prohibited in all but the most extreme cases, I will gladly reach out to those who believe otherwise to enact anti-abortion legislation that 84 percent of Americans would favor.
The eight percent of people who favor the Roe status quo have been allowed to misrepresent the national consensus for too long. May the truth come out.
Friday, October 10, 2008
The issue that must not be reported
Catching CNN during a lunch break yesterday, I witnessed their coverage of a McCain town-hall meeting. One man asked McCain:
Now that's an interesting question.
Before McCain answers, we find that Tom Brokaw isn't the only one trying not to bring this question up.
CNN's Kyra Phillips interrupted, speaking over McCain's unheard reply:
McCain was about to talk about something besides our money, but CNN wouldn't let him.
After talking over McCain's answer, Phillips then speaks about the National Debt Clock,
concluding: "Dr. Deepak Chopra and Reverend Franklin Graham up next to talk about how our economic crisis could be a spiritual awakening for all of us."
Cut to commercial.
Polls often claim to show what issues Americans are really concerned about. Perhaps well-informed respondents merely echo the editorial priorities of the newsroom.
Well, first of all, thank you both for all you're doing for our country. I wanted to ask you about -- about the issue of abortion, and specifically about the debate a couple of nights ago. The moderator cleverly never brought this -- the question up.
And with the debate coming up again, I would ask if you're going to find a way to bring the subject up, even if it's not asked about, because I firmly believe it's an issue which you have the advantage.
Now that's an interesting question.
Before McCain answers, we find that Tom Brokaw isn't the only one trying not to bring this question up.
CNN's Kyra Phillips interrupted, speaking over McCain's unheard reply:
John McCain campaigning in Waukesha, Wisconsin. You can still watch this live, if you want, at CNN.com/live. He's talking about your money and his pledge to bring it back.
McCain was about to talk about something besides our money, but CNN wouldn't let him.
After talking over McCain's answer, Phillips then speaks about the National Debt Clock,
concluding: "Dr. Deepak Chopra and Reverend Franklin Graham up next to talk about how our economic crisis could be a spiritual awakening for all of us."
Cut to commercial.
Polls often claim to show what issues Americans are really concerned about. Perhaps well-informed respondents merely echo the editorial priorities of the newsroom.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
At the DNC: The Faith Caucus
The Democratic National Convention was a great experience for me and for the city of Denver, though many of its consequences for the Democrats won’t be known for years.
The Sunday the convention began, I was informed that Catholic News Agency's credentials application had been approved after we were wait listed following an initial denial.
Hurrying downtown, I collected my credentials. Clueless about what to do with them, I felt like a dog who had finally caught the car he had been chasing. I certainly missed many freebies because of this ignorance.
With little time to plan, my editor and I decided the Faith in Action Forum, held the Tuesday and Thursday of convention week, could yield some quality stories.
We were not disappointed.
Most of the "Faith Caucus" panels were hosted by Sojourners editor and Evangelical pastor Rev. Jim Wallis, who told several jokes and sometimes even quoted Catholic social teaching.
At one point DNC Chairman Howard Dean made a surprise appearance at the Faith Forum.
Saying the party had acted as if “we mustn’t talk about religion,” he said “I think we’ve made a lot of progress for the last couple of years... I am thrilled to be in a party that no longer cedes the faith community to the Republican Party.”
He made the standard non-committal remarks any public figure makes about religion. Talking about how religions in the United States put aside their differences to unite, he echoed the standard neoconservative empty boasts about the U.S. being a “universal country.”
Would that we were a provincial nation instead!
Dean’s words were not the language of a society that recognizes its limits. Constrained by the secularist wing of the Democratic Party, his rhetoric could not place the United States “under God.” Indeed, his tone implied the United States herself was that Higher Power.
His short talk, which alternated between unconscious hubris and appealing platitudes, charged that Republicans pretend the United States is a mono-religious country. The diversity of the Democrats, he suggested, means the party must talk about religion in a different way.
To this, one might reply that while the Republicans may pretend there is more religious unity in the country than there really is, they do not pretend very well or very hard. Their religious references are generally bland and reactive to the latest secularist advance. Their rhetoric rarely translates from opportunistic vote-seeking into substantive action, as they too must strike a balance between Evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, secular elites, and non-religious libertarians.
As for the Democrats, they often pretend there is far more religious diversity than there really is. Their idea of diversity is formed by the creedal melange of the college town or the big city, rather than the suburbs or the rural areas where religious belief is generally split between Christian denominations and the congenial unchurched.
(The Democratic leadership is also perhaps swayed by its religious minority donors. For instance, if it is correctly reported that more than half of Democratic presidential giving comes from Jewish contributors, strict Church-State separationism will dominate the party’s ethos regardless of that position’s wisdom or popularity.)
Obviously, Dean would not criticize the obnoxious secularism of certain party activists. Alas, such activists have done more than anyone else to help the Republicans play identity politics. Both Republican pandering and secularist pushiness have swayed Christians and others rightly disgusted by the licentious and impious path the Democratic activist leadership has taken.
Generally speaking, the faith panelists themselves were of very high quality, speaking as people desirous to inform, rather than merely persuade. Unlike the Senators I observed at other caucuses, the speakers rarely relied on slogans or flattery.
Perhaps the quality of a speaker is inversely proportional to his or her need to appeal broadly.
Diving into policy, Prof. John DiIulio and Rabbi David Saperstein discussed the future of faith-based initiatives. While there was nothing untoward about their discussion, it is quite clear that Democratic policymakers are pondering how to co-opt faith-based initiatives for their own political ends. The abolition of the programs was not considered, and speakers made foreboding, terse references to new non-discrimination regulations under an Obama administration.
Such regulations could include “anti-sexist” measures for charities run by churches of an all-male clergy, rules that would prevent charities from preferring their own coreligionists for leadership positions, and those predictable culture war issues which can be cast in the legal language of anti-bias.
Just as Bush’s critics warned, his program has become a tar baby for civic-minded religious groups.
Nonetheless, the speakers at the Faith in Action forum were far more concerned about the ability of politics to co-opt religion and “mute the prophetic” than mainstream Republican Christians have appeared to be. Rev. Otis Moss, Jr. quoted the remarks of his mentor, Martin Luther King, Jr, who said that the church ought to be neither servant nor master of the state, but rather its conscience.
“We should never allow the state to dwarf our witness,” Rev. Moss said.
One panelist discussed the surprising and saddening issue of modern slavery, claiming that there are between 50,000 to 100,000 people who are treated as slaves in the U.S. each year. When the enslaving conditions of sex trafficking, abused immigrant labor, and pure human meanness are considered, that number is too believable.
Two other panel speakers discussed how to reduce the numbers of abortions. There, it became clear to me that injunctions to seek “common ground” on the abortion issue are often just methods of avoiding the debate about whether or not the country is perpetrating a grave injustice.
“I’m tired of all the shouting on this question,” panel host Rev. Jim Wallis said. “The shouting has to stop. Let’s find some common ground.”
Yet the debate is precisely over who deserves to share the common ground of the community. When we let highly trained medical professionals fatally assault the unwanted unborn at the request of their distressed mothers, we have already declared that such people do not count.
One can’t deny human solidarity in one breath and plea for unity in the next without glaring inconsistency.
Certain Republicans have often hoped their party can poach socially conservative African-Americans away from the Democrats on moral issues. A few speakers from the Faith in Action panels would give those in the GOP some hope, as when one African-American Democrat rose to speak.
“I am a pro-life Democrat, and I like to think there is room for me in this party,” Rev. Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner said, receiving scattered applause. She argued that African-Americans care about the “sanctity of life” and the “sanctity of marriage,” adding “and they want to be in this party!”
Daydreaming Republicans should remember her closing words: they want to be Democrats. At the same panel Rev. Romal Tune noted with perplexity how he had once read a Family Research Council pamphlet that didn’t mention poverty among its moral issues. At another panel, it was obvious that prison reform and prisoner rehabilitation is a vital issues to this Democratic constituency.
Facing the prospect of their young men being sent through the hellholes of the American prison system, where they risk further moral corruption, rape and AIDS, it’s obvious that abortion is not the only life-or-death issue for the African-American community.
Let us remember that a lack of health care, too, appears to be a mortal threat for those on the borders of economic security.
Groups with such concerns are never going to vote for a party sternly dominated by anti-welfare and law-and-order policymaking.
Further, Republican daydreams place the interest of party over the public good. It is good for social conservatism to have representatives in both parties. Indeed, that presence is a prerequisite for any eventual return to a national consensus on such issues.
Worse, when social conservatives act as Republicans first, they risk ignoring threats to their philosophical allies in the other party.
For instance, there was an under-reported conflict between Democratic African-Americans and the Democrats’ LGBT faction, resulting in a lawsuit against the DNC.
At the linked page, DNC Chair Howard Dean testifies in the suit: “I wanted equal representation for gay and lesbian Americans, and I wanted to achieve it in a way that wasn’t offensive to the history of the civil rights movement.”
This likely means socially conservative black Democrats have taken offense at certain activists’ tactless insinuations that such loyal Democrats are the segregationists and Klansmen of the present because of their opposition to gay rights. It is a common conflict; earlier this year one black woman was even fired from her university employer for writing an article which took exception to the gay rights/civil rights analogy.
While I have not thoroughly investigated the matter, apparently the DNC delegate rules now include affirmative action provisions favorable to the impolitic but effective LGBT crowd. Democratic delegate quotas for youth and women precipitated the demise of the New Deal Coalition, and any similar rules privileging sexual lifestyle activists will further prevent the revival of that coalition’s better surviving elements.
These rule changes had been opposed by many African Americans, yet I doubt this conflict was prominent in the Republican social conservatives’ echo chamber. It seems to have been covered most in the gay press, which shows a deep animosity against African-American Pentecostal minister and DNC CEO Rev. Leah Daughtry.
Rounding out my listing of Faith Caucus stories, I should mention that Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec was a panelist. He tried to explain how a pro-life Catholic like him ended up supporting Obama, and briefly discoursed on the Catholic vote. Kmiec’s position is further described in a below post on the Democrats for Life Town Hall Meeting.
The close of the faith caucus prompts the question: why have a faith caucus at all?
Though the African-American community is more accustomed to clergyman politicians than other groups, most churches don’t want ministers to become political delegates. A Machiavel could with reason see the caucus as an effort to train tame preachers as counterparts to prominent Evangelicals on the right.
However, these ministers are also community leaders. Perhaps like the Holy See’s observer mission to the United Nations, their access to the party may at best advance issues of mutual interest and provide still other avenues to inform leaders of community problems.
One obvious application of the Faith Caucus is to temper, rather than conceal, the acerbic atheism of some party regulars.
Yet some Faith Caucus members themselves think such an effort could be a threat to party unity.
Addressing one panel, a questioner pondered how “principled secularists” would react to a growing faith caucus, worrying that the party itself could be fractured by secularist reaction.
“It’s a sad commentary that religion is such a scary word,” one speaker answered, promptly blaming his theological and political opponents of the Religious Right for religion’s bad reputation.
This blame-shifting is a mistake. Rebuking irreligion of the type represented by the reprehensible Amanda Marcotte is a basic part of social hygiene. Fanatical secularists have a culpable ignorance of religion that should be excused and tolerated even less than the damaging excesses and obscurantism of Evangelical populism.
One would like to think that such rebukes go on in private, as the operative rule at a party convention is the Eleventh Commandment paraphrased: “never speak ill of a fellow partisan.”
But to speculate on whether such actions are ongoing tempts one to judge by one’s hopes, rather than by one’s observations. Until Democratic leaders begin turning the Bill Mahers and the P.Z. Myerses into Sister Souljahs, we will have little evidence of progress.
Also at the DNC:
Faith Caucus
Women's Caucus
LGBT Caucus
Democrats for Life Town Hall
The Sunday the convention began, I was informed that Catholic News Agency's credentials application had been approved after we were wait listed following an initial denial.
