Category Archives: politics

An important distinction

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Courtesy Slacktivist:

Here I would remind us, again, of Wendell Berry’s distinction between religion and superstition. Religion, Berry said, is belief in something which cannot be disproved. Superstition, on the other hand, is belief in something that has been disproved. The former can be reasonable, the latter cannot. For all of Bill Maher’s railing against religion as “mere superstition,” it seems he doesn’t understand either of those ideas. His latest anti-vaccine, anti-medicine, anti-science crusade is superstitious nonsense. It’s religulous.

The first church of taking offense

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Heard about R. Crumb’s comic-book adaptation of Genesis? The Slog passes this along from the Daily Telegraph:

“It is turning the Bible into titillation,” said Mike Judge, of the Christian Institute, a religious think-tank. “It seems wholly inappropriate for what is essentially God’s rescue plan for mankind.

“If you are going to publish your own version of the Bible it must be done with a great deal of sensitivity. The Bible is a very important text to many many people and should be treated with the respect it deserves.”

Thing is, Crumb’s adaptation is an entirely straight-faced illustration of the text. (Check out NPR’s excerpt, if you want to see for yourself.) So, yes, Adam and Eve are naked, and Lot has incestuous (and unwilling) sex with his daughters. But these are straight out of the text! That’s right: a Christian “think-tank” is objecting to the very concept of illustrating the Bible. Slacktivist is right, in spades.

Wait, let me get this straight …

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The compromise that might actually get us a nationwide, publicly-financed insurance plan — what many are calling a “public option” — is to make it optional? Well, at least the crazy is flowing the way I’d prefer, for once.

Snark aside, the compromise is to make the public option “optional” at the state level — states can opt out if they want, presumably through legislative action. Sounds fine to me. The point of a public option is to make it big, and the big blue states — California, New York, &c — won’t opt out. It’ll be (mostly) smaller, hyperconservative states that — Mississippi, Alabama, Idaho — are most likely to do so. That’s unfortunate, because these are also poor states, with lots of citizens who would benefit from public health insurance — but at least their legislatures can be crazy on their own, and not derail it for the rest of the country.

This is also one more reason I’d better find a postdoc somewhere outside of Idaho.

William Safire

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Nixon speechwriter turned political analyst William Safire has died. What I read of his political writing encapsulated everything I can’t stand about American political conservatism, although it was well-reasoned and insightful by the Glen Beckian standards of the present era. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed “On Language,” his magazine column about words and their usage. On that subject, Safire was geekily, infectiously enthusiastic, and that’s an attitude that transcends a lot of political backbiting.*

*Incidentally, Oxford English Dictionary defines “backbiting” as “the action of detracting, slandering, or speaking ill of one behind his back,” and dates its first usage in this sense to approximately 1175 CE, not long before the origin of parliamentary democracy.

I think this says it all …

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At the behest of a reader, the Daily Dish posts this photo of an integration protest. Any of those slogans sound familiar?

“Race Mixing is Communism”
“Stop the Race Mixing March of the Antichrist” [sic]

Yes, that’s Martin Luther King, Jr., they’re calling the Antichrist.


Photo hosted at WikiMedia Commons.

I think the lesson here is that, for the segregationists as for the people who now say that health care reform is Socialist/ Fascist/ Communist/ Satanic, these terms mean only one thing: “not the way I want America to be.” And I think it’s every bit as sad that there exist Americans who believe it’s OK for a huge portion their our fellow Americans to live without proper health care, as it was for there to exist Americans who thought it was wrong for black kids to go to school with white kids.

Good grief

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A census worker has been found hanged on National Forest land in Kentucky.

Investigators have said little about the case. The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, said Wednesday the man was found hanging from a tree and the word “fed” was written on the dead man’s chest. The official did not say what type of instrument was used to write the word.

Apparently this is not officially murder yet, but it certainly sounds as though the poor guy knocked on the door of someone who’s taken the insane anti-government rhetoric of the past few months a little too seriously (i.e., seriously at all). Of all the things the Federal Government does, I think the census might be one of the least objectionable — somewhere between the Post Office and the National Park Service.

Viva la revolucion!

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Given the power to regulate an industry, a U.S. Federal agency is actually issuing regulations:

Federal health officials Tuesday banned the sale of flavored cigarettes and hinted that they may soon take action against the far-larger market of flavored little cigars and cigarillos, the first major crackdown on cigarettes since the Food and Drug Administration was given authority to regulate tobacco.

For those of us, who, like me, were maybe no longer sure that having Democrats running two branches of government makes much difference.

I wish I could say this made me think less of them …

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Anti-government-spending protesters complain about inadequate public transit on the way to the protest.

Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.

Via the Slog.