Accidental Blogger

Wash, Rinse, Spin and Liberate!

March 9, 2009

I love my washing machine – a sturdy, reliable, oversized contraption with a stainless steel drum that doesn't chip like most enameled ones. But never have I looked upon it as my liberator! Well, not any more than my car, refrigerator, microwave oven, cooking range, garage door opener and sundry other household conveniences. And in computing comparative liberating power, it is difficult to assign a higher rank to the washing machine than to education, modern medicine, electricity or even indoor plumbing. But the Vatican has declared that the washing machine (!) deserves special veneration for unshackling women from their oppressed existence.

As International Women’s Day is celebrated, the Vatican had a novel message for the women of the world: give thanks for the washing machine. This humble domestic appliance had done more for the women’s liberation movement than the contraceptive pill or working outside the home, said the the official Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano.

“In the 20th century, what contributed most to the emancipation of Western women?” questioned the article. “The debate is still open. Some say it was the pill, others the liberalisation of abortion, or being able to work outside the home. Others go even further: the washing machine.”

The article is entitled, “The washing machine and the emancipation of women: put in the powder, close the lid and relax”, taking its name from the Washy Talky, the Electrolux bilingual-talking washing-machine launched in India seven years ago, which would remind the absent-minded housewife how to use the appliance.

The Catholic Church was never likely to laud the pill for its transformative power on women’s lives. Since Pope Benedict became the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics, he has published a religious document condemning contraception for “negating the intimate truth of conjugal love, with which the divine gift [of life] is communicated” and has urged pharmacists to refuse to dispense the morning-after pill. The Osservatore Romano held the pill responsible for polluting the environment and contributing to male infertility.
Travellers (Sujatha)

March 8, 2009

I had been recently asked to translate the lines from an 18th century Tamil poem, written in the lingo of the Koravas or Narikoravas, an itinerant tribe often termed the 'Gypsies of South India'.As I researched verse after verse, I found some very interesting essays and commentaries about their history and traditions.

Today Kurava people in the area are officially prohibited from even going
into the mountains to collect materials for basketry and broom-making, an
occupation that provides a large portion of their meager income. Did the
differential literary portrayals, in works like Kutrala Kuravanji, of
Kurava people and of wealthy, powerful landowners and little kings factor into
justifications for dispossessing real people from their ancestral homes?
Literature and entertainment styles and forms from other times and places have
clearly played such a role in justifying dispossession. Might Kavirayar’s
portrayals have served the expansionist needs of little kings and big landowners
by painting Kurava people as so markedly different from those powerful people,
indeed painting them as untamed, independent, and silly, that they might seem
perhaps unworthy of ownership rights?

Here is a more recent article about their current status as a protected tribal group.

Gypsies used to
wander from place to place for their livelihood, receiving sustenance
from hunting in whichever region they moved to. “Those belonging to the
gypsy communities still have no skill but that of hunting, like their
forefathers, who lived in forests and had plenty of game to hunt. Now,
hunting is illegal. And since development too has passed them by, the
gypsies lead a precarious existence,” Siva says. While some like the
sparrow hunters manage to make a living by hunting and selling beads,
many of them live on the alms of travellers and passersby.

Many
hundreds of years ago, they claimed hunting-gathering rights in the
hills of what are now Tamil Nadu,Kerala, and Karnataka states, awarding the rights over the hills to the various clans in their tribes, a fact frequently referred to in the poem, as well.

Now, they have in general, been banned from
those very hills, as practitioners of slash-and-burn style agriculture
and inveterate hunting, detrimental to the beauty of the forests, never
mind that their numbers are too small to cause significant damage.

Many in this group
have been cut off from their nomadic ways, and lead more settled lives,
but at the cost of taming the wanderlust which still holds a strong sway
over them.