Hurrying downtown, I collected my credentials. Clueless about what to do with them, I felt like a dog who had finally caught the car he had been chasing. I certainly missed many freebies because of this ignorance.
With little time to plan, my editor and I decided the Faith in Action Forum, held the Tuesday and Thursday of convention week, could yield some quality stories.
We were not disappointed.
Most of the "Faith Caucus" panels were hosted by Sojourners editor and Evangelical pastor Rev. Jim Wallis, who told several jokes and sometimes even quoted Catholic social teaching.
At one point DNC Chairman Howard Dean made a surprise appearance at the Faith Forum.
Saying the party had acted as if “we mustn’t talk about religion,” he said “I think we’ve made a lot of progress for the last couple of years... I am thrilled to be in a party that no longer cedes the faith community to the Republican Party.”
He made the standard non-committal remarks any public figure makes about religion. Talking about how religions in the United States put aside their differences to unite, he echoed the standard neoconservative empty boasts about the U.S. being a “universal country.”
Would that we were a provincial nation instead!
Dean’s words were not the language of a society that recognizes its limits. Constrained by the secularist wing of the Democratic Party, his rhetoric could not place the United States “under God.” Indeed, his tone implied the United States herself was that Higher Power.
His short talk, which alternated between unconscious hubris and appealing platitudes, charged that Republicans pretend the United States is a mono-religious country. The diversity of the Democrats, he suggested, means the party must talk about religion in a different way.
To this, one might reply that while the Republicans may pretend there is more religious unity in the country than there really is, they do not pretend very well or very hard. Their religious references are generally bland and reactive to the latest secularist advance. Their rhetoric rarely translates from opportunistic vote-seeking into substantive action, as they too must strike a balance between Evangelical Christians, conservative Catholics, secular elites, and non-religious libertarians.
As for the Democrats, they often pretend there is far more religious diversity than there really is. Their idea of diversity is formed by the creedal melange of the college town or the big city, rather than the suburbs or the rural areas where religious belief is generally split between Christian denominations and the congenial unchurched.
(The Democratic leadership is also perhaps swayed by its religious minority donors. For instance, if it is correctly reported that more than half of Democratic presidential giving comes from Jewish contributors, strict Church-State separationism will dominate the party’s ethos regardless of that position’s wisdom or popularity.)
Obviously, Dean would not criticize the obnoxious secularism of certain party activists. Alas, such activists have done more than anyone else to help the Republicans play identity politics. Both Republican pandering and secularist pushiness have swayed Christians and others rightly disgusted by the licentious and impious path the Democratic activist leadership has taken.
Generally speaking, the faith panelists themselves were of very high quality, speaking as people desirous to inform, rather than merely persuade. Unlike the Senators I observed at other caucuses, the speakers rarely relied on slogans or flattery.
Perhaps the quality of a speaker is inversely proportional to his or her need to appeal broadly.
Diving into policy, Prof. John DiIulio and Rabbi David Saperstein discussed the future of faith-based initiatives. While there was nothing untoward about their discussion, it is quite clear that Democratic policymakers are pondering how to co-opt faith-based initiatives for their own political ends. The abolition of the programs was not considered, and speakers made foreboding, terse references to new non-discrimination regulations under an Obama administration.
Such regulations could include “anti-sexist” measures for charities run by churches of an all-male clergy, rules that would prevent charities from preferring their own coreligionists for leadership positions, and those predictable culture war issues which can be cast in the legal language of anti-bias.
Just as Bush’s critics warned, his program has become a tar baby for civic-minded religious groups.
Nonetheless, the speakers at the Faith in Action forum were far more concerned about the ability of politics to co-opt religion and “mute the prophetic” than mainstream Republican Christians have appeared to be. Rev. Otis Moss, Jr. quoted the remarks of his mentor, Martin Luther King, Jr, who said that the church ought to be neither servant nor master of the state, but rather its conscience.
“We should never allow the state to dwarf our witness,” Rev. Moss said.
One panelist discussed the surprising and saddening issue of modern slavery, claiming that there are between 50,000 to 100,000 people who are treated as slaves in the U.S. each year. When the enslaving conditions of sex trafficking, abused immigrant labor, and pure human meanness are considered, that number is too believable.
Two other panel speakers discussed how to reduce the numbers of abortions. There, it became clear to me that injunctions to seek “common ground” on the abortion issue are often just methods of avoiding the debate about whether or not the country is perpetrating a grave injustice.
“I’m tired of all the shouting on this question,” panel host Rev. Jim Wallis said. “The shouting has to stop. Let’s find some common ground.”
Yet the debate is precisely over who deserves to share the common ground of the community. When we let highly trained medical professionals fatally assault the unwanted unborn at the request of their distressed mothers, we have already declared that such people do not count.
One can’t deny human solidarity in one breath and plea for unity in the next without glaring inconsistency.
Certain Republicans have often hoped their party can poach socially conservative African-Americans away from the Democrats on moral issues. A few speakers from the Faith in Action panels would give those in the GOP some hope, as when one African-American Democrat rose to speak.
“I am a pro-life Democrat, and I like to think there is room for me in this party,” Rev. Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner said, receiving scattered applause. She argued that African-Americans care about the “sanctity of life” and the “sanctity of marriage,” adding “and they want to be in this party!”
Daydreaming Republicans should remember her closing words: they want to be Democrats. At the same panel Rev. Romal Tune noted with perplexity how he had once read a Family Research Council pamphlet that didn’t mention poverty among its moral issues. At another panel, it was obvious that prison reform and prisoner rehabilitation is a vital issues to this Democratic constituency.
Facing the prospect of their young men being sent through the hellholes of the American prison system, where they risk further moral corruption, rape and AIDS, it’s obvious that abortion is not the only life-or-death issue for the African-American community.
Let us remember that a lack of health care, too, appears to be a mortal threat for those on the borders of economic security.
Groups with such concerns are never going to vote for a party sternly dominated by anti-welfare and law-and-order policymaking.
Further, Republican daydreams place the interest of party over the public good. It is good for social conservatism to have representatives in both parties. Indeed, that presence is a prerequisite for any eventual return to a national consensus on such issues.
Worse, when social conservatives act as Republicans first, they risk ignoring threats to their philosophical allies in the other party.
For instance, there was an under-reported conflict between Democratic African-Americans and the Democrats’ LGBT faction, resulting in a lawsuit against the DNC.
At the linked page, DNC Chair Howard Dean testifies in the suit: “I wanted equal representation for gay and lesbian Americans, and I wanted to achieve it in a way that wasn’t offensive to the history of the civil rights movement.”
This likely means socially conservative black Democrats have taken offense at certain activists’ tactless insinuations that such loyal Democrats are the segregationists and Klansmen of the present because of their opposition to gay rights. It is a common conflict; earlier this year one black woman was even fired from her university employer for writing an article which took exception to the gay rights/civil rights analogy.
While I have not thoroughly investigated the matter, apparently the DNC delegate rules now include affirmative action provisions favorable to the impolitic but effective LGBT crowd. Democratic delegate quotas for youth and women precipitated the demise of the New Deal Coalition, and any similar rules privileging sexual lifestyle activists will further prevent the revival of that coalition’s better surviving elements.
These rule changes had been opposed by many African Americans, yet I doubt this conflict was prominent in the Republican social conservatives’ echo chamber. It seems to have been covered most in the gay press, which shows a deep animosity against African-American Pentecostal minister and DNC CEO Rev. Leah Daughtry.
Rounding out my listing of Faith Caucus stories, I should mention that Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec was a panelist. He tried to explain how a pro-life Catholic like him ended up supporting Obama, and briefly discoursed on the Catholic vote. Kmiec’s position is further described in a below post on the Democrats for Life Town Hall Meeting.
The close of the faith caucus prompts the question: why have a faith caucus at all?
Though the African-American community is more accustomed to clergyman politicians than other groups, most churches don’t want ministers to become political delegates. A Machiavel could with reason see the caucus as an effort to train tame preachers as counterparts to prominent Evangelicals on the right.
However, these ministers are also community leaders. Perhaps like the Holy See’s observer mission to the United Nations, their access to the party may at best advance issues of mutual interest and provide still other avenues to inform leaders of community problems.
One obvious application of the Faith Caucus is to temper, rather than conceal, the acerbic atheism of some party regulars.
Yet some Faith Caucus members themselves think such an effort could be a threat to party unity.
Addressing one panel, a questioner pondered how “principled secularists” would react to a growing faith caucus, worrying that the party itself could be fractured by secularist reaction.
“It’s a sad commentary that religion is such a scary word,” one speaker answered, promptly blaming his theological and political opponents of the Religious Right for religion’s bad reputation.
This blame-shifting is a mistake. Rebuking irreligion of the type represented by the reprehensible Amanda Marcotte is a basic part of social hygiene. Fanatical secularists have a culpable ignorance of religion that should be excused and tolerated even less than the damaging excesses and obscurantism of Evangelical populism.
One would like to think that such rebukes go on in private, as the operative rule at a party convention is the Eleventh Commandment paraphrased: “never speak ill of a fellow partisan.”
But to speculate on whether such actions are ongoing tempts one to judge by one’s hopes, rather than by one’s observations. Until Democratic leaders begin turning the Bill Mahers and the P.Z. Myerses into Sister Souljahs, we will have little evidence of progress.
Also at the DNC:
Faith Caucus
Women's Caucus
LGBT Caucus
Democrats for Life Town Hall
At the DNC: The Women's Caucus
The Women’s Caucus meeting held the final day of the Democratic National Convention proved newsworthy.
There, several speakers exhorted the crowd to encourage women to run for office. Obligingly, several young women in my social circles have been asked whether they have considered doing so. As the ladies in my social circles tend to be disgruntled conservative Democrats, the Women’s Caucus leaders would regard many of them to be the “wrong kind” of women, but they should be more careful about what they wish for.
Women’s Caucus speakers’ rhetoric about the advancement of women provides an appetizing irony in retrospect, considering the hostile reaction to the GOP’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin one day later.
One asserted that women bring “different perspectives.” Certainly, Palin was not the difference she had in mind.
Speakers lamented how many more women were seated in foreign parliaments as compared to the U.S. former Vermont Governor Madeline Kunin told how she saw how many women were in Rwanda’s parliament and asked a female parliamentary leader why this was so. “For the survival of our children” was her touching reply.
The former governor’s remarks that women need to agitate “for the survival of our children, and children all over the world” patently clashed with speakers’ repeated support for that certain “women’s issue” which will be discussed below.
Howard Dean made another appearance and provided a gem quote for an unscrupulous reporter. Mentioning how the Democrats’ electoral woes were aggravated by hostile secretaries of state, he quoted the old saying “It doesn’t matter who votes, but who counts the votes.”
“We count the votes now,” he added, stating his belief that the Democrats will use this power for good.
With such a potent sound bite, it’s amazing Republican media outlets did not exploit it as a potential “Macaca moment” to score easy political points. Though politicians are not known for honoring self-imposed limits on debate, perhaps there is an unspoken bipartisan agreement against combing convention speeches for political gain.
More likely, media businesses which report such items don’t get press credentials at the next convention.
A few speakers endorsed Barack Obama with a noticeable deficit of enthusiasm. The tensions between the Clinton and Obama camps were referenced by continual exhortations to party unity.
“Hillary supports Obama and so do I” said Governor Kunin. “We have to reach out to our sisters who pause between saying those words!”
The tensions peaked just before Michelle Obama took the stage. At that time, the protesters showed up:
About a dozen women waved these signs in relative silence, protesting the absence of Hillary from the ticket. They were tolerated for far longer than the anti-abortion protesters who showed up before Sen. Boxer's appearance. Finally, Hillary's women were escorted out. One person was particularly incensed that she, a woman, was being thrown out of the Women’s Caucus.
Michelle Obama’s speech was lackluster. Her delivery was so reliant on her notes that both photos I took of her show her glancing down.
