The real anti-science Barbarians.

Moira Breen shares the happy news that a three judge panel of Ninth Circuit turned back the attempt to legislate scientific truth and methedology. The case involved the ability of scientists to study the "Kennewick Man." The subject of the dispute centers around the approximate nine thousand year old remains of a human with feautures more typical of Europeans than Asians, thereby raising the possibility that the migration of humans into North America was a lot more complex than anyone had previously imagined. Here is the link to the decision.

The decision is a good primer on things like standing and statutory construction. The decision focuses on the interpretation of Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (“NAGPRA”), 25 U.S.C. § 3001 and specifically whether the Secretary of the Interior's decision to deliver the nine thousand year old remains to modern tribes was irrational or arbitrary under NAGPRA. The Court makes the fundamentally intelligent decision that the since Congress defined the tribes within the scope of NAGPRA's protection in the present tense, only existing tribes could make a claim to the remains, and since there was no evidence of a connection between existing tribes and the remains, the Secretary's decision was irrational, arbitrary or capricious.

Now let's set the intricacies of statutory construction aside for the moment and take a look at the big picture. What was going on here? Obviously, what was at stake was some kind of ideological view that requires that Native Americans not have European antecedents. And, because of that, the government was willing to stifle and suppress scientific research.

There is a fundamentally amazing footnote in the decision:

[Footnote] 10 The Corps buried the discovery site of the remains under approximately two million pounds of rubble and dirt, topped with 3700 willow, dogwood, and cottonwood plants. The lengthy administrative record that Defendants filed with the district court documents only a portion of the process by which the decision to bury the site was made. Nevertheless, that record suggested to the district court that the Corps’ primary objective in covering the site was to prevent additional remains or artifacts from being discovered, not to “preserve” the site’s archaeological value or to remedy a severe erosion control problem as Defendants represented. Bonnichsen III, 217 F. Supp. 2d at 1125. Burial of the discovery site hindered efforts to verify the age of Kennewick Man’s remains, and effectively ended efforts to determine whether other artifacts are present at the site which might shed light on the relationship between the remains and contemporary American Indians. Id. at 1126.

Reflect on that for a second - the United States government dumpted tons of rubble on a scientific site that could have proven invaluable in learning about the origins of man in North America.

Consider also the attempt to enshrine "Native Science" as a basis for allowing the tribes to prove the connection between the remains and their tribes.

So what happened in this case was classic barbarism - vandalism - which was perpetrated by the government against science in the name of ethnic identity politics.

Now let's listen for the sound of outrage by the same folks who express outrage when the fundamentalists try to play obvious and marginal games when the State tries to teach their children things which threaten their faith.

[Sounds of crickets chirping.]

There's a scandal here that should be uncovered, but will probably die in silence. What induced the Army Corps of Engineers to vandalize an archeological site in the name of political correctness? Why didn't the Bush administration pull out of this suit? What induced three democrat judges to do the right thing?

Americans need to wake up and realize that science is under attack and the real threat comes from the side that can tie policy to the prevailing zeitgeist of identity politics.

Daughters, Freedom and Cultural Oppression.

Without mentioning Janet Jackson by name, Amy Welborn posts a thoughtful reflection on how the role models available for girls such as her 12 year old daughter have dwindled to some variant on that of "the courtesan." I recommend the essay particularly for anyone raising daughters.

A dissenting view on Gay Pride.

Classical Anglican Net News, which regularly gets shut down by hacker attacks, has posted a long essay on the discontents of "Gay Pride." The author observes along the following vein:

As an openly gay male, I have no problem conceding that heterosexuality is and always will be the great human norm. But I'm sick and tired of a media culture that faciley equates homosexuality with heterosexuality and asks no deep questions about human psychology beyond the superficial liberal-vs-conservative, freedom-vs-oppression dichotomy. And I'm sick and tired of the sentimental, feel-good, liberal propaganda that conceals and denies the blatant Roman Empire decadence and compulsive, tunnel- vision promiscuity of so many gay men's lives.

And

A well respected Toronto journalist recently expressed to me her dismay that, despite the mainstreaming of Gay Pride, teenagers are still being harassed. Sorry, but I'm afraid the connection is lost on me. For years, I've been warning that the primary contribution of Gay Pride is to reinforce every public prejudice against us and to accelerate the inevitable backlash. When well meaning but foolish politicians, such as Alan Rock or Joe Clark, march in our cheezy, sleazy pride parades, they're not doing us any favours. The media pronounces them cool, enlightened and compassionate, but, like the Emperors New Clothes, the naked eye sees awkward sychophants. Or as my beloved lesbian author and professor of humanities, Camille Paglia, has said, "If you don't swing with the sodomites, you're nowheresville on the A-list".

Now if you happen to be the mayor of any municipality, don't even think about not issuing an official proclamation for gay pride, unless you want to find yourself in front of a human rights tribunal. I realize that Kelowna has managed to dodge this bullet for the time being, but there will be other years, other events and other mayors, and who knows what the future will bring. But this relentless effort toward mass education and forced compliance cannot be achieved without fascist obliteration of all individual freedoms. And since freedom is a hell of a lot more important than political correctness or tolerance, you can rest assured that any perceived threat to freedom will result in a societal backlash which will guarantee oppression of all homosexuals. And gay males, especially, are forever on the edge of a precipice because, in a political cataclysm, we're always the first to be purged.

A similar insight is beginning to dawn about the Massachusetts Supreme Court droit de signeur edict on "gay marriage." a guest blogger at Boy from Troy notes that the decision may be a "Pyrrhic victory."

Update: CanaCon blogger, Shiny, Happy Gulag offers a few reflections on the rush to dump the Western paradigm of marriage in a post entitled, "Do you, Trigger, take these Triplets...?", which is a great title for a post on our "evolving" idea of matrimony. (Darn, I wish I'd thought of that title first.)

There's a rocking "Calvinism v. the World" Cage Match going on in Mark Shea's comment boxes.

The post that kicked it off was:

Question: Does God love me?

Calvinist: I don't know.

That post brought David Heddle out swinging. Then a general melee. Gibes were flying, elbows were poking. Words like "monergetic" were thrown around. Citations to Augustine, Aquinas and many, many biblical quotations were generated. Actually, it was a high level of discussion and very educational, at least what little I could follow. And all of this by people on their coffee breaks.

Truthfully, David Heddle is like a one-man Calvinvist army. I'm listening to a lecture series on Europe in the Age of the Reformation and you can see in Heddle how Calvinism could emerge in the second wave of the Reformation as the "take no prisoner" alternative to Lutheranism.

here's the link to the comments if you like that kind of thing.

Anti-Creationism and Constructive Conversation.

My post on why I don't consign creationists into the emotional nether regions reserved for mendacious villains elicited a number of civil and constructive responses. Three-Toed Sloth notes that there is a perspective that his proposal would not survive constitutional challenge - there not being a sufficient nexus between agriculture funding and science education - before civilly noting my critical position. I appreciate the Sloth's civility, but, really, doesn't the agriculture subsidy defunding proposal suggest the very problem of class stereotyping I criticized. The proposal is based on the stereotype that creationists are redneck rubes, i.e., country folk, i.e., people dependent on agriculture and, therefore, cutting off agricultural subsidies would really hit those fundy yahoos where they lived.

Of course, I don't know what effect cutting off ag funding would have had on my creationist Ukrainian Orthodox high school biology teacher who doesn't appear to fit the stereotype, but maybe it's a good idea nonetheless. Kind of like cutting off the subsidies for bagels until those big city folks finally take care of that crack epidemic we keep hearing about here in the sticks. Frankly, though, both notions are just offensive stereotypes.

Moira Breen seems to share some of the ambivalence of my position. She does make the fair point that the issue comes to "expertise v. freedom."

I think this point may also separate me from the hard-core evolutionists. Evolution apologists tend to take the position that science is exactly like solving a problem in geometry. We have a problem and we collect facts and we make exercise the same logical and bloodless mindset as that of Mr. Spock and, voila, we have our answer. But as we all recall from our study of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that kind of process may work within a paradigm - a scientific worldview - such as evolution, but where the paradigm doesn't work, or where there is a disagreement between paradigms, the decision-making process looks more like a political revolution with supposedly objective scientists picking sides on scientific questsion because of academic loyalties or aesthetic views. Copernicus may have been right, but Ptolemy was largely supplanted because many people thought that a sun-centered solar system was more beautiful than an Earth-centered one; "proof" had little to do with it since at the time both theories were equally "provable."

If you postulate an evolutionary paradigm, then becoming upset with those who do not work within the paradigm makes perfect sense. But if some folks don't accept the paradigm, then the "proof" that's required is not going to be the neutral, objective, logical, scientific proof that evolution-apologists believe they have a corner on; instead, you're going to have to work with the complex of emotional values that make people believe what they believe. Generally speaking, my sense is calling people like my revered 10th Grade Ukrainian Orthodox Biology teacher a "right wing barbarian" is not an effective approach.