I still remember the harshly musical "Kallukothanundo, ammikal kothanundo, aattukal kuthanundo"
(Do you have grinding stones to be resurfaced?)that the korava woman used to call out, walking the streets of the
neighborhood in her swinging skirts, baby with sun-browned hair peering
out of the sling on her back. Despite the life of dire poverty, there
was always a gracious beauty to these women, going house to house
selling small trinkets or resurfacing granite grindstones with their
little iron awls and mallets, watched over with an eagle eye by the housewives,
who mistrusted their reputation for 'light fingers'. Work done, they
would haggle over the price, finally settling for whatever they could
extract, milking whatever pity they could muster for their runny-nosed
little ones.

They were soothsayers too.

I vividly recall the time
when I visited Thiruchendur, a seaside temple, with my parents. We were
enjoying the bracing sea breeze one evening when a kurathi came up and
insisted on reading my mother's palm. I was about 13 years old at the
time. She took a look at my mother's palm and had us close to
collapsing in laughter when she predicted that my mother would have
another child.
"Look at her," my mother said, pointing to me.
"That's my child, and my only one." I was taller than her at this age.
"Are you saying that I will have another after all these years?" We
were incredulous.
"Amma, I have never made false predictions in my
life. You will see. You will be back here in two years to look for me
and thank me."
Two years later, we were there… for my baby
sister's first birthday ritual hair offering. We looked for the
kurathi, but never did find her. She must have moved with the wind, in
the manner of her people.
Slumming at the Oscars

March 5, 2009

Okay, so we haven't talked about it here despite the hoopla. Slumdog Millionaire that is. But today I came across this hilarious video that is worth posting. I am flummoxed by the mass appeal of the movie which swept this year's Oscars and a bit amused when people ask me slightly breathlessly if I am happy about its stupendous success. Friends of my age haven't bothered but two young people at my gym made the friendly overture of mentioning the Oscars "miracle" to me. I am wondering if other Indian Americans are being asked about Slumdog too.

I know, I know, it is just a harmless icebreaker. I thought it was cute that the two young acquaintances approached me with a smile and kind of "congratulated" me for the success of Slumdog. Of the three, only I had hated the movie. And why didn't the film sit well with me? Well, not because it exposed the seamy side of India Shining. India is a huge, complex and multi-faceted country. People anywhere can believe what they wish about India. I myself harbor many complaints and much anger in my heart about the inequities of Indian society. What director Danny Boyle showed in the movie about the heartbreaking squalor of Indian slum life is exaggerated but not entirely incorrect. But that is not what the movie is about and why it won awards and accolades. It was the puerile, unrealistic and gaudy triumph of the underdog in the story that made it a hit – with just enough sexual tension, cruelty and filth thrown in the mix to complete the image of India that appeals to much of the world. Here is Indian journalist Tarun Tejpal expanding on what I said. (link: Usha Alexander, another non-fan of the Slumdog)

One feels awe not for the film, but for its miraculous journey. Clearly, in an increasingly low-brow ocean of publicity and hype, the idea of true excellence is a drowned raft.

Not shorn of the hype, but because of it, to an Indian, the film ought to disappoint. It tells me nothing that I don’t already know; and it tells me things I know to be not true. Unlike Amitabh Bachchan I have no problems with the film focusing on India’s abject poverty. That focus is salutary, and crying out for further exploration. My problem is the opposite— that it trivialises it. Uses its excreta and chopped limbs to tell a dubious story that leaves the viewer not disturbed but cheerfully smug. You leave the seat exhilarated, not in pain.

The film tells a very big lie: that India’s poor have a happy shot at leaping out of their misery into affluence and joy. One day you can be in the crap heap — diving into excreta — and the next running down a slum girl who may have failed to make school but seems to have managed to walk through Vogue’s offices on her way to teenage. With a stunning lack of plausibility you see the slum child Jamaal grow into a refined public schoolboy who must surely be eating cucumber sandwiches for lunch. India’s wannabe wealthy — billionaires among them — would slice their fingers to boast such a sophisticated son. For that accent alone, they would throw in their toes too.

