Eric The Blue

On a spring day

A beautiful spring day in Minneapolis, the first one this year in which the hum of lawn mowers in  neighborhoods seems a correlative of summer. 

I'm home from work after attending, this morning, the funeral of a work colleague of many years, someone I liked a lot.  He was a Catholic, and after the service it was a relief to walk out of the church into the sun and past the school next door where uniformed children shouted on the playground.  Inside, the median age, boosted somewhat by the two officiants, was probably 60-something.  The homily was boilerplate:  he'd said it a thousand times, and then the censer and incense--to me, not inured by frequent exposures, it seems creepy, repugnant.  In the entryway, on shelving to the side of the casket, there were pamphlets, including "What Does the Church Teach About Evolution?"  No one should care.  There were prayers for the pope and Archbishop John Nienstedt, who are not favorites of mine.  It would be easier to feel some sympathy for these guys if they ever seemed honestly perplexed about something.  But perplexity is for the fallible. They know, for it is written, and the Church teaches.

My friend was just one of countless decent and devout Roman Catholics.  I'm sure, for example, that Garry Wills is right about the nuns he has known.  But he's right about the old guys in the funny hats, too.  Here are some cartoons they wouldn't like.  Same-sex marriage and humor--two things they can't stand.  And, speaking of Wills, here is more of his good sense.

Useless

The "humanities" fill US News and World Report's "gallery" of "the 13 most useless majors."  English (my long-ago major)  comes in at #7, a notch less useless than philosophy (#6), but substantially more worthless than history (#12).  I remember having taken a course called "Philosphical Ideas in Literature," a double waste of time and effort.  I also took Art History.  Loser!

What makes these subjects useless?  It's the marketability, stupid.  That and the earning power of "recent" and "experienced" graduates who studied them.  If a philosophy major were to question the usefulness of these standards, it would only prove that she had wasted her time. 

My own view is that college should fit you to be un- or under-employed.  Imagine business administration majors reading management books in coffeeshops on their day off from waiting tables.  They're what I would call losers, if there were any.

Dickens at 200

Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago today.  I wrote about him most recently here; I am not one of those who loves Dickens unreservedly.  Adam Gopnik, writing recently about the scandal of America's prison system, had the occasion to quote Dickens on the subject of the Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia, which he (Dickens) visited in 1842:

I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers. . . . I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.

When Dickens was a kid, his father had been thrown into debtor's prison, the notorious Marshalsea.  The boy never got over it.  Wherever he went, he wanted to see the prison.  In his novels, they loom large, simultaneously metaphors and grotesque in their materiality.  You have to love the wounded, reforming Dickens. 

In 170 years we in America still have not "roused up to stay" the awful toll of our prisons.  We could begin by not incarcerating people for possession of marijuana.  I can't think of anything good that comes from that. 

Christopher Hitchens is dead; Ross Douthat comments

Christopher Hitchens is dead and every journalist who ever had a drink with him wants us to know it.  Ross Douthat, for example.  I wish this column wasn't a representative specimen of the work product of a regular New York Times op-ed columnist.  Let us take a look at some more or less randomly chosen passages and see whether it is possible to extract sense from the wheedling tone, the wordy self-regard.

• "Intellectually minded Christians, in particular, had a habit of talking about Hitchens as though he were one of them already--a convert in the making, whose furious broadsides against God were just the prelude to an inevitable reconciliation."  The wordiness starts with the first three words.  Why not "Christian intellectuals"?  Possible explanation: somehow the more dissolute expression is less apt to cause the reader to demand of the remote author, "Name one."  The gambit here is the cousin of that editorial cliche, "Thoughtful people believe. . . ."  It's as if the author, sensing the lameness of his argument, is obliged to make it impressive by invoking deep-thinking phantoms.  When Douthat says "Intellectually minded Christians," he means: I, Ross Douthat, smart Christian.  He's the intellectually minded one who, overcome by the force of Hitchens's arguments, simply says, x = y: really, deep-down, he's one of us.  (No, he isn't.)
• "American Christian intellectual life is sustained today, to a large extent, by the work of writers very much like Hitchens--by essayists and journalists and novelists and poets, from G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis to W.H. Auden and Eveyln Waugh, who shared his English roots, his gift for argument and his abiding humanism."  Why not Bertrand Russell and David Hume, a couple of Brits "with a gift for argument" whom Hitchens was in general agreement with on the topic under discussion?  Also, does the author realize that it is not an advertisement for the vibrancy of American Christian intellectual life to allow that nowadays it is sustained, "to a large extent," by a handful of dead Englishmen? 
• "When stripped of Marxist fairy tales and techno-utopian happy talk, rigorous atheism casts a wasting shadow over every human hope and endeavor, and leads ineluctably to the terrible conclusion of Philip Larkin's poem 'Aubade'--that 'death is no different whined at than withstood.'"  Oh, spare us.  Is it Douthat's point that there is a God, because he'd be depressed if there weren't?  Or that he majored in English? 
• "Officially, Hitchens's creed was one with Larkin's.  But everything else about his life suggests that he intuited that his fellow Englishman was completely wrong to give in to despair."  What exactly is meant by "giving in to despair"?  It's not as if Larkin committed suicide, and the aforementioned Russell and Hume were somewhat ruddier than, say, Kierkegaard.  But so what?  The question is about what's true, not who's cheerful. 
• "My hope--for Hitchens, and for all of us, the living and the dead--is that now he finally knows why [it's wrong to give in to despair]."  Only the rhetorical flourishes of unbelievers earn the epithet "happy talk." 

