Homosexual marriage is having the same corrosive effect on the legal system as abortion has had.

This is an essay that is a useful reminder about what being a lawyer is supposed to be about.

Same-Sex Marriage and the Assault on Institutional Integrity by Matthew J. Franck:

 After publishing articles recently in the Washington Post and First Things, both arguing that the defenders of conjugal marriage between a man and a woman should not be tarred as irrational bigots, “haters,” or “theocrats” by the advocates of same-sex marriage, I received e-mail messages from likeminded friends hailing me for my “courage.” I was grateful for their appreciation, but a little mystified at what I took to be overstatement. I find little reason to hail the “courage” of someone who defends the consensus view of the whole history of human civilization—that marriage is a bedrock social institution that unites a man and a woman in order to make a family—as rational and well intended. But one of the kind notes came from a friend who was about to leave for Cuba to help beleaguered Christians there, persons of whom the word “courage” can be used without embarrassment. So what was going on?


It was simple: my correspondents were academics, writing from within the establishment of American higher education, where it can be very uncomfortable to speak out against the idea of same-sex marriage. Are people’s jobs on the line if they dissent? This is harder to say with certainty, and the circumstances will not be the same everywhere. The deadly combination of unchallenged liberal presumptions and casual intimidation of dissenters is probably at its worst in the most prestigious universities, which set the tone for the rest of the country, on this issue as on many others. But in all except the most resolutely religious colleges, there is no doubting that the default position of the American academy is to dismantle the institution of marriage and remake it on a new basis. The result is a good deal of self-silencing—self-exile into the “new closet” on issues involving sexuality—not just by students but by faculty, too. The path of least resistance turns out to be the path of no resistance. For institutions that claim to be homes of diverse views and free inquiry in the pursuit of truth, this creeping orthodoxy is a sign of wounded institutional integrity and failed leadership.

The same harm to institutional integrity, and the same ethical failure of institutional leaders, is now publicly on display in the most elite precincts of the legal profession. On April 18, the press reported that Paul Clement, former solicitor general in the last administration, would take up the cause, so contemptibly abandoned by the current administration, of defending the Defense of Marriage Act in federal litigation, with Clement’s firm, Atlanta-based King & Spalding, engaged by the House of Representatives.

One week later, on April 25, King & Spalding’s chairman Robert Hays announced that the firm was withdrawing from its representation of the House, apparently leaving DOMA’s defense without legal counsel in federal court. Notwithstanding the blandishments of Mr. Hays about “inadequate” vetting of the decision to take the case, it was evident to everyone that this retreat was made under pressure, with the gay advocacy group Human Rights Campaign leading a concerted political and economic campaign to bring the firm to heel. Within an hour or two on the same day came the news that Clement was decamping from King & Spalding to take new employment at Washington’s Bancroft law firm, and intended to continue his representation of the House, and of the interests of the United States, in the DOMA litigation. In his letter of resignation from King & Spalding, Clement describes his conduct as the only “honorable course,” saying he was driven by “loyalty to the client and respect for the profession” of law. “Defending unpopular positions is what lawyers do,” he wrote, adding that the “adversary system of justice” and “the rule of law” itself are at stake. Clement finished by quoting the late Griffin Bell, once a King & Spalding partner as well as attorney general in the Carter administration: “You are not required to take every matter that is presented to you, but having assumed a representation, it becomes your duty to finish the representation.”

Supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act were quick to hail Paul Clement’s courage, and he certainly deserves praise for his unhesitating decision to do the right thing. But it detracts not at all from Clement’s rectitude to remark that there was nothing heroic in it. He did what any lawyer would do who conformed his actions to the time-honored ethical norms of his profession. Lawyers and law firms accept and reject clients for all sorts of reasons, including moral affinities and moral objections, political sympathies and ideological opposition. But once a lawyer has been engaged as a client’s advocate, a relationship is created for which words like “duty” and “honor” are exactly the right ones. Clement rightly understood that this duty demanded he sacrifice any competing claims on his loyalty of his law partners, and leave the firm. What this cost him we cannot know, but again, his action was an ordinary sort of courage, not an extraordinary sort.

What is extraordinary, and therefore worthy of more of our attention, is the behavior of King & Spalding and the leadership of its chairman Robert Hays—as well as the behavior of the political activists at the Human Rights Campaign and elsewhere who embarked on an open campaign of intimidation that is morally reprehensible in a constitutional republic.

It appears, from other cases taken on by King & Spalding, such as its pro bono representation of unlawful enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo, that the firm’s politics lean leftward. But again, lawyers and law firms accept and decline clients and causes for many reasons, and political ideology is not an illicit ground of such choices. Knowing this might inform one’s judgment if one of its partners ran for public office, or were nominated for attorney general, and it might incline certain clients to seek representation there or to go elsewhere. But it is not in itself blameworthy to undertake the representation of clients and causes of whom others disapprove. As Paul Clement himself said, this is what lawyers do—and what someone in the profession must do, if the adversary system of justice, central to our rule of law, is to function well.

What is blameworthy—indeed, squarely inimical to the norms of legal practice—is for a firm’s leaders to buckle under political pressure and abandon a client they have agreed to represent. King & Spalding’s withdrawal may even have violated various codes of legal ethics. But even if no codified norms were breached, the firm’s decision to bug out on advocating the constitutionality of DOMA is deeply troubling as a failure of institutional responsibility. And it is not merely the law firm as an institution that should concern us here, although the firm is one kind of institution (and the larger it is, the more “institutional” any firm looks). It is the institution of the law itself that is at stake. Mr. Clement might seem to have been engaging in hyperbole when he remarked in his resignation letter that the rule of law was harmed by the firm’s decision. But he was not.

Those of us who are not lawyers, hope never to need one, and enjoy a good joke at the profession’s expense might be loath to admit it, but the rule of law depends to a great degree on the probity of lawyers and judges. Law graduates, when admitted to the bar, become “officers of the court,” and this is no quaint honorific like “esquire.” Each time they assume the burden of advocacy for a client, they also take on a duty to the court of the jurisdiction in which they practice on the client’s behalf. The lawyer is the conduit through which the client’s interests are communicated to the court, and, in the opposite direction, through which due process is meted out to the client. Just as the judge is expected to have no conflicts of interest in the case before him, the lawyer representing a party is expected to have no interest whatsoever that can be distinguished from those of his client. The judge must be disinterested in the outcome, but the advocate must have, and appear to have, an identity of interest with the client and cause on whose behalf he advocates. Once assuming this burden, his own private, competing impulses to separate himself from his client must vanish from his calculations, for his duty is a public one, vital to the provision of due process, and, for that reason, is of the utmost solemnity.


Thus the King & Spalding skedaddle is more than an unseemly ditching of a client in order to escape the heat of political pressure. It is a blow to the institutional integrity of the legal system, and this would be true even if the abandoned party were not the United States itself. The firm will rightly suffer in reputational terms, but is no doubt big and established enough to survive the self-inflicted wound.

But what is behind this unexpected caving of such a large and well-esteemed law firm? If King & Spalding’s leaders exhibited cowardice and a failure of integrity, it is worth our noticing that they were bullied into it by the organized enemies of DOMA, led by the euphemistically named Human Rights Campaign (HRC). It is increasingly clear that the movement for same-sex marriage has no regard for the ethical norms of institutional integrity that ordinarily govern the processes of republican self-government in the United States.

The day after King & Spalding was reported to be taking the DOMA case, the HRC launched a high-pressure campaign to force the firm to reverse its decision. This was too much even for the liberal editors of the Los Angeles Times, who oppose DOMA but recognize a principle when they see one. Ditto the editors of the Washington Post, who chastised HRC after the success of its campaign of intimidation.

But intimidation—“mau-mauing the flak-catchers,” Tom Wolfe memorably called it—is now the default tactic of same-sex marriage advocates. What else, for instance, explains the antics of now-retired federal judge Vaughn Walker, who wanted to broadcast the Proposition 8 trial in California, and then broke his promise—and his legal duty—to keep the trial’s video record from public view? What else explains the instantaneous denunciation of all opponents of same-sex marriage as “haters”? Resistance to such intimidation, in the name of the ethic of institutional integrity, is fast becoming the duty of all persons in positions of institutional responsibility, whatever their private views on homosexuality or same-sex marriage. When we witness such principled resistance, as in the case of Dean Evan Caminker’s decision to stick with Ohio Senator and alumnus Rob Portman as the commencement speaker at the University of Michigan’s law school—despite the outcry of those who object to Portman’s 1996 vote for DOMA as a House member—we should applaud it heartily.

