I'm underemployed, recurringly housebound with insanely painful now-sporadic (when I have meds) gout, an enlarged heart, and other health problems, particularly including lifelong recurring severe clinical depression. See here for a major crisis. I'm also sometimes available to some degree as a paid writer or researcher. This is a previous update on my situation & this -- and this from December 19th, 2005 update.
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Sanely free of McCarthyite calling anyone a "traitor" since 2001!
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"The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson
"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin
"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton
"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan
"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to
trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule --
and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley
"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss
"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire,
the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind;
and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise
the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his
expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were
respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon
"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify
the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon
"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority.
They show disrespect for elders and they
love to chatter instead of exercise.
Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They
no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize
their teachers."
-- Socrates
"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook
"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook
"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect
disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest
and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the
land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion
"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him
an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this
or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages
to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing,
with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess
and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the
opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion
and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their
ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty,
because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of
judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square
with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil
government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts
against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if
left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her
natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is
permitted freely to contradict them.
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson
"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices,
intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to
improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation;
a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most
tiresome arguments against ideas is that their "tendency" is to some dire condition --
to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand
"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri
"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke
"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology;
it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to
understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit
and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant
"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is
but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest
winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis
"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon,
but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without
being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant
"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand
"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.
"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible,
and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and
man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and
after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814
"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort,
are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true,
the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944
"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas
"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero
"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman
"Being evil is not a full-time job."
-- James Lileks
Gary Farber is now a licensed Double Super-Secret Master Pundit.
He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
Did he mention he was presently single?
The lutefisk is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left
or I'll shoot this gefilte fish.
No, really, I seriously need the help at present. And I hate asking.
Current Total # of Donations Since Blog Began: 587
Subscribers to date at $5/month: 29 sign-ups; 15 cancellations; Total= 14
Supporter subscribers to date at $25/month: 6 sign-ups; 2 cancellation; Total= 4
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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
Farber's First Fundamental of Blogging:
If your idea of making an insightful point is to make fun of people's
names, or refer to them by rilly clever labels such as "The Big Me" or "The Shrub,"
chances are high that I'm not reading your blog. The same applies if you refer
to a group of people by disparaging terms such as "the Donks" or "the pals." (Note: I have to say I don't give that much of a damn any more.)
Farber's Second Fundamental of Blogging:
The more interested you are in scoring a "point" for a political "team," a "side," than in exploring the validity or value of an idea, the less interested I am in what you're saying.
(Note: Partially suspended for the Duration.)
Farber's Third Fundamental of Blogging:
If you see a link on another blog, and use it, credit the blog.
Some places I go:
[weblogs, sites, and columns]
People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, George Alec Effinger,
Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Jay Haldeman, Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry,
Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Reed Waller, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny.
It's just a start.
And She of whom I must write someday.
You Like Me, You Really Like Me
...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object.
-- Hilzoy
Where would the blogosphere be without the Guardian? Guardian fish-barreling is now a venerable tradition. Yet even within this tradition, I don't believe there has ever been a more extensive and thorough essay than this one, from Gary Farber's fine blog. Gary appears to have examined every single thing that Guardian/Observer columnist Mary Ridell has ever written. He ties it all together, reaches inevitable conclusion. An archive can be a weapon.
-- Dr. Frank
Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott
I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow
...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow
Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit." -- Jim Henley
I look at it almost every day. I can't follow all the links, but I read most of your pieces. The blog format really seems to suit you. It also suits me; I am not a news junkie, so having smart people like you ferret out the interesting stuff and leave it where I can find it is wonderful.
-- Lydia Nickerson
Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland
...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong
My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal
If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.
Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks
Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross
One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com
Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit
I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings
Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow
The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes
Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's
face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged
We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!
Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber
Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog
Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula
Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
Swiss authorities knowingly contributed to the Holocaust by turning back Jewish refugees to face their Nazi persecutors, according to a five-year study funded by the Swiss government. [...] The undertaking, which produced 26 volumes and cost about $13 million, confronted neutral Switzerland with unpleasant truths about its World War II balancing act next to Hitler's Germany.
[...]
"We are obliged to sustain the affirmation, perhaps provocative in form, but nonetheless in conformity with the facts: The refugee policy of our authorities contributed to the most atrocious of Nazi objectives -- the Holocaust," he said. [...] The historians said "it must . . . be assumed that Switzerland turned back or deported over 20,000 refugees" during the war, and that a large proportion were Jewish. Many of those rejected were believed captured by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps, where they died.