Ridiculing creationists as rural yokels may be fine and well, but my view is that we shouldn't pretend that the debate between evolution and creation has anything to do with normal science; (normal in the Kuhnian sense.) It's literally a cultural war and some evolutionists are like the Leninists drawing up their proscription lists. While that may be fine, and a great advance for science, let's admit it for what it is and have some sympathy for the collateral damage.

That said, I think that biology classes ought to be in the business of teaching the accepted evolutionary paradigm. After all, what else are we going to do? Let every person with an off the wall belief deny a paradigm that is thus far working?

Mark Shea on the dysfunctions of material reductionism.

What's wrong with using human cadavers as artwork? What's the harm in one fellow butchering another human for food if the latter really, really wanted it to happen? I mean if humans are simply animals with an enhanced ability to reason?

Mark Shea provides an explanation well worth reading.

"Should the need ever arise, may God grant me just a fraction of the courage of these men."

Midwest Conservative Journal on the sinking of the USAT Dorchester.

So Janet Jackson got up that morning and said, "Hey, not enough under-14 year old boys have seen my tits...

In order to help me assess the merits of her claim that "it wasn't an accident, Justene Adamac at Calblog has thoughtfully directed me to the Drudge Report's photo of Janet Jackson's "undergarments."

OK, I'm no expert, and Lord knows that disastrous "costume failures" are an all too common occurrence among rock divas and porn stars, but I'm thinking that Janet's "undergarments" are designed for show and not for comfort.

By the way, I didn't learn about Jackson's immodest behavior until the next day, and I was in a pub watching the game with about 20 men. Which probably goes to show how boring and unwatchable Superbowl Half-Times have become.

In the same vein, though, on my way to court, the SUV pulling into the underground parking had a license frame holder that informed the world "Beyond B*tch....Gone to C*nt." (Of course, I bowdlerized the nouns because I don't need the kind of traffic that those words would attract.) Now I was alone. I didn't have the Widget, the Wadget and Boff ages 5, 6 and 10 respectively. The Wadget is turning into quite a reader. She reads everything she can see from the car. So, I ask again, raising kids is hard enough, why are there people like Janet Jackson and this cretin who want to make it harder?

It simply is not enough to say, "well we've all seen tits" or "we all know those words." Not my girls and not in public. I think I'd rather have them form the sense that modesty is a virtue and that respect for others is a virtue and that that respect begins with being concerned about offending the sensibilities even of prudes. After all, it's not like we have to worry about the sensibilities of libertines.

Hitchens offers a parable.

The rest of the essay is worth reading.

Germany sentenced to another 50 years of probation before it can return to Western Civilization.

Clayton Cramer notes that Germany managed to scrape out a manslaughter conviction agaainst a German man who advertised for a person to butcher and eat, received a response and a proceeded to butcher and eat that person. Cramer notes:

Oddly enough, while the article admitted that Meiwes had done this for sexual gratification, it neglected to mention that this was a form of homosexual activity--and that there were hundreds of others who had volunteered to be Meiwes meal.

The story is indeed chilling, as Kramer notes. Hundreds of others had volunteered??? That's chilling indeed. Hundreds of people believed that the destiny of their lives was to be an appetizer for some moral leper's sick form of 'sexual gratification'; that after millenia of human evolution and all the myriad chances that were required for them to live, they were called to be the momentary diversion of a human pustule. And all the German law could manage in its majesty is manslaughter? The Cranky Professor views the verdict more positively than I do; a sentence of something like 8 years is hardly an expression of undying loyalty to the idea the importance of human life. Moreover, the fact that apparently the decision took into account the alleged legal complexities arising from the fact that the victim wanted to die, doesn't give me a great deal of confidence in German civilization.

Of course, this tragedy has been used by some to as a whip to hammer Christianity with its alleged hard hearted attitude toward the unloved. Check out the comment to and this Mark Shea post to get a flavor of the argument. Of course, it is Christianity that defines each human being as ontologically unique and infinitely priceless; modern culture, to the contrary, considers human beings to be animals with overdeveloped cerebrums who can be exterminated before birth on a whim. A whim like killing and cannibalizing someone.

And speaking of the modern culture, Aramvirique makes this point about the Dutch euthanasia law which could be applied as easily to the "complexity" of a person willing to enslave himself to the perverse appetites of another man:

What I mean is this: that by legally sanctioning euthanasia we at the same time sanction a view of human life that is superficial at best and morally repugnant at worst. At bottom, it is a view of life that reduces the good to a calculus of pain and pleasure. Life is held to be worth living to the extent that its pleasures outweigh its pains.

One problem with this philosophy of life is that it erases the claims of everything whose reality is not susceptible to the pleasure-pain calculus. Considerations of honor, of virtue, of patriotism, of the sanctity of life: such values are what make us human. And all such things are either ruled irrelevant or are redefined in such a way that they no longer exhibit their original weight and density. (If we try to define honor in terms of pleasure and pain, as some philosophers have done, we wind up with someone that has precious little to do with honor as traditionally conceived.)

Evolution in the News - Neanderthals and Georgia.

Science Daily News reports on the findings of the largest and most comprehensive study on the question of whether Neanderthals were incorporated into the Homo Sapien lineage or were a separate species. The conclusion:

The study found that the differences measured between modern humans and Neanderthals were significantly greater than those found between subspecies or populations of the other species studied. The data also showed that the difference between Neanderthals and modern humans was as great or greater than that found between closely related primate species.

Hence, Neanderthals were a different species who lost out in the evolutionary struggle.

In other news, Georgia's silly law removing the word "evolution" from the teaching of evolution has generated they typical buzz among "skeptics" and "freethinkers." (See, for example, John Scalzi's Post.) Now, obviously, I'm fascinated by evolution and I accept the the theory of evolution as an explanation for what really happened in "deep time." I've had my share of debates with "creationists." I agree with most of Scalzi's observations about the proper way of challenging science. And, definitely, I find that the arguments of creationists have a "fingernail scratching on chalkboard" effect on me.

Why, then, do I get the same "fingernail on chalkboard" feeling about the anti-creationists? What is it about the people who seem to envision themselves as latter day Clarence Darrows manning the lonely barricades against the hordes of ignorant creationists. Pharyngula, for example, with respect Georgia's "rub the serial numbers off of evolution" approach writes:

Why does being a Republican party member have such a strong correlation with this kind of nonsense? I know that there are reasonable Republicans out there: why aren't you loudly shouting down the lunatic wing of your party?

Well, why should I? Because evolution is the prime center of Pharyngula's worldview? Who cares? People managed to live for millenia without any idea of evolution and if, tomorrow, evolution were replaced by a paradigm shift in favor of "space men zapping life into existence," how would anyone's life change? The very next day people would wake up and find that the highways are jammed. Lights would light. Dogs would bark.

Likewise, Three-Toed Sloth proproses a faux-federal initiative that would deny funding to school districts which dissent from the received orthodoxy of evolution. What's next? Marking dissenters with large red "C"s? Denying work visas to anyone who fails to sign a loyalty pledge to evolutionary orthodoxy?

Don't get me wrong. I favor the teaching of evolution because I'm philosophically in favor of Truth, which is one reason why I found the DaVinci Code so obnoxious. But, you know, all kinds of untruths are being shoved down my kids throats at their public schools every year, such as the moral neutrality of homosexuality and the idea that because they're "white" or, as my daughter was led to believe, "English," they are the direct heirs of southern slave owners. ("You're not English," I pointed out to my daughter, "The English were the people who didn't emancipate your ancestors until the 1820s and who drove your ancestors to America where they were drafted into the Union Army to fight the people who owned the slaves.")

Likewise, I have to take my time and money to make sure that my children learn the truths that are of central importance to their cultural tradition. But when it's my core beliefs that are involved, I find that people allied with Pharyngula have created a paradigm that preempts my core beliefs. So, why should I get excited when it's something that the secular left uses to bash the people they hate most, the fundamentalist Christians?

Another reason for my indifference to dissent about evolutionary education is that the very people most exercised by dissent by creationists also regularly post bumper stickers on their care that say "Question Authority" and write histrionics about the stifling of free thought and such-like. Yet, when they are confronted for the first time by such dissent to their cherished beliefs, they start reaching for social control mechanisms like ridicule and denial of funding. It looks like hypocrisy. It looks like a narrow minded attack by the elite members of society on a minority group. It looks like thought control.

And a final reason for my indifference is that evolution has won. No one seriously thinks that evolutionary theory can ever be read out of social consciousness. Too many cultural metaphors are wrapped up in the worldview of evolution. Books on evolution will be published and get wide acceptance for the foreseeable future. Information about evolution will inevitably spread because people like myself find the subject true and fascinating and we'll spread it by relaying the latest findings on, for example, Neanderthals. Outside of provincial areas, evolution has won the hearts and minds of society in general. That's not going to change and if tolerance - I repeat tolerance - means that those with an investment in creationism be allowed to find a formula for reconciling their faith with science, well, then in the interests of tolerance, shouldn't they be allowed to do so.