A sage older colleague of mine is fond of saying that integrity is something you can have just by deciding to have it. But you do have to decide. It’s that easy, and that hard. But those who would sacrifice ethics and the integrity of our institutions to the victory of a political cause must be sharply rebuked by fair-minded conservatives and liberals alike.

Apparently, it is important to some clients that they can rely on their attorneys not to drop their case because of political considerations.

The State of Virginia fires the King and Spaulding law firm for dropping its Defense of Marriage Act client:

Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia now has dumped King & Spalding as special counsel (it's not clear in what), as reported by The Washington Examiner (via Powerline). Here is the text of Cuccinelli's letter, which reads in pertinent part (emphasis mine):

We seek to do business exclusively with law firms that do more than merely aim to perform the bottom of the barrel ethical obligations and do just enough on behalf of their clients to avoid trouble for themselves. We seek law firms that will actively protect our interests, even when that may be uncomfortable for their firms.

Virginia does not shy away from hiring outside counsel because they may have ongoing professional relationships with people or entities, or on behalf of causes, that I, or my office, or

Virginia as a whole, may not support. But, it is crucial for us to be able to trust and rely on the fact that our outside counsel will not desert Virginia due to pressure by an outside group or groups.

Virginia seeks firms of commitment, courage, strength and toughness, and unfortunately, what the world has learned of King & Spalding, is that your firm utterly lacks those qualities. As the official in Virginia responsible for ensuring that the legal needs of Virginia's agencies are well met, I cannot leave UV AMC in the hands of a law firm of such weakness.

Bill Maher manages to get under the skin of a liberal Mormon.

Liberal Mormon blogger Joanna Brooks is really offended about a "joke" by Bill Maher about Mitt Romney's "magic underwear."

This week, on David Letterman, Bill Maher got ugly about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his Mormonism.


“Don’t get me started on Mitt Romney,” Maher sneered to Letterman. ”Because Mitt Romney will teach America what’s really in Mormonism.”

“Mitt likes to gloss over... ‘well, we’re just different types of Christians.’ No. No, I was raised Catholic,” Maher leaned in and raised an eyebrow, setting up for his big punchline: ”And there was no magic underwear.”

Big laughs from the crowd at CBS studios. Right on cue.

Magic underwear?

It’s no secret that highly observant LDS people wear sacred undergarments as an expression of religious commitment.

But magic underwear? Please.

There is a historic Mormon folk belief that garments offer a kind of protection to their wearers. But for the vast majority of Mormons, garments first and foremost represent the daily wearing of a covenant to lives of modesty, chastity, and faith.

The same way an orthodox Jew would wear a kippah (for men) or modest clothing (for women), or a Muslim woman would wear a headscarf, highly observant Mormons wear garments.

Fair point and Mormons are as entitled to respect for their traditions as any other group.
 
It's nice to see that Maher can bring such diverse people together by being such a complete human toothache.

Tolerance is the space between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another.

San Francisco may pass law banning circumcisions.

Just file this as another example where it is not social conservatives who want to regulate other people's lives and once again no one - as in the media and "pro-choice" groups - is particularly concerned about threatened restrictions on people's freedom coming from the left.

Just another day in utopia.

Tolerance is the moment between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another.

Apparently, for the San Francisco homosexual community, Easter is a time for mocking Christian beliefs.

So, heck, let's change the definition of marriage, run Catholic charitable organizations out of the adoption business, teach homosexual history in schools, and stigmatize Catholics as suspected agents of a foreign power.

What could possibly go wrong?

It's not like they hate us or anything.

We're still waiting for the "Hunky Muhammed" contest during Ramadan.

Are there contradictions in the Resurrection accounts?

This is a big issue for raging fundamentalist Bart Ehrman, but it's not so much for other - saner - people.

The Left's "March through the Institutions" is Complete.

Superman to renounce American citizenship.

Well, he wasn't eligible to be president anyway.

Another excuse to ignore all of Christian history between Paul and Martin Luther.

Who really needs to pay attention to the history of Christianity prior to 1517 because those people really didn't grow up until Martin Luther?

C. Michael Patton illustrates his (tentative) way of thinking about the history of Christianity as being the equivalent of a person growing up, complete with the rebellious and immature ways of thinking characterized by the "Dark Ages," which didn't end until 1517.

So, apparently, all of Christian intellectual developmet from St. Augustine through St. Thomas Aquinas gets swept into a pigeon-hole called the "Dark Ages," where they are completely labeled "not sufficiently mature" for serious Christians. 

Never mind that the Dark Ages ended prior to the 1000 A.D., or that by the 12th Century, Europe was building great cathedrals and had a university system and unrivalled in the world.

I don't doubt that this way of thinking represents the authentic thinking of many American protestants, for whom the period between approximately 60 A.D. and 1517 (or, more likely, the founding of their local church by "Pastor Bob" in 1985) is a dark and obscure period.  Most Americans do conflate the "Dark Ages" with the "Middle Ages," because of the succesful polemics of Protestants and Secular Humanists who wanted to distinguish their "enlightened" age from a darker time. 

Likewise, I had a Baptist law partner who had no embarrassment in telling me, as a matter of simple fact, that Catholicism was "transitional paganism," which meant that the period from Christ to the discovery of the "pure Gospel" by Martin Luther was a long, long period of a pagan culture evolving into true Christianity.

Likewise, this model contains the core theology of American secularism - a belief in progress.  Under the American view of progress, development is always upward, nothing abandoned in the past had any value, and the goal of all history was to lead to us.

Obviously, this model is a cartoon, a caricature that reassures, rather than challenges its adherents to learn some actual history.

Just another unremembered act of courage - Anti-Nazi German Martyrs.

You get sense from the popular "Hitler's Pope" and "Hitler was a Christian" folderol that all Christians were uniformly carrying the water for the Nazis.  The subtext of this idea is the notion that all Christians - and particularly priests and pastors - were virulent anti-semites that supported the Nazi party on anti-semitic grounds.  This kind of mindset gets cemented by the attention that books like Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners," John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope" and  James Carroll "Constantine's Sword" from the popular media, which helps to cement a zeitgeist that acts in the place of real knowledge.

One of the problem with such broad-brush approach to history is that it is slanderous to the many Christians who opposed the Nazi party on the grounds of their faith and suffered the consequences.  When I read about such instances, I am honestly surprised because despite the fact that I know that there were such martyrs, conditioned by the zeitgeist, I'm surprised to see so many.

A case in point is this article from Huffington Post, which still manages to give the story a liberal, anti-catholic spin, which is probably the only reason that the story gets attention:

Beatification Of WWII Martyrs Divides Lutherans, Catholics

LUEBECK, Germany (RNS) Residents of this north German city have long taken pride in four native sons -- three Catholic priests and a Lutheran pastor -- who were beheaded in quick succession on Nov. 10, 1943 by the Nazi regime.


The commingled blood of Catholic priests Johannes Prassek, Hermann Lange, Eduard Mueller and Lutheran pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink spawned an ecumenical cooperation between the city's majority Lutherans and minority Catholics that still lasts.

But the Vatican's decision to beatify the three priests on June 25 -- but not Stellbrink -- is testing that ecumenical spirit, and has some religious leaders worried that the event could drive a wedge between the two communities.

"People worry that the priests who are beatified will be seen as higher than Stellbrink, and that the focus will be on the three, not the four," said the Rev. Constanze Maase, pastor of Luther Church in Luebeck.

"We recognize that beatification is an important part of the identity of the Catholic Church. But there is a sadness, because it makes the ecumenical work more complicated," he said.

Prassek was a 30-year-old chaplain at Luebeck's Sacred Heart Catholic Church when he met Stellbrink, a 47-year-old pastor at the nearby Luther Church, at a funeral in 1941. They had a shared disapproval of the Nazi regime, and Prassek soon introduced Stellbrink to his two Catholic colleagues, Lange and Mueller.

The four clergymen were active but discreet in their anti-Nazi activities, speaking out against the Nazis and distributing pamphlets to close friends and congregants.

