Blogworthies II

Because The Blog from the Core simply can't cover everything.

Noteworthy entries @ Discriminations, Turnabout, JunkYardBlog, The Remedy, Midwest Conservative Journal, Dust in the Light, Discriminations (again), Cor ad cor loquitur, Dyspeptic Mutterings, Bettnet.com, Sed Contra, Lex Communis, JunkYardBlog (again), and Midwest Conservative Journal (again).

Duke And Diverse Diversities @ Discriminations:

An interesting argument is breaking out all over about diversity on campus. No, no, not that diversity (usually referred to here as “diversity”), which has become nothing more than a code word for the number of minorities. That argument is more broken down than breaking out, and if truth be told is not even so interesting any more.

The new diversity argument deals with the often stifling political uniformity of many faculties, particularly in the humanities, and its point man is ideological provocateur par excellence David Horowitz, who is leading the charge for an Academic Bill of Rights to promote and protect, well, diversity.

Horowitz is a master of needling the lefties, of getting under their skin, and one of his most infuriating (to them) tactics is appropriating their language....

Establishment and liberalism @ Turnabout:

A lawyer with mainstream liberal views on the Establishment Clause sent me a note taking issue with some of my comments on my page on the Establishment of Religion and I responded. Here’s an edited version of the exchange:

Liberal Lawyer: How can you justify the assertion that liberalism is implicitly totalitarian? A society is totalitarian if only one belief on the nature of man, society, politics, economics, philosophy etc. is permitted and all others are ruthlessly suppressed. America and contemporary Europe aren’t at all like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.

Jim Kalb: America isn’t like Germany or Russia, but all three reflect in various ways certain bad features of the modern world. You might look at what I say about totalitarianism in The Tyranny of Liberalism. If you’re interested you can search for the word “totalitarianism” in the text and read the section.

I don’t view extreme brutality as a requirement for totalitarianism. To me it seems illuminating to think of it as a general tendency of modern politics, so that there could be soft as well as hard totalitarianism. The basic issue is whether it makes sense to call Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World totalitarian. I think it does. (My view isn’t completely idiosyncratic — try googling “soft totalitarianism” or “Brave New World” and “totalitarian.”)

So as I use it the term refers to the total reduction of human existence to a single set of principles that governing elites claim to possess in full here and now. The principles are capable of clear operational definition, and so the elites feel called on to enforce them throughout the whole of life everywhere and have a reasonable prospect of doing so. Unfortunately, the reason the principles can be defined in such a clear, comprehensive, universal and usable way is that they leave out concerns that are difficult to define and manipulate. The result is that things essential to our humanity get crushed as the principles are implemented. Governing elites treat the losses as nonexistent because their theory of things keeps them from noticing them and makes them view opposition as simple ignorance and evil....

Practical Effects of Anti-War Movements @ JunkYardBlog:

What effect does pacifism have on war? What effect does it have on our enemies? What effect do anti-war demonstrations, be they in the guise of pacifism or "peace" or simply an end to a given conflict, have on that conflict?

Since 9-11 all of these questions have been asked, but not really answered, because it is difficult to answer them. If one side in a conflict involving more or less equal opponents refuses to fight, even if attacked, the result would be obvious--the pacific side would lose as soon as the aggressor side decided to attack. But what about an imbalanced conflict, such as the war against al Qaeda and Islamicism?

There is an obvious imbalance of power in the present war; the United States is an unchallenged military power, possesses the world's largest and most robust economy by far, owns vast stores of natural resources and has no strong enemies, in fact no enemies at all, on its immediate borders. Al Qaeda is a well-financed but in terms of scale a rinky-dink rag-tag force; its despotic state sponsors are similarly weak, though through terror sponsorship and development of weapons of mass destruction seek to close the yawning gap between themselves and the US. What effect does the anti-war movement have in this war? What if America eventually decides not to fight?

It's difficult to say with any certainty. We don't even know if Osama bin Laden is still alive, much less whether he follows news accounts of protests or the general war footing and mood of the American public. But we can look back at other wars to see if any parallels exist....

Why We Need an Amendment @ The Remedy (emphasis in original):

There seems to be a pattern establishing itself here: once again, I find myself at odds with my friends Ken Masugi and Dennis Teti, and taking the side of our formidable commentator, "TheChair." Perhaps I'm just stubborn or invincibly ignorant, but I still haven't seen a satisfactory argument against the constitutional amendment strategy.

