October 29, 2004
Renew the Fairness Doctrine
A project of MMA. The Fairness Doctrine, enshrined as law, would require equal air time for all sides of a political or social issue to present their case before the public. How could a democrat (note the small `d') not support this?
October 28, 2004
Faith, Reason, and Morality
I have a couple of things to say about this. It's going to be long, which hopefully will make up for the past few days' silence.
First, you should read it for the perspective it gives -- at this point completely unsurprising -- of Bush and the sort of religious beliefs he holds:
Now that I've got your attention, let's talk about Abraham.
Specifically, what Soren Kierkegaard , one of the first philosophers universally regarded as an Existentialist, had to say about Abraham. Kierkegaard radically opposed himself to the moral-political-religious system of Georg Hegel (those of you who've studied some Marx will have heard Hegel's name before). In Hegel's system, the world was supremely rational, governed by reason and logic slowly but inevitably triumphing over absurdity, coming together into one rational community. Western, meaning Christian, moral, religious, and political systems could be reached using reason. Kiekegaard, on the other hand, embraced individualism and the absurd. In Fear and Trembling, he considered the biblical story of Abraham, a man ordered by God to sacrifice his only son. Kierkegaard pointed out that Abraham's behavior -- preparing, albeit with great reluctance, to sacrifice his son, until at the last moment God rewards his faith and devotion with a substitute sacrifice -- is simultaneously completely irrational, completely amoral, and completely Christian. How would Abraham explain his actions to the fellow members of his community? Or to his wife? "God talks to me! And he told me I had to kill my son! It's not my fault! God told me to!" He'd sound crazy. Clearly not the type of person Hegel has in mind.
And yet this man is held in such esteem that three of the world's major religions are named for him (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are called the Abrahamic religions). Kierkegaard concludes that Hegel's characterization of Christianity is completely backwards: faith isn't something you arrive at objectively, using reason; it is a passionate, subjective, and ultimately absurd individual commitment, one that must be constantly renewed. Furthermore, a Kierkegaardian, Existentialist Christian could not view morality as public: one comes to know what to do through one's faith, not through the standards of reason or the community. This doesn't mean that the Kierkegaardian Christian believes she hears voices telling her what's right or what's wrong; that's incorrect both because the Kierkegaardian Christian doesn't think she's hearing voices of God or angels telling her what to do, at least not unless she's been profoundly blessed, and because she wouldn't apply the words `right' or `wrong', with their connotations of a public system of morals, to a transient, personal understanding of how she should behave.
That is to say, for this sort of pietistic, individualistic sort of religion, there can be no moral system. Everything, even one's desire for a secure sense of right and wrong, must be sacrificed and placed, faithfully, in the hands of God.
Let that sink in for a moment. I'll wait here while you take five minutes.
Kierkegaard did add that this was such a demanding task -- to live one's life devoted to the absurd, in the face of all reason and pressure from the community -- that only a very few people could ever manage it (Nietzsche made a similar point, about how most people could not bear the personal responsibility to accept the transvaluation of all values, and hence public morality was necessary for the public). What about all those devoted evangelicals who live in our country today, then? What about Bush and his rock solid faith? You can read the piece in the New York Times, or I think you can imagine what I think of him, even with my own Existentialist tendencies.
First, you should read it for the perspective it gives -- at this point completely unsurprising -- of Bush and the sort of religious beliefs he holds:
But the basic idea is that, once you surrender to God, divine guidance is palpable. "If you obey God in the first thing he shows you, then he instantly opens up the next truth to you," Chambers [an early 20th century Scottish theologian, whose homilies Bush reads every morning] writes.
And you shouldn't let your powers of reflection get in the way. Chambers lauds Abraham for preparing to slay his son at God's command without, as the Bible put it, conferring "with flesh and blood." Chambers warns: "Beware when you want to 'confer with flesh and blood' or even your own thoughts, insights, or understandings - anything that is not based on your personal relationship with God. These are all things that compete with and hinder obedience to God."
Once you're on the right path, setbacks that might give others pause needn't faze you. As Chambers noted in last Sunday's reading, "Paul said, in essence, 'I am in the procession of a conqueror, and it doesn't matter what the difficulties are, for I am always led in triumph.' " Indeed, setbacks may have a purpose, Chambers will tell Mr. Bush this Sunday: "God frequently has to knock the bottom out of your experience as his saint to get you in direct contact with himself." Faith "by its very nature must be tested and tried."