That changed when the British Royal Air Force bombed Luebeck on March 28, 1942. After Stellbrink spent the night tending to the wounded, he went to his church to celebrate Palm Sunday, and attributed the bombing to divine punishment.

Stellbrink was arrested a few days later, followed soon after by the priests. All four were sentenced to death. Rather than fear their executions, the four were said to have died as happy martyrs, confident that they were going to be with God.

"Who can oppress one who dies," Prassek wrote in a farewell letter to his family.

Just as Christian tradition sees the blood of the martyrs as the seeds of the church, many observers credit the four clergymen with spawning a German ecumenism that had been almost unheard of until then.

What an impressive story, and let's acknowledge that in many ways Pastor Stellbrink's strength is particularly noteworthy in light of the fact that at least the Catholic priests knew that their church opposed Nazism, whereas Pastor Stellbrink's church was divided between the "German Christians" - who supported the "nazification" of the Protestant church - and the "Confessing Church" - which didn't.

But the anti-Catholic angle is just weird. Are we supposed to assume that the Lutheran church and Lutherans now recognize the Catholic Church as the authority on who is in heaven?  Has the Lutheran church amended its position on intercessionarly prayer, and that Lutherans are really go to say, "St. Karl Stellbrink, ora pro nobis."  I certainly can say such a thing, and there are examples of non-Catholics who have been canonized - such as St. Nicetas the Goth - but I just don't see Lutherans bending their knee to a Catholic saint.

Moreover, we could just imagine the outrage we would be hearing if the Catholic Church decided to beatify a Lutheran pastor - assuming that its post-Trent rules for canonization even allow such a thing.  Such a move would be taken as an indication of the Catholic Church's "imperialism" and its condescension that Karl Stellbrink's sacrifice was meaningless unless he was Catholic.

It's just another convenient stick for the folks at Huffington Post.


One thing that this rather inane story shows is that the Catholic Church matters.  It is the one church that non-members believe that they have a stake in running.  Non-Catholics, and Non-Christians, are constantly interjecting their views on what doctrines and practices that the Catholic Church should have and follow, as if (a) their opinion mattered and (b) the Catholic Church's doctrines and practices mattered.

Let's face it, when was the last time you saw a news story about non-Methodists being concerned about some doctrine or practice of the United Methodist Church.

Ditto for Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc.

Apart from the modern political angle, the historical circumstance is fascinating. How often did this kind of thing happen? What motivated the Nazis to pick up the priests?  Did they preach an anti-Nazi or "defeatist" sermon?  Who knows?  But this kind of thing was all too common at the time, notwithstanding the view of people like Cornwell who wish to opine on the decision and courage of people on the spot from the safety and security of the offices.

"Say it ain't so, Joe."

The story behind the song.

More historical song lyrics.

I got the reference to the 1919 "Black socks" scandal, but the rest of it makes no sense, unless you read leaped to the conclusion that Richard M. Nixon was "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, which still doesn't make any sense.

Nerds like us.

Glenn Reynolds says:

WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER, JERRY POURNELLE’S ESSAYS IN GALAXY WERE A HUGE INFLUENCE. I’d say as big an influence on me as anything else I read. Now there’s a new edition of the collection, A Step Farther Out, available on Kindle. (Bumped).

Here's the link.

Galaxy magazine - check.

Pournelle's essays - check.

Teenager - check.

Downloaded to my Kindle - check.

Apparently, water is wet, the sky is blue, and ...

a belief in Hell promotes good behavior.

Ignatius Insights reports:

In experiments involving 100 students at UBC, the researchers found that a belief in God doesn’t deter a person from cheating on a test, unless that God is seen as mean and punishing.


Students who believed in a caring, forgiving God were more likely to cheat — as likely, in fact, as students who professed no belief in God.

“When you look at the division between nonbelievers and believers, there was no difference in cheating,” Shariff said. “It doesn’t matter so much whether you believe in God, but what God you believe in.”

Shariff said he wasn’t necessarily surprised that students who believe in a punitive God would be less likely to cheat. That’s consistent with a “supernatural punishment hypothesis” that has long recognized that societies can “outsource” the time-consuming task of promoting moral behavior to a supernatural agent, he said.

“Rulers have known for a long time that God is an incredibly effective way of keeping people in line,” he said.

Shariff said he was more surprised that students who believe in a forgiving God were more likely to cheat.

“It almost gives people license to act in an immoral way because they have a supernatural agent who will forgive them regardless of what they do,” he said. “They’ll think, ‘It’s OK to do this because I won’t be judged too harshly because my God is a forgiving God.’ ”

And:

Without having seen the study, it sounds as if students had to choose between polar opposites that are, from the standpoint of orthodox Christian theology, quite misleading and misrepresentative. Further, it sounds as if the notion of "loving" in the study equates, at least in the minds of many of the students, to "letting me get away with cheating", or at least "will forgive me for cheating without asking for anything in return". That, needless to say, isn't a loving God, but a Dr. Spock-inspired, coddling, spineless enabler. And, on the other end, the belief that punishment is somehow part and parcel of being "mean-spirited" is equally misguided. After all, how many of the students, I wonder, believe that criminals should get away with, say, murder, rape, or molestation without being punished in some way?


A basic problem is that "love" is too often divorced from a sentiment-free view of reality that is rooted in the belief of an objective, moral order. If no such moral order really exists, then "love" simply becomes a matter of sliding-scale sentiment, in which one's subjective affections become the arbitrary and voluntaristic basis for relationships, order, and community. Not surprisingly, when people adopt this basic perspective, they read it back into their notion of God. Of course, as Benedict XVI pointed out in his Regensburg address, it was a voluntaristic understanding of God that led, step by logical step, to a relativizing of morality and the creation of a false love severed from any transcendent source.

Out of all the federal judges who could have heard the Prop 8 case...

...how did it end up being tried by probably the one judge who had - at the very least - the appearance of a personal stake in the case?

According to the Associated Press:

Rumors swirled that the federal judge who had struck down California's same-sex "marriage" ban last summer was homosexual, but the lawyers charged with defending the measure remained silent on the subject. Their preferred strategy for getting the ruling overturned on appeal was to focus on the law, not a judge's personal life, they said.


Lawyers for the ban's backers argue that the judge's relationship status, not his sexual orientation, gave him too much in common with the couples who successfully sued to overturn the ban in his court. The judge should have recused himself or at least revealed the relationship to avoid a real or perceived conflict of interest, the lawyers say.


"If at any time while this case was pending before him, Chief Judge walker and his partner determined that they desired, or might desire, to marry, Chief Judge Walker plainly had an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding," wrote attorneys for the coalition of religious and conservative groups that put Proposition 8 on the November 2008 ballot.

Eight months later, Proposition 8's proponents and their attorneys have taken a new position. They filed a motion Monday seeking to vacate Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's historic ruling, a move they said was prompted by the now-retired jurist's recent disclosure that he is in a long-term relationship with another man.

And:

Speculation about Walker's sexual orientation circulated during the 13-day trial that preceded his decision and after he handed down his ruling. Lawyers for Protect Marriage, the coalition that sponsored Proposition 8, however, had purposely refrained from raising his sexual orientation as a legal issue until Monday.


But they decided it gave them grounds for getting Walker's decision struck down after the judge disclosed his 10-year relationship this month to a group of courthouse reporters, said Protect Marriage general counsel Andy Pugno. "We deeply regret the necessity of this motion. But if the courts are to require others to follow the law, the courts themselves must do so as well," Pugno added.

Indiana University Law School professor Charles Geyh, an expert on judicial ethics, said that without more evidence that Walker stood to personally benefit if same-sex marriages were legal in California, he found it difficult to imagine that the particulars of the judge's same-sex relationship provided marriage traditionalists with an avenue for reversing his ruling. "It really implies it would be fine if he were essentially surfing at bars and had a new partner every night because he wouldn't want to be married," he said. "I don't see that as advancing their cause."

And, of course, we can trust legal experts, because it's not like pressure isn't being placed on the legal community to get into lock step with homosexual marriage:

The law firm hired by Republicans in the House of Representatives to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act withdrew Monday amid pressure from gay-rights groups. The decision prompted the resignation of a prominent partner, who said he intended to take the case with him to another law office.