Aw! Gee! The camera is shaking, the story is sprinting — there is no way anyone can tell if a few chapters have fallen out, several links of logic lost. You have to be grateful Jamal only grows up to be Dev Patel. Given the absence of any need to explain the miraculous transformation, he could well have become Brad Pitt or Prince Charles. To further celebrate the carnival of implausibility, Master Dev acts with the cool flatness of the cucumber sandwich (that he surely must be eating) — no neuroses of the slums tarnishing his soul.

For those celebrating the authenticity of the film, here’s a secret: the makers clearly had no interest in verisimilitude. It’s been the rough approach of artists working the India material for the last hundred years. It arises from a clear understanding of “audience”. The awgee mobs filling theatres around the world, and paying in dollars or some such muscular currency, cannot tell the difference between Hindi and Hindu or the vast distance between Mumbai and Agra. Much like the American tourists at the Taj Mahal, who cannot distinguish between an unlettered, ignorant urchin and a licensed guide.

Update: I wonder if African-Americans are becoming similarly wary of being congratulated on Obama's election to the presidency. Apparently,they are :-)
The Little Known Gateway to America

March 5, 2009

When we think of immigration to the US, Ellis Island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty comes to mind. But there have been other historic points of entry for foreigners wishing to seek their fortunes in the land of opportunity. Angel Island in northern California was the main processing station for far east Asian immigrants arriving via the Pacific (see the story of immigrant poetry on the walls of Angel Island). Texas too had its own gateway. Galveston Island near Houston saw some 200,000 foreigners from many different countries come through its port from the late 19th to the mid 20th century.

A.I. Schepps, his mother and seven siblings left Russia in 1913 on the steamship Chemnitz, bound for a new life in the United States.

But they never sailed through the shadow of the Statue of Liberty and never set foot on storied Ellis Island. Their immigrant journey took them farther south, through the Gulf of Mexico and into an island community still recovering from a devastating hurricane a decade earlier.

From there, the family traveled more than 250 miles north to Dallas, where Schepps’ father and three other siblings were preparing to start the farm that would become one of the largest dairies in the nation.

Theirs is the quintessential immigrant success story — they arrived tired and poor, and their brood was likely a huddled mass — but it has a Texas twist: They were among an estimated 200,000 immigrants who came to America via the port of Galveston between 1865 and 1924.

That number, considered by some scholars a conservative estimate, puts Galveston among the 10 biggest immigrant ports of 19th- and 20th-century America.

“People do not think much about Galveston as a national port of entry to the United States,” said Suzanne Seriff, curator of the Forgotten Gateway, a new exhibit that chronicles Galveston as a major port of entry for U.S. immigrants.

On display at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, the exhibit will come to Galveston’s Moody Gardens in November.

“We are trying to add to our national history about a port that has largely been forgotten,” Seriff said.

Like those who arrived via other ports of the time, those who came through Galveston were overwhelmingly European. During the late 19th century, they arrived from countries such as Germany and what was then Czechoslovakia. Later, they increasingly were from Italy or Greece.

As Galveston became more developed, some settled there as tailors and merchants. Others moved on to different states. Many branched out to other communities in Texas, establishing ethnic enclaves such as Fredericksburg and New Braunfels.

The rest of the story here.
Sukrita

March 4, 2009

My sister-in-law Sukrita Paul Kumar's profile, poems and paintings in the Houston Literary Review.
GLAD sues US in MA (Joe)

March 3, 2009

From CNN:

A legal advocacy group sued the federal government Tuesday, seeking
benefits for 15 gay and lesbian Massachusetts residents who wed after
the state legalized same-sex marriage.

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders — the same Boston-based
group that successfully argued in 2003 for same-sex marriage rights in
Massachusetts — filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in
Boston on behalf of six couples and three men whose husbands have died.

The suit contends the federal Defense of Marriage Act denies them
protections and benefits that heterosexual couples receive, including
health insurance for federal employees, the ability to file as "married
filing jointly" on federal income taxes and Social Security spousal
protections.

* * *

GLAD's suit addresses only Section 3 of the law, a
portion that prevents the federal government from giving Social
Security and other protections to same-sex married couples.