Now that I've got your attention, let's talk about Abraham.
Specifically, what Soren Kierkegaard , one of the first philosophers universally regarded as an Existentialist, had to say about Abraham. Kierkegaard radically opposed himself to the moral-political-religious system of Georg Hegel (those of you who've studied some Marx will have heard Hegel's name before). In Hegel's system, the world was supremely rational, governed by reason and logic slowly but inevitably triumphing over absurdity, coming together into one rational community. Western, meaning Christian, moral, religious, and political systems could be reached using reason. Kiekegaard, on the other hand, embraced individualism and the absurd. In Fear and Trembling, he considered the biblical story of Abraham, a man ordered by God to sacrifice his only son. Kierkegaard pointed out that Abraham's behavior -- preparing, albeit with great reluctance, to sacrifice his son, until at the last moment God rewards his faith and devotion with a substitute sacrifice -- is simultaneously completely irrational, completely amoral, and completely Christian. How would Abraham explain his actions to the fellow members of his community? Or to his wife? "God talks to me! And he told me I had to kill my son! It's not my fault! God told me to!" He'd sound crazy. Clearly not the type of person Hegel has in mind.
And yet this man is held in such esteem that three of the world's major religions are named for him (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are called the Abrahamic religions). Kierkegaard concludes that Hegel's characterization of Christianity is completely backwards: faith isn't something you arrive at objectively, using reason; it is a passionate, subjective, and ultimately absurd individual commitment, one that must be constantly renewed. Furthermore, a Kierkegaardian, Existentialist Christian could not view morality as public: one comes to know what to do through one's faith, not through the standards of reason or the community. This doesn't mean that the Kierkegaardian Christian believes she hears voices telling her what's right or what's wrong; that's incorrect both because the Kierkegaardian Christian doesn't think she's hearing voices of God or angels telling her what to do, at least not unless she's been profoundly blessed, and because she wouldn't apply the words `right' or `wrong', with their connotations of a public system of morals, to a transient, personal understanding of how she should behave.
That is to say, for this sort of pietistic, individualistic sort of religion, there can be no moral system. Everything, even one's desire for a secure sense of right and wrong, must be sacrificed and placed, faithfully, in the hands of God.
Let that sink in for a moment. I'll wait here while you take five minutes.
Kierkegaard did add that this was such a demanding task -- to live one's life devoted to the absurd, in the face of all reason and pressure from the community -- that only a very few people could ever manage it (Nietzsche made a similar point, about how most people could not bear the personal responsibility to accept the transvaluation of all values, and hence public morality was necessary for the public). What about all those devoted evangelicals who live in our country today, then? What about Bush and his rock solid faith? You can read the piece in the New York Times, or I think you can imagine what I think of him, even with my own Existentialist tendencies.
Climacus [one of the psuedonyms under which Kierkegaard wrote] hopes to deceive readers into the truth of Christianity by virtue of an absurd representation of Christianity's ineffability; the Christian God is represented as absolutely transcendent of human categories yet is absurdly presented as a personal God with the human capacities to love, judge, forgive, teach, etc.
October 26, 2004
In which I continue to dislike David Brooks
Has he just started writing op-eds about himself?
And minus a million points for the Nietzsche reference. You don't get to be a complete tool and reference Nietzsche.
And minus a million points for the Nietzsche reference. You don't get to be a complete tool and reference Nietzsche.
Homie Don't Play This
Eminem seems to have joined the Reality Based Community with his new music video. MTV is evidently a little squeemish about playing it, but hey, that's what the internet is for.
Via Pandagon.
Via Pandagon.
October 25, 2004
Surprise, October Surprise!
Well, since it makes sense that any October Surprises, the last minute stories/stunts candidates pull to try and take the wheels off the other guy, would be coming by about now, it seems both campaigns have their final big guns.
On the Kerry side we have the story (not linked to a particular story since the entire front page is about this shit at this point) Dan mentioned earlier about the 350 tons of explosives stolen from under Bush's nose in Iraq. That's right, TONS. I could come up with all sorts of examples of stuff you could do with that, but I think you all understand that it really comes down to blowing up LOTS of shit, pretty much all of which will be ours. I guess they really didn't think things were exciting enough over there and decided to help the other guys out a bit.
On the Bush side we have this. Really, that's their big gun. Kerry said he talked to all of the Security Council and it turns out to not have been all of them. Conservatives are fighting tooth and nail against the common sense that this doesn't matter in the slightest.