Gay rights groups criticized the 126-year-old, Atlanta-based law firm, King & Spalding, saying that its agreement to defend the law, which prohibits federal recognition of gay marriages, would hurt its ability to recruit and retain lawyers. The firm's chairman, Robert Hays, said Monday that the firm would no longer defend the law.

So much for the sacred legal duty to defend the unpopular.
Homosexual marriage is going to have the same corrosive effects on legal principles that abortion-rights have had.

It's official - Andrew Sullivan is "nucking futs."

Pejman Yousefzadeh documents Andrew Sullivan's latest round of "Trig Trutherism" (quoting Salon's Justin Elliott):

Sullivan’s refrain on this issue is that he does not endorse any conspiracy theory, he is merely asking questions. He simply wants Palin “to debunk this for once and for all, with simple, readily available medical records.” He has proposed, for example, the release of “amniocentesis results with Sarah Palin’s name on them.”


It’s worth noting that this posture is identical to the rhetoric used by Obama birthers (for instance, WorldNetDaily Birther czar Joseph Farah employs the “just asking for definitive piece of proof x” line here).

But the larger point is that continuously demanding more “proof” on an issue about which there is already overwhelming evidence is either irrational or disingenuous. And why would a piece of paper with amniocentesis results and Sarah Palin’s name be more dispositive than the doctor’s many statements and the testimony of all of the reporters who saw Palin pregnant? If you already believe everyone is lying and everything is a hoax, it wouldn’t.

Andrew Sullivan has no moral obligation to affirm that Sarah Palin is the mother of Trig, but - *Sheesh* - he sure looks like totally "nucking futs" with this obsession.

Preference Cascade - The Tea Party.

The Virginian argues that the "preference cascade" concept explains why the Tea Party movement formed in spite of the opposition and derision of the official political class.

The "Taranto Principle" may be a special case of "preference cascades."

What is the Taranto Principle? It is a principle laid down by the Wall Street Journal's perceptive editorialist, James Taranto. Mr. Taranto, in his column "Best of the Web Today," surveys the press and reports daily on their output with special emphasis on their contradictions, hypocrisies and — most deliciously — imbecilities. Like all other thoughtful observers of American press, Mr. Taranto recognizes that they are heavily biased toward the Democratic Party and the left in general.


Yet, while many who hold that this advances the Democratic Party and the left, Mr. Taranto believes that it has a harmful effect on left-wing politics, often causing left-wing candidates to lose at the polls.

According to the Taranto Principle, the press's failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left's bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans. According to Mr. Taranto, in 2004 the press quietly went along with Senator Jean-Francois Kerry's exaggerated claims to heroism and military prowess, thus encouraging his braggadocio and leaving him utterly unprepared when his fellow vets stepped forward and demonstrated that he had been a dreadful showoff in Vietnam.

The "Politics of Personal Destruction" against a kid with Down's Syndrome.

You just have to wonder what the heck is going on in the minds of lefties who make up the audience base - and writing staff - of trendy, hip, liberal/progressive/left blog sites where making fun of retarded children in order to demean the child's mother is considered "funny." 

A case in point is a "Wonkette" post:

Know what doesn't go over well with advertisers? Making fun of disabled children.


On April 18, political blog Wonkette published a post titled "Greatest Living American: A Children's Treasury of Trig Crap On His Birthday" (none of which we will quote here). Trig, for those who don't remember, is Sarah Palin's youngest son, who has Down Syndrome. The initial response to this "celebration" of Trig's birthday was limited to comments getting in on the action, contributing the sort of jokes that would make Gilbert Gottfried proud.

Fortunately, not all of America has lost its mind.  Wonkette paid a price in lost advertisers which forced it to do a "walk-back." Eventually, Wonkette ended up with this bit of stench:

A post on this page satirizing Sarah Palin using her baby as a political prop was very badly done and sounded like the author was mocking the child and not just Sarah Palin/Sarah Palin’s followers.


The writer, Jack Stuef, has apologized for it. And we have decided to remove the post as requested by some people who have nothing to do with Sarah Palin, but who do have an interest in the cause of special needs children. We apologize for the poor comedic judgment.

Poor comedic judgment?  Very badly done?

How about a complete lack of human decency?

Because making a joke about a kid with Down's Syndrome would have been "hunky-dory" if people had laughed?  Wouldn't that have been - you know - worse!

Mark Shea nails it with this typically Chestertonian common-sense observation:

One of the many marks of a culture in radical decline is when the comics stop doing their job of making fun of the powerful and begin to make fun of the weak instead. As is always the case with human beings in the grip of evil, such cowardice always attempts to portray itself as courage ("Look at me! I'm edgy!"). The fitting rejoinder to such comics is, of course, other comics who still remember what their job is (NSFW):

To get some balance from this foulness at the heart of this post, vent along with Steven Crowder.


And don't ever forget that for these people it's about "choice," not about killing people who they consider life unworthy of life.

"He may not be a mass murderer, but don't you ever dare call him Canadian."

James Taranto is in search of the logic that makes "Birthers" comparable in some strange world to "Truthers."

The former after all simply dispute where Obama was born; the latter thought that we were being led by a mass murderer. 

Here are some suggestions from Taranto's readers:

Birther, Truthers and Other Frothers

Are 9/11 "truthers" as bad as Obama "birthers"? In response to a Friday item, reader Brian Gates makes an excellent argument that they're worse:

You noted that Politico's Ben Smith went looking for an analogy to the set of beliefs that Barack Obama had either been born in Kenya, or Vancouver, or could not be a natural-born citizen because his father was not an American citizen, or at least that Obama has not done all he could to disprove those beliefs. He found what he called a "good analogue": the belief among Democrats that George W. Bush was either complicit in or directly responsible for the murder of thousands of human beings.

And we're supposed to be the xenophobes. Sure, like any normal person, I would take umbrage at the suggestion that I was from Canada. But being called Canadian is a pretty mild slur compared to being called mass murderer.

And reader Roger Membreno offers a better analogy:

I'm more interested in the number of Democrats who believe George W. Bush was not the rightful winner of the 2000 election. For a good portion of his presidency, we were subjected to complaints that he was "not my President!" out of some belief that he halted the recount before Al Gore could find the boxes of "missing" votes and claim victory. To me, birtherism is on par with the belief that Bush stole the Florida election--detractors are looking for a quick and easy way to declare the election results null and void (maybe out of fear that if he did legitimately win, then he could win a second term too).

PollingReport.com has the partisan breakdown of the recent New York Times/CBS poll results on the question of where President Obama was born, which we'd been unable to find Friday. The question was worded as follows:

"According to the Constitution, American presidents must be 'natural born citizens.' Some people say Barack Obama was NOT born in the United States, but was born in another country. Do YOU think Barack Obama was born in the United States, or do you think he was born in another country?"

Results: Republicans 33% U.S., 45% another country, 22% unsure; Democrats 81% U.S., 10% another country, 9% unsure; independents 52% U.S., 25% another country, 23% unsure.

We're particularly interested in the independents, because they more than anyone will decide whether Obama gets a second term. A majority of independents do not believe the false claim that Obama was born elsewhere. On the other hand, it's a small majority, and independents are even more likely than Republicans to say they're unsure.

Overall, the proportion of respondents who believe Obama was born outside the U.S. is up, to 25% from 20% a year earlier. Perhaps this is just a proxy for general unhappiness with the president. But it may be that birtherism is catching on in part because it is getting so much media attention.

Another interesting feature of our weird media culture is the insistence that the media has on forcing Republicans to state on the record if they have any doubts about where Obama was born, as if they had personal knowledge where he was born, when they gave "Truthers" like Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell, and politicians associated with those loons, a complete pass.

Put simply, no one has a moral obligation to take a position on where someone else was born. 

Likewise, no one has a moral obligation to take a position on whether in a complicated voting process, the votes tallied out exactly the way they were reported, which is why I'll cut slack to any Democrat for saying "we wuz robbed" about the 2000 election (so long as my side gets to say it about other elections.)

But whether we are being led by a mass murderer is something you really have a moral obligation to make a decision about, or else you become complicit with murder and tyranny.

Sport Poisons Everything, or....

...so much for the utopia promised by Richard Dawkins and Christoher Hitchens, or...