Should they have waited, giving Obama time to fill up the federal courts with a few more moderates? Will this suit win? I don't know. But I'm oddly exited about this. I think DOMA, on these facts, is plainly unconstitutional — the provisions refusing federal benefits to same-sex married (or civil unioned) couples pretty clearly reflects nothing more than a "bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group," as they say. Recently a couple of well-known judges on the Ninth Circuit, including conservative Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, have suggested that DOMA is unconstitutional in this respect.

One thing the plaintiffs are clearly doing right is limiting the claim. A challenge to the "no recognition of gay marriages as marriages" portion would surely fail. That would probably make it harder in the future to overrule that precedent; it would also endanger the rest of the litigation, and cause a greater political frenzy.

And while we're on the topic, I'd just like to mention that Bill Clinton signed DOMA in 1996. It's one of the most rotten things he did as President, and the Act does far much more than merely allow states to refuse to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in Massachusetts or Connecticut (or at the time, Hawaii), no matter how much he attempts to spin it that way. As we have noted from time to time at this blog, the Clinton years are far from perfect, no matter how they seem in relation to the (worst of all time?) Bush II years.
Seeking Life Among “Twinkling” Stars

March 2, 2009

NASA hopes to launch the giant telescope / light meter Kepler on Friday. The mission is to look for Earth-like planets in our galaxy – planets whose size and conditions could support life forms. From the Houston Chronicle:

The universe may be filled with Earth-like planets — worlds where extraterrestrials might flourish. But these planets were once considered too small to spot, even with the latest in space technology.

Now, many astronomers believe NASA’s $600 million Kepler telescope, which is scheduled to shoot into space this week, will help to clear up the mystery.

Named for Johannes Kepler, a 17th-century German astronomer who studied planetary motion, the telescope is designed to search 100,000 stars in the Milky Way for Earth-sized rocky planets where water could flow and form streams, lakes and oceans.

Some astronomers believe the spacecraft could eventually find about 50 Earth-like planets.

“If we find that many, it will certainly mean life may well be common throughout our galaxy,” said William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center, the astronomer who leads the Kepler science team.

“On the other hand, if we don’t find any, that is still a profound discovery,” he said. “It will mean that Earth must be very rare. We may be the only life in our universe.

“It will mean there will be no Star Trek.”

Finding wobbly stars

The unmanned Kepler is scheduled to lift off aboard a Delta II rocket on Friday from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Its quest, though, is not as fanciful as it may seem.

Astronomers first discovered a planet outside our solar system in 1994 and have since identified 340 of them. But even the best observatories, the Hubble Space Telescope among them, are not equipped to spot something as tiny as the Earth at great distances.

So far, the discoveries have been made with telescopes that detect small wobbles in the movement of stars, which astronomers attribute to the gravitational tug of unseen planets.

Most of these worlds rival giant Jupiter in size. Many are larger. Some circle their stars so closely that their surface temperatures are much too high for life.
Inde tibi tuaeque rei publicae quod imitere capias… (Dean)

March 1, 2009

Are the humanities “relevant”? Should they have to “justify their worth“? I am disturbed by last week’s NYT article in which these questions are posed, not because it’s reporting an unfortunate, if not entirely newsworthy, phenomenon—the decline of interest in the formal study of humanities given their seemingly inherent impracticality and the excessive costs of education—but because these questions are simply wrongheaded.

The majority of the pro-humanities experts cited in the article perpetuate the error. Columbia’s Andrew Delbanco worries about the perceived relevance of studying the humanities. I think he may have chosen the wrong word. Relevance to what? Put another way, how can the humanities not be relevant to the seemingly infinite varieties of topics, themes, problems, and occasions they address? Take the article headline, for example. How are the humanities not relevant to “tough times”?