Let's assume everything about this story is true. John Kerry did not, in fact, meet with the entire Security Council. I'll even go further and assume he didn't meet with any of them. So Kerry lied in order to puff himself up and make himself seem more important than a Massachusetts Senator really is on the world stage. Ok, I don't like lying as a general rule, so that's a negative which I mark up against Kerry.
On the Kerry side we have the story (not linked to a particular story since the entire front page is about this shit at this point) Dan mentioned earlier about the 350 tons of explosives stolen from under Bush's nose in Iraq. That's right, TONS. I could come up with all sorts of examples of stuff you could do with that, but I think you all understand that it really comes down to blowing up LOTS of shit, pretty much all of which will be ours. I guess they really didn't think things were exciting enough over there and decided to help the other guys out a bit.
On the Bush side we have this. Really, that's their big gun. Kerry said he talked to all of the Security Council and it turns out to not have been all of them. Conservatives are fighting tooth and nail against the common sense that this doesn't matter in the slightest.
Let's assume everything about this story is true. John Kerry did not, in fact, meet with the entire Security Council. I'll even go further and assume he didn't meet with any of them. So Kerry lied in order to puff himself up and make himself seem more important than a Massachusetts Senator really is on the world stage. Ok, I don't like lying as a general rule, so that's a negative which I mark up against Kerry.
To me it just shows that he's a politician. As has been said before, Bush has plenty of exagerations throughout his campaign, let alone his term, but none of that really matters. What matters (at least to an extent that overwhelms everything else to me) here are two things: What policies do the candidates support? and What kind of record do they, and especially the sitting president, have?
Bush has a terrible record as President. He's made policy mistakes that have cost the country a lot of money and lives. He supports policies for the second term which seem to continue things as they are, if not worse. Do I like Kerry lying? No, not at all and I wish he wouldn't. Eight days from an election am I going to spend ANY amount of time thinking about chaning my vote over this? Jesus God no. It is AN issue, but so far removed from the other more important issues that it's laughable.
Man Down, Dude!
Chief Justice William Rehnquist is undergoing sugury on thyroid cancer today. Evidently it's extremely treatable, with a 90% success rate, but with almost half the court above seventy this sure makes you think about the next 4-8 years and the possible make up of the court, no?
Hot Or Not...But For Congress
I'm sure this isn't really new, but as NBC says, it's new to me. So here it is. Some interesting choices there, especially people that got "support" from across the isle and people that had to rely on their own camp to get to the top.
As If We Needed Another Reason For Logging More!
The BC '04 guys have a new commercial (Scroll halfway down). All I can say is that if this was the best idea for a TV spot they could come up with this close to the end of the campaign, somebody should get their money back. And the BC '04 folks have the audacity to claim it's Kerry that's running the scare campaign.
And, of course, the internet folks have come up with their clever responses here and here.
And, of course, the internet folks have come up with their clever responses here and here.
I like math
This is a nifty little story -- asking physicists what their favourite equations are. A bunch of them, naturally, are physics ones, and I have no idea what they mean, but Euler's equation, the Pythagorean theorem, Fourier Transforms, the formula for the circumference of a circle, and the Riemann zeta function, are all pure math.
Let me run down the left-hand side of this, for those of you who don't remember calculus (possibly because you haven't taken it yet). One of Euler's many, many achievements was discovering that exp(i*theta) (that's "e to the theta") is equal to cos(theta)+i*sin(theta). So if you plug pi radians in for theta (that's halfway around the circle, or 180 degrees), you'll get that exp(i*pi)=-1. Then add 1 to it, and voila, 0. Euler's eqution isn't so mysterious, once you've done a couple of semesters of calculus, but it still looks cool.
Let me run down the left-hand side of this, for those of you who don't remember calculus (possibly because you haven't taken it yet). One of Euler's many, many achievements was discovering that exp(i*theta) (that's "e to the theta") is equal to cos(theta)+i*sin(theta). So if you plug pi radians in for theta (that's halfway around the circle, or 180 degrees), you'll get that exp(i*pi)=-1. Then add 1 to it, and voila, 0. Euler's eqution isn't so mysterious, once you've done a couple of semesters of calculus, but it still looks cool.
The national security President
I finally did get one reason for voting for Bush besides abortion from one of my conservative friends -- "I believe Bush will keep this country safer than Kerry". Details were not forthcoming.