Post-modern soccer fans still find ways to threaten each other with violence in Post-Christian Europe.

The story is how fans of the [Catholic] Celtic Glasgow soccer team are being threatened with mailbombs sent by the fans of [Protestant] Rangers Glasgow soccer team.

Except they call it "football."

Silly Europeans.

Here's the section from the story on why the essentially pagan fans still manage to nurse hatred based on religions that they have long-since abandoned:

In time, the animosities found expression in the two soccer teams, and in the so-called “90-minute bigots” who pack the stands. Celtic, which plays in green-and-white stripes, was founded in 1888 by a Catholic priest, partly to counter religious persecution. Rangers, whose colors are the blue, white and red of Britain’s Union flag, drew mostly Protestant support. From the start, the underlying loyalties — Protestant and Catholic, British and Irish — lent strong passion to their encounters. Yet these seem to have intensified even as their original causes have eased. Religion has declined in an increasingly secular Scottish society, and 13 years have passed since Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland concluded the Good Friday agreement that has brought at least a fragile peace.


That has led Devine and others who have studied the issue to say that the enmities now are more tribal than religious, and fueled by poverty and social breakdown. Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, has pockets of poverty that are among the most extreme in the developed world. The Catholic minority, particularly men from 18 to 35, has traditionally been among the poorest, and has suffered “a bigoted anti-Catholicism in certain sections of society,” Devine said.

In the most deprived areas, encompassing crumbling public housing towers ravaged by joblessness, and alcohol and drug abuse, male life expectancy is 54 — four years lower than in war-torn Sudan — according to World Health Organization figures.

In the soccer rivalry, the resentments have often found expression in violence, but soccer authorities have been slow to act. Rangers were fined $12,000 last week by UEFA, soccer’s governing body in Europe, after its fans continued singing sectarian songs at high-profile matches, including one that urges those of Irish origin to “go home,” and another, “The Billy Boys,” that includes the refrain “We’re up to our ears in Fenian blood,” Fenian being a derogatory term for Irish republicans. Celtic supporters have refrains of their own, including “The Fields of Athenry,” an old Irish republican ballad.

Several points:

First, isn't it reassuring that reality can mess up the best theories of intellectuals, such as Hitchens and Dawkins, who assure us that we will immantize the eschaton once we get rid of religion.

Well, apparently not.

Second, kudos to post-modern, post-Christian Europe in creating a culture with a male life-expectancy that is shorter than "war-torn Sudan."

Seems like they could use a religious revival, or a shot of Pentecostalism, to revive their flagging work ethic.

Third, the ability of human beings to "tribalize" based on sports isn't new.  It was a mainstay of the politics of the Eastern Roman Empire to keep the population divided between the Reds, Greens, Blues and Whites - and woe betide the Empire when these sport factions united.

[Via Vox Day.]

Let's stop apologizing for the 11th Century.

Rodney Stark on the Crusades:

The Crusades is a topic that generates a lot of books each year. Why did you want to write God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades and what makes this book different from others?


Since my teens I have read a great deal of military history, but until now I had not written any myself. Along the way I read many books about the Crusades and in the past few years I have been greatly impressed by the work of historians such as Jonathan Riley-Smith and others including Thomas Madden. Unfortunately, these wonderful new studies have not reached the intelligent reading public. Nonsense about Crusaders as greedy, colonizing, brutal barbarians still prevails in the public sphere. So, I wrote a chapter on the matter as part of a proposal for a book on anti-Catholic historiography. My publishers responded that they wanted that chapter expanded into a book. So I did it. What makes my book different is, first, that it pulls together the scholarly literature (all of it carefully acknowledged) in one volume written for the general reader in hopes of setting the record straight. Secondly, my book begins in the seventh not the eleventh century, since I regard the Crusades as part of many centuries of conflict between Christendom and Islam. Thus far there have been four major book club pre-publication adoptions, so maybe God’s Battalions can have some corrective effects.

If one starts one's study of the Crusades in 1098, it looks like Christian aggression, in the same way that starting with a freeze-frame of one guy hitting another makes that person look like the aggressor.  Roll the tape back and a different picture emerges.  With respect to the Crusades, that picture includes the fact that the Crusades were into formerly Christian territory with a majority Christian population after Islamic Turks had lopped off the largest and richest part of the Christian territory in Turkey.

"Preference Cascades."

A comment at Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit on the "Arab Spring" provides a useful way of thinking about surprising historical events, such as the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 or the collapse of the ancien regime in France in 1789.  Both events were surprising because these appeared to be solid, imposing, monolothic structures that were swept away in a matter of months. 

The comment observes:

JON HENKE EMAILS: “I was thinking about the ongoing revolutions in the Middle East and surrounding areas and I recalled something you wrote in 2002 that really captured what is happening in that region today. Concerning ‘preference cascades’, you wrote…”

This illustrates, in a mild way, the reason why totalitarian regimes collapse so suddenly. (Click here for a more complex analysis of this and related issues). Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it – but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.

This works until something breaks the spell, and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers – or even to the citizens themselves. Claims after the fact that many people who seemed like loyal apparatchiks really loathed the regime are often self-serving, of course. But they’re also often true: Even if one loathes the regime, few people have the force of will to stage one-man revolutions, and when preferences are sufficiently falsified, each dissident may feel that he or she is the only one, or at least part of a minority too small to make any difference.

So, to give credit where credit is due, Glenn Reynolds posits the idea of "preference cascades" working in a subterranean fashion in totalitarian regimes.

This is obviously an argument in favor of the First Amendment, which provides feedback to our government about the true sentiments of the governed, because truth is always good.  If a "preference cascade" effect is to occur in the United States, it will probably occur in an area of "political correctness," where the things that people know that they have to affirm to be accepted members of good society are at a variance from their lived experience.

Self-knowledge, true self-knowledge and the original walk on the "Wild Side."

David Mills at First Things has an essay up that is noteworthy for two reasons.

The first is that it explains the lyrics in Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side."

He was, as the newspapers always put it, born Jimmy Slattery of Massepequa, Long Island, before going to New York City and becoming Candy Darling, a transvestite star of Andy Warhol’s famous Factory.


He earned a small fame in the long decade of the sixties: one of the subjects of Lou Reed’s “Walk On the Wild Side” (it is not a flattering reference) and the subject of Reed’s song “Candy Says,” mentioned by the Rolling Stones in one of their songs, the star of two of Warhol’s better known movies, chosen by Tennessee Williams to act in one of his plays, the center of a famous party attended by people like George Plimpton and the clothes designer Halston, and now 36 years after his death the subject of an apparently worshipful documentary called Beautiful Darling.

Slattery died in 1974 at 29 of lymphoma—caused, according to a writer in the Village Voice, by the hormones he’d been taking. A photo for which he posed on his hospital bed the day before he died became a minor sixties icon.

And I always thought that "Walk on the Wild Side" was based on throwing together random words.  Lyrics here.

The other is the insight that the advice to "be yourself" is good advice if it is a challenge, but not good advice to the extent that it is a counsel of self-indulgence:

According to the New York Press reviewer, Beautiful Darling ends with a quote from his diaries: “You must always be yourself no matter what the price. It is the highest form of morality.” Many of us will find it easy to scoff at a man in a dress proclaiming the need to live honestly as a moral imperative. “Of course he’d say that,” we think. “He’s wearing lipstick.”


It’s the great credo of the libertine life, “Be yourself.” But the young James Slattery was right. Aristotle and St. Thomas would have understood him. You must be who you are and suffer for it if you have to. That is, after all, one of the lessons of Good Friday. A lot of people hanging around Jerusalem that day hated the one man in history who was perfectly who he was, hated him for precisely that reason, and few of us would have liked him any better.

Slattery was only partly right, though. He did not see that we do not know ourselves, and the self we think we know is really only the self we want to have, for many reasons, a few of them our fault but many given to us. (Slattery surely did not choose to like dressing like a woman—and for all we know his desire to do so was more powerful than our desires for the more socially acceptable vices we succumb to without feeling bad about it.)

And:

James Slattery does not seem to have been able to become who he really was, despite living the moral life he promoted. Trying to be who he was on his own terms didn't work out well for him.


In a letter written on his deathbed to Warhol and his circle, he wrote that "Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life. . . . I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death. (D)id you know I couldn't last. I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again." To have lived such a life and still have been bored to death, that is haunting.