HAIL FREEDONIA: Interesting year old Washington Poststory on how AID aid to "help democracy" can go down the--, er, be of limited usefulness in states rather more interested in autocracy, such as Kazakhstan. Also details how such powers can co-opt would-be helpers, and find plenty of US politicos to pay off to shill for them. Part of a 3-part series I missed the first time 'round.
3/23/2002 08:24:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN PLAYING BUSHKAZI: Fun and games in Kabul.
The incident Thursday began when an American player fell on the court near the seating area of the Kabul stadium. An Afghan spectator stepped forward and kicked the player in the head, Flight Lt. Tony Marshall said.
An Afghan guard with the U.S. team moved in to try to push the crowd back. He cocked his Kalashnikov and it went off unintentionally, hitting an Afghan spectator in the leg, Marshall said.
[...]
This week, British and other members of the international peacekeeping force played a cricket match with an Afghan team – complete with cucumber triangle sandwiches, scones and tea. The Afghans were leading when rain ended the match.
I RAN TO READ IT: Big story in the Sunday New York Times on the Iran-Palestinian terrorism connection. Also has info on al Queda in Iran:
Abu Musaab Zarqawi, a senior Al Qaeda leader who fled the western Afghan city of Herat after the American military campaign began, has turned up in Tehran under the protection of Iranian security forces, according to senior Israeli and American officials.
Last month, Mr. Zarqawi dispatched three Afghan-trained operatives to attack Israel, Israeli officials said. The three, two Palestinians and a Jordanian, were arrested when they crossed from Iran into Turkey on Feb. 15.
Turkish authorities said the men had possessed fake documents, had diagrams for bombs and claimed that they intended to attack targets in Tel Aviv on orders from a leader known as Abu Musaab. Israeli intelligence said his full name was Abu Musaab Zarqawi, and American officials said he was believed to be the highest ranking Al Qaeda leader now in Iran.
Remember, bin Laden has written extensively about the need to overcome differences, such as that between Shia and Sunni, or even to make alliances with others, to strike at the main enemy.
Jordanian intelligence officials said they had thwarted many attempts by Iran and its proxies to mount attacks against Israel from Jordan.
THE SAUDI PRESS PRESS: I'd say this is significant and important. This is a real press rebellion.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- The government is censoring a leading Arabic-language newspaper after it published a column saying the Information Ministry controls the press in Saudi Arabia, the paper's regional director and author of the column said Saturday.
In another statement Saturday questioning press freedom in this desert kingdom, a writer criticized the Saudi media for not reporting the firing this past week of an editor whose paper printed a poem accusing Islamic judges of being corrupt and following the orders of ``tyrants.''
The Interior Ministry ordered the dismissal of Mohammed Mokhtar al-Fala, editor-in-chief of the daily Al-Madina, earlier in the week. The poet, Abdul Mohsen Musalam, was jailed.
``Our press does not publish such news, which proves that it is still a prisoner to its weakness,'' liberal Saudi writer Abdullah Nasser al-Fawzan wrote in an opinion article in the daily Al Watan, accusing top editors of practicing self-censorship to comply with the wishes of the government.
Dawood al-Shirian, regional director for the London-based daily Al Hayat, told The Associated Press that the Saudi issue of the paper has been subjected to censorship by the Information Ministry since Friday, the day after his column criticizing the ministry appeared.
Al Hayat, one of the most widely read Arabic-language dailies, is owned by Prince Khaled bin Sultan, son of the Saudi defense minister. It is printed in several countries, including Saudi Arabia.
The censors are looking for articles critical of the government and may halt the paper's distribution in Saudi Arabia if they find any, al-Shirian said.
He said subjecting Al Hayat to censorship ``is not in the interest of the kingdom, harms the country's budding press freedom and sheds doubt on any talk the government intends to open up.''
Countless outspoken San Carlos students were assassinated by security forces during Guatemala's brutal 36-year civil war. The guerrilla conflict ended with 1996 peace accords, but participants say they wear hoods in the parade to keep their identities secret just in case.
Prince Charles is selling his own brand of luxury chocolate Easter eggs, the Mirror has reported.
The prince's organic chocolate confections have gone on sale at London's swanky Fortnum & Mason's grocery store for 30 pounds each. The 400 gram (14 oz) eggs, made from dark Belgian chocolate, are being sold by the prince's natural food company, Duchy Originals, with all proceeds going to charity.