On miracles

The Star Tribune had an article the other day about a sullied but possibly miraculous communion wafer at a Catholic church in South St. Paul.  The wafer fell to the floor during a mass and, as it had presumably been consecrated, was placed in a chalice with water so that it would dissolve.  It seems that, having touched the floor, the wafer no longer qualifies as the body of Christ.  Nevertheless, you can't just toss it in the scrap, either.  There are rules covering these cases. Well, the wafer did not dissolve, as expected, but sank to the bottom and turned "a blood-red color," causing some to think they were in the presence of a miracle.  The Star Tribune article continues:

The church's pastor turned it over to the archdiocese for examination.

The archdiocese sent the host to an unnamed laboratory to be tested and released the results Wednesday in a statement from archdiocese spokesman Dennis McGrath.

"Exhaustive biological analysis by an independent scientific laboratory has determined that the reddish coloration on the Holy Communion host that was kept in a water solution after it was discovered on the floor of St. Augustine Church . . . was caused by fungus.  The host in question has been disposed of in a manner prescribed by church law.

"While the Catholic Church fully recognizes the possibility of miracles and remains open to their possibility, it does so with extreme scrutiny, investigation and care. This incident was the result of natural biological causes and should not be considered in any other way."

You have to love the tone of breathless stupidity in the church statement.  The analysis was exhaustive.  The laboratory was independent.  The situation called for scrutiny, investigation and care.  Oh, my! If you're worried about the manner in which the fungus-infested host was discarded (and who isn't?), rest easy: it was accomplished "in a manner prescribed by church law."  Whew! 

It's also good to know that "the Catholic Church fully recognizes the possibility of miracles and remains open to their possibility."  On the question of "miracles," the key word is evidently possibility.  There's a lot to love about this little story.  I think my favorite aspect concerns the wafer's ascent up the chain of command.  The parish priest turned it over to the archdiocese "for examination."  The archdiocese in turn called in the scientists.  That's why the archdiocese boys have been promoted--they know who is most apt to be able to explain the mystery, which in the end must be attributed to "natural biological causes," or, more colloquially, fungus.

 

 

A professorial oracle: I demur

In yesterday's Star Tribune, Stephen J Heaney, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of St Thomas, argues that a rule mandating "that nearly every insurance plan cover sterilization procedures and contraceptives" amounts to "an indefensible assault on freedom of conscience, of association and of religion" for Roman Catholics.  He purports to "explain the situation." 

Perhaps the first thing to notice is the words Professor Heaney chooses to deploy.  He speaks, for example, of "sterilization procedures," which in ordinary speech refers to a surgery imposed upon an unwilling subject by court order or the fiat of a tyrannical power.  But what the professor means by "sterilization" presumably includes one of  the most common, elected surgeries performed in the United States--the one most of us refer to as a "vasectomy."

No one is saying that Catholic hospitals must perform vasectomies, or abortions.  Insurance policies, however, should cover them.  And medical professionals should tell patients about their options, including those that are not available at Catholic hospitals.  People can get the services they conclude are best for them at some less benighted institution. 

When Professor Heaney isn't indulging himself in fanciful metaphors concerning "pork stores," he manages to make some straightforward pronouncements that are pretty bizarre.  Here he is "refuting" the claims of a previous writer, State Sen. Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis):

Medicine is about restoring people to health.  Abortion destroys a living human being.  Contraception, when it works, prevents pregnancy. . . .  Deliberately frustrating healthy functions and destroying human beings is the opposite of health care.

This conception of the practice of medicine appears to ignore the entire realm of preventative care.  Is the professor against doctors telling patients they should quit smoking, or lose weight, or be screened for colon cancer?  Does he deny that for many women another pregnancy is medically undesirable, even dangerous?  The professor seems to think it is never a bad idea for a woman to become pregnant.  How many women concur?  And who should decide whether or not it is a good idea for her to have a baby?

The main thing the professor's article explains is why so many people, including most American Catholics, think the Church's teachings on matters touching upon sexuality are completely bonkers.  "Contraception, when it works, prevents pregnancy."  Yes, professor.  Now I understand why the Church is okay with the rhythm method.  It isn't on the insurance menu--and, better yet, it doesn't work.

Crime stories

In its Metro section today, the Star Tribune runs the following blurb:

ARRESTED TWICE IN AN HOUR
Aug. 29 A 41-year-old man was arrested for stealing a comforter from J.C. Penney at Southdale Center, Edina.  An hour later, he was arrested for stealing merchandise from Cub Foods across the street.

