Theodicy

Andrew Sullivan has spent an awful lot of time in the past week or so exploring attempts to justify the behavior of God. The first post is here, with follow-ups here, here, and here, and dissents here and here.

Today, the latest edition to this series is from a reader who puts the whole thing very simply:

I believe that the problems you and your readers are "debating" have much more to do with disagreement over mode of inquiry than with any real attempt to answer important questions of our origin, the problem of suffering, our ultimate end, etc. In other words, some of your readers (myself included) take issue with otherwise intelligent people who propagate the acknowledged myths of Christianity because we do not believe that, as Marcus Borg might say, the fact that a particular myth did not take place in history does not make it untrue. We insist that the only proper and intellectually honest answer to the questions religion attempts to answer is simply "I do not know."

The believer who believes things to be truth despite their having no basis in empirical truth (i.e., a biblical literalist) renders any honest discussion of religion impossible. The story of creation is a perfect example. Literalists take every word of Genesis as factually true: that God created the entire material universe out of nothing in six earth days and rested on the seventh. It actually never occurs to them that, perhaps, this story was written by men based on oral histories during a time when people believed that the earth was the center of the universe. It also canonizes a belief, at least as I see it, that time and matter cannot be eternal, because before God created the universe out of nothing, then there was no time and no matter before Creation. If that's true, then biblical literacy denies the eternity of God.

In Jewish thought, the question of Creation is an evolving one. Check out this passage on Creation in the Jewish Encyclopedia. It looks at the subject from so many different angles, and in the end the question is still unsolved. It supports the reader's suggestion that we simply do not know. I don't think we can know. This is the only intellectually honest argument; despite centuries of attempts to slice or dice this question in an attempt to answer it, at the end of the day we still don't know. Our freedom to believe as we wish gives us the ability to accept however narrow of view of this subject we want.

This is Patriotism

The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday on the court martial mistrial of Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused to deploy to Iraq in 2006 and argued in court that to fight in Iraq would be to engage in war crimes. After the mistrial was declared, the Army ruled that it could not retry Watada.

As his lawyer put it:

[Watada is] a hero and a patriot . . . [who] took a lonely stand as a matter of conscience, never attempted to spread discord within the ranks, and never sought to evangelize about his ethical convictions. . . . It is our belief that history will treat Lt. Watada far more favorably than the United States Army sees fit to regard him now.

Word.

A Military Solution to "The Obama Problem"

Talking Points Memo has the full text of a Newsmax column by John L. Perry suggesting a military coup may be necessary to solve "The Obama Problem." The piece has since been withdrawn.

This is how may on the right think, as if the country were living an episode of "24" and the only hope is a bunch of responsible generals and other officers who would finally stand up and say, "No, sir, Mr. President" while flags wave and stirring music plays in the background.

Obama Risks a Domestic Military Intervention

By: John L. Perry

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America's military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the "Obama problem." Don't dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn't the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn't mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:

# Officers swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to "obey the orders of the president of the United States."

# Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized.

# They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office.

# They can see that the economy -- ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation -- is financially reliant on foreign lender governments.

# They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.

# They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America's troop strength is allowed to sag.

# They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time.

# They can see the nation's safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before.

So, if you are one of those observant military professionals, what do you do?

Wait until this president bungles into losing the war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear bombs falls into the hands of militant Islam?

Wait until Israel is forced to launch air strikes on Iran's nuclear-bomb plants, and the Middle East explodes, destabilizing or subjugating the Free World?

What happens if the generals Obama sent to win the Afghan war are told by this president (who now says, "I'm not interested in victory") that they will be denied troops they must have to win? Do they follow orders they cannot carry out, consistent with their oath of duty? Do they resign en masse?

Or do they soldier on, hoping the 2010 congressional elections will reverse the situation? Do they dare gamble the national survival on such political whims?

Anyone who imagines that those thoughts are not weighing heavily on the intellect and conscience of America's military leadership is lost in a fool's fog.

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a "family intervention," with
some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don't shrug and say, "We can always worry about that later."

In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.

Palin Watch (Someone's Got to Do It!)

My last post did not post correctly and it went out blank so I'm doing another.

Palin gave a speech in Hong Kong Wednesday to a group of global investors. It was, of course, closed to the media, since she told the sponsors of the speech that she would have to "adjust her speech if reporters were present." While some liked what she had to say, according to AFP, two US delegates left early, with one saying, "it was awful, we just couldn't stand it any longer." Another Asian delegate complained that she spent too much time "promoting investment in Alaska."