My knee-jerk reaction is to oppose constitutional amendments, and I have opposed every "conservative" constitutional amendment that I recall having been proposed in my adult life. But in spite of Dennis' claim that the argument against an amendment is "simple," neither his nor Ken's explanation is persuasive, or at least not fully so.

Of course, federal legislation is much easier to enact. But how does that help the poor folks in Massachusetts? Or how will it help the folks in other states when, as is inevitable, their courts tell them that they must allow "gay" "marriage"? Federal legislation, even if upheld by the courts (doubtful, in my view, given recent trends), offers no solution here.

Furthermore, once "gay" "marriage" is allowed in some jurisdictions, it becomes infintely more difficult for it to be resisted in other jurisdictions.

So while Ken and Dennis have convinced me that legislation is easier, they haven't demonstrated that it will actually solve the problem....

Up Periscope @ Midwest Conservative Journal (emphasis in original):

The attempt to cast the Massachusetts homosexual-marriage issue as a modern civil rights struggle just took a torpedo amidships:

The three major associations of Greater Boston's black clergy, exercising their considerable influence within the minority community and asserting moral authority on civil rights matters, have shaken up the debate over same-sex marriage with their insistence that the quest by gays and lesbians for marriage licenses is not a civil rights issue.

The Black Ministerial Alliance, the Boston Ten Point Coalition, and the Cambridge Black Pastors Conference issued a joint statement this weekend opposing gay marriage.

Don't get us wrong, say these ministers. We're political progressives. But the Scriptures are clear:

"As black preachers, we are progressive in our social consciousness, and in our political ideology as an oppressed people we will often be against the status quo, but our first call is to hear the voice of God in our Scriptures, and where an issue clearly contradicts our understanding of Scripture, we have to apply that understanding," said the Rev. Gregory G. Groover Sr., pastor of Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston.

Some Boston blacks are shocked....

Smaller Hurdles to a Steamroller @ Dust in the Light (embedded ellipsis in original):

Gabriel Rosenberg, with whom I had what turned out to be a preliminary discussion of the implications of the Massachusetts gay marriage decision for such next-step innovations as incest and polygamy has now expanded his thoughts into two posts. When it comes right down to it, while he has made some reasonable arguments — ones to which I may very well refer if things devolve so dramatically in the future — and considered various angles, the whole endeavor strikes me as beside the point.

The reason I say that is the tenuousness of the distinction between abstract contemplation and practical, political considerations. Look, even, at Dr. Rosenberg's closing sentence:

Of course, I believe the US Constitution's 14th amendment requires same-sex marriage everywhere, but until the time that is recogized I do not buy arguments that a federal marriage amendment is needed to avoid the chaos of differing state regulations.

So, he believes that one state's gay marriage laws ought to be federalized, and he would presumably oppose an amendment even if that proved to be the case, but he intends to dismiss arguments on behalf of the amendment until it is too late for them to have any chance of being put into effect. That's a bit like a supporter of abortion declaring in 1970 that the issue oughtn't be federalized until the Supreme Court writes the "right" into the Constitution.

I'm grateful to Dr. Rosenberg for his cordial interaction with me, thus far, so I hope he won't consider this to be a break in that standard, but I must say that his arguments throughout are typical of the strategy of the more intellectual of gay marriage's supporters. The strategy is merely to mollify concerns and to cast objections as unreasonable... until their objective is a fait accompli. A movement that has pushed its cause through the courts has almost no credibility to argue that further undesirable advances will find the way blocked....

Misleading Article On Decline In Minority Applications To Michigan @ Discriminations:

The Los Angeles Times and other papers ran an Associated Press article yesterday, “Fewer Minorities Apply At Michigan,” that qualifies for a hall of fame spot in any museum of alarmist misleading journalism.

It begins:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Seven months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the University of Michigan's undergraduate affirmative action policy, the number of applications from blacks, Latinos and American Indians is down 23% from last year.

The number of those admitted is down 30%.

Then we learn (at least those who kept reading) that these figures are preliminary, that all the applications have not been reviewed.

"We've only accepted a fraction of the class we'll ultimately admit," said Chris Lucier, associate director of admissions.

But wait, as they say, there’s more. (As it happens, much more). It turns out that the applications for the entire freshman class “were down 18%, according to the preliminary data....”