Ah, to heck with creationists. Fire up the auto da'fe.

New Montana Anthem.

Mtpolitics offers "Black Choppers in the Sky." Sung to the tune of "Ghost Riders in the Sky."

As the choppers blew on by him, he heard one call his name.
"If you want to save your folk from us, you must play this game.
Get yourself some tin foil and wrap it around your head.
The Jews control the world, and Elvis isn't dead."

Yippee-Yi-Oh.
Yippee-Yi-Ay.
Black Choppers in the sky.

Too funny. The ironic thing is that I'm in trial on Monday for a probate case where the decedent used to tell his kids things like the government was watching him, they shouldn't get marriage licenses so the government couldn't track them, never sign anything and that they should never let their fingerprints be taken. It is part of our case to present evidence of the signed medical releases which he would sign with "codes" such as "UCC 1201" and "18 USC 1702" to indicate that he was signing under "duress."

Apparently, apart from that whole "black choppers in the sky" quirk, he was a lovely, loyal husband and father who is missed by his family who did not share his paranoid obsession.

Strange but true.

I'm a Blogship Trooper.

Cool.

My Canadian Mennonite partner might want to make Shiny Happy Gulag - A Rebel Yell from the People's Republic of Canada a favorite site. After 20 years, I've managed to turn him from a Social Credit into a National Review reading conservative.

One down, thirty-one million or so to go.

More Unhinged Franken News.

I missed Al Franken's appearance on David Letterman last week, which is hardly surprising since I never watch Letterman. Anyhow, according to Jim Treacher used his appearance to tell a story about how "rightwingers" used an Amazon review of his book to inflict emotional injury on him about the recent death of his mother. Treacher found the exchange painful and, well, unhinged. On the other hand, Captain Spaulding aka Daniel Frank thinks that the story falls into a fine comedic tradtion.

Maybe it does, but, come on, Franken used the story not for comic effect, but to ride his hobbyhorse, which is to dwell upon the Manichean struggle between the forces of virtue and the "neanderthal" Right, who, in his eyes, lack any class, human feeling or common decency.

For what it's worth, here's the Amazon review site. I didn't find the purported crass shot at Franken's tragedy. I did find this review, however, that I thought was useful:

This book is only slightly funny, full of racist statements, and factually inaccurate, opps, I mean full of lies. "On page 85 of Lies, Franken refers to talk-show host Sean Hannity as an 'angry, Irish ape-man.' Three pages earlier, Franken pondered whether Bill O'Reilly suffered from a 'touch of the Irish flu.'" There are so many lies in this book, there are web pages devoted to the lies. http://www.frankenlies.com/ It doesn't deserve even one star.

Hmm. "Irish ape-man." "Irish flu." What could that mean? Well, it probably doen't matter because it's not an attack on "diversity." It's not "hateful." It's a "parody" by a "comedian."

Great things, those quotations marks.

Regarding the Neo-Con self-identification.

A correspondent asks:

I found your interesting blog quite by accident today while researching etymologies. As a self-described neo-con, do you consider the term "neo-con" to refer to a group that is homogenous to the extent that they are a community or sub-culture with common perspectives? The alternative is that "neo-con" is a big-tent term and refers to folks with similar leanings, but perhaps very different positions on specific subjects of relevance (economic policy, taxation, morality, etc.).

Part of what I'm after is a determination of whether a neo-con can speak authoritatively about the positions of neo-cons.

My response:

My sense is that Neo-Conservativism constitutes less of a community and more of an attitude. I first began to identify myself as a "neocon" in the '70's when I was in college and reading Commentary magazine, and particularly its brilliant editor, Norman Podhoretz, and Irving Kristol. Where paleocons would tend to defend their policy positions by starting with windy philosophical propositions, the neo's tended to use sociological studies. I think, in fact, that James Q. Wilson made that very point back in the early '80s.

The other thing that may identify Neo's was their strong support of national defense. Most of the Neo's, James Q. Wilson being a notable exception, tended to be Jewish, from New York, and former hard leftists. I think that the Neo's came to realize during the 60s that the capture of the Democrats by the New Left carried would engender a weakened commitment by the Democrats with respect to national security. Being supporters of Israel for obvious reasons, the Neo's realized that an American which was weak on national security was bad for Israel. I don't mean to suggest that Podhoretz and Kristol subordinated America's interests to that of Israel; I like to think that they "grew up" and realized that the dalliance with a weak postion on national security could have dramatic real world consequences.

Today, you see the continuation of the Neo-Con tropism in the strong, "forward" position on national security, which sometimes appears to conflate America's national interests with those of Israel's. I don't, however, see the same interest in using sociology as a basis for crafting policy positions.

For me, the Neo-Con tag is probably a hold-over from my student days, although it does represent my continuing view which favors a strong national defense and continuing interest in justifying conservative policies with scientific data.

That's my explanation, but today I wonder how much of my former identification with being a Neo-con was simply a desire on my part to avoid the flack I knew I would get from my fellow college and law students from being a "conservative." I don't, however, think it was in anyway odd for a redheaded Irish Catholic kid from California to adopt the politics of a group of middle-aged Jewish, former Trotskyites from Brooklyn.

Appropos of the Culture of Death Candidate Howard Dean.

Domenico Bettinelli, Jr. puts paid to HugeTim's sophistic claim that Howard Dean is the "pro-life candidate."

Big Mistake

"Hugetim" who runs the Catholics for Dean blog made the incredibly foolish mistake of provoking Kathy Shaidle of Relapsed Catholic. I guess it was to be expected since he's a self-proclaimed 22 year old Philosophy major.

For those with a taste for flame wars - and really who doesn't like a flame war done by an expert like Shaidle - here is the link.

I like HugeTim's favorite philosophical gambit of claiming to have "friends from Gambia, Nigeria" and whereveria when Shaidle points out that so much of the suffering being imposed on Africa is due to correctible dysfunctions in their society, such as choosing to adopt Marxism which, per Shaidle, Does. Not. Work. Nice use of philosphy, Tim. Can you say non sequitur.

Maybe not. It is Latin after all and was spoken by Dead White Men.

Enjoy.

Update: Some of the comments over on Mark Shea's blog about HugeTim's approach to dialectics are priceless. For shear wisdom, I recommend this comment by Gerald Gerard E.

Al Franken - First Amendment Gladiator or Unhinged Maniac?

Check out this article describing how Al Franken body-slammed a heckler at a Dean campaign appearance.

The trouble started when several supporters of fringe presidential candidate Lyndon Larouche began shouting accusations at Dean.

Franken emerged from the crowd and charged one male protester, grabbing him with a bear hug from behind and slamming him onto the floor.

Bear hug from behind? Isn't this a garden-variety assault? Is there a "protect free speech by bitch-slapping demonstrators" privilege for assault and battery?

Franken explained his motives:

"I'm neutral in this race but I'm for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down."

OK, let's be honest, who hasn't wanted to deck one of those kookie Larouchites? I think it's a fariness issue. If leftists get to deck Larouchites, everyone should get an equal shot at them.

On the other hand, Franken was the clown who boasted about threatening NRO's Rich Lowry to a fistfight. This incident puts that "charade" into some kind of perspective. The man appears to be seriously unhinged.

And if I could work sex into this post, I would hit the "three things not to discuss in polite society" trifecta.

As long as I'm on a religion and politics roll, I invite you to check out this Midwest Conservative Journal about an Episcopalian priestess who calls on churches to support the cause of abortion rights.

The abortion rights movement needs support of churches to keep abortion legal, an Episcopal priest told a gathering of about 30 people, including several state legislators, on the eve of the 31st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision....."We must be active in every election and in every realm of government," said the Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, a Massachusetts priest who addressed Naral/Pro Choice Colorado ....

Well, they said that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.

I guess we should share a moment of silence to hear the expressions of concerns about the possibility that this would amount to a Taliban-like intrusion of theocracy into the holy ground of secular politics.

(Sound of crickets chirping.)

Catholics for Dean.

Although it's probably largely irrelevent given the way the Dean campaign appearst to be circling the drain, someone has started a Catholics for Dean site. The proprietor challenges why a Catholic can not support Dean in light of the assertions that (a) Bush has killed people in war and Dean hasn't and won't; (b) Dean will multiply the loaves and fishes and prevent starvation; and (c) Dean is really, really offended and hurt by abortion and although he supports abortion rights, he would prefer to see a regime where abortions are far, far fewer than one sees today. In other words, Dean has the social issues right and his heart is in the right place on abortion.

Canon lawyer Peter Vere offers his take on the issue and why the issue is non-negotiable. He also makes the point:

And this is the problem with each and every candidate for the Democratic Presidential nominee:

The Democrats don't get the abortion issue.