She did provide a suitably bizarre remark to base a story upon, saying of her husband:
Sanctity of parenthood trumps sanctity of life, I guess.
My reportage was apparently the only story carrying this quotation. The exclusive even attracted the attention of NewsBusters.
Needless to say, abortion was a major topic of discussion and a major focus of my coverage.
Right before Sen. Barbara Boxer was to speak, about a half dozen women ranging from middle-aged to elderly moved to the stage and opened their shirts to reveal T-shirts reading “I regret my abortion.”
As if performing an exorcism, the audience then loudly chanted “Obama! Obama!” as security escorted the protesters out.
Sen. Boxer effectively repeated many talking points, but was otherwise uninteresting.
Taking the lead from Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen, she started declaiming hypothetical criminal sentences for women who seek abortions and the doctors who provide them. As noted here, National Review responded to this point a year ago, noting how abortionists and their clients were treated in law, with much harsher penalties only for the former.
The fittingly surnamed Rep. Louise Slaughter attacked conscience protections for medical professionals who won’t involve themselves in abortions.
Bizarrely, she categorized such conscientious refusals as a violation of the Hippocratic Oath’s phrase “do no harm.” Of course, that oath forbade abortions until its opportunistic revision in recent decades.
More accurately, Slaughter suggested that abortion was the prerequisite for the creation of the feminist professional classes.
“It was the right to control our reproductive systems that made it possible for almost all of us to achieve our own dreams which our parents had paid for,” Rep. Slaughter said.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor made much the same argument in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey.
Pro-lifers generally aren’t socially aware enough to realize how significantly our society relies upon abortion as backup contraception. Without abortion, casual sexual relations would have to cease, yet casual sexual relations are now almost normative. Both male and female professionals are severely tempted to abort the child they have conceived because a child does not fit into the careerism for which they have prepared their lives.
They have been taught since kindergarten that they can do anything they choose if they apply their talents and work hard in the right career. In the context of abortion, we know what “doing anything they choose” often means.
The “me-tooism” of pro-life feminists such as Sarah Palin does not inquire whether the preferable aspects and results of feminism could only come by trampling upon the corpses of the unborn.
It is chilling to think that even admirable pro-life women may be unknowingly promoting the careerism, the egalitarianism, and the revolts against motherhood and fatherhood which both sustain and require the United States’ abortion regime.
Also at the DNC:
Faith Caucus
Women's Caucus
LGBT Caucus
Democrats for Life Town Hall
There, several speakers exhorted the crowd to encourage women to run for office. Obligingly, several young women in my social circles have been asked whether they have considered doing so. As the ladies in my social circles tend to be disgruntled conservative Democrats, the Women’s Caucus leaders would regard many of them to be the “wrong kind” of women, but they should be more careful about what they wish for.
Women’s Caucus speakers’ rhetoric about the advancement of women provides an appetizing irony in retrospect, considering the hostile reaction to the GOP’s selection of Gov. Sarah Palin one day later.
One asserted that women bring “different perspectives.” Certainly, Palin was not the difference she had in mind.
Speakers lamented how many more women were seated in foreign parliaments as compared to the U.S. former Vermont Governor Madeline Kunin told how she saw how many women were in Rwanda’s parliament and asked a female parliamentary leader why this was so. “For the survival of our children” was her touching reply.
The former governor’s remarks that women need to agitate “for the survival of our children, and children all over the world” patently clashed with speakers’ repeated support for that certain “women’s issue” which will be discussed below.
Howard Dean made another appearance and provided a gem quote for an unscrupulous reporter. Mentioning how the Democrats’ electoral woes were aggravated by hostile secretaries of state, he quoted the old saying “It doesn’t matter who votes, but who counts the votes.”
“We count the votes now,” he added, stating his belief that the Democrats will use this power for good.
With such a potent sound bite, it’s amazing Republican media outlets did not exploit it as a potential “Macaca moment” to score easy political points. Though politicians are not known for honoring self-imposed limits on debate, perhaps there is an unspoken bipartisan agreement against combing convention speeches for political gain.
More likely, media businesses which report such items don’t get press credentials at the next convention.
A few speakers endorsed Barack Obama with a noticeable deficit of enthusiasm. The tensions between the Clinton and Obama camps were referenced by continual exhortations to party unity.
“Hillary supports Obama and so do I” said Governor Kunin. “We have to reach out to our sisters who pause between saying those words!”
The tensions peaked just before Michelle Obama took the stage. At that time, the protesters showed up:
About a dozen women waved these signs in relative silence, protesting the absence of Hillary from the ticket. They were tolerated for far longer than the anti-abortion protesters who showed up before Sen. Boxer's appearance. Finally, Hillary's women were escorted out. One person was particularly incensed that she, a woman, was being thrown out of the Women’s Caucus.
Michelle Obama’s speech was lackluster. Her delivery was so reliant on her notes that both photos I took of her show her glancing down.
She did provide a suitably bizarre remark to base a story upon, saying of her husband:
He’ll protect a woman’s freedom of choice, because government should have no say in whether or when a woman embraces the sacred responsibility of parenthood.
Sanctity of parenthood trumps sanctity of life, I guess.
My reportage was apparently the only story carrying this quotation. The exclusive even attracted the attention of NewsBusters.
Needless to say, abortion was a major topic of discussion and a major focus of my coverage.
Right before Sen. Barbara Boxer was to speak, about a half dozen women ranging from middle-aged to elderly moved to the stage and opened their shirts to reveal T-shirts reading “I regret my abortion.”
As if performing an exorcism, the audience then loudly chanted “Obama! Obama!” as security escorted the protesters out.
Sen. Boxer effectively repeated many talking points, but was otherwise uninteresting.
Taking the lead from Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen, she started declaiming hypothetical criminal sentences for women who seek abortions and the doctors who provide them. As noted here, National Review responded to this point a year ago, noting how abortionists and their clients were treated in law, with much harsher penalties only for the former.
The fittingly surnamed Rep. Louise Slaughter attacked conscience protections for medical professionals who won’t involve themselves in abortions.
Bizarrely, she categorized such conscientious refusals as a violation of the Hippocratic Oath’s phrase “do no harm.” Of course, that oath forbade abortions until its opportunistic revision in recent decades.
More accurately, Slaughter suggested that abortion was the prerequisite for the creation of the feminist professional classes.
“It was the right to control our reproductive systems that made it possible for almost all of us to achieve our own dreams which our parents had paid for,” Rep. Slaughter said.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor made much the same argument in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey.
Pro-lifers generally aren’t socially aware enough to realize how significantly our society relies upon abortion as backup contraception. Without abortion, casual sexual relations would have to cease, yet casual sexual relations are now almost normative. Both male and female professionals are severely tempted to abort the child they have conceived because a child does not fit into the careerism for which they have prepared their lives.
They have been taught since kindergarten that they can do anything they choose if they apply their talents and work hard in the right career. In the context of abortion, we know what “doing anything they choose” often means.
The “me-tooism” of pro-life feminists such as Sarah Palin does not inquire whether the preferable aspects and results of feminism could only come by trampling upon the corpses of the unborn.
It is chilling to think that even admirable pro-life women may be unknowingly promoting the careerism, the egalitarianism, and the revolts against motherhood and fatherhood which both sustain and require the United States’ abortion regime.
Also at the DNC:
Faith Caucus
Women's Caucus
LGBT Caucus
Democrats for Life Town Hall
At the DNC: The LGBT Caucus
As one who is occasionally optimistic about the state of the Democratic Party, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Caucus was disillusioning for me. I found that the newest faction of politicized sexual liberation is well-organized, well-funded, and willing to use raw power when it can.
Even so, it was surprising how some speakers played to the melodramatic stereotypes attributed to their members. Caucus Chairman Rick Stafford flatteringly but falsely declared the caucus the “best dressed” at the convention. His announcement that Ben Affleck had donated 25 VIP badges for the Starz Green Room prompted some attendees to bolt to the distribution like teenage girls in the throes of Beatlemania.
One actor from the X-Men movie, I believe it was “Nightcrawler” Alan Cumming, also put in an appearance and was acknowledged by the chairman.
Monday marked not only the first caucus, but also the birthday of Stafford.
Relieved at the opportunity to show charity towards a faction I hold in such low regard, I was happy to join in singing “Happy Birthday.”
The happiness was fleeting.
As I mentioned before, Colorado multi-millionaire Tim Gill described to the caucus his strategy for removing critics of his sex life from the political class. He targets any critics of gay rights at the state legislative levels, marshaling donors via Gill Action Fund mailing lists and so preventing his opponents from replenishing their talent pool.
Further commentary on Gill may be found at YourHub, where I note that every time Gill says “bigot” one may read the word “critic” without loss of information.
Gill's comments were also under-reported, finding mention only in the Rocky Mountain News but not in the Denver Post.
However, the likable GOP shill Hugh Hewitt linked to the story.
The LGBT caucus itself, whose Monday acts were reported here, claimed 274 members, about 6.7 percent of the 4,049 total. Speakers gleefully claimed that the number may not be accurate since more and more delegates were “coming out.”
There were a few allusions to the new changes to the DNC rules, though little that an outsider could understand.
Say what you will about the caucus, they sure know how to exploit multiculturalism. They claimed about one third of their 2008 caucus is composed of youth and about 40 percent were described as “people of color.” One speaker welcomed the changes from past convention caucuses, which he said had been “almost entirely white.”
Caucus speakers spoke of how necessary it was for caucus members to install themselves in the leadership of the other minority caucuses, showing they are well-positioned to cement their hold on the Democrats.
A minority LGBT is a diversity chimera whose identities may shift as politics demands. Further, the caucus adds to the power of the ethnic spoils system of affirmative action, identity politics, and anti-discrimination lawsuits. If they perceive other benefits, self-interested minorities may actually ally with and be co-opted by the LGBT caucus and its issues.
As people who are generally childless, LGBT caucus members have much time to sit on multiple committees and they have money on hand for political endeavors. Further, their sexual liberationism allies them with the dissolute, heterosexual college-educated youths who, secular and single, also have disproportionate influence in the Democratic Party.
At times, it was especially obvious how much the Democrats had changed. Nancy Wohlforth of the AFL-CIO addressed the caucus on Wednesday, trying to muster support for labor. Her pandering was blatant, going so far as to endorse “trans-inclusive” anti-discrimination legislation.
Yet her audience’s reaction generally ranged from indifference to rudeness. About four dozen caucus members, media, and guests were mulling about near the entrance to the ballroom, chatting as if no one were speaking. This peeved me to no end, not only because I was trying to record the session on a voice recorder, but because it was to my mind a clear affront to the Democrats’ blue collar past.
Wohlforth’s remarks received the applause of perhaps one-fourth of the delegates. The response was so tepid that a few attendees in the back engaged in frenzied, over-loud handclapping with the futile hope of inspiring a widespread response.
None came. They were saving their fawning adulation for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Thinking how my Democratic forebears would respond to the rise of the LGBT Caucus was nauseating. Caucus speakers’ allusions to a Wednesday party sponsored by the Stonewall Democrats prompted in me yearnings for a renewed Vice Squad.
At the entrance to the Wednesday meeting somebody was handing out free packs of “Gay Republican” playing cards. Fearing them to be pornographic, I declined, which was not the best example of journalistic instincts.
(Fortunately, a Google search reveals, the card decks only describe, not depict, the unnatural acts of GOP partisans.)
On Monday, Chairman Stafford made a particular point of praising one speaker as the “best dressed person here,” which was again unfounded flattery. As I observed from the rear of the ballroom, the person was dressed in a drab brown business dress with wide shoulders and ugly glasses, looking like a character from a bad eighties movie.
Later, as this person conversed with someone near me, I realized he was that queer sort known in current parlance as “transgendered.” His dress’ broad shoulders masked those of a man.
Another example came before me on Wednesday when, still puzzled over that blatantly false “best dressed” description, I noticed a homely woman with frizzy blonde hair, a pea-green skirt, and an ugly blouse with a rainbow butterfly-like pattern set on a black background.