The Easter sweets, made for Duchy Originals in London and each embossed with the prince's crest, will also be sold over the Internet. "This is a luxury egg for serious chocoholics," Duchy Originals spokeswoman Fiona Gately told the Mirror's Saturday edition. "It's made with 70 percent rich dark chocolate and has a distinctive flavour," she said.
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch police say they have impounded a 56-tonne Centurion tank and a Scud missile as well as an anti-tank rocket launcher and various handguns and rifles at the premises of a scrap metal merchant.
Police arrested the 44-year-old owner after finding a dilapidated arsenal at his home and warehouse in the seaside town of Noordwijkerhout. The collection also included the shell of a Soviet-built MiG fighter jet rusting in his scrapyard.
They never say what kind of MiG, as if they are all alike. I'd like a 29, myself.
WANNA DISAGREE, PAL?: Oh, these kids. And the adults who generalize about them.
Noisy dorm and dining room debates are no longer de rigueur as they were during earlier decades; quiet acceptance of differing views — be they political or aesthetic — is increasingly the rule.
Maybe.
...a survey of the post-Gen X generation — suggests that the young people born in the early 1980's and afterward are, as a group, less rebellious than their predecessors, more practical-minded, less individualistic and more inclined to value "team over self, duties over rights, honor over feeling, action over words."
That sounds good, mostly. But:
"Debate has gotten a very bad name in our culture," Jeff Nunokawa, a professor of English at Princeton University, said. "It's become synonymous with some of the most nonintellectual forms of bullying, rather than as an opportunity for deliberative democracy."
That's bad.
"It's as though there's no distinction between the person and the argument, as though to criticize an argument would be injurious to the person."
I see that a great deal. On the flip side, our minds are amalgamations of our ideas, conceptualizations, and feelings. On the counter-flip side, if one can't sort and discard bad ideas, let alone accept or look for criticism of them, one might as well declare one's self mentally dead, and start putrefying now. After all, it's a sweet smell.
3/23/2002 01:44:00 PM |permanent link| | Main Page |
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MALTHUS IS THE MONSTER WHO LURKS BEHIND IGNORANCE: They really need to stop doing this. The alternative will not be good for any of us.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (March 22, 2002 7:24 p.m. EST) - The ruling African National Congress has distributed to top officials a document that questions the existence of AIDS, condemns AIDS drugs as poisonous and describes Western attitudes to the pandemic in Africa as blatant racism.
DARTH BLAIR TO FIGHT REBEL ALLIANCE: Probably not via Death Star, though. More likely, talking them to death.
A hardcore of leftwing Labour MPs are privately pressing for some form of public challenge to Tony Blair's leadership of the party as a means of reining him in and - if necessary - replacing him with Gordon Brown. They believe an attitudinal sea change is under way, reflecting the disappointment of activists, unions and voters.
MAKE THEM PRY IT FROM YOUR COLD DEAD KEYBOARD: It's here, and it's that scary.
The bill, called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), prohibits the sale or distribution of nearly any kind of electronic device -- unless that device includes copy-protection standards to be set by the federal government.
That means your computer.
Joining Hollings as co-sponsors of the CBDTPA are one Republican and four Democrats: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisana) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California).
Write them. Remember them. And write your own Senators to explain why this bill must be opposed, to defend your interests, and those of society, against that of Disney and the entertainment industries' power-grab.
You can track bills in the US Congress with the Library of Congress's Thomas (Jefferson). As yet "The text of S.2048 has not yet been received from GPO." Meanwhile, Declan McCullagh's
Politech is one place that will be tracking, as will the EFF. Go be concerned.
THE IRON THAT FAILS: Mayhaps it's just me, but my sense that this page and the items on it are simply drenched in Moral Superiority of the I'm So Smart, I See Beyond You Mere Hick Ordinary Americans, You Poor Blinded Fools, You: Wake Up! variety causes this stuff to not work for me.
It is, in fact, the same sense of overwhelming Moral Superiority and self-inflated belief in one's ability to Pierce Society's Evil Veil that I get from Michael Moore in recent times, and much of the failed and juvenile left, the same sense that leaves them with a moral compass ever-spinning, and a moral yardstick that magically changes in size from moment to moment and issue to issue, the same sense that makes for such wrong-headed political analyses such as that it is better to make sure poor people in the third world have no job and income than it is to let them be Exploited, or that it is better to let people suffer under the Taliban than to Not Have Peace, and that to make these observations is to be a war-monger and a fascist oppressor.