This is supposed to be a funny story about a hapless criminal that readers can laugh about in a self-congratulatory manner.  It would work better for that purpose if the fellow had stolen a pack of condoms from a Walgreens and then, an hour later, a lighter and some pastries from SuperAmerica. 

On the crime beat, different order of magnitude, the state of Georgia is gearing up to execute a man, Troy Davis, despite the fact that the evidence of police misconduct is considerably more compelling than the evidence of Davis's guilt.  The prospect of an innocent person being executed is horrifying.  The only way to prevent it is to abolish capital punishment.  For if capital punishment is not abolished, and justice continues to be administered by fallible human beings, then, inevitably, innocent people will be put to death. 

I'm against it

Sometimes--frequently--I get so annoyed by stuff I hear or read that I can hardly think of anything else till I've expressed my annoyance, thereby achieving a sort of exorcism.  Thus a blog.  It doesn't even matter if anyone reads it.  I doubt the therapeutic effect could be any greater if my posts were published on the editorial page of The New York Times.

Yesterday the Star Tribune newspaper printed on its editorial page a long, pompous editorial by Mitch Pearlstein, the director of a local conservative think tank.  He really annoys me.  Yesterday's piece was about family breakdown.  Oh woe! woe! woe!  Nobody wants to acknowledge that family breakdown is a leading cause of the gap between "haves" and "have nots."  But he will trod where only big thinkers dare go.  Oh woe! woe! woe!  The sociologists all concur it's terrible!  Oh woe! woe! woe!  We must permit vouchers for private school education.  And so on.

Here's a typical Pearlstein gambit.  Having appealed to reasonable people by fussily charging "liberals" and "conservatives" of different sins on the issue of wealth inequality, he writes:

Might I respectfully add here that it is impossible for me to imagine how liberal friends could not be at least as concerned as I am from the conservative side of the aisle about the thinning of marriage and its straight line to social class rupture.

Emphasis in original.  He is so concerned.  He can't imagine why his "liberal friends" aren't.  Permit him to respectfully point out that he's better than they are.  His actual meaning would be clearer if the italics came two words later. 

You might think that the need for private school education does not necessarily follow from data about wealth inequality and family disintegration.  But Pearlstein has decided that vouchers would be a good thing and consequently every possible social observation attests to the necessity of adopting his view.  Here he is performing the pivot:

I asked [the] principal of a Catholic elementary school in the Twin Cities what her institution's mission was.  "To manifest God's love in every child," she said, or words close to that.  As educational mission statements go, this was one of the briefiest yet meatiest ever drafted.

No, it's tied with a million others for the most meaningless.  "To manifest God's love in every child" is just the empty cant of a dull nun.  It doesn't mean anything.  I hate the way we are all expected to bow down and pay obeisance soon as anyone suggests that their view is supported by religion.  I guess if you disagree with Mitch Pearlstein, then you must be against making God's love manifest in children.

Well, count me among that small group.  No tax dollars should support religious schools.  No God's love manifest in young children.  No taking time out from math and reading for lessons concerning the Virgin Mary.  I'm against it, and I'm feeling better.

Unchaste thoughts

I understand that Rep Anthony Weiner, D-NY, has been in the news?  "Keep a chaste mind," advised Henry David Thoreau, but lord, it's hard.*  I surrender.

One bit of conventional wisdom relating to political sex scandals holds that "politicians think they can get away with it."  As Hendrik Hertzberg points out, the exact opposite is the case.  In one of Woody Allen's movies, his sister calls him after a disastrous date in which it became evident, late in the evening, that the seemingly okay fellow derived sexual pleasure from an activity that most of us believe should be confined to a room usually found across the hall from the bedroom. Stunned by her story, Allen muses out loud that (as I recall the lines) "in the realm of human sexuality, 'normal' is not a useful concept."  The definition of "abnormal" is pretty close to "other peoples' secrets, publicized"--and for your secrets to be publicized you have to be someone like Anthony Weiner.  (I could get away with it, had I ever performed an impure action.)

I like, also, Hertzberg's remark that "lying is an inherent part of adultery."  I remember trying to make this point, during the Time of Bill and Monica, to a Limbaugh enthusiast of my acquaintance who, adopting a posture of moral sternness leavened with end-of-the-century sophistication, insisted, "It's not that he had sex with her, it's that he lied about it." The benefit that the self-appointed upright confer upon themselves is material for comedians.  The answer to You should have taken a cab is, If I'd been sober, I'd have known that, too.

*One cannot write on this subject without letting drop an unintentional double entendre.

 

And another thing

The Katherine Kersten column I criticized here includes the following:

Today, American democracy's Judeo-Christian roots are no longer well-understood or appreciated.  In fact, we're accustomed to hear religious faith abused by influential voices intent on driving it to the margins of our public square.