The Democrats don't want to get the abortion issue.

The Democrats don't even want to try and understand how practicing Catholics think when it comes to the abortion issue.

There once was an exception to the above. His name was Bob Casey and he was the Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania. In fact, our family had the good forture -- when we lived in Scranton -- of moving a mere couple houses down from where the retired Governor lived. I met Governor Casey on the street several times. He was a principled Catholic, a principled politician and a principled Democrat. If he were still living, I would support his presidential campaign in a heartbeat.

To Governor Casey, the right-to-life was and remained non-negotiable throughout his life. He understood that what lay in a woman's womb was not some blob of extra tissue, but a human life. He understood that to destroy that human life was murder. He was a great advocate of Catholic social justice because he recognized that the hierarchical nature of Catholic social justice teaching begins with the right to life and that the state must protect this fundamental right. When the DNC silenced Gov. Casey back at the '92 convention, they essentially stated there is no room in the Democratic Party for practicing Catholics and sent us packing for the GOP.

Vere concludes that as long as the Dems refuse to allow Catholics to speak on their views on abortionOf course, as we know from the media, only Republicans have "litmus tests" and have a theocratic refusal to allow a "big tent" and free discussion of social issues. Devere concludes:

Tim then sent me a third email stating, "Will you at least acknowledge that a case can be made for a Catholic to vote for Dean?" Again, as long as the DNC refuses to acknowledge that a Catholic can make the case for the pro-life position because his or her conscience tells him or her that abortion is murder, the answer is no.

A further point. Does anyone outside of the lunatic left really think that Bush didn't feel that war was a tragic necessity? On the other hand, can anyone really say in good faith that Dean doesn't believe that "abortion rights" are a fundamental element of the ordered liberties that make up his and his supporters view of a "good society?" The two attitudes are simply not comparable. Presumably, they could be compared if, and only if, President Bush viewed war as a normal, natural, necessary and morally neutral result of the intercourse between nations, and on that point there is absolutely no evidence that he does.

Presentism and the Tuskegee Study.

Moira Breen has unearthed an interesting essay on the Tuskegee syphilis study. The study offers the "counter-narrative" that the study was not an example of institutionalized racism. Rather, the study was founded on the medical realities of the time which included the fact that syphilis was not easily or reliably treated, that the men were past the period when they were infectious, that since 98% of the men sought some kind of treatment for "bad blood" during the stuy there was some awareness by the men that they were not being treated as part of the study and that a majority of syphilis cases spontaneously cure themselves. Incidentally, I was surprised to find out that the men were not infected as part of the study. I don't where I got the information that they had been, but that's what I kind of thought.

I don't know. I strongly suspect that such a study would never have been performed among the middle class in New York or Chicago. Maybe, as Moira points out and the article suggests, the doctors went to where there knew there were poor people who would be more likely to think that the possibility of some free medical care as worth the non-treatment they were getting.

I certainly think that the essay underscores the problem that we as a society have with "presentism" which acts as a filter on our understanding of the past.

Classics Blog

If you like scholarship - and, really, who doesn't like scholarship? I mean even those guys who go to tractor pulls and like to crush beer cans - empty, full, whatever - on their foreheads probably like a cage match on the proper way to pronounce Ciceronian Latin. Or maybe not.

But I digress.

If you like scholarship - the Classics specifically - go check out Classics in Contemporary Culture.

Then go to a tractor pull to show that you're still hip.

Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line, or President Bush when he's in a diner serving ribs.

Surf through this Mark Cameron post to the President's comments to the press in Roswell, New Mexico.

Ripples of Battle.

Victor Davis Hanson has a heart-ripping reflection on the very personal holes left in his life after battle of Okinawa. On which point, Tricia at Dear Brian is working on the after-effects of 9/11. Say a prayer for her, Brian and Brooke.

I wonder whether Tim Cavanaugh had this in mind when he referred to this man as "the Roman Dictator.".

Tim Cavanaugh was the Reason writer who told me not to "get your scapular in a bunch" when I objected to his calling John Paul II "the Roman dictator." Well, under the principle that the idea that "good men do are oft interred with their bones" should be fought whenever possible, let me direct anyone interested to this article where Rabbis describe JPII as the best Pope "in history, in terms of the Jews."

I wonder if Cavanaugh would agree that this kind of hopeful reconciliation does constitute a "home runs for human dignity, knowledge and freedom."

Victor Davis Hanson talks about War and Peace.

Penner and I had the great opportunity to attend a talk that Victor Davis Hanson gave as part of the Community Speakers Series at the Saroyan Convention Center. If you ever get a chance to see Hanson in person, do so. The man is the very embodiment of reflective erudition. I can't help but think that our public discourse would be dramatically raised by a few mandatory classes in the Classics and, certainly, listening to Hanson is like listening to Mozart compated to the "nails on chalkboard" cacaphony offered by the likes of Howard Dean and Jeanine Garofolo.

The speech was well attended by several hundred individuals, most of whom appeared to be retired. I'd guess that I and my host were among the youngest people in the audience and we're in our forties. But stop there for a second. Reflect on the fact that several hundred people went to listen to a Classics professor who used words like "manichean" and casually noted that the last time two consenual societies went to war with each other was 415 BC when Athens invade Sicily as if he expected everyone to understand these references. Note that's several hundred people in Fresno, California, and I rather suspect that they did understand these references.

Hanson spoke away from the podium and without notes and presented an engaging and coherent analysis of war through the ages, making particular use of Thucydides assertion that wars are started by fear, honor or perceived interests. His view appears to be that bin Laden may have been motivated by the element of fear since he and his kind are looking at a future where you can go anywhere and find someone in sneakers carrying a walkman and wearing a "University of California T-shirt." That future must appear threatening to bin Laden. Hanson likened it to the Spartans who knew that Athen's "likeability" threatened their way of life.

Perhaps, Penner will post his take on Hanson's talk in the comment box. I did want to commemorate this accolade to life in the Valley:

Hanson pointed out that he finds more wisdom and common sense among farmers in Selma than in all of the facultry meeting rooms of all of the great universities he's been to. Academics, he reflects, have tenure and something about tenure makes academics think that they can reason with other people who will recognize that the academics are correct because they are so dad-gummed educated. This attitude is fostered by the unique hot-house environment of the academic world where you have lifetime tenure and what you do isn't supposed to have consequences on your income.

Farmers, on the other hand, know that life is unfair. They can do everything right - they can plant, weed and water - and in the end a freak storm can wipe everything out. "Crap just happens." So it's not surprising, according to Hanson, that a farmer in Selma is more likely to say, "that Osama is one bad dude. He's not going to stop, until someone goes out there and stops him." Crap happens, but what are you going to do about it? Whine and pass a resolution? Or roll up your sleeves and fix the problem?

Being originally from the Valley, I appreciate Hanson's observation. I think if you're from a place like Fresno, you can go either of two ways. You can either be embarrassed by the provincial backwardness of your home and swear to leave and go to where people are sophisticated and cultured. Or you can go to the big city and realize that those folks are a bunch of silly eunuchs. Many of my friends took the first course and they're gone to LA or San Francisco or wherever. God bless them, but based on my experience, Hanson and I made the better choice.

Interesting Return of the King Factoid.

Certainly, we all know that RotK has three different endings, but did you know that the last one is twenty minutes long. Infinite Monkeys says it is and likens it to the Wizard of Oz.

I really didn't notice, maybe because I was just happy to be avoiding the company of drunken, happy New Years Eve revellers. I thought the endings dragged, but overall I really enjoyed the movie.

Speaking of Churchill.

It's like a bleedin' slice of living history. Churchill's parrot is still alive and cursing out the Nazis.

Forget my deep moral question one post below. Any person who can raise a 104 year old, Hitler-cursing bird deserves absolution on a little thing like contemplating anthrax warfare on a civilian population.

How do we think about the Firebombing of Dresden?

Mark Shea links to this article that compares Churchill's decision to firebomb Dresden, and his initial plan to use anthrax against the civilian population, to Saddam.

What do you think? Are the two comparable? Was Churchill the moral equivalent of Saddam?

It's a disturbing question, particularly because I admire Churchill and the comparison may show that my idol has feet of clay.

I think that there may be a difference, but that difference is not going to be appreciated in our modern age, which focuses on the act and not the actor.

Thin Skin Alert.

Not me this time. You know, I had never thought about the peculiar agony of being both a movie reviewer and a believing Catholic. On reflection I guess that being forced to watch movies like The Order could constitute a significant act of penance. Rick McGinnis at Movieblog has an extensive review of Heath Ledger's execrable flick "The Order." I've read Movieblog before and never guessed his theological orientation, but, apparently, one more flick involving "an evil Cardinal commissioning murders to protect Catholic dogma from exposure" was one too many:

If you wanted to be clever, you could rope in films like Ken Russell's The Devils, and the whole "nunsploitation" subgenre, the cinematic echo of "escaped nun" stories like 1836's Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, which endeavored to tell fearful Protestants titillating stories of life behind convent walls, full of rape and perversion, randy bishops and monks, and which live on today in the "lesbian nun" porn subgenre. It's a prurient, mostly sordid little backwater of junk culture, and it can be ignored more often than not.