My initial reaction was "throw the book at these two hoodlums"...

...but then I found out that the problem was that this fight was sparked by the fact that the victim is a transvestite who wanted to use the women's restroom, I'm thinking, "why these don't women have a right to privacy" and "who decided that they had to participate in this guy's experiment in practical sociology?"

Here is the video.

Here is the backstory:

The police report identifies the victim as 22-year-old Chrissy Lee Polis, who appears identical to Christopher Lee Polis, whose rap sheet includes convictions for disorderly conduct, property destruction, and prostitution, according to court records. The civil rights group Equality Maryland has identified the McDonald’s victim as a transgender woman.


Polis told police that she was walking to the restaurant’s bathroom when she “got into a verbal argument with two black females” who “began punching her in the face with their fists and pulling her hair.” A female bystander told cops that when she tried to break up the fight, the suspects punched her in the face, which “caused her to become disoriented.” Police noted that the woman, who declined medical treatment, had “redness around her right eye which is consistent with someone punching her in the face.”

Obviously, the McDonald's employees deserve condemnation for standing around filming this travesty, rather than getting involved, albeit, in California, at least, the may have had no legal responsibility to actually do anything.

But notice the news story's acquiescence to the notion that this man is a "she."  How about "the purported she"? or the "alleged she"? 

Isn't the problem that until people have been re-educated by post-modernism, they recognize that a person with male genitalia is a man no matter how he dresses? Wouldn't a man who didn't claim a post-modern attitude about gender confusion have been recognized as a potential sex criminal for this kind of stunt?  How do we - or these women - know that he isn't?

Vox Day's point is worth considering:

This is what a vibrant American community will increasingly look like. You simply cannot expect to maintain civilization by giving barbarians responsibility for upholding their share of the social fabric. As the social scientists have discovered, much to their chagrin, the more diverse a community becomes, the less contact people wish to have outside of their race and ethnicity. This is not hard to understand, given incidents like these. The problem is that European cultures tend to do nothing about obvious problems for far too long, then brutally overreact. The Western way of war is unlike the Eastern, it is total and destructive in nature rather than limited and predatory.


In other words, when the reaction finally comes, history suggests that it is going to be very ugly indeed. And the worst thing is that it will have been completely unnecessary.

For what it's worth, I'm not sure what I would do if one of my daughters went into a restroom to be followed by a man dressed as a woman.  Would I go into a state of post-modernist indifference or would I bust in after him, give him an arm lock and tell him to use the other facility, even though that would have made me the face of the "new intolerance"?

It's something I've never had to think about.

Until now.

Edward Feser...

...on Frank Turek's radio show on "The Last Superstition."

N.T. Wright on the Resurrection.

As I get older this seems more and more true...

...but I'm not sure if I'm changing or my country is changing.

Peter Leithart writes:

Alasdair MacIntyre’s comment is often quoted, and exaggerated in a curmudgeonly way, but it gets at so much of the truth of modern politics that it’s worth another citation:

“The modern nation state, in whatever guise, is a dangerous and unmanageable institution, presenting itself on the one hand as a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services, which is always about it, but never actually does, give its clients value for money, and on the other as a repository of sacred values, which from time to time invites one to lay down one’s life on its behalf . . . . It is like being asked to die for the telephone company.”

That little “invites” is the killer.

Where was Jesus on Holy Saturday?

The Harrowing of Hell.

Mars.

A substantial portion of Mars atmosphere is tied up as "dry ice" at its poles.

Those who don't remember the history of scare-mongering are doomed to repeat the history of scare-mongering.



It's great that Paul Ehrlich made the list.

God bless even the Cafeteria Catholics.

I like the ecumical attitude expressed by revert Dana Laviano in an interview with Kathryn Lopez:

Every week we see headlines about “Cafeteria Catholics” which the mainstream media likes to use as proof that even the faithful think the Church is wrong or out of touch and should therefore be disregarded. But they are missing the point: the wonderful thing about “cafeteria Catholics” is the very fact that they continue to identify as Catholics. It IS the one true Church, founded by Christ, and there is nowhere else to receive his real presence or absolution. And yes, Jesus and the Church’s teachings can be very hard to follow and live up to. It’s a constant challenge. But the point is, you still go to Mass. You still pray for understanding. You still receive the sacraments. And when you stumble, you ask for forgiveness. We are all, in one way or another, “cafeteria Catholics.” We are all imperfect sinners who want to keep trying, keep coming home to Christ because we know the Catholic Church is where you find him!

N.T. Wright on the "New Perspectives on Paul."

This is kind of unsettling to one of my cherished prejudices.

I had always had the unspoken assumption that the Nazi leadership was really stupid, because it seems that they would have had to have been stupid to believe the nonsense that passed for truth in Nazi ideology.

I know, of course, that this is my socially-conditioned prejudice.  I know intellectually that the ideas of eugenics and race and Social Darwinism were the common currency of the educated elites throughout America and Europe prior to World War II, and by "educated elites," I'm including free-thinking leftists like H.L. Mencken, who had quite the thing for Nietzsche.

Vox Day points to the results from IQ tests administered to Nazi leaders at Nuremberg:

Not that it is likely to, but the results of the IQ tests performed by an American Army psychologist at the Nuremberg Trials should put at least a slight damper on the often-heard atheist appeals to intelligence. Especially since at 121.72, the average IQs of the National Socialist leadership was more than a standard deviation higher than the 103.09 mean IQ reported for atheists:

IQ of Nazi leaders, cited from: Gilbert, G. M.: Nuremberg Diary. New York: Signet Book 1947, p. 34; Wechsler-Bellevue

Hjalmar Schacht, Reich Minister of Economics: IQ 143

Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Foreign Minister of Germany: IQ 141

Hermann Göring, President of the Reichstag and Reich Minister of Aviation: IQ 138

Karl Dönitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine: IQ 138

Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and War Production: IQ 128

Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht: IQ 127

Alfred Rosenberg, Commissar for Supervision of Intellectual and Ideological Education of the German National Socialist Workers Party: IQ 127

Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer: IQ 120

In my mind, Hess and Rosenberg will always be high-functioning morons.

Actually, I'm still surprised the Hess did so well. A person who decides it would be a good idea for the second ranking leadier of a country to fly solo into an enemy country duing a war sounds like someone with a room temperature IQ at best, and a very cool room at that.

...which in light of his IQ score makes you wonder if there really wasn't something more to his flight....

...nah, what kind of game is it that puts such an intelligence asset into the hands of the enemy?

What a crazy trip.

Jewish comedy writer for "Seinfeld" tells his story about why he will be joining Catholic Church this Easter.

His story demonstrates a phenomenon called "synchronicity" - "a coincidence of events that seem related: the coincidence of events that seem related, but are not obviously caused one by the other."

Whether "synchronicity" grabs you - like it did the author, Tom Leonard - depends on who you are.  In M. Night Shyalaman's movie "Signs," one character observes:

"People break down into two groups when the experience something lucky. Group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. I'm sure the people in Group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in very suspicious way. For them, the situation isn't fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they're on their own. And that fills them with fear."

Another way of looking at the two groups is "grace."

"Pope and Devil" by Hubert Wolf.

For anyone interested in the Pius Wars – the argument that Pius XII was somehow complicit with the Holocaust by virtue of his alleged silence or other actions – or for anyone who has read the execrable John Cornwell’s “Hitler’s Pope” – “Pope and Devil” by Hubert Wolf is an essential resource for arriving at a balanced assessment of the issues. Wolf’s book largely refutes Cornwell’s specious arguments by meticulous attention to archival material released in 2003.

Not all of the relevant material have been released, but in 2003, the papacy of Pope John Paul II, released files relating to the nunciature – the diplomatic representatives of the Vatican – in Munich and Berlin during the period 1922 – 1939, as well as files relating to the Vatican’s interaction with these nunciatures. This information was not available to Cornwell, and essentially disproves Cornwell’s thesis that Pius XII, as Secretary of State Pacelli, pulled the strings that resulted in the Catholic Center Party supporting the Nazi Enabling Act. The proof is established by correspondence between Pacelli and the nunciatures indicating Pacelli’s opposition to the Center Party’s decision to dissolve itself.