Possibly these "influential voices" would be more influential if their larynxes had names.  Anyway, it is evident that, despite their best efforts, religion has not been driven "to the margins of our public square."  Not even close.  While Kersten was composing her column, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, hard at work on the problems of The Lone Star State, signed a Proclamation reading, in its entirety:

WHEREAS, the state of Texas is in the midst of an exceptional drought, with some parts of the state receiving no significant rainfall for almost three months, matching rainfall deficit records dating back to the 1930s; and

WHEREAS, a combination of higher than normal temperatures, low precipitation and low relative humidity has caused an extreme fire danger over most of the State, sparking more than 8,000 wildfires which have cost several lives, engulfed more than 1.8 million acres of land and destroyed almost 400 homes, causing me to issue an ongoing disaster declaration since December of last year; and

WHEREAS, these dire conditions have caused agricultural crops to fail, lake and reservoir levels to fall and cattle and livestock to struggle under intense stress, imposing a tremendous financial and emotional toll on our land and our people; and

WHEREAS, throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer; it seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous wildfires;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.

IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto signed my name and have officially caused the Seal of State to be affixed at my Office in the City of Austin, Texas, this the 21st day of April, 2011.

RICK PERRY
Governor of Texas

Our founding fathers would not have been capable of creating such a document.  Bless them.

 



Kersten's Easter sermon

Since Easter falls on a Sunday this year, and Sunday is the day for Katherine Kersten to spatter her fantasies on the editorial page of the Star Tribune, you could pretty much count on a lecture concerning how America has fallen away from the Christian principles of its founding, the dire consequences for our Republic, and the urgent need to reinstitute "limited government" as required by the Judeo-Christian tradition.  And the train rolled into the station right on time!

Kersten will believe that the founding fathers were a congregation of Bible-believing Christians if it pleases her to believe that.  But it's a little rich for her to argue at the same time that "truth exists" and  can be apprehended by ordinary people exercising their reason.   If that is so, why is she so clueless about the views of Franklin, Jefferson, Paine, Washington, et. al.?  

Oh, but I've overlooked the inscription on the Liberty Bell!  She's as ridiculous as Bachmann.

Kersten's regard for what she calls "the truth" ends where her politics start. Evidence of that is the bogeyman she puts up opposite the vaunted Judeo-Christian tradition--"scientific materialism."  This is just a way of coloring the argument by borrowing some of the vaguely unfavorable associations of "materialism."  The subject of science is materiality.  Its methods are materialistic.  There is no such thing as "unscientific materialism."  Kersten's phony distinctions conceal that her real problem is with the modern world, especially science, which has done such a good job of uncovering the real answers to questions formerly pontificated upon by churchmen that nowadays people like her are reduced to spreading falsehoods about America's founders.

That's progress, I guess.

More on Stiglitz

The Joseph Stiglitz piece I linked to a few days ago--here it is again--makes a familiar argument about income and wealth inequality seem fresh and compelling.  I like the way in which, almost in passing, he sheds light on the foolish and self-defeating actions of a lot of people with the phrase "trickle down behaviorism."  Why do people spend on things they plainly cannot afford?  Well, if the top one per cent of income earners have about a quarter of all income, and the wealthiest one per cent control forty per cent of all wealth, then it makes sense to churn out products and services that the people with all the resources desire.  As the high-end end of the economy proliferates and becomes ascendant, people of ordinary means are tempted to play--it's too much like the only game in town. 

Everyone shops for the things advertised on TV during golf tournaments.  But hardly anyone can actually afford them.  Why then are the advertisements for them all around us?  Because the very few people who can afford them have such a high percentage of all the money there is.  Wealth inequality has the effect of shifting economic outputs toward high-end consumers.  It also has the effect of sucking people of ordinary means into the high-end game, where they soon lose, thereby widening the gap between themselves and those they were foolishly emulating.

Criticizing Israel

Regarding Israel's disputes with the non-Jewish residents of Palestine, the merits of the respective cases, rooted as they are in history, probably have almost nothing to do with the views of Americans, which I'm afraid come down to a kind of picture preference wherein the Jews (close to white, and believers in the God of the Old Testament) prevail over the Palestinians (more alien on both counts).  So basic information about the situation is needed, and I recommend Justin Elliott's interview, over at Salon, with Geoffrey Aronson, of the Foundation for Mideast Peace.  Elliot asks about the settlements in the occupied territories, and Aronson replies that they are to be understood as "a continuation of the historical effort of the Jewish community in Palestine to expand its sovereign presence and by so doing undermine the ability of Palestinian Arabs to do the same."  Then Elliott: "But under international law this is considered illegal?"  And Aronson: "Most international lawyers whom one would consult would consider the settlement of civilians in permanent settlements in areas that are under hostile military occupation to be illegal. Israel, however, has its own view of this. The bottom line is they feel they’ve got a right to do this."

He's trying to be evenhanded, but it's hard.  The settlements are illegal.  "Israel, however, has its own view of this."  What is that view?  Why does it have a right?  Inevitably it amounts to the methods of the Palestinians. It's not an argument that gets to the heart of the matter.  Why do the Palestinians, however despicable their methods, have no case?  Again, what is the justification for settlements in the occupied territories?  The settlers themselves would appeal to triumphalist religious interpretations.  The leaders of the Israeli government have the good sense not to do that but they don't appear to have anything better to say.