Yes, he was another one.
Even I could tell this person had the fashion sense of an insensate male. I have better sartorial taste than transgendered DNC delegates. Who knew?
As the song goes, “Dude Look Like a Lady,” but not very well.
It seems male to female transgendereds are mockeries, a man's idea of how a woman should look, somewhat like the way a porn star or a Playboy Bunny are distortions of femininity. So, too, will same-sex marriage parody and distort the real thing.
Yet these wannabe walking parodies are now an influential element in a once great party.
How saddening.
Also at the DNC:
Faith Caucus
Women's Caucus
LGBT Caucus
Democrats for Life Town Hall
Even so, it was surprising how some speakers played to the melodramatic stereotypes attributed to their members. Caucus Chairman Rick Stafford flatteringly but falsely declared the caucus the “best dressed” at the convention. His announcement that Ben Affleck had donated 25 VIP badges for the Starz Green Room prompted some attendees to bolt to the distribution like teenage girls in the throes of Beatlemania.
One actor from the X-Men movie, I believe it was “Nightcrawler” Alan Cumming, also put in an appearance and was acknowledged by the chairman.
Monday marked not only the first caucus, but also the birthday of Stafford.
Relieved at the opportunity to show charity towards a faction I hold in such low regard, I was happy to join in singing “Happy Birthday.”
The happiness was fleeting.
As I mentioned before, Colorado multi-millionaire Tim Gill described to the caucus his strategy for removing critics of his sex life from the political class. He targets any critics of gay rights at the state legislative levels, marshaling donors via Gill Action Fund mailing lists and so preventing his opponents from replenishing their talent pool.
Further commentary on Gill may be found at YourHub, where I note that every time Gill says “bigot” one may read the word “critic” without loss of information.
Gill's comments were also under-reported, finding mention only in the Rocky Mountain News but not in the Denver Post.
However, the likable GOP shill Hugh Hewitt linked to the story.
The LGBT caucus itself, whose Monday acts were reported here, claimed 274 members, about 6.7 percent of the 4,049 total. Speakers gleefully claimed that the number may not be accurate since more and more delegates were “coming out.”
There were a few allusions to the new changes to the DNC rules, though little that an outsider could understand.
Say what you will about the caucus, they sure know how to exploit multiculturalism. They claimed about one third of their 2008 caucus is composed of youth and about 40 percent were described as “people of color.” One speaker welcomed the changes from past convention caucuses, which he said had been “almost entirely white.”
Caucus speakers spoke of how necessary it was for caucus members to install themselves in the leadership of the other minority caucuses, showing they are well-positioned to cement their hold on the Democrats.
A minority LGBT is a diversity chimera whose identities may shift as politics demands. Further, the caucus adds to the power of the ethnic spoils system of affirmative action, identity politics, and anti-discrimination lawsuits. If they perceive other benefits, self-interested minorities may actually ally with and be co-opted by the LGBT caucus and its issues.
As people who are generally childless, LGBT caucus members have much time to sit on multiple committees and they have money on hand for political endeavors. Further, their sexual liberationism allies them with the dissolute, heterosexual college-educated youths who, secular and single, also have disproportionate influence in the Democratic Party.
At times, it was especially obvious how much the Democrats had changed. Nancy Wohlforth of the AFL-CIO addressed the caucus on Wednesday, trying to muster support for labor. Her pandering was blatant, going so far as to endorse “trans-inclusive” anti-discrimination legislation.
Yet her audience’s reaction generally ranged from indifference to rudeness. About four dozen caucus members, media, and guests were mulling about near the entrance to the ballroom, chatting as if no one were speaking. This peeved me to no end, not only because I was trying to record the session on a voice recorder, but because it was to my mind a clear affront to the Democrats’ blue collar past.
Wohlforth’s remarks received the applause of perhaps one-fourth of the delegates. The response was so tepid that a few attendees in the back engaged in frenzied, over-loud handclapping with the futile hope of inspiring a widespread response.
None came. They were saving their fawning adulation for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Thinking how my Democratic forebears would respond to the rise of the LGBT Caucus was nauseating. Caucus speakers’ allusions to a Wednesday party sponsored by the Stonewall Democrats prompted in me yearnings for a renewed Vice Squad.
At the entrance to the Wednesday meeting somebody was handing out free packs of “Gay Republican” playing cards. Fearing them to be pornographic, I declined, which was not the best example of journalistic instincts.
(Fortunately, a Google search reveals, the card decks only describe, not depict, the unnatural acts of GOP partisans.)
On Monday, Chairman Stafford made a particular point of praising one speaker as the “best dressed person here,” which was again unfounded flattery. As I observed from the rear of the ballroom, the person was dressed in a drab brown business dress with wide shoulders and ugly glasses, looking like a character from a bad eighties movie.
Later, as this person conversed with someone near me, I realized he was that queer sort known in current parlance as “transgendered.” His dress’ broad shoulders masked those of a man.
Another example came before me on Wednesday when, still puzzled over that blatantly false “best dressed” description, I noticed a homely woman with frizzy blonde hair, a pea-green skirt, and an ugly blouse with a rainbow butterfly-like pattern set on a black background.
Yes, he was another one.
Even I could tell this person had the fashion sense of an insensate male. I have better sartorial taste than transgendered DNC delegates. Who knew?
As the song goes, “Dude Look Like a Lady,” but not very well.
It seems male to female transgendereds are mockeries, a man's idea of how a woman should look, somewhat like the way a porn star or a Playboy Bunny are distortions of femininity. So, too, will same-sex marriage parody and distort the real thing.
Yet these wannabe walking parodies are now an influential element in a once great party.
How saddening.
Also at the DNC:
Faith Caucus
Women's Caucus
LGBT Caucus
Democrats for Life Town Hall
At the DNC: Democrats for Life Town Hall Meeting
The Democrats for Life Town Hall took place on Wednesday of the DNC week at the Hotel Monaco.
The room was small and had a seating capacity of perhaps sixty. Here is a picture taken from the second-to-last row:
Sadly, many of the seats were taken not by delegates but by media. E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post was present, as were Jonathan Last, Jim Antle, Tim Carney, and a few other journalists from conservative publications.
Perhaps this shows conservative journalists, or rather the readers they serve, are saps for the quixotic and compromised struggle of pro-life Democrats.
Three other seats were occupied by known locals, John Wren and his friend, plus a woman with the Colorado Catholic Conference.
Jonathan Last’s column contains a sad joke:
Before this cozy audience, speakers made an unseemly fuss about Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.’s speech to the DNC the previous evening in which he voiced disagreement with the party line on abortion. His two sentences were hardly compensatory for the speech his father, Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey, Sr., was barred from giving at the 1992 DNC.
Here’s what the junior Casey said:
“Barack Obama and I have an honest disagreement on the issue of abortion,” he said. “But the fact that I’m speaking here tonight is testament to Barack’s ability to show respect for the views of people who may disagree with him.”
Not impressive, that.
Also voicing much happy talk about how the new Democratic platform was so committed to reducing abortions, speakers’ gratitude for Casey’s speech sounded desperate, like that of a beaten wife who sees in one kind word from her incorrigible husband a sign of his sure reform.
The politicians who spoke included Tennessee Congressman Lincoln Davis, North Carolina Congressman Heath Shuler, and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.
Lincoln Davis’ remarks showed good political sense.
If Democrats continue to have only a “stark contrast” with the Republican platform, he said, “I think we start losing.”
There is “too much work to be done” to allow abortion to be “the one issue that takes us down,” Davis argued.
Also noteworthy is their view of the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which the priority-skewed Obama has pledged to push through Congress in his first act as president. The bill would reportedly remove all restrictions on abortion, including restrictions on partial-birth abortion and federal funding for abortion.
While Republicans have cited FOCA to stir up concern among their captive pro-life contingent, they rarely consider its likelihood of passage. Rep. Shuler said he did not see FOCA passing the House and Rep. Davis was confident it was not going to pass.
Sen. Bob Casey, the man of the hour, discussed the Pregnant Women Support Act and proposed supplying nurses or health care practitioners for pregnant mothers to provide health care advice and counsel.
He also admitted the DNC platform language on abortion “wasn’t good enough for me.”
Both Casey and pro-life Obama-booster Doug Kmiec had to address Obama’s most infamous statements on abortion.
Regarding Obama’s “punished with a baby” comments, Casey said the statement was “poorly articulated” and “didn’t reflect what he was trying to convey.”
He added that he believed Obama was trying to describe the crisis situation that afflicts some young women during a pregnancy.
Obama also notoriously commented at the Saddleback Church forum that deciding when a baby gets human rights is “above my pay grade.”
Fortunately, Doug Kmiec reported at the Faith Caucus that he himself informed Obama that he thinks that decision is within his pay grade.
However, Kmiec similarly described Obama’s words as an occasion of misspeaking and not the most “felicitous” of statements.”
For a candidate so praised for his eloquence, these repeated misstatements on abortion indicate a particular confusion, perhaps even dissimulation, on Obama’s part.
Other Democrats for Life town hall speakers included Colorado State Senator Debbie Stafford, a former Republican, who discussed the role of domestic violence in abortion cases. She described the sickening cases where a woman undergoes an abortion due to pressure and even abuse from her lover or where a man is threatened by a pregnant woman who uses the possibility of an abortion to punish and harass him.
Rev. Clenard Childress, pastor of the New Calvary Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey, rebuked the use of the cant saying that Democrats are great for the born, but Republicans only respect life from “conception to birth.”
“But because someone failed the first nine months, but then they do better the next nine months… does that make your failure justified?
“I don’t understand the analogy. Yes, I hear it all the time. ‘What about after the baby gets here?’
“Well if I need a grant, if I need an education, if I need help, I first have to get here,” he countered.
Rev. Childress also discussed the damage abortion is doing among African-American women, who disproportionately seek abortions.
“There’s too many women hurting,” he said, focusing upon the pro-life Democrats in the audience. “And the ethnic group that is hurting the most is the one that supports your party the most.”
Several non-politicians at the Town Hall provided commentary on policy proposals to reduce the numbers of abortions.
There, the results of a Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good study were presented, reputedly showing what policies affect the abortion rate.
Further, Vince Miller, a professor of theology at Georgetown University, argued that programs aimed at reducing abortions would help people “think like Democrats” by emphasizing how constructive governmental policy can help people in their daily lives. He also landed a few blows in his attacks upon the individualism of Republicans and their reduction of “values voting” to “expressions of identity” detached from concrete results.
Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University and member of the DNC platform committee, was the most provocative of the policy hounds.
“It’s fine to finance Planned Parenthood on the one side,” he asked, “but shouldn’t there be government funding for counseling centers that want to in fact help women, and counsel women, who want to bring their pregnancies to term?
“Shouldn’t there be financing on both sides if we’re going to have ‘parallel of choice’?”
This is a very seductive position that could end up being very destructive to either or both sides of the abortion debate. By linking crisis pregnancy center funding to funding for abortion clinics, pro-lifers could be given a perverse incentive to vote for more abortion clinic funding to help crisis pregnancy centers.
Campolo cited statistics claiming that 43 percent of Americans are pro-life, but 51 percent are pro-choice. This somewhat conflicts with Rep. Davis’ statistic that seventy percent believe abortion takes a life.
There is a degree of selectivity concerning which surveys one decides to cite. For all we know, some of the “pro-choice” people referenced by Campolo don’t approve of legalized abortion in most cases, while some of the pro-lifers make exceptions of their own.
Ought a survey ask whether people support overturning Roe v. Wade, the extremely permissive details of which are unknown to many, or ought a survey ask how strict abortion laws should be? Ought the survey focus its questions on the woman, her unborn child, or her abortionist?
Some pro-life Democrats may end up publicizing the survey results most pessimistic about anti-abortion sentiment, simply to provide rhetorical justification in support of their favored social programs. Worse, they may cite these statistics to be good partisans who justify not pressing for “divisive” legislation which restricts abortion.