By viewing the humanities as relevant, I don’t mean to endorse the comments of Yale Law School’s Anthony Kronman, who seems at once willfully oblivious to history and dangerously naïve, implying that greed, irresponsibility, and fraud are somehow peculiar to today’s world, and suggesting that humanistic reflection will manage to fix that circumstance. To my mind, the engaging aspect of so much work in the humanities is precisely their not being “well-equipped” to do much of anything. Perhaps they facilitate accomplishment only incidentally. One learns from poetry, for instance, how to read for a kaleidoscopic range of meanings, a skill that could bolster one’s work as an attorney. But that’s not the only, let alone the primary, reason for reading poetry.

How are “producing enough trained engineers and scientists” and the study of the humanities mutually exclusive enterprises in the struggle to assure “America’s economic vitality”? Why only our “economic” vitality? I’m with Derek Bok: “There’s a lot more to a liberal education than improving the economy.” One might even demand engineers and scientists to justify their worth in humanistic terms.

I cribbed this post’s title from an old book review in Slate that discusses the growing popularity of the study of Latin. This is one of those instances of remarkable, perhaps not merely fortuitous timing, when the report of the imminent collapse of the humanities, a “prerequisite for personal growth and participation in a free democracy,” is proclaimed pretty much just as the study of its emblematic, dead language becomes fodder for best sellers.
More than the cup you crave

February 27, 2009

A small news item in today's local paper caught my eye. In these hard economic times, a coffee shop in Maine has won the battle with the local city council to employ topless wait persons to boost sales. (The G-rated video here)

VASSALBORO, Maine — Cup size has more than one meaning at a new central Maine coffeehouse.

Servers are topless at the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop, which opened its doors Monday on a busy road in Vassalboro. A sign outside says, “Over 18 only.” Another says, “No cameras, no touching, cash only.”

On Tuesday, two men sipped coffee at a booth while three topless waitresses and a bare-chested waiter stood nearby. Topless waitress Susie Wiley said men, women and couples have stopped by.

The coffee shop raised the ire of dozens of residents when it went before the town planning board last month. Town officials said the coffee shop met the letter of the law.

Capitalizing on the female anatomy to sell consumer items from cars to cruises is not remarkable. Topless women serving food and beverages to attract hungry men are not uncommon either. What drew my attention to this little story is the presence of the bare chested male waiter. Is that a selling point too? Does the sight of well sculpted manly pectorals act as an appetite enhancer - for women and gay men, for example? Or is the man shirtless only to prove gender equality so that the cafe is not accused of exploiting female sexuality? It looks like the latter to me. If the man were also a sexual selling point on an equal footing with the women, why does the sanitized video show the female employee covered up for the cameras while the young man at the coffee machine is blithely bare?
Where in the world is Dubya?

February 27, 2009

Just over a month ago George W. Bush, our most incompetent president in recent memory became a private citizen. Mr. and Mrs. Bush have moved to their new home in an upscale neighborhood of Dallas. The transition from being the most powerful man on earth to a Texas suburbanite must take some work. I was wondering what George Bush must be up to now that the boxes have been unpacked and he has had time to get familiarized with the new digs (Bush had not seen his new home before moving in). Laura Bush told ABC News that she and her husband are settling in and gradually finding the rhythm of their new life. I believe Mrs Bush when she says that the newspaper is not being delivered on time and that she has had to do little cooking, with friends bringing over food. But I do not believe that she simply forgot to watch President Obama's address to the nation and the joint session of Congress last Tuesday.

After years of having everything they wanted right at their finger tips, the Bushes are finding that sometimes the little things are the most difficult to get.

"The only thing we don't have are the newspapers. It has been slow to get The Dallas Morning News delivered," she said. "People bring the newspaper to us later in the day. It's just not being delivered yet."

Despite the lack of newspaper delivery at their new home, the former first lady said they are keeping up with the news back in the nation's capital but they certainly are not operating on Washington's clock. In fact, Mrs. Bush said she did not watch President Obama's address to Congress on Tuesday night because she "totally forgot about it."

"The next day I thought it was so ironic that for eight years I would be a nervous wreck before the State of the Union, and for days before, as George would be preparing his speech, worried about it and thinking about what was going to be in the speech. And this time it came and went and I didn't even think about it."