Wolf also brings balance and depth that is missing from Cornwell’s Manichean good- liberal versus evil- conservative story. Thus, Wolf describes the case of the Amici Israel, which was an association of Catholic priests, including bishops and cardinals, that in the late 1920’s was committed to eradicating anti-semitism within the Catholic Church. Part of the agenda of Amici Israel was to eliminate the Good Friday prayer’s reference to “perfidious Jews.” This project was unsuccessful, and Amici Israel was suppressed, not because of anti-semitism, but because of a party of anti-liberal, conservative irredentists within the curia, led by Cardinal Merry De Val, who opposed anything that smacked of “modernism.” The point of the story is that the Catholic Church, and particularly its bureaucracy, has not ever been monolithic. There were parties within the church with their own agenda, entirely unrelated to the agendas that people like Cornwell want to find. Hence, the blanket accusation by Cornwell, Goldhagen and Carroll that the Church, pope and curia have all been anti-semitic is simply wrong.

Moreover, irony is a constant of history. One of the results of the Amici Israel affair was that the papal was that the decree of dissolution of Amici Israel in March of 1928 contained a clear condemnation of racial anti-semitism long before Kristalnacht. (p. 120.)

Wolf’s chapters generally are as follows:

Chapter 1 – Neutralizing Evil? Vatican Prescriptions for Germany (1917 – 1929).

Between 1917 and 1929. Wolf points out that the Vatican’s decision to reach out to Nazi Germany was not unusual or unexpected; it had reached out on three separate occasions to conclude a concordat with Stalinist Russia. (p. 9.) No one views those efforts as recognizing the legitimacy of the Soviet Union.

What was particularly interesting in this chapter was the fact that the up until the Weimar Republic, German states – including Protestant German states – were directly involved in selecting Catholic bishops. In Berlin, the Protestant state was able to choose which candidates would be put to the local church from which it could choose a bishop. Even though Weimar Germany, saw many German states give up their control over the Catholic Church, this movement was not entirely complete, and the concordat process was intended to cement the separation of church and state.

Not surprisingly, the bishops that were selected under the prior arrangement tended to be more conciliatory to the state, including the Nazi state, than the bishops selected by Rome after the concordat was signed. Galen and Von Preysing were both bishops who became known for being anti-Nazi stalwarts who would not have been chosen under the prior system.

Not surprisingly, this fact completely escapes Cornwell’s potted history.

Chapter 2 – Perfidious Jews? The battle in the Vatican over Anti-Semitism.

This chapter covers the interesting, relatively unknown and important Amici Israel affair.

Chapter 3 – The Pact with the Devil? The Reichskonkordat (1930 – 1933.)

This chapter covers the circumstances leading to the execution of the concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican.

Contrary to Cornwell’s unsubstantiated claims that the perfidious Pacelli single-mindedly engineered the Nazi police state, Wolf’s scrutiny of the dispatches between Pacelli and the nunciatures show that Pacelli was outside the loop, and that the Center Party and German Catholic bishops were running their own shows.

Chapter 4 – Molto Delicato? The Roman Curia and the Persecution of the Jews.

This chapter addresses the many petitions to Pius XI to speak out and condemn Nazi persecutions of the Jews. Wolf describes how both Pius XI and Pius XII desired to speak out against anti-semitism, and encouraged others to speak out, but believed that because of their position as leader of the worldwide church were required to maintain a position of public neutrality.

Chapter 5 – Dogma or Diplomacy? The Catholic Worldview and Nazi Ideologies (1933 – 1939).

In this chapter, Wolf looks at the compatibility of Catholic and Nazi ideological claims and concludes that those claims were not compatible. In reaching this conclusion, Wolf outlines the various occasions when the Catholic Church condemned core Nazi doctrines as being incompatible with Christianity.

Wolf also tackles a “talking point” advanced by Christopher Hitchens that since the Church didn’t put “Mein Kampf” on the Index of Forbidden Books, it must in some sense have endorsed Nazism. Wolf points out that although Mein Kampf was not placed on the Index, Alfred Rosenberg’s “The Myth of the Twentieth Century,” which was viewed as the key ideological treatise on Nazism was put on the Index. Wolf concludes that the reason Mein Kampf was not indexed was due to the curia placing diplomacy ahead of doctrine, particularly with respect to a book “written by a head of state who had come to power through legal means and with whom the Vatican had just signed an agreement binding under international law.” (p. 264.) On the other hand, “the dangerous opinions to be found Mein Kampf [were] refuted in the syllabus of the Congregation of Studies and contrasted to the true Catholic doctrine in the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.” [p. 270.] In other words, the Church compromised short of placing Mein Kampf on the Index, but it was clear to all that the noxious teachings of Mein Kampf were condemned.

Finally, similar constraints prevented the excommunication of Hitler – which in 1938 Mussolini, of all people, was advocating. [p. 270.] As Wolf concludes the book, “Pronouncing a Reich chancellor and head of state anathema was simply out of the question. Hitler remained a member of the Catholic Church until the day he died. Like the pope, even the devil could be Catholic.”

All in all, this is a readable and balanced book that examines the real world nuances facing real people in real history, which is a far cry from the comic book version of history that is currently so popular.

Libertarianism - the sexual ethics for people without children...

...or actual friends.

A Lutheran minister named Benjamin Dueholm writes a column in the Washington Monthly about Dan Savage - who is apparently America's most important advice columnist.  Savage is a homosexual and apparently sees the road to happiness as embracing one's inner kink with the proviso that one is honest about it - to a certain extent - and meets the express agreement that one undertakes with one's sexual objects.  In other words, it is a ethic for psychopaths.

Consider the case of a correspondent from late in 2009. A straight male in his late twenties, the writer felt indicted by a distinction Savage had drawn in a recent column between being an “honest nonmonogamous dude” (HND) and a “cheating piece of shit” (CPOS). “I have a girlfriend of several years whom I live with and love very much,” he writes.

I have never been an HND; I have in the past been a CPOS (though not in this relationship). My girlfriend is lovely, supportive, and generally GGG, and though the sex is good, I have a significantly higher libido than she does and I would like to have a little more variety in my sex life. I want to be an HND, but I don’t know how to broach the subject with the girlfriend without ruining our relationship. We are very open about our sex life and our relationship in general, but I think this is probably a “next level” topic that may not go over very well. How do I bring this up without screwing up our relationship beyond repair?

—Aspiring Honest Nonmonogamous Dude

Savage’s reply is frank as always: “I would encourage you to err on the side of screwing up your current relationship with an honest conversation about your mismatched libidos and your natural and normal desire for a little variety. Lies, damn lies, and statistics all demonstrate that, in time, one or the other or both of you will cheat. Better to toss that out there now, even at the risk of calmly winding down this relationship before you revert to form/CPOS, than to see the relationship explode after someone, most likely you, winds up cheating.”

This Aspiring Honest Nonmonogamous Dude (AHND) takes greater pains than most of Savage’s correspondents to praise his girlfriend, not only in general but specifically with regard to their sex life. They have already spent several happy years together. He is anxious about his surplus of desire, but apparently nothing else. Yet that consideration trumps all others in Savage’s answer. Sexual compatibility—in terms of libido or in terms of tolerating nonexclusivity—is the coin of the realm. Love, emotional compatibility, the possibility of a life together, not to mention irrecoverable years already spent—these must all be staked against the value of a fully deployed libido. But what, exactly, is the upshot of “calmly winding down” a relationship with a high risk of infidelity? Potential romantic partners, unlike firms in the classical free-market model, are not infinite in number, and a life of comparison shopping is not free of cost. If the aspiring HND dissolves this years-long transaction in order to find a partner who is just as lovable but less jealous, or who shares his libido at every point, he will likely have a lonely road ahead of him.

So, HND "loves" this women in the same way that he "loves" ice cream and he would like more ice cream, but unlike ice cream, his girl friend might object to being treated like an object. 

Savage's advice is that her past service is so much sunk cost that he should be willing to get rid of because, after all, it's probably going to end any how. 

This isn't love; it's a business arrangment - a profit maximizing contract where an "efficient breach" of trust - a pareto superior move where one person betters his or her position - justifies itself.

Love isn't what we feel about how ice cream - or a human being - makes us feel.  It is a decision - it is, classically, "willing the good of another." 