I'd have done the same, I expect, if not for the fact that I'm a Catholic, that films about religious subjects have attracted the spillover from the spotlight being shone on Mel Gibson's unreleased but controversial Passion, and because of the heated discussions on the resurgence of anti-Catholicism being tossed about in the circles where I live and read.

McGinnis then does an erudite job during which the movie is discussed, an explanation of the Oratorians' background is provided, and, for you obscurantist legal junkies, Canon law is quoted. (He also works the word "revanchist" into his essay. Cool.) McGinnis observes:

The great twist at the heart of The Order is that Benno Furmann's sexy, velvet-suit wearing sin-eater isn't really the villain: it's Peter Weller's slick, power-hungry Cardinal, who presides over some kind of pagan death-cult in the catacombs under Rome, and is the front-runner to succeed the current, ailing Pope. And so the oldest anti-Catholic trope is revived for the sake of a third-rate thriller: Perfidious, covertly satanic Rome, poised to reclaim earthly power and brutalize the world.

It's a piece of propaganda that won't die, the anti-Catholic blood libel. It's especially popular when a Catholic runs for President of the United States; when Al Smith ran for president in 1928 against Herbert Hoover, it was rumoured that Smith was having a tunnel built under the White House that would run straight to the Vatican. In 1960, John F. Kennedy had to answer the charge of "divided loyalties" by declaring that his Catholicism would take second place in any decisions he made as president.

Now, I've seen The Order and I considered it to be a brainless, inconsequential slur of a film. I recognized the historic anti-Catholic tropes in the movie, but the movie is so dumb and boring that it was hard to work up a good head of steam. In fact, I deliberately left it out of my "Lost Gospel" post because it was so lightweight.

In fact, the internal logic of the movie is fractured. The McGuffin is a "soul eater" who endangers the Church because he can offer absolution of sins outside of sacramental confession. The Soul Eater is depicted as offering a compassionate end-run around the heartless Church who denies Last Rites because of its commitment to petty legalism.

Now that's a weird kind of anti-Catholicism since it posits, among other things, that (a) your works can damn you despite your faith, which has to come as a shock to Lutherans, and (b) that Sacramental Confession is necessary to salvation, which will come as a shock to American Baptists and (c) the Church holds the keys to salvation, which is what we've been saying all along.

Of course, the premise of the hard-hearted, petty, merciless Church withholding Last Rites is nonsense. McGinnis actually did some research on the subject, a practice Dan Brown could learn from:

I e-mailed Father Dan at the Oratory to find out if it was remotely true.

"Anyway, as you suspect: the whole purpose of our Lord in giving us the Sacrament of Confession is so that sinners can be reconciled to God and the Church. In danger of death, this is so important that any priest, even though he lacks the faculty to hear confessions, can lawfully and validly absolve any penitents from any sins or censures. This applies even to a priest who has been excommunicated (Code of Canon Law, Canons 976 and 1335). The general principle about when to give or withhold absolution is expressed in Canon 980: 'If the confessor is in no doubt about the penitent's disposition and the penitent asks for absolution, it is not to be denied or deferred.'

Well, duh. It's exactly what you'd expect, or, rather, it's exactly what I expected. Now what's interesting is that this piece of folderol was exactly where my I started thinking that the writer was "just making s**t up." (Actually, my first hint was earlier, when the director had Father Heath says Mass with his back to the congregation, also noted by McGinnis, which told me that either the writer didn't bother to do elementary research, or did, but wanted to ignore fact in favor of some plot point.) Nonetheless, so much for the premise on which this pathetic flick is based.

I agree with McGinnis that the lack of financial success of the "Anti-Catholic Genre" is definite evidence that claims of anti-Catholicism are substantially overstated. I also agree when McGinnis notes:

That there's more than a whiff of paranoia about this vision is undeniable, especially compared to the very real resurgence in anti-Semitism, but Cavanaugh is right - the spectre of resurgent anti-Catholicism is a pretty toothless thing if its most visible manifestations are crap thrillers with unearned pretentions, or even the residual anti-church seethings of apostate Marxists. That said, there's always the old trope/t-shirt slogan: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you."

Maybe so, but why do these movies keep coming out? Answer: because it's easy. The storyline can be taken off the shelf and apparently there's an audience out there willing to ignore slurs about Catholicism. But if the Order is any indication, that audience won't shell out for movie tickets on bad flicks.

By the way, I don't think that I would be quoting Tim Cavanaugh on tolerance and the absence of anti-Catholic bigotry in America. Cavanaugh is the Reason writer whose virulent bigotry caused me to delink Reason's blog, said virulence becoming more pronouned after I suggested as a fomer laborer in the vineyards of the Movement that calling the Pope "the Roman dictator" did nothing to advance the Libertarian agenda. But read the exchange for yourself and note that Cavanaugh's response loosed a veritable peanut gallery of bigotted comments. In fact, it was that exhibition which burned the last emotional attachment I had with Libertarianism, and I helped to start a Libertarian Law Society at UCLA. As far as I'm concerned, I will never vote for another Libertarian candidate, and I used to do so simply so they could stay over the percentage necessary to qualify on the ballot. Not a bad piece of ranch work for one Libertarian writer.

If you're interested, here's my post on the exchange. I think it's a classic in snarky writing, but I'm prejudiced.

Update: I guess what I'm saying is don't waste your money on The Order because it's boring and stupid. If you want to waste your money, rent Dogma instead, which was stupid but not boring. Actually, I picked up a copy for my collection. I just found it so boneheaded that I couldn't take offense.

Alternatively, another movie recommendation I could make - and therefore will - is the The Tao of Steve" which I found to be intelligent subtly humorous. [Actually, the Tao of Steve is the ultimate nerd fantasy film - it's main character is a chubby, overeducated, underemployed doper who quotes Nietszche and is irresistable to women. What's not to like?]

Old Glory on Mars.

Pathetic Earthlings shares his emotional response to President Bush's space initiative. I just like the fact that he illustrates his point by quoting Robert A. Heinlein's Glory Road "Tunnel in the Sky." [d'oh!]

For me, when I was a kid in fifth or sixth grade - when the Earthling was gestating - I watched the Moon landing. That year I also read Red Planet and there was no doubt in my mind that someday I'd go to Mars. I remember Red Planet as a great story with intelligent Martians, a Martian environment that could be negotiated by humans with "breathers" and an exotic Martian ecology. I think it could have been the first Heinlein juvenile I ever read and it kicked off what would be a lifetime love of reading.

There is no way that Heinlein could write Red Planet today. We know too much. There is no life on Mars. Humans couldn't survive there. The idea of a teenager surviving on his own on the surface of Mars is laughable.

This is a practical age. All the more reason then to make sure that the romance of exploration stays alive.

Update: By the way, by all means check out Lileks reflections on the subject. I particularly like his essay because it too brings back memories. In 1979, I was in college and Skylab was falling. I was in the habit of carrying an engineering notebook around with that I would write down essays in at lunch - kind of a protoblog. One essay I wrote was called "Did Skylab Die for Our Sins" and had the same kind of defeatist, "we all fouled up" tone to it that Lileks describes. Really you have to be a certain age to understand the depression that event caused. Lileks and I are approximately the same age, and we had the experience of (a) seeing America concede defeat in Viet Nam; (b) watching a president driven out of office; (c) witnessing economic stagnation where everything got more expensive every year; (d) knowing that natural resources were simply going to run out by the year 2000 since that's what we were being told every day; and (e) hearing a new president repeatedly concede that America was truly fubared. Skylab falling out of the sky just seemed par for course. That's why I say "thank God for Ronald Reagan." Another four years of that mindset and we would have been living in a grimmer, uglier world.

Likewise, one of my favorite movies as a preteen/early teen was "Marooned." (Also Omega Man.) Lileks makes me want to order a copy.

Majority of Americans Pro-Life.

Antioch Road reports on a Zogby poll that finds that a 53% to 36% margin agrees that "'Abortion destroys a human life and is manslaughter.'"

Don't expect to hear this poll highlighted on the evening news, which could explain the various times that a particular friend of mine has told me that no one agrees with those "radical right wingers" on the abortion issue.

Where's the Barrister.

The Mighty Barrister hasn't posted since December 22.

I need him to return to active status. He's more militant than I am. Without him defining the outer edge, I am totally lost.

"It was a great day."