Campolo’s sharpest criticism blamed the churches for not doing enough:
“The churches, the synagogues, and the mosques of America have not been able to convince their own constituencies on this issue.” Legislation and political action is “asking politicians to do what churches have failed to do.”
Too gleeful abortion advocates often note, sometimes even with sound evidence, that the abortion rate among Catholics is reportedly equal or in excess to that among non-Catholics.
At any rate, it is too high.
If a deacon, priest, or bishop preaches (or does not preach) against abortion only out of consideration for political effects, he is not addressing the root.
Rather, he must treat abortion as a temptation some in his congregation have faced, are facing, or will face. In our own pews are young men and women contemplating whether to abort: the youth group’s popular young man who is heading to a prestigious out-of-state college or the young woman who helps with the daycare could be facing that temptation without spiritual counsel.
Perhaps their parents, even the ones who attend daily Mass and sit on the parish council, are considering pressuring the pregnant girl to do the deed.
Such youths or their parents may have already lost their horror of such a sin. Exhorting them to vote pro-life is secondary to exhorting them not to go to the clinic.
And what, then, can the Democrats for Life do?
Other than run interference for Obama, bash Republicans, and pass one or two social programs, not very much. It can be hoped that a well-placed pro-life Democrat may help appoint as federal judges a few “Bob Caseys of the bench,” though Mark Stricherz tells me he is skeptical of this possibility.
The judiciary, not to mention the law school, needs moderate or conservative Democrats as anti-Roe critics who lack the “Republican baggage” but can perhaps check the Democrats’ cultural radicals whose overreach consistently helps the GOP and hurts the country.
I would be remiss if I did not include Tim Carney’s political analysis written for CNA during the convention.
To my regret, I only met Carney briefly at the town hall meeting. I didn’t even have a chance to tell him I liked his book.
Carney, a journalist with the Evans-Novak Report, remarks on the reaction to Biden’s selection as VP, discusses Doug Kmiec’s support for Obama, writes of Casey’s DNC floor speech and examines the Democrats’ abortion platform.
Also at the DNC:
Faith Caucus
Women's Caucus
LGBT Caucus
Democrats for Life Town Hall
The room was small and had a seating capacity of perhaps sixty. Here is a picture taken from the second-to-last row:
Sadly, many of the seats were taken not by delegates but by media. E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post was present, as were Jonathan Last, Jim Antle, Tim Carney, and a few other journalists from conservative publications.
Perhaps this shows conservative journalists, or rather the readers they serve, are saps for the quixotic and compromised struggle of pro-life Democrats.
Three other seats were occupied by known locals, John Wren and his friend, plus a woman with the Colorado Catholic Conference.
Jonathan Last’s column contains a sad joke:
Another reporter saw me counting [attendees] and asked how many anti-abortion Democrats were in attendance.
"All of them," I replied.
Before this cozy audience, speakers made an unseemly fuss about Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.’s speech to the DNC the previous evening in which he voiced disagreement with the party line on abortion. His two sentences were hardly compensatory for the speech his father, Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey, Sr., was barred from giving at the 1992 DNC.
Here’s what the junior Casey said:
“Barack Obama and I have an honest disagreement on the issue of abortion,” he said. “But the fact that I’m speaking here tonight is testament to Barack’s ability to show respect for the views of people who may disagree with him.”
Not impressive, that.
Also voicing much happy talk about how the new Democratic platform was so committed to reducing abortions, speakers’ gratitude for Casey’s speech sounded desperate, like that of a beaten wife who sees in one kind word from her incorrigible husband a sign of his sure reform.
The politicians who spoke included Tennessee Congressman Lincoln Davis, North Carolina Congressman Heath Shuler, and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.
Lincoln Davis’ remarks showed good political sense.
If Democrats continue to have only a “stark contrast” with the Republican platform, he said, “I think we start losing.”
There is “too much work to be done” to allow abortion to be “the one issue that takes us down,” Davis argued.
Also noteworthy is their view of the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which the priority-skewed Obama has pledged to push through Congress in his first act as president. The bill would reportedly remove all restrictions on abortion, including restrictions on partial-birth abortion and federal funding for abortion.
While Republicans have cited FOCA to stir up concern among their captive pro-life contingent, they rarely consider its likelihood of passage. Rep. Shuler said he did not see FOCA passing the House and Rep. Davis was confident it was not going to pass.
Sen. Bob Casey, the man of the hour, discussed the Pregnant Women Support Act and proposed supplying nurses or health care practitioners for pregnant mothers to provide health care advice and counsel.
He also admitted the DNC platform language on abortion “wasn’t good enough for me.”
Both Casey and pro-life Obama-booster Doug Kmiec had to address Obama’s most infamous statements on abortion.
Regarding Obama’s “punished with a baby” comments, Casey said the statement was “poorly articulated” and “didn’t reflect what he was trying to convey.”
He added that he believed Obama was trying to describe the crisis situation that afflicts some young women during a pregnancy.
Obama also notoriously commented at the Saddleback Church forum that deciding when a baby gets human rights is “above my pay grade.”
Fortunately, Doug Kmiec reported at the Faith Caucus that he himself informed Obama that he thinks that decision is within his pay grade.
However, Kmiec similarly described Obama’s words as an occasion of misspeaking and not the most “felicitous” of statements.”
For a candidate so praised for his eloquence, these repeated misstatements on abortion indicate a particular confusion, perhaps even dissimulation, on Obama’s part.
Other Democrats for Life town hall speakers included Colorado State Senator Debbie Stafford, a former Republican, who discussed the role of domestic violence in abortion cases. She described the sickening cases where a woman undergoes an abortion due to pressure and even abuse from her lover or where a man is threatened by a pregnant woman who uses the possibility of an abortion to punish and harass him.
Rev. Clenard Childress, pastor of the New Calvary Baptist Church in Montclair, New Jersey, rebuked the use of the cant saying that Democrats are great for the born, but Republicans only respect life from “conception to birth.”
“But because someone failed the first nine months, but then they do better the next nine months… does that make your failure justified?
“I don’t understand the analogy. Yes, I hear it all the time. ‘What about after the baby gets here?’
“Well if I need a grant, if I need an education, if I need help, I first have to get here,” he countered.
Rev. Childress also discussed the damage abortion is doing among African-American women, who disproportionately seek abortions.
“There’s too many women hurting,” he said, focusing upon the pro-life Democrats in the audience. “And the ethnic group that is hurting the most is the one that supports your party the most.”
Several non-politicians at the Town Hall provided commentary on policy proposals to reduce the numbers of abortions.
There, the results of a Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good study were presented, reputedly showing what policies affect the abortion rate.
Further, Vince Miller, a professor of theology at Georgetown University, argued that programs aimed at reducing abortions would help people “think like Democrats” by emphasizing how constructive governmental policy can help people in their daily lives. He also landed a few blows in his attacks upon the individualism of Republicans and their reduction of “values voting” to “expressions of identity” detached from concrete results.
Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University and member of the DNC platform committee, was the most provocative of the policy hounds.
“It’s fine to finance Planned Parenthood on the one side,” he asked, “but shouldn’t there be government funding for counseling centers that want to in fact help women, and counsel women, who want to bring their pregnancies to term?
“Shouldn’t there be financing on both sides if we’re going to have ‘parallel of choice’?”
This is a very seductive position that could end up being very destructive to either or both sides of the abortion debate. By linking crisis pregnancy center funding to funding for abortion clinics, pro-lifers could be given a perverse incentive to vote for more abortion clinic funding to help crisis pregnancy centers.
Campolo cited statistics claiming that 43 percent of Americans are pro-life, but 51 percent are pro-choice. This somewhat conflicts with Rep. Davis’ statistic that seventy percent believe abortion takes a life.
There is a degree of selectivity concerning which surveys one decides to cite. For all we know, some of the “pro-choice” people referenced by Campolo don’t approve of legalized abortion in most cases, while some of the pro-lifers make exceptions of their own.
Ought a survey ask whether people support overturning Roe v. Wade, the extremely permissive details of which are unknown to many, or ought a survey ask how strict abortion laws should be? Ought the survey focus its questions on the woman, her unborn child, or her abortionist?
Some pro-life Democrats may end up publicizing the survey results most pessimistic about anti-abortion sentiment, simply to provide rhetorical justification in support of their favored social programs. Worse, they may cite these statistics to be good partisans who justify not pressing for “divisive” legislation which restricts abortion.
Campolo’s sharpest criticism blamed the churches for not doing enough:
“The churches, the synagogues, and the mosques of America have not been able to convince their own constituencies on this issue.” Legislation and political action is “asking politicians to do what churches have failed to do.”
Too gleeful abortion advocates often note, sometimes even with sound evidence, that the abortion rate among Catholics is reportedly equal or in excess to that among non-Catholics.
At any rate, it is too high.
If a deacon, priest, or bishop preaches (or does not preach) against abortion only out of consideration for political effects, he is not addressing the root.
Rather, he must treat abortion as a temptation some in his congregation have faced, are facing, or will face. In our own pews are young men and women contemplating whether to abort: the youth group’s popular young man who is heading to a prestigious out-of-state college or the young woman who helps with the daycare could be facing that temptation without spiritual counsel.
Perhaps their parents, even the ones who attend daily Mass and sit on the parish council, are considering pressuring the pregnant girl to do the deed.
Such youths or their parents may have already lost their horror of such a sin. Exhorting them to vote pro-life is secondary to exhorting them not to go to the clinic.
And what, then, can the Democrats for Life do?
Other than run interference for Obama, bash Republicans, and pass one or two social programs, not very much. It can be hoped that a well-placed pro-life Democrat may help appoint as federal judges a few “Bob Caseys of the bench,” though Mark Stricherz tells me he is skeptical of this possibility.
The judiciary, not to mention the law school, needs moderate or conservative Democrats as anti-Roe critics who lack the “Republican baggage” but can perhaps check the Democrats’ cultural radicals whose overreach consistently helps the GOP and hurts the country.
I would be remiss if I did not include Tim Carney’s political analysis written for CNA during the convention.
To my regret, I only met Carney briefly at the town hall meeting. I didn’t even have a chance to tell him I liked his book.
Carney, a journalist with the Evans-Novak Report, remarks on the reaction to Biden’s selection as VP, discusses Doug Kmiec’s support for Obama, writes of Casey’s DNC floor speech and examines the Democrats’ abortion platform.
Also at the DNC:
Faith Caucus
Women's Caucus
LGBT Caucus
Democrats for Life Town Hall
Thursday, September 25, 2008
An implicit schism?
Michael Brendan Dougherty, writing at the promising new site Culture 11, considers why there has not been a schism in the U.S. Catholic Church in his short essay A Schism Deferred
At first the question appears unwarranted. Though one still hears of “AmChurch” in traditionalist Catholic magazines, there is no organized impetus for a split.
Dougherty helps explain why.
Liberal Catholics, he writes, “find their most powerful allies in the hierarchy of the Church... the New York archdiocese alone has over 110 different offices, with some organs of Church bureaucracy dedicated to immigrants, others to diversity, and others still to the promotion of social justice.”
One could add that liberal Catholics of an activist bent also find congenial ground on colleges in the Catholic tradition.
It should not be said that all liberal Catholics are heretical. But those who are must ask themselves: why break away from an institution when we already run it?
“Conservatives, political and theological, tend to be an insurgent force in the Church, establishing new institutions rather than occupying old ones,” Dougherty points out. Just as political conservatives left the media and the academy short of conservatives by establishing their own think tanks and journals (admittedly sometimes because establishment hostility forced them to do so), new conservative or orthodox Catholic groups and journals sometimes leave the established chancery bureaucracies, the charitable foundations, and the Catholic universities to the liberals.
Perhaps they are content with their own fiefdoms of uniformity.
