Category: Political Matters

Revanchists, Uniates, émigrés and Abram

George Weigel is rooting for Ukraine to align with Europe to defeat Putin’s “revanchist” impulses. (I finally looked up revanchist, by the way; good word to know.) In context, I think he is rooting for a European Ukraine the better to secure the Eastern Catholic (“Uniate” is another good word to know) fortunes:

Ukraine’s future is an issue of great strategic consequence, which Vladimir Putin understands, if many Americans (including an administration that was seriously behind-the-curve on events in Ukraine) do not. A Ukraine integrated into Europe guarantees that there will be limits to Russian revanchism, an easing of Russian pressure on Poland and the Baltic states, and no de facto reconstitution of the Soviet Union. A future Russian leadership, realizing that Putin’s revanchist game was up, just might stop throwing elbows internationally and attend to Russia’s vast internal problems. Much is at stake in Ukraine, geopolitically.

It’s hard to know what Putin’s up to except that the land of chess Grandmasters seems to produce leaders who can play a longer game than our own leaders, and are (to mix a metaphor) great poker-faces. I’m much friendlier to him than are most Americans, but that’s because of my own concern for the Russian Orthodox, who are thriving – sort of:

Reading Dante these past few days, I’ve thought about my Russian Orthodox theologian friend in Russia, who has been telling me for a couple of years now that the Church’s close relationship with the Russian State is ravaging the Church’s soul. He tells me that we American Orthodox are too naive about the rebirth of Christianity in his country. Yes, it’s happening, and thank God for it, but the way it’s happening is coming at a high cost to the Church’s moral integrity. Or so he says. A Russian Orthodox émigré friend emphatically agrees, telling me that America, for all its problems, is a far, far better place to be a practicing Orthodox Christian. I confess that having grown up in a country in which the State and the Church(es) are constitutionally separated, it is hard for me to understand in detail what they mean, but I take their word for it.

(Rod Dreher) On the other hand, is Weigel too sanguine about Ukraine’s uprising?:

A lot is also at stake morally. The Ukrainian popular uprising of late 2013 was not motivated by an unquenchable thirst for MTV and other expressions of western decadence. It was motivated by a deep yearning for truth, justice, and elementary decency in public life ….

(Weigel) Mine is not a rhetorical question; most “popular uprisings” these days are at least partly the result of stars in the eyes about Western prosperity. We all have confirmation bias, and Putin’s a convenient guy to demonize. Add to that the relative disadvantage of Eastern Catholics in Ukraine aligned with Russia versus Ukraine aligned with Western Europe and all you need is a grain of salt to finish a skepical soup.

No wonder people long for a detailed map of the future, and read such a thing into the Bible. But God’s “get Thee up into a land than I will show Thee” hasn’t come with a map since he first said that to Abram.

* * * * *

“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

“The Obamacare We Deserve”?

TODAY marks the beginning of health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act’s new insurance exchanges, for which two million Americans have signed up. Now that the individual mandate is officially here, let me begin with an admission: Obamacare is awful.
That is the dirty little secret many liberals have avoided saying out loud for fear of aiding the president’s enemies, at a time when the ideal of universal health care needed all the support it could get.
…
I believe Obamacare’s rocky start — clueless planning, a lousy website, insurance companies raising rates, and the president’s telling people they could keep their coverage when, in fact, not all could — is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go. When right-wing critics “expose” the fact that President Obama endorsed a single-payer system before 2004, they’re actually telling the truth.

(Michael Moore, The Obamacare We Deserve, in the New York Times)

You knew that was coming, didn’t you? I don’t really think that Team Obama deliberately screwed up implementation in order to push us toward “a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model,” but that’s where we’re headed unless the GOP can come up with a better idea. And since Obamacare, born in Boston as Romneycare, is itself (give or take an abortifacient mandate or two) a conservative think-tank’s proposed fix for a broken system, I’m not holding my breath.

By the way: single-payer, implemented by Democrats, will make the Hyde Amendment and its kin the deadest of dead letters, and challenges as to the abortifacient mandate will have a much steeper, and probably insurmountable, barrier to success – analogous to the losing cause of protesting paying taxes that fund war.

* * * * *

“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Slacktivist Compares Apostle to Mafioso!

Millions of you have been jamming my comment boxes with inquiries about the wellbeing of Fred Clark, the Slacktivist, who appeared to have some kind of melt-down Friday.

I’m sorry to report that by Saturday evening, my good friend Fred was doubling down on his mendacious railing.