Another memorable line from The Thirteenth Warrior, which is rapidly becoming my favorite movie. Actually, the whole "no man can escape his doom" ethos is appropriate for a foggy Valley day. This site looks pretty good for background on the movie, and, look, here's the Viking Creed:

Lo, there do I see my father
Lo, there do I see my mother and my sisters
and my brothers
Lo, there do I see the line of my people back
to the beginning
Lo, they do call to me
They bid me take place among them
in the Halls of Valhalla
Where the brave may live forever...

How come modern Pagans only come in the modern "give Nature a big hug" flavor, and we never hear anyone claiming to be a modern survival of Viking Paganism with its doom-filled stoicism?

In any event, drove up to Sacto last night. Defensed an $80,000 debt collection case. Drove back. Rule #5 in the Eternal Truths of Litigation, when your opponent's settlement offer is "all the principle, all the interest and all the attorney's fees," it makes the decision to try the case fairly automatic. Rule #6 is something like, "if you're going to be arrogant, you'd better win."

Update: In case anyone is interested, I thought that I'd provide the first four Eternal Truths of Litigation. Realize that this is a work in progress and that the nuances of the Truths sometime change based upon experience. OK, here goes:

Rule Number One: There are no secrets.

Rule Number Two: Some people can lie to your face and make you believe them.

Rule Number Three: If your gut is telling you something, but you can intellectually convince yourself that your gut is wrong, your gut is always right.

Rule Number Four: When your partner tells you that you can't lose the small matter he wants you to handle, it's always (a) much bigger, (b) a headache and (c) you can.

Rule Three is actually a logical conclusion derived from Rule One and Rule Two. Rule Four was added by me at 11:30 a.m. yesterday. Rule Number One is so true that you could safely tattoo it on your body and it would never need to be changed.

Second Update.

Come to think of it, I remember hearing of Fresno attorney Robert Bergen's Three Rules:

1. There are no secrets.

2. People never change.

3. People never get any smarter.

Which really do encapsulate that Viking no-man-escapes-his-doom ethos.

Huh? I've been refuted?

Patriot Paradox offers a rebuttal my post on the six "literal" days of creation. The rebuttal basically asserts that a non-diffuse light existed on Day One and, therefore, through a variety of etymological backflips, "days" "literally" existed before "day" and "night."

OK, fine, whatever. But while I've got no dog in this fight, let me suggest that too an outsider, and, nonetheless, a theist and a sympathizer, these arguments seem like the worst kind of semantic hairsplitting. They're barely intelligible, and completely unpersuasive without assuming the premise. Simply put, if you're dedicated to arguing a literal meaning of the first four "days" of Genesis, then you have to accept a literal meaning of "day," which is something like the period of time demarcated by the rotation of the earth with reference to the sun. But if there is no sun, there can be no literal "day."

The approach adopted by the literalists kind of rings of the concept "what does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his soul." Fundamentalism ought to have going for it the simple idea that one can read and understand the "plain meaning" of scripture without resorting to symbolism or allegory. But if preserving the "plain meaning" of a text requires etymological parsing and other techniques, it starts sounding like the "plain meaning" isn't so plain after all, and the author of the text might have been trying to communicate something deeper than the mere words. Perhaps the author is using the text to communicate metaphor or allegory?

Besides I'm not the one being refuted here. As I noted it was St. Augustine who adopted an allegorical approach. For Augustine, the "six days" were a distribution only of narrative and not of time. Augustine was a well-educated man who knew that there were occasions when the literal meaning of scripture conflicted with empirical truth. Rather than have people embrace the darkness over matters which had no theological significance, Augustine pioneered the allegorical method of exegesis.

Like it or not, Augustine was smarter than anyone writing on the internet today. I'd warrant that if he were alive today, Augustine would be kind of a super-Glenn Reynolds. If Augustine didn't see a conflict between faith and an allegorical method of interpreting Genesis, that's good enough for me.

Thin Skin Alert.

It's nothing special. I just simply got to treated to the sharing of opinions which included the idea that my intent to obtain an annullment was hypocritical, that annulment was simply a hypocritical example of the Catholic Church once again imposing man-made laws on its adherents, and that my purpose in seeking an annulment was simply to ensure that I can re-marry in a Catholic ceremony. It would seem that my intent to seek an anulment establishes that I'm something of a self-serving, narrow-minded hypocrite afflicted with a neurotic scrupulosity.

Heavens, I reckon if I was a Budhist expressing my desire to comply with some tenet of Budhism, I would have got a pass without comment. People might have expressed a genuine interest in the subject. But if it's Catholic doctrine, everyone - even non-Catholics - get to have an opinion.

Incidentally, though, two cheers for my Faith and its faithful adherence to the rule that remarriage - marriage after a real marriage - is prohibited. I've been forced to reflect on my orientation towards dating, romance and marriage. Having seen some recently separated men on the prowl to put a band-aid on their heart-ache, and who will probably end up remarried in the next year or two to women who are identical to their soon to be ex-wives, thereby positively establishing Nietszche's idea of eternal recurrence, I think an ethos that forces a time-out and a re-think on such matters is one that has substantial merit. Counter-cultural certainly, but meritorious. Further, I don't intend to remarry, but I would like to be free, and an independent determination that my ex and I didn't have the same understanding of "marriage" might be a step in that direction. Besides if my purpose was simply to get remarried, I could always become a Protestant.

But that's not my beef. Check out this Southern Appeal post on Margaret Cho's scurrilous attack on my Faith.

Ah, who cares? She's a fat, washed-up, untalented, lesbian, Korean, unfunny comic.

Maybe so, but didn't she have a network series not long ago? Apparently, she's hosting some Move-On shindig. She also had a guest writing spot on Howard Dean's campaign blog. Further, Move-On may have a significant role in picking the next president - assuming the unlikely occurence of a Dean victory - but who cares? Besides we have to preserve our moral outrage for the next time Rush Limbaugh suggests that a quarterback is being played for reasons other than his football skills.

Robert Reich - Partisan Stooge.

It appears that I'm not the only person noticing Robert Reich's habit of tedentious politicial posturing. Last Night, on the O'Reilly factor I saw him assert without challenge that the bulk of Republican contributions are from large corporations, when, in truth, the backbone of Republican fund raising has been small individual donations. Unlike the Dems who get the lion's share of donations from the wealthy. This guy has a good round-up of data on this issue, but this phenomena is one that I've seen reported in a variety of publications for years.

Likewise, I saw Reich strenuosly spinning the O'Neil story that Bush "plotted" war with Iraq before 9/11 as a scandal because Bush had purportedly campaigned on a platform of opposition to "regime change." Professor Bainbridge punctures that windy gambit.

Bottom line, Robert Reich appears to be another dishonest partisan whore.

Cool Internet Site.

My brother sent me this link.

Pretty Cool, huh?

The Twilight Zone edge where the real world meets the blogoverse.

Patterico links to a story where a blogger met someone trolling his site in the flesh.

Great story. Go to the link

It does raise some questions though. Like, does everyone have their blogger-tags tattooed somewhere on their body?

Cause if it does, count me out. I bleed easily, I don't like pain, and on this pale flesh, a tattoo would stick out like a neon sign.

Party Crashing.

[Via Mark Shea whose answer is "no."] Patriot Paradox posts a "deep think" question for "Christian blogs" to chew over in "long answers." The question is:

Did God create everything in six literal days?

My answer is - that would be a good trick indeed, given that night and day weren't created until the fourth day. Genesis 1:14.

I'm with Augustine on this one.

I hope all of you Fundamentalists have fun working this one out.

Somedays I'm so happy I'm not a literalist, I can't begin to describe it.

Generally sensible reflections from a liberal Catholic.

Uber-liberal Catholic Jcecel3 pens an interesting and - I hate to so this for fear of damaging his reputation - orthodox reflection on chastity. This passage is worth the price of admission:

First, the church teaches that dualism is a heresy. Dualism is the belief that mind and body, or matter and spirit are two separate realities. Many people, including uninformed Catholics, mistakenly believe that Catholicism teaches dualism, but Catholicism teaches the exact opposite. Dualism among those who profess to be Catholics is often expressed in views of the afterlife. If we believe that we become disembodied spirits, or ghosts after we die, we are believing a doctrine that the Church does not teach!

What the Church teaches is that you are your body. The body is spirit in the flesh. The soul is the life-force of the body, and it cannot exist apart from the body. Your body is good and holy, because it is what you are.

When we say the Apostles Creed, we proclaim that we believe in the resurrection of the body. We will not be disembodied spirits in the next life. Our very bodies will be raised to glory. It is true that our bodies will be different in the next life, in a similar manner that an adult body is different from the body of a child. The glorified body probably will not be physically larger, and it may have powers and abilities that are unknown to the body on earth. Yet, the body that dies will be the body that rises!

This is an important point because it touches on the notion that many people have that as long as they feel love, any sexual activity is justified. There is a false sense many people have that all that is important is the spirit of an act, not the physical concrete act in history itself. To this, the Church is saying, you are your body!.