Olivia, what do you think of this? This isn't Bill Clinton's supposed lax attitude on terrorism; this isn't the UN somehow keeping US soldiers from doing their job. This is the rank incompetence of the people you want keeping you safe for the next four years.
Atrios has the response from the Kerry campaign. Note he mentions Condoleeza Rice, the National Security Advisor. She is the first National Security Advisor since the position came into existence sometime in the twentieth century (I just woke up and I'm terrible with dates, someone else look it up) to campaign for her boss' re-election.
Olivia, what do you think of this? This isn't Bill Clinton's supposed lax attitude on terrorism; this isn't the UN somehow keeping US soldiers from doing their job. This is the rank incompetence of the people you want keeping you safe for the next four years.
Atrios has the response from the Kerry campaign. Note he mentions Condoleeza Rice, the National Security Advisor. She is the first National Security Advisor since the position came into existence sometime in the twentieth century (I just woke up and I'm terrible with dates, someone else look it up) to campaign for her boss' re-election.
October 24, 2004
October 23, 2004
God and Sex
Some of you know I come down very harsly on Biblical arguments against homosexuality, ie, "It's bad because it says so in the Bible".
Why?
Precisely because it involves the kind of cherry-picking Kristof is talking about here: if you're going to condemn something, or not, just because the Bible says so, you have to take the whole book, all at once, and there's a lot of stuff in there that's pretty appalling. I haven't been hesitant to call such cherry-picking Christians hypocrites in the past.
Why?
Precisely because it involves the kind of cherry-picking Kristof is talking about here: if you're going to condemn something, or not, just because the Bible says so, you have to take the whole book, all at once, and there's a lot of stuff in there that's pretty appalling. I haven't been hesitant to call such cherry-picking Christians hypocrites in the past.
In fact, the most obvious lesson from Sodom is that when you're attacked by an angry mob, the holy thing to do is to offer up your virgin daughters.
Why Bush can't "win" the "war" on terror[ism]
I think Jesse over at Pandagon has it pretty much right: "war" is just a completely inappropriate point of view on this terror[ism] thing. We can't fight a war on terror[ism], or even a war against a certain species of international terrorists, because it's like trying to shoot a tornado. If we're really concerned about this, we need to stop doing the shit that gets people to hate us so much, eg, not invade sovereign nations because they're a shitty place to live/might be a threat to us at some point in the future, maybe.
October 21, 2004
Republicans make my head hurt
I just don't get it. Why? Why do you believe these people?! They're lying to you!
According to the report, this reality gap is something new in American life. 'So why do Bush supporters show such a resistance to accepting dissonant information?' it asks. 'While it is normal for people to show some resistance, the magnitude of the denial goes beyond the ordinary. Bush supporters have succeeded in suppressing awareness of the findings of a whole series of high-profile reports about prewar Iraq that have been blazoned across the headlines of newspapers and prompted extensive, high-profile and agonizing reflection. The fact that a large portion of Americans say they are unaware that the original reasons that the US took military action -- and for which Americans continue to die on a daily basis -- are not turning out to be valid, are probably not due to a simple failure to pay attention to the news.'
The analysis says that the roots of this denial could lie in the trauma of 9/11 and people's desire to hold on to their image of Bush as a 'capable protector.' It offers no guidance, though, on how ordinary Republicans might be coaxed back to reality.
And while 'The Separate Realities of Bush and Kerry Supporters' may be perversely satisfying to Democrats in its confirmation of blue-state prejudices, it carries a pretty disturbing question for all rational Americans: How can arguments based on fact prevail in a nation where so many people know so little?
Twelve days to go
and things are looking pretty damn good, I'd say. Note that no single `outlined' state has enough EVs to bring Bush up to 270, but there are plenty of combinations of two that do it, and even more combinations that will bring Kerry below 270. So I'm still going to predict that there won't be a President-elect until 2 December, and even later if Kerry has an advantage early on in the vote-counting.
Two Jons (from the Chron)
One hosts the Daily Show, and the other writes opinion pieces. Me, I'm fans of both.
My life is about to get stupid busy, so don't expect to see lots of posts for a while. Meaning the next six weeks. Unless I get sick of being productive and start procrastinating. Then you'll see a dozen rants of insane detail against David Brooks.
My life is about to get stupid busy, so don't expect to see lots of posts for a while. Meaning the next six weeks. Unless I get sick of being productive and start procrastinating. Then you'll see a dozen rants of insane detail against David Brooks.
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