I had taken solace that dissenting groups like Call to Action are aging and powerless. Under Dougherty’s analysis, we see that such groups are merely superfluous. Their needs for networking and information-sharing are served by the faculty lounges or the national conferences for liturgists or catechists. Dissenting ideologies are all the more effective in these organizations when they have become taken for granted.
At first the question appears unwarranted. Though one still hears of “AmChurch” in traditionalist Catholic magazines, there is no organized impetus for a split.
Dougherty helps explain why.
Liberal Catholics, he writes, “find their most powerful allies in the hierarchy of the Church... the New York archdiocese alone has over 110 different offices, with some organs of Church bureaucracy dedicated to immigrants, others to diversity, and others still to the promotion of social justice.”
One could add that liberal Catholics of an activist bent also find congenial ground on colleges in the Catholic tradition.
It should not be said that all liberal Catholics are heretical. But those who are must ask themselves: why break away from an institution when we already run it?
“Conservatives, political and theological, tend to be an insurgent force in the Church, establishing new institutions rather than occupying old ones,” Dougherty points out. Just as political conservatives left the media and the academy short of conservatives by establishing their own think tanks and journals (admittedly sometimes because establishment hostility forced them to do so), new conservative or orthodox Catholic groups and journals sometimes leave the established chancery bureaucracies, the charitable foundations, and the Catholic universities to the liberals.
Perhaps they are content with their own fiefdoms of uniformity.
I had taken solace that dissenting groups like Call to Action are aging and powerless. Under Dougherty’s analysis, we see that such groups are merely superfluous. Their needs for networking and information-sharing are served by the faculty lounges or the national conferences for liturgists or catechists. Dissenting ideologies are all the more effective in these organizations when they have become taken for granted.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Democrats for Life talk policy and politics at the DNC
(A mix-up at CNA meant this story wasn't entered for timely publication, so I am publishing it here)
Denver –
Self-professed pro-life Democratic legislators, candidates, and other speakers addressed a Democrats for Life town hall meeting in a Denver hotel last Wednesday during the Democratic National Convention (DNC). During the meeting academics and policy experts stressed the need to find “common ground” with pro-choice Democrats and advocated programs they believed would “dramatically” reduce the abortion rate.
One speaker even argued that abortion reduction programs would help people “think like Democrats.”
Kristin Day, President of Democrats for Life, introduced the town hall.
“The debate regarding the legality of abortion has gone on for far too long,” she told the audience of more than sixty guests and journalists.
“But we all agree that we can do more to decrease the abortion rate by preventing unintended pregnancies, but also by providing support for pregnant women.”
Speakers included Alexia Kelley, co-founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good; Vince Miller, a professor of theology at Georgetown University; and Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University.
They were joined by several politicians and other speakers, including Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.
Kelley began the town hall meeting by summarizing the findings of a national abortion study commissioned by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to address a “dearth of data” on how economic and social support affect the abortion rate.
According to Kelley, the study found that women under the poverty level are four times as likely to seek an abortion as women living at three hundred percent of the poverty level. Three fourths of women who seek abortions cite childcare, job or school as a factor for pursuing an abortion.
The study argues that “better-targeted policy” would help reduce the abortion rate. “Robust nutrition support” for women and children correlated with a 37 percent lower abortion rate, while states with higher male employment had a 29 percent lower abortion rate. Family caps on economic assistance increased the abortion rate, as did Medicaid funding for abortions.
Parental consent laws and partial birth abortion bans were not found to have a significant effect on the abortion rate during the study's time period.
Based on 2003 data, the study projects that removing caps on income assistance and removing Medicaid funding for abortions could lead to 300,000 fewer abortions per year.
Vince Miller discussed both practical and theological concerns, claiming that abortion reduction is not simply voter outreach. It is additionally a set of political proposals that gets voters to “think like Democrats” by emphasizing how constructive governmental policy can help people in their daily lives.
Turning to Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Miller charged Republicans with applying “significant editing” to the document to support their political views.
He said that, though the encyclical laments in conservative fashion the “cultural crisis of relativism,” it also criticizes a “social context of profound individualism” in which, in John Paul II’s words, “individuals, couples and families are often left alone with their problems.”
“There are situations of acute poverty, anxiety or frustration in which the struggle to make ends meet, the presence of unbearable pain, or instances of violence, especially against women, make the choice to defend and promote life so demanding as sometimes to reach the point of heroism,” the Pope continued, going on to encourage the advancement of “effective family and social policy.”
Including comprehensive abortion reduction policies in the Democratic platform, Miller said, was a “monumental achievement,” though he conceded that their language is the “language of the negotiation table” and requires “positive policy proposals.”
He charged Republicans with eroding “the notion that government can do anything,” saying they have “carved out one area of government activity, the so-called ‘values issues’ of abortion and same-sex marriage.” However, the delay of the Republicans’ victory on those issues has seen “values voting reduced to expressions of identity.”
Alluding to Democratic efforts to present themselves as equally religious to Republicans, Miller said abortion reduction proposals are not an opportunity for Democrats to say “we have values too,” but rather the proposed programs enable voters to think through the “difficult question” of connecting their moral concerns to “concrete policy.”
Tony Campolo, who served on the platform committee, said platform struggles in the weeks leading up to the convention were “intense” because, in his view, “I don’t think we’ve done a very good job educating people that we don’t have to be enemies, that we can work together.”
“It’s fine to finance Planned Parenthood on the one side, but shouldn’t there be government funding for counseling centers that want to in fact help women, and counsel women, who want to bring their pregnancies to term?
“Shouldn’t there be financing on both sides if we’re going to have ‘parallel of choice’?”
Campolo said that “parallel of choice” is going to be a phrase increasingly used to argue for balance between policies presuming abortion is a valid choice and policies that encourage women to carry their child to term.
Arguing that his inclusion on the party platform was a deliberate indication of the diversity of viewpoints, Campolo exclaimed: “We are not a monolithic party, we have various points of view, and we want to be a party in which those various views are articulated.”
Campolo said he was chosen for the party platform committee by Howard Dean because Dean thought the pro-life point of view needed representation.
“He chose me because I screamed at him, literally, on one occasion, about this matter. And he said to me ‘You need to be on the platform committee, because the party needs to have this value system incorporated into the platform.’ And that’s how I got on the committee,” Campolo explained.
Campolo cited statistics claiming that 43 percent of Americans are pro-life, but 51 percent are pro-choice.
“The churches, the synagogues, and the mosques of America have not been able to convince their own constituencies on this issue.”
The Republican Party, Campolo alleged, in fact believes most Americans are pro-choice and while it professes pro-life stands, its members will not overturn Roe v. Wade if most Americans are actually pro-choice.
By relying too much on legislation and political action, he said, pro-lifers are “asking politicians to do what churches have failed to do.”
Summarizing a conversation with Bill Clinton, he said: “If we have a pro-life president, America moves to the left. If we have a pro-choice president, America moves to the right.”
“So I’m thinking,” Campolo added, “if we have a pro-choice president, we’ll be moving in the right direction.”
Denver –
Self-professed pro-life Democratic legislators, candidates, and other speakers addressed a Democrats for Life town hall meeting in a Denver hotel last Wednesday during the Democratic National Convention (DNC). During the meeting academics and policy experts stressed the need to find “common ground” with pro-choice Democrats and advocated programs they believed would “dramatically” reduce the abortion rate.
One speaker even argued that abortion reduction programs would help people “think like Democrats.”
Kristin Day, President of Democrats for Life, introduced the town hall.
“The debate regarding the legality of abortion has gone on for far too long,” she told the audience of more than sixty guests and journalists.
“But we all agree that we can do more to decrease the abortion rate by preventing unintended pregnancies, but also by providing support for pregnant women.”
Speakers included Alexia Kelley, co-founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good; Vince Miller, a professor of theology at Georgetown University; and Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University.
They were joined by several politicians and other speakers, including Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.
Kelley began the town hall meeting by summarizing the findings of a national abortion study commissioned by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to address a “dearth of data” on how economic and social support affect the abortion rate.
According to Kelley, the study found that women under the poverty level are four times as likely to seek an abortion as women living at three hundred percent of the poverty level. Three fourths of women who seek abortions cite childcare, job or school as a factor for pursuing an abortion.
The study argues that “better-targeted policy” would help reduce the abortion rate. “Robust nutrition support” for women and children correlated with a 37 percent lower abortion rate, while states with higher male employment had a 29 percent lower abortion rate. Family caps on economic assistance increased the abortion rate, as did Medicaid funding for abortions.
Parental consent laws and partial birth abortion bans were not found to have a significant effect on the abortion rate during the study's time period.
Based on 2003 data, the study projects that removing caps on income assistance and removing Medicaid funding for abortions could lead to 300,000 fewer abortions per year.
Vince Miller discussed both practical and theological concerns, claiming that abortion reduction is not simply voter outreach. It is additionally a set of political proposals that gets voters to “think like Democrats” by emphasizing how constructive governmental policy can help people in their daily lives.
Turning to Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Miller charged Republicans with applying “significant editing” to the document to support their political views.
He said that, though the encyclical laments in conservative fashion the “cultural crisis of relativism,” it also criticizes a “social context of profound individualism” in which, in John Paul II’s words, “individuals, couples and families are often left alone with their problems.”
“There are situations of acute poverty, anxiety or frustration in which the struggle to make ends meet, the presence of unbearable pain, or instances of violence, especially against women, make the choice to defend and promote life so demanding as sometimes to reach the point of heroism,” the Pope continued, going on to encourage the advancement of “effective family and social policy.”
Including comprehensive abortion reduction policies in the Democratic platform, Miller said, was a “monumental achievement,” though he conceded that their language is the “language of the negotiation table” and requires “positive policy proposals.”
He charged Republicans with eroding “the notion that government can do anything,” saying they have “carved out one area of government activity, the so-called ‘values issues’ of abortion and same-sex marriage.” However, the delay of the Republicans’ victory on those issues has seen “values voting reduced to expressions of identity.”
Alluding to Democratic efforts to present themselves as equally religious to Republicans, Miller said abortion reduction proposals are not an opportunity for Democrats to say “we have values too,” but rather the proposed programs enable voters to think through the “difficult question” of connecting their moral concerns to “concrete policy.”
Tony Campolo, who served on the platform committee, said platform struggles in the weeks leading up to the convention were “intense” because, in his view, “I don’t think we’ve done a very good job educating people that we don’t have to be enemies, that we can work together.”
“It’s fine to finance Planned Parenthood on the one side, but shouldn’t there be government funding for counseling centers that want to in fact help women, and counsel women, who want to bring their pregnancies to term?
“Shouldn’t there be financing on both sides if we’re going to have ‘parallel of choice’?”
Campolo said that “parallel of choice” is going to be a phrase increasingly used to argue for balance between policies presuming abortion is a valid choice and policies that encourage women to carry their child to term.
Arguing that his inclusion on the party platform was a deliberate indication of the diversity of viewpoints, Campolo exclaimed: “We are not a monolithic party, we have various points of view, and we want to be a party in which those various views are articulated.”
Campolo said he was chosen for the party platform committee by Howard Dean because Dean thought the pro-life point of view needed representation.
“He chose me because I screamed at him, literally, on one occasion, about this matter. And he said to me ‘You need to be on the platform committee, because the party needs to have this value system incorporated into the platform.’ And that’s how I got on the committee,” Campolo explained.
Campolo cited statistics claiming that 43 percent of Americans are pro-life, but 51 percent are pro-choice.
“The churches, the synagogues, and the mosques of America have not been able to convince their own constituencies on this issue.”
The Republican Party, Campolo alleged, in fact believes most Americans are pro-choice and while it professes pro-life stands, its members will not overturn Roe v. Wade if most Americans are actually pro-choice.
By relying too much on legislation and political action, he said, pro-lifers are “asking politicians to do what churches have failed to do.”
Summarizing a conversation with Bill Clinton, he said: “If we have a pro-life president, America moves to the left. If we have a pro-choice president, America moves to the right.”
“So I’m thinking,” Campolo added, “if we have a pro-choice president, we’ll be moving in the right direction.”