What you do in concrete, fleshly, historical reality is what you are!

I seem to be going through a Gnostic moment. Between reading the Da Vinci Code and The Perfect Heresy, I've been reflecting on the significance that the Gnostic challenge had to orthodoxy. I've come to the conclusion that you really can't understand historical Christianity, and maybe Western Culture, without recognizing what orthodoxy and the West rejected when it rejected Gnosticism.

Gnosticism was dualist. It opposed Spirit to Matter. Spirit was Good; matter was Evil. Orthodoxy rejected all that, both ab initio and through St. Augustine who toyed with Gnosticism. After rejecting Manichian dualism, Augustine affirmed that the created world was Good.

Frankly, I think I've come to realize that this is the big divide between the Catholic worldview and the Protestant one, which posits a world of total depravity rather than one of goodness and seems to want to divorce the spiritual from the material. I recently experienced this Gnostic mindset during an argument I had with my low-church Protestant (aka "Christian") partners who thought that the practice of praying for the intercessions of saints was ridiculous.

"Wait a second," I said, "you ask other people to pray for you all the time."

"Not anyone who is dead," one of them snorted.

Now these two are "Bible Christians" and so certainly could not have forgotten Luke 9:30 -31, what we benighted Papists refer to as the "Transfiguration." What could they therefore have been thinking? Probably, something like a buried assumption that Spirit and Matter are two different things which have no congress with each other, which is simply lightweight Gnosticism. Those who forget old lessons, it seems may simply recreate old errors.

Anyhow, I do recommend JCecil3's essay with the following two caveats. First, I think that he has a confused understanding of the teleology of marriage and sex. Marriage exists to engender and support the good which is children; sex is the sacramental of marriage. Accepting Jcecil3's teleology of sex - something having to do with the "unitive dimension (two becoming one in an act of total self donation)" - begs the question, such as: "Why only 2?" "Why not more than two?" "Why are there two complementary sexes?" and "Why is there this amazing correspondence between Jcecil3's numerical maximum of 'self donation' and the number of complementary sexes?"

Second, as to JCecil3's criticism of priestly celibacy, I tend to side with Mark Shea in believing that's a matter of hiearchical discipline. But that's a matter for a later day.

Former Fresnans in the News.

I just have to give this that home-town slant.

In any event, Powerline deconstructs O'Neils claim - which will reverberate in the wind tunnel of Hollywood and the Media - that G.W. Bush "plotted" the Iraq war.

On the other hand, so what? It's hardly surprising that there was some kind of planning going on. Even Clinton viewed Saddam as a problem. Generally, this kind of thing is considered the prudent precaution of a concerned leader.

No Comment.

From another internet "test" over at Absinthe and Cookies comes a Tarot Card "quiz." My results:

I am The Hierophant The Hierophant often represents learning with experts or knowledgeable teachers. This card also stands for institutions and their values. The Hierophant is a symbol of the need to conform to rules or fixed situations. His appearance in a reading can show that you are struggling with a force that is not innovative, free-spirited or individual. Groups can be enriching or stifling, depending on circumstances. Sometimes we need to follow a program or embrace tradition, other times, we need to trust ourselves. For a full description of your card and other goodies, please visit LearnTarot.com

What tarot card are you? Enter your birthdate. Month: Day: Year:

The Hierophant is the card for the "Pope." That and the description should amuse my nonvirtual friends who read this site.

Ok, spooky, but not rational.

Home Town Pride Alert.

I'm running off to a short cause trial. However, before I go I wanted to pass along what I heard the Fresno City Police Chief report during his speech at my Rotary Club yesterday.

According to the Chief, 80% of all Meth used/sold in America is cooked in California.

Moreover, according to the Chief, 50% of all Meth cooked in California is cooked in - you guessed it - Fresno County.

We're Number One.

On the other hand, it makes you wonder what level of corruption exists in Fresno County as a result of the sheer magnitude of this black market/bootleg economy. I mean, I'd like to think there was some geographic reason for this factoid, but what if we're simply the "Al Capone's Chicago" of the 21st Century?

Later.

Anti-Discrimination Law and Practice.

Lane Core links to a column about prejudice against children and families with children.

Keep in mind that discrimination in housing against families with children is against California law. I think I may know a Bay Area attorney who might be willing to take such cases.

The Insufferable Bill Maher Expands on Things Beyond his Comprehension.

Maher is on the O'Reilly Factor and is calling George W. Bush a "draft dodger." When O'Reilly pointed out that Bush served in the National Guard, Maher explainst that was tantamount to cowardly copping out on military service.

Of course, this is nonsense. National Guard units were called up for service in Korea and Viet Nam. Moreover, there actually were draft dodgers during the Viet Nam War. They went to Canada and were treated as heroes by people like Maher. The ones who went to Viet Nam were viewed as something close to war criminals. Of course, our current war in Iraq is being described by these folks as a war crime, which would make our troops in Iraq war criminals. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Of course, they support our troops.

The Long Lent.

I think I am in agreement with David Morrison's post on the banality of a "simple solution" to the priest abuse problem. Just when I'm tempted to think that a "zero tolerance" approach solves all of our problems, I read something like this post from Secret Agent Man who offers the following insight:

I really don't care if my parish priest is a homosexual. I really don't care if, when he falls from grace, his mind turns to images of teenagers "bonking" in the Vatican gardens. Men need a Redeemer, and our Redeemer died on a Cross while we were yet sinners; we should expect men caught in sin to look grotesque and pathetic, their thoughts to be twisted and violently contorted. Didn't our Redeemer look that way when He died? Didn't He bear our stripes? No, none of that fundamentally bothers me. In fact it seems rather ordinary and shabby, made all the more pathetic by its appearance in public on the Bishop's pornographic little website. Anyone who would really be shocked to his foundation to hear of thoughts and desires like those flitting through the mind of a cleric hasn't spent much time examining his own conscience. Or spent much time in a lawyer's office, for that matter. Spend enough time with men "as they are" and you start realizing that the truly disgusting people are the ones who believe sin's ugliness only disfigures their neighbors.

Wow. To repeat a key passage:

"We should expect men caught in sin to look grotesque and pathetic, their thoughts to be twisted and violently contorted. Didn't our Redeemer look that way when He died?"

Alas, it appears that we have not been called for simple solutions.

On the other hand, I am with Mark Shea in my amazement at the Mystery of Secular Transubstantiation, whereby the scandal of male priests having sex with boys is transformed into a Catholic problem with is source in celibacy and chastity and not a human problem involving homosexuals choosing to sacrifice self-mastery to selfish pleasure.

A Fair Question.

TTAM117 asks a fair question:

The book is silly, but readable. How can you be so sure in your criticism without having read the book?

I think that's a fair question. Let me answer the question with a question. Have you ever noticed in murder mystery movies that if they show you that the protagonist has problems starting the car during the first ten minutes of the movie, that fact will be critical in the last ten minutes? Think of "What lies beneath." When you saw that the cell phone didn't work on the bridge didn't you say to yourself that that would somehow be important later in the movie?

Likewise, in Vampire flicks there are certain rules that have to be followed. Vampires have to seek blood and fear the sunlight. If you have a vampire who can sunbathe and has an unnatural hunger for V8, you have a mess.

The reason is that mystery and vampires involve there own genre and genres have cliches.

The Da Vince Code fits into the "Lost Gospels" genre. This genre has a quite a few recent entries. Think of Stigmata and Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Bart Ehrman's Lost Scriptures offers one account of the so-called lost Gospels. (on the other hand, Philip Jenkins' Hidden Gospels points out that the "Lost Gospels" have been known to scholars for centuries. In fact, the "Gospel of Thomas" - which Stigmata inanely identifies as the "Gospel of St. Thomas" as a proof of its writers lack of interest in a modicum of scholarship - was known to Origen and was described as a Gnostic work.) Then, of course, there's the X-Files amusing Hollywood A.D.

The point is that I'm acquainted with the genre. I've also read the reviews of the Da Vinci Code. These reviews have been confirmed by people who've read the book. I think I have a fair basis on which to conclude that Dan Brown's book posits that (a) Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had children, (b) some "lost" text describes this, (c) a "secret" arm of the Catholic church is willing to murder to keep the secret.

How'd I do? Well, according to the Official Dan Brown website, I'm dead on, which is hardly surprising given the fact that this is virtually the plotline of Stigmata and Hollywood A.D., sans the part about Mary Magdalene. I may be off about the "lost" text, but I deserve credit because clearly the Dan Brown story line traces through Mary Magdalene, who was venerated in Languedoc, the heartland of the Gnostic Cathars. On the other hand, this review identifies the "lost gospels" used by Brown. That these "lost gospels" would find their way into Brown's book was predictable.

Like I said spot the cliches.