Okay, I made up the part about millions jamming my comment boxes. And the part about Fred being my good friend. I just follow him because about a third of the time he says interesting and defensible things that challenge me a little or a lot. The other 2/3 is mostly cryptic allusions to something the choir he’s preaching to, or a demographic younger than me, understands. I don’t think he follows me.

In admitting that I made stuff up, I’ve admitted infinitely much more error than Fred has admitted, for Fred has, like a politician caught in flagrante delicto, reinvented what he said and doubled down on the reinvention as if it were the original. The only thing he’s admitted is anger, but is at pains to demonstrate how very righteous that anger was and is.

The original lie:

A white evangelical Christian celebrity got up in public and spouted hateful racist bullshit. That celebrity, further, claimed that this hateful racist bullshit was based on Jesus and the Bible, and that it represented the views of all white evangelical Christians everywhere.

There could be one — and only one — appropriate response.

And white evangelical Christians struggled, and failed, to give that response.

Instead of denouncing the hateful racist bullshit, white evangelicals rose to defend the celebrity’s right to spout hateful racist bullshit without being criticized. And his right to be televised while doing so.

(Emphasis added)

The new version:

Yeah, so, some third-tier bearded TV personality proclaimed white supremacy, compared gay people to terrorists who practice bestiality, and reduced all women to “a vagina.”

And that got me angry. Not because this sad old man said such things — that wasn’t a surprise, so his bile itself wasn’t that upsetting. What got me angry was that Christians raced to defend this man and to identify with him and with his message.

(Emphasis added)

He’s added “reduced all women to ‘a vagina’,” which is a little exaggerated, but “partially true” in Snopes terms.

And he’s added “compared gay people to terrorists who practice bestiality.” The charge that someone “compared” one controversial thing to a second odious thing is, of course, a standard tool (“equivocation” is the name) of demagogues because it sounds damning, whereas the reality may be less indefensible. But Fred makes this one easy: this one’s a lie. The article’s only reference to terrorists has nothing to do with bestiality, and even the “comparison” of homosexuality with bestiality is a mere inclusion of both in a list of sins, as shown below.

“Spouting hateful racist bullshit,” the original exaggeration, now is an outright lie: “proclaimed white supremacy.” Pants on freakin’ fire, Fred.

He still cites not one example of Christians defending any of this, but this time I have no doubt that he could, if he wanted, find someone who defended Phil Robertson comparing homosexual practice to bestiality, if they could be conned into thinking Phil said it. On the vaginas and happy pre-civil-rights blacks, I doubt that Phil has many defenders rushing to identify with him, but maybe Fred will point some out.

As for “defending this man,” what are we supposed to do, Fred? “Exclude him from the blessed community”? Yeah, Fred uses that trope:

Here’s all you need to know about Robertson’s misuse of the Bible: He quoted Paul to defend excluding people from the blessed community.

Yes, the Apostle Paul. Not some other Paul. Paul, formerly Saul of Tarsus. The star of the second half of the book of Acts. The guy who wrote a bunch of letters that we’ve included in the New Testament.

Have you ever read Acts? Have you ever read those letters?

If you have, then you’re one up on Phil Robertson, because there’s no way you could read Acts and read Paul’s letters and then still somehow decide that Paul has got your back when you’re trying to exclude people.

Quoting Paul to defend exclusion is like quoting Tony Soprano to defend pacifism. Maybe you can find something Tony said that you can pluck out of context to make it sound like it might support that. And then you can ignore everything else Tony ever said or did and just elevate that one isolated phrase, repeating it over and over until you’ve convinced yourself that it means the opposite of everything Tony Soprano represents.

First question: Did Robertson really defend excluding anyone (or “compare” homosexuality to bestiality in any meaningful sense)? Are you referring to this, Fred?:

[GQ question:] What, in your mind, is sinful?

[Robertson Answer:] Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.

…

We never, ever judge someone on who’s going to heaven, hell. That’s the Almighty’s job. We just love ’em, give ’em the good news about Jesus—whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later, you see what I’m saying?”

(Boldface added to highlight the points at which Fred’s flights of fierce fantasy glance off an isolated word or two.) I’ve squinted real hard, Fred, and I don’t quite see that Phil’s trying to exclude anyone.

Second question: have you, Fred, ever read I Corinthians 5? It’s a short, pointed chapter. Paul seems to me to be telling the Church at Corinth to “exclude from the blessed community”:

  • a man who fornicated with his step-mother
  • fornicators generally
  • covetous
  • idolaters
  • drunkards
  • extortioners
  • Oops. Sorry Fred. “Railers,” too. Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on your way out.

