A quick glance at this powerful editorial looks to me like this guy didn’t just hit the bullseye, he got the little gold dot right in the middle of the bullseye. I’m not ready for a separation like he is (just yet), but there’s a reason that the Republican primary is a lot more interesting right now than the Democratic one.
Revision and update to this post will come later tonight, after my litigation and teaching obligations are fulfilled.
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A country was founded as a strictly secular state with a Constitution that requires that the government be strictly non-religious. It is poised on the brink of nominating its first religious observant President. The army obviously has serious reservations and there is a massive rally of secular people demanding that the apparent nominee make a pledge to adhere to the secular Constitution. That’s what’s happening in Turkey, right now.
Seems a contrast from the United States, where most of the major politicians are running towards religion.
UPDATE: The BBC reports:
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The Wife likes 9-tile scrabble. This morning, she got three 50-point bonuses in a row. It’s hard to come back from that, but I made a go of it.
Each turn’s score is on the left; running totals are on the right. She wound up winning by 33 points but I came back from being down by 161 points (after her triple-word score for “lodges” and “stove”).
| TL | The Wife | |||||
| 86 | burglars | 86 | 104 | vampires | 104 | |
| 12 | broom | 98 | 74 | failings | 178 | |
| 11 | cruet | 109 | 78 | bemoaned | 256 | |
| 10 | peeve | 119 | 18 | el, to, lodge | 274 | |
| 29 | sleazy | 148 | 35 | lodges, stove | 309 | |
| 72 | ungotten | 220 | 14 | away | 323 | |
| 29 | elixir | 249 | 11 | yo, on | 334 | |
| 31 | raj, ere, na | 280 | 18 | ranks | 352 | |
| 15 | feats, if, re | 295 | 15 | owe, one | 367 | |
| 21 | hid, he, id | 316 | 15 | hid, id, hi | 382 | |
| 20 | dicta, pa | 336 | -13 | (i, i, q, u) | 369 | |
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You may not like Christopher Hitchens, if you know who he is or what he writes about. If you’re a return Reader, you probably have something of a taste for the ironic, iconoclastic, and insightful (whether I provide the insight or someone commenting does is a different issue). So like him or not, he rarely fails to give his readers something weighty to consider.
And for brain-stimulating power, really good intellectual ideas have more effect than strong coffee, which is something I need on this particular Sunday morning. Two things from a recent interview with Hitchens really strike me in that fashion.
First, on atheism and domestic politics: “Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, ‘I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.’” Karl Rove? The President’s right-hand man, an atheist working as hard as he can to support a millenialist Christian whose foreign policy seems driven by a desire to hasten the Apocalypse? Now that’s interesting, make no mistake.
Second, on Islam and the future: Islam is “unalterable. You notice how liberals keep saying, ‘If only Islam would have a Reformation’—it can’t have one. It says it can’t. It’s extremely dangerous in that way.” This rather depressing thought is more interesting to me. Why can’t Islam have a Reformation? Both Judaism and Christianity have done so, despite their both possessing texts that are absolutist in content and which derive their ethics from a nomadic or early-urbanized Bronze Age culture of expanding tribal power, or from the desire to endure and eventually seek the overthrow of a Classical-era occupying military dictatorship.
Whatever criticisms I may have of Judeo-Christian religion today, I will certainly concede that Reform Jews and some kinds of Protestants have at least tried to adapt the ancient teachings of their religion to a more contemporary world. I disagree with Hitchens that similar kinds of intellectual updating and editing are impossible for Islam, at least if the reason is that other religions permit the influence of theology — because they really do not, given a literal reading of their texts, but have done so anyway. Perhaps the real problem is that Muslims do not see their religion as needing reformation; they see their religion in its eleventh-century form as still having application in the contemporary world. Perhaps that is because their contemporary world is really not all that different from the world their ancestors lived in a thousand years ago. That’s a real danger, but at least it’s something that can be fixed.
Hat tip for the interview to Justin Gardner at Donklephant.
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Eugene Volokh suggests that “exploiting 9/11” is really the political process working as intended. I agree with Prof. Volokh that a past incidence of a politician’s response to an emergency situation is probably the best and most telling thing that suggests what that person’s future performance in a time of need will be like. Of course, I’m an unrepentant advocate for Rudy Giuliani and I think it’s entirely fair that he should get to tout his performance on that day, and afterwards, as part of his credentials and qualifications for President – and I accept that if he’s going to do that, he fairly subjects himself to criticism for things that could have been done better (sixth paragraph down), too. Maybe some of you non-Giuliani supporters would care to dissent?
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Our pets are disgusting animals. This morning, I come downstairs, ready to go to work today, and I see the dogs industriously licking at the carpet. I know I hadn’t dropped anything on the floor. “What are you doing?” I ask, and they can’t be bothered to look up or even acknowledge my presence.
Turns out that a cat has regurgitated her food all over the place and this is now second breakfast for the dogs. By the time I got to them, they had pretty much cleaned up everything, so there wasn’t much more for me to do except not let the dogs lick me when I put them in their kennels.
Ugh.