My objection with the Da Vinci Code is that these cliches constitute bad cliches that reinforce lamentable ignorance on the part of his readership. I have never said Brown is not a good writer, but the cliches are pernicious.

For example, I'll repeat, the pre-eminence given to Mary Magdalene is a Gnostic theme. But the Gnostic's abhorred sex for the basic reason that sex involved the "vile, evil material world" and could entrap more spirit-stuff. Now, if you're going to write a novel based upon Gnostic suppositions, fairness would suggest that you follow out those suppositions, otherwise you're perpetrating codswallop. I like this review of the obnoxious movie, Stigmata, particular where the author observes about the movie rewriting Catholic dogma:

Now let me say this, no movie is required by law to follow official Catholic teaching as it advances its plot, but once it embraces a feature of Catholicism (stigmata) which depends upon a certain philosophy of the world--God, Jesus as the divine son of God, the miraculous, evil, Satan--internal logic dictates that the movie must move within this world view. Otherwise, the whole plot turns into a pillar of nonsensical salt before our very eyes.

Likewise, no book is required to follow Gnostic dogma, but, jeepers, if you're going to use Gnostic myths and sources to impeach the "official story," doesn't the logic of that proposition require some consistent treatment of Gnosticism. Otherwise, a fair criticism is that the plot of the book "turns into a pillar of nonsensical salt before our very eyes." In other words, a person can argue that Gnostic Gospels provide a truer version of Jesus than the orthodox contemporaries, in which case Jesus didn't marry and have children, or they are precisely the mythmaking fabrication of a small, dissident sect, just like Origen said they were.

Likewise, much of the "lost Gospel" storyline - irrespective of Brown's writing ability - is based on errant nonsense. The best source on this is Philip Jenkins' Hidden Gospels, which should be read by anyone interested in the Da Vinci Code. The best example of the nonsense of the "hiden Gospel" school is the the fact that the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark has not been laughed into non-existence. The Secret Gospel of Mark was "discovered" by Morton Smith in a monastery. Smith claimed that he had discovered handwritten in an 18th Century book a supposed letter from the late second-century church father Clement of Alexandria purporting to describe a different version of Mark - one in which Jesus appears to engage in homosexual activities. Smith took a couple of pictures and promptly thereafter the Secret Gospel of Mark was lost.

Despite the fact that the Secret Gospel of Mark was never seen by any scholar other than Smith, and at best is double or triple hearsay - it was an 18th Century rewrite of a supposed 2d Century letter purportedly describing a third document - it was initially hailed as authentic. Although after Smith died, the word "forgery" started to surface, the Secret Gospel of Mark is still treated as legitmate by some scholars. See for example, this site and this site. This site offers a nice rebuttal.

Beyond bad scholarship, the Da Vinci Code caters to a thread of American populist Anti-Catholicism that goes back to the Know-Nothings. (That whole part about murderous Catholics could have been lifted out of popular works from the early 19th Century.) Interestingly, Dan Brown's next book happens to feature a "Freemason conspiracy," which is delightfully reactionary, conjuring as it does a possible revival of the fortunes of the lately moribund Anti-Masonic Party.

However, to be fair, I've acquired a copy of the Da Vinci Code in an under the table deal at the local Catholic bookstore. I might as well read what I've been criticizing.

As long as I don't have to pay for it.

Science Fiction Movie Review.

Vanguard gives a positive review of the new Phillip K. Dick/Ben Affleck movie, Paycheck.

Speaking of the last flatulent emission from the squalid, vapid, evil, vile, corrupt, naseauting ooze that is Communism.

Arthur Miller shares his version of "My Dinner with Fidel." More later, when I have time but consider this:

Having had a certain amount of experience with Soviet and Eastern European officialdom in the arts, particularly as head of International PEN for four years, I expected to have to do a lot of agreeable nodding in silence to statements manifestly silly if not at times idiotic. Unelected leaders and their outriders are unusually sensitive to contradiction, and the experience of their company can be miserably boring. However, Castro was mythic by this time, and the prospect of an hour or two with him was something to look forward to.

Note the 'nodding in silence?" Silence? Well, of course, this is a liberal in a hurry after all. It wouldn't do to disagree with him.

And also note the "unelected leaders are unusually sensitive to contradiction." Of course, they are. Their "unusual" sensitivity usually results in purges, mass graves and perhaps, what is worse to Miller, "boredom."

But Castro is a mythic figure.

Have you ever noticed how leftist opposition to Communist dictators is always in the past tense. We find out from people like Miller that they this or that Communist dictator was a crashing bore only after such dictator has shuffled off to his reward. Until, then, we hear about how this or that "unusually sensitive" leader is a great Romantic figure.

The Da Vinci Code Again

Amy Welborn offers her insights into the epistemological significance of the Da Vinci Code. Namely, if everyone was reasonable and studious and open to the truth, there would be no concerns. But since everyone is not...

A case in point. Several nights ago, I was at a local evening spot with my partner having a drink with one of the waiters. A waitress came up and subject turned to her reading the Da Vinci Code. It turned out that everyone at the table, except me, had read the book. The general theme was something like "I know it's fiction, but do you think it's true." (To give my partner credit, he acknowledged that it was a page turner but he hadn't been able to finish the last 60 pages.) The waitress was a history major and I pointed out a few historical stupidities in the book.

The good news was that when I returned the next night, the waitress came up and told me that she had concluded that the book was silly. The characters, for example, were supposed to be intelligent people and versed in Da Vinci, but when confronted near the end of the book with supposedly unknown writing, they are completely mystified. The waitress allowed that she didn't consider herself to be a Da Vinci scholar but she recognized backwards writing. She got a mirror and, lo and behold, it was intelligible.

Reason Number 23456 as to why European Culture is taking one last circle around the toilet bowl of history.

According to Aramvirique it's the meticulous attention paid to Bananas.

Too easy. Too true. Too sad.

Via Mark Shea comes this essay on "Why I am a Democrat?" It reads as a parody, but is it? I like this observation:

I am a Democrat because I hold sacred freedom of the press, as well as freedom of the TV and freedom of the movie. Where I draw the line is freedom of the talk radio, and don't even get me started about that damn Internet business.

As with the DU homage to American troops below and the recent Bush is Hitler ad from MoveOn, it hardly seems that anyone needs to parody the left anymore.

Now, obviously, there are some sane and sensible libs out there who must be embarrassed by this deranged output, and for them a word of advice. Dude, take back your party. You need someone to play the William F. Buckley, Jr. role in sending the lunatics - for Reps it was the Birchers and the anti-semites - off to Kamchatka. Of course, that role was to have been played by the Democratic Leadership Council, but that thread apparently played out.

But doesn't it seem that the main thrust of the liberal project is hypocrisy. These are the people who puffed up sexual harassment and used it to abuse Republicans, but lost interest in that project when Bill Clinton engaged the clearest example of a powerful male using his power to objectify and trivialize females. Likewise, the libs have used "sensitivity training" to beat up on anyone who diverges from their preferred position by an inch.

Yet, we have this kind of nonsense.

But, hey, they love the troops.

Adrienne Barbeau and I were Schoolmates.

Yup, we both went to Lafayette Elementary on the corner of Blackstone and Princeton before they tore it down.

Of course, Adrienne went to Lafayette maybe ten or fifteen years before I got there.

And what a filmography? Who can forget Escape from New York or Swamp Thing?

I've just discovered Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death which gets surprisingly strong review for its parody of feminism and sheer camp quality.

Apparently, the insufferable Bill Maher has a role in the film which he'd rather everyone forget.

More People have been killed in the name of Godless Socialism than any other reason.

We here at Lex Communis are virulently anti-communist. There are days when we wish that the corrupt, moribund, dehumanizing, satanic, vile, filthy, murderous, barbaric, selfish, oppressive swamp of fetid, stinking, slimey, oozing, nauseous goo that was Communism hadn't imploded under its own perverse, irrational, enslaving weight just so we would have them to kick around.

Oddly, though, we meet very few people who think the same way. So many of the folk we meet view Communism as an interesting but essentially harmless enterprise, kind of like being a Congregationalist. That's one reason why it has been so nice to find out that there are people on the internet who are sane.

Along that line, please read this essay by Tacitus as a refresher on the evils of Communism.

Blogroll Addition.

OK, that's it. I'm going to have to add John and Belle have a blog to my "The Observatory" section. Belle is reading cheesy science fiction novels while she's recovering from the grip and John seems to be lamenting the demise of the perfectly understandable word "tetralogy" while - get this - offering Gene Wolfe's various tetralogies as providing a lamentably infrequent opportunity to use this functional word. (Did I ever mention that I met Gene Wolfe twenty some-odd years back at Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions bookstore when I was in law school? Actually, I met Ellison there at the same time. Throw in Robert Heinlein and it would have been exactly like being present at the Transfiguration.)

Nerdy, obsessed with words, an encyclopedic knowledge of cheesy science fiction... dammit, these are my kind of people.