Elliott also asks Aronson about the checkpoints.  His answer, fine so far as it goes, leaves out the daily humiliations suffered by Palestinians as they attempt to move around in the occupied West Bank. I wrote here about one incident among thousands. It happens that a recent New Yorker article, by David Remnick, on the Israeli daily Haaretz, includes a mini-profile of columnist Gideon Levy, who told Remnick that he could never forget a scene, at a checkpoint, where

I saw a soldier checking the X-ray of an old lady, as if he will decide if she is sick enough to get to the hospital in the West Bank.  The scene of this nineteen-year-old child who has the right to decide on her fate and plays God and looks at her X-ray without knowing a thing, just to humiliate her or give himself this power--those things can happen today, too.

Criticizing Israel is politically risky in the United States.  In Israel, it can be lethal.  Zeev Sternhell, a professor at Hebrew University, has expressed in Haaretz views that, as summarized by Remnick, match  my own:

In 2008, on the sixtieth anniversary of the state, Sternhell won its highest honor, the Israel Prize, and the announcement infuriated settlers, who claimed that he supported armed insurrection.  Sternhell did no such thing, but he had written in Haaretz that Palaestinians had no recourse other than armed resistance.  "My intention was not to say that they could kill civilians," Sternhell recalled.  "No.  The important thing is that I said the settler's movement was both illegal and illegitimate, and the Palestinian resistance to settlements was understandable."

On September 25, 2008, Sternhell was nearly killed by a pipe bomb that exploded as he opened the door of his apartment.  He was returning from a trip and was shielded from the blast by his luggage.  The  police eventually arrested a settler, Yaakov Teitel, formerly of Florida, who, Remnick reports, "had also killed a Palestinian shepherd in the West Bank and an Arab cabdriver." 

Concerning bike lanes and gambling games

Hendrik Hertzberg, citing poll results indicating that, among New Yorkers, opposition to bicycle lanes on city streets is for people of all ages, ethnicities, and boroughs-of-residence under 50 per cent, while among those who identify themselves as Republicans opposition stands at 59 per cent, muses:

I'm sure there are many decent, sensible individual Republicans.  But as a category, Republican appears to have absolutely no positive qualities whatsoever.  Am I wrong about that?  If so, could someone please tell  me what I am overlooking?

I have a candidate!  Socially conservative, Bible-believing voters tend to oppose state-sponsored lotteries and other gambling games to which cash-strapped governments are turning, more and more, for revenue.  It's one issue on which I concur with the pious.  There are a lot of things that government shouldn't do and one item on that list is raising funds by, in effect, imposing a tax on people who aren't good at math.  What's worse, government inevitably begins encouraging people to gamble, including by advertisements in the media, so desperately does it need the money.  When I see one of these ads I always wonder why so many people seem to regard the progressive income tax as illegal governmental confiscation of private wealth, a violation of the commandment against stealing, whereas only me and the Bible-thumpers have similar ideas about luring suckers and thrill-seekers to pay to play games of chance they can't win. 

Why is state-sponsored gambling morally acceptable social policy but so-called "soak-the-rich" income tax rates an abomination? 

The Hippocratic oath--"first, do no harm"--should be applied to more than the practice of medicine.  I personally prefer it to the Golden Rule, which is too often an excuse for busy-bodies to swing into action.  My advice would be just to refrain from causing harm, and government, when it actively encourages people to gamble, violates that basic rule of decent behavior.

Bike lanes, on the other hand--yes, by all means!  Republicans are opposed?  Then I'm more sure than before that it must be a good idea!

Presidents Day

Presidents Day is a good day to remember that, notwithstanding what we are always being told by the Republicans in our lives, not every worthy American has been a church-attending, Bible-believing Christian.  Take the two men, Washington and Lincoln, who, thanks to our fondness for three-day weekends, now share one holiday.  Here is an excerpt from an interview conducted by NPR's Robert Siegel with Washington scholar Edward Lengel, of the University of Virginia:

SIEGEL: Now, a lot of us know about the Washington stories that grew up, thanks to his early biographer Parson Weems, who gave us the, I guess, the cherry tree yarn, I cannot tell a lie. But here's a bigger and more arguable question. Was George Washington a religious man? Because there's a lot of lore about his profound faith.

Prof. LENGEL: Right. He was a very moral man. He was a very virtuous man, and he watched carefully everything he did. But he certainly doesn't fit into our conception of a Christian evangelical or somebody who read his Bible every day and lived by a particular Christian theology. We can say he was not an atheist on the one hand, but on the other hand, he was not a devout Christian.

SIEGEL: But what about his kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge in prayer?

Prof. LENGEL: That's a story that was made up by Parson Weems. I think he took it out of popular folklore. It's something that many Americans have always desperately wanted to believe. And even President Ronald Reagan in the '80s, he called the image of Washington kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge, I think, the most sublime image in American history. But it just didn't happen.

SIEGEL: And George Washington's prayer that's displayed at St. Paul's Chapel in Manhattan?

Prof. LENGEL: That's also a modified version of something that he said to Congress. And it was turned into a formal prayer by somebody who we don't know exactly who.