In the speech she also criticized Obama's "government intervention" policies without naming him, saying, "We got into this mess because of government interference in the first place. We're not interested in government fixes, we're interested in freedom."

Uh, yeah right.

Well, of course she would have long forgotten by now that the Bush administration started the bailouts (which were a good idea, by the way). Before Obama had taken office, we had already bailed out banks (Citi, B of A, Wells), investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns), insurance companies (AIG), and the secondary mortgage market (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

But by far my favorite part of the speech was when she ruminated about the land bridge that connected Asia to North America across the Bering Strait:

Personally, I’ve always been really interested in the ideas too about the land bridge. Ideas that maybe so long ago, had allowed Alaska to be physically connected to this part of our world so many years ago. My husband and my children, they’re part [unintelligible] Eskimo, Alaskan natives. They’re our first people, and the connection that may have brought ancestors from here to there is fascinating to me.

Scientists say the land bridge disappeared about 12,000 years ago. So, if the earth is only 6,000 years old according to biblical literalists, how can it be that it existed at all?

Two Sullivan Posts -- People Leaving America

The first one tackles the issue of same-sex relationships. Sullivan, being gay and married and HIV-positive and living in America, is extraordinarily vulnerable:

I've been in the US for a quarter of a century, have paid taxes when I was working, am married to an American and have never asked for a dime of public help. But the US - alone among developed nations - still persecutes non-Americans for having HIV and regards my civil marriage as null and void and my husband as a total stranger to me.

Britain doesn't persecute people with HIV and never has; moreover, Britain would allow my husband and I to relocate together to England at any point. I'm not sure people fully understand what it's like to build a life with someone and to do all you can to contribute to a society - and yet be vulnerable at any moment to having your family torn apart by the government. But it's a strain that eventually becomes crippling: you have no security, no stability, no guarantee that you have a future you can count on. And that affects an American citizen, my husband, as well.

Why has America become such a callous outlier on these matters? Why is the government forcing more and more able, qualified, productive and talented citizens into a diaspora to protect their families? And why, even after a big victory for Obama and a Democratic Congress, is there not the slightest chance of any progress for the foreseeable future?

Because it's about gays. And we are still, in the eyes of the federal government, sub-human.

The American blogger who triggered Sullivan's rant had already relocated with his British partner to the UK, where people in same-sex domestic partnerships are considered married couples for immigration purposes.

The second post has to do with America's insane process for legal immigration, which has become so maddeningly protracted that skilled immigrants from China and India are returning to their native countries, where the economies are expanding. Experts predict that America will lose 200,000 skilled immigrants to these two countries. What we'll have left are Wal-Mart shoppers and Glenn Beck.

"Get 'Em Out By Friday"

Only the most hard-core progressive rock geeks would recognize the headline as title of the seminal epic song by Genesis (when Peter Gabriel was their singer and Phil Collins mostly played drums). It was on the Foxtrot album, along with the other classics, "Watcher of the Skies" and the side-long epic "Supper's Ready."

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a video online of the band performing this song.

However, the premise of the song is this: Various government and/or corporate interests are buying up real estate in England to make way for new homes, evicting tenants and owners who are already on hard times, moving them to a "block of flats with central heating." A man known as "The Winkler" intones:

I represent a firm of gentlemen who recently purchased this house and all the others in the road
In the interests of humanity we've found a better place for you to go, go, go

What the poor evictees are slowly learning is that the reason for these purchases is because people will soon be restricted to a height of only four feet, and because "It's said, now that people will be shorter in height/They can fit twice as many in the same building site."

Great little creepy science fiction tale for 1972, right? Well, dig this: William Saletan at Slate proposes that in order to save the planet, we should be breeding people to be smaller. Studies are showing that having fewer children and promoting contraception will do more to combat climate change than all the other things we're doing to try to save our planet.

Well, no one would ever volunteer to do that, and one can only imagine that a government would have the foresight, let alone the ability, to force such a genetic breeding program on its citizens. So no chance of this happening, as I can see it. But score one for Peter Gabriel for prescience.

True

The Washington Post continues to deny that the US's treatment of detainees at Gitmo, Bagram, and elsewhere is not torture. Otherwise how could it advocate the discussion of prisoner torture as an agenda item in talks with Iran?

The cases of torture and rape of prisoners courageously documented by opposition presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi should be as worthy of discussion as the non-nuclear subjects that Iran wants to bring up.