Why Did God Kill Onan? Luther, Calvin, Wesley, C.S. Lewis, & Others on Contraception @ Cor ad cor loquitur (embedded ellipses in original):

Genesis 38:9-10: “But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife he spilled the semen on the ground, lest he should give offspring to his brother. 10 And what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he slew him also.”

It is an historical fact that no Christian communion sanctioned contraception until the Anglican Lambeth Conference in 1930. Protestant historian Roland Bainton states casually that the Church “very early forbade contraception” (Early Christianity, 56). According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, “many Christian moralists . . . repudiate all methods of family limitation” (Cross, 889). Ronald Knox eloquently recounted how Christians used to detest contraception:

"Practices hitherto connected with the unmentioned underworld have found their way into the home . . . it is not merely a Christian principle that has been thrown overboard . . . Ovid and Juvenal, with no flicker of Christian revelation to guide them, branded the practices in question with the protest of heathen satire. It is not Christian morality, but natural morality as hitherto conceived, that has been outraged by the change of standard."

(Knox, 31-32)

Christianity (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism alike) had always opposed contraception as gravely sinful. When I first learned of this in 1990 (as an inquiring evangelical pro-life activist curious about the “odd” and inexplicable Catholic prohibition) it was a shocking revelation to me and the first step on my road to conversion to Catholicism....

Proof That Multiculturalism Should Come with a Surgeon General's Warning. @ Dyspeptic Mutterings (emphases in original):

Proof That Multiculturalism Should Come with a Surgeon General's Warning.

"Has been proven to cause brain rot in bi-coastal types."

It takes much education and even more practice to sound as dumb as Andrea Lewis does in this review of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Her charge? "Racism," of course. It's the same kind of "analysis" that wonders in the voice of an angry schoolmarm why black olives are locked away in a steel can while the green ones are kept in glass jars for the whole world to see?*

She goes downhill from the title:

A 'Return' of the White Patriarchy?

You mean it went away? Gosh, and no one let me know either.

Those white devils are nothing if not clever.

The "Lord of the Rings" and "Matrix" trilogies have defined early 21st century cinema more than any other big-screen flicks.

Fair enough. For those of you keeping track at home, this is the analytical high point of the article....

The rally for marriage @ Bettnet.com:

I attended the rally for marriage on Boston Common this afternoon [Feb. 8] and while I’m often skeptical of the effectiveness of rallies, I was impressed with this one. Although it was one of the coldest days of the year, with a very cold wind chill caused by heavy winds, there was still a decent turnout. If it had been a warm spring day in May, the crowd would have been huge. As it was, the organizers estimated 2,000 - 3,000 people and I think that’s about right. There were counter-demonstrators as well, of course. Across Tremont Street, a few hundred people gathered on the steps of a (non-Catholic) church for a counter-rally and about a dozen of them carrying signs stood directly behind the podium of our rally. Their signs said things like “Shame on you Sean” (referring to Archbishop O’Malley) and other hate-filled rantings. It’s ironic that we’re the ones accused of hatred, but it’s the other side that manifested it. Meanwhile one speaker noted the irony that while we had several American flags spread throughout the crowd, the counter-protestors only brought their rainbow flags. We’re fighting for our democracy and our nation’s best interests. They’re interested in their own individuals wants and desires....

On Same Sex Marriage @ Sed Contra:

Well, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has acted to make sure that everyone knows precisely how bright and firm it intended its lines in the sand to be. Same-sex marriage alone will satisfy its need to fashion society along its own ideals, so all you fence sitting politicians hoping for a compromise on same sex unions have to make a choice now. Politics is a bitch, ain't it?

Opponents of the the Courts interpretation of reality have already rallied (picture at right) in support of a constitutional amendment which will limit marriage to being between one man and one woman. I guess its a measure of how lost we have become that such a cultural foundation would have to be enacted into the constitutional law of a State in order to remain preserved and honored.

Both Dan, my former partner and I, oppose any move toward same sex marriage and its funny to see how we each approach the issue. Now that we have godkids with whom we are pretty deeply in love and in whose lives we hope to be involved for a long time, I find he is an even sharper hawk on the cultural issues than I am....

The real anti-science Barbarians. @ Lex Communis:

Moira Breen shares the happy news that a three judge panel of Ninth Circuit turned back the attempt to legislate scientific truth and methedology. The case involved the ability of scientists to study the "Kennewick Man." The subject of the dispute centers around the approximate nine thousand year old remains of a human with feautures more typical of Europeans than Asians, thereby raising the possibility that the migration of humans into North America was a lot more complex than anyone had previously imagined. Here is the link to the decision.