SIEGEL: And there's a whole range of stories. There's a story about his late in life total immersion baptism. There's a story about his comforting a Jewish soldier on Hanukkah at Valley Forge. There's no end to stories about what a prayerful man he was.

Prof. LENGEL: Yeah. I think this is a reflection of something that many Americans feel this need to be close to Washington and feel this need to feel like he's one of us.

SIEGEL: What about the argument one can hear at the other end of the spectrum that while he may not have been an atheist, Washington was a deist, and that indeed, his views of God might be closer to today's secularists than today's evangelicals?

Prof. LENGEL: Well, I don't know. He was not formally anything. He wasn't really a deist. I think if any philosophy influenced Washington more than another, it was stoicism. And it was a sense that he had a path that was laid out for him by providence that by an act of will, he could either accept or reject. But he did not live by any particular tenets or theology.

Regarding Lincoln: When in 1846 he ran for Congress, his opponent, a Methodist minister, leveled against him the charge of “infidelity.” Lincoln’s rejoinder, in the form of a campaign handbill, allows that while “not a member of any Christian Church,” he has however “never denied the truth of the Scriptures” or “spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general.” He admits, by way perhaps of accounting for the rumor of his heresy, that as a much younger man he discussed and entertained heterodox philosophic notions.

The handbill is interesting mainly for what it seems to take care not to say. Lincoln gives no explanation for not being a church member, a current fact. He has never denied the truth of Scripture but does not now positively affirm it. He says that he has never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion but does not say that he believes in it now. He does not now disavow the skeptical views to which he says he was attracted as a younger man. David Bromwich, writing on this question in an article for the New York Review of Books, concludes: “Even in this critical position, with his back against the wall, Lincoln took care not to say that he was a believer.” 

Occupation of the Territories: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies 2000-2010

The current New York Review includes an article, by David Shulman, on Occupation of the Territories: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies 2000-2010, which is also the subject of a Shulman post at the NYRB blog.  The book is a project of Breaking the Silence, an organization of IDF veterans that seeks to draw away the veil from daily life in the occupied territories, and to reveal to Israeli society the details of IDF activity there. 

The first-hand accounts do not make for happy reading.  One soldier describes being ordered by his team commander to participate in a revenge killing after a terrorist attack had killed six Israeli policemen.  He was troubled by the lack of any connection between the perpetrators of the first attack and the Palestinian police targeted for retribution.  "[I]t doesn't matter, they took six of ours, we are going to take six back," he reports the commander saying.  Despite his doubts, he followed orders:

Now, the guy who I killed, who I took down, I shot a bullet at him, he was lying on the ground, we only saw . . . like we only saw . . . something was hiding him, and we were four or three people who just put . . . we just kept shooting at the body.

The interviewer then asks whether they kept shooting to "verify the killing."

Not to verify the killing, from the hysteria of the excitement . . . and then I got to him and he was, like, hacked to pieces . . . And I tried, and I turned him over, like . . . it was a 55-year-old, if not 60-year-old guy, very old, and he didn't have a weapon.

At the other end of some grotesque spectrum, another soldier relates his experience at a vehicular checkpoint during the cold winter months.  He and his colleagues had a "hobby."  They would make Palestinian men attempting to pass through the checkpoint get out of the car to pop the trunk so that it could be searched.  That the trunk could often be opened from the driver's seat did not matter.  They wanted the driver to get out into the cold.  He remembered one who refused. 

[H]e said he wasn't getting out, I confiscated his car, I took the car keys, I told him to step to the side.  He mumbled a bit, I hit him in the face with the butt of my weapon, and like that I returned to the circle of violence.  My soldiers couldn't believe it, they were so excited.  I was a deputy commander at the vehicular checkpoint and this was "a step up for us," this incident.  The checkpoint became very violent.

The book is more than 400 pages long.  The Israeli occupation is now in its forty-fourth year.  It will be objected that Occupation of the Territories presents a one-sided view.  Maybe.  But who doubts that the described events occurred?  And, considering that the book is the first-hand accounts of Israeli soldiers, to whom should we turn for "balance"?

Black History Month

It's not to remember conditions on the slave ships.  When Representative Bachmann speaks of how the founding fathers worked tirelessly to eradicate slavery, she is only taking our penchant for national self-flattery so far that even the historically under-informed can smell the falsehoods. What forces opposed them that they had to work so hard?

We like pleasant celebrations but sometimes they require some sanitation work.  Take, for example, "the Jackie Robinson story."  The principal elements feature the brave white sponsor, Branch Rickey, and Robinson's own quiet struggles.  If he had replied in kind to the racial animosity, all would have been lost.  I don't know why, exactly, but that is the way the story goes.  His white friend Pee Wee Reese helped him through the worst times, which ended soon enough.  He was the Rookie of the Year, the color line was broken, and the major leagues have retired his number 42 jersey--he's the only player so honored.

The story of Robinson's court-martial, three years before he played in his first big-league game, related here by Jules Tygiel in American Heritage Magazine, isn't part of the Black History Month canon.  Maybe the problem is that Robinson fought back too hard and without any help from kindly white people. 