Forgot? More likely she deliberately avoided it knowing what a painful contrast it would be to listen to a coherent presidential speech after the eight years of drivel that her clueless husband had dished out. And what has George Bush been doing in retirement? Well, it is reported that he is looking for a "play group" in his new neighborhood of Preston Hollow. [link: Sujatha]

Open house at Pershing Elementary on Wednesday drew a dozen Preston Hollow-area parents to check out the prospects for their children. But the Dallas school's most prominent visitors didn't have any kids in tow. Only Secret Service agents.

George and Laura Bush have been little more than rumors the last few months, fleeting glimpses behind tinted windows of big, black Suburbans. But the kids got a first-hand look Wednesday when their new neighbors took a tour.

The Bushes were scheduled to visit three classes but popped in on any room with an audience.

Ducking in one room, Bush asked, "Hey, kids, do you know who I am?"

Gasps all around, then someone blurted, "George Washington!"

"That's right!" the visitor said. "George Washington Bush!"

Well, the middle initial was the same, anyway.

In a dual-language class, Bush tried to introduce himself in Spanish. But it came off a little too twangy. He tried again. Blank looks. Even held up three fingers. You know, a "W." Still nothing.

Finally, Pershing's energetic principal, Margie Hernandez, stepped in with a proper Spanish introduction.

Ohhhhhhh.

The kids laughed. The former president laughed. The principal laughed, out of relief, mostly.

So much for the ex-president and his wife. At least they can look forward to an idyllic retirement. The disgruntled cadre of right wing followers they have left behind on the other hand, are in the mood for an armed revolution!
Something called “volcano monitoring” (Joe)

February 25, 2009

What on earth was Bobby Jindal thinking? Even for Republicans, this is off the deep end. We shouldn't spend money monitoring volcano activity because if they explode with no warning hey man it's cool, potentially thousands of dead people and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property is no biggie. I know that advanced warning of Hurricane Katrina didn't do as much good as it could have when it hit Jindal's state because of government incompetence, but seriously? That's not a winner. No one wants to see people becoming one with a flood of molten rock.
Boneheads

February 24, 2009

George W. Bush's aristocratic family boasted several dedicated Yalies, many of whom were members of Yale University's ultra secret Skull and Bones Society, home to a number of movers and shakers of America's establishment ruling class. A decades old adventure of one Bonesman Bush is now the basis for a modern day lawsuit. George Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush is said to have robbed the grave of the famous Apache leader Geronimo, for his "skull and bones" as a treasured prize for the eponymous secretive fraternity. It is tempting to speculate that the same arrogance that plagued the grave-robbing Bush ancestor, may have manifested itself as an atavistic trait in his frat boy grandson whose monumental prank as president nearly turned the nation of Iraq into a graveyard. Geronimo the warrior, who spent his life fighting against occupiers, can't even turn over in his own grave.

They claim his body was taken by members of Skull and Bones, a secret student society, and are hidden at Yale University.

George W Bush's grandfather and two other members of the group are said to have taken the remains of the Apache warrior Geronimo during the First World War.

However, the society's repeated refusal to comment on the story, or on rumours that new members have to kiss the chief's skull, have prompted the extraordinary lawsuit.

In a court action that names not only Yale and the society, but also Barack Obama and Robert Gates, his defence secretary, 20 descendants of the famous American Indian leader are seeking to recover his remains so his spirit can be laid to rest in his tribal homeland.

Their legal action, filed this week in a federal-district court in Washington DC on the 100th anniversary of his death, will seek to determine the truth of rumours that Geronimo's burial at Fort Sill in Oklahoma was not his final resting place.

Three Bonesmen, including Prescott Bush, served at Fort Sill during the First World War.

The trio were rumoured to have dug up Geronimo's remains in 1918 and took some of them back to Yale where they are supposedly still kept in the society's hall – known as the "Tomb" – on the university campus.

The Skull and Bones, whose illustrious membership has numbered three US presidents including both Bushes, supposedly makes new members kiss the Chiricahua Apache's skull.