There’s more that could be said about that list, but I think the chapter makes it a bit facile for Fred to, er, “compare the Apostle Paul to Tony Soprano.”

See what I mean about how dishonest an equivocal “compare to” can be?

* * * * *

“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Impacting Indiana for 33 years!

Advance America, in a Sunday bulletin insert offered to churches, lays out what its leaders see as dangers ahead:
» Authorities jailing pastors for preaching against homosexuality.
» Cross-dressing men violating women’s privacy in their restrooms.
» Government forcing business owners to cater to same-sex weddings.
» Schools teaching children that gay marriage is normal.
The flier, put out this fall, argues that the items are “Just Four Dangers of Same-Sex Marriage” that could be on the horizon if Indiana fails to safeguard its traditional marriage definition, which already is contained in state law.

(Indianapolis Star story reprinted 12/13 by the Journal & Courier on page C1)

The flyer was quickly dismissed by “experts.” I’m an expert of sorts, and in the context of the article (“dangers of same-sex marriage”), I’d say the fourth is almost certain to happen in Indiana if Indiana recognizes same-sex marriage, even if there’s no legislative mandate to do it.

The others really are, in varying degrees, either (a) plausible but not consequences of recognizing same-sex marriage or (b) outright implausible in the United States.

Bear in mind that the defeat of HJR-6 does not mean that Hoosiers favor same-sex marriage or that SSM will become law. I likely would vote against it, with mixed feelings, because the second sentence is so vague that it feels like deliberate sabotage of the Resolution by false friends. (This isn’t an accusation of anyone. I don’t know who dreamed up that second sentence, or what they had in mind.)

A statutory prohibition already exists. The way litigation on homosexuality-related laws progress these days, things like the Advance America bulletin insert likely will end up marked as Trial Exhibits in any lawsuit alleging that Hoosiers only approved HJR-6 because they’re bigots with a “bare desire to harm” gays (not to mention that we’re ugly and our mothers dress us funny). That kind of evidence weighs heavily with Justice Kennedy, and he’ll be sure to accuse us of bad stuff in his 5-4 opinion for the majority.

But how about the specific “dangers ahead”?

  1. “Authorities jailing pastors for preaching against homosexuality.” “Jail,” implies crime. Eric Miller of Advance America, a lawyer, knows this. Free Speech remain pretty secure, though the made-up right to sexual expression, free from any stigma, is ascendant. I’d not bet against jail in 50 years, nor would I bet against extreme social and media hostility toward anti-homosexuality preaching in very short order. And there will be preachers so obsessively fixated on this particular sin that they’ll deserve to be held suspect. But jail? I call “bullshit” on this one.
  2. “Cross-dressing men violating women’s privacy in their restrooms.” Not a consequence of same-sex marriage. There are apparently true stories about “gender identity” mismatches with biological sex, and of a school being forced to allow a boy who identifies as a girl to use the girl’s restroom. Weird marks of cultural insanity, to be sure, and of the sort of insanity that would also think same-sex marriage reasonable. But whoever came up with this “danger” was just free associating about the outlandish things sexually troubled people do, not reasoning about consequences of SSM.
  3. “Government forcing business owners to cater to same-sex weddings.” This is a big topic. Lots of stories about this sort of thing from states that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Indiana has no such law. New Mexico bans SSM adheres to a traditional definition of marriage but does have such an anti-discrimination law, and a New Mexico photographer is on her way to SCOTUS appealing her hefty fine for declining to photograph a “commitment ceremony” that couldn’t be a “marriage” precisely because of the state’s non-recognition of SSM. Some Indiana cities and counties, moreover, have banned (maybe more accurate to say “subjected to free-floating flak from do-gooders on Human Relations Commissions if someone complains”) “discrimination based on sexual orientation.” I think it’s highly likely that caterers, photographer, bakeries and the like will be subjected to petty harassment of Human Relations Commissions in some localities if Indiana recognizes same-sex marriage, but those ordinances are relatively toothless.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine Indiana recognizing same-sex marriage without previously or concurrently banning discrimination based on sexual orientation statewide.  Bear that in mind as you look at my precis on some of these three items.

Advance America, despite its Christian pretenses, appears guilty of transgressing the 9th Commandment which, even Protestant Reformers agreed, includes reckless gossip.

But what do you expect from a group whose website boasts that it’s “Celebrating 33 Years of Impacting Indiana!”? What say we give Indiana a high colonic, to thoroughly rinse out 33 years of accumulated Advance America toxins, and call it a day?

* * * * *

“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.