It's quite common to not just blindly consume, but to blindly consume opinion, whatever the flavor. (Via Boing Boing.)
DEPARTMENT OF BLOGS I'VE NOT MENTIONED: I actually try to keep my links to other blogs to a minimum, so as to avoid blogorrheaic incestousness, which is why I've never or rarely linked to your excellent blog, as yet, of course.
And I'm ever more picky about whom I permalink to, as I see more and more endless repetition in blogs, as well as a lot of logs being praised despite sloppy writing, muddy analyses, arguments that beg their question, and little apparently in their favor beyond Correct Thinking of the "Yay Us! Down with Them!" flavor. The latter we see no shortage of, but it's a much-needed gap in the literature.
One utter exception is Adil of the British MuslimPundit, who has all sorts of wonderful stuff on his blog, which I keep meaning to mention. He has quite the expose of British Islamist groups, and their agenda, while discussing the Channel Four documentary, "Who Speaks for Muslims?".
He also has cogent things to say about the differences between Islam and Islamism here. His whole page is always worth reading.
The Bush administration … proposed dropping a requirement at the heart of federal rules that protect the privacy of medical records. It said doctors and hospitals should not have to obtain consent from patients before using or disclosing medical information for the purpose of treatment or reimbursement.
WHAT TOM RIDGE KNOWS is what the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee in charge of White House funding wants to know. ABC mentions the Washington Timesinterview with Rep. Ernest Istook, who says:
"Chances for the White House's appropriation request to pass as submitted are 'slim to none' unless the administration allows Mr. Ridge to testify."
Yes-it-does, no-it-doesn't doesn't make for an enlightening exchange of ideas, nor does it convince anyone on either side. But:
Even if (and the proposal in Ohio doesn't go this far) you literally had teachers putting "God Exists" up on the chalkboard and talking about their belief in God, that wouldn't constitute a violation of the First Amendment's protection against an establishment of religion.
Yes, of course it would. Many people don't believe in "God." Those who do differ wildly in their beliefs. Many other people believe in different sorts of gods. Many other people believe in other sorts of religion without God. Saying "God exists" specifies one minority belief on this planet, and a government-run school in the US can't put down other people's religious or non-religious beliefs by such an establishment of religion.
Here's a simple test: try word-substitution, and see if you still agree:
"Even if you literally had teachers putting 'Krishna Exists' up on the chalkboard and talking about their belief in Krishna, that wouldn't constitute a violation of the First Amendment's protection against an establishment of religion."
"Even if you literally had teachers putting 'Buddha Exists' up on the chalkboard and talking about their belief in the Mahatma, that wouldn't constitute a violation of the First Amendment's protection against an establishment of religion."
"Even if you literally had teachers putting 'Xenu Exists' up on the chalkboard and talking about their belief in L. Ron Hubbard, that wouldn't constitute a violation of the First Amendment's protection against an establishment of religion."
"Even if you literally had teachers putting 'Allah Exists' up on the chalkboard and talking about their belief in Mohammed, that wouldn't constitute a violation of the First Amendment's protection against an establishment of religion."
"Even if you literally had teachers putting 'Christian Science Exists' up on the chalkboard and talking about their belief in Mary Baker Eddy, that wouldn't constitute a violation of the First Amendment's protection against an establishment of religion."
"Even if you literally had teachers putting 'Odin Exists' up on the chalkboard and talking about their belief in Frigga, that wouldn't constitute a violation of the First Amendment's protection against an establishment of religion."
Now, one might walk the line if there's some reason for a teacher to digress into a discussion of personal beliefs, and many beliefs are discussed, and none are taught as true, maybe. But for a teacher to teach the "truth" of any of these assertions, in a public school, would certainly be using the authority of the public school and the government that runs it to be teaching what is "true" about particular religions or non-religions. And the First Amendment says you can't do that, and surely everyone wants that protection for their children, when they consider it may not be their religion or non-religion taught as true, otherwise?
Despite what all of the religion-out-of-all-public-life folks (and I used to be one of 'em) want to believe, the Constitution doesn't prohibit the government from mentioning or even assuming the existence of a god. Belief in a god does not equal religion.
First, I have no problem with religion in public life. Have religion in public life all you want. Just don't ask government to promote your religion over another citizen's beliefs.
Second, of course the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits government from establishing any sort of belief, pro or con, about religion, and of course declaring belief in a God-concept is a religious belief. What else is it?