 

The year in this and that

Some things you are a sucker for even though you understand in your head that the object of your affection is, you know, messed up.  (That is my idea of the way with-it people talk nowadays.  The Republicans win a lot of elections and with-it people, such as myself, are apt to say something such as, "That is, like, you know, fucking messed up.  Seriously!")

Anyway, like sports. My wife has patiently explained to me, more than once, that it makes no sense to care who wins ball games, that they're just fleeting and meaningless competitions between the multimillionaires of one franchise and the multimillionaires of another, and that it is a fantasy to imagine that the guys in the one colored uniform are "our guys."  No, they are not our guys, they are from Texas or California or possibly the Dominican Republic, and soon as the season is over they will go to one of their multiple residences somewhere away from here and daydream, when not patronizing strip clubs, about selling their services for several million more to another franchise.  Who cares?  She doesn't, and neither should I, says she.

Okay, maybe she is right, technically, but to me it is sort of like arguing that the actor playing Hamlet is only an actor, he's going out after the performance to knock a few back, and you are crazy to be affected in any way because it is not as if anyone really suffered or died, it's just a play, did you not notice how the actors revived to take a bow?  It's not exactly like that, but it's sort of like that, and if being interested makes time pass pleasurably for me then time is passing pleasurably for me. 

The above is all prologue.  The subject of this post is all the year-end rituals, the resolutions and the list-making and the journalistic retrospectives.  All quite stupid, I think.  If you are going to resolve to do better, you should start doing better, now, instead of waiting for the calendar to turn.  The chopping up of time into years, for such things as Nobel Prizes and Academy Awards and the "ten best of this year"--how much sense is there in that?  There is no logical connection between the time it takes for the Earth to travel around the sun and these human activities.  Also, it seems unfair in a random sort of way.  If your book is published in January, it creates a little buzz, and then, eleven months later, it's time for the year-end retrospectives, so it gets a second little buzz that crowds out any initial buzz for the book just published in December, which December book will not ever have a chance to get a year-end buzz because it was published "last year."  Two buzzes to none, and for no very good reason at all.

Notwithstanding, if you are a reader, you might enjoy going here as much as I did.  "Here," for those of you who kept reading, instead of clicking, is the New Yorker's Book Bench Blog and their year-end retrospective, "The Year in Reading."  Compare Tad Friend's breezy look at Franzen's Freedom with those, here and here and here, of Eric the Blue.  Notice that the only book that gets mentioned by two different contributors is The Imperfectionists, a first novel by Tom Rachman--I missed the "initial buzz" on this one.  Find out that Malcolm Gladwell is a self-described lover of "thrillers and airport literature," whereas Rebecca Mead spent a good part of the year with George Eliot.  Also, I did not know, but do now, thanks to Richard Brody, who enjoyed Saul Bellow's letters, that the author of Augie March was still having a hard time making ends meet a decade after that great novel was published.  (Editorial comment, accompanied by mournful string music:  Don't whine to Melville about it.)

In the Times

Here, from a New York Times story on Saturday's Senate vote on the Dream Act, a sentence that a lot of readers unschooled in the inscrutable byways of America's political system might naturally think needs a copy editor:

The 55-41 vote in favor of the bill, which is known as the Dream Act, effectively kills it for this year.

But, no, it is a fact that, despite being supported by 57% of senators present to vote, the Dream Act is dead, at least for now--and, considering that there will be a lot more Republicans voting in the next Congress, probably for a long while.  The counterintuitive truth of the Times's sentence must be credited, if that is the word, to the fact that bringing a bill to a "final vote" requires 60 supporters in the 100-member US Senate.  Since 55 < 60, it matters not that the Dream Act is supported by a clear majority of senators.  For in the Senate, we do not have "majority rules," but, rather, "super majority rules," which often seems the practical equivalent of "minority rules."

Imagine if other areas of human competetive endeavor operated along the same line.  We might then read in the sports pages:

Today, in NFL action, the Chicago Bears failed to defeat the Minnesota Vikings when, at the end of the fourth quarter, the Bears led, but only by 30 - 21.  In the waning minutes of play, the Vikings, trailing 30 - 14, drove 67 yards for a touchdown, and when Ryan Longwell added the extra point the Bears found themselves with fewer than 60% of all the points scored in the game.  The Vikings were jubilant over their come-from-behind victorious non-loss.

Or, staying within the political arena:

The Republicans, who hold a 42 - 58 advantage in the US Senate . . . .

There are various ways of trying to impress upon skeptics the profoundly undemocratic nature of this state of affairs.  For example: since every state, no matter how small its population, gets two senators, the 60 per cent rule means that the 21 smallest states, which have less than 12% of the country's population, hold what amounts to a legislative veto power over senators representing 88% of the people.

Enough drizzle.  In sunnier news, this same Senate, over the same weekend, repealed DADT ("Don't Ask, Don't Tell"), thereby clearing the way for homosexuals to serve openly in the armed forces.  If I were one of them, I think I'd be happy, though in a peculiar ironical sort of way, seeing as how military training consists to a considerable degree in helping people to get over their previous aversion to killing other human beings.  Fewer and fewer are excluded from the privilege.