Sullivan has a great point here:

America is exceptional not because it banished evil, not because Americans are somehow more moral than anyone else, not because its founding somehow changed human nature—but because it recognized the indelibility of human nature and our permanent capacity for evil. It set up a rule of law to guard against such evil. It pitted branches of government against each other and enshrined a free press so that evil could be flushed out and countered even when perpetrated by good men.

The belief that when America tortures, the act is somehow not torture, or that when Americans torture, they are somehow immune from its moral and spiritual cancer, is not an American belief. It is as great a distortion of American exceptionalism as jihadism is of Islam.

My emphasis. The Christianists and the political hawks (such as WaPo's Fred Hiatt and Charles Krauthammer) who continue to assert America's moral high-ground when it comes to the treatment of prisoners are worthy of the same question Barney Frank asked of that woman at his town hall: "On what planet do you spend the majority of your time?"

Until George W Bush himself breaks his silence and admits that the US did, in fact torture prisoners, we will always be in collective denial about this, and we will never be able to complain about the treatment American prisoners (particularly those in the military or government) receive. Ever.

Bill-O Supports the Public Option

Take that, wingnuts!

"But you know, I want that, Ms. Owcharenko. I want that. I want, not for personally for me, but for working Americans, to have an option, that if they don’t like their health insurance, if it’s too expensive, they can’t afford it, if the government can cobble together a cheaper insurance policy that gives the same benefits, I see that as a plus for the folks."

Bill-O was speaking to someone from The Heritage Foundation on his show Thursday.

The actual transcript has him saying "The public option is now done," so I'm not exactly sure what Bill-O put in his coffee to have him talking out of both sides of his mouth. But the above quote has him clearly supporting government efforts to provide health insurance that provides a low cost alternative to expensive private insurance.

Somewhere in hell, Hitler and Nixon are skiing down some very cold slopes.

What to do with Crazy Aunt Edna...

Noah Millman at American Scene wants to keep the loonies in the GOP "inside the tent and pissing on the sleeping bags."

If they are inside, pissing on the sleeping bag, you aren't going to get any sleep, you aren't going to forget they are there, and you aren't going to forget they are crazy. But you're going to know where they are and what they are up to, and they are going to be warm and dry (Warmer and drier than your sleeping bag, anyway).

In the comments section of the post, matoko_chan pwns Noah big time:

C’mon Noah, you guyz didn't have the nads to [laugh] Sarah Palin off the stage last summer and NOW you pretend you are going to bravely direct the teabaggers, birthers, frothing bluehairs and rabid assorted KKK rally attendees you have summoned? This is your problem now.YOU invited the vampires into the House so you could farm their votes…Either stake them through the heart or burn the House down.

Ain't that the fuckin' truth?

To another commenter who felt it appropriate to bring up Obama's $53,770 in 2005-07 contributions to the church where Jeremiah Wright is a pastor, matoko_chan writes:

You are prejudiced against Obama because he is black, [but w]hy aren’t you prejudiced against Sarah Palin because she is stupid? Sarah Palin is going to destroy the GOP, not Obama. She is unelectable, and the base has gone gila monster on you. They won’t let go of her until the GOP is dead.

The logical conclusion to the GOP drama is not that the crazies are thrown out of the party, but that they leave on their own to form the party they envision as capable of returning their country back to its fundamentalist Christian origins. Given the unpopularity of that idea among sane Americans, the crazies would only be further marginalized. This is where Millman's idea is sound. Once they're out of the tent, pissing everywhere (including back into the tent), the crazies are far more dangerous. Feed them daily doses of Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Malkin, and Coulter, and they'll be positively feral.

Religious FundaMENTALism

MSNBC reports on studies regarding religiosity, teen birth rates, and abortion statistics expose a "strong correlation" people who identified as religious conservatives (i.e., literal interpretation of the Bible, only one way to interpret one's religious teachings) and teen birth rates, even when income and abortion rates were considered.


It turns out that teens in less religious states had more abortions, but even stripping that away, the more religious the state, the higher the rate of teen births. And, says a public health official, while there are parts of New England where religious participation is high but have low teen birth rates, those folks tend to be involved in "less conservative, less fundamentalist type[s] of congregations."


In other words, religious fundamentalism nationwide contributes more to teen births, societal problems, and the breakdown of families than moderate, liberal, or nonexistent religiosity.

As Sullivan says, the same people who want to prevent gays from marrying and forming families are the ones most responsible for teen unwed mothers (meaning more unprotected premarital sex and, one could argue, potentially more transmissions of STDs). Sarah Palin's family fits in perfectly with this model.