Then there is Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania whose right wing blather no longer reverberates on the senate floor but is unfortunately still to be heard on the speaking circuit where he continues to spread fear and misinformation about war and peace. On a recent tour of college campuses to "present his idea that Americans do not truly understand why the United States is at war," Santorum tried to explain the conflict in the middle east to students at the University of Nebraska. Mixing politics and religion to make his case, the senator proved that he is ignorant on both fronts.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum visited the auditorium of the Nebraska Union on Tuesday to present his idea that Americans do not truly understand why the United States is at war.

Santorum is passing through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a part of his college campus tour on which he describes to students what he believes are the dangers in not knowing what is going on in the Middle East.

“I talk to college students because I can have an intellectual conversation, and they usually don’t agree with me,” Santorum said. “I like to state my case (to students) and let them decide who to believe.”

Santorum was a member of the United States Senate from 1994-2007. He believes that the Bush administration made a huge mistake in not informing Americans exactly what’s happening with the wars and who America is fighting. He said the Obama administration is making the same mistake.

“America has little information and Bush went out of his way to mystify who the enemy really is,” Santorum said. “Is that true, are we really fighting ‘terrorists?’”

Santorum also gave the audience a lecture on Islam. When he asked the audience who knew the difference between the Sunnis and the Shi’ites, three audience members raised their hands. Santorum said this proved his point – America has been at war with Islam for seven years and doesn’t know the two branches.

Santorum said he supported the war when it was unpopular because he thinks not fighting could destroy western civilization. He said he believes that Muslims are America’s enemy because they read their religion literally and apply it to real life, instead of in historical context.

The lecture continued when Santorum pointed out what he thought were the main differences between Christians and Muslims. Santorum said Christians, who believe in Jesus Christ, never governed or conquered anyone, but Mohammed was a warrior and killed people.

Santorum said he believes Muslims’ religious views cannot be changed or altered, so Middle Easterners reject American, democratic ideals.

“A democracy could not exist because Mohammed already made the perfect law,” Santorum said. “The Quran is perfect just the way it is, that’s why it is only written in Islamic.” (emphasis mine)

Someone needs to inform the senator that the Quran is NOT written in Islamic. Just as the New Testament is not written in the Christian language, the Torah in Jewish, the Gita in Hindu … nor by the way, the US Constitution in American. And also, Santorum conveniently forgot Christianity's messy Crusades, Inquistion and colonialism.
Name that fallacy… (Joe)

February 22, 2009

In a New York Times op-ed, the co-authors (one for same-sex marriage, one against) propose the obvious compromise: replace the federal Defense of Marriage Act with something slightly less beastly, and moderately less constitutionally infirm. Basically, federal civil-union or domestic-partnership law. Same-sex couples still can't get the name marriage for federal purposes, but they can get the civil benefits offered by the federal government if they are given marriage or civil-union status under state law. (To be fair, the more obvious compromise [still beastly, but less so, and no longer constitutionally infirm] would be full-fledged federal civil-union law: same-sex couples are guaranteed the right to create civil unions, period.)

Anyhow, I support same-sex marriage because I'm not a horrible person, but as a political matter, federal recognition of civil unions is certainly worth talking about, and is a plausibly reasonable compromise. What bugs me about this op-ed is that they think federal legislation here should include a "condition":

Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience
exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not
recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government
would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of
these changes would be enacted in the same bill.

This seems to come up a lot: "We need protection for religious freedom, laws creating same-sex marriage could force churches to change religious doctrine!" This is flatly ridiculous. I believe it's what you would call a red herring, although I could be wrong on that — my philosophy days are long behind me. My law days, however, are not, and it's clear that discussion of religious-freedom exceptions both distracts from real issues and gets people worrying about something which is actually impossible.