The opposite of that kind of marriage is the "laissez faire" marriage.  The problem with laissez-faire marriage is at least two-fold.  First, laissez-faire relationships are inefficient because its members have to spend more time defending their position in the relationship, making sure that they aren't defrauded, ensuring that they don't invest more in it than they get out of it, and always maintaining an "exit strategy," than they can spend in the primary mission of marriage - making and rearing children.

Second, such laissez-faire relationships habituate their members in being narcissistic.  If every decision is based on "what's in it for me?", people are not developing the kinds of virtues that don't result in immediate returns on investment.

Maggie Gallagher suggests that Savage's ethics encapsulate his experience in the gay community, where such open relationships are normal.  Gallagher's suggestion is backed up by studies showing the number of partners that homosexuals have, even among those in purportedly committed relationships, as well as anecdotal statements by homosexuals who have taken advantage of judicially-mandated marriage in California and Massachusetts to the effect that marriage doesn't mean monogamy.

Savage's response is here and includes this typical bit of bile:

And aren't you a practicing Catholic? Not knowing what women are like (or taste like) has never stopped the Pope from offering his unsolicited advice to women—no birth control, no abortions, no oral, no anal, no handjobs—and it's hypocritical of you to suggest that I'm not qualified to advise women, since I won't fuck 'em, without first telling that old fag in Rome to STFU already.

Because, obviously, whether you think that abortion is murder or not, the question of whether we have institutionalized the murder of human beings is of equal weight with the issue of whether Dan Savage can engage in anal sex.

And this guy is an expert in ethics? Might there not be more ethical nuances in Savage's list of things that the Pope gives "unsolicited advice" on than this ethical expert recognizes?
 
The subtitle of Dueholm's article is, "Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?"
 
Yes.
 
Clearly.

Playing "Spot the Idiot."

Lee Stranahan collects videos of really angry leftists and asks:

I’m someone who doesn’t agree with Sarah Palin on most issues – but why is this good?


This isn’t debate. It’s not answering her arguments. He’s not explaining a difference in policy. It’s yelling. It’s making noise. It’s not discourse. It’s what drunk frat boys do when a song comes on that they don’t like. It’s what people in Detroit do to Charlie Sheen. It’s what kids do before an adult tells them to stop or go on a timeout.

But look at the comments from the liberal blog Political Carnival…

Progressives Rock!

this makes me happy – love these people

What a Beautiful Sound let’s see if FOX shows this or better yet shows this without any anti

No. No! This isn’t a beautiful sound – it’s the sound of idiots. Got that? IDIOTS YELLING.

I would hate this behavior for exactly the same reasons if I saw conservatives doing this to a speaker. So here’s

my question…

When HAVE conservatives done this? Do they show up en masse at public rallies to keep Bernie Sanders or Michael Moore from speaking?

Because there the rules are different for the different sides.

If this kind of behavior had surfaced last year, it would have been front page news.

Truth is stranger than fiction...

...because fiction has to be plausible.

Consider the case of the woman who remade herself from a waitress to French nobility and then had her husband fake her death:

Genevieve Sanders was a Valley kid through and through.


Her father was a Tulare County supervisor; her stepmother was the mayor of Lindsay. Sanders studied psychology at Fresno State, then reigned as National Raisin Queen. She worked as a waitress in Fresno. She got married.

Genevieve Marie de Montremare was royalty.

Born in France, brought up on estates across Europe, she held multiple university degrees and was known worldwide for her work in horse genetics. She was a recognized authority on the Friesian breed, and the horse-judging events on her Clovis ranch drew well-to-do horse owners from far and wide.

The strange tale of how Genevieve Sanders reinvented herself as the flamboyant -- but fake -- Genevieve Marie de Montremare was a well-kept secret. Not even her closest friends suspected her French accent was made up.

And they might never have found out if her husband -- a prominent Fresno doctor -- hadn't faked her death in 2007.


Dr. Michael Weilert, 60, is director of pathology and clinical laboratories for Community Regional Medical Centers and a founding member of Pathology Associates in Clovis. He acknowledges that he told friends his wife -- now 48 -- had died after a long illness. He said he did it to protect her privacy because she is gravely ill.

But you'd sound like a loon claiming that story was true.

Tolerance is a virtue, which means that it is not natural.

Tolerance - a "live and let live" attitude - is a virtue, which means that it is not natural.  It is a developed skill, a habit, something learned by people who are confronted with a choice of reaction or tolerance, and something learned by watching other people who are confronted with that choice.

Secular liberals seem to think that tolerance is natural, perhaps because, to them, tolerance is something that is applied to things they are completely indifferent to, i.e., religion or race.  When it comes to things that secular liberals do care about, they are famously intolerant, as can be seen from their shouting down people who oppose their views, such as a fourteen year old speaker at a Tea Party rally.

As a learned habit - as a virtue - tolerance depends on social consensus that tolerance is in fact a good thing.  So, it's probably not surprising to see that tolerance will start breaking down everywhere if it breaks down anywhere.  A social attitude that says that it is good for you to be tolerant of my views when I don't have to tolerate yours is not a virtue, it is a species of tyranny.

Hence, this story about French protestors destroying the infamous "Piss Christ" exhibit seems timely:

Armed with hammers and screwdrivers, four protestors in Avignon destroyed a blasphemous 1987 photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine. Frederic Mitterand, the nation’s culture minister, denounced the act as an “attack on the freedom of creation.”


In an impassioned April 8 statement, Archbishop Jean-Pierre Marie Cattenoz had blasted local officials who permitted the display of the photograph in . Comparing the officials to Pontius Pilate, the prelate noted that they would not have tolerated the display of a similar photograph of the Qur’an.

Here is the story from another source:

Christian fundamentalists in France destroy "Piss Christ" artwork


A group of Christian fundamentalists armed with hammers and screwdrivers destroyed two artworks in an exhibition in the southern French city of Avignon at the weekend, one of which depicted a crucifix immersed in urine, French media reported Monday.


The attack on the photographs of US artist Andres Serrano, which were being shown as part the I Believe in Miracles exhibition of contemporary art followed calls by the local Catholic archbishop for the 'Piss Christ' photograph to be taken down.

The photograph, taken by Serrano in 1987, shows a plastic crucifix wallowing in a glass of the artist's urine. The Christ figure appears to glow in the image, which caused a scandal when it was first exhibited in 1989 and which has since toured the world.

Civitas, a lobby group which says it aims to 're-Christianize France,' called the piece 'sacrilege vis-a-vis God and Catholics' and launched a petition for it to be removed from the exhibition at the residence housing the Yvon Lambert collection.

On Saturday a group of around 500 people shouting Christian slogans demonstrated outside the building, Liberation reported.

The following day four youths wearing sunglasses entered the building and surrounded two security guards stationed in front of the artwork, while others began hacking at it and another of Serrano's photographs, showing a nun meditating.

Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand denounced the incident as an 'attack on the freedom of creation.'

While 'recognizing that the (Piss Christ) artwork could shock certain audiences,' Mitterand said 'any act of violence, destruction and intolerance is unacceptable.'

The attack is not the first involving the artwork. A copy of Piss Christ was vandalized at the National Gallery of Victoria in the Australian city of Melbourne in 1997, during a Serrano retrospective.

The Melbourne gallery later cancelled the show.

Eric Mezil, the director of the Lambert collection, said he would leave the shattered artworks hanging so that the public could 'appreciate the barbarity committed by extremists.'

This story describes the action as being performed by "Christian fundamentalists."  It would have been useful and informative if the story had actually given information telling us who these people were and whether the term "fundamentalist" means anything more than "people with whom the writer disagrees."  

Is it the case that anyone who is offended sufficiently to engage in conduct other than protest is a "fundamentalist"?  If so, is it, therefore, proper to refer to the many Democrat "fundamentalists" who called in death threats to Republicans and spay painted graffiti on statues?

This is probably how Socrates felt after talking to the Sophists -

"You people can't be either (a) serious or (b) so dense."

"Richard Dawkins is so popular because people are so unsophisticated in their thinking." (William Lane Craig)

Andrew Breitbart responds to Wisconsin Leftist Hecklers.

From Gateway Pundit.




Breitbart scores a solid point about the Obama strategy of pitting Americans against each other via "class warfare."