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
I, DNC credentialed reporter...
This week will certainly be a rush, as I was approved for DNC press credentials as part of Catholic News Agency at very late notice. So late that we have had very little preparation time, so leads are welcome either in the comments or at my new e-mail at (PR.joneskevinj) over at, let's distract the spammers, gmail.com.
I have already suffered through the LGBT Caucus, where Tim Gill conveniently provided to all hearers a synopsis of his $150 million dollar-tossing strategy to eradicate lawmakers and laws which disapprove of his sexual behavior.
Certain pro-life Democrat events are also on my schedule. Perhaps I'll even run into Jill Stanek.
And, reader, have you heard about the 5,000-strong Latino pro-family rally? Me neither.
Limping around LoDo during convention time is sure to be memorable, despite the incessant boosterism of the political convention.
There is a treatise to be written on the transient brevity similar to protesters' signs and e-mail spam. This hypothetical document could cite Alisdair MacIntyre's remarks on protest and emotivism. What do these people praising peace, anarchy, or Fox News hope to accomplish besides appearing in a digital photo to be forgotten with haste?
Further, someone must explain to the Washington Post that few people in Denver actually have an "inferiority complex" in comparison to other cities. Most of us, if we even bother, just affect inferiority to flatter people from back east, who after all are our guests.
(I include my picture in case any of my internet acquaintances happen to be in town.)
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A new blog about the New Catholic Politics
Mark Stricherz has set up a new blog, New Catholic Politics, where we are sure to find insighful commentary on the progress (and plights) of Catholic Democrats in particular and American life in general.
He describes the purpose of his site thusly:
Would that these diagnoses and ideals were more obvious to everyone!
While he says that his political content will as much as possible be rooted in the principles of the natural law, I hope he retains the political realism which marked his analysis of Why the Democrats are Blue.
It's worth highlighting some of Stricherz's remarks on the prospective Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Sticherz notes that even though many commenters are hastily presuming Sen. Casey will address pro-life concerns, the content of his speech is not confirmed. He suggests the Casey lecture is a "trial balloon" to test pro-choice activists' reaction.
Further, Stricherz makes a necessary sally against the wishful thinking of pro-life Democrats:
Stark but true.
Note that Stricherz will be speaking at the Archdiocese of Denver on September 23.
He describes the purpose of his site thusly:
This site seeks to uphold the three cardinal virtues: faith, hope, and love. It believes that those virtues are under attack from three sources: secularism, elitism, and relativism. We Americans have too little faith and are too materialistic and individualistic. We ought to be more faith-filled, family-oriented, and civic minded.
Would that these diagnoses and ideals were more obvious to everyone!
While he says that his political content will as much as possible be rooted in the principles of the natural law, I hope he retains the political realism which marked his analysis of Why the Democrats are Blue.
It's worth highlighting some of Stricherz's remarks on the prospective Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Sticherz notes that even though many commenters are hastily presuming Sen. Casey will address pro-life concerns, the content of his speech is not confirmed. He suggests the Casey lecture is a "trial balloon" to test pro-choice activists' reaction.
Further, Stricherz makes a necessary sally against the wishful thinking of pro-life Democrats:
“I think that pro-lifers in the Democratic Party are naïve,” he said. “They don’t seem to realize the power of the abortion industry and the feminists in the party. At least publicly, pro-life Democrats’ rhetoric says ‘the party can change if it just does a few things’.”
“No,” Stricherz countered, “the party has to negotiate with the feminists and the abortion industry, and those folks have no interest in negotiating. They’ve got what they want.”
Stark but true.
Note that Stricherz will be speaking at the Archdiocese of Denver on September 23.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
A backgrounder on Russia, Georgia and South Ossetia
With the American media focused upon the smog problem in Beijing and the bright, shiny medal objects soon to be awarded to athletes there, the escalation of the Russia-Georgia conflict on the eve of the Olympics took many by surprise.
Fortunately Stratfor.com provides an informative overview of the recent action, concentrating especially upon the puzzling and provocative opening move of Georgia into South Ossetia:
"Intelligence failure" is in the race for the worst and most oft-repeated euphemism of the early twenty-first century.
Perhaps successful diplomacy never makes the news, leaving only obvious failures in the public eye.
However, the repeated disasters of oblivious American foreign policy are highly dispiriting.
Fortunately Stratfor.com provides an informative overview of the recent action, concentrating especially upon the puzzling and provocative opening move of Georgia into South Ossetia:
It is inconceivable that the Americans were unaware of Georgia’s mobilization and intentions. It is also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the Russians had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian frontier. U.S. technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals intelligence to unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that thousands of Russian troops were moving to forward positions. The Russians clearly knew the Georgians were ready to move. How could the United States not be aware of the Russians? Indeed, given the posture of Russian troops, how could intelligence analysts have missed the possibility that the Russians had laid a trap, hoping for a Georgian invasion to justify its own counterattack?
It is very difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against U.S. wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States, and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities. The first is a massive breakdown in intelligence, in which the United States either was unaware of the existence of Russian forces, or knew of the Russian forces but — along with the Georgians — miscalculated Russia’s intentions. The second is that the United States, along with other countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when the Russian military was in shambles and the Russian government was paralyzed.
[...]
Putin revealed an open secret: While the United States is tied down in the Middle East, American guarantees have no value. This lesson is not for American consumption.
[...]
The Russians knew the United States would denounce their attack. This actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior leaders are, the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk.
"Intelligence failure" is in the race for the worst and most oft-repeated euphemism of the early twenty-first century.
Perhaps successful diplomacy never makes the news, leaving only obvious failures in the public eye.
However, the repeated disasters of oblivious American foreign policy are highly dispiriting.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Fred Barnes examines Colorado's new left-wing thinktanks
Fred Barnes has written a passable report in the Weekly Standard on the progress of left-leaning think tanks in Colorado. Barnes repeats the accusation that the prominent ColoradoPols.com blog suckles at the Democratic teat, an accusation which the blog owners have repeatedly denied.
However, he voices some plausible comments on the synergy created between like-minded partisan groups who can create an echo-chamber in the news:
His examination of wealthy homosexual Democrats' targeting of social conservatives also lines up with other reports.
Barnes rightly notes that the flood of money offers an excuse for Republicans' "tailspin," but also suggests social conservative concerns face enemies within their own party:
While an out-of-state pundit's insight into Colorado affairs is questionable, it is significant that Schaffer himself has backed away from Proposition 48, an idealistic but premature endeavor whose collection of over 100,000 signatures was a surprise to many.
Missing from Barnes' analysis is consideration of the factions involved in local politics and whether these well-funded think tanks do more than provide commercial spam and employment opportunities for college-educated partisans.
Ethics Watch, for instance, looks to be targeting intra-party enemies of a certain set of Democratic leaders to provide a facade of even-handedness to its vendettas. It is doubtful Denver City Auditor Dennis Gallagher would have appeared on their "rogues' gallery" of allegedly most corrupt public officials had the trustworthy Gallagher not made enemies among the Denver establishment during his tenure as a Denver city councilman. Gallagher's enemies only increased when he exposed the patronage jobs of Mayor Wellington Webb's administration.
Perhaps Barnes' largest flaw, however, rests in his obliviousness to Colorado's demographic change. He writes as though he believes well-funded scribbling can win elections.
However, he voices some plausible comments on the synergy created between like-minded partisan groups who can create an echo-chamber in the news:
It works quite simply. The investigative arm uncovers some alleged wrongdoing by a Republican candidate or official or plays up what someone else has claimed. Then Ethics Watch steps in and demands an official investigation, and ProgressNowAction.org jumps on the story. This is synergy at work. It spurs political chatter. Finally, the mainstream media are forced to report on it.
His examination of wealthy homosexual Democrats' targeting of social conservatives also lines up with other reports.
Barnes rightly notes that the flood of money offers an excuse for Republicans' "tailspin," but also suggests social conservative concerns face enemies within their own party:
Absent the Democratic headwind, [Senate candidate Bob] Schaffer would have a reasonable chance of winning. But his prospects could be further hampered by an antiabortion referendum on the ballot this November declaring that life begins at conception. If abortion becomes a major issue, Schaffer, who is pro-life, might lose the votes of suburban Republican women.
While an out-of-state pundit's insight into Colorado affairs is questionable, it is significant that Schaffer himself has backed away from Proposition 48, an idealistic but premature endeavor whose collection of over 100,000 signatures was a surprise to many.
Missing from Barnes' analysis is consideration of the factions involved in local politics and whether these well-funded think tanks do more than provide commercial spam and employment opportunities for college-educated partisans.
Ethics Watch, for instance, looks to be targeting intra-party enemies of a certain set of Democratic leaders to provide a facade of even-handedness to its vendettas. It is doubtful Denver City Auditor Dennis Gallagher would have appeared on their "rogues' gallery" of allegedly most corrupt public officials had the trustworthy Gallagher not made enemies among the Denver establishment during his tenure as a Denver city councilman. Gallagher's enemies only increased when he exposed the patronage jobs of Mayor Wellington Webb's administration.
Perhaps Barnes' largest flaw, however, rests in his obliviousness to Colorado's demographic change. He writes as though he believes well-funded scribbling can win elections.
PickAFig: social bookmarking for Catholics
PickAFig.com aims to be the digg for Catholic matters.
Best of luck to them. These clones often run into trouble and go extinct. Perhaps this is because their focus is too narrow or because their target audience is already using their model and sees no need for a duplicate.
Further, those who make a niche-targeted version of a more popular site often lack that novelty, creativity and dedication which made their model succeed.
In less than a week of operation, PickAFig has picked up about 80 registered users. A good start, but not enough.
Best of luck to them. These clones often run into trouble and go extinct. Perhaps this is because their focus is too narrow or because their target audience is already using their model and sees no need for a duplicate.
Further, those who make a niche-targeted version of a more popular site often lack that novelty, creativity and dedication which made their model succeed.
In less than a week of operation, PickAFig has picked up about 80 registered users. A good start, but not enough.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Graham Greene's story of a failed Eucharistic desecration
The horrific actions of Paul Zachary Myers are shocking, but alas they are not new. You see, Myers' character was ably described and, to a point, explained in a short story written decades ago by Graham Greene: The Hint of an Explanation.
In the story a Catholic man, while discussing religion with the agnostic narrator, recounts his youth as an altar boy when the village atheist, a baker named Blacker, tried to bribe his ten-year-old self into providing a consecrated Host.
Greene captures in his art the qualities, or lack thereof, possessed by the vehement atheist. See his familiar-sounding description of Blacker:
Even Blacker's words prefigure Myers' own:
Tolle legge, take and read.
(Found via this comment at the blog What's Wrong with the World)
In the story a Catholic man, while discussing religion with the agnostic narrator, recounts his youth as an altar boy when the village atheist, a baker named Blacker, tried to bribe his ten-year-old self into providing a consecrated Host.
Greene captures in his art the qualities, or lack thereof, possessed by the vehement atheist. See his familiar-sounding description of Blacker:
"There was much more hate than love, poor man, in his make-up. Can you hate something you don't believe in? And yet he called himself a free-thinker. What an impossible paradox, to be free and to be so obsessed."
Even Blacker's words prefigure Myers' own:
"'What's the fuss? It's only a bit of bread' [Blacker said,] looking so longingly and pleadingly up at me that even as a child I wondered whether he could really think that, and yet desire it so much."
Tolle legge, take and read.
(Found via this comment at the blog What's Wrong with the World)
Christine Hefner: Playboy's Obama booster
The infamous Obama caricature on the cover of the New Yorker has attracted more attention than the essay it was meant to publicize.
That is a shame, because the story well explores Obama’s rise through Chicago politics and helps dispel the different notions that Obama is an otherworldly naïf or the idealist we have been waiting for. Essay author Ryan Lizza lays out Obama's political calculations and explains his contacts in enough detail to appeal to any budding political scientist.