Maybe in the 18th century

You know the world according to Adam Smith, wherein the invisible hand of the unencumbered market creates a paradise here on earth.  Was there ever anything to it?  A recent news article details how, according to a lawsuit filed by Minnesota attorney general Lori Swanson, the Discover Card company signs customers up for expensive and unwanted products, such as identity theft protection and credit score monitoring:

The suit alleges that Discover's telemarketers lulled cardholders into thinking they were getting a "courtesy call," then read a sales script so quickly -- often running sentences together and skipping over key words -- that many cardholders reflexively said, "Yes," or, "OK." Discover treated these responses as agreements to sign up for a new product, even when there was no clear consent and the customer did not understand the terms, the lawsuit alleges.

This business practice reminds me of my first cell phone contract.  It was for two years, with Sprint.  While the contract was running, my work made a BlackBerry available to me, so I was eager to ditch the phone that I hardly ever used anyway.  On the 731st day I made the call, and was told that I would be assessed a $200 "early termination fee."  Turns out I had at one point decided to save a few bucks by changing my text messaging plan--I rarely used the phone but I never texted--and, the Sprint representative explained, in the voice of Hal from 2001, I had at this time consented to a new two-year contract, which began to run on that day. Now I was terminating well before the "new" contract was up.

It 's ridiculous that making a minor change to a billing option would result in a new contract.  But the other point, relating to the case against Discover, is that I never would have made the change had it been made clear to me that I was signing up for another two years.  

In the wonderful world of Adam Smith, there are willing sellers and willing buyers.   Now we have companies that sell people things without their consent.  It's like they had the idea: Why advertise?  You can try to persuade people to buy things they don't need, but it is more efficient just to send them a bill for it.

The private sector is a mostly seamless advertisement for big government.  You go, Lori Swanson!

Barbara Ehrenreich speaks

I found this on Wendell Hiller's Facebook wall.  Check it out.  Barbara Ehrenreich is, or ought to be, a national treasure.  Years ago I came across an essay of hers, "Cancerland," which, rereading it now, suggests that dopey, misplaced optimism has been on her mind for quite awhile.  It's available online here or in Best American Essays of 2002, selected by Stephen Jay Gould, who was himself the author of a memorable personal essay on cancer that I discussed here. 

All these people who insist that getting cancer was a good thing for them, that it made them realize what's truly important in life, and all of that yackety-yack: they should have made the discovery before they got sick. 

Addendum

When did conservative politicians and their friends stop thinking in order to devote themselves full-time to shouting and waving their arms?  I date it to 9/11, though it is possible that's only when their gesturing started knocking things over so that it got hard to ignore. 

Really, though, does not the reaction to the despicable acts performed that day seem now rather out-sized?  The attack could have been regarded as a horrendous crime demanding investigation, prosecution, and punishment.  But, no, we were told it was an act of war--19 guys with box cutters achieving what formerly required an army.  If it's war, the civilian body count of around 3000 probably does not strike, say, the Japanese as a sufficient reason to invent a new epoch, the "post-9/11 era."

When war is declared, the shouting and sloganeering follow.  The clash of civilizations!  The Islamofascists! Anything is permitted, for we were attacked by the evil enemy.  I can't even remember which Democrat (Biden?) said of Rudy Giuliani that all his sentences include a noun, a verb, and a reference to 9/11, but he had it about right--though there was no particular reason to single out Giuliani.  The way I'd put it is, after 9/11, we were told, "Because we were attacked, we must do x"--and x could be anything.  You couldn't be a patriot if you noticed what freshman composition teachers sometimes write in the margins of student themes: "logical connection weak." 

A nation at war doesn't listen to reason.  John Kerry made the mistake of suggesting that a "war on terror" could not succeed, that we need instead constant vigilance, over a long period, exercised in defense against a dangerous but weak enemy.  What we don't need is to lash out, go crazy, invade countries, waterboard prisoners, fly them off to "black sites" in distant lands or keep them indefinitely in Cuba.  Once, it was possible to imagine that the "conservative" party might make that case.

Commencement address

Rebecca Mead, writing in The New Yorker, asks aloud during this graduation season whether a college education is worth the expense.  According to the economists, it isn't, unless you major in something like accounting or business.  For those in the truth-and-beauty fields, forget it: take the job today you would otherwise take in four years, only with tuition debt the size of a mortgage.

The unexamined assumption is that it's better to have money than an education.  Mead demurs, gently.  My own view is that the economic utilitarians have carried the day so that what now usually passes as a college education really isn't worth the expense.  Accounting!  My distinct impression is that the top colleges are just white-collar trade schools.  All education now is vocational.  What are you going to school for?  It's assumed that the answer is to prepare for a profession or a particular line of work.  Great.  Go to college, get a job, spend the rest of your life buying the stuff advertised on TV during golf tournaments.  You'd be a sucker to go to college to catch the beat of a different drum, because, nowadays, there's only one drum beating.

Mead's colleague George Packer has more.