The First Amendment protects the freedom of religion, forbidding state establishment of religion as well as state infringement on the free exercise of religion. As a factual matter, I am not aware of any state with same-sex marriage which has purported to require religious recognition of same-sex civil marriages (nor am I aware of any state without same-sex civil marriage which recognizes, for civil purposes, same-sex religious marriage). More important, as a constitutional matter, neither a state nor the federal government could do so. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that religious organizations cannot be forced by government to recognize same-sex marriage. (There are also judicial doctrines, such as the ministerial exception, which protect the freedom of religious organizations and preclude judicial inquiry on marginal issues such as employment discrimination.)

This type of sophistry, even if well-intentioned, in fact distracts from any real debatable issues and functions to get the socially conservative base riled up. I'm sick of hearing about the need for statutory protection of religious freedom, which falsely makes it seem as if that protection is not existent and fully secure. Church-state separation on this issue is probably as doubt-free as anything in the Bill of Rights. So let's stop talking about it as if it's even debatably in need of aid, okay?
A brave little tank defends itself against a menacing twelve year old. (Joe)

February 22, 2009

Who could have known that I would agree with the mysterious Fafblog! author — or in this case, specifically the Medium Lobster — on the subject of Israeli self-defense? I know, it seems unlikely. Still, here we are.

A lesser nation might have wavered in the face of a merciless
Palestinian onslaught of pleading and stump-waving, but Israel realizes
this is a war between good and evil, right and wrong, civilization and
those too poor to afford civilization. True, it's far from a fair fight
– Israel has a mere three hundred nuclear warheads while the
Palestinians have countless rocks to throw – but somehow the pluck and
determination of this scrappy regional superpower has prevailed over
the deadly horde of orphans, beggars and amputees who threaten to live
next to it.

Israel's critics will forever bicker over the spilled milk of Israeli policy – a few thousand homes demolished here, a few thousand corpses over there – but we must allow that Israel has a right to defend itself, and we must also
allow that defending itself necessarily entails the indiscriminate
bombing of thousands of screaming refugees. After all, if an implacable
terrorist enemy had been launching rockets at one of your villages,
wouldn't you do everything in your power to stop them? And once those
same implacable terrorist enemies agreed to a cease-fire, wouldn't you break
that cease-fire by bombing them and their families, reasoning that they
are, after all, implacable terrorist enemies, and not to be trusted?
And when you went to bomb those terrorists and their families, wouldn't
you also bomb everyone and everything around them, reasoning that only
a terrorist would live near, go to school with, or be hospitalized in the same vicinity as a terrorist? And when you went to bomb everything around them, wouldn't you be sure to plan that bombing months before the event that nominally precipitated it? And before planning that massive bombing campaign, wouldn't you be sure to cut the entire population off
from terrorist food, militant medicine, and jihadist electricity for
months in advance? And when that population retaliated against your
pre-retaliation retaliation by launching rockets at one of your
villages, wouldn't that merely confirm their nature as implacable
terrorist enemies who must be destroyed at any cost?

. . . As much as we might all yearn for
peace, history has shown that Palestinians understand only violence.
Well, violence and Arabic, but Arabic is notoriously difficult to
learn, while most of us can become fluent in violence in just under a
semester.

It is indeed difficult to argue with the notion that Israeli self-defense "necessarily entails the indiscriminate bombing of thousands of screaming refugees."
Will Obama’s Stimulus Package Be Big Enough? (Andrew)

February 19, 2009

I sure hope so — but the book I reviewed in this week's Observer suggests that the big problem in the Depression was that aggressive deficit spending didn't go far enough to overcome the fear and pessimism of bankers, workers, and employers.

The book reminds me of one of Ralph Waldo Emerson's notes: "My estimate of America, which sometimes runs very low, and sometimes to ideal, prophetic proportions. My estimate of my own mental means and resources is all or nothing: in happy hours, life looking infinitely rich; and sterile at others."

The gyrations between perhaps irrational exuberance and deep self-loathing that Emerson saw in himself and in his country seem very widely shared among Americans in our time. For one tiny example, check out the "black panther" in the Observer comments section who concluded from the review that the fall of capitalism and World War III are upon us.

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