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Springtime has arrived in the desert, and with it came the beloved cherry blossoms and (allegedly) the flowering of the California poppies. We are starting to see temperatures in the eighties — that is, when we aren’t experiencing week-long windstorms. And along with the coming of spring we have had some new house guests.
The common black cricket is, frankly, an icky-looking bug. I have no love of him for that reason, although I realize he is harmless. His chirpy mating call is thought in many cultures to portend good luck of some sort — an imminent pregnancy, an unexpected source of money, and so on — but I’ve no such illusions. He’s come in the house to look for shelter from the snakes, mice, and birds that feast upon him and his friends out in the desert fields, and if he is really a “she” who has just mated, she is looking for a safe place to deposit her fertilized eggs so that there can one day soon be hundreds of little crickets just like her.
Our first cricket invader was spotted by The Wife, who adopted a heightened tone in her voice and asked me to come take care of the “Gigantic icky bug I hope it’s not a roach tell me it’s not a roach!” She freaks out about bugs.
I took a look at the creature — obviously not a roach with his big grasshopper-like legs, but I could see how she might think that because the cricket does have really long, droopy antennae. I remembered all the crickets chirping in the ice plant and juniper bushes near the house where I grew up. “Oh, it’s a cricket,” I said, “He won’t hurt anything, but he’s tough to catch.”
And they are. I found another one, a much bigger one, yesterday on the stairs. I tried to get him in a paper towel but he kept on jumping away from me. Then I tried to get the cats to come and play with the creature, figuring it would be great fun to see them figure out such a thing. Both the cats ran away from me, apparently afraid that I would kennel them. The dogs were completely useless and aren’t good for that kind of play anyway. So I vacuumed up our cricket guest and he’s lived inside the vacuum cannister with all the dusty pet fur ever since.
We are quite likely to have several more cricket invasions over the next several weeks. No house is ever sealed up from the outside world (not if it wants air conditioning and working toilets, anyway) so this sort of thing is just going to happen. But relax, my lovely wife, these are not roaches even if they are icky looking. Hopefully they don’t come in and start their chirpy, loud, and ultimately annoying songs while we’re trying to sleep.
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British prison guards seize prisoners’ Viagra. I just couldn’t resist the headline.
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Insomnia, that is. I couldn’t fall asleep until about 3:00 in the morning. Then I had to get up at 6:00 to be at an early-morning conference about the local economy. I feel like a zombie right now from lack of sleep and information overload. And I just pretty much agreed to a three-hour speaking gig in front of every human resources professional in northern Los Angeles County, to take place a few months from now. I suppose a three-hour speech is not much different than teaching a class.
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I told the story of the Ivory Door at dinner tonight with the partners of the firm, both of whom are smart and perceptive. One of them quickly asked the question, “Well, would you really want to be Prometheus?”
I quite enjoyed the sudden shift of symbolism. So, considering the extent of the suffering that Zeus imposed on Prometheus in the myth, I reflected for a moment, but I decided that it would have been worth it. Enlightenment and truth have inherent value and should be pursued for their own sake as well as for the utility that they bring.
Prometheus is perhaps the ultimate heroic figure in all of mythology — he brought enlightenment to man; he boldly forged his own path and made his own decisions about right and wrong, defying even the arbitrary orders of Zeus when necessary to advance the interests of the good. That he was made to suffer for it later, and indeed given that he acted as he did with full knowledge of the terrible fate that awaited him for so doing, only makes his act more noble by injecting the element of self-sacrifice. He does so not for a desire to assert his own power, as did Milton’s Satan, nor does he defy the Gods for the sake of demonstrating his free will like Loki or the pursuit of the enjoyment of life like Kokopelli. Rather, Prometheus acts for the pursuit of an objective good.
Sisyphus had a far more cruel and wretched fate than Prometheus. And more cruel indeed was the fate of Job. Although things turn out for the best for Job in the end, I’ve always thought the ending of that Biblical story was a narrative cop-out, and Biblical apologists ascribing a good motive to Jehovah for destroying a good man have yet to change my mind that the story portrays Jehovah as anything but arbitrary, capricious, cruel, and ultimately prideful — all the same sorts of character traits for which he condemns man.
While no one would accept a path of suffering gladly, in some cases it is worth it. Prometheus, at least, suffered for a noble purpose.
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Burt Likko is the pseudonym of an attorney in Southern California. He is sometimes known as the "Transplanted Lawyer" in commemoration of a two-year sojourn in East Tennessee which was something of a transformative life experience. His interests include politics and public policy, Constitutional law with a focus on the separation of church and state, cooking, good wine, and bad science fiction movies.
Will Truman is the pseudonym of a somewhat random guy that lives in the Mountain West with his doctorly wife. He has moved around frequently, having lived in four states in the last five years or so. Part-poligeek, part-geek, sometimes substitute teacher, sometimes professional gearhead, and off-and-on amateur fiction writer. He is primarily interested in the balancing of competing interests and points of view where answers are not easily found. He does (mostly) non-political blogging at Hit Coffee and can be found on Twitter.