The decision is a good primer on things like standing and statutory construction. The decision focuses on the interpretation of Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (“NAGPRA”), 25 U.S.C. § 3001 and specifically whether the Secretary of the Interior's decision to deliver the nine thousand year old remains to modern tribes was irrational or arbitrary under NAGPRA. The Court makes the fundamentally intelligent decision that the since Congress defined the tribes within the scope of NAGPRA's protection in the present tense, only existing tribes could make a claim to the remains, and since there was no evidence of a connection between existing tribes and the remains, the Secretary's decision was irrational, arbitrary or capricious.

Now let's set the intricacies of statutory construction aside for the moment and take a look at the big picture. What was going on here? Obviously, what was at stake was some kind of ideological view that requires that Native Americans not have European antecedents. And, because of that, the government was willing to stifle and suppress scientific research....

The Man Behind You @ JunkYardBlog (emphasis in original):

So the little girl lost is dead. They found Carlie's body in some underbrush near a church. They have charged the mechanic, Joseph Smith, with her abduction and murder.

Smith has a rap sheet as long as Shaquille O'Neal's arms. A judge named Harry Rapkin had just freed him, though Smith had been in violation of his parole terms. Freed him because he believed the prisons are too full; freed him to kill a little girl. Thanks, judge. May you never get another night's peaceful sleep for this one. May guilt rack your conscience as long as walk this earth. May some of the lawyers who talk big about the issues of the day do something about judges that free madmen to kill little girls.

And may the murderer die, soon.

I know, there are already criminals' rights advocates and anti-death penalty advocates lining up to argue that Smith should be spared, given life in prison without parole, the usual claptrap. As usual, they argue for the rights of killers and ignore the rights of victims.

Liberals, anti-death penalty advocates, whoever you are, allow me to let you into my mind for a minute or two. I'm a conservative. I'm a Christian. Chances are, at least one of those two words is enough for you to start hating me.

Turn one ounce of your wrath on someone who deserves it for once, just once, instead of someone like me — just a guy trying to protect his family and make an honest living and worship his God. Just once....

Des Does Southwark @ Midwest Conservative Journal (blockquoted quotations here are italicized in original):

Secular, non-religious liberalism's house chaplain, Desmond "Genuflect When You Say That Name!" Tutu, recently preached a sermon at Britain's Southwark Cathedral. If you've got other important matters that you need to take care of, I'll sum it up by saying that the former Primate of South Africa relieved himself on the grave of Anglican homiletics. A few highlights:

Long, long ago, very clever people decided that the human body, flesh, all material things, that all of these were in and of themselves, evil, intrinsically, inherently and always. So there was no way that the good, the pure, the sublime and, by definition, the perfectly good spirit could be united with the material. For these people, the dualists, the incarnation, God, pure spirit, becoming a human being was totally and in principle, and always, out of the question. What people thought was God become flesh in Jesus Christ, well, that was all just playacting, a charade. Could you imagine God the all-powerful, God the eternal, dying? Oh come off it! Get real! When this one was crucified, it was not really Jesus — God — dying. You and I may pooh-pooh all this superiorly and say, "How odd, flying in the face of facts" but aren't so many of us really closet duallists or worse, have we not sometimes been embarrassed with our physicality, when we have found it attractive to engage in the familiar dichotomies as between the sacred and the secular, the profane and the holy? When we have thought that Original Sin, must somehow have had to do with the facts of life, we snigger a little bit, wink, wink, as if when God said to Adam and Eve, "Be fruitful and multiply", God meant that they would do so by perhaps looking into each others' eyes!

I never knew Catharism was such a problem in the church, Des. Steams me, too. The Catholics claimed that they took care of that problem. I'll never trust those people again.

The Jesus I worship is not likely to collaborate with those who vilify and persecute an already oppressed minority. I myself could not have opposed the injustice of penalizing people for something about which they could do nothing — their race — and then have kept quiet as women were being penalized for something they could do nothing about — their gender, and hence my support inter alia, for the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate.

You probably already know where Des is going with this: ....

P.S. See also Blogworthies I and Blogworthies III.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 02/14/04 03:57:09 PM
Categorized as Blogworthies.