This passage in particular shows how deeply sexual liberationism has embedded itself in the Democratic Party:
While I think social conservatives are far too often exhorted to "change the culture" before attempting even defensive political action, here's a key example of how the erosion of cultural shame surrounding the pornography industry has crippled a political response. Were an aspiring Chicago politician to challenge obscene businesses, he would cut himself off from this powerbroker and her friends.
Further, it is naive to expect the pornography industry to make billions of dollars annually but never spend its money on politics. Any opponent of such a candidate could instantly attract a significant donation from the Caddish Businessmen's Association, almost by default.
The would-be crusader, finding that the lack of a financial interest in combating obscenity has hindered his campaign, must soften his stand or, having already cut himself off from certain elites, he now would have to rally much more local support than he otherwise would require.
Which do you think is the easier path?
That is a shame, because the story well explores Obama’s rise through Chicago politics and helps dispel the different notions that Obama is an otherworldly naïf or the idealist we have been waiting for. Essay author Ryan Lizza lays out Obama's political calculations and explains his contacts in enough detail to appeal to any budding political scientist.
This passage in particular shows how deeply sexual liberationism has embedded itself in the Democratic Party:
In electoral politics, operating in the world as it is means raising money. Obama expanded the reach of his fund-raising. Every network that he penetrated brought him access to another. Christie Hefner, Hugh Hefner’s daughter, who runs Playboy Enterprises from the fifteenth floor of a lakefront building, explained how it worked. Hefner is a member of a group called Ladies Who Lunch—nineteen Chicago women, most of them wealthy, who see themselves as talent scouts and angel investors for up-and-coming liberal candidates and activists. They interview prospects over a meal, often in a private dining room at the Arts Club of Chicago. Obama’s friend Bettylu Saltzman, a Ladies Who Lunch member, introduced Obama to the group when he was preparing his Senate run. Hefner, who declined to support Obama in 2000, was ready to help him when he came calling in 2002.
Not long ago, Hefner and I talked in her office; we were seated at a granite table strewn with copies of Playboy. “I was very proud to be able to introduce him during the Senate race to a lot of people who have turned out to be important and valuable to him, not just here but in New York and L.A.,” Hefner explained. She mentioned Thomas Friedman, the Times columnist, and Norman Lear, the television producer. “I try and think about people who I think should know him.”
While I think social conservatives are far too often exhorted to "change the culture" before attempting even defensive political action, here's a key example of how the erosion of cultural shame surrounding the pornography industry has crippled a political response. Were an aspiring Chicago politician to challenge obscene businesses, he would cut himself off from this powerbroker and her friends.
Further, it is naive to expect the pornography industry to make billions of dollars annually but never spend its money on politics. Any opponent of such a candidate could instantly attract a significant donation from the Caddish Businessmen's Association, almost by default.
The would-be crusader, finding that the lack of a financial interest in combating obscenity has hindered his campaign, must soften his stand or, having already cut himself off from certain elites, he now would have to rally much more local support than he otherwise would require.
Which do you think is the easier path?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Academic freedom means never having to say you’re sorry, P.Z. Myers thinks
P.Z . Myers’ encouragement of theft and desecration of the Eucharist over at Pharyngula marks a new low point in the Death Valley that is internet atheism.
Myers not only encourages his readers to disrupt religious services, a crime in many U.S. jurisdictions, he endorses using deception with vicious intent to acquire a consecrated Host.
Every priest, deacon, and extraordinary minister of the Eucharist presumes in good faith that those who present themselves to receive Holy Communion are Catholics in a state of grace. Myers carelessly sows distrust among those who have done him no harm.
His dishonesty calls into question his dedication to truthful inquiry. Academic freedom ends where blatant mendacity begins.
His deception also renders untrustworthy any of his complaints about “death threats.” Even if he is receiving angry threats from seventeen-year-old zealots and albino Opus Dei monks, it is not a stretch to believe that some of his readers, having absorbed Myers' lesson that deception is noble in the service of their cause, are penning their own hoax missives in hopes of stoking the controversy.
It is doubtful Myers will post any Catholic’s intelligent, well-written reply. It is a cheap trick of bloggers and newspaper columnists to take outrageous and indefensible stands and then report only the most outrageous responses from their most illiterate critics. This makes the original writer appear to be the voice of reason in the eyes of his own naïve supporters.
This is a lucrative tactic if one is paid on the basis of internet traffic.
This is not, however, a method productive of worthwhile public debate.
Not that there is reason to believe Myers thinks his atheism needs to be presented for public debate. Otherwise he would not be endorsing such Propaganda of the Deed.
He has lost his sympathy for his religious opponents, which is why he is so vile to them. This is to be expected, since he sneers at the Man who said "Love your enemies..."
But let’s imagine an analogous situation that might prick what’s left of Myers’ conscience. Say there is a nationwide chain of public reading libraries which freely make available to the public cheap copies of Darwin’s Origin of the Species and Myers’ friend Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. The library’s only caveats are that the books must be treated with respect and may leave the library only rarely and not without the authorization of the librarian.
Along comes Enoch Emery of the Church of Christ without Christ, whose blog reaches thousands of readers each day. Emery incites his enthusiasts to enter the library and hide a free copy on their person. “After smuggling it out,” he has ordered them, “burn it on YouTube while shouting claims that Darwin and Dawkins are Nazis who have no place in good society! Or send them to me at my office, and I'll do it for you!”
(Come to think of it: will Myers be accepting stolen Hosts mailed to his university office address on the grounds of academic freedom?)
Surely Myers cannot claim outrage would be unjustified at such an incident. Surely he would not see limited restraining force from the library staff as a just means to keep the library open and functioning.
Because of Enoch Emery’s fanatics, the library has to clamp down. Even though the economic costs of what is lost are nominal, the intangible costs are great.
Rather than focus on their own reading, the staff must scrutinize new visitors. Anyone who resembles an Emeryite falls under suspicion of the staff. Every time a book is successfully burned, the staff become more and more hostile to outsiders. Library patrons inundate Emery with complaints.
Suppose further this Enoch Emery then claims that such hostility, which he and his allies have encouraged, is further justification for more book burnings.
Is this bit of imaginative sympathy beyond Professor Myers?
I am not calling for Myers to be fired. Unlike Francis Beckwith, however, I think his university colleagues and his superiors at the University of Minnesota Morris and Scienceblogs.com need to rebuke him, with disciplinary action if necessary.
Myers’ support for public dishonesty is unprofessional and undermines the prerequisites for academic inquiry. His endorsement of disrupting religious services is an unjustified threat to civil peace. Myers needs to be reminded of the standards of society.
His readers sure won't do it for him.
Myers not only encourages his readers to disrupt religious services, a crime in many U.S. jurisdictions, he endorses using deception with vicious intent to acquire a consecrated Host.
Every priest, deacon, and extraordinary minister of the Eucharist presumes in good faith that those who present themselves to receive Holy Communion are Catholics in a state of grace. Myers carelessly sows distrust among those who have done him no harm.
His dishonesty calls into question his dedication to truthful inquiry. Academic freedom ends where blatant mendacity begins.
His deception also renders untrustworthy any of his complaints about “death threats.” Even if he is receiving angry threats from seventeen-year-old zealots and albino Opus Dei monks, it is not a stretch to believe that some of his readers, having absorbed Myers' lesson that deception is noble in the service of their cause, are penning their own hoax missives in hopes of stoking the controversy.
It is doubtful Myers will post any Catholic’s intelligent, well-written reply. It is a cheap trick of bloggers and newspaper columnists to take outrageous and indefensible stands and then report only the most outrageous responses from their most illiterate critics. This makes the original writer appear to be the voice of reason in the eyes of his own naïve supporters.
This is a lucrative tactic if one is paid on the basis of internet traffic.
This is not, however, a method productive of worthwhile public debate.
Not that there is reason to believe Myers thinks his atheism needs to be presented for public debate. Otherwise he would not be endorsing such Propaganda of the Deed.
He has lost his sympathy for his religious opponents, which is why he is so vile to them. This is to be expected, since he sneers at the Man who said "Love your enemies..."
But let’s imagine an analogous situation that might prick what’s left of Myers’ conscience. Say there is a nationwide chain of public reading libraries which freely make available to the public cheap copies of Darwin’s Origin of the Species and Myers’ friend Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. The library’s only caveats are that the books must be treated with respect and may leave the library only rarely and not without the authorization of the librarian.
Along comes Enoch Emery of the Church of Christ without Christ, whose blog reaches thousands of readers each day. Emery incites his enthusiasts to enter the library and hide a free copy on their person. “After smuggling it out,” he has ordered them, “burn it on YouTube while shouting claims that Darwin and Dawkins are Nazis who have no place in good society! Or send them to me at my office, and I'll do it for you!”
(Come to think of it: will Myers be accepting stolen Hosts mailed to his university office address on the grounds of academic freedom?)
Surely Myers cannot claim outrage would be unjustified at such an incident. Surely he would not see limited restraining force from the library staff as a just means to keep the library open and functioning.
Because of Enoch Emery’s fanatics, the library has to clamp down. Even though the economic costs of what is lost are nominal, the intangible costs are great.
Rather than focus on their own reading, the staff must scrutinize new visitors. Anyone who resembles an Emeryite falls under suspicion of the staff. Every time a book is successfully burned, the staff become more and more hostile to outsiders. Library patrons inundate Emery with complaints.
Suppose further this Enoch Emery then claims that such hostility, which he and his allies have encouraged, is further justification for more book burnings.
Is this bit of imaginative sympathy beyond Professor Myers?
I am not calling for Myers to be fired. Unlike Francis Beckwith, however, I think his university colleagues and his superiors at the University of Minnesota Morris and Scienceblogs.com need to rebuke him, with disciplinary action if necessary.
Myers’ support for public dishonesty is unprofessional and undermines the prerequisites for academic inquiry. His endorsement of disrupting religious services is an unjustified threat to civil peace. Myers needs to be reminded of the standards of society.
His readers sure won't do it for him.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Bloggers' Progress
My congratulations to Daniel Larison and James Poulos for being mentioned in David Brooks’ most recent New York Times column.
Brooks characterizes them as part of a group of “young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers,” most of whom
An analysis of the effectiveness of the conservative/Republican “feeder system” could be entertaining to read. A movement that takes young people from the imbalanced ideological hothouse of the undergraduate life and throws them into a think tank or a congressional office similarly lacking in flexibility can’t expect to produce many competent and broadly interested critics like those Brooks praises, not to mention future leaders.
I’d like to think Larison’s and Poulos’ advance elevates me to the second tier of the national discussion merely by virtue of their respective blogs’ welcome permalinks to Philokalia Republic.
Alas, such status must come from this blog's own quality and productivity. Happily increasing work commitments and continued physical rehab have hampered my contributions here, though I have several “almost done” works to be added in the coming weeks. Curious readers may peruse my StumbleUpon Log for clues about my recent thoughts.
Happy Independence Day.
Brooks characterizes them as part of a group of “young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers,” most of whom
… did not rise through the official channels of the conservative or libertarian establishments. By and large, they didn’t do the internships or take part in the young leader programs that were designed to replenish “the movement.” Instead, they found their voices while blogging.
An analysis of the effectiveness of the conservative/Republican “feeder system” could be entertaining to read. A movement that takes young people from the imbalanced ideological hothouse of the undergraduate life and throws them into a think tank or a congressional office similarly lacking in flexibility can’t expect to produce many competent and broadly interested critics like those Brooks praises, not to mention future leaders.
I’d like to think Larison’s and Poulos’ advance elevates me to the second tier of the national discussion merely by virtue of their respective blogs’ welcome permalinks to Philokalia Republic.
Alas, such status must come from this blog's own quality and productivity. Happily increasing work commitments and continued physical rehab have hampered my contributions here, though I have several “almost done” works to be added in the coming weeks. Curious readers may peruse my StumbleUpon Log for clues about my recent thoughts.
Happy